If anything.
He found the Captain at the opposite side of the lounge with his crew, most of whom seemed to have survived the attempted hijacking. They had pulled several pieces of the comfortable lounge furniture together and were sharing warm blankets and hot drinks with one another.
“You know,” the Captain said to Wilson. They had seen each other several times since the asteroid hunters’ arrival, but had not been introduced. “I was offered a fireplace for this room, one of those round ones with a conical hood? Next time I’ll consider it more seriously. I think I like the idea of a spaceship leaving a trail of smoke behind from its chimney.”
Looking down at the Captain’s blanket-covered form, Wilson told him, “As soon as you can give me a list of your fatalities, sir, I’ll have them beamcast straight back to your company in the Earth/Moon system.”
“Don’t ’sir’ me, son,” he told Wilson. I take it you’re in charge of the rescue party, and you command more vessels than I do. Call me Al.”
“Okay, Al, but it’s vessels I lead, not command.”
“A fine distinction, but an important one. To begin to answer your question, we lost a Space Marshal and two people from the kitchen. I don’t know if that’s complete, but I’ll find out and let you know. At the moment, nobody’s at their duty stations.” He waved an arm, taking in his shaken crew, sitting around him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Wilson nodded.
“The opposition fared a lot worse,” West suggested.
“Yes, Al, nineteen dead and still counting. I’d like to talk to you about that sometime. But we’re ready now to get your ship turned around. I need you to send somebody down and round up all those oxygen bottles. I wouldn’t want to be turning this ship over, and have one of them come sailing out through the wall of the service core. I also wanted to discuss the possibility of restarting her engines after turnover.”
The Captain nodded.
“The boys and I could probably decelerate you all the way to Mars with our ships, and we’ve got three more coming back to join us right now. But we were at high-boost almost on the opposite heading when we got the message, we’re all getting a little short on reaction mass, and … ”
“You would appreciate our helping ourselves, to whatever extent we can. Very well … I heard your people call you ‘Commodore’, is that right?”
“It’s a joke.” He reached a hand down to the Captain. “I’m Wilson Ngu—and yes, Al, it’s those Ngus, including my baby sister over there.”
“She handles a Ngu Departure Mark Two pretty effectively for a baby.”
Wilson laughed. “My sister Llyra is probably an East American’s worst nightmare. She came about as close to being born with a gun in her hand as anybody ever has. She’s a much better long-range shot than I am, and I’m a three-tournament silhueta winner, back home.”
The Captain nodded and began to get up off the overstuffed sofa. ”I’ll be down to inspect the engines as soon as I can move my legs again.”
***
Four hours later, through the transparent dome of his own little vessel, Wilson could see Captain West sitting in his chair on the flight deck of the City of Newark, flanked by a couple members of his bridge crew. The bodies of the young woman and the other hijackers had been put away in cold storage on one of the cargo decks until they could be properly identified.
Somehow, he doubted if they ever would. Only East America still kept files of fingerprints and retinal patterns. The rest of humanity had moved on too quickly for that to follow. From what he’d learned from the passengers, a couple of hijackers were missing, including the woman who’d been at the spaceport with the assassin who’d murdered Fallon. He very badly wanted to have a private conversation with her.
There was a passenger missing, too, an old man who had befriended and defended Llyra and Jasmeen, and who could kill with a thrown table knife. A private conversation with him would probably be illuminating, as well.
Pimble Pharch seemed gone for good.
Once they’d started, it hadn’t taken West’s technicians—with the aid of Shorty—half an hour to repair the dense network of plugs and cables that connected the navigational computer with various systems it controlled, or that sent it information. In fact, it had taken the Captain somewhat longer to reprogram it. Other bridge functions had been restored, as well. It would be the Captain who gave the Turnover command.
Meanwhile, the ships Wilson had sent after the yacht were back, safe, if empty-handed.
