by David Hardy
“If she sabotaged the hopper, rewiring the safeties would be the next thing she ordered done. We’re not going to find anything wrong.”
“Buckle up. We’re going to blast.”
“What if we explode on takeoff?”
Enahoro grunted as she worked on the com unit. Rather than using it for voice transmission, she flicked it on and off to cause small bursts of static.
“Will that show what Wu did to the controls?”
“Hugh, trust me. I spent half my life thinking of ways to kill people.”
“You’re a spy? If you are, you’re a damned good scientist, too.”
“I prefer that to snooping around and finding traitors, but get ready. We’re hopping in ten seconds.”
Longstreet let the acceleration press him into the cushions. Even under extreme acceleration, takeoffs on the Moon were easy. It didn’t take much to overcome one-sixth g. It took a lot more for him to believe everything was going to work out fine.
○●○
“Are you ready to die?”
Longstreet looked sharply at Enahoro. She worked intently at the hopper controls. From what he could tell, she had cut off the GPS unit and disabled the radio. The smile she flashed him did nothing to settle his nerves. She looked like a jaguar sighting its prey in the night.
He nodded once. Then he let out an involuntary cry as the hopper engine cut out, and they plunged downward. In the low g, his stomach shouldn’t have revolted at the sudden change in both direction and acceleration, but it did. He fought to keep from vomiting. Then he cried again as they hit the lunar surface. On the vid screens he saw a huge cloud of regolith blasting upward all around them. More obscured his view when Enahoro goosed the engines a final time before cutting them off. The hopper shivered, as if dying, then settled into an eerie silence.
“We must leave right now. There is no way to know if Wu planted a bomb aboard. I think she did.”
“We’re not twenty klicks from the base. She wouldn’t kill us that close.” Then he remembered how Sunny and the others had died within sight of the Nearside port. Wu’s desperation to keep the presence of Liber and the aliens secret knew no bounds.
He clumsily followed Enahoro out of the hopper. Neither used the ladder. The drop was only a couple meters – hardly a stumble on Earth. As he trailed her through the still rising dust, he realized how their roles had reversed. He didn’t like that but had no choice. His onetime assistant had connections she claimed would take them to the aliens, or at least their artifact-laden capsule aimed for orbit around Jupiter.
“Faster. We have to be away before—”
The shockwave lifted him and hurried him along. The hopper had detonated.
“It’s a long walk home now.”
“Only we’re not going home,” she said. “We’re going to make some history.”
“More history,” he corrected. Longstreet stared at the small beacon ahead balefully flashing red and yellow from a shallow crater. When he got closer, he asked, “Is that big enough for both of us?”
“It doesn’t have to take us to Jupiter, just to orbit. The spaceship will take us all the way.”
He edged down and faced the single aluminum pole, then put his feet on a tiny attached platform. Enahoro slung a web belt around both of them and cinched it down. They faced each other since she occupied a spot opposite. She gripped his hands. He looked down as the flashing lights turned off and the small rocket engine began kicking up a fuss. For the third time he let out a cry of surprise as they blasted upward.
It took all his willpower to keep from protesting that the rocket had fired only a few seconds before burning out. He felt them arcing over and knew they hadn’t hit orbital velocity for the Moon. In a few minutes they would crash back to the barren land, adding a new unnamed crater.
Only it didn’t happen that way. As he rolled over slightly, he saw a cargo bay opening above them. Snaky ropes lashed out and snared them. In less than five minutes they were reeled inside, the hatch closed and two space-suited astronauts helping them disengage from the pogo stick rocket they had ridden aloft.
“We can get settled later. Are you any good at navigation?”
“I can plot with the best astronomer. Why? What’s wrong?”
Longstreet looked around the spacious cabin. There were couches for ten crew members but other than the two who helped, they were alone.
“There. Get to it. I have to copilot.” Enahoro looked upset for the first time. “We’re running a few short on crew right now. Engineer. That’s Neandra Jacks.” The woman gave him a thumbs up and headed for the aft section. “Pilot. Tommy Chin.”
