The Prometheus Project

by Steve White

  Thramoz and I exchanged a quick look through out helmets. Then I launched myself into the weightlessness of the tunnel.

  The transition was sickening, and I might have puked had I not had other things on my mind—notably, fighting the outflow of air from the ruptured hull ahead. That was an annoyance, but also a cause for exultation: we had burned our way through! I floundered forward and grabbed a curling piece of wreckage, pulling myself forward.

  Getting through was no problem; there was barely enough intact hull material around the perimeter of the tunnel for the access tube's magnets to adhere to. Weight descended on me as I entered an artificial gravity field. It was full Earth-normal weight, to which I'd grown unaccustomed, but I was expecting it. I landed on my feet in a ruined passageway.

  A survival-suited figure loomed ahead of me in the dim emergency lights. There was no one aboard that ship I was concerned with keeping alive; I brought up my laser weapon and used the awkward firing mechanism. The suit's nanoplastic was tough, but not that tough. Superheated body fluids erupted outward in an explosive energy transfer that smashed him (or her) back against a bulkhead as viciously as a large-caliber bullet would have.

  I swung my weapon to left and right, alert for fresh targets. There were none in sight. But to the right, the hull was especially damaged, with great rents through which I glimpsed our ship, at the far end of the access tube.

  And, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed something else.

  From a little farther forward along the hull, a long jointed rod was unfolding itself and reaching toward our ship. I had no idea what it was or what it was for. But at its tip was something that held the unmistakable look of jury-rigging, as though it had been hastily attached.

  The thought ripped through me in a silent scream: limpet mine!

  As I watched, helpless, the tip reached our ship's flank and drew away, leaving the improvised object clinging there.

  At that instant, as I stood paralyzed by horror, a weight at least equal to my own landed on my back, smashing me down to the deck and twisting my left arm behind me and upward.

  Even as I struggled, I had a full view of the shattering explosion that sent our ship reeling away, clearly wrecked beyond hope of repair, leaving the access tube still attached to this ship, flopping obscenely about like a cut umbilical cord. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I could see the survival-suited figure of Thramoz tumbling away from the open air lock into the depths of this lunatic space.

  But I hardly noticed, for at that moment my entire soul was one vast, silent shriek of Chloe!

  Something hard crashed against the flexible nanoplastic of my helmet. The pressurization cushioned the blow, and I didn't lose consciousness. But my head spun, and I lost my grip on the laser weapon I couldn't use anyway at such close quarters. Whoever it was who was grasping me from behind heaved my unsteady form upright.

  I stared into the face of Renata Novak, silhouetted against a crescendo of secondary explosions that completed the destruction of the ship that had contained Chloe.

  Chapter Eighteen

  "Do you have any idea why you're still alive?" Novak's question didn't seem to call for a reply, so I kept quiet as she answered herself. "Two reasons: first of all, I want to know just exactly who the hell you are, and what you were doing aboard what was obviously a Medjavar ship."

  Realization brought me out of my sinkhole of despairing horror, and stilled my tongue before I could stupidly blurt something out. She didn't recognize me. Not having looked in a mirror lately, I'd forgotten that, thanks to Nafayum, I still had one card left to play.

  "Don't you also want to know where Chloe Bryant and Robert Devaney are?" I asked, meeting her hate-filled eyes.

  "Not particularly. If, as I suspect, they were aboard that ship, you're not likely to admit it. And even if they are still alive, somewhere and somewhen, there's nothing they can do to stop me now."

  "Stop you? Lady, you're already stopped! You may still be able to drop out of temporal displacement whenever you want to, but do you really think you'll be able to land this piece of wreckage you're flying?" I gestured at the ruined passageway around us and the rents in the hull. "If you try to reenter the atmosphere, all you'll do is burn up from friction and give the people on early nineteenth century Earth an extra shooting star to make wishes on. Why don't you just pack it in?"

  For the barest instant, Novak blinked with puzzled annoyance, as though there was something vaguely familiar about her mysterious prisoner's voice, something she couldn't quite place. But then the look was gone, expunged by one of vicious gloating.

