by Jerry Oltion
47
Allen was washing her back when the radio at his hip crackled to life and Tippet said, "Listen to this." The speaker hissed with static, then a different voice, much fainter, said, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Is anybody listening? Mayday, Mayday, Mayday."
"Sounds like somebody's in trouble," Allen said.
"Yes, we gathered that much," said Tippet. " 'Mayday' was the same word that the French used. Could this be the same submarine needing rescue again?"
"Not likely," Allen said. "They're speaking English between the Maydays, for one thing. Where's it coming from?"
"Near your home planet. About one hundred thousand kilometers from the surface, above the center of the North American continent. One of our relay satellites picked it up."
"Sounds like somebody hit the escape button on landing," Judy said. She was floating in front of Allen, wearing no clothing except her panties and the cast on her arm while he gave her a bath.
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," the voice said again. "This is Trent Stinson, calling Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Can anybody hear me?"
Judy flinched so hard when she heard the name that she nearly doubled over with the pain in her ribs. "Wait a minute!" she said when she could breathe again. "We know him!"
"Impossible," Allen said. "I mean, what are the odds?"
"Pretty good, actually," she replied. "You built him a hyperdrive engine before we left." She turned around and listened through another set of "Mayday"s to be sure, but the voice was unmistakable. "It's him. We've got to go help him."
"Someone from your own planet will rescue him, won't they?" Tippet said.
"With what? It would take a hyperdrive ship to reach him, but they'd need regular docking equipment to bring him back. NASA's the only outfit with the gear for it, but if I know them they're a mile deep in paperwork without a ship to show for it yet. Besides, he's out there because of us. We've got to go get him."
"No," Tippet said. "Not in this ship. It could be a trap. Even if it's not, the moment we appear that close to Earth, we'll be attacked."
Allen shook his head. "We only need to be there for a couple of seconds. Jump in, move close enough to make sure he's inside our jump field, and jump out again. Then we can take him on board just like you did us."
Tippet thought about that for a moment, then said, "This ship doesn't need to go anywhere."
"You can't leave him out there to—"
"Of course not. But you can bring him here with your own spaceship, can't you?" Allen narrowed his brows. "It's got a blown seam. And I can't maneuver it in regular space."
"Your pressure suit still contains enough air for the short time you would be away," Tippet said.
"And if you put yourself in the right spot, your relative velocity will bring you together. You could then bring him back here with your hyperdrive and let us dock with both of you."
"Do we know his position that closely?"
"In another three minutes we will. When the next relay satellite reports in, we can triangulate on his broadcast."
Allen rubbed his chin. "Hmm. I'd have to expand the jump field so I was sure to pick him up on the way past, but that's easy enough." He reached out absently and handed Judy the sponge he'd been using to bathe her. "All right. I'll be right back."
"Wait a minute," she said. "You've got to breathe oxygen for at least an hour first."
"Trent may not have an hour. I'll be fine. It'll only take a few minutes."
"Famous last words," she said, but she couldn't think what else to do. If Trent was in serious trouble, they needed to get him to safety now.
She wished she could go with Allen, but she couldn't fit inside a spacesuit with her arm in a cast, and with two broken ribs she would be useless anyway, even in zero-gee.
"Be careful," she said, leaning forward cautiously to give him a kiss.
"Always."
She went with him at least as far as the Getaway and watched him push it from the garden back into the cargo hold. He positioned it right up against the airlock so the escaping air would blow him away from the ship, then climbed inside and donned his spacesuit, handing her the walkie-talkie at the last minute before he sealed it inside with him. Judy made sure he got all his joints sealed correctly, then Tippet gave him the coordinates for Trent's location and helped him calculate an intercept jump and figure out when to trigger their return. Allen spent a few minutes adjusting the jump field, then gave the thumbs-up.
She saw his lips move, and Tippet relayed his words through the walkie-talkie: "Back in a flash."
