Though Hell Should Bar the Way

by David Drake

  “We’re off ben Yusuf, aren’t we?” she shouted in my ear.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Twenty miles above the surface is the legal definition, and we’re above all but traces of atmosphere.”

  I looked at her. “We’re a long way short of getting where we want to go, though,” I said.

  “Where I wanted to go was off that horrible planet,” Monica said. Then she kissed me.

  Monica went back to the bunk. It took me a while to get back to my course calculations, but eventually I did.

  * * *

  I hadn’t had time to check the suit locker. When I thought of it I was momentarily dizzy with fear. If the watchman had been able to get into it, he would’ve sold the suits as he had everything else.

  My only choice then would’ve been to land at another harbor on ben Yusuf and purchase at least one suit there—hoping that the news from Salaam wouldn’t arrive before I’d been able to do that. That was unlikely, since I’d have to earn money for the suit. I didn’t have a clue as to how to do that.

  I grinned. Perhaps Lal and I could rob a pirate cutter. If it had been Abram with me, I might’ve thought I had a chance.

  The suit locker was secure storage, opened by the console. That was common on freighters on the fringes. Weapons and liquor would be similarly secured, though the Alfraz carried neither.

  I opened the locker and stood. “Let’s go take a look,” I shouted to Lal, but Monica joined us as well.

  I breathed out in relief as I saw suits. I was glad to have anything, though the reality wasn’t great. The only hard suit was missing the left lower leg. The four air suits had all their limbs, but I could see gaps at the joints of one when I manipulated them.

  I could have repaired that well enough for the purpose with a roll of cargo tape, the sturdy material designed to keep cargo from shifting in the hold under sideways acceleration. Unfortunately, any cargo tape aboard the Alfraz had been sold for Ahmed’s upkeep.

  “Well, I figure two of them will work,” I said to Lal, hoping that I sounded cheerful. “That’s an advantage of being short-crewed, right?”

  “And perhaps the rigging won’t need much help,” Lal said, showing that he was trying to keep up spirits as well.

  Our sensors didn’t show any other ship above ben Yusuf. I didn’t trust the Alfraz’s electronics, but I hoped they were good enough to warn me at least if there were another ship closing with ours.

  “I’m going to raise the rig,” I shouted to my companions over the discharge of the High Drive. As soon as I thought we had time, I was going to swap the speaker in the hold for the useless one here in the cabin.

  I set the rig to deploy in stand-by condition, sails furled and yards remaining vertical against the antennas. The bolts and clamps withdrew like a badly performed version of the “Anvil Chorus”. Whines and squeals followed as hydraulic motors began to lift the antennas.

  “Captain?” said Lal. “Do you want me to go out and see how the equipment is working?”

  I shook my head and shouted, “No. Neither of us go out until we can go out together. I won’t trust the suits until we’ve tried them. We’ll each be ready to get the other back to the airlock if something goes wrong.”

  If they both failed at the same time, we were screwed. So, for that matter, was Monica.

  I smiled reassuringly toward her. It was the only thing I could do. Her expression didn’t change, but she nodded in acknowledgement.

  When the sound of the rig ceased, I took a deep breath and shut off the High Drive. I said in a loud, clear voice, “We will enter the Matrix in five seconds. Entering the Matrix … now.”

  I pressed the EXECUTE button with the heel of my palm. The Alfraz entered the Matrix as smoothly as a fish leaps back into the sea. In that aspect at least, our ship was exceptionally good. I could only hope that she would extract as easily when the time came.

  I queued up the course data, then pressed EXECUTE again. Rising from the console, I said to Lal, “Let’s get suits on and inspect the ship, shall we?”

  So far, so good.

  * * *

  The air suits didn’t fall apart when we pulled them on. Monica hovered close, but she didn’t get in the way or ask questions. She was obviously nervous, but she kept it controlled.

  I set the pistol on the floor of the locker, just to get it out of my pocket. There wasn’t room inside the suit anyway. It was possible we’d need it again—I had needed it to cow Platt and his driver—but I sure didn’t like having it on me.

