His immediate malaise, however, stemmed from the final briefing of his New Terra pilots, George Cleopolous and Stephen Kreveld, which just concluded. He had never been particularly comfortable with Kreveld's participation in this mission. Indeed, the man's occasionally humorous but usually silly demeanor did not show signs of letting up during the briefing, despite the immediacy of the launch.
Allowing Stephen to train with George for this mission was a reward for his financial generosity that kept this base to remain operational in the first place – and because the nephew and sole heir to Andorran's creator begged for the assignment. Stephen insisted he must do it to honor his uncle and to prove he could accomplish more in this life than simply spending the millions of vallors Richard Kreveld left behind.
Despite Adam's unease, reports from George were always positive regards to Stephen's tactical abilities. The man's frivolous countenance never seemed to compromise how he handled himself as a navigator. In simulations, anyway.
“It's all moot at this point,” Adam reminded himself. He wasn't about to replace a man with 18 months of training.
So, what's wrong? He asked himself again. What's REALLY wrong? What am I missing?
Was he just using the pending launch of New Terra as an excuse for why his stomach was taut and unsettled? He tried to convince himself that this sudden and growing anxiety was the product of a combination of factors: His fear that he might never see Janise again, or that he would never have Arilynn back into the world where the rest of them existed.
No, no. There's something else. A piece that doesn't fit.
But as Adam sat down before a workstation in the command pod and prepared to tape his message to the crew of Andorran, he tried his level best to squash the anxiety for just a few moments. He knew there was a great probability his voice would be the first from the home world that the crew of Andorran would hear. Consequently, it was vital that he be calm, reassuring and as hopeful as he could given the circumstances of history.
The package of vital statistics, maps and schematics necessary to educate Andorran to a dramatically different world had been prepared more than a year earlier. All that remained was an audio cover letter, so to speak. He tried many times to put this greeting into a vidtext, but ultimately, Adam concluded that nothing he wrote could possibly match words spoken from his heart.
“On behalf of all of us who have anxiously anticipated this day, we welcome you home, Andorran,” he began. “What you have accomplished makes all of us immensely proud and gives us a new sense of hope that our future will be much more prosperous.
“My name is Dr. Adam Linnaeus Smith ...”
36
D
r. Smith's daughter, Arilynn, was also in the grip of extreme anxiety. But this was not an outward change in behavior from that which began four years earlier when she fell into the hinterlands known as MassGrid delirium.
Her left hand was moving at a remarkable speed, the images flowing through her sea blue eyes and bringing shape and form to an otherwise empty pad of paper, tinged pink by the room's specially designed lighting.
But this time something was different, and it was frustrating Arilynn. She changed her body positions when she could not get comfortable. Legs crossed, pad in her lap. Lying on her right side, pad flat and drawing pencils piled against her chest. On her back, right hand holding pad above, left hand extended to scribble. On the floor upon her stomach, two pencils in the corner of her mouth, one in each hand and the pad being transformed dexterously.
“Devilbluebox!” She mumbled. “Watchout devilbluebox.”
She ripped away each sheet of paper. The image pervading her thoughts and corrupting everything that once flowed so systematically was beginning to frighten her.
She could see the shape, she could hear the sounds, she could read the schematics. Just like all the other millions of images that fought so desperately to explode from her consciousness and make a home on her canvas. But there was a pivotal difference: Unlike all that her mind absorbed from MassGrid, this image was not allowing itself to spring forth in intimate detail from her fingers and onto the paper. In fact, the more she tried to draw it, the more convoluted and misshapen the image became.
Arilynn was unaware she had been crying for almost 30 minutes now, rivulets of water drying upon her cheeks.
“Whatyoudevil?”
She tried another position, this time kneeling against the corner of the bed, propping the pad against the outer edge of the top mattress. She steadied herself and closed her eyes. She tucked a drawing pencil behind each ear.
Her mind's eye focused upon the awkward image, and it isolated every detail.
Whatyoudevil? Makinmemad, makinmemad. Radialinterface junc... junction interfacejunction. Whatyoudevil? Youbluedevil? 6-oh-4centis, 6-oh-4centis, centimeterjunction radialjunction. Youbluedevilbox? Radialinterfacejunction 6-point-4 centimeters radialjunction. Youdevilwith guidewirejunction? Guidewirejunction toradialinterface. 6-point-4centimetersto youdevilbluebox.
Arilynn's eyes opened slowly, and then they were wide. And she almost smiled.
She lifted her left hand and removed a red pencil from behind her ear. She placed the hand against the pad, and it froze for a second.
“Gotyou devilboxblue. Watchout devilbox.”
The pencil raced across the canvas in harsh geometric patterns, forming a perfect square and then enhancing the interior with details that brought a short conduit directly through the square, with an array of short-stemmed wires extending from the conduit.
Arilynn's heart raced as she etched in minutiae, and she released a guttural laugh.
“Seeyoudevilbox blue. Gotdevil bluebox.”
Arilynn was happy – not because she could finally give detail to at least a part of this vexing image, but because, somewhere through the fog of MG delirium, she now understood why this had been so difficult for her to draw.
