The Last Science Fiction Writer

by Allen Steele

  “Uh-uh. I’d just as soon…um, float, if it’s okay with you.” I couldn’t take my eyes from the starboard window. Once my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I saw billions of stars—planets, suns, nebulae, distant galaxies—spread out before us in a broad swath, with the Moon an oval patch of darkness, sunlight forming a slender crescent around its western terminator.

  “So would I.” Mickey grasped a handrail encircling the porthole, anchoring herself next to the window; I took hold of the rail on the other side. “This is a treat, believe me. No gravity…and the place all to ourselves.”

  Better than the drive-in, that’s for sure. But that wasn’t what was on my mind. “Mickey…what’s going on here? Why are you…I mean, why did you…?”

  “Of course. Questions.” She took a deep breath, then released the handrail and folded her legs together in a position that I would’ve called “sitting” if she wasn’t three feet above the floor. “It’s like this…”

  By the year 2337 (she explained), the human race had not only colonized most of Earth’s solar system—the Moon, Mars, the asteroid belt and the major satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, along with space stations as close as Venus and as distant as the Kuiper belt—but it had also ventured out to the nearby star systems: Alpha Centauri B, Wolf 359, Epsilon Eridani, and Bernard’s Star, among others. The development of nuclear engines had opened the solar system as a frontier during the 21st century; the subsequent invention of hyperspace travel during the 23rd century had carried humankind to the stars.

  During this time, Earth’s nearby colonies decided to form the Solar System Confederation, a democratic alliance that sought to maintain trade and diplomatic ties among both the near-Earth colonies and the extrasolar settlements. This wasn’t an easy task; the colonies often quarreled, and more than once war had threatened to tear the union apart. So in order to keep the peace, as well as facilitate further colonization, the Solar Confederation Fleet was established.

  The Vincennes was one of three heavy cruisers belonging to Mars, which—next only to Earth itself—was the most populated and politically powerful of the SSC worlds, particularly after it had been terraformed during the 22nd century. The Vincennes took its name from the flagship of the United States Exploratory Expedition of 1838, and was the oldest of its class; constructed at the Deimos shipyards in 2278, it remained in service until 2329, when it was retired from active duty and turned over to the Mars campus of the Confederation Fleet Academy as a training vessel.

  “Whoa, wait a minute…” Hearing this, I held up a hand. “You mean this…?” I looked around myself, at everything I’d seen so far. “You mean this is…this is just a training ship?”

  “Sort of a let-down, isn’t it?” There was a sad look in her eyes as Mickey glanced up at the ceiling. “Maybe she doesn’t look it, but she’s obsolete. Range limited to only fifty light-years. Nothing like the…”

  “Okay, I get it.” I shook my head. Only fifty light years…“So I guess that, compared to whatever else you guys have, it’s beat to crap…”

  “Hey, that’s my ship you’re talking about.” Mickey scowled at me, and suddenly I realized that I’d just crossed the line. “Maybe you think this is funny, but here in this century, your people still thought liquid-fuel rockets were…”

  “Easy. Easy.” I held up my hands. “Bad joke, okay? No offense.”

  Mickey relaxed. Uncurling her legs, she grasped the rail again. “Of course. I forget that irony was a preferred form of humor in your…never mind. Let’s go on.”

  When it departed from Phobos Station on Aquarius 47, 2337, the Vincennes’ crew included sixty-five cadets, ranging from ensigns to junior-grade lieutenants, along ten senior officers who acted as their instructors. Not to mention Alex, whose full name was Alex Elevendee and who was just as much a part of the Vincennes as its lifeboats and life-extinguishing equipment: another piece of hardware, albeit a little more conversational than, say, the toaster. This particular mission was the third one for the Class of ’38, and was supposed to be relatively simple: a quick jaunt through hyperspace from Mars to the Moon, a couple of orbits around Earth to test the cadets’ knowledge of planetary rendezvous procedures, then another jaunt back through hyperspace to Mars. No one had brought more than the clothes on their backs and their datapads; they’d fully expected to be home by evening mess.