"Good luck," she replied. She was still holding the wet sponge in one hand and the radio in the other, naked except for her cast. It was less than ten minutes since they'd heard the distress call. She and Tippet went back into the garden they'd just been in, and the door sealed behind them. They heard a hollow thump that had to be the airlock opening up and the Getaway blowing out into space. Judy went to the window and watched the yellow tank dwindle into the distance. It was tumbling slightly, and she wondered how Allen would stop the rotation without the air release valves, but then she saw him stick his arms out through the hatch and throw something into space. A can of beans, maybe?
Whatever it was, the reaction from tossing it slowed the tank's rotation, and he did it again until it stopped.
"That was smart," she said.
"Of course it was smart," Allen's voice said through the walkie-talkie. Tippet had relayed her comment.
"Are you okay out there?" she asked.
"Fine. Let me get a little farther away from—holy cow. The whole back half of the ship is covered in a gooey-looking layer of gunk." He must have realized how that sounded, because a moment later he added. "It's actually kind of pretty, in the right light."
Tippet said, "That's the cocoon. The metamorphosis is nearly done; if you think this is pretty, wait until you see the finished spaceship underneath."
"Neat. Okay, I'm definitely far enough away now. Here goes."
"Good luck!" Judy called out. If he heard her, he didn't reply. The yellow speck winked out, and space was empty again, save for the dark, cratered surface of the asteroid they were using for cover. She finished her bath one-handed, then dressed in her old clothes, since her fresh ones were in the Getaway with Allen. While she was doing that, she asked Tippet, "Are you seriously considering . . . what you said about Earth?"
"Yes," he replied. He was hovering near the door. "I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem safe to let your species loose in the galaxy."
"We're already loose," she said.
He was staying well out of her reach, she noticed. Was he afraid of her, now, too? Personally?
He said, "The total number of emigres is not yet large enough for your race to survive without continued support from Earth. We could still stop you if we choose to do so."
"Using the hyperdrive we gave you."
"There is that irony."
She looked out the window to see if she could spot the Getaway Special when Allen returned. He should have had time to get there and back by now, shouldn't he? But there was only black space outside. Even the asteroid looked dark and cold.
"You know," she said, "there are times when I think humanity's too stupid to live, too. Whenever I have to deal with politicians, for instance. Governments seem to bring out the worst in people. So do fifty-percent-off sales in department stores. But for every jerk, there's a hundred decent people who will help you out in a pinch. And even the people you think are hopeless can surprise you. Did Allen tell you about Dale Larkin, the guy who bankrolled us?"
"No," Tippet said.
"He's a thief. Makes his living stealing money from banks. That's not a good thing," she added, just in case finance was different on Tippet's world. "But when he heard we needed money to build our starship, he offered to just give it to us. No strings attached. We had to talk him into letting us pay him back."
Tippet apparently understood the concept well enough. He said, "I'm not impressed by his generosity
with what was never his in the first place."
"It was his by the time he gave it to us," Judy pointed out. "He didn't have to part with it."
"It wasn't a hardship for him. Generosity when it's easy isn't as significant as generosity that costs the giver."
"No, it's not," she agreed. "But isn't that the same question you're up against? Letting us out of the cradle is going to cost you some security. So are you going to—"
"It's not the same."
"Sure it is. The stakes are bigger, but it's the same argument." It seemed strange to discuss the fate of humanity so calmly with an alien who could snuff it out if he decided that was in the best interest of his own race, but Judy didn't think hysterics would help her case any. Besides, she'd never been much good at hysterics anyway.
When Tippet didn't answer, she said, "I'm sure there will be problems if you let us loose. That's practically guaranteed. But it won't be all of humanity causing trouble. The vast majority of us are going to want to be good neighbors, and we're going to help stop the ones who don't. We don't want con men and carpetbaggers out there any more than you do."
" You don't," Tippet said. "You individually. But you don't speak for your species. You can't! You're physically unable to. We're having a very hard time puzzling out how this will affect negotiations with you as a group."