For the first time in longer than her mind would allow her to remember, Arilynn Smith was processing information that did not come to her from MassGrid.
37
S
amuel Raymonds no longer had time to be concerned with the headache that seemed to be crushing his skull in upon his brain. He was far more focused on correcting a mistake that had cost him 11 years of his life, and he was resolved that this would be the final night he would spend inside this mountain.
It was all he could do to present himself as a man with no particular agenda as he proceeded down the narrow corridor of the habitation ring, vidtext pad under one arm, blue toolbox held to his other side.
If he thought too hard about the rewards of this mission, he could be overcome by joy. If he focused upon the end result, he risked being consumed in guilt. With joy came smiles and confidence; with guilt came further pain. Sam reminded himself that either could put him at risk of forgetting the details. And since he had taken it upon himself to complete this mission ahead of schedule, the details would be the essence of success.
He wanted to enter the elevator alone and cursed under his breath when that did not happen. An uptech named Calvin Moone sprinted in as the door was slipping shut. Uptechs were devoted to Sprint repair and modifications. Sam spent enough time in the past few months giving orders on the upper platform to know each of them well.
The spindly uptech fidgeted with his vidtext pad and shook his head. “Dunno how we're gonna finish these diagnostics before the launch window clears. You know? Had to make a quick jog to R/D just to get a VR confirm on this configuration I'm showing in the ant-stabilizers. You know? So, I'm showing 14.75 rips on the fusion counterswitch, which is a good point-4 off the recommended minimum, and ...”
The uptech stopped himself in midstream as he noticed the toolbox dangling casually from Sam's right hand.
“What you got going there?”
Sam licked the back of his lips without opening his mouth, and he inhaled hard through his nostils. “You have a problem with
your supervisor getting his hands dirty, too, Moone?”
“Hey, oh! Not me, sir. We can use all the help about ...”
The elevator reached the apex of its shaft, and the door opened to the upper platform. Moone sprinted forth, but Sam, having just endured a longer ride than he had planned, held back. Before the door slipped shut, however, Moone turned about.
“You coming, sir?”
Damn!
“Got to take a jog back down myself, Moone. Just realized I forgot something damn important. Don't want us in a fix come launch.”
“No, sir. No, sir.”
Moone went from confused and suspicious after all of two seconds, to a hasty retreat to proceed with the diagnostics he was certain wouldn't be completed on time.
Sam was draped in relief when the elevator door closed, and he was alone. There were three diamond color-coded panels to the right of the door: Red, blue, green in descending order. He pressed his hand against the blue panel, then pulled it back quickly and realized he had to be careful – his trembling was more apparent.
The elevator stopped almost halfway along its descent, and it opened into a chamber perhaps no more than 15 meters wide in any direction. A long, high-bank workstation dominated by broad-screen monitors and a viop sphere lined one side of the hazily-lit chamber. The workstation towered at a slender angle over a single operator, a man who had been a part of Second Sunrise for more than nine years.
Benyard Crantz, a black man nearing 60 and whose close-cropped head of hair was whitening as rapidly as his gut was burgeoning, offered a nonchalant thumbs-up to his visitor. Benyard swiveled about.
“Sam our man. What brings you to the capital of solitude?”
“Damndest thing, Bennie.” Sam tried to sound as convivial as he could muster. “Just on my way to the upper platform – last-minute preps for launch – and I just got a strange notion to stop in.”
“That's one crazy kind of notion coming about now, Sam. Especially considering nobody stops in here unless they got nothing better to do than kill some time.”
“Exactly,” Sam uttered, barely above a whisper, and he almost allowed himself an internal chuckle.
It was true enough he rarely called upon the operator of “heap,” as it was generally known. Specifically, this was the hydro and environmental assessment pod. This tiny chamber was the monitoring junction for all major arteries of the energy dispersal conduits and water relays that powered the base and supplied its people with the most crucial elements for subterranean life.
He looked directly across from Benyard's station, where an enormous schematic of yellows, reds and oranges against a black background detailed the base's energy and hydro-distribution networks. Sam remembered how, when he first entered this mountain 11 years earlier, he had been especially fascinated by the system of hydraulics that extended 3 kilometers beyond the mountain, harvesting water during the enormous winter snowfalls, then funneling it into a reservoir no more than 30 meters beyond this very pod.
But now, as he glanced at the environmental control network originating from this chamber, Sam envisioned an entirely different use for this workstation.
He sat the blue toolbox upon a counter and offered his best smile.
“So, you don't miss all the action out there?” He asked.
“What's to miss?” Benyard pointed to a monitor directly in front of him. “I'll get a look-see when the shuttle breaks out of the shaft. If you call that action. Now, when those folks from Andorran come calling, well now ...”
“Yes. That should be quite a moment. Will you still be on shift that late, Bennie?”
“Nooo, nooo. Couple more hours and Evie's coming in for me. But, I don't reckon I'd be counting the minutes or such. Tell you what, Sam, this job is a helluva lot more fascinating than most SS'ers give it credit for. Just last couple days I've been working on putting together an updated nodule for a ...”
