by Jerry Oltion
"Oh," Gerry said. He looked out the windows again as if to assure himself that the Earth was really gone. Finally he said, "Look at the sun."
"What?"
"The sun."
Judy looked. It was shining in through the forward windows. She had to squint to keep it from burning her eyes, but not much, and now she could see what Gerry was talking about. The solar disk was about a fourth the normal size.
Carl, floating just above the mid-deck hatch, looked too. He made a strangling sound, looked over at Judy as if he was pleading for help, then his eyes rolled up and he went slack.
"Catch him!" Judy yelled, but it was hardly necessary. People don't fall when they faint in free-fall. Neither do they faint. Blood doesn't rush away from the brain without gravity to pull it. So what had happened to him?
As she debated what to do, the answer came in a long, shuddering breath. "Oh," she said. "He forgot to breathe." She laughed, but it came out wrong and she cut it off. She wasn't far from Carl's condition herself.
Get it under control, she thought.
"Gerry, help him down to his bunk."
Gerry nodded and pushed Carl back through the hatchway into the mid-deck. When they had gone below, Judy said, "Well, Allen, this is a pretty situation you've got yourself in."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean hijacking and piracy."
"What? You've got to be—" He stopped. She wasn't kidding. "All right, I can believe hijacking, but piracy?"
"We're carrying a full load of privately owned cargo, which you diverted without authority. That makes it piracy. You should have thought of that before you started pushing buttons." Allen looked at her without comprehension. "I don't get it," he said. "What's wrong with you people? I demonstrate a working hyperdrive engine and Carl curls up into a ball, and now you start talking about piracy? Where's your sense of adventure? Don't you realize what this means? I've given us the key to the entire universe! We're not stuck on one planet anymore! The human race can have some breathing room again. And what's more, I've ended the threat of nuclear extermination forever!" Judy hadn't even thought of that angle. She'd been too busy trying to suppress the hysterical giggles that kept threatening to bubble to the surface. Hyperdrive! But now she did think about it, and she didn't like what she came up with. "Ended the threat of nuclear extermination? You idiot! You've probably caused it! Do you have any idea what's going on at Mission Control right now? Full-scale panic, that's what. They've lost an orbiter—gone, just like that—and it's not going to take long before somebody decides that the Russians or the French or somebody shot us down with an antisatellite weapon. I think you're smart enough to figure out what happens then."
She watched him think it through. He opened his mouth to speak, but he couldn't. Judy said it for him: "We've got to get back within radio range and let them know we're okay, or all sorts of hell is going to break loose. So how do we do that?"
"I—without calibrating it we shouldn't—"
"I just want you to reverse the direction. Send us back the same distance we came. Can you do that?"
"Uh . . . yes, I suppose so. The error in distance should be the same both ways. But I don't think it's a good idea. We could be off in direction as well as distance. We could wind up in the wrong orbit, or underground for that matter."
Judy tried to weigh the chances of that against the chances of nuclear war. Since France had put missiles in Quebec in response to American missiles in England, both sides were on a launch-on-warning status. If somebody decided they had already used an A-sat weapon . . . ?
She was starting to feel like a captain again. At least she felt the pressure of being the one in command. Four lives against six billion, hardly a choice except that she had to make it. She heard herself say, "It's a chance we'll have to take. Do it."
Seconds later she was convulsed in laughter. It was an involuntary reaction. The giggles had won. Allen stared at her for a moment before he ventured, "Are you all right?" Judy fought for control, and eventually found it. She wiped fat globules of tears away from her eyes and sniffed. "Yeah," she said. "It just hit me." She pitched her voice in heroic tones and said, "'I'll take that chance, Scotty! Give me warp speed!' God, if only the Enterprise had flown." Allen looked puzzled for a second before comprehension lit up his face. "The first shuttle. Okay." He laughed quietly and turned to his keyboard. As he typed in the coordinates he said, "You know, I did try to buy the Enterprise for this, but I couldn't come up with the cash."