  “But it didn’t work out that way, did it?” I asked.

  “No, it didn’t.” Mickey shook her head. “The jaygee at the navigation station laid in the wrong jump coordinates. He accidentally transposed the elements for the c-factor for the t-factor, which in turn caused…” She caught the look on my face. “You haven’t had quantum mechanics, have you?”

  I snapped my fingers, glanced up at the ceiling. “Gee, y’know, they offered it this year, but I went for trig instead because I heard it was a crip coarse.”

  “Never mind.” From her expression, I could see that she couldn’t tell whether I was putting her on again or not. “Look, plotting a hyperspace jaunt is a very precise business. You’ve got to get everything right the first time, or…”

  “Uh-huh. And I take it this guy screwed up.”

  She nodded. “In a major way, yes. Oh, he got us to the Moon, all right…but through a curved timelike loop that opened a wormhole through the space-time continuum. So instead of arriving here in our own year…”

  “You arrived here in my year. Let me guess the rest…you can’t get back, right?”

  “Oh, no. Returning to our time isn’t the problem. Once we realized what had happened, all we had to do was sort through the onboard log, detect where the mistake had been made, and figure out how to correct it. If everything had worked out as it should have, we could have been home in less than an hour.”

  “So what went wrong?” I corrected myself. “I mean, what else went wrong?”

  “Because the main computer detected a flaw in the flight profile, it automatically tripped the master alarm as soon as we came out of hyperspace. I was on the bridge when it happened, and it was really scary. All the lights went red, and then the horns went off all at once, and then…”

  Mickey suddenly stopped. Looking away from me, she gazed out the porthole at the far side of the Moon. “It…it was my fault,” she said quietly. “I was minding the power control station. I was confused, just as they’d warned us might happen when we came out of hyperspace, when I saw the red-alert light on my console, I…”

  Now I saw a strange thing. Tiny bubbles, like miniature spheres of water, departing from the corners of her eyes, gently float upward. Tears in the moonlight. A girl crying in zero-g.

  “Mickey…” I leaned forward, touched her arm. “C’mon…”

  “I’m sorry. I’m still…” She reached up to her face, dried her eyes. “I dumped the reactor,” she murmured. “The alarm confused me, and I…I mean, we didn’t know what had happened. All I knew was…that is, I thought the main reactor was about to meltdown, so I jettisoned the rods. Which is what they tell us to do in an emergency.”

  “You use a nuclear reactor?” As soon as I said this, I knew it sounded dumb. What was I expecting, dilithium crystals? Perhaps nuclear fission hadn’t worked out so well in my time, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be used three hundred years later. “Sorry. Go on…so you dumped the reactor, and that meant…”

  She didn’t say anything, only looked at me, and that was when everything came together. Sure, the crew of the Vincennes knew how to get home…but without fuel for their reactor, there was no way they’d be able to make another jump through space-time. So they did what they had to do: parked the ship in lunar stationary orbit on the far side of the Moon, where it couldn’t be seen from Earth, and sent down a team to steal some nuclear fuel rods.

  “So how did you…?” I paused. “I mean, how did you know about Narragansett Point?”

  “The ship’s library system has complete historical records.” Mickey snuffled back her tears. “Meant for download int
o colony computers for educational purposes. Someone did a little research and discovered that, in this time, your nuclear power plant was being decommissioned.” She shrugged. “That seemed to be the least dangerous means of getting what we needed. Minimal security…or at least nothing that our stun guns and Alex couldn’t take down…”

  “I was wondering about that. All those guards, and the guys inside the plant…”

  “We used a sleeper. Sort of like a grenade, only that it emits an electromagnetic pulse that temporarily disrupts higher brain functions. We hid in the vehicle we’d stolen while Alex penetrated the front gate, then detonated the sleeper to knock out the sentries.”

  “Right. Got it.” But that still left much unexplained. “But if you guys knew about our nuke, then why come into town? Why ask me for directions?”

