Asimov's SF, February 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Report not yet complete."

  “Results so far."

  “Commander Loránd Delago: microfractures in left femur, right femur, left ulna—"

  Loránd's eyes fluttered, crossing occasionally, and dipped back beneath his lids.

  “Ceevee, give Loránd internal cam. Hey, pal, can you hear me? Loránd?” His eyes stopped fluttering as the lasers glinted off them. Another camera above her head hummed.

  “What happened?” His synthetic voice was steady.

  “You blacked out. Control said something went wrong with the acceleration, did you catch that?"

  “No. You've got blood out your nose."

  Tessa's view shifted as she looked down on herself, red streaks edging down both cheeks. Twinges of dull pain pulsed behind her eyes. She lifted her faceplate and wiped her nose with the slick plastic of her glove. Her shoulder jerked painfully back into place.

  “Ceevee, full medical. Report."

  “Commander Tessa Bruncsak: microfractures in left femur, right radius, right scapula. Minor hemorrhages in all extremities. Possible major hemorrhage in upper torso. Soft tissue report in seven minutes. Commander Loránd Delago: mircrofractures in left femur, right femur, left ulna, right ulna, left radius, left tibia. Major fractures in left ulna, right ulna, left ribs four, five, and six. Minor hemorrhages in all extremities. Possible major hemorrhage in upper torso. Cyclimorph injections imminent. Soft tissue report in six minutes."

  “My rib,” came his voice. His larynx was starting to recover, as was Tessa's natural eyesight.

  “What is it?"

  “It hurts. A lot.” She could see his hand moving along his side. The thick fingers of his suit prodding beneath his arm. “The spoke broke."

  “Ceevee, can you abbreviate that soft tissue report?” she asked, and twitched as the opiate needle tapped her armpit inside her suit.

  “Under two minutes."

  “Don't worry, Control said they knew what went wrong and would have full medical teams ready as soon as we're in-transit.” They both knew the procedure. There was no way Control would pull a team back from the other side. If something was wrong, it was the team's job to fix it. Scamper away from the problem and they might never reconnect with Betty. Painkiller warmth spread from her armpit. “Ceevee, what was the acceleration malfunction? Check your logs and everything Darkside beamed us."

  “No malfunctions recorded."

  Though they were not facing each other, they read each other's expressions.

  “What do you mean, ‘no malfunctions'?” said Loránd. “How many gees did we just pull?"

  “Thirty-two-point-eight,” came the ship's voice.

  Thirty-two-point-eight. Nearly eight gees harder than anyone had pulled before. It was several seconds before Tessa was able to respond.

  “Darkside said ‘anomaly,’ not ‘malfunction.’ What ... Ceevee, what was the anomaly?"

  “Darkside reports link requiring acceleration of thirty-two-point-eight gravities."

  “Well, no kidding."

  “Soft tissue report complete,” chimed the ship's voice.

  “Report."

  “Commander Tessa Bruncsak: minor hemorrhages in all extremities. Minor muscular damage in all extremities. Minor hemorrhages in maxillary sinus and right renal cortex. No emergency medical action required. Commander Loránd Delago: minor hemorrhages in all extremities. Minor muscular damage in all extremities. Major hemorrhage in chest cavity. Left rib six penetrating lung, diaphragm, pancreas, depressing kidney. Continuing blood loss. Emergency medical action required."

  The lasers played Loránd's silent expression across her retina.

  “Ceevee, what medical action is required?"

  “Transfusion and surgery."

  Tessa's lips moved, but the lip-reader could not discern the intended word.

  “Ceevee,” said Loránd, his real voice starting to crack through, “report prognosis without treatment."

  “Death from blood loss in forty to eighty minutes."

  “I can make the impellers reduce the hemorrhaging,” said Tessa. “I can set them to push most of the blood in the area away from your rib."

  “There aren't enough. Only a couple dozen impellers in the seat that can reach. Too many arteries."