“That’s it? You were going to Mars with only two crew?”
“We were rushed when Fumilayo contacted us about the alien signal.”
Longstreet shot her a hard look. They had agreed to keep the discovery quiet. She must have contacted the Nigerian space authority immediately on discovering Liber. Enahoro ignored him as she made her way to the acceleration couch forward.
“You had a full crew? Once?” Longstreet saw the answer to that. Nigeria, because of its development of nuclear fission ground plants and space engines, had become an international pariah. Building this ship and powering it with a nuclear fission reactor might have scared off the most capable of certified spacemen.
“The drive parameters are in your nav computer. Set up a fastest orbit out. We can haul ass the whole way. Better than one-g, if necessary.”
“I was just adapting to one sixth. Going higher than Earth g will give me more than flat feet.” He swung around and settled into the couch. The computer array before him proved impressive. He had hardly expected an abacus, but the Nigerians had built in state-of-the-art computers.
A few minutes showed why they thought they could get away with such a small crew. Constant monitoring of every aspect of the VASIMR drive, its couplers, plasma output, the reactor and its argon fuel, along with extensive robotic repair equipment eliminated several crewmen.
“Lemme see.” He cracked his knuckles, drew out the crystal block memory with the full coordinates given by the Liberans and let that data settle for a moment before he explored the capabilities of the drive. “This is sweet. That plasma engine will boost us along nicely. It’s got to if we want to get to Jupiter orbit 5 AUs off.”
“There are three engines to prevent torque. Mass density is upward of 10 kilowatts per kilogram.” Tommy Chin rattled off the explanation between other readings Enahoro fielded as she did something arcane with on her computer.
Longstreet knew nothing about nukes or the argon used to provide the ions. Magnetoplasma was something he had read about in passing, when he had nothing else to do while out on the Ballarat Plains. Mostly he had preferred reading Arthur Upton mysteries to get away from the tech for a few minutes. He wished now he had read more about the Nigerian development of the Chang-Diaz engine and how it worked.
“How long before you have an orbit for me?” Chin sounded anxious.
“Are we on a time table? Hold your horses. This is all new to me. I’m used to plotting orbits but not for ships and never to match velocity and all that.”
“Hugh, please. Tommy is worrying about Wu finding that we didn’t die in the hopper explosion. She’s not above blowing a vessel from a sovereign country out of space.”
“She would need authorization from higher ups,” he said. Sweat beaded his forehead as he worked on the numbers. He usually had a feel for his answers. Not now. The added pressure of being blown up on UN orders made him even less sure of himself. He started again, double checking his figures, the planetary positions and trying to guess if he interpreted the operating parameters of the ship properly.
“That won’t be hard. What’s it going to be, Dr. Longstreet?”
“I’m not sure this right. A bit over ninety days to Jupiter?”
“Those numbers you just ran. Are they close enough?”
“I don’t know. I suppose they—”
Acceleration pr
essed him back into the couch. Then a new blast crushed him deeply into the cushions and made it hard for him to breathe.
“What the hell!”
“The window matched up fast on this orbit. I didn’t want to go around the Moon again. There’s a lot of buzz on official frequencies, and most of it is coded. That’s not a good sign.”
“It’s not a good sign taking my rough guess to fling us across the solar system, either.”
“It’s better than staying. We can correct.”
Longstreet moaned as the acceleration mounted. He watched the readouts and saw that they left orbit and poured on the speed, accelerating at about a quarter g more than Earth-norm. The readouts flashed and raced and finally settled down. The heavy lifting had been programmed into the computer. All he had done was input the proper astronomical readings.
“It looks like ninety-nine days to Jupiter,” he said.
Longstreet stared at receding Moon framed in a vid screen. He found it difficult to swallow when he saw his research station and the ribbon arms of rectenna reaching out to the universe. Then he choked as brilliant flares showed missiles being launched. At them.
