The Middle of Nowhere

by David Gerrold

  If they had succeeded, they now had a secure communications network. The optical cables were sending coded signals only. The codes were updating themselves one thousand times a second. Even if the imp could monitor the signals, it still wouldn’t be able to decode them on the fly. And even if it could link into one network, it still wouldn’t be able to tell what any other network was doing. The Quillas’ communication channels were holographic and therefore unreadable by anyone not part of a Quilla cluster.

  Korie turned to Quilla Delta. “Status?”

  “We are Happy,” the Quilla reported. “We are very Happy.”

  “Good,” Korie nodded. “Very good. We are now the first manually operated ship in the history of the Fleet.”

  “A singular honor, to be sure,” Brik remarked.

  “Whatever works,” Korie replied grimly. To the Quilla, he said, “Send this message. Code Doc. Code Doc.”

  “Message sent and acknowledged,” said the Quilla.

  Korie sat down in the captain’s chair. Brik sat down in the chair beside him. The Quilla took the third seat behind the two of them. Korie secured his safety harness. The others did likewise. Across the Ops deck, the Bridge crew were also securing themselves. Jonesy was opening the overhead access of the Bridge and climbing up toward the observation bubble; he was trailing a long communications cable behind him. This was the crucial part of the operation. Hodel was standing on the hull at the aft of the vessel, there to provide the only guidance cues they would have for the docking maneuver. They needed to establish a secure communications link with him; it would be critical for manual docking.

  Jonesy reported abruptly, “We can’t make the optical connection through the observatory port. The glass has been frosted with some kind of . . . I don’t know, but it’s opaque.”

  Korie and Brik exchange a glance. The imp? Yes.

  “All right,” said Korie. “Use the external emergency net.” The external emergency network was installed on the hull of the ship for exactly this kind of situation. Self-powered, separate from the rest of the ship, it provided an auxiliary channel for operations.

  “Sir?” Jonesy asked, concerned. “Are you sure?”

  “We have no choice.” He added, “Chief Leen has detoxed the network seven times since the imp was detected. The most recent decontam was seven hours ago. Let’s trust it.”

  “Okay,” said Jonesy uncertainly. He disappeared into the overhead again.

  Korie looked to Brik and held up his hands with his fingers crossed. Brik gave him that look. Korie shrugged.

  “We have completed Doc,” said Delta, abruptly. Jonesy came floating back down into the Ops deck.

  “Thank you,” said Korie. “Code Dopey. Code Dopey.”

  A moment more, and all gravity in the starship went off. It did not go off gradually, it simply disappeared. One moment Korie was sitting in his command chair. The next instant, he was falling, and the moment after that he was relaxing into the familiar drift of zero-gee. So far, so good.

  “All right,” Korie said. “Hi, ho. Hi, ho. It’s off to work we go.” He waited until the command had been sent, and then said, “Commander Tor. She’s all yours. Take us in.”

  Docking

  Astrogator Cygnus Tor turned to her console. It was dead. She bent down to the floor and brought up a jury-rigged board, which she plugged directly into her starsuit. She studied its tiny display. There were only rudimentary readouts connected; Hodel wore three positional scanners, no camera. If the scanners failed, he would talk the ship into the docking harness.

  Tor’s job was further complicated by the fact that the usual docking thrusters had been disconnected from the ship’s control network, along with all of the other units of the drive system. She was working with handmade cold-firing rockets, installed by Chief Leen’s machine shop crew. Her control of the vessel was nowhere near as accurate as she would have had with a more precise propulsion system.

  Plus, she was working without an onboard intelligence engine. She had none of the usual instrumentation and automatic guidance circuitry. Her approach would be a process of correction and countercorrection all the way in. In other words, she was “parking by ear,” aiming at the docking harness and listening for the crunch.

  Korie watched her from the Bridge. Her small display showed a red dot inside a green circle. Her job was to keep it centered. She worked in a steady rhythm. First she checked the schematic display on her board, then the approach program on her clipboard. Then she either waited or made an adjustment. She kept her burns short and soft. Then she checked her displays again. She waited and watched. Occasionally, she would report, “Confidence is high.” Or, “In the channel.”

  Korie licked his lips. They were dry. His throat was dry. He took a sip of water and waited.

  “One minute,” reported Tor. A lifetime later, she said, “Thirty seconds.”

  Somewhere they had crossed an invisible line. It was too late to abort. Whatever was going to happen when they docked was now inevitable. Korie had often brooded about this invisible “point of inevitability.” It bothered him. After studying all of the lessons of the zyne, about possibility being the author of choice, and choice being necessary for freedom, the moment when choice actually disappeared from the situation unnerved him more than ever now. It was a loss of control. All he could do now was ride it in and hope he hadn’t missed anything—

  “Fifteen seconds.... Ten . . . Five . . .”

  Something behind him went quietly clunk. He could feel it locking into place. They were docked.

  “Hello, Dolly,” Korie whispered to himself.

  Nothing happened.

  He waited.

  They all waited.

  He looked to Brik. Brik looked back. Expressionless.