  “I can vary the impellers. I can make them back up blood flow in one artery and flip to another while blood starts moving again in the first. They should be able to alternate pretty quickly if you don't move too much. Ceevee, can the impellers move blood in the damaged arteries at least twice as fast as it's currently flowing through Loránd's diaphragm?"

  “Impellers can operate at two-point-two times current flow."

  “What about organ damage from lack of blood?"

  “Pancreatic necrosis likely in two-hundred to four-hundred-twenty minutes."

  “Forget about my pancreas."

  “If this works, the capillaries will still leak a lot, but it should keep you alive until we can get back. Or nearly so."

  “Nearly so.” The voice simulator couldn't reconstruct sarcasm. Or resignation.

  “If you don't make it, I'll pull the heaters in your suit and the cabin. I can even use some of the CV's coolant to chill you. They'll be able to revive you. Okay? Ceevee, give me the impeller schematics."

  Tessa's eyes flooded with bright lines, straight yellow streaks where the microwaves in Loránd's couch could push; red and blue curves where the edges of his diaphragm, rib, and pancreas intersected. A cursor followed the movements of her hands as she set about moving the yellow streaks about.

  “You okay?"

  “I can feel it every time you switch them on.” His voice worked against the crippled lung.

  “Sorry. Does it hurt?"

  “Yup."

  “I think I can make this work. At least for a while."

  “Hey Tess? I'm starting to shake."

  She didn't answer for a long minute. “Yeah, well, me too.” Despite the open faceplate, her breath made the inside of the helmet humid. She had to keep stopping to breathe and think of open spaces. Of trees and cut grass. The legs of her suit automatically constricted. Ceevee must have detected the onset of shock.

  “I didn't make a big deal out of saying goodbye to Marith,” he said. “I don't like making a big deal of it because I don't want her to think I'm worried. She'd get more nervous if she thought I was. I just gave her a peck and told her I'd be back for dinner."

  “You'll be back.” She nudged another yellow streak and could see him twitch.

  “We're trying to get pregnant again."

  She closed her eyes, teeth pressed tight. Open spaces and the sound of a breeze on the treetops. Over and over. The cursor was shaking with her hand.

  “Tess? Tessa?"

  “Yeah?"

  “I don't want to die out here. I'm not afraid of dying but I don't want to die way out here. I don't want to die in this. Promise me, will you? Promise me you'll get me back. If I gotta die I don't want it to be out here. Promise me, Tess."

  The thought crowded into her head. The emptiness. The gray. “I promise, pal."

  “For real."

  “I promise for real."

  * * * *

  For a long time, Tessa worked the impellers in silence. She used every impeller in Loránd's seat to hold back the blood flow, and, though it wasn't perfect, it was working better than she'd expected. The pain in her head relaxed to a dull ache, but she was growing aware of pangs in her legs, pelvis, and back. “I've been thinking, the only reason the linkup system would demand that we pull thirty-two-point-eight gees would be if our heaters couldn't reheat us properly, or—"

  “Or Betty is moving a hell of lot faster than she should be."

  “Or Betty is moving a hell of a lot faster than she should be,” she repeated, slowly. “When we first came out-transit, I noticed way more micrometeor hits than usual in Betty's frame. Ceevee, shut down my holodisplay."

  With a flicker, the outline of Loránd's diaphragm disappear
ed. Blinking hard several times, she made out the instrument lights first, then the dimmer colors of her suit, her reflection in the canopy above, and finally the giant curving stretch of Betty's rim arcing away out of the CV's floods. Ceevee had docked them as usual against Betty's side, giving them a tremendous view out the canopy. The far side of the ring's delicate, spider-web network of cables stood out black; dark against the mist of stars beyond. She switched on the holodisplay again to highlight the new pockmarks that tiny bits of dust and interstellar debris had made in Betty's thin skin in the last thirty days. Particularly in the series of linkage terminals that ensured a proper connection home.

  “I'm going out, Lor. I have to start repairing some of Betty's acne and make sure the linking system is All Green like Ceevee says. Okay?"

  “Don't leave."

