The Blue Marble Gambit

by Boson, Jupiter

  "Right," Trina agreed. “None of that awkward privacy."

  "It's really not so bad," I said lightly, as I brought the pitifully few systems on line.

  "Especially since we'll only be here a few minutes before we're reduced to our component atoms."

  I flipped a row of switches. “Fixated on the black cloud at the center of the silver lining, are we?" I was distracted, for I was scheming with both the tiny lifeboat computer and the Blue Bean's jittery brain. Picking a moment. A still morose Ned finally joined in.

  "It'll never work," he mourned.

  "Shut up."

  The trick was to launch the lifeboat late enough that the Etzans wouldn't spot it, but early enough that it wouldn't be blasted into smithereens. Assuming that the blaster bolts impacted a favorable spot and didn't atomize us instantly, the computer consensus was that the launch window was precisely 0.27 seconds long. Any earlier, and we were toast. Any later, and we were toast.

  I assigned the launch to the lifeboat's computer.

  It refused.

  I tried again.

  It refused again.

  "Curses!" I shrieked, unable to think of any in particular and so settling for a generic.

  "I think I understand the problem," Ned said.

  "Tell me, o sage with no body."

  "The computer doesn't want to be responsible for our, er, demise. Rather, it can't. Its programming won't let it. It seems it doesn't think much of our chances."

  "Arg! Then I'll do it! Manually!"

  I gripped the launch handle, a long lever striped with bright red and yellow.

  "Easy enough," I lied for Trina's benefit. She glared at me and turned away, her skin flushing crimson, half her head wearing long blonde hair, the other half a bobbing Afro.

  I glued my eyes to the readouts. The Etzan was powering up its main batteries; the tips began to glow purple. The first blow would be massive - though our little ship was a mere soap bubble to the heavy blasters, the Etzans believed in overkill, and then a bit more for good measure. I gripped the launch handle, feeling its smooth metallic warmth.

  "Not yet," Ned said from somewhere.

  The purple glow deepened. A computer-run projection of time to optimal launch jolted and jumped. Tennish seconds. Then, in a moment, six. Then sevenish. The Etzans were not only thorough, but thoroughly unpredictable.

  Two. I gripped harder.

  Four.

  "Saturn's ringed ass!" I groaned, and relaxed.

  One.

  Launch, screamed the screen.

  "Launch," screamed Ned.

  I was already yanking the handle. The twenty-two G jolt was enough to black both - or maybe even all three - of us out. But even through that blackness I saw the brilliant flare of the Blue Bean's destruction. Brighter than a solar flare, brighter than a supernova.

  Then we were away and in a tumble, gyrating around all three axes. The blood fought its way back into my head and rebooted my brain. My vision returned, which told me several things. First, it meant I still had eyes, and a brain, and they were connected to each other. That meant we'd survived, this far, at least. I took a closer look around the pod, now that I had time. A small plaque announced that the Blutonians had manufactured it in Orbital Lifepod Factory #329. In case I cared to make any complaints, it also informed me that it had been inspected by # 7,149,008(b).

  I reached over to check Trina. She was groggy but recovering, and sat up after a few gentle slaps.

  "Pluto's teeth," she yelled. “We're out of control!" Stars were whipping and streaming past the tiny viewports. We were faster than a top, twirling like a one-winged bird in a power dive.

  "Straighten us out!" she shouted next.

  But I couldn't. Or rather, wouldn't. For although we had the necessary attitude thrusters, it was vital that we impersonate a piece of lifeless rubble blasted to kingdom come. Otherwise, we would shortly be exactly that. There was no telling how long it would take the Etzans to lose interest in scanning the rubble. But given that they were both thorough and thoroughly unpredictable, it would be at least several hours before we were safe.

  "Reminds me," I said, "of a gravity storm."

  She thought for a moment, smiled, and wafted towards me.

  The funny thing about lifeboats is that they're actually miniature starships. Far more than mere bubbles of air, they have drives, air cyclers, and food and water supplies. Everything to keep one alive to enjoy the misery of close confinement.