  Tor switched off her board. She replaced it on the deck. She swiveled around in her chair. She gave Korie a thumbs-up sign and a grin.

  Korie wished he could rub his nose. He didn’t like this. It was too quiet. He tapped the arm of his chair nervously. How long do we have to wait?

  He shook his head. This wasn’t good. Something—anything—should have happened. Nothing.

  He wasn’t so arrogant as to believe they had so thoroughly confused the imp that it had been unable to sabotage the docking. No. The imp had known they were going to try docking manually. It had opaqued the observation port, forcing them to use the external emergency net. Therefore, the net was compromised. Therefore, something in that net was waiting for the docking confirmation. Therefore... Therefore. Therefore. Korie’s mind chased the thought around. What had he missed? What else was connected to the external emergency net? Had he made a fatal error here? Had they detoxed the external network too well?

  And then, Hodel spoke. “All right, there it is. A coded signal. It’s using the entire ship as a broadcast antenna. Wait a minute, I’m tracking it. Wait a minute . . .” Hodel was on the hull of the ship with a hand-built Systems Analysis board. On the first six detox operations, Leen’s crew had routinely replaced the signal monitors at every node of the network. It was easier to replace them than to test them in place. On the last detox, the crew had replaced the signal monitors again . . . but these latest units were reporting directly to Hodel’s board. Hodel was silent a moment more, then he said angrily, “Albert Flaming Einstein on Heisenberg’s cross! I’ll be skeltered!”

  Korie grabbed his code list. Albert Einstein—the signal scrubbers! The signal was entering the network through the aft signal scrubbers! All over the ship now, individual detox crews would be leaping toward their assigned targets; but one crew knew that they were handling a live bomb. Candleman and Hatano. If everything was going according to plan, some of the crews were even detaching themselves from their local area networks. The imp would have no way of knowing where they were.

  Korie studied his watch. There would have been no way to drill this operation. Still, they had projected less than five minutes of actual broadcast time before the transmitter was found a
nd disabled. The seconds ticked voraciously into the past. Korie imagined an expanding sphere of radio noise. It didn’t matter what the signal said. Its presence was beacon enough. How far would it travel before it was intercepted by a Morthan probe? Three light days? Six? Twelve? How big was the time window? How long would it scream, “Here! Over here! Stardock! Here it is!”

  Quilla Delta said quietly, “Be vewy vewy quiet. We’re hunting wabbit.”

  Korie looked at his watch. Three minutes. “Double bonus for Candleman and Hatano,” he said without thinking. He glanced at the code sheet. The transmitter had been located, a destruction button had been placed on the interconnect, and the crew was now backing out to a safe distance.

  There was a faint thump transmitted through the keel of the ship. “It is now duck season,” said the Quilla.

  Korie grunted. The destruct button had been triggered. The connection to the net had been broken. The transmitter had then exploded violently. Exactly as they had expected it to.

  “Hodel?” he asked.

  “Signal is still going out,” Hodel reported grimly. “It’s singing like a flaming princess.”

  Flaming princess. Beta singularity harness. Damn. They were going to lose part of the singularity cage. Leen was prepared for it, but still—

  Quilla Delta reported, “Ye Gods and little fishes.”

  Korie looked to his watch. Leen had trained his crew well.

  Another thump. “Bouillabaise,” said Quilla Delta.

  “Hodel?”

  “Loud and clear. This is not my idea of a good time!”

  Good time. The starboat harness. Cappy and MacHeath would be up there by now. Thump.

  “Are we having fun yet?” asked Quilla Delta.

  “Hodel?”

  “What are you guys doing?” he replied. “Singing along with it? ‘We all live in a yellow submarine!’” Engine room. Singularity harness Gamma. Dammit. Thump. Quilla Delta annotated, “She came in through the bathroom window.” Korie wondered if Leen was already checking the Alpha harness.

  The imp had never been spotted in the engine room. It couldn’t have had access to the harnesses. Of course not, there was always a crew on watch around the singularity containment. The imp would have had to have had access to the replacement parts. Which was exactly what Korie had hoped. “Helter skelter,” he said to the Quilla.

  “We copy,” she replied.

  “Hodel?”

  “I’m an old man, I’m gonna die soon, I have a right to be cranky.”

  Bingo! The engine room again! They were getting closer. The imp had been frustrated by their security measures. It had retreated to the main module of the ship and had concentrated all of its operations there. Exactly as they had guessed. Thump. Another transmitter explosion. He was afraid to think how bad the damage was going to be. Quilla Delta reported, “Isn’t it amazing how time flies when you’re having fun?”

  Korie put his finger on the next phrase on the code sheet. Sure enough, Hodel reported, “Yngvi is a louse.” And a little bit after that, “Ward, I’m worried about the Beaver.” Korie was actually starting to feel pride in the speed of the Black Hole Gang when Hodel said, “I tawt I taw a putty-tat . . .”

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  And finally... Hodel reported with a sigh, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” And in the clear, he added, “The system is silent!”

  Korie was too pleased to be annoyed with the breach.

  “It’s over . . .?” asked Tor.