  “We knew there was a plant near Bellingham, but we didn’t know exactly where it was located. Also, we needed to take out the security and find the spent fuel before we could bring in the shuttle to take it away. That was my part of the operation. So very early this morning, Hsing dropped us just outside town, then landed the shuttle out in the hills and waited for us to send him a signal. We hiked in, stole an automobile and hid it in an alley, then broke into a shop to steal some clothes…”

  “I know about that.” I tried not to grin as I glanced at her Dead T-shirt and faux-fur overcoat. “Someone should’ve told you how we dress in my century. You guys stuck out.”

  “We did?” She looked down at herself, and laughed at herself “Well, what do I know? Besides, we would’ve looked even stranger in our academy uniforms.” Mickey sighed. “But I think our biggest mistake was asking you for directions.”

  “Thanks a lot…”

  “No!” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that our orders were to avoid contact with the inhabitants as much as possible.” She frowned. “But Tyler was in charge of that part of the operation, and he became frustrated when we couldn’t find a map that would show us exactly where the plant was located. So when he saw you…”

  “Let me guess. Since I’m your age, he figured that asking me for directions wouldn’t be as risky as talking to an adult. Right?”

  “Something like that.” She gave me a grim smile. “It wasn’t the first mistake Tyler made. The first was setting the wrong coordinates for the hyperspace jump.”

  “He…?” Now it was my turn to be surprised. “I don’t get it. If you two were the guys responsible for this mess, why did the captain pick you to…?”

  “Because we were responsible.” She let out her breath. “One of the first things they teach us in the academy is that, if you make a critical error, you’re the one who has to make it right.”

  “You break it, you bought it.” She gave me a quizzical look, and I smiled. “Something we say in my time.”

  “‘You break it, you bought it.’” Mickey smiled as she repeated my words. “I like that. Anyway, once we knew how to find the plant, we went out there, and…well, you know the rest.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Then I thought about it for a moment. “No, I don’t. What good would nuclear waste do you? I mean, what you stole were spent fuel rods. How could you…?”

  “Only about three-quarters of the U-235 contained within nuclear fuel rods is actually consumed during fission. The rest gets thrown away along with the U-237 and plutonium waste…or at least by standards by which 20th century nuclear power plants normally operated. But our ships are designed to reprocess spent fuel rods from other ships in the event of an emergency.” She nodded in the general direction of the stern. “Right now, nanites are disassembling those uranium-dioxide pellets, molecule by molecule, and recombining the usable U-235 as fuel for our reactor. Believe me, it’s a very fast process. We should be back to full power any minute now.”

  “Oh, I believe you.” I remembered how quickly nanites in the floor of the shuttle had cleaned up my vomit. Maybe it wasn’t the most savory example of the wonders of the 24th century, but nonetheless it was the one that came to mind. “Then…”

  Then? Then nothing. She’d told me everything I needed to know, just as the captain had told her to do. Once again, I gazed out the window. Here I was, aboard a starship lurking above the dark side of the Moon, farther from Earth than anyone had ever been before. I should have been awestruck, or delirious with wonder, or…something, I don’t know what. Yet instead, I only felt hollow. Something was missing, but I didn’t know what it was…

  “Eric?”

  “Yeah?” I didn’t look at her. “What?”

  For a moment, Mickey said nothing. Then I felt her come closer to me, and as I turned around, she took my face within her hands, looked me straight in the eye, and kissed me.

  Exactly three times before, a girl had given me a kiss. I won’t go into details about the earlier ones, but take my word for it: this was the best one yet.

  And, by the way, did I forget to mention that zero-g is really cool?

  It might have lasted longer, but then a shrill alarm came over a ceiling speaker. Hearing this, Mickey reluctantly pulled herself away from me. “Inertial dampeners are coming back online,” she murmured. “We’re going to get gravity again in about ten seconds.” She reached up to grasp the ceiling rail. “Brace yourself.”

  I had just enough time to grab the rail myself before we went from microgravity to one-g. This time, I was ready for it; no puking in front of my new girlfriend, or at least not for the second time tonight. We waited until the alarms shut off, then dropped to the floor.