"I'm surprised you didn't build your own ship out of an old septic tank or something. Isn't that the way most mad scientists do it?"
"Don't laugh; I could have done it that way. The hyperdrive engine will take you directly into space from the ground if you want to. But I didn't think a flying septic tank was the image I wanted. I thought a shuttle would be better for getting the world's attention."
Judy felt a shiver run up her spine. "Well you definitely did that. I just hope we can patch things back together before it's too late. Are you ready there?"
"Ready."
"Let's go, then."
Allen grinned. "Warp speed, Captain," he said, and pushed the "Jump" button. Earth suddenly filled the view again. It was at the wrong angle, but just having it there made Judy sigh in relief. She tried the radio again.
"Control, this is Discovery. Do you copy?"
Response came immediately. " Discovery, this is Control. We copy. What is your status, over?"
"Green bird. Everything is fine. We've had a minor, uh, navigational problem, but we've got that taken care of. No cause for alarm. What is your status, over?" She realized she was babbling. There would be hell to pay when she got back on the ground, but she didn't care. Warp speed!
The ground controller wasn't much better off. "Everything is under control here too," he said.
"Barely. What is the nature of your navigational problem? Over." She suddenly realized that she had another big choice to make. Half the world must be listening in on her transmission; should she tell them the truth? Or should she do the military thing and keep it a secret? There were code words for just such a contingency as this.
It was a simple decision, even simpler than the one to return. She said, "Dr. Meisner has just demonstrated what he calls a hyperdrive engine. I believe his description of it to be accurate. We went—"
There was a violent lurch, followed by the beep of Allen's radio pulse, and the Earth disappeared again.
Judy turned away from the radio to see Allen lifting his finger off the keyboard. "Damn it, I told you not to touch that until I gave the word! Get away from there!"
Allen looked hurt. "I think I just saved our lives," he said. "Somebody shot at us." He pointed out the aft windows into the cargo bay, where a cherry-red stump still glowed where the vertical stabilizer had been. Hydraulic fluid bubbled out into vacuum from the severed lines. Judy took it all in, in less than a second, then whirled and kicked herself forward between the commander's and the pilot's chairs to look at the fuel pressure gauges. They remained steady, but the hydraulics and the auxiliary power units that drove them were both losing pressure fast. It hardly mattered, though; both systems were used only during launch and descent, and there could be no descent without a vertical stabilizer.
She shut off the alarms and clung to the command chair for support. "That was stupid," she said.
"Of course the laser satellites would fire on something that suddenly pops into orbit where it doesn't belong. Damn it! Now there really is going to be a war." She turned around to face Allen. "Take us back again, but this time put us short of the Earth. I don't want to go into orbit; I just want to be in radio range."
Allen hesitated. "I—I don't think we should—"
"Do it! The end of the world is about fifteen minutes away. I don't care what it takes, just get us within radio range. And outside laser range."
Allen nodded.
While he punched numbers on his keyboard, Judy tried to compose w
hat she was going to say. She wouldn't report the damage yet, not until she was sure everybody had their fingers off of the missile launch buttons. Ground control would know by their telemetry that something was wrong, but they wouldn't know how it happened, and the military would know that the Russians or the French or the Chinese had fired an A-sat weapon, but they wouldn't know at what. Or—she had a sudden thought. Who said it had to be an enemy A-sat? It had to have been an automatic shot; that made it a fair chance that it was an American beam.
It hardly mattered. Either way, it would mean war if she didn't explain what had happened. Allen looked over at her and said, "I've cut the radial distance by one percent. I don't know where that will put us, but it should at least be out of Earth orbit."
Judy nodded. "Okay. Do it." She turned to the radio.