  "You're mistaken. And that brings me to the second reason I haven't let Evan here kill you. I want you to live long enough to know you've failed. Bring him!"

  The last two words were addressed to Evan, who jerked my arm even further up behind me, sending pain tearing through the shoulder, and shoved me forward. We followed Novak through passageways into areas that looked like they still had structural integrity, ending up in the control room, where Novak slapped a switch. I heard the rumble of closing airtight hatches behind us. Novak depressurized her survival suit and removed the helmet. Evan did the same for himself and me with his free hand. Then we continued forward into an open air lock whose most conspicuous feature was a round hatch in the middle of the deck.

  Novak pointed at the hatch in the deck. "Do you know what's down there?" I did, but saw no reason to deprive her of the pleasure of answering her own question. "The lifeboat. It is undamaged, being recessed into the underside of the ship, as you probably know is standard."

  I did, in fact, know that. The so-called lifeboat that all spaceships carried was, in fact, a very small lifting body with rudimentary impellers that could bring it to a landing on a planetary surface—in the ocean, if necessary, for it had flotation capacity though no aquatic propulsion. A human-designed one could hold four people in cramped quarters. It also had a limited cargo capacity. I had a sick feeling that I knew what Novak was going to say next.

  "We took all possible precautions. The database containing all the Project's data about galactic technology, and all the necessary interfacing equipment—including media for presenting it in readily understandable format, rather like what the Delkasu use for teaching aids—are in the lifeboat."

  It didn't occur to me to doubt it. I knew galactic data-storage capabilities—far beyond what you know, operating on the molecular level—well enough to know the staggering amounts of information that could be crammed into a database of ridiculously small physical size.

  "So," Novak went on, "we don't need to land this ship. We'll take the lifeboat down and let the ship continue on course, burning up in atmosphere as you've correctly said it will. So you see, you and friends—your late friends—have accomplished nothing. Nothing! Do you hear me?" She got her breathing under control, and gestured to Evan. We returned to the control room.

  Evan released me and gave me a shove that sent me sprawling. I looked up at Novak, aiming a small hand weapon at me. I recognized it as a needler, shooting tiny flŽchettes by electromagnetic pulse. It wasn't a serious combat weapon, being useless against the body armor that galactic technology could produce, but in the present circumstances it got the point across. Evan, clearly a traditionalist, was fondling a knife. I recognized him from the raid on the Sanctuary.

  There was no one else around. I decided that Novak and Evan were the only survivors. A small ship like this couldn't have held many, especially with a laser cannon crammed into it. And Novak's reference to the lifeboat seemed to confirm it.

  "And now," said Novak, "we can get back to my first reason for keeping you alive. There's something about you that makes me feel I ought to recognize you—I assume you're from the Project—but I can't put my finger on it. What's your name?"

  Like a nerve pain of the soul came the memory of my last moments with Chloe. "Blackbeard the Pirate," I said dully.

  Novak thrust her face down toward mine—I was still
crouching—with a glare. "Don't be a smart-ass! For your information, I'm all that's standing between you and Evan. He'd love to use that knife on you. He and Victor—the man you killed back there—were very good friends."

  "Yeah," I said, eying Evan. "I'll just bet they were."

  I didn't quite succeed in covering my rib cage before Evan's foot crashed into it. I rolled over on my back, gasping with pain, and looked up into Novak's face.

  "Since you choose not to be cooperative, I think I'll let Evan punish you for that remark in, shall we say, appropriate fashion." She nodded at Evan, who flourished his knife, smiled, and advanced toward me.

  Something Hollywood has never gotten right about weapons-grade lasers is the sound they make in atmosphere: a sharp snap! as the air rushes back in to fill the narrow cylinder of vacuum that has been drilled through it. It isn't nearly as loud as a gunshot, but it's damned startling if you're not prepared for it . . . as I wasn't prepared for the sparkling lance of ionized air that speared Evan's chest. He reeled back in a pale pink spray of vaporized blood and water.