  Of course there's good reason for this. Once lifeboats were unpowered baubles, mere reservoirs of air and maybe a sip of water. It was quickly established that all they were good for was exchanging a quick fiery death - usually from a cascading drive malfunction - for a painfully lingering expiration. This was because once you were in such a lifeboat, you were utterly and completely stranded. Helpless. After a week or so - if you lasted that long - you just opened the airlock and got it over with.

  But none of that was a problem for us. We had primitive but serviceable nav computers and drive elements. And since we were carrying the Blue Bean's inertia, we were still on course for the Boff homeworld. Although, with the lifeboat's lesser thrust, we would arrive a bit late. But not bad at all, compared to being dead.

  "I don't get it," Trina said, pulling away. “Why did they follow us? Why monkey around with that mine? Why not just vaporize us to start with?"

  "That would offend their sense of order," I explained, as I shifted our tandem orbit ninety degrees.

  "That's crazy."

  "That's the kind of place the galaxy is." I spun her, slowly.

  "I just hope this isn't an omen."

  I shrugged. “Well, it probably is."

  Trina glanced around the tiny lifeboat. It held only us, and two tiny parcels I'd grabbed as we fled the Blue Bean. “Diz! We're ruined! Our mission! Humanity is doomed! All of our supplies were on the ship!"

  Almost all, I agreed. We had only the tiniest scraps from our mountain of equipment. We'd be hitting Boff almost naked, which was happily ironic, since at the moment we were both entirely naked.

  "What are we going to do!"

  "When?" I was pondering several interesting options for the next minutes. At least two were completely impossible but worthy of speculation anyway.

  "When we get to the planet, you idiot. If we get to the planet. What did you think I meant?"

  I shrugged. Now, I had thought she meant, but I didn't say so. I said, "Improvise," and did. Trina stopped asking questions.

  We entered the Boff system, and the old balky computer managed to point us in the correct direction and light off the engine, which slowed us. We dropped below TL - far more stealthy that way, with no photic bow wave - and cruised onward. Trina began demonstrating several fascinating aspects of zero-g hyper-yoga.

  We could have happily copulated the parsecs away except for an odd bit of trivia: thirty five years before, on an obscure Horsehead nebula planet called Grooge, it rained.

  The planet Grooge has long been inhabited by a race of sponge-like caterpillars, each of which is possessed of five fuzzy wisps of nearly prehensile antennae. Grooges are singularly uninterested in the universe around them, with the sole exception of the mining and polishing of the silicon orbs which grow from the unique Groogian silicate trees.

  Coincidentally, these same silicon orbs are essential conductors in modern trans drives, and the best orbs, of the most exquisitely perfect cut and alignment, come from Grooge. Happily for the Groogians, they now enjoy a profitable trade, sending their orbs to all six corners of the galaxy. Early negotiators were stymied, though, because it was very difficult to find anything at all that the Grooge liked more than their orbs. Thus, for many years, they were completely and utterly uninterested in selling them. Then one day a junior negotiator named Clemence McGillicuddy, in a fit of exasperation, said sarcastically, "How about robot harvesters? If we trade you those, you can harvest even more orbs."

  The Grooge spokesman, who was slowly and meth
odically plucking orbs from a shrub-like silicate tree, made an unusual, an unprecedented, even, gesture with its usually limp and uninterested communication antenna.

  The negotiation team scrambled through their dictionaries to find the meaning of the strange wavering motion.

  At last Clem found it. It translated as: "Well, alright. If you insist."

  And so began a new era of safe and efficient space travel, made possible by the uniquely pure and perfect silicon orbs of Grooge.

  The only problems arose when, every few decades, a rainstorm hit Grooge. Then, the spongy Groogians would soak up water, swelling to three times their normal size. In a drunken frenzy of short-circuited silicon-based biochemistry, the bloated Groogians would no longer seek out only perfect orbs. Instead, their sense of aesthetic fulfillment, which normally could be satisfied only by crystalline perfection, was replaced an equally high regard for mischievousness. They would, with their habitual care, select only those crystals which appeared to be perfect but in fact contained tiny flaws.

