Joker Moon

by George R. R. Martin

  According to Anya, Constantin thinks the medal is an empty gesture to honor futility. He drinks himself to sleep on the few remaining bottles of vodka.

  After the Swarm debacle, Constantin constantly mutters under his breath. Yuri just avoids him and spends more time practicing his travel abilities. He makes several trips to the Swarm Mother, but it seems to definitely be headed out of the system at its much-slower-than-light pace. It will probably be months until it is beyond the orbit of Pluto.

  After several trips, Yuri decides to check on the reported resolution of the Swarm Mother menace, and converts to the frequency of deep radar to slip inside the shell.

  The inside is roughly the volume of Crimea. He can see many sections where Swarm monsters lie quiet. Dead? Or just waiting for orders? Speeding about the shell, he eventually comes to a chamber. Inside, the apparent brain of the creature seems to half encompass the body of Mai, the ace who is reported to have achieved a symbiosis with the Mother and directed her from her career of devastation.

  “Hello?” Yuri ventures as he reverts to his material form. His English is much improved from the experience of the battle against the Swarm. One breath confirms that the atmosphere in this chamber, at least, is breathable. It is filled with intriguing smells.

  “I greet you,” replies a voice that seems to come from the girl, but has an alien vibration. “Why are you here?”

  “I heard of your unique status and thought to offer to provide some human contact.”

  “You are very kind,” replies the symbiotic voice, “but I would not keep you from your fellows.”

  “No fear of that. I travel at the speed of light and can return to Earth at any time.”

  Their conversation continues for several hours. Then Yuri takes his leave and heads back for the station, with the invitation to come back at any time.

  Very confident in his abilities, Yuri gets a fix on the radar signature of the station, and comes up short. He realizes that the station is fifty kilometers closer to the planet than it should be. He crosses the distance in a short hop.

  Standing as still as anyone can in orbit, he sees the station venting its maneuver rockets and falling toward the Earth.

  Further, there are two more spacecraft in the station’s orbit. One is another Progress capsule, locked to Almaz 3. Now all the docking portals are blocked. The other is a winged craft somewhat like the American Hornet spaceplanes. This one has the designation MiG-105 on its fuselage. It seems to have just arrived, as Yuri can see it still using maneuvering jets to establish a parallel course to the station’s decaying orbit.

  “Yuri, this is Many Toes,” Yuri hears over the special band that he and Anya use exclusively. “I am barricaded in Almaz 5 and most of my communication array has been subverted by Lead Man. This station is in great danger, and so is the Kremlin.”

  “The Kremlin?”

  “Da. Constantin intends to crash the station, or what’s left of it after reentry, into the Kremlin.”

  “No way he can guide this conglomeration into the Kremlin.”

  “So he dumps a highly radioactive station into the suburbs? How is this an improvement?” returns Many Toes. “I tried to fight him, but he broke three of my noses and smashed my dorsal arm.” Yuri wonders why the ground-side medical telemetry hadn’t picked up on that, but they notoriously do not track every peculiarity of a Star Gifted’s anatomy. And Many Toes has a lot of peculiarities.

  Yuri speeds to the spaceplane. Looking in through the cockpit, he can see a pilot and another seat with no one occupying it. He recognizes the pilot from their days in Star City. Cosmonaut Colonel Aviard Fastovets has mostly dealt with suborbital missions and has never been to the station. But he is the best pilot with the experimental MiG-105.

  Yuri switches to his visible form, this time in a space suit like the one he had left on the station six years before, and slips into the unoccupied passenger seat.

  “Who in hell’s name are you?” asks Fastovets, trying to figure out how Yuri has appeared so suddenly.

  “You have heard of Star Ghost, certainly?” he replies. “What do you know of this situation?”

  “No reports for the last three weeks. No Progress capsules released to burn up in atmosphere for the last three months. Telemetry shows both station keepers alive, and radiation levels rising. And now I had to chase the damned crate all this distance,” Fastovets says. “The station’s now in a more northerly orbit and at least fifty kilometers closer to Earth than it should be.” He looks out at the Progress-festooned station. “Now I can’t even knock to let me in. I tried to approach the spacewalk port on Almaz 4 and he shot at me.”

