Manhattan Transfer

by John E. Stith

  "Now what?" Matt asked.

  Abby asked the question of the Archie captain.

  "Wait. Watch," came the answer.

  Julie approached Matt. "The Mayor wants to talk to you." She offered him her walkie–talkie.

  Matt held the unit to his mouth and answered. A moment later, he said, "Yes, ma'am. Maybe I can get Bobby Joe to set up a second link so Julie can continue feeding a steady stream and we can still talk." Matt glanced at Bobby Joe, who thought for a couple of seconds then nodded. "Yeah, apparently it's possible."

  Matt listened for a long moment. "No, I don't think that'll help much, either." Pause. "All right. We'll do our best."

  Matt listened a moment longer. "I understand. I was about to ask the Archies to make sure we know as much as they do about the planet shaper, and we've still got some questions about their own capabilities. If there aren't any supplies in Manhattan that will help, maybe ideas can help. Would you put out a call just the way you did for materials? If there are any experts with useful suggestions about space warfare or any useful ideas triggered by what we learn about the planet shaper, pass them up to us fast. Right at the moment, we're a little short on options. We need creative, devious ideas. There has got to be a way to stop that ship."

  A moment later Matt handed the walkie–talkie back to Julie. To Bobby Joe he said, "Okay. Get a second link set up as soon as possible, and give me a walkie–talkie on the second channel as soon as you're finished."

  "Will do," said Bobby Joe. He hurried off toward the nearest line–of–sight point without even a smart remark.

  Matt glanced at Abby, then at the others in the small group. "The mayor has set up a technical team to help get answers to questions that may come up. And I'm officially in charge of the war effort. By the time anyone else could get here from Manhattan, it might all be over anyway, plus we're the Archie experts now." He looked at the overhead screen. "First item of business. Abby, tell the captain we want to intercept the planet shaper. About there if we can." He pointed to a spot about a third of the way from Venus to the location of the planet shaper.

  Abby nodded. This would be pushing the limits of her speech translation, so she grabbed a marker, sat down, and began to write directly on the floor of the bridge. She made sure the captain was watching. She drew an octagon and said, "Archie ship." She drew a four–leaf clover and said, "Planet shaper."

  As she drew, the Archie captain folded her legs underneath her and sat on the floor, tipped forward so her eye–stalk could point at the drawing on the floor. Her mouth hung open, and Abby tried not to look at it.

  Abby drew a line from the planet shaper to a dot she called, "Planet." From the Archie ship to the intercept point she drew an arrow. From the planet shaper to the same point she drew a second arrow. Finally she said, "Move," and retraced the arrow from the Archie ship to the intercept point.

  The Archie's eye–stalk wiggled from side to side, then she chattered. The translator said, "Waste."

  Abby went back and forth a couple of times trying for clarification as her anger built up and she had to work harder to conceal it. Finally she looked up at Matt. "She's saying it's a waste of time or energy. She says this ship has no weapon that can damage the planet shaper. I'll show her two choices—either moving this ship or having this ship explode." Matt nodded.

  Abby drew a picture of a fractured octagon, then what she thought was the "or" symbol, then retraced the line to the intercept point again.

  Finally the Archie brushed its mouth with one of her forward legs, then chattered to her nearest compatriot, who in turned chattered at the Archie in the center of the bridge. That Archie's eye–stalk swiveled to point at the captain, who proceeded to tap one hand against the floor.

  Moments later the image overhead changed as a series of concentric circles formed, centered on a point about a third of the way from Venus to the planet shaper. The set of circles began to expand slowly. The display reminded Abby of scenes in movies showing the cockpit display as an airliner came in for a landing. Each circle disappeared as it reached a diameter of about a meter, and at the same time tiny circles appeared in the center of the smallest circles. "I think we're moving," Abby said.

  Abby wasn't sure why she'd had to go through with the threat again. It was almost as if the Archie captain didn't believe anything that had been said only once or twice. Maybe the team was now closer to being taken more seriously.