○●○
“Any last minute corrections?” Chin failed to keep his voice level. The edge carrying just a hint of accusation of malfeasance made Longstreet angry. This wasn’t the time for that. Every instant was critical and any mistake now doomed the mission.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Dammit, yes, I’m sure. I spent the last three months boning up on astrogation. I’m not an idiot.”
“I’m not so sure after—”
“Gentlemen, please.” Enahoro didn’t have to raise her voice to cut through their rising ire. She had kept them from each other’s throats the entire way. “We started the trip on a sour note, but we evaded the UN missiles.”
“We outran them,” Longstreet said, still in awe.
“We defeated them on several levels, but we got away and there was nothing Wu could do about it. She failed twice to kill us.”
“I doubt she’s given up trying. Only we’re too far away for her to do much.”
Longstreet reached out to run his numbers one more time, then drew back. Fine tuning was one thing, doubting himself so that he fiddled them to death was something else. He had to show confidence in his calculations, even if he didn’t feel it down deep in his gut.
Longstreet had no reason to dislike Chin. But he did and the feeling had become mutual over the past three months. If the Herbert Macaulay had carried its full complement of crew, there might have been a physical confrontation. More than ever, he understood the need for psychological balancing – and this hasty flight had not afforded even a rudimentary integrating of personalities. Having entire empty sections of the spaceship let him study in quiet or simply stare at the stars. More than once he had tried to sight Liber directly, but the planet emitted radiation outside the visual. Although it would have created havoc in the solar system, if Liber had a circled a star of its own he would have been happier. As it was, only radio signals told of the rogue and its civilization.
Tension had grown when the UN began jamming their radio signals back to Earth to prevent anyone from knowing what their true mission was. Longstreet had assumed being out of contact with Earth wouldn’t be a big deal. After all, he had volunteered to head an expedition on the Farside of the Moon where even sight of Earth was denied. But that had been different. The coaxial cable to Nearside provided a link to the home planet that was comforting. Any trouble could be addressed quickly, and from Earth, if necessary. But here? Past the orbit of Mars. Past the asteroid belt. For him it wasn’t that much of a burden, but no longer being able to talk with his family had caused Tommy Chin to become increasingly ill-tempered.
The sun was so small from here, and the Earth required a telescope to locate. Soon enough it would wheel about to the far side of the Sun, preventing any direct contact. A tiny smile crept to his lips. The UN wouldn’t need to blanket their com frequencies for a couple months unless they wanted to make sure they didn’t find a relay comsat to let the people know they were on the way to learning about an intelligent alien civilization.
“The Liberans were precise about the orbit their probe would enter around Jupiter. All we need to do is go into a lower orbit, then rise to match velocity with it. We snare it and bring it aboard, and there’s our first physical contact with an alien race.”
“But you’re sure?”
“Tommy, please. He said he had it all covered. Don’t you, Hugh?”
“I do.” He leaned back and scanned the screens in front of him. The calculations were all there. Nothing had gone wrong.
But what if he had made some amateur’s mistake? This wasn’t his field. He knew everything there was about radio astronomy but navigation between planets? Actually going into Jupiter orbit and then capturing the alien capsule? Contact – reassurance – with Earth and technical teams there would have eased the nagging apprehension that he had missed something.
Even contacting the UN mission so far behind them hadn’t been possible. He had foolishly thought the ship launched sixty days after them would be willing to lend aid. More and more, he feared the other spaceship had a different mission, and it had more to do with their destruction than assisting them.
“What do they fear so from making contact?” He jumped when Enahoro answered. He hadn’t realized he spoke.
“They don’t want to lose their power. There hasn’t been a war in more than thirty years, other than the terrorist uprisings.” Enahoro came to stand behind him. He saw her quick eyes take in readings from Liber rather than that of their vessel going into Jupiter orbit. She was as much a loss at such calculations as he was.