"That's why we have governments."
"Which you have just admitted are composed of the worst specimens humanity has to offer. And from what's happening on Earth right now, it's also obvious that governments don't heed the wishes of the people they ostensibly serve. Therefore, negotiating with a government would be an immoral act, by our standards."
"But blowing us all up wouldn't be?"
"It would be the worst thing we have ever done in the entire history of our race. But it may also be necessary. We still don't know."
And the longer they took to decide, the harder it would be to accomplish. Judy didn't need to remind him of that; she was sure he knew it all too well. The fact that he and the rest of his hive had refrained so far was good news, but she suspected they had set a deadline: if they didn't come up with a decision soon, they would err on the side of caution. Unfortunately for humanity, that meant they would start bombing before it was too late.
A flicker of motion out in space caught her attention. Two tiny specks of light had popped into being. They were too far away to see any detail, but it had to be Allen and Trent.
"Allen?" she asked.
"Here," he said. "Keep an eye on Trent. He's moving fast." It didn't look like it. The two dots weren't separating very quickly. Allen's vector wouldn't have changed much since he left, so he shouldn't be moving more than a few meters per second away from the ship, but if Trent was moving relative to him, there should have been some proper motion. Unless . . .
"Holy shit, he's coming straight for us!"
She barely had time to get the words out before the speck of light loomed into the distinct image of a four-wheel-drive pickup tumbling end-over-end as it swept toward them. 48
"Brace yourself!" Tippet said.
Judy grabbed on to the window frame, which yielded under her fingers like high-density foam rubber, but she kept her eyes glued to the pickup outside. It was obviously Trent's: deep red with every chrome accessory he could bolt on to it. There was a new addition this time: a big metal box in back, faceted like the top half of a Lunar Module and polished to as bright a shine as everything else. He'd welded together an interstellar camper shell.
They had maybe five seconds until impact. There was no way the starship could get out of the way in time, not even with the hyperdrive. The truck was already inside the jump field. There was a little sideways drift, enough to see that it would hit somewhere toward the back of the ship. That might save the ship, but the pickup was moving fast enough to smash itself flat.
Four seconds. Three. Judy could see two faces through the windshield, Trent in the driver's seat, and Donna sitting right next to him. Their mouths were gaping wide as airlocks. Then they vanished, pickup and all winking out like they had never been. Judy let out her breath. A second later, Trent's voice came over the radio. "Whoo-ee! That was close enough to leave skid marks. Sorry 'bout that. Couldn't hit the button quick enough."
"Trent!" Judy yelled. "Trent! Are you and Donna all right?"
"Judy?"
"Yes!"
"Well I'll be a son of a . . . Yeah! We're fine. How'd we get . . . hell, I don't even know where we are. And how did you get that big-ass spaceship?"
"Allen brought you here," she said. "Allen, can you hear us?"
"I can hear you" he said, "but not Trent. And I'm sure he can't hear me, either. That was one little detail we forgot in the rush to go after him. The shortwave radio's useless in vacuum."
"Oh." He was right. Without air, the microphone couldn't pick up any sound and the speaker couldn't make any. There was probably a way to patch it into a spacesuit's intercom, but it would take cables Allen didn't have.
"We hear him just fine now," Trent said.
"Hey, I hear you now, too!" Allen said.
"Tippet must be relaying your signals."
"Who's Tippet?" Trent asked.
"It's a long story. Hang on a second. Tippet, how are we going to pick them up?" Tippet said, "Our relative velocity is not that great. We can use Jupiter's gravity well to change our own vector and dock with them within half an hour. Trent, do you have enough air to last that long?"
"Yeah, easy," he said. "We've got a tank and a half of that left. It's parachutes we're short of. The fuckin' laser satellites nailed both of 'em when we tried to land. Pardon my French."
"They shot at you?" Judy said. "I'd swear too. Well, hang tight, then, and we'll be right there."
