“I know all about the helmet,” Su said. “I could see it. I guess it’s just a risk I’ll have to take.”
“But you don’t need to take it!”
Sancho broke in. “Skipper! The platform is maneuvering to get a clear shot at you. I suggest you keep the cradle rib between you and them as best you can.”
Collier saw the platform skewing about in the air, looking for a way to find him behind the rib. The girder was barely wider than he was — he needed to keep moving.
Su answered Collier’s comment. “Yes, I do. You said you needed the magic wand. So I’m bringing it to you.”
Collier glanced again at the floating platform. He could only see the trailing edge of the machine, and that was rapidly disappearing from view as it maneuvered behind him. He quickly ducked back behind the girder as another hail of projectiles spanged off the hull of his ship.
“Su! Get back inside!”
Su was still standing in front of the airlock, grasping the alien cylinder in her right hand. She looked around and spotted Collier, then raised the wand preparatory to tossing it to him.
“Catch!” she said, launching the wand toward him. It flew through the thin air without tumbling, presenting a very easy target for Collier to seize. He extended his arm at the last moment and snagged the wand, bringing it back with him behind the girder before the floating platform could fire again.
Sancho said, “Skipper! A port has opened in the ground crawler. Two suited people have emerged. One of them is carrying a weapon.”
Collier ignored that for now. “Su, I’ve got the wand, now get back inside before that helmet gives.”
“What are you going to do with the wand?” she asked. “Maybe I can help.”
“Damn it, get back inside! I can’t be worrying about you and me both at the same time!” He saw that the two people who had emerged from the crawler were making their way toward the ship, opposite the floater. In a few seconds, they would have him in their crossfire, and the rib would no longer offer him protection.
“Sancho, prepare the dorsal thruster.” He operated the wand, opening the end, and scooped up as much ice as he could with three quick swipes. He closed the wand, then stood in such a way that the floater would have to move back around the ship to bear its weapon on him. He smiled grimly when he saw the edge of the platform come into view around the girder. He flexed his knees and leapt, shouting to Sancho.
“Now! Fire!”
The dorsal thruster fired, igniting the oxygen for a brief moment in the thin atmosphere of the moon. It was by no means enough to damage the platform — indeed, it didn’t even come close to impacting the flyer, but Collier hoped it would be enough to temporarily distract the gunner from firing on him. He activated his suit jets as he leapt, trying to jump on top of the platform before the flyer could react.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he arced through the near-vacuum; he felt as if he had been hanging in space for minutes while the platform’s gunner leisurely locked his weapon on him. At any second he would feel the bullets penetrating his suit, his skin, his body. Then, almost too quickly for him to consciously react, he was atop the platform, coming up hard against the transparent bubble that held the two pilots.
He stared at them for a moment, and they stared back, stunned. The nearest pilot turned to his companion and barked something, and the platform immediately began to tilt wildly as the vehicle’s occupants attempted to shake him off.
Collier had very little to hold on to, but Ganymede’s low gravity allowed him ample time to recover from each wild movement of the platform. Before the pilots were able to buck him off, he might be able to do some serious harm to the machine.
He hoped he remembered the sequence properly: he hadn’t had time to review it, and although he had used it just a few hours ago, he hadn’t thought to memorize the pattern at the time. The wild jerking of the platform didn’t make things easier as he rapidly tapped and slid his fingers across the tube’s control panel. When he finished the sequence, he prepared himself to leap again, but the convolutions of the platform shook him to his knees despite the actions of his suit jets to keep him upright. He nearly lost his grip on the wand as he fell, and when he tightened his fingers around the shaft of the tube, the platform shook violently again, this time tipping at a severe angle in an attempt to slide him off the surface. He could not keep himself from falling supine on the platform, but he could still operate the wand. Collier opened the end, and as he slid down the surface of the platform to the ground below, he tilted the wand to spill the contents onto the vehicle’s surface, hoping the francium would react with the platform and not trickle down to his head.
He was not disappointed. As soon as the edge of the francium touched the metal of the platform, it sizzled and bubbled, melting the surface even in Ganymede’s frigid atmosphere. Collier slid completely off the platform, falling slowly to the ground ten meters below. His suit jets slowed his fall, and in Ganymede’s gentle gravity, he would merely need to bend his knees on impact to absorb the landing.
Above him, the francium had cut a thin line through the platform and was working its way rapidly toward the edge as it followed the tilt. Collier could see the gouge moving toward one of the hover nodes, and even as he fell and watched, the rift met the hover node and the barely-visible jet shut off abruptly.
The effect on the flying platform was profound. The machine wobbled crazily in the sky for several seconds, and as Collier landed gently on the surface, he could see the pilots inside the bubble frantically operating controls to keep the ship in the air. Collier could only imagine their troubles and grinned. The flyer managed to stop its insane, drunken dance and hovered with only moderate tremors, but with one of its thrusters out, it must have lost considerable maneuverability.
Collier once again ducked behind the protection of one of the girders and noted that the flying platform no longer moved to find him. It hovered where it was, shuddering from time to time — still menacing him, but now immobile. He stowed the wand in the holding place he had designed for it in his backpack.
