by Unknown
The ship shot upward through the corridor of stone. They were inside a crumbling volcanic cone, he realized—and nor a dead one. Congealing lava and rocks the size of houses roared toward him: One final obstacle, one last assault, before this world had to set them free… and suddenly this was the best damn VR game he'd ever been inside of.
"Rock and roll — " He grinned, letting the adrenaline rush sweep him into the Zone, where a starship inside a volcano could do the impossible; where missiles of stone and bombs of molten lava could never touch him, or his ship, or the people he'd come to care about as much as his own life.
He made the Jupiter dance to his music, weaving and pirouetting through the firestorm of debris with never a false step or a millisecond's hesitation.
"There. A window—" John said, beside him, pointing.
He nodded. "I see it!" He banked the ship toward the opening. The light at the end of the tunnel was a starry sky.
The ship burst out of the volcano's mouth, into the night, rocketing upward through the dissipating remains of the atmosphere.
The nameless world fell away behind them, crumbling in on itself as they passed the limit of its lethal grasp, escaping into the silent depths of space.
Epilogue
Dan rase from his seat, stretching knotted muscles as his body surrendered at last to relief. Finally able to stop looking at the stars, he turned to look back at his crew… at his family. John sat watching him from the copilot's chair, with pride and more than a little envy in his smile. Don grinned, pushing his hands into his pockets, as if it was No Big Deal.
Judy came up behind him as the others began to stir. "Nice work, flyboy," she said softly.
He turned around, and his grin widened. "So," he said, "I earn that kiss yet?"
She kissed him chastely on the cheek. "You earned that."
Geez, what does it take—? He shrugged, starting to turn away.
Judy's hand caught him, pulling him back around. "This one is on credit." She threw both arms around him, fusing her body against his as she kissed him, long and passionately, on the mouth. She let him go.
Don staggered back, speechless.
She smiled, raising her eyebrows. "'Cold fish,' huh?"
She glanced away as Penny's pet began to blawp
loudly and insistently; the distraction saved him from the embarrassment of any answer at all.
Maureen's amused glance left the two of them for Blawp. Her smile faded as she stroked Blawp gently. "Poor thing… She's all alone."
But even as she spoke Penny had begun to sidle out of her reach, taking the excited baby with her. Maureen said, "Penny, why are you looking at me like that? Penny—?"
Penny stopped again near the blast doors, safely out of reach. "I promised Judy I'd take care of her___" she murmured, fighting a guilty grin. Her dark eyes fleet-ingly turned somber. "I couldn't leave her all alone." She turned, looking into the hallway, and called, "You can come out now."
An enormous creature stepped into the room, decam-ouflaging as it came. By the time its impossible form was clearly visible, Don realized it could only be an adult of Blawp's species. He shook his head. And I thought orangutans were ugly...
Penny let Blawp leap into its arms. The… mother? father?—this is going to be an interesting story—cradled the baby contentedly. Penny beamed while Will stood by the pair of aliens, looking up in fascination. Maureen sighed, as if she was already wondering what they were going to feed the thing.
John looked over at Don with a weary smile. "Now if we could only find our way to Alpha Prime…"
Will glanced back at his father, his face brightening. He nodded to the Robot.
"If I may, Professor," the Robot said, from where it stood watch over Smith's mercifully unconscious form. A holographic schematic of the galaxy suddenly hung in the air at the center of the bridge. Don recognized the familiar icon of the Jupiter Two among the stars. On the far side of the room there was another blinking point of light: Alpha Prime. "Your son's star charts."
"It's a map," Will said excitedly, coming to John's side.
John smiled and put an arm around him, nodding in fond appreciation. He looked up at the starmap again, so that only Don saw the fleeting shadow of sorrow in his eyes.
Alarms sounded suddenly, all around the bridge. Don turned back to the com, scanning the displays. Behind them in space, the nameless planet was bright red and pulsing. As he watched, it swelled like an angry blister and burst open, spewing a blast of pent-up energy and vaporized debris in a death cry that would echo through the reaches of space forever.
At her present speed, the Jvpiter should be safe. By the time the shockwave reached them, its expanding shell of plasma should have dissipated enough to be harmless…
Don checked the displays one more time, just to be sure. Onscreen the core of the imploding world was shrinking again, growing smaller by the second, as if it was trying to suck itself completely out of existence.
He swore in disbelief as half the readings on the panel suddenly went off the scale. "The planet's gravity field is collapsing!"
"We'll be sucked in," Maureen said, looking toward her husband.
"There's no way to get clear in time." He shook his head.
"The hyperdrive?" Judy looked at her father, at Don.
Don nodded, pasting his smile back on as he took his place at the com and ascended his chair to the controls. John took his position, and removed the keys. He tossed one up to Don.
"Everybody hang on…" Maureen murmured, the words filled with more irony than dismay.
Penny rolled her eyes at her mother. "Here we go again."
"Cool!" Will said, grinning.
The nameless planet's core imploded, blinding the night, as the Jupiter Two's warp engines engaged. For one brief moment the ship became a second sudden star against the darkness.
And then, like the world it left behind, it was lost in space.
* * *
About the Author
JOAN VlNGE has been described as "one of the reigning queens of science fiction" and is renowned for creating lyrical human dreams in fascinatingly complex future settings. She has won the Hugo for her novel The Snow Queen. Vinge is the author of the bestselling Return of the )edi Storybook, World's End, and Psion. Kirkus called her novel Catspaw, "an engrossing and satisfying read." The Summer Queen, a sequel to The Snow Queen, was published in 1991. She is currently writing two novels set in the Bronze Age. Dreamfall, which Publisher's Weekly called a "richly detailed and suspenseful sequel to Catspaw," was on the Locus 1996 Recommended Reading List.