  “I've gotta go, pal, you know that. I'm going to make sure we can get home, okay? Stay on the radio.” She spread the spoke cage, unbuckled from her seat and turned so she could see him. He was wincing. “I'm decompressing the cabin."

  The decompression was silent and only noticeable as her suit swelled slightly. She watched his face and could see him wince harder as his own suit stiffened against his broken rib. She had been on thirty-two launches with him and they'd worked well together. To have him suddenly unable to move...

  The magnetic soles of her boots clung to the rivets in Betty's lithium skin as she stepped out of the concussion vehicle. She stood in the CV's floodlights for a moment, the brightest object for a trillion kilometers, before clipping in her tethers and walking along the great rim. It stretched before her like a black arch; each slow, measured step throwing small shoots of pain up her legs, sounding small and echoless in her suit as the endless gray sky rose and sank around her. Beneath her. Her faceplate fogged slightly with each breath.

  “Talk to me about Marith,” she said, wishing the lip-reader were still on. He didn't need to hear the uneasiness in her real voice. “Talk to me about this baby thing."

  “We kind of just decided. I don't know.” His voice was steadier than hers. “She grew up in a big family and always wanted like four or five kids. She said she had noisy Thanksgivings and that that was one of the best times of the year for her. Everybody around the table all talking at once.” He stopped suddenly, but continued. Tessa reached the line of link terminals a quarter up the rim and switched on her helmet lights. “I only had a brother so when I imagine a noisy Thanksgiving it sounds like chaos. But she'd talk about how everyone could somehow talk all at the same time but keep a conversation going, and how somebody in one of the conversations was always laughing. The more she described it, the more, I don't know, friendly it seemed."

  She shortened the tethers to hold her, kneeling, against the ring and punched in the passcode over the linkage panels. Betty's silvery skin glinted brightly in her helmet lights as she unfolded the lids and keyboards and watched green lights appear one by one. She wanted to double-check.

  “Ceevee, report on linking terminal status."

  “Linking terminals report All Green."

  “Is there enough power to re-establish the bridge?"

  “There is."

  “Are the timers compensating for relativistic dilation?"

  “They are."

  She stared at the bank of green lights under her helmet lights. Everything working. The link between Alice and Betty was a tenuous one; Alice had to house all the power to generate the wormhole to save precious weight on Betty. But it meant the crews couldn't initiate the bridge from this end, and couldn't communicate until the bridge opened. Connection relied solely on both rings’ perfectly coordinated timing.

  “Is there anything at all that may interfere with a proper linkup?"

  “There is not."

  She quietly let out a long breath.

  “Sounds good,” he said. “At least we know we're going home. One way or another."

  “We need to figure out why we're going too fast."

  “The engines?"

  “I can't see how. They're ion engines. They could never produce that much acceleration in just thirty days.” She closed the panel and extended the tethers until she stood on the outer edge of the ring, the lights of the concussion vehicle far below. She threw a glare at the stars around her.

  Loránd spoke. “What if the last team's in-transit didn't produce the expected amount of drag?"

  “Maybe, but eight gees worth? What does that translate to in kilometers per hour? We don't even know how fast we're going now. We don't even have a way to check direction. We could even be way off ... Ceevee, were there any course corrections since the last team? Major ones, not corrections for micro-impacts."

  “Betty reports ninety major course corrections."

  “Holy...” began Loránd.

  “Ceevee, show me Lalande 21185.” An invisible laser drew crosshairs on her retina around the image of a single, dim star in the field before them. “Show me our heading.” A second crosshair came into her vision, superimposed on the first.

  “Maybe one of the engines is pushing it off kilter."

  “That wouldn't explain our speed,” she replied, almost to herself. She stared at the starfield, at Lalande with its glowing crosshairs, at the stars around it, one by one. All of them hundreds of times more distant. Looking at each with suspicion. So distant. So alone. The stars surrounded her. Waiting.

  “Ceevee, show me the nearest star on our lateral—the nearest one perpendicular to our line of travel."

  “Up and to your left. Wolf 359."

  She turned and saw another crosshair glowing around another nondescript star.