  There turned out to be tools in the locker: a kit attached to the belt of the hard suit and a separate kit with only an adjustable wrench and combination screwdriver/pry bar. I suspect the tools with the hard suit had been forgotten when the leg was removed and the suit became unserviceable.

  The airlock was beside the console. We entered and I immediately locked down my helmet. I began turning and moving my limbs as pumps evacuated the lock. If something was going to let go, I’d rather that it happened while I was still aboard.

  Lal watched me impassively. I suppose he was used to equipment of this quality. The suit he’d been wearing when I grabbed him as he floated away from the Martinique was worse than the one he’d taken from the locker. We’d checked the magnets in the boot soles before we got into the airlock.

  When the pump stopped, I unlocked the outer hatch and led Lal onto the hull.

  The Matrix surrounded us in pastel glory. Captain Leary had told me he was in the presence of God every time he stood in the Matrix. I wasn’t spiritual, but it was a magnificent thing even to me.

  Our family had never been religious, though Mom had made of point of attending fashionable temples when money had lifted us into higher society. When I stood in the Matrix, I could imagine that the god-bothering types might be right … but might be, that was all.

  With a single ring of antennas, it was easy to make a circuit of inspection. Proper safety lines had gone down the watchman’s belly if there’d been any aboard, but I’d cut two fifty-foot lengths from the coil of rope Abram had provided. It was woven from the leaf spines of a desert tree and was good enough for the purpose. I’d have preferred RCN-standard beryllium monocrystal, but something around my waist was better than something better in a warehouse on Cinnabar.

  The ventral antenna hadn’t rotated properly, though the yards were extended and had shaken the sails out. They were blocking Casimir Radiation to drive us off course, unfortunately.

  I opened the cover of the gearbox at the base of the antenna. A tower gear spun determinedly, but it wasn’t turning the cog which should have driven the antenna.

  I removed the hydraulic line. When the gear stopped, we could see that the lower half the beveled side had been worn smooth; it was misaligned, so a portion of the teeth had been having to do the work of the whole length.

  Remembering Barnes’ lesson, I unlocked the tower gear from its retaining clip, turned it upside down, and reclipped it. When I reconnected the hydraulic line, the antenna started rotating properly.

  I was grinning as I stood and gestured Lal back to the airlock. This had been a good watch.

  * * *

  “Give me a moment,” I said to Monica as we entered. “I’ll tell you what’s going on after I’ve reset this.”

  I didn’t bother taking off the air suit before I sat down at the console, though I had removed the helmet. I recomputed our course to correct for the time the antenna failed to turn. When I sent that command to the rig, I stood up, stretched, and walked over to the locker to change.

  Lal had removed his suit while I was busy. He wore shorts and a sleeveless tunic and was barefoot as he’d been even on the ground. That wasn’t uncommon in Salaam, though at least half the men had sandals.

  The boots that Captain Hakim had worn when he captured the Martinique were unique in my experience. He probably wore them as a mark of rank.

  “The rig is working now,” I said as I stripped off the leggings. “We repaired a gear. It ought
to be replaced but it seems to be working now.”

  “The captain repaired the motor,” Lal said to Monica. “I could not have.”

  “You can now,” I said. “You hadn’t been trained, is all. If we get to a civilized planet, maybe we can buy a replacement. Though I don’t know what we’d use for money.”

  I hung up the air suit. Thinking about it, I might be able to trade my skill at a computer for a used tower gear. Ben Yusuf might be unusually ignorant, but I suspect in this arm of the galaxy my level of expertise would have been a boon to most chandleries or scrap yards. Even on Xenos, I’d have been more use to Petersburg in the office than I was as a flunky.

  “When we get to Saguntum,” Monica said from where she sat, “I can get as much money as we need.”

  “Well, for now we’re heading in the other direction,” I said, sitting on the bottom bunk of the other stack. “We need reaction mass, and such navigational data as we have indicates there’s a water world almost as close in the other direction as there would be if we’d headed for Saguntum. There may not be anybody chasing us from ben Yusuf, but I really don’t want to be recaptured.”