  The rate at which the circles grew increased, as though the ship were moving faster and faster. Julie directed her minivid at the display.

  "What next?" Abby asked.

  Matt stared at the expanse of stars above as he spoke. "If they're unwilling to fight, or unequipped to fight, they're only good for one thing: following our directions. Can you tell the captain that she's going to have to be prompt about doing what we ask? Tell her that we won't take any action as long as she cooperates quickly, but keep reminding her that we still have the power to destroy this ship."

  "I'll give it a shot."

  Abby spent more than ten minutes trying to get the concepts across to the Archie captain. As she was still working on it, Bobby Joe came back and handed Matt a walkie–talkie, saying the second link was all set. Abby drew on a new section of floor, trying to get across the idea of an undamaged ship, and finally, several minutes later, the Archie captain verbally agreed to the request and confirmed Abby's suspicion that tapping a hand on the ground meant "yes."

  "Okay," said Abby. "I think she's still having a hard time accepting the idea that we would deliberately destroy the ship that's keeping us alive, but I tried to convince her we think differently from them. It's odd, though. A couple of times I've gotten the feeling they actually like having someone telling them to do something more than save cities and watch the planets be destroyed. Maybe they're feeling guilty about not being able to do more. What next?"

  Matt said, "Next she's got to tell us everything she knows about the planet shaper's weapons and its defenses."

  That request took almost a half–hour to complete, but Abby's hope grew as she was able to add more vocabulary to her computer's translation bank as she did it. Communication ease was accelerating. The planet shaper's hull was mirror–like as part of its defense. The surface would apparently easily reflect the cutting lasers employed by the Archie shuttlecraft. And beneath the reflecting layer was a very hard material, so hard that the Archies felt no projectile would penetrate it. Small projectile weapons like human rifles and even anti–tank weapons would be useless.

  "But muzzle velocity is meaningless," Bobby Joe pointed out. "The weapons we're talking about have muzzle velocities measured in thousands of meters per second at most. If we're going to reach where we're going any time soon, we'll be traveling at millions of kilometers per second. Just dropping a bullet in empty space and veering away would leave the bullet traveling a thousand times faster than we could shoot it."

  Matt said, "Good point. But what about the planet shaper's offensive weapons?"

  The Archie captain was less sure about what weapons the planet shaper carried. Apparently they hadn't had much reason to care. Abby finally decided the Archie captain was telling her the planet shaper did in fact carry a weapon that could strike at a distance, but she didn't have the vocabulary to pin down what it was.

  "Well, we've got to damage the planet shaper somehow," Matt said finally. "We got to find a way of turning something into an offensive weapon."

  As Matt talked to the others, Abby realized she had finally obtained a large enough sampling of Archie–speak that she could load it into a language program that would start to extrapolate additional data to fill in the gaps.

  If only it could help.

  #

  Dorine Underwood couldn't avoid a yawn. She wasn't at all bored, but she'd been awake for too long. She was exhausted. She held up a hand to the camera operator to say, "Just a couple of seconds more."

  Finally she nodded. The camera light came on and she saw the "on the a
ir" signal.

  "Hello, New Yorkers. By now many of you have been watching what's happening on the bridge of this ship we're aboard. Now that the planet shaper has arrived, our captors are telling us there's less than a day before the ship reaches Venus, and then perhaps only another eight hours before it reaches Earth. We were lucky that, thanks to where the planet shaper appeared, it happened to be closer to Venus than to the Earth. That bought us an extra half day.

  "We need to make sure that gift is not wasted. We need to find out some way of crippling or destroying the planet shaper before it reaches Earth. I want to be very clear on this point. If the ship we're in takes offensive action against the planet shaper, there is a risk that it will strike back. By trying to save the Earth, we ourselves will be at risk.