  Tiny fatal flaws.

  Such a crystal followed the usual route. It was mined, no doubt to the rustling corduroy sound of damp Grooge antennae shivering with drunken amusement, and then sent to Groogopolis, where it perhaps sat in a warehouse for years. It might then have been traded to the Grapoids, those notoriously unscrupulous middlemen, or perhaps to the nomadic Huffers. Most certainly, though, it found its way to the Blutonians, more specifically to Orbital Lifepod Factory #329, perhaps at a cut-rate price, but perhaps not. From there it made the short journey to the lifepod slated for the Blue Bean.

  Where, just as Trina and I were attempting a blindfolded no-hands matching of trajectories, the worthless little unit turned an eighty million credit lifepod into a weightless paperweight, with two critical differences:

  1. There was no paper below us.

  2. Few, if any, paperweights are on collision courses with planets.

  As soon as the orb shattered and stilled the ship's heart I knew what had happened. To a pilot, the hum and thrust of a ship's systems are as familiar as one's own heartbeat; such things become remarkable only when they cease. The odds of a failure were like those for lightning - tiny but real. But now? On this mission? Cruel, but for me typical, luck. I whipped off my blindfold and darted straight to the pilot's couch. Trina orbited overhead like a highly erotic moon.

  "Come back here, Apollo," she called seductively. “Soyuz calling. Mission incomplete.” We were reenacting the historic docking of the 1970s. “

  Engrossed in the displays, hoping my gut was wrong, I didn't reply. Finally she removed her own blindfold. The pod's power and system monitors were flat-lined. Dead.

  "Why is it so quiet?" she asked. “And why do have that funny look on your face?"

  I fondled a few controls; there wasn't much to try, though enough to confirm what I already knew. So I told Trina the story of Grooge and our drive orb. When I finished, she didn't look especially concerned. Instead, impossibly, she just shrugged and pointed at a certain part of me. “We still have some unfinished business."

  I wasn't in the mood, and said so.

  She pursed those fine full lips into a pout. “So what do we do?"

  I reached out and ran one finger down the cold clearsteel porthole. The thin wafer was all that lay between us and death by vacuum. “It's very simple, Trina. We can't maneuver. And we can't stop. So in ten hours, we make a very appreciable size hole right in the middle - and maybe even right through - the planet of Boff."

  I expected shock. Perhaps denial. Rage wouldn't have surprised me. But Trina was calm and undisturbed, absolutely unflappable. Or at least unflapped. Maybe it was her Martian heritage. “Surely there must be some good news too."

  I thought for a moment, and then another. It took a couple more, too, before I found the good news. “Ah. Well. The good news is that we'll take a lot of Boffs with us. But we'll be in a singularly poor position to appreciate that."

  "Good point," she agreed. “How long did you say we have?"

  I told her again. Just under ten hours.

  She smiled. “I'm sure you'll think of something. But first, I think, to clear your mind, you should show me that trick again."

  "What trick?"

  "You know," she chided, "the one you said you learned on Io."

  I was confused for a moment at the mention of Jupiter's moon. Then I figured it out. “No, not on Io. From a lass named Io. Although, to be accurate, I guess you could say that at the time I was on-"

  My voice squeaked off as an iron grip grasped a fragile portion of my anatomy, none too delicately. “Diz, dear," Trina said lightly, "don't spoil the moment."

  What a creature. Trapped in lifeboat, headed for meteoric

  demise, hours to live, and she was worried about spoiling the

  moment. Who could resist? Well, maybe some could. I didn't even

  try.

  Much later, Trina gurgled, "I love zero g," and closed her

  eyes.

  I'd never met someone more flippant and irreverent than

  myself. It was outrageous.

  "Has it occurred to you that our mission is about to fail, and with us we take the whole planet Earth? Aren't you a little relaxed about all that?"