  “I’m in your hands,” Monica said simply.

  The bulkhead behind me was wet. While Lal and I were on the hull, Monica must have washed Platt’s remains off the steel.

  I remembered that I’d meant to put the body out when we entered the Matrix. Well, so long as we got rid of it before we were next in contact with anybody,

  I let out my breath again, feeling more relaxed than I had since I’d been shanghaied aboard the Martinique. Aloud I said, “We’re on our way!”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  We extracted from the Matrix about the right distance from the unnamed planet’s primary. We were on the wrong side of the primary though, where the world we wanted would be in another half circuit.

  I felt too awful to even pretend to be pleased with my astrogation. I’d had a reasonably easy time with extractions before now. Even veteran spacers talked about how bad they felt after an extraction, so I’d been congratulating myself for being one of the lucky ones.

  I’d been one of the lucky ones. This time I felt as though my flesh had been replaced with half-melted ice cubes which then had been poured back inside my skin. I was shivering so badly that I had difficulty entering the new course data.

  “Inserting into the Matrix,” I said. “Now.”

  I closed my eyes as I pressed EXECUTE this time, because I didn’t want to think about what I was doing. Entering the Matrix meant that I’d have to extract again, and right at this moment I’d almost rather have died than do that.

  If other people feel this way, how do they manage to keep on doing it? I thought.

  We shuddered into the Matrix. It was a short hop, crossing the orbit; probably less than three hundred million miles. We could even have managed it using the High Drive in the sidereal universe. I didn’t feel quite miserable enough to start the calculations for that, because I knew it would be a matter of weeks or even months; but I was almost that miserable.

  “I feel awful,” Monica said. “Someone is chopping on my head with an axe.”

  Lal sat with his head in his hands, saying nothing. I guess it was all of us. Maybe it had just been an unusually bad extraction.

  A telltale on the display winked at me. “Extracting,” I said and threw the toggle.

  It was as gentle as sliding into warm cream. I muttered a prayer. I hadn’t prayed before the extraction because I didn’t in my heart of hearts believe in divine powers. I was willing to thank powers that might not be, though, rather than not be courteous in case they were real.

  We were above our destination at about a hundred thousand miles. I made quick calculations and entered a High Drive burn of just under three minutes to kick us into orbit so that we could pick a landing spot. Lal was on the striker’s seat but Monica came and stood beside me, gripping the back of my couch when we entered free fall.

  The world below was half deep ocean, but the other half was a shallow sea with thousands of islands. Mostly the islands were arrayed in strings and circles. Even where the land didn’t break surface I could see patterning on the bottom.

  There were no signs of human involvement, but many of the islands were green, especially around the fringes. The ship’s optics weren’t good enough for me to make out details.

  “I guess it doesn’t matter where I land,” I said. “We’ll have water regardless.”

  “Land in a lagoon,” Monica said. “We may not be able to go ashore, but we’ll have some protection if there’s a storm. And if we can go ashore, I’d like that.”

  “We’ll do that,” I said. I located a spot on the surface, marked it on the display, and set the console to calculate the landing.

  “Better take your bunk,” I said to Monica. “I’m using the automatic landing program, so I don’t know when or how long we’ll be braking—”

  The thrusters kicked in, starting us down toward the surface. It caught Monica by surprise, but her two-handed grip on my couch kept her from falling. She returned to her bunk with two quick strides which were just short of leaps, then strapped herself in.

  I kept my hands on the controls, but though the descent was rough I didn’t even consider making a manual landing. I practiced constantly with the console, but lives depended now on the landing.

  I could probably have brought us in safely, but the console certainly could. I had a lot to learn and nothing at all to prove.

  I expected the banging in the lower atmosphere to become violently worse when a rigging clamp failed and some major assembly tore off—or possibly tore the ship apart instead. That didn’t happen, and the buffeting reduced. The image on the display had degraded with the vibration, but it sharpened as our speed dropped. I saw that we were heading for the center of an atoll.