“Very well, my fellow captains,” West spoke to Wilson, Marko, Mikey, and Scotty, whose ships presently stood at the ends of long lines attached to the larger spaceship, every engine silent. “Captain West has given the word. If it’s agreeable, let’s make it thirty seconds on my mark. Are you ready? Mark!”
Wilson watched numbers, hanging in the air before his face, count down.
Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend and Marko’s Mina (named after a Chinese movie star, Wilson had learned), were attached to towing bollards near the front end of the space liner, Albuquerque Gal and Nessie, at her stern. The pair forward—Wilson and Marko—would pull at her, taking her ninety degrees off the line she presently occupied, turning her on an imaginary point amidships. Mikey and Scotty would gently brake her, until she had completed a full one hundred eighty degree rotation, confirmed by her Captain.
“Five, four, three, two, one!” Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend fired one of her three engines. The other two would be unnecessary—and perhaps too much—for this job. He could see that Marko’s ship had done the same. The stars reeled about them as the collection of ships pivoted on the liner’s horizontal axis. In seconds, she was halfway where they wanted her to be, and the two ships at the bow stopped blasting.
The Captain said, “Cut!” abruptly to Mikey and Scotty, after they had braked her practically to a halt. He then let his fingers play across his own keyboard—Wilson could see it under magnification—firing powerful thrusters fore and aft that brought the ship to rest, her stern now pointed at where Mars would be about ten days from now. The asteroid hunters cast off—their lines would be gathered in later—and hovered, waiting for her six hybrid fusion engines to fire.
There was a fugitive flickering, and then there they were, six big frying pans at the stern of the ship, filled to their brims with a brilliant blue-white hell. The City of Newark worked her way up to one tenth of a gee—Wilson and his friends kept up—and stayed there for the next four hours, as her badly-abused systems were checked.
And double-checked.
Wilson took a shower in the comfort of his own ship, had a hot meal, and then called his sister. The spaceliner had some kind of communication relay that made ordinary phones work perfectly. It was a nice touch, and one he wouldn’t have expected from anything East American.
“Llyra Ngu’s telephone. Is Jasmeen Khalidov speaking.” She sounded extremely serious, exactly the way they always portrayed Martians on 3DTV.
For some odd reason, Wilson’s heart began beating a little more quickly in his chest. “Uh, hello, Jasmeen. May I speak with my sister?”
“No, Wilson,” she said, still very serious. “You may not.”
Was that humor in her voice or was that just wishful thinking on his part? “Okay,” he told her at last, “I’ll bite. Why can’t I talk to Llyra?”
“Because telephone is not waterproof. Your sister is taking shower.”
He laughed. “Okay, I’ll call back later.” He started to thumb it off.
“Is good idea,” he heard her say. “Is better idea if you come over and have dinner with us here. They have dining room almost fixed now and kitchen works perfectly. I do not think that they have room service. Llyra needs to see you around, Wilson. Makes her much less afraid.”
“I’ll be happy to come over. I was just going to lock onto the City of Newark anyway and shut my engines down for a while. Save a little reaction mass that way. But I have to tell you, Jasmeen, I don’t belie
ve there’s anything in the universe that my sister’s afraid of.”
There was a pause at the other end, then, “Do it for me, then, Wilson.”
An odd thrill went through his body. “Dinner it is, then, in an hour.” What the hell was wrong with him? He’d known Jasmeen for years and never felt this awkward and tongue-tied in her presence before. It must be a reaction to nearly losing her and his sister.
That was it, only a reaction.
Hands above the keyboard, he was about to head for one of the larger ship’s airlocks, when there was an explosion—a big one—he actually heard it as the wavefront of expanding gases rolled over his ship.
Backing away on his thrusters, he saw that one of the City of Newark’s six engines was missing, an impossible tangle of fiery wreckage taking its place. Chunks of shrapnel were flying in every direction.
The Captain had his wits about him, though, and cut his other five engines almost instantaneously. “Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend? Mina? Anybody else? Did anybody happen to get the license number of that bus?”