  She smoothed back blonde sweaty hair, then fixed me with the

  cool golden gaze of her golden eye. "Diz. Please. Given the choice between weeping, teeth-gnashing, hair-tearing and all that, or enjoying what might well be my last few hours, I'll take the latter, thank you very much. Besides, I don't know how to pilot a ship - that's your department. Get me to that Time Oscillator, and then you'll see fur fly. Until then, I'm just baggage. The Admiral assured me that you could - and would - get me there. I'm assuming you will. The how is up to you."

  By Neptune's frozen Trident! Was she stupid? Had she looked around lately?

  "And if I don't? Because things aren't going so well, you know."

  "If you don't get us there, then that's a problem." She shrugged, curled up, and closed her eyes again.

  A problem, she called it. Martians were known for their magnificent understatements, especially under fire. Somehow living on a hostile planet did that to them. But still.

  I stared at the control console. Nine hours to impact. We'd been steadily slowing from gravitational friction since the loss of the transdrivers, but we were still going to make a very big bang. Through the tiny slit of a viewport I could see the shining jewel of Boff. It was a bilious combination of green and brown.

  Falling from on high

  Like a bird shorn of its wings

  A big splat we'll make.

  "Will you stop that!" groaned Ned.

  I ignored him. We could, I supposed, call for help. Though it seemed pointless, for several reasons. First, the Boffs would almost certainly ignore us, and wisely so. If they went to the trouble of rescuing us, they would just have to go to the further trouble of killing us, for alien entry into their system without a permit, a major transgression under the Boffian code. According to legend, they once executed an entire returning army for that very offense, after a minor paperwork error by a junior clerk. The final irony would be the means of our execution: the punishment would be dropping us into the atmosphere from space. So rescue wasn't really an option.

  At least we stood little chance of being detected by spacedar. The lifeboat was small, and with the reflectors stowed, had a very small signature. Besides which, the Boffs reputedly didn't pay that close attention. They had few visitors and wanted fewer.

  So if there was to be any help, it had to be here. Right in front of me.

  The control console was simple and I examined each and every item on it. My whole universe was reduced to two square feet of absurdly polished ancient psuedo-Marsnut. Nicely burled and shiny. What inane, perverse logic. Who has a fancy lifeboat? But at least, thanks to the whim of that long-forgotten Blutonian designer, we would splat in luxury. I took inventory. A control stick. Thruster knobs - useless no
w. Maneuvering jets. Still workable. Nav display. Com station. A bank of circuits.

  A small T-lever.

  A small T-lever? Hardly standard. I looked closer.

  Parachute, read the label beneath it. Parachute?

  Ned phased in. He was dressed in black; I could swear a funeral dirge was playing in the background.

  "Don't bother," he moaned. “Won't help."

  "Spawn you," I said, borrowing a crustaceanoid expression. “What's the squishiest part of Boff?"

  "The lowland Peristalsis Peat Bog is, as a matter of fact, the largest swamp in the sector and something of a tourist attraction for the Boffs. They come from all over their system to see it. Parts of the sodden moss are kilometers deep." Sullenly, he pulled up a graphic - a brown and green globe, overlaid with the concentric circles of a bulls-eye. We weren't going to hit the bog, but we weren't going to hit far from it. We would be plummeting straight into a high rocky plateau, which the Boffs had sculpted into an enormous sculpture of, not surprisingly, a Boff. The huge spear shape was so big we'd be able to see it from space, except for the layers of swirling green and brown clouds.

  "Wonderful, isn't it," Ned said sarcastically. “By the way, it's been a real pleasure serving with you. I can't say how much I've enjoyed this last mission in particular."

  I punched a few commands into the nav computer, then rotated the ship with the maneuvering jets. I checked my positioning, then waited three long slow minutes. I checked the nav again. Then I fired our maneuvering jets, expending every bit of our fuel.

  "What are you doing?" Trina murmured, opening her green eye.

  "Aiming," I shrugged. On the bright side, we might not burn up. Modern lifeboats had heat shields. But that still left us with a fairly insoluble problem at the end of our descent.

  Impact.

  Through the monitor, Boff swelled larger, all green and yellow-brown swirls. It looked something like a monstrous toilet flushing. Trying to be helpful, the on-board computer placed a tiny golden crosshair on our impact point.