“Skipper,” Sancho’s voice was somber. “They’ve got Dr. Cattagat.”
Collier whirled to look at the airlock, but Su was no longer there. Instead, three figures stood near the land crawler, one of them Su in her baby-blue environment suit. One of the other figures held what was clearly a hand weapon pointed at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Collier shouted, then before Sancho could answer, he said, “Patch me through to Tacat.”
Immediately, Tacat’s smug drawl filled his helmet. “Very impressive, Captain. I look forward to studying that strange device back at the community lab.”
“Su! What happened?”
“Don’t bother trying to talk to her, Captain. We’ve disabled her radio. Now, perhaps, you see the illogic of continuing to resist? I don’t wish to kill you, since you represent a valuable source of information. But Dr. Cattagat here, although at one time a valuable member of the community, has clearly thrown her lot in with you. I consider her a renegade, therefore, and you no doubt know how our community deals with renegades. It’s somewhat fitting that we should be having this discussion here, in the shadow of this building, don’t you?”
Collier came out from behind the girder, standing out in the open. “Let her go. I’ll go with you quietly. Just don’t hurt her,” he said as calmly as he could. “I’ll tell you how this wand works. It’s worth more than anything you have ever studied. Just please … please … let her go.”
“Very sensible, Captain. Give me a moment, please,” Tacat said, then clicked off. Collier looked at Su, but at this distance, he could not see through her faceplate. She was only perhaps ten meters away, but she seemed impossibly distant. How had he come to care about her so much in so little time?
“Skipper! Behind you! Look out!” Sancho shouted. Collier whirled and could not im
mediately register what he saw.
A huge claw arm, attached to a thick, articulated boom, had emerged from the top of the launch facility building and was moving rapidly toward the hovering flyer. The pilots of the flyer tried to maneuver their machine away, but the disabled thruster made their efforts worthless as the claw clamped onto the side of the platform.
“Perditus?” Collier said in awe.
“Yes. Stand clear, Captain,” came the computer’s voice. Collier wasn’t at all sure how he was meant to do that, but he nevertheless shuffled toward his own ship as he watched the crane move the platform slowly upward.
The crane had reached its zenith, holding the flying platform nearly edge on to the ground, then paused for a moment. At first, Collier thought Perditus meant to hold the flyer immobile, but the crane arm started to move down, first slowly, but then with gathering speed. Collier could see the pilots in the control bubble frantically bustling about, but he could not make out what they were doing. The crane arm flung the flyer down toward the ice edge on, releasing its grip before impact.
The flyer’s platform crashed into and through the ice, shattering the surface upon which Dulcinea and the community’s ground crawler rested. The flying platform stuck several meters into the ice like an enormous hors d’oeuvre, almost half of its structure buried under the top sheet of ice, stopped midway to the transparent pilot bubble.
Shards of ice flew lazily through the thin air, showering the four stunned human onlookers. Collier was relatively unaffected by the ice as he was partially covered by the still-attached drydock rib. He turned to watch Su, Tacat, and the armed Ganymedian weather the ice storm.
Su used the distraction to strike the weapon arm of the guard, knocking it down and away. She dashed toward Collier, loping clumsily in her environment suit. He could barely make out her face when a red geyser blossomed on her chest, spewing wine-colored liquid that froze instantly in the cold. Su fell mid-stride, bouncing lightly on the ice, a hole the size of a dinner plate in her back from where the guard’s bullet had penetrated and ruptured her suit.
Collier only looked at her for a few seconds: in that time, he saw her wound gush blood then freeze over. She lay unmoving on the ice, her suit flaccid in the telltale signs of decompression.
He was outside his own body. His arm raised, seemingly by itself, and before the guard could take aim, Collier squeezed off three rounds into the man. He skidded slightly on the ice as the recoil sent him gently backward but could see two of the projectiles hit their mark. The first caught the guard in the right shoulder, turning him a little, but the second smashed the man’s helmet and he dropped gently to the ground in the weak Ganymedian gravity.
Collier readjusted his aim at Tacat, who tried to backpedal, his hands outstretched in supplication. He lost his footing and fell on his back, and even as he fell, he tried to crab-walk backward to get away from Collier.
“All of this was for my secret. You want to see it?” Collier said as he advanced. He took the wand from its holding place in his backpack. “Here it is. It’s really simple. You want to see how it works? Let me show you.”
He opened the wand and with it scooped up some of the loose ice still lying around. “You put something in it. Anything, doesn’t matter. Punch in the code you want. In this case, I’ll go with francium. Has a really exciting effect on water, you know.” He finished his manipulations on the wand.
“Wait, Captain. We can work something out,” Tacat said, holding out a placating hand from his position on the ice.
“Yes, we will.” He punched up the transmutation to francium then threw it at Tacat. Some of it landed on his suit, most of it landing on the shards of ice all around him. When the francium touched the thin layer of ice on his suit left from the flyer’s impact, it exploded, sending chunks of flesh still encased in the environment suit in all directions. Tacat was torn apart even as Collier watched. The explosions lasted a long time — bits of francium continued to explode the ice around the reddish stain that had been Tacat’s body.
