THE VALIANT

by Michael Jan Friedman

  That was a different story entirely.

  Still, Gardenhire asked himself, what choice did they have? Their pod was low on fuel and even lower on nutritional packets and potable water, and this was the only habitable world they had come across.

  Through the pod’s observation portal, he could see the ragged white of dense clouds ripping past them. But they were high clouds—sixty-five thousand kilometers high. The pod still had a long way to go before it reached the planet’s surface.

  Gardenhire looked around at the other faces in the escape vehicle. They looked back at him with trust if not complete confidence, knowing he would do his best to land them safely despite the pod’s limitations.

  There was Coquillette, the little medic who had seen them through everything from seasickness to bedsores. And O’Shaugnessy, the craggy-faced assistant engineer who had nursed their engines as deftly as Coquillette had nursed the crew.

  There was Santana, the stoic and uncomplaining security officer, and Daniels, the astrophysicist with the wicked sense of humor. And finally, Williamson, the balding supply officer who had bullied them into surviving one day after another, regardless of whether they wanted to or not.

  By getting this far, they had already set themselves apart as the lucky ones, the ones on whom Fortune had smiled. Only twelve of the Valiant’s fourteen escape pods had cleared the explosion that destroyed the ship, and one of those twelve had fallen victim to a plasma breach days later.

  The units that remained intact were packed with six or seven people each, with so little living space that only one person could move around at a time. But then, the pods hadn’t been designed with an eye to creature comfort. They were survival tools, and survival was a grim business at best.

  Gardenhire had always prided himself on his ability to stay cool, to perform calmly under pressure. But after just a month of such close confinement, his nerves had frayed to the breaking point. He was tense, irritable, ready to lash out at anyone who looked at him sideways.

  Then came the change.

  It was subtle at first, so subtle that the navigator had to wonder if he was losing his mind. But as it turned out, he wasn’t losing anything. He was gaining something remarkable. He could hear the thoughts of his fellow crewmen.

  Not all of them, of course—just a stray reflection or two. But it distracted Gardenhire from his misery. It gave him something to think about as he lay prone in his padded shock bunk and waited for his appointed exercise period.

  The navigator wasn’t oblivious to the fact that telepathy had been one of Agnarsson’s talents too. In the back of his mind, he knew he might become what the engineer had become.

  But somehow, he felt confident that it wouldn’t happen. After all, it had been weeks since the crew was exposed to the Big Red phenomenon. If Gardenhire was going to be altered to the same extent as Agnarsson, if he was going to mutate into a gray-haired, silver-eyed superman, it seemed likely that it would have happened already.

  Besides, it was different when the individual undergoing the transformation was oneself. For obvious reasons, it made the prospect seem a lot less chilling.

  Then, one day when the navigator was skimming Coquillette’s thoughts, he felt an awareness there—a facility capable of not only recognizing his intrusion, but responding to it.

  He was afraid that the medic would balk at his invasion of her privacy—for clearly, that was what it was. And in a tinderbox like the escape pod, that was the last thing they needed.

  But as it happened, Coquillette didn’t mind his trespass at all. In fact, she seemed to welcome it.

  It made her feel less lonely, she told him—communicating not in spoken words, but in precise and evocative thoughts. It let her know she wasn’t the only one who was experiencing some kind of transformation.

  It made Gardenhire wonder . . . if he and Coquillette had changed, was it possible that some of the others were changing as well? And like the medic, were they too uneasy with the situation to speak of it?

  Both of them wanted to discuss the matter with the group. However, they were concerned . . . if they were the only ones who had been affected, how would their companions look at them? Would they see Gardenhire and Coquillette as threats to the welfare of their miniature society—threats that had to be dealt with in a harsh and immediate manner?

  Then, while they were wondering what to do, O’Shaugnessy responded to their telepathic intrusions as well. And a day later, Williamson did the same. It was Williamson who insisted that they let the others in on what was happening to them.

  As Gardenhire had expected, the revelation didn’t go very well. Santana didn’t say much, but his thoughts were decidedly frightened ones. And though Daniels made a joke about it, it didn’t take a telepath to see he was every bit as scared as Santana.

  The atmosphere in the pod became taut and uneasy. No one said anything more about the transformations, but they were a subtext in every conversation, a stubborn and nettlesome ghost haunting them every hour of the artificially induced day and night.

  Until Santana and Daniels found themselves with telepathic powers of their own, their discoveries coming less than a day apart. At that point, the air of suspicion went away. They were all equals again, working together toward a common goal.

  But there were other surprises in store for them. One day, when Williamson was delving in a locker for a hard-to-reach nutritional packet, he saw the thing move obediently into his outstretched hand.

  Apparently, he had developed a knack for telekinesis. Announcing his discovery to his podmates (as if he could have kept it secret from a bunch of telepaths), the supply officer challenged them to test their own talents in that regard.

  At that juncture, only O’Shaugnessy and Santana exhibited rudimentary telekinetic abilities. But in the days that followed, the rest of them followed suit. Only Coquillette seemed to lag behind, never becoming anywhere near as adept as the rest of them.