  “I think someone doesn’t want visitors,” Yuri says into the pilot’s earphones. He moves his image lips to look like the pilot is hearing it live.

  The regular communication channels are full of static due to the radiation.

  “Attention spaceplane Spiral II, attention spaceplane Spiral II. Almaz station to spaceplane Spiral II.” It is a signal on another band, but Yuri picks it up.

  “Switch to station intrapersonnel band,” he instructs Aviard. As the pilot does so they can hear the message over their speakers. The words are static-filled and faint, as one would expect from the interior communications of a station still several kilometers away.

  It is Anya. “Almaz station to Spiral II. Mayday.”

  “Spiral II to Almaz station.” Fastovets speaks over the intrastation band. “This is Colonel Aviard Fastovets in MiG-105 to Almaz station. Is anyone receiving?”

  “Yes, Colonel,” replies Anya. “My station mate Major Constantin Radianskyev has gone insane. He intends to crash the Almaz station into the Kremlin!”

  “Colonel,” says Yuri, “I can enter the station easily, but it would be good if Lead Man is not fully aware of my capabilities. Can you bring this craft up to the center of the station? It will mean you have to get by the cannon.”

  “No problem.” Aviard initiates the main engine of the MiG-105. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready, my friend.” In the intervening years, Yuri has learned to manipulate his visible image so that he can look like his Flat Man self clothed in a space suit, though Anya has pointed out several times that parts of the suit, and parts of Yuri, disappear at random moments as Yuri loses concentration because of a momentary distraction.

  Yuri assumes this form. Fastovets sees this transformation out of the corner of his eye and a sudden recognition lights his eyes as he turns his concentration back to piloting.

  The MiG shoots toward the station, and one of the 20 mm cannons twists in its cradle to aim at the plane. Fastovets slips the ship aside and the burst of slugs goes by. Then they are past the arc of fire and decelerating rapidly to come stationary to the hub of the connecting tent.

  With a thought, Yuri is next to the patch he and Georgy put on the tent six years before. No one had ever fixed it. Now the patch hangs off its moorings, the maneuvering of the station having apparently shaken it loose. No wonder the tent is empty of air. Yuri slips his light image through the gap and into the tent.

  “Yuri, is that you?” Anya’s face appears on a communication screen in the tent as Yuri enters in his visible light form, complete with space-suit overlay. She is in her space suit, helmet hinged back but ready to be applied if there’s a sudden air loss. Yuri can see that Almaz 5, where she tends to work, is sealed. There are several eruptions of forming organs on her face. Stress must speed up the process.

  “Yes, sweetheart. Be ready to evacuate on a moment’s notice.”

  “Yuuuri!” she screams into the screen. Yuri reorients himself to face Constantin. Lead Man is in his space suit and braced in the air lock to Almaz 6, and he has a shotgun. The only guns officially allotted to the Almaz station are the external 20 mms.

  “You are supposed to be dead, Flat Man,” snarls Constantin. “Apparently the stories of the haunted station are correct.” Constantin continues moving the barrel of the shotgun in a little arc that include
s Yuri every second. “Are you surprised, Comrade Mattress? I have friends among the pilots, too.”

  Yuri can name a half-dozen “friends” who could have smuggled a gun to Lead Man for enough money. It’s not like Constantin has any place to spend his salary. Constantin’s space suit gives him trouble aiming the weapon, apparently a hunting shotgun, but at this range he can hardly miss.

  Yuri launches himself at Constantin. The gun goes off. Yuri’s perceptions speed up and he can see the single slug coming for him. He lets go of reality as the heavy bullet slams through his image. Light changes around him and he can see the haze of radiation that fills the tent and the station.