  My eyes went to the hatch that opened into the control room, and the figure that stood there holding the Ekhemasu weapon I'd lost on capture. I would never have thought Chloe could have lifted the thing under this ship's Earthlike gravity field.

  Novak saw her too. With a wordless snarl, she swung toward the new arrival—as unfamiliar-looking to her as I was—and brought up her needler.

  My body still felt pain, but at that instant my mind wasn't processing it. I sprang to my feet and crashed into Novak, grasping the wrist of her gun hand and forcing it upward. I heard a sinister metallic tinkling as flŽchettes sprayed the overhead. I tightened my grip and wrenched, and Novak dropped the needler. She continued to struggle like a wildcat.

  Chloe heaved the laser gun aloft and brought its stock down against the side of Novak's head with an alarming sound. Novak went limp. I let her fall to the deck and stared at Chloe, who had dropped the laser gun and was catching her breath.

  "How . . . ?" I began.

  "I followed you into the access tube," she gasped. "Thramoz tried to stop me, but I wiggled past him. "Then that explosive charge went off. The tube's connection to our ship was ripped away. But it was still connected at this end, and I had my suit pressurized. I held on inside the tube, and pulled my way forward into this ship, through the hole that had been blasted through its hull. By that time, you'd been captured; I got inside just in time to see you get led away. I picked up your weapon and followed. Fortunately, I was inside the airtight hatches before Novak closed them."

  I could only stare at her. I still didn't understand her actions toward me, back aboard that other ship, but it no longer mattered. There were so many things I needed to say to her . . . but first things first.

  "The data Novak was taking is in the lifeboat," I explained, gesturing at the forward air lock and, as a matter of ingrained habit, scooping up the needler. "We can get away in it, and just let this ship burn up on reentry. Let's do it now, before we get any farther into the past. I've lost track of how many hours have passed since we went into temporal displacement, at about minus two years per hour, but it hasn't been many."

  "Do you know how to disengage this ship's temporal displacement field?" she asked.

  "I'm willing to take a crack at figuring it out. And even if I can't, I've got a theory that after the lifeboat passes beyond the boundaries of that field—which it will do just after being deployed—it will drop back into the normal time stream, leaving this ship to keep going back in time until its power runs out."

  "That makes sense," she nodded. "The lifeboat doesn't have a time machine of its own."

  "Right. So one way or another we'll drop back into the time stream, destroy Novak's database, and try to make a go of it wherever . . . I mean whenever we end up. And the further that is into the past, the harder a time we'll have adapting. So let's get busy!"

  For an instant, Chloe's face wore that strange, shuttered look again. But then it was gone, replaced by a brave smile whose artificiality I was too preoccupied to notice, although I can recall it now. "Yes, of course, Bob. You're right. It's the only way."

  It took us no time at all to locate the switch that activated the lifeboat deployment sequence. It was just inside the inner door of the lifeboat air lock, and it was delayed action, giving the occupants just barely enough time to get into that air lock before it closed irrevocably—this was for ultimate emergencies, remember—and strap into the lifeboat before it was flung free of the ship. All very standard.

  The time machine was another matter.

  "As nearly as I can figure it," I said, after a frustrating computer search and a tentative examination of instrumentation that had obviously been cobbled onto the ship's control board, "this is also delayed action. It takes a couple of minutes after you start the shutdown sequence before the field collapses and you snap back into the normal universe."

  "But are you sure you know how to actually commence the shutdown, as opposed to just making these lights flash on and off?"

  "Hell no, I'm not sure! But we can activate this—or try to—and then slap the lifeboat switch and get into the lifeboat. If the field shuts down like it's supposed to, all well and good; we land on Earth and this ship burns up. If not, then the lifeboat launches anyway and we go to Plan B."

  "All right," Chloe said matter-of-factly. Our eyes met. On a sudden impulse, I kissed her. She responded hungrily . . . almost desperately. I tasted tears on her face. I should have asked myself why. But instead I drew away and commenced field shutdown. Then I entered the lifeboat air lock and opened the hatch in the deck, revealing the lifeboat's tiny passenger compartment below. Chloe followed. On the air lock's threshold, she paused, her hand halfway to the switch.