The hyperdrive did its trick again, but the Earth didn't fill the view. In fact it took Judy a moment to find it: a gibbous blob of white reminiscent of Venus seen through a cheap telescope. At least she supposed that was Earth. A bright point of light that might have shown a disk if she squinted had to be the Moon beside it. They were too close together, though, or so she thought until she remembered that the Moon could be between the ship and Earth, or on the other side of it, and the apparent distance would be shorter than it really was.
She shook her head. "Too far," she said. "We'd never make ourselves heard from this distance. You'll have to take us closer."
Allen was starting to sweat. "Look," he said. "I can't keep moving us around without calibrating this thing. Every time we jump we're compounding our error, and we get farther and farther from knowing where we are."
"I know exactly where we are," Judy said. "We're too far for radio communications. Take us closer." She waited about two seconds while Allen hesitated, then added, "Now."
"All right," he said. He tried to throw his hands up in a shrug, but he overbalanced and had to grab on to the overhead panel to steady himself. He pulled himself down again and began to work with the keyboard.
Judy heard the radio pulse and the view changed again. Earth was larger, about the size that it would be when seen from the Moon, though it showed only a crescent now. She didn't see the Moon out the front windows, but when she looked back through the cargo bay windows she found it. It was bigger than the Earth. Much bigger. They couldn't have been more than a couple thousand miles from it. She watched the surface for a few seconds, trying to determine their relative motion. Was it getting closer?
She couldn't tell.
All the same, as she plugged her headset into the radio she said, "Get ready to move us again." This time Allen didn't argue.
"Control, this is Discovery, do you copy?"
She had forgotten about the time lag. She was about to call again when she heard, "Roger Discovery, we copy, but your signal is weak and you have disappeared from our radar. What's happening up there?"
"We're not in orbit any longer. Doctor Meisner's experiment has moved us to the general vicinity of the Moon. I repeat, Doctor Meisner's experiment is responsible for our change in position. There is no cause for alarm. Do you copy?"
A pause. "We copy, Discovery. No cause for alarm. You bet. We'll tell the President to get his finger off the button, then. Hold on a second—uh. . ." The timbre of Control's voice changed, and Judy realized he was reading. Someone had evidently handed him a note. He read: "Due to a state of national emergency, the Pentagon has taken control of this mission. You are now a military flight. Any information concerning the nature of Doctor Meisner's experiment is now classified top secret. Do you copy?" Judy had been expecting that. She laughed into the microphone and said, "Don't tell the world that we've got hyperdrive? You know where you can tell them to put it, Control. Kindly remind the idiots at the Pentagon that I am a civilian pilot, and that my loyalty goes to humanity first, nation second. What they request is tantamount to suppressing knowledge of the wheel, so you can tell the Pentagon to stuff it deep, over."
Judy saw motion out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Allen applauding silently. He said, "I sent e—"
Judy held up her hand to quiet him as Mission Control responded. She could hear the cheering in the background. "Roger, Discovery. We copy and concur. Your, ah, hyperspace jump seems to have messed with the telemetry. We're getting low pressure readings in the hydraulics and APUs. Do you confirm, over?"
"Your readings are correct. We have sustained damage to the vertical stabilizer. We won't be able to reenter. Request you reserve space for us on the next flight down."
"Roger, Discovery. What kind of damage to the stabilizer?"
"It's been vaporized. Completely melted away. We assume it was either a particle beam or laser antisatellite weapon, automatically fired. We do not consider ourselves to have been attacked. Please be sure the Pentagon understands, over."
"Roger, Discovery. I'm sure they'll be glad to hear that." Allen butted in. "Uh, Commander?"
"I'll bet they will. Hold on a sec." She turned off the mike. "What, Allen?"
"I think we should get away from here. We're picking up velocity being this close to the Moon. It'll make it hard to put us back into orbit."
"Velocity? How?"
"Gravitation. We're falling toward the Moon. When we make our next hyperspace jump the velocity we gain will still be with us. We'll have to cancel it before we can go into Earth orbit."