  Yuri continues his path and passes right through Lead Man into the Almaz 6 module. Going through Lead Man feels like having to swallow the horse pills he’d received from doctors when he was first Gifted. Constantin spins in the air lock, overcorrects, and catches himself. He stares at Yuri, or is it the ghost of Yuri?

  Yuri Serkov drifts in the space next to the reactor. He is proportionally human, what Yuri Serkov would have grown into had the Takisian virus not had its way with him. Every detail of Yuri’s disabled potential is on display, because Yuri is naked. The only similarity to Yuri as Constantin had known him is that all of his body hair is missing. The shock of hitting Lead Man’s dense body knocked out all thoughts of maintaining the form of Flat Man in a space suit.

  Yuri moves his head back and forth. “I know where you are, Constantin. How about giving up this madness?” His voice over the intrastation public address is cold and only phrasing shows it is Yuri’s. “You can’t hurt me.”

  “What are you, Flat Man?” Constantin jacks another shell into the shotgun.

  Yuri considers the question. He is already shaking because the lunge at Constantin almost took him through the wall of the module and into space. At the speed he is traveling he might have gone too far away to see Earth, much less the station. But his senses speed up whenever he moves like this and his control holds. This time.

  Of course, he damps down his reception of most radiation so as to not be affected by all the deadly alpha, beta, and gamma given off by the reactor. Everything is silent, only expected in vacuum, but he isn’t breathing. He can hear Anya over the intrastation radio. Mostly she is just breathing hard. Constantin, on the other hand, is approaching him, waving his arm in front of his body.

  “If this is you, Captain Flat Man, it is not much of you. I don’t think you can do anything to stop me. You can just watch.” His waving hand intersects with Yuri’s image. There is a slight static along the arc of its movement. “Hah, it seems I might be able to harm you.”

  Yuri felt that blow. He moves instantaneously to the other side of the reactor from Constantin. Nothing physical has ever affected this form before. Lead Man is so dense that his cellular structure can actually interact with Yuri’s energy form.

  Concentrating as he has when fighting the Swarm, adding infrared to his visible form, Yuri channels heat energy through his hand onto the cables and conduits leading to the reactor. Some elements of the reactor are missing, though the core is still present, as evident by the outpouring radiation. Something is happening to the element he is heating, but he can’t be sure how effective he is being. He speaks through the intercom to distract Constantin. “What do you think to do, Constantin? You can only die by these actions.”

  “I am dying already, Comrade Light Show. Even my bones cannot keep the radiation from eventually affecting me. And now Comrade Gorbachev says Anya and I must come home and the station be destroyed as an expensive failure. So I am helping that process along.”

  Yuri has heard the plans to deactivate the station, and worried there might be consequences. Right again, smart-ass, he thinks to himself. “Complain to Star City. I am sure they are trying to get that policy changed.”

  “I will change the policy,” Constantin replies. “I will bring this station down around Gorbachev’s big ears.”

  “You’ll never hit the Kremlin.” Yuri repeats his previous argument to Anya.

  “If I hit within one hundred miles of Moscow, the message will be heard.”

  Yuri agrees with the sentiment. He senses one of the cables holding the reactor together break free, its molten melted end sending hot metal throughout the compartment. Alarms go off, including through the intercom. Apparently, it is also a hose, because some liquid or gas is turning into mist in the vacuum and filling the reactor room. Good thing I don’t breathe, thinks Yuri.

  “What have you done?!” screams Constantin as he rounds the reactor, moving effortlessly in no gravity as only someone who has lived in it for five years can do. Yuri “steps” to the other side of the reactor, again barely stopping from going through the wall of the module. I have to get more practice with short leaps, he thinks as he turns to face Constantin. Concentrating slightly, he reassumes his Flat Man shape, then releases one layer of image as blinding light. Another first for him; he had postulated the trick after seeing Pulse in the Ukraine but had never had the opportunity to use it.