  This console didn’t pause to hover as some programs did. Instead we plunged toward the water swiftly until the pressure of steam and reflected thrust brought us into dynamic balance for a moment.

  The thrusters shut off and dropped the Alfraz the remaining distance to the surface of the lagoon. It was probably no more than a few inches, but it was enough to shake me. Monica yelped and Lal fell off the striker’s seat to sprawl on the deck.

  Next time I’d bring us down the last ten feet myself. Though we were safe, as best I could tell.

  I unhooked my restraint harness. “All right,” I said. “We can’t open the ship up yet, but we can start filling the reaction mass tanks.”

  The pump was in the main hold. I opened the fairing and lowered the intake pipe, but the pump icon on the console display was yellowed out.

  “It’s not recognizing the pump?” I said aloud, hoping that when I heard the words, an obvious answer would occur to me.

  “It’s been rewired when the new bottle was put in,” Lal called from the hold. “Would you like me to throw it?”

  “Wait!” I said, because I wasn’t about to agree to something that I didn’t understand. I walked into the hold and saw Lal with his hand on a knife switch projecting from a control box beside the main hatch. A heavy lead entered from the fusion bottle; another ran to the intake pump on the other side.

  “Why is it like this?” I said.

  Lal shrugged. “They didn’t want to reprogram the console,” he said, “so they left the control circuit in place but put in a separate power switch. I’ve seen it before, or setups like it.”

  I took in what Lal had said. “All right,” I said. He threw the switch in a sudden spurt of blue sparks.

  I walked back to the console. The pump icon was live again. I switched it on and was gratified by the heavy vibration as the pump began sucking the lagoon’s contents into the tanks.

  When I first boarded the Alfraz, I’d noticed the octopus of armored conduits leading from the fusion bottle. They’d been clamped to the deck and to bulkheads rather than being buried within the ship’s fabric as the originals had been. I’d been di
sgusted, but in a detached fashion; I hadn’t made a detailed study on the new routings. If I’d had a thought, it was to hope I’d soon return to civilized planets on which even tramp freighters had to meet higher standards if they were to lift off after inspection.

  I suppose I was better off to remain in ignorance as long as I could. I’d just added to my list of necessary repairs—once we’d reached a repair yard—to put a cage over the knife switch. It wouldn’t be possible to rewire the pump without a full rebuild, but it wasn’t necessary to leave high-amperage connectors open to the air.

  “Let’s take a look at our new world,” I said to Monica, speaking as cheerfully as I could. No reason to tell her that we were riding in a deathtrap. “Want to name it?”

  I started the hatch to open. Thank goodness it hadn’t needed rewiring also.

  “No,” Monica said. “I just want to get home. I really want to get home.”

  “Don’t we all, my dear,” I said, but as the words came out I wondered what my home was now. Xenos three years ago, I suppose. Simply going back to a cheap apartment on Cinnabar wouldn’t take me home.

  When the hatch opened, the local atmosphere rushed in with the residues of our exhaust. I sneezed from the ozone, but the usual stench of garbage incinerated by our thruster exhaust was absent.

  I smiled. We weren’t in a regular harbor into which ships and often the community itself dumped waste. This was a barren island without civilized amenities.

  We were in the middle of the lagoon. On the blue-green water around us floated the bodies of worms from six inches to a foot long, probably boiled by our exhaust. Winged creatures about two feet long made short hops from the low islands around us, hovered momentarily above the water, and stabbed down with long tongues.

  Most of them concentrated on the worms we’d killed, but other flyers were plucking similar worms from the lagoon’s fringes beyond the range the plasma had heated.

  “I think they have exoskeletons!” Monica said, walking out on the ramp. “I wonder if we could catch one?”

  “Like insects, you mean?” I said. I joined her, though I’d just as soon not get too close, myself. The creatures’ long noses uncoiled at least six inches to spike the worms. Even if they weren’t poisonous, I didn’t want anything six inches long driven into my body.