  "I believe the risk is one we have to take. I say this as someone who has a husband still on Earth, but I would say it anyway. I don't honestly know how to evaluate the risk, any more than someone running into a burning building to save a child knows exactly what the odds are. I think for the most part you will agree with me that we have to take the risk. If the worst happens to us, and this ship is damaged while stopping the planet shaper from destroying life on Earth, then at least we will know that for every life in this dome, we saved a thousand lives on Earth, and the Earth itself.

  Dorine pinched the bridge of her nose, then looked back at the camera. "I also have to say I've lost some of my optimism. We may not find a way to save the Earth. We're in a ship built for comparatively peaceful purposes, up against a ship built by people who probably expected it to run into massive opposition.

  "But I also have a strong belief in human ingenuity. If there is a way to fight the planet shaper, we will find it. If none exists, then we will have at least done everything possible to help.

  "The nine–one–one lines are open again, this time for suggestions or tactics we could employ against the planet shaper. As before, abuse of the nine–one–one system will be dealt with harshly. If you've got a legitimate idea, call. If you don't know that it's useful, call anyway. We'll filter the ideas down here, and pass as many as we can to the team on the bridge. Keep watching the telecast from the bridge, in case any new information triggers more possibilities.

  "Thank you, Manhattan."

  #

  Rudy said, "We could have the Archies ram the planet shaper with a shuttlecraft."

  Abby asked the Archie captain about that and got the answer that even if she were willing to try, which was unlikely, she was pessimistic about the impact being large enough to do significant damage.

  Bobby Joe's eyes opened wide. "Between Mars and Jupiter are lots of asteroids. What if we could grab a big one and throw it at the planet shaper?"

  Matt nodded to Abby. "See if you can get an answer to that." He clicked on his walkie–talkie and asked the mayor to run the same question by the technical team that was now standing by.

  Within a few minutes Matt interrupted Abby's discussion with the captain. "The technical team says it's feasible, but the answer depends on the maximum acceleration the Archies' ship can attain. We'd have to go through three acceleration phases. One get up to a high enough speed to approach a suitable asteroid long enough before the planet shaper arrives, a second to slow down to match speed with the asteroid, and a third to get the ship and the asteroid up to ramming speed."

  Abby shook her head. "I don't think it will work. She was trying to tell me the ship couldn't move fast enough, and now I know what that means."

  Matt relayed that information to Manhattan. Seconds later, he said, "All right. They're ready to relay some of the initial suggestions that they've recorded and that the technical team thinks are at least adequate to pass on to us. I think if we all get close to the walkie–talkie I can crank up the sound enough that we can all hear so I don't have to relay everything."

  Matt sat down next to Abby. Bobby Joe, Rudy, and Richard huddled close by as Julie kept transmitting. "Go ahead," said Matt.

  The sound was tinny but audible. What sounded like an old man said, "Warn Earth. They can use atomic weapons on that sucker."

  A young girl's voice said, "Squirt acid on the ship. Dissolve it."

  "Fly out of the sun. Surprise it," said a male voice. A different voice, presumably one of the technical team, added, "This one makes sense not just because of the obvious visual difficulty the planet shaper would have. Besides that, the sun gives off a huge amount of broad–spectrum noise that might interfere with other kinds of sensors, too."

  A nervous man said, "I think perhaps—perhaps we should just ram the planet shaper with this ship."

  #

  For the last twenty hours, the largest display in Times Square had been showing live video from what residents had dubbed The Mayor Channel. At the moment, the screen showed the bridge of the Archies' ship, along with Matt Sheehan and Abby Tersa.

  Herb Abjernal watched the screen intently, wishing he had a cigarette, ignoring the jostling of the huge crowd. At the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 43rd Street, a tall pedestal supported twelve huge speakers that carried the audio to go with the video. Herb was close enough to the speakers that when the Mayor or someone else spoke, the sound hurt his ears, but he didn't move away because sometimes the crowd's excited reaction almost covered up the words.