  "What about Renata?" she asked.

  "Huh?" I'd forgotten Novak just as completely as I had the equally motionless Evan. I looked back and faced Chloe. "What about her?"

  "Shouldn't we—?" She turned around and started back into the control room.

  With a scream, a face from hell reared up in her path.

  I'd thought Novak was as good as dead, and certainly immobilized by concussion. I'd forgotten the way hysterical strength can power a body beyond what is medically plausible, if the restraining band of sanity snaps. And the blood that caked Novak's hair and streamed down her cheek wasn't what gave that face its horror—it was the absolute lack of humanity. It was a mask of hate from which all reason had fled.

  She was like a fury out of the darkest reaches of myth. And she was brandishing Evan's knife, about which I'd totally forgotten.

  Like a Cossack swinging a saber, she slashed at Chloe with the knife.

  Desperately, I lunged forward and pushed Chloe out of the way of that onsweeping edge, into whose path momentum carried me. Pain exploded as Novak whipped the knife across my face, laying my left cheek open to the bone.

  Sickened, blinded, I staggered backwards and fell through the hatch into the lifeboat. As I caught myself and struggled back up into the air lock, I saw Chloe tackle Novak and grasp her knife hand before it could commence another swing. She gave a twist. Novak screamed and dropped the knife. Chloe bore her backwards through the air lock door, into the control room. Just beyond that threshold, they grappled, straining against each other.

  The left half of my face was a fireball of agony, and blood was already trickling down my neck into my survival suit. But I staggered upright, just in time to hear a voice that was pure Chloe.

  "You really don't know who I am, do you, Renata?"

  For a moment, stunned realization wiped Novak's face clean of madness, and she loosened her grip. It gave Chloe a chance to wrench one arm free and bring the elbow sharply up into her opponent's face, bloodying her nose.

  I started to reel toward Chloe. Our eyes met for an eternity that could only have lasted a fraction of a second—a flash of frozen time in which her face held more emotions than a lifetime could or should c
ontain. She opened her mouth and said something to me, but Novak screamed again, so I couldn't hear it.

  Then, as though in slow motion, Chloe's free hand came up and slapped the lifeboat switch. The airlock door began to slide shut.

  "Chloe!" I shouted, stretching my sliced facial muscles and bringing a renewed deluge of blood, and a spasm of pain that almost made me lose consciousness. But even as the universe spun around me, I forced myself forward, toward that inexorably closing air lock door and the two struggling women just beyond it. . . .

  It clanged shut just before I reached it. A red light began to flash stroboscopically, and a warning siren began to wail

  I crashed against the air lock door, heedless of my agony, pounding on it with futile fists. I glimpsed Chloe through the transparent bull's-eye for a last instant, before her struggles with Novak took her out of my line of sight. The siren continued to ululate.

  "Ten seconds to lifeboat deployment," a robotic voice called out. Ten seconds . . . after which the lifeboat would be gone and the air lock would be open to space. . . .

  I was beyond thought. All I could do was react. I got into the lifeboat just before the hatch automatically closed. I had barely strapped into one of the couches when the universe seemed to drop out from under me. I looked through the lifeboat's curving transparency and saw the half-wrecked ship recede rapidly into the weird emptiness of that extradimensional realm.

  Then, with mind-shattering suddenness, the real universe was back, and the lifeboat was hurtling down into the tenuous upper atmosphere of the blue planet below.

  My theory had been correct: as soon as it had left the ship's temporal displacement field, the lifeboat had reentered the flow of time at whatever point the ship had reached. For a heartbeat, I looked up and scanned the blue-black sky of those altitudes for the fireball that would mark the ship's death. Not seeing it, I felt relief rise in me, only to be smashed flat by the realization that at the moment of my departure the ship had still been in temporal displacement, headed still farther backward in time. So, assuming that my tinkering had succeeded, that fireball had already happened, and by now had faded from the sky.