  They never figured out why. But then, they never figured out anything else about their powers either. Their newfound facilities were a mystery to them through and through.

  Eventually, there was only one more step they had to take.

  Since the destruction of the Valiant, the pods had maintained periodic radio contact—in the beginning, communicating as often as several times a day. Then, as tedium set in and there was less and less to say, their conversations had become correspondingly less frequent.

  But in none of these give-and-takes had Gardenhire and his companions ever mentioned their transformations. The main reason for this restraint was simple—it seemed imprudent to give the crews of the other pods a reason to fear them.

  Of course, Santana and Daniels could have sent a message to the other pods when they found out about their comrades’ powers. At that juncture, they still appeared to be unaltered human beings, and they might have seen it as their duty to send out a warning.

  Why had they hesitated? Not just out of fear that they might get caught, as they quite willingly revealed later. It was because they were explorers by nature, and they wanted to see where their podmates’ transformations ultimately led them.

  Such considerations notwithstanding, they all knew they would have to spill the beans someday. And that day arrived when the pods came within scanner range of a solar system.

  By unanimous agreement, Gardenhire radioed McMillan and the other ranking officers and revealed everything that had happened. But far from exhibiting concern, the other pods appeared to be relieved.

  Because they had been experiencing the same things.

  It wasn’t a possibility the navigator hadn’t weighed in the back of his mind. The individuals in his group had been exposed to the same stimuli as the men and women in the other vehicles. It stood to reason that they might be changing too.

  But it felt good to know for sure.

  Especially when their scanners showed them a habitable planet in the solar system they had discovered. A planet with plenty of water an
d plant life. A planet where they might have a future.

  The same planet toward which Gardenhire’s pod was now dropping like a very large stone.

  “We’re falling too quickly,” said Daniels, his brow uncharacteristically creased with concern.

  “Much too quickly,” agreed Coquillette.

  Through the observation portal, the navigator could see a faint reddish hue—the play of friction about the shields. And as he had noted earlier, the shield generators had seen better days.

  “Something’s wrong with the thrusters,” O’Shaugnessy said.

  “Can you see that?” Gardenhire asked. “Or are you just guessing?”

  “I can see it,” the engineer assured him, his eyes glazing over as he focused his mind. “One of the release apertures is jammed shut.”

  The navigator knew that that was no small matter. There were only four apertures and they needed all of them to brake their descent.

  “Can you unjam it?” asked Coquillette.

  O’Shaugnessy shook his head. “This isn’t a nutritional packet we’re talking about. It’s a machine part.”

  “What if we were to work together?” asked Williamson.

  Daniels seemed to like the idea. “It’s worth a shot—and we don’t have too many other options.”

  Outside the pod, the heat was increasing. What had been a faint red glow was now a deep crimson. They were starting to vibrate as well, starting to experience the roughness Gardenhire had warned them about.

  “How’s this going to work?” asked Santana.

  Gardenhire turned to O’Shaugnessy. “If you can picture the lever that opens the aperture, we can try to access it through you.”

  “Then we all put pressure on it at once,” Daniels added.

  “Exactly,” said the navigator.

  O’Shaugnessy nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  Gardenhire concentrated on linking his thoughts to the engineer’s, picturing what O’Shaugnessy was picturing. It turned out to be easier than he had imagined. He could see the lever in question, even feel the place where the thing was stuck.

  If the navigator could have reached into the mechanism with his hand, he might have been able to free the offending lever. As it was, he focused on moving it with the power of his mind.

  He sensed the others, vague presences all around him. They were pushing with their minds as well.

  Come on, came a thought—O’Shaugnessy’s. We can do it.

  And the lever moved.

  In fact, Gardenhire was surprised at how little resistance it offered them. It was like moving a feather.

  But were they in time? The navigator looked out the observation portal and saw that the aura had become an actual flame. Their shields were rapidly losing their battle with the planet’s atmosphere.

  Turning to his instrument panel, he checked the pod’s rate of descent. It was less than it had been, certainly, but still a good deal more than what safety demanded.

  “What’s the verdict?” asked Daniels.

  “Not good,” Gardenhire told him.

  “We’re still falling too fast,” said Coquillette, “aren’t we?”

  The navigator nodded.

  “Wait a minute,” said Santana. “O’Shaugnessy couldn’t move that lever at all—but when we worked together, it moved easily. Maybe we could slow the pod down the same way.”

  At first blush, it seemed like a crazy idea. But the more Gardenhire thought about it, the less crazy it sounded.

  “Let’s try it,” said Williamson.

  Outside, the flames of their descent had completely obscured their view of the alien sky. Soon, they would feel the temperature begin to rise inside the pod. And after that . . .

  “O’Shaugnessy will be our point again,” said the navigator, “since he did such a good job last time.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, the engineer closed his eyes. “All right . . . I’m picturing the underside of the pod. We need to push against it, to slow it down . . .”