  At the moment, the speakers were silent, and Herb heard the loud voice of a man on the south side of the intersection. "What the hell do we owe Earth? All the rest of the world ever did was complain about New York. They're probably glad we're gone. Why should we risk our lives to help those idiots?"

  Even if Herb hadn't had a daughter in Hawaii and a son in Arizona, he would still have been angry. He considered moving from his chosen spot, but the angry reactions from the people nearest the speaker said there was no need to move. The man was being cursed in three languages.

  The man started up again, saying, "We're all safe. No one is going to touch us if we don't interfere. I say—"

  Whatever else the man had to say was interrupted by the meaty sound of a punch. Voices rose again, but Herb didn't hear the complainer say anything more. Who said New Yorkers just stood by and let crap happen?

  #

  "You know," Matt said, "we do have something really massive we could throw at the planet shaper. And we wouldn't have to go anyplace to get it."

  Rudy cocked his head. "And what might that be?"

  "A city. The dead city we explored."

  Abby sensed the first glimmer of hope she'd felt for hours.

  Richard nodded, and Bobby Joe said, "I like it!"

  To Abby, Matt said, "Ask the Archies if that's possible, and if it is, to get started removing the city as fast as they can. We won't want to match speed at the intercept point; we'll want to be moving as fast as we can relative to it."

  Abby nodded and turned to the Archie captain. She tried to get the question across, being extremely careful to identify the correct city.

  The Archie captain seemed to get excited. Her two front legs twitched as Abby completed the first question. Finally Abby turned back to Matt and said, "She thinks they can do it. And she seems to think it might work. They'll start now."

  One of the wall screens showed an overhead view of the huge square building they had searched earlier, and Abby identified it as the correct city.

  "Tell them about setting a course so the final approach has this ship directly between the sun and the planet shaper," Matt said. "We can't assume they know anything about fighting."

  "Let me help, will you?" Bobby Joe said to Abby as he reached for the marker.

  Bobby Joe drew on a new section of floor, showing the straight line between the planet shaper and Venus and the straight line between the Archies' ship and the interception point. He scratched through the straight line and next to it drew a curve that ended at the intercept point. He drew a tangent to the final portion of the curve and drew a straight line directly into the sun. Bobby Joe suggested what Abby should say, translating from technical
to layman as Abby completed the translation.

  Finally she was convinced the Archie captain understood.

  The captain chattered to a nearby Archie. Seconds later, Bobby Joe said, "Terrific!"

  Abby followed his gaze to the overhead display, which had changed. The series of expanding concentric circles had stretched out so they were no longer concentric but instead formed a transparent shape like the old–fashioned curved cone of an early mechanical record player. Instead of heading directly for the intercept point, their path curved closer to the sun.

  #

  "Hello?" Lucky Stiles called.

  His voice echoed in the warehouse, but no reply came. Lucky moved quickly up the stairs and through the maze to the preacher's office.

  "Hello?" he called again. Still no answer.

  The office was unoccupied. The preacher must have been out someplace, getting more idiots to follow him.

  Lucky withdrew a package from his coat pocket and quickly did what he needed to do.

  #

  Jamie Fahred carefully pushed the buttons on the portable phone. Nine–one–one. Seconds later a woman's voice said, "Please state your suggestion concisely. Go."

  Jamie hesitated, then let the idea burst forth. "I think we should move the Earth so it's on the other side of the sun so they can't see it."

  #

  "I don't think we're going to be able to contact Earth," Abby said. "At least not in time to help. With Bobby Joe's help, I've tried to describe radio, and as best as I can tell, they use some other method of communication."

  Abby didn't know whether to be disappointed or not. There was nothing the people on Earth could do to avert disaster. If her parents were doomed to die soon, maybe it would be best if they didn't have their final hours filled with panic and frustration.

  "All right," Matt said. "We've had some suggestions for taking parabolic satellite dishes and modifying them so they could be used to feed signals toward Earth. People in Manhattan are working on the modifications, but there's probably not enough time to finish and move the equipment to someplace it could be used."