by Scott Mackay
She waited for Fernandes to get back, then told him her plan. “Let’s get the kerosene. Jake, help us.”
They went into the cave’s second chamber and retrieved five big cans of kerosene, a primitive fuel that Lenny had had the foresight to stash away “For when our batteries fail.” The wind was strong, though it changed direction often, and would act like a bellows. The forest was tinder-dry and would go up like a torch. Eight hundred and seventy thousand acres, all of it dead, providing the necessary combustibles to make her own firestorm.
They poured the fuel in great ribbons of vaporous liquid, venturing into the forest, down the hill, up the hill, until they had dumped every last ounce of kerosene into the brush. Then Glenda got the box of safety matches, scratched one along the side, and, keeping it shielded from the wind with her hand, lit the nearest bush. The flames ignited with a voracious ripple, and spread so fast she hardly had time to leap back.
Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, and the size of the conflagration grew alarmingly. Tongues of flame leaped yards into the air; she took glory in how bright everything was. She could see ! The glow of the fire bathed her eyes with soul-refreshing illumination. All four kids looked on in fascination. She knew that somewhere out there in the dead forest the Tarsalans looked on as well. She thought they were feeling dread in their hearts, and that they were oozing the thick, musty odor they oozed whenever they were terrified.
The heat of the fire became too much for Glenda, Fernandes, and the kids, and they retreated into the cave, where it was cool and damp, and where a faint wind blew up from the bowels of the Earth, forcing smoke away from the cave entrance.
There they stayed as the firestorm raged around them. Glenda wasn’t without guile when it came to the Tarsalans. Maybe they had an ingenious way of putting out the fire. Maybe they would just get in their TLVs and take off. Some ash drifted in through the cave entrance and landed on her foot. Then again, maybe, as with the attack on the mothership, and ultimately on the phytosphere control device itself, they would be caught unawares. They would see this fire, and they would get another lesson in how humans behaved, especially when they had nothing left to lose.
39
The following day Gerry and Ian eased away from the Phobos-Deimos Terminal, and Ian established a transit orbit toward Earth. He engaged thrusters three and one. The singularity drives showed no malfunction and Ian risked full power.
Four days later, the Earth-Moon system hove into view over the craggy nose of Gaspra. The phytosphere was a festering green cancer around Gerry’s home planet, thicker than he had ever seen it, and he momentarily wondered if it would be enough—the shift of the Moon two thousand miles closer to Earth—but then decided it would, knew that he couldn’t have been wrong in his calculations.
For a brief while, as they got closer, an automated Tarsalan probe, egg-shaped like most of the alien craft and wrapped in its own shimmering plasma of blue, violet, and pink light, orbited the asteroid, but the PCV’s scans told them it was unweaponized, unmanned, and posed no threat.
“I’m sure they’ve exhausted all their military capability by this time,” said Ian. “Looks like we’re home free, buddy.”
All that needed to be done now was fire Drive Five. This would initiate the slight change of angle needed for the final impact, and bring Gaspra crashing into the lunar surface.
But when Ian tried the modified key box, it was as if the alien virus had at last worked through to his initial fix and he got no response from thrust conduit number five. In other words, the drive that had given them their initial trouble previous to mission countdown was again flickering into the red. Ian maneuvered from his seat over to the navigation console and his fingers clicked over the keys, but he couldn’t regain command of the conduit, nor secure access through some creative rerouting.
He worked frantically on the problem for the next five minutes. Gerry glanced nervously out the big freighter windows and saw the Earth, like a rotting wedge of lime, and the Moon, craters now fully visible.
“So there’s no way to fix the problem?” asked Gerry, because in these most harrowing moments he had no choice but to defer to Ian.
Ian now had full schematics on screen four. The left side of the screen showed diagrams, while text filled the right side—script so tiny Ian had to tap his contact lenses to their strongest setting.
Ian didn’t so much read as skim. He ignored Gerry as he went through the thick, turgid prose of the drive specs, the sweat beading on his shaved head and a thick vein sticking out like a blue worm over his temple. All the while their speed increased.
“I know these specs like the back of my own hand,” he said. “But you never know. Maybe if I review it, something could jog and I might…”
Gerry felt helpless, frustrated, and so anxious to solve the problem that he kept fidgeting in his seat.
“Couldn’t we go to the drive itself and do something to fix it?”
Ian froze. He stopped flicking through the script and turned to Gerry. He looked like a man on a spirit quest who had just experienced the revelation he had been looking for, his blue eyes wide, his lower lip coming out, his ears shifting a fraction on the sides of his head. Gerry thought he had only pointed out the obvious, but Ian looked at him as if he were Moses coming down from the mount.
“You’re a genius, Gerry.” Then he swung to the timer up on the console. “We’ve got to move. We’ve got only a certain envelope to do this and, after that, it’s a no go for good.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to blow Drive Five sky-high. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Am I ever glad you’re on this mission. The resulting explosion will give us the necessary thrust to angle us into a collision trajectory. As I say, I know the specs inside out and I think this can work. Especially because all we have to do is collide with your so-called wide region of effectiveness.”