"Oh. Right." Judy tried to visualize the situation in her mind. Too close to the Moon; well, "Can you put us on the other side of the Earth?"
"I don't want to fool around near the planets any more. I need to calibrate it. I think the danger of war is past, is it not?"
Judy nodded. "Okay. Give me a minute to explain what we're going to do, then you can take us wherever you want. Within reason," she amended quickly. She turned on the radio again and said,
"Control, this is Discovery. Doctor Meisner says that the Moon's gravitation is causing us to build up unwanted velocity. We'll have to make another hyperspace jump in order to leave the area, plus another series of jumps to calibrate the engine. We'll be out of radio contact for a while. Promise you won't let them blow up the world while we're gone? Over."
"We'll do our best, Discovery. Things are a little hot down here." Judy imagined they were. If the ground controller didn't have a Marine holding a pistol to his head within the next couple of minutes she would be very surprised. "Just keep the lid on until we get back," she told him. "Remind the President that this would be a really stupid time to go to war."
"We'll do that. Good luck, Discovery."
"Good luck to you. Discovery out." Judy switched off the radio, turned around, and screamed. 3
"Be calm," Gerry said as he floated up through the mid-deck hatchway with the .45 from the emergency survival kit in his hand. "Allen, you may continue with your jump. Judy, you will please come away from the controls."
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded.
"I'm appropriating this vessel for the Russian Federation. You won't be harmed so long as you do as I say."
"Come off it, Gerry. You're not going to fire that thing in here. One stray shot and you'd lose all your air."
"There is that risk. I'd have preferred a less destructive weapon, but the survival kit doesn't carry a dart gun. I'll just have to be careful not to miss, won't I? Now come away. Slowly, that's it." He reached out and stopped her in midair, leaving her floating where he could see her move long before she reached anything to push off against.
He glanced out the aft windows at the surface of the Moon beyond the cargo bay and said, "Allen, you may move us away now." He kept the gun aimed at Judy as he spoke. Allen swallowed. "Right." He turned to the keyboard and began keying in coordinates.
"Why are you doing this, Gerry?" Judy asked. "You're not a Russian."
"That depends on your definition. I've been a sleeper agent since before I entered the space program, since before the Union collapsed. In any case, my nationality is not the issue. What matter
s is my belief that the Federation should have this device."
Allen cleared his throat. "I, uh, I was planning on giving it to everybody. You see, part of the reason I did things the way I did was to get everybody's attention so they wouldn't think it was a hoax when I sent the plans out over the internet."
Gerry shook his head. "A noble thought. Unfortunately, the world isn't ready for it. Russia will have to keep your idea secret until the rest of humanity is sufficiently civilized to handle something this dangerous."
"Bullshit," Judy said. "You can't believe that. You want to keep it for yourself. You want Russia to be a big superpower again, and you think this will—"
Gerry waved the pistol at her. "Be quiet. Allen, you will make the jump now." Allen turned back to his keyboard and pushed the transmit key. The radio sent its timing pulse, but nothing else happened.
"What—?" He looked out the window, pushed the key again, and again. Still nothing changed.
"I must have miskeyed it," he said. He entered the coordinates again, canceled the tinier and reset it, and hit "Jump" again.
Still nothing.
"Something's wrong."
"Allen." Gerry had the gun pointed at him now.
"I'm not lying! It's not working! It's hardly surprising, with all the jumps we've been doing in a row. Something's probably burned out. It's still an experimental model, you know."
"Then you will find the problem and fix it." Gerry glanced out the window and added, "I suggest you do it quickly."
Judy followed his glance. The Moon's surface was definitely closer now. Allen said, "You'll have to go out and get the canister."
"Not until you've exhausted the possibilities inside. The problem may be in the computer."
"It isn't. The signal is reaching the radio, and all the data uses one line. The problem is in the canister."
Gerry thought it through and nodded. "All right, but Judy will go out and get it. I prefer to remain here where I can watch you."