Wilson answered, “Your number four engine just blew up, Captain, with what appears to be minimal damage to the rest of the ship. You don’t appear to be venting atmosphere. You are off course again. How are you for air pressure?”
“We look fine, on the boards. You gentlemen want to give us a little inspection? That had the feel of deliberate sabotage to it—or am I just being paranoid? Nope, I just checked and there are people out to get me—or my ship. I’m not going to trust those engines again until I tear them apart and put them back together again with my bare hands.
“I don’t think you’re paranoid, Captain,” Wilson said.
Scotty added, “And even paranoids have enemies.”
“How reassuring,” said the Captain.
“We’ll inspect the hull for you, Captain. What will you do for power—”
“We may have to depend on you, sir, although it grieves me deeply to—”
“Don’t give it a thought. We’ll inspect the ship and then I’m coming aboard. Ngu out.” He picked up his phone and punched a single button.
Jasmeen again. “You two all right down there?” he asked. “Slipped in the shower, did she? Only a bruise? I’m glad to hear it. But the City of Newark just lost an engine, and I’m going to be a little late for dinner.”
***
Aaron Manzel, the individual who sometimes thought of himself as the Fastest Gun in the Moon, fired an opposing pair of thrusters in the little spaceship’s stubby wings, rolling her so that she appeared to be orbiting over Mars, instead of under. He’d always hated it the other way around. Somehow it never failed to make him feel gloomy and claustrophobic.
“There, that’s better, isn’t it?” he asked his companion.
His companion didn’t answer, but gave him a murderous look.
The Swan-class yacht White-Winged Dove groaned alarmingly as she rolled in response, her backbone severely bent, if not completely broken. She’d held together so far, but she’d probably been dealt a mortal blow, he thought, when her angry pursuers had destroyed her upper engine. They’d looked like a squadron of asteroid hunters, and he wondered if Llyra Ngu’s brother Wilson had been among them. In any case, the ship would almost certainly come apart when he tried to land her.
Manzel attempted to be philosophical about it. After all, he’d lived to see, and do, quite a number of wonderful things—certainly far more than his fair share—in his long and adventure-filled life. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe in that nonsense about fair shares. There was quite a number of wonderful things remaining for him to see and do—and quite a number he wanted to see and do again.
He’d lied to his new friends: Mars was not one of them.
Unlike the Earth, all swirly blue and white—and most beautiful when she was stormiest—Mars was unpleasant to gaze upon at the best of times. To begin with, under a cloud cover that was only occasional even now, the world was covered with meteoric scars large, medium, and small. A mottled orangey-pink in the few remaining desert regions, and a sickening mustard yellow where the macaroni plants had taken over altogether, the whole planet closely resembled a gigantic infected wound, centered on the three thousand mile gash that was Valles Marineris.
“Unidentified spacecraft,” came a powerful radio signal from the ground. They could probably roast an ox on a spit close to their antenna.
The ship was presently over Valles Marineris, that vast and complicated system of equatorial rifts and prehistoric river canyons, now filled once again with coursing water. It was the most highly developed and densely populated region of the Formerly Red Planet, because it was very nearly the lowest, and possessed the richest atmosphere.
“This is Coprates Spaceport Control. Do not approach without permission and instructions. I say again, do not approach without permission—”
“This is White Winged Dove, Coprates Spaceport Control,” Manzel answered. “Lately out of Port Armstrong in Luna. Your message heard and understood, but probably not doable. I’ve only got four or five orbits left in this poor crippled bird, and then she’s for the long singe and a messy landing. I’ll try very hard not to ugly up any of your runways.”
“White Winged—I thought I recognized that Swan-class profile! So you’re the one! You’re hot, whoever you are. I’ll come and arrest you, myself, for the reward! That’s a stolen ship you’re flying! She’s implicated in the hijacking of the East American space liner and cold-blooded murder!”