  “Ceevee, check the star's position against where it's predicted to be in relation to Betty."

  “What's up, Tess?"

  “Hang on. Ceevee, you got that?"

  “Calculating ... Wolf 359 is 0.0023 degrees ahead of predicted position."

  “Lor! We're drifting sideways! There's a gravity source out here. There's got to be some huge mass pulling us off course.” She looked around at the silent stars, their billion trillion silent numbers. “Ceevee, show me the course corrections. Graph them over time.” A grid with fluttering dots superimposed itself over her vision. The dots started infrequently but appeared more and more clustered toward the edge of the graph.

  “Whoa,” said Loránd.

  “You seeing this?” She looked down to him.

  “They're getting more frequent. Looks exponential."

  “We're bearing down on top of it,” she whispered. “Something huge. Planetoid or brown dwarf. Bigger maybe."

  “Tess, the last correction was only four minutes before we out-transited. The next one will be probably be any second now."

  “Ceevee, alert when Betty corrects course."

  The ship confirmed. Tessa watched the stars through the grid hovering in her vision.

  “Ceevee, can you extrapolate from course corrections to estimate the amount of mass needed to drag Betty into current course?"

  “No. Distance to gravity source unknown."

  “If it's been pulling us off course for thirty days and we haven't hit it yet, we know the lower limit. What's that?"

  “Zero-point-two solar masses,” said the ship. “Assuming imminent impact."

  Though he didn't say anything, Tessa knew Loránd was also staring at the starfield ahead. Nothing but the gray dust.

  “Betty initiating course correction,” Ceevee suddenly announced.

  “Ceevee, override course correction!” shot Tessa.

  “Course alterations require—"

  “Lor! Back me up. Confirm the override."

  “Tess, we're not supposed—"

  “Lor! Override it!"

  “Ceevee, I concur. Override Betty course correction."

  Ceevee confirmed. For several seconds neither of them said anything. The ion engines’ push was so light they couldn't feel anything, but, within half a minute, a small yellow warning light began blinking in both their helmets.
>
  “Tess?"

  “Ceevee, show me Lalande 21185.” A crosshair fluttered to life. “Show me current heading.” A second crosshair. Barely to the right of the first. “Ceevee, use spectrometer to scan in a straight line from Lalande 21185 to current heading and continue past heading for five degrees. Report any sudden Doppler shifts in starlight."

  “Report ready in four minutes."

  “Tess, what are you doing? You're letting us drift off course."

  “We're already off course—way off course. We've been curving for days. The course corrections are just reorienting us back toward Lalande, not making up for the curve; they're not compensating for the sideways drift at all and we're not going to know how far we've drifted or how much farther we're going to drift until we find out how big that mass is.” She was kneeling at the linkage terminals again, tethers tight, watching the computers count down the seconds until they'd anchor Alice's long reach again. Loránd coughed. A short, wet cough.

  “Ceevee,” his voice was strained, “clear my faceplate."

  “You okay?” She leaned over the terminals, looking down into the CV's floods.

  “Breaths are just hurting. Thank god for zero-gee or my suit legs would be full of blood. Nice job with the impellers. I'm lasting longer than Ceevee said.” Tessa looked at the chronometer on the terminal. They'd been out-transit for an hour and twenty-one minutes.

  “Spectrometer report ready."

  “Report."

  “Fast Doppler shift patterns detected.” A crosshair appeared further to the right of Lalande and their heading. “Gravitational lensing likely. Necessary mass; eighteen-point-seven solar masses."

  Tessa's fingers gripped Betty's metal as she stared at the crosshairs. The air in her helmet began to feel thick and inadequate at the same time. Eighteen-point-seven solar masses. A black hole. A singularity.

  “Tessa, I have to get out of here. I have to see Marith."

  She looked down at the CV, saw the crystallized blood from her nose on the back of her glove. Eighteen-point-seven ... drifting invisibly across their path. Eighteen-point-seven solar masses.

  “I have to get back!” he yelled. She could hear his sounds as he thrashed about inside his helmet. Animal sounds.