  Linking his mind to O’Shaugnessy’s, Gardenhire could see the flat titanium surface. Surrounded by the four thruster apertures, he pushed up against it. He wasn’t alone, either. He felt the others with him, around him and inside him, adding their strength to his own.

  At first, he didn’t perceive any difference. Then their efforts began to pay off. The pod began to slow down.

  Breaking contact with O’Shaugnessy for a moment, the navigator darted a glance at his instruments. They confirmed it—the escape vehicle was falling at a slower rate than before.

  Keep it up, Gardenhire told the others.

  They did as he asked, continuing to toil against the pull of gravity with all the telekinetic power at their disposal. And little by little, the pod continued to decelerate.

  He glanced at the observation portal. The shields were all but gone, but so were the flames that had blocked his view. He could see clouds again. And through them, patches of blue.

  If he and the others had had enough time, they might have teamed up with the thrusters to stop their descent altogether. Unfortunately, they didn’t have that much time. Gardenhire could see that all too clearly on his monitor, the harsh truth expressed in cold mathematical certainties.

  The planet’s surface was rushing up eagerly to meet them. And when it did, it would crack them open like an egg.

  The injustice of it pierced the navigator’s heart like a dagger. To have come this far, to have tried this hard, only to be crushed on a hard and unfeeling alien landscape . . .

  Then he saw a way out.

  “We need to do more than slow down,” Gardenhire said. “We need to push ourselves that way.” And he pointed to the bulkhead behind Daniels.

  “What for?” asked Williamson.

  “So we can splash down,” the navigator explained. “Or would you prefer to crack up?”

  “Let’s push,” said Daniels.

  What Gardenhire was asking of them was a lot more complicated than what they had done before. They couldn’t push in two directions at once; they had to find just the right vector.

  Somehow, they managed it.

  Then the six of them pushed for all they were worth. The mingling of their talents created an unexpected level of force, one that seemed to be more than the sum of their individual abilities.

  The navigator moved closer to the window and looked down. He could see land through breaks in the cloud cover. He could make out a large, blue bowl of a bay, embraced by a hilly, green coastline.

  It would be a good place for a settlement, he thought, a good place to make a future for themselves. That is, if they survived long enough to think about such things.

  Push, he insisted.

  They poured every last ounce of their energy into the effort, nudging the pod away from the land and out to sea. Gardenhire followed their progress on his instruments, cheering inwardly with each minute alteration in their angle of descent.

  We’re going to do it, he told the others.

  It encouraged them to keep it up, to shove the pod as far out over the bay as they could. With a couple of kilometers to go, the navigator was certain of it—they had earned a water landing.

  Brace yourselves, he thought.

  They looked at each other as they slid into their shock bunks, needing no words—silent or otherwise—to communicate their feelings. Whether they survived or not, whether their temperamental dampers held or failed, they had fought the good fight.

  They had discovered a strength in themselves that few members of their species ever came to know.

  Neither Gardenhire nor any of the others had a single regret.

  Then they punched through the surface of the bay. The impact sent rattlings of pain through the navigator’s skeleton, despite the gelatinous padding that lined his bunk. For a moment, he wondered if they might have hit something more than water—some submerged spine of land, perhaps.

  Then he craned his neck to look out the observation portal and saw silver bubbles c
lustering around them like living seacreatures, enveloping them in an intricately woven cocoon of oxygen-rich atmosphere.

  Slowly, feeling for injuries all the while, Gardenhire emerged from his bunk. One by one, the others did the same.

  “Everyone all right?” asked Williamson, who looked a little dazed.

  Santana felt his jaw. “Could have been worse.”

  Daniels kneaded his neck muscles. “You can say that again.”

  “How far down are we?” asked Coquillette.

  The navigator checked his control panel, but his screen was blank. “I wish I could say. We must have lost external sensors when we hit.”

  O’Shaugnessy looked out the portal. “Who needs external sensors? I’d say we have five meters of water above us, tops.”

  “And we’re rising,” Williamson added, his eyes closed in concentration as he made the judgment.

  Gardenhire concentrated as well and came to the same conclusion. Their mantle of bubbles was dissolving, abandoning them, and the waves above were getting closer. Finally, with an effervescent bounce, the pod broke the surface of the bay.

  “Look!” said Santana, pointing to the portal.

  The navigator looked through the transparent plate, which was dappled with prismatic droplets. In the distance, past a stretch of undulating blue water, he could see the rocky coastline they had managed to avoid. From here, it looked friendly, even inviting.

  “I want to get out,” Coquillette said suddenly.

  Daniels grinned. “Me too.”

  Gardenhire considered it. There might be jagged rocks just under the surface, or a school of carnivorous sea monsters. But he knew how much the others wanted to leave the pod, because he wanted to leave it also.

  “Let’s get a little closer to shore first,” he advised, running contrary to the current of enthusiasm.

  Despite their urge to leave their artificial womb behind, the others agreed to do as the navigator asked. By then, working in concert had become almost second nature. They got the pod skidding through the waves rather easily and came within twenty meters of shore.