“Well she’s since been stolen back, Coprates Spaceport Control, Scout’s Honor and sorry about your reward. By the way, if you’re in communication with City of Newark, have them inform Miss Ngu and Miss Khalidov that their friend Aaron made it this far. I have references to back up what I’m saying, and a pair of Null Delta Em prisoners.”
“Null Delta—”
“Furthermore, Coprates Spaceport Control, White Winged Dove’s owners are more than welcome to recover any of her that’s left after I set her down. Almost certainly, I won’t be in any condition to protest.”
Martians loved to see themselves as fatalists and stoics. They loved that kind of talk, although, for the most part, he really meant it this time. Manzel winked at Crenicichla, gagged and taped into the copilot’s seat. Crenicichla glared back. Manzel grinned at his prisoner.
The radio said, “We only have one runway, White Winged Dove.” For shuttlecraft from both moonports. Manzel shrugged to himself. In many ways Mars was still a frontier planet and would probably always remain so. For reasons dating back to their brief war of independence from Earth, Martians didn’t like things hanging over their heads in orbit and had developed ways of dealing with them.
“Okay, then, Coprates Spaceport Control,” he told them. “I’ll try hard to miss it if it’s at all possible. Can you recommend a nice, soft desert nearby, where your emergency vehicles can reach us in a hurry?”
“Locate Coprates Chasma in the eastern half of Valles Marineris—you should have charts. Look for a horseshoe-shaped astrobleme tight against the south canyon wall—that’s where we are: Coprates City and Coprates Interplanetary Spaceport. There’s a large sandy basin to the west, between the horseshoe crater and an isolated set of little mountains. Land anywhere in that basin, we can be there within half an hour. Sooner, if we start now!”
Manzel displayed one chart after another on the navigation screens until he found what he wanted. He then overlapped the view from one of the ship’s exterior pickups on the screen. There it was. He would land as close to the horseshoe-shaped crater—and the spaceport—as he could.
“Got you, Coprates. A nice little desert, as ordered, and a gentle turn to starboard at the bottom.” He wondered if the structure of the ship would survive it. “Should be interesting. Follow us down if you can.”
“Will do, White Winged Dove, and good luck. You’re gonna need it.”
“You’re telling me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: FESTIVAL OF WRECKAGE
/> It’s one thing to smile at other people’s customs and tell yourself how liberal and broadminded and multicultural you are for putting up with them. It’s quite another thing to suffer—or to see your loved ones suffer—because of some savage, idiotic practice that’s sacred simply because it’s been going on for decades or centuries or millennia.
A real civilization is not “multicultural”. It has no arbitrary customs or practices that put your life, limb, and luggage at risk. It got rid of them all a long time ago, and it will never welcome them back again. —The Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu
“So it was sabotage,” he said, mostly to himself.
Wilson sat in the transparent nose of Mighty Mouse’s Girlfriend, looking down on City of Newark, watching sparks, vapor, and debris still coming out of the ragged place where one of her engines had just exploded.
“Can’t be any question about it, Wilson!” Shorty was aboard the crippled liner, in the engine room. He’d gone there originally to survey the damage from the blast. Instead, he’d found five suspect packages—about two and a quarter pounds apiece—carefully hidden in each of the engines.
Wilson wished he was using a video pickup so he could see Shorty’s face.
“I knew something weird was going on,” he told Wilson. “I never saw a hybrid fusion reactor let go that way before, and neither have you. It’s one of the reasons we use them. No, it was C-17, an old-time military explosive. Almost nostalgic, kinda like using dynamite. Looks like a heat-sensitive detonator. The engines start running, they reach a certain temperature, and Ka-blamm! Captain says Number Four always tended to run a little bit hotter than the other five. He’s lucky it did!”
The man must really be rattled, Wilson thought. He’s forgetting to call me Commodore. “Okay, Shorty, I agree with you on all points. Whoever did this, it has to be somebody who didn’t know about Number Four running hot. And it has to have been done after we originally shut the engines down. I know what I think. What does the Captain think?”
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