  “Thanks.” I took a deep breath, then took a step closer to her. “So, where were we…?”

  Mickey blushed, but she didn’t back away as I took her hands. “I think I was thanking you for…”

  The hatch clicked, and we had a chance to retreat from each other before it swung open. Then the ceiling lights came open; squinting against the abrupt glare, I looked around to see Tyler standing in the hatchway.

  He stared at us for a moment, then looked at Mickey. “Skipper wants to talk to you now,” he said, with plenty of frost in his voice. Mickey’s face went pale, but she said nothing to me. Instead, she silently nodded, and marched out of the observation lounge, taking care not to brush against Tyler on the way to the ladder.

  Tyler and I silently regarded one another. For a second, I was afraid that he’d join me in the lounge—there would be no hugging and kissing between the two of us—but instead he turned toward the corridor. I was relieved that he was going to leave me alone, but then a smug grin crept across his face, and he wagged a finger at me.

  “See you in China,” he said.

  “Sure thing, bud,” I replied. “Right after you learn quantum math.”

  His face went red, and then he slammed the hatch shut.

  I was alone in the observation lounge for only ten or fifteen minutes. Then an ensign barely old enough to try out for the junior varsity basketball team came to fetch me. Yet I was escorted not to the bridge, as I expected, but to another compartment on the same deck.

  The captain’s quarters were little larger than the janitor’s closet at my high school; just enough room for a small desk, a chair, a locker, a fold-down bunk, and a door leading to what I assumed was a private john. Captain Van Owen was seated at his desk when the ensign led me in; he accepted the kid’s salute with a cursory nod, then waited until he shut the hatch behind me.

  “Mr. Cosby…or may I call you Eric?” I swallowed and nodded, and he gave me a brief smile. “Eric, then…please be seated.”

  There was nowhere else to sit except his bunk. “Thank you, sir,” I said, and sat down on the very edge, trying to disturb its drum-tight covers as little as possible.

  “You’re welcome…” His eyes never left mine. “I believe that Midshipman McGyver has fully debriefed you of our situation. Correct?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s told me everything.” And a bit more, although the last thing he’d ever learn from me was the exact nature of our debriefin
g.

  “Very well.” Sitting back in his chair, the captain crossed his arms. “First, let me express my appreciation for the assistance you’ve given my team. Judging from what both Ms. McGyver and Mr. Ionesco has told me, your performance has been outstanding…particularly in regards to the lieutenant’s rescue.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Perhaps I wasn’t a member of the crew, but nonetheless I found myself addressing him as if he was my commanding officer. “I did what I had to…”

  “Of course. And if you were one of my cadets, I’d expect no less.” Van Owen hesitated. “Which leads us to our predicament, because you don’t belong to the Vincennes, and I’m at a loss to know what to do with you.”

  Pushing back his chair, he stood up, walked over to the porthole. “As you now know, this was supposed to be a covert mission. No one on Earth was ever supposed to be aware of our presence. Of course, there’ll be an investigation of how spent uranium was stolen from a secure nuclear facility, but I’m gambling that it will be done quietly, with no one in public ever learning what happened tonight.”

  “Even with Air National Guard jets chasing your shuttle?”

  “Yes, even despite that.” Van Owen gazed through the porthole, his hands clasped behind his back. “In fact, I’m willing to bet that those pilots have already been thoroughly interrogated by military intelligence. Even if their story is believed…and how many unconfirmed UFO sightings were there during your time?…chances are that they’ll be sworn to silence about what they saw, or thought they saw.”

  “I…”

  “Eric, the last thing anyone will suspect is the truth. Think about it for a moment. All eyewitnesses on the ground were rendered unconscious by unknown forces. A single cask of nuclear waste was lifted from the site by an unidentified aircraft that bore no markings and managed to evade military jets. The only clue left behind was a stolen vehicle, and the fingerprints won’t match any in law enforcement databases. Now, put yourself in their place. Would you conclude that this was done by men from outer space…or by a well-equipped terrorist organization?”