“You’re going to blow up the drive?”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m going to sled to the drive, crawl into its access bay, and manually cross the male and female thrust conduits so they reverse on each other and blow the singularity to pieces.” He motioned at the screen of schematics. “I can’t believe I was looking at a technical solution when all I really needed was the PCV’s fire ax. You’re brilliant, Gerry.”
“But…you’re going to blow up the drive?”
“Right.”
“And then what?”
Ian frowned. “I already told you. The blast should give us the necessary thrust to make it all happen.”
“And then you’re going to come back here to the Prometheus, and we’re going to escape in the survival pod?”
Ian’s brow settled. “Maybe you’re not so smart after all.”
The two stared at each other. It was a pivotal moment for Gerry, because he suddenly understood that Ian was a hero after all.
“Ian… no.”
Ian’s face creased and he now looked irritated. “It’s the only way, buddy. You’ll have the pod all to yourself. There’s no sense in two of us going down for this thing. Now, come on, we’ve got to move. If I leave right now it’s going to take me at least twenty minutes to get there. That’s going to give me only three minutes to reverse the thrust conduits. This is the only chance we have. If this doesn’t work, the Earth dies. Glenda dies. Jake and Hanna die. I got no one. You got your family. This is my moment, Ger, and I mean to go for it. This is the only way I can make up for all the dismal things I’ve done to other people over the years.”
“What about Stephanie?”
“Just tell her what I did. And that I love her, even though she might not love me.”
“It’s not the only way, Ian.”
“God damn it, Gerry. I take back what I said about you being a genius. You’re an idiot.”
“Yes… but you’re going to die.”
“And so’s everybody else if I
don’t do something to stop it. Listen to me, buddy. I’m fifty next month.
That’s long enough. I’ve done some interesting things in my life. But this is where I can really contribute.
When this is all done, they’re going to need you back on Earth. ’Cause there’s going to be a lot of problems, and they’re going to need people like you to solve them. There won’t be any need for reformed-alcoholic test pilots. Now, come on. Help me. Before we lose our chance.”
Gerry forced himself to shut down his emotions.
But as they went into the surface access bay and he helped Ian into his CAPS, he couldn’t help thinking that he was aiding and assisting in suicide. Plus he thought of all the good times he had spent with Ian: the time they had gone to Japan together and made a pilgrimage to Hiroshima on the two hundredth anniversary of the atomic bomb; how they had nearly gotten swamped in a hurricane after stealing a boat from the marina near Neil’s place on Trunk Bay; and how, miraculously, they had finally met up at the Buena Vista Hotel and Gambling Casino on the Moon. Now they were here together, old friends, true friends, two men trying to save the world, knowing the stakes couldn’t be higher and that time was running out. What did you say to each other at a moment like that?
“I’ll make sure Steph knows what you did,” he said as Ian finally mounted the sled.
Ian’s lips tightened, and he nodded. “Just tell her how I feel. I want her to know.” Then he checked over the sled’s console, made sure the fire ax was secure in one of the straps, and turned back to Gerry.
“You’re clear on the precise point you have to eject?”
“The angle-of-entry change.”
“When precisely? You have to remember the survival pod’s orbital limitations.”
“When the asteroid’s angle of entry has reached thirty-seven degrees.”
“That should put you ten kilometers outside of Nectaris. The blast event is going to knock out all radios for a while, and control has everybody hunkered down for the strike anyway, so—”
“I know. I have to walk.”
“You’ve got ample life support, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”
They said a rough good-bye, gave each other a hug; then Ian went into the air lock.
The air lock opened ten seconds later, and Ian was on his way—on the last journey he would ever make.
As the air lock finally hissed shut and Gerry was left standing there by himself, he felt the sudden change, the quietness that comes with solitude; but also the shedding of the particular persona he used whenever he was around Ian, as if Ian was someone he not only embraced but also a man he had to guard against, a reminder of his own alter ego. He turned from the sled access bay and yanked himself along by the handholds, essentially in free fall except for the weak pull of Gaspra that settled him groundward with the slowness of a dust speck. He went to his bunkette and packed a few personal items: his A.A. two-year medallion, photographs of his wife and children, and a bag of rocks from Gaspra. He then suited up in his CAPS.
He got a red light on his fresh-water valve, which meant he was going to be awfully thirsty by the time he got to Nectaris, but he knew he would survive.
He took one last glance out the big freighter windows, looked around the operations area, and had the same feeling a castaway might have when leaving his island; that here, in this setting, momentous events had unfolded, and that the place had made an indelible impression. He turned away and stepped into the void of the companionway hatch. He sank—with the slowness of a dust speck—down to the engineering level. He pulled himself to the back, where the corridors bifurcated and continued in a large circle. He took Corridor A until it joined with Corridor B, way at the back of the PCV. From here it was into the survival pod launch unit, an area much like a missile bay on a nuclear sub, housing two projectiles, the primary and the backup, like huge bullets standing next to each other.
He checked over the system of the first and got three red lights. On the backup pod, he got only one red light, life support, but as his CAPS was capable of life support, this wasn’t an endgame obstacle. He pressed the latch buttons and the gull-wing hatch lifted. He moved with an air of unreality, and with a distant sadness clutching at his throat. He slotted himself into the middle launch bed, while those on either side remained empty.