Benyard smiled broadly as he tried to map out a new systems design he was developing on the viop. Sam walked behind his comrade and reached into his left pants pocket.
Benyard leaned forward and tapped at a handful of controls, and the viop sphere became active with an intense network of coils and capillaries. “Now, this is what I'm ...”
As the older man spoke, Sam felt a rivulet of perspiration fall over one eye; he whipped his eyelid into a flutter.
“You'll be a lucky one,” he whispered, then stretched a thin, silver wire taut between both hands. With a firm grit of his teeth, Sam plunged the wire forward, over his victim's head and hard against the front of the neck.
Benyard gurgled, raised his hands in a defensive instinct.
Sam trembled as he forced every ounce of his physical prowess into his arms, which were yanking in retreat as the rest of Sam's body braced hard against the back of the swivel.
Pull! Pull! Pull! Just die ... dammit!
As Benyard's hands flailed and a trickle of blood fell from the corner of his lips, there was an audible snap. The second shift operator of heap fell limp, eyes in a glaze.
“You'll be ...” Sam started, then closed his eyes and reeled as the pain played darts with his mind. “You'll be a lucky one,” he whispered.
His hands let go of the wire, which had left a deep bloody ring around the black man's neck.
Sam turned his attention to the toolbox.
Details, he reminded himself. Details and time! Not much time!
38
S
omehow, Stephen Kreveld managed to slip into his full-body flight suit without spilling the small bowl of rice pudding he coddled in one hand. He seemed to pay little mind to the three uptechs who were adjusting the emergency EVA sockets along his side and shoulders, just below the neck collar. He carefully scooped the pudding off the edges of the bowl and grinned as he ate.
George Cleopolous, who had just finished servicing his own EVA sockets, curled down his lips. “Why you could not have finished that off with your meal is beyond me, Kreveld.”
Stephen raced his tongue across his lips and hummed. “Let me tell ya something, bud! A good dessert is one of the most fulfilling morsels for the soul. It's like I can hear myself giving thanks, saying, ‘Yep! Now there's an experience to take to the hereafter.’ And as rice pudding goes, this was some mighty satisfying business.”
George flexed an eyebrow, and Stephen laughed. “Man's gotta savor these kind of things, George. Gotta take his time with them. I can't apologize for that. Besides, I kinda doubt we're going to get this good on Andorran.”
“Even if we could, Stephen, we wouldn't be there long enough for the opportunity.” He turned to an uptech at a small workstation in the transition pod. “How are we looking?”
Calvin Moone was decidedly frantic, but he offered a reassuring nod. “Think we're getting back up to speed, sir. Wasn't sure we'd have the preps comped, but looks like we'll have New Terra cleared for the window. We're at 20 minutes and counting.”
There were five uptechs in the transition pod, a small chamber that opened into the primary departure platform. Only minutes after the armored Sprints cleared the mountain, the much larger New Terra had been transferred by mono-lifts from its holding shaft nearby and rotated within the departure platform until aligned with Shaft 4, through which it was scheduled to depart.
This wild scramble among the uptechs to complete their prep work was a combination of factors: Their last drill took place almost two months earlier, and they always presumed they would not be working under such a tight timetable. Watching these men and women hustle around him and his co-pilot made George a tad nervous.
He was somewhat relieved when their supervisor appeared.
“What's your assessment?” He asked. “Go for launch on schedule? Every minute is pivotal.”
Sam Raymonds paused, felt a weight tumble down his throat, then raised his vidtext pad before his face, studied the schematics.
His eyes did not make contact with George
or Stephen as he spoke without emotion. “I don't see a problem if we keep to the outline. But I think it's time the two of you joined me in the shuttle. We have a number of checklists to cover if this flight is going to make history. And details are the essence of success, after all.”
Sam twirled effortlessly about-face, and his pilots followed.
39
T
wo Sprints in a tight formation completed their turn toward the east, and very quickly the last glimmer of twilight dissipated, and they proceeded in virtual silence into the heart of night. They cruised at an altitude of 12,000 meters, a limpid sky full of stars above them and a mantle of storm clouds barreling along the Gulf Coast beneath them. The tiny crafts were all but invisible against the darkness, their running lights disengaged and the stealth technology called the wv.scan shield cloaking them from any electronic detection.
They were alone, and that's how the captain of this mission was feeling as they raced past the halfway point of their journey to Barbados.
Janise Albright was agonizing as she lay essentially encased in her reclining chair attached to a Strategic Vioptric Field. If she had been able to pace, at least the time might have passed more swiftly, she reasoned. From where she laid, the schematics of the flight path and readouts of the Sprint's systems were becoming repetitive and maddening. She had little to say to her crew, or they to her. Greg Mickelsby had the helm as the Sprint's navigator, so most of what limited work was necessary at the moment belonged to him.
The six crewmen were reclined no more than four feet astride each other, and each was inhibited in the same manner. But no one was talking, not even as awkward attempts to slice through the tension, to add comforting levity to the frightening reality.
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