“But they could claim anything they want. They’d be intermediaries. They’d—”
“There’s a reply to your question about fuel remaining aboard the cargo capsule.” She pointed to a screen monitoring signals from Liber.
“How do they do that? Unless we made a big mistake about the rogue’s distance, the speed of light is being ignored.”
“Is it possible they launched a space station or ship that is much closer to Jupiter? Comm delays would be far less then.”
“I suppose.” He had toyed with that idea and didn’t like it. Why not come the entire distance and make physical contact?
“They might not want to leave their world,” she said, answering his unstated objection. “Their engine tech might not be as advanced as ours.”
“All fuel remaining will be jettisoned.” He pointed to the screen containing the answer to that series of questions. The aliens had answered several and ignored the majority, as always.
“Radar blip.” Chin barked out the words. “That’s the alien probe coming in, right down the groove, right on time, right on... the money.”
Longstreet sat straighter, glad now for the constant one-g acceleration. His reflexes were honed for Earth, not low-g, no matter how much he had enjoyed being on the Moon. Every movement came with a precision that made him proud of how he had practiced for this moment. Numbers flowed, traces showed on his screens and their green trajectory curled about Jupiter and crept up on the red line showing where the aliens had inserted their probe.
“Rendezvous in two hours.”
“Why couldn’t they have dropped it in an orbit farther from the planet? Outside the radiation belts would have been safer for us. “ Chin grumbled. “We have to dip down so close I worry about the high-energy ions.”
“We’ve got lots of water left. Keep the filled tanks toward Jupiter as a shield. It works for blocking cosmic rays, it’ll work to keep us safe enough for the time to grab our trophy.” Longstreet gripped the arms of his couch as Chin rotated the Macaulay to shield them. Jupiter spat out a constant stream of electrons and ions that sent high energy photons ripping through everything, ionizing as they went.
“I’ve got cameras working from the hull,” Enahoro said. “I want
a complete record as we capture it.”
“Why not give us all a streaming picture?” Longstreet worked a few seconds and one screen exploded with color. “There. The permanent aurora and just a hint of the Red Spot.”
“We need to look the other way, Hugh. That’s where the probe will be.”
He glanced at the slowly converging red and green lines on another screen. Before he could ask Chin if he had all the data he needed the Macaulay shuddered and made a small orbital adjustment. A quick switch of external cameras brought a stretch of star-specked space onto his screen.
“What’re the hazy patches?” Enahoro pointed out the wisps coming in from all directions.
“Atmosphere. We’re really down far in it.” He fancied he felt the ship rattling as it plowed through the thin gases.
“That’s why we’re getting some turbulence,” Chin said, confirming his fears. “We are pretty deep in the atmosphere for a ship intended for use in space.”
“You’re doing fine, Tommy. Keep it up,” Enahoro said in a voice so low only Longstreet overhead. “Keep us together.”
For the first time he worried they might not make it. Hands shaking, he magnified the filmy traces that appeared to be forming above them and blocking view of the alien capsule.
“Intercept in twelve minutes.”
“Let the aliens know we’re closing in.”
Enahoro wanted to keep watching his screens, then went reluctantly to her copilot’s couch.
Longstreet felt some relief at her no longer peering over his shoulder. At this point, there wasn’t anything he could do but watch. He had given Chin the numbers. The ship’s computer did all the real work. The humans were only observers. So he cranked up the magnification on a camera and tried to get a better look at their target.
Lidar told him the probe was almost a hundred meters long, cigar-shaped and close to twenty meters in diameter at the center. The aft section where the propulsion occurred was obscured by electrical discharge and atmospheric gases ionizing. It would have been so much easier – safer – if the aliens had orbited this beyond the radiation belts. Best of all would have been a small change that sent their artifacts directly to Earth. Crashing on the Moon would have been far easier than orbital insertion and dealing with Jupiter’s atmospheric turbulence, even at this altitude.