  Constantin’s helmet opaques, but not quick enough. He screams in pain as the light sears his retinas. His swooping dive to smash through Yuri’s image also comes up short. It takes Yuri several vital seconds to realize that Constantin’s air hose is twisted among the bare framework of the reactor. Another second and he realizes why the reactor is a framework. Constantin has removed all the shielding and recycled fluid tanks. No wonder the radiation levels have skyrocketed. The reactor is running unencumbered. This actually means it is not running as hot, but the radiation from the fuel rods is unblocked.

  This has to end quickly. With a resigned sigh, Yuri “touches” Constantin’s air hose and applies heat. He can feel the weakness starting to come over him. All of the matter of his body is converted to energy, and he is using his control of the energy to expend energy that is actually the matter of his body. If he keeps this up for much longer there might not be enough left of him to reconstitute his body.

  The air hose, already strained, burns through easily. A fire flare accompanies the break as the oxygen hits the heat, but he tamps off the heat immediately. Constantin, just getting his vision back, yells and tries to get to another oxygen hose but the remnant of his old hose still holds him. Yuri watches as Constantin struggles to free himself, but his efforts stop almost immediately. Lead Man’s dense body demands a constant flow of oxygen. The floating body jerks twice then continues to float at the end of the nearly severed air hose.

  Yuri moves to the patch locker in the tent and he realizes he can’t do anything about the hole in the hub tent he entered through. “Anya, I am coming into module five,” Yuri orders while regaining the image of the Flat Man form he has lived with so long.

  Yuri steps through into Almaz 5 and nods to Anya, who is ready, her helmet fastened to her suit. “Aviard, are you still with us?” Yuri puts out on the station-to-ship band, without worrying about using comm equipment.

  “No problem, Captain Yuri Star Ghost. Do you need pickup?”

  “One to pickup, anterior lock five,” replies Yuri, and goes to help Anya get ready to abandon the station.

  Aviard argues, but the spaceplane really has no room for more than two. It makes Yuri wonder just who the folks in Star City thought would be coming back from this mission. He releases the empty Progress modules from Almaz 3 and 5, after taking out any food stores still in them, and sends them to their fiery funeral in Earth’s atmosphere, then deposits Anya and what little baggage she had accumulated in six years in space into the Spiral II, now locked to Almaz 5.

  He waves as Aviard disengages, drifts away from the station, wags his wings in response to Yuri’s wave, and sets course for Star City. Thanks to the configuration of the spaceplane, Fastovets doesn’t have to wait for a special window to make his return and he can land on the Star City airfield runway.

  Yuri maintains an almost fully material form long enough to use the station’s maneuvering jets to get it back into an
orbit that should keep it from hitting atmosphere for at least fifty years. While doing this he feasts on as much of the stores Constantin had been building up as he can—for what he has no idea. Perhaps neither Constantin nor Anya had been hungry after taking in so much radiation. Yuri makes sure his own form is transparent to the usual killers in the radioactive spectrum, just as he had before when he had been close to the nuclear strike. He feels the effects of the food restoring him to the size he had started at.

  “Office of Star Gifted Enterprise to Colonel Yuri Serkov.” That is interesting; someone must really be pushing a signal to get a message from Earth through the radiation around the station. The office name sounds familiar. Some techs from that office had tested him several times in the lead-up to the original mission. And apparently he has received a promotion.

  “Go ahead.” No sense in burning bridges.

  “Well done, Colonel. We have been monitoring you off and on through the years.” Yuri is hardly surprised. In fact, he had been puzzled no one had interfered with him since he joined the cosmonaut corps.

  “So now you want to give me a medal?”

  “You already have a medal. We want to offer something like that, but you can’t display it anywhere.” There is a pause. “Are you intending to leave your current location?”

  “I think I can do it safely. As the pilots say, it is not the trip, but the landing that’s the problem.”

  “Do you know to the millisecond the distance from your location to the Crimea?”

  The Crimea? Not Star City? Interesting. “No.”

  “In fifteen minutes and thirty seconds it will be eight thousandths of a second at light speed, which we assume you are capable of. It will be forty-seven degrees south and thirty-eight degrees northeast of your position.” Yuri understands the initial reference to South actually meant toward the Earth.