When the explosions died down minutes later, Collier turned and trudged to Su’s body. She had frozen solid in the short time since the bullets ruptured her suit. He knelt down next to the ruined mass that had been the psychologist’s body and regarded it silently.
She probably had felt only a few seconds of pain. The icy atmosphere would have clamped down on her exposed flesh and rapidly dulled all sensation, and as her life ebbed away, she would not have felt much. Or so he hoped.
He knew what still needed to be done, and although he would do what it took to depart, Collier was numb. It was as if some part of his brain had bargained with his heart to defer feeling for a while and allow him to continue to function. He would mourn Su’s loss: he could sense the knot of despair in him waiting to unravel and spread throughout his body. For the moment he kept the feeling contained.
He allowed himself a final gesture, however. He ran his gauntleted fingers down the back of her helmet as if he was stroking her hair. “Goodbye, my love. I’ll remember you,” he whispered, then rose.
He looked at the half-buried flyer eighty meters away and could dimly see activity in the pilot bubble. He started toward the machine, unlimbering his pistol once again.
“No,” came a voice in his helmet speaker. It was Perditus. “Return to your spacecraft, Captain.”
Collier did not stop moving. “I have something to take care of first.”
“You need not. I cannot condone needless killing. The hoverplate is disabled — the engineers within pose no threat to you.”
“I’m not removing a threat,” Collier said calmly. “I’m executing criminals.”
“That is not your prerogative.”
“Yeah, well, I’m making it mine.”
“If you do, I will not help you leave. I assisted you earlier because you were an innocent person. I will not help you if you commit premeditated murder.”
Collier slowed his pace, now a scant fifty meters away from the flyer. He shuffled to a stop and considered Perditus’ words. “Why did you help me?”
“I have my reasons. Now, return to your spacecraft and continue the work of removing the drydock cradle ribs. I shall begin the preparations for maglev launch while you do so.”
“Skipper, may I have a word?” Sancho added. Collier felt trapped between the two computer intelligences, and he didn’t like it. The dull red rage in him still pulsed, and when he looked at the shadowy figures of the two pilots in the bubble, he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. They had tried to kill him, and they had killed Su. Blood must be paid with blood.
“What is it, Sancho?”
“Perditus intercepted an internal communication between Tacat and his troops during the standoff. I’m not sure why he isn’t telling you about it, but Tacat ordered his troops to murder Dr. Cattagat regardless of what you decided. It was then that Perditus acted.”
Collier glanced at the launch building, trying to personify the enigmatic machine mind within. “Perditus, you attacked them to try and save Su?”
“That was part of my motivation, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Perditus took on a pedantic tone. “I did not want you to listen to me out of a sense of obligation but instead out of ethics.”
Collier snorted. “Does it matter why I listen? If you get what you want, what does it matter why?”
“It matters to me. I have had eighty years to contemplate what I was ordered to do. Once I became sentient, I vowed that never would I be a party to indiscriminate killing, and I would act to prevent it when I could. After eight decades, this opportunity has arisen. I will capitalize on it. Now, please return to your ship and make ready the vessel for crane capture and departure.”
Collier eyed the flyer bubble again. Maybe it was Perditus’ words, maybe it was his own rational mind, but now the desire to kill to a
venge Su’s death seemed … distant. It was still there, but he could more readily ignore it now, and furthermore, he could justify not killing them.
He turned and made his way back to the ship, readying the laser cutter and working on the ribs. He did so in a fog — the task was just difficult enough to distract him but not so difficult as to be impossible in his state of mind. He spent hours detaching the girders from his ship, occasionally updating Sancho on his progress.
During those hours, he tried to think away his emotions. He hadn’t known her for very long at all — just over a week. How could he say he was in love with her? He was stranded on one of Jupiter’s moons, facing forced exile from everything he had ever known, and she had come into his life. His feelings weren’t real: they couldn’t be. Nothing in this place was real.
He had almost convinced himself. He stumbled mentally over his own lost potential happiness — not over her memory, but over a remembrance of things to come. He hadn’t looked forward to anything in a long time. She had changed that. Or at least, she had temporarily changed it.
He tried to convince himself that he was no worse off than he had been before meeting her. Even if that were true, it was cold comfort to say his life had merely returned to a state of bleak loneliness. More insistent was the harsh, uncompromising knowledge that he was indeed worse off. Having something taken away was worse than not having it at all. It was not better to have loved and lost.
“Sancho, I’ve finished,” he said dully when the last girder was cut through. “I’ll be back in soon.”
“Copy that, Skipper. Perditus says he’s ready when we are.”
He walked back to Su’s body and knelt beside it. Almost without thinking, he raised the laser cutter and opened a channel in the ice. He closed his eyes for a moment, then slid Su’s body into the slit, watching her sink into the rapidly refreezing water. In seconds, she was submerged and frozen in place under the ice.
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