"Uh, guys?" Allen said. "Maybe you could swing by and pick me up first? As long as you're in the neighborhood, and have the right relative velocity and all. Just a thought." Judy grinned. "I don't know," she said. "How about it, Tippet?" He was flying in tight little circles near the door. "Are you insane? Of course we'll pick him up first. He would die of the bends if we—oh. That was humor."
"Pretty lame," she admitted, "but yeah."
A moment later the Getaway blinked into existence a kilometer or so away—or rather Tippet's ship moved that close to it—and then there was a minute or two of light thrust while the pilots matched velocity and brought the plastic tank in through the airlock.
As soon as the docking bay filled with air again, Judy and Tippet went to greet Allen. He was cursing at his spacesuit as he tried to take the helmet off against air pressure.
"Wrist seals first," Judy reminded him.
"Oh. Yeah." He pried off a glove, and after that the rest was easy. They barely had time for Allen to push the Getaway back into its garden before Tippet announced that they were ready to pick up Trent and Donna. They watched out the window while the huge starship maneuvered to meet the tumbling pickup. The airlock was only thirty or forty feet from their window, so they got a good look as it approached. The truck looked incongruous as hell out there, even with a pressurized camper shell. Its four fat tires had looked silly enough on the ground; here they were a caricature of themselves. The passengers looked a bit out of place as well: Trent still wore his black Stetson, and Donna still sat right next to him on the bench seat and chewed gum like her life depended on it. The only thing that looked different was her hair, which had puffed out all around her face like a yellow halo.
They drifted closer to the airlock, their tumbling motion reminding Judy of the thighbone-to-spaceship transition scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then they disappeared from view, and a few seconds later there was a loud thud and a deep vibration ran through the ship.
"That was them hitting the back wall," Tippet said.
They waited until the docking bay was filled with air, then opened the connecting door and swooped in. The pickup was slowly drifting back toward the closed airlock, and Trent and Donna were struggling to open the doo
rs.
"Open a window first!" Judy called out to them.
Trent slapped himself on the forehead, then cracked open his window. Air whooshed in, ruffling his beard and nearly blowing off his hat, then he popped open the door. Judy could see crisscrossed reinforcing bars welded on its inner surface and an extra layer of rubber molding around the edges to seal it tight against vacuum.
Allen caught Trent as he stepped out and helped steady him, but then the two tried to shake hands and they both wound up wobbling around and laughing. Donna pushed herself out of the truck and floated more gracefully toward Judy, her arms outstretched for a hug. Judy held up her arms and said quickly, "Careful! Broken ribs."
"Oh!" Donna tried to stop her forward motion, but there was nothing to grab except for Judy herself. The two women held one another's hands and did a slow pirouette, Judy's chest and right arm aching under the stress, but they managed to come to a stop without breaking anything more.
"Man, you two are a sight for sore eyes," Trent said. "We was startin' to get worried. Nothin' like comin' home from a thirty-light-year road trip and gettin' shot at on your own doorstep."
"Everybody's gone to red alert with their missile defenses," Allen explained. "They're shooting first and asking questions later."
Donna snapped a little bubble of gum. "That definitely sucks."
"Yeah," Allen agreed.
Trent looked around appreciatively. "This is one hell of a ride you've got here. How'd you score it?"
"It's Tippet's," Judy said. She held her good arm out toward the butterfly, who fluttered up to land on her palm. "Tippet, this is Trent and Donna. They're the ones who helped us build the Getaway" To them, she said, "We met Tippet on a planet way out in Cetus." Trent nodded toward the butterfly. "Pleased to meet'cha."
"Likewise," Tippet said through the walkie-talkie.
Trent looked at Judy's waist, where the radio was clipped, then back up at her face. "We were in Cetus, too.
We met some guys who looked like strings of beach balls on sticks."
"You did?" Judy tried to imagine Trent and Donna making first contact with an alien race. "How, uh, how did it go?"