He had a moment of doubt. Would Ian screw up, as he had so often in the past? He touched the necessary spots on the screen in front of him, the gull-wing hatch sank, and the launch bed braces closed over him. He remembered the time Ian had totaled his car, and how he and Glenda had then had to buy a much crappier one, the relic they were driving now. Would Ian, in the final desperate seconds, lose his judgment, as he had lost it so often in the past? Or would he simply chicken out?
He radioed control. “Ira, I’m ready to eject.” Then he let control know what Ian was doing. Ira ranted because Ira was the orchestra conductor, and someone had played a wrong note, but Gerry didn’t want to listen to it, so he switched communications off. The silence was sublime. It memorialized Ian’s approaching death. He brought his gloved hand up to the screen. With a few flicks of his finger he had his telemetry readouts. The timer now told him Ian had only three minutes to make a course correction.
All Gerry could now do was watch the timer roll down, the digital numbers, counting back in bright amber. When the timer reached the two-minute mark, the numbers turned red. Red, the color of the eleventh hour—this whimsical thought passed through his mind, even as his body tightened, went cold, and nausea knocked at the back of his throat. A big loser: these words from Glenda, describing Ian, when she had reached her wits’ end about his drinking. And yes, there was something of the loser in Ian.
A man with a lot of bravado, confidence, and damn-the-torpedoes attitude, but one who had a history of choking at the last second. The time was now down to a minute and twenty-five seconds. A man who ultimately scored the touchdown, but missed the field goal. The numbers rolled relentlessly by and Gerry had the sense that he was in numerical free fall. Also a man who was desperate to make amends. Maybe the pressure of his own remorse would be too much for Ian.
“Think of Stephanie, Ian.”
And in that moment, he knew that’s exactly what Ian was doing. The digits seemed to slow their free fall, as if they had the presentiment of great change and, as the counter timed down to twenty-two seconds, the PCV began to shake as if in an earthquake, sudden g-force pushed him flat into his launch bed, and his stomach got the same feeling it got whenever he was going down in a fast elevator. He checked his screen and saw that the diagrammatic representation of the Moon, the Earth, and the asteroid had shifted, and that Gaspra was now establishing a tight and degrading orbit around the Moon. He watched the angle-of-entry numbers tip toward the region of effectiveness. On the screen, Gaspra looked like a big bee getting ready to sting the Moon, and was approaching its surface at an ever-accelerating rate. He felt a curious moment of elation, because this really looked as if it was going to work. Then again, if the Martians could shift moonlets around to form the PDT, why couldn’t he shift the Moon to save the Earth? What was so difficult about it? It was nothing but operating heavy equipment on a gargantuan scale.
The angle of entry eased toward the target zone. Yet the vindication he felt for finally struggling out of his underdog position and coming up with a procedure that looked as if it was going to do the trick was tempered by a knowledge of just how close they had come. The rock screamed toward the Moon at a phenomenal rate of speed. Angle of entry reached deeper into the region of effectiveness, and within the next few seconds, at thirty-seven degrees, Gerry launched.
The survival pod shot upward through the tube and in seconds he was well above the PCV and watching it recede. Ten seconds after that it was like he was looking down at a mountain, because he saw the sloping curvature of the asteroid, and the curves looked like precipices. Then he got so far up that Gaspra became the big stone that it was, with all its tiny craters—a scarred old w
arrior that was about to be obliterated in its final battle.
The surface of the Moon was a blur of speed below, its craters shadowy blips. As his vehicle rose, the asteroid sank. His pod’s movement soon carried him beyond the asteroid’s path. He was on his stomach now, his head down as if he was going to dive to the Moon, and from this upside-down position he watched the asteroid get lower and lower, rolling end over end like a badly thrown football, until finally…it struck the Moon’s surface.
By this time, his readouts told him he was nearly three hundred miles away, with the curve of the Moon fully visible, but it was as though the blast happened right next door. The asteroid threw up a small ring of debris, but the debris was moving quickly, and every piece of blasted particulate took on the same shape, an elongated, blurry lozenge. Outside this first small ring, a second ring developed. Then a third ring. Then a fourth. Each ring reached higher and higher into the dark vacuum above the Moon, until finally the rings were so gargantuan, tall, and violent that debris started flying around him and he grew concerned that he might be hit. Take a baseball, stick an upside-down thimble on its side, and that was the proportion of the blast size compared to the Moon. The ground surrounding the crater, covering an area of five hundred square miles, quivered like a bowl of Jell-O. He watched in horror and fascination.
He took a moment to think of his friend—but then had his own concerns to consider. The survival pod carried him up and over the rim of the Moon so that the asteroid strike disappeared behind him. His braking thrusters fired and the pod sank. The surface of the Moon came up fast. In minutes he no longer saw its curvature. Then it was as though he was looking out a jet window from thirty thousand feet. And in many ways it was like coming in for a landing in a jet, with the bleak, gray-brown landforms growing more and more distinct every minute.