  “Not yet,” said Brik.

  “Stand by,” said Korie, in the clear. Waiting. “Helter Skelter?” he asked the Quilla. She shook her head. Nothing yet.

  Korie realized his whole body had gone tense and rigid. He was cramped forward. He forced himself to straighten out, leaning back in his chair. He took a deep breath. They weren’t half done yet. He had to pace himself.

  “Mister Korie?”

  He opened his eyes. It was Jonesy.

  “What do all these code phrases mean?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think they mean anything at all. HARLIE generated over ten thousand one-time code pads. They’re probably all just nonsense phrases.”

  “Oh,” said Jonesy. He turned back to his work station.

  And then, abruptly—Quilla Delta spoke. “Elvis has left the building,” she said.

  That’s when the rest of the traps went off.

  Disaster

  He couldn’t hear it. He felt it.

  He had his hand on the railing, when he felt a sudden sharp vibration. He recognized it, but—filtered through the soundlessness of space, filtered through the hull of the ship—it took him a moment. Then he realized. Oh my God, the missiles—!!

  There came two more thumps, and then a fourth and final one. He was already pulling a new transceiver pack out of his gear belt. These had been specially coded. They didn’t use any single channel, but bounced around random channels several thousand times a second.

  Korie caught Quilla Delta’s eye and held up the transceiver so she could see it, then clipped it into his suit harness. “Status reports. Now!” he shouted, not waiting to hear who was online. He waited impatiently. “Come on, you bloody bastards. Come on. Status reports. Now! Leen?”

  “All right, it’s like we figured. The damn missiles have launched themselves. The trigger was the docking confirmation—”

  “Where are they now? Goldberg?”

  “They’re drifting. They launched, but didn’t fire. No hyperstate plugs. We gave those to the Houston with the warheads. We’ve got good tracks on all the birds. They’re drifting, they won’t go far. We’re sending out the retriever teams.”

  “What about the other four?”

  “As near as we can tell, they’re moribund. We’re checking now.”

  “Well, be careful. No telling what else the imp has done. Hodel?”

  “Sir?”

  “How soon can we bring HARLIE back online?”

  “Six hours.”

  “No good. Okay, power up the autonomics, run the idiot code. Deflex, disrupt, skelter, and remix. Viricide everything. You know the drill.”

  Goldberg again. “Sir? We’ve got disruptor activity.”

  “I thought we pulled those out of the circuit.”

  “Yes, sir. We did. We’re still getting power directly from the portside fuel cells to the aft disruptors.”

  “Unplug them.”

  “We have, sir. They’re still charging.”

  “How long till full charge?”

  “Four minutes.”

  “If you can’t abort, blow them.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Those things aren’t going to go off politely. Discharge them or jettison them.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Leen?”

  “Here.”

  “The hole?”

  “Nothing in it that we didn’t put there.”

  “You’ve lost your singularity control, Chief. How do you know the imp hasn’t diddled your grapplers?”

  “The grapplers have all been pulled out of their harnesses. Actually blasted out. They’re on their way to the machine shop already.”

  “What about disruptor charges?”

  “We’re scanning now. I’ve got the hole in an isolation bottle. It can’t be inverted.”

  “Is the bottle secure?”

  “We didn’t build it until after we opened the ship to space. We detoxed as we built. It’s secure.”

  “You built a passive bottle?”

  “I only look stupid, Commander—”

  “Sorry, Chief. I just—”

  “I know. You’re feeling guilty because you sacrificed my engine room. Now you’re trying to make up for it. Do me a favor, Mr. Korie?”

  “Chief?”

  “Trust my judgment?”

  “Right. Sorry. Thanks. Out.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Korie stopped himself. He wanted to run his hands through his
hair and rub his eyes. But the starsuit prevented that. Instead, he took a breath. And another. And a third deep breath. Finally, he reseated himself in his chair—he hadn’t noticed when he’d come floating out—and secured the safety harness. He forced himself to shut up for a moment. He’d trained this crew. They knew what to do. It was time to stop jiggling their elbows.

  He forced himself to sit back. He waited for the rest of the status reports to come in.

  He looked around, Brik was already beside him; he hadn’t even noticed when the big Morthan had returned. How long had he been waiting there?

  “I don’t suppose anyone has found the imp?”

  Brik shook his head.

  “All right. Secure the hatches. Forget about repressurizing. We can’t risk it. Let’s get the section heads up here. We need to scramble.”

  Brik nodded and began relaying orders.

  Something shuddered. They felt the vibration through the skeleton of the ship. Korie looked to Brik—

  A Hole in the World

  Armstrong saw the flash before he felt the shockwave. In fact, he never felt the shockwave at all. Suddenly, a stanchion leapt up and slammed him across the chest. He grunted involuntarily; the stanchion swam away. Everything was red. He couldn’t hear. Armstrong grabbed instinctively for something. He was tumbling. He saw stars swirling past. He caught one arm—almost accidentally—on a twisted bar of metal. He hung on, blinking, still not certain what had happened or where he was or what he had been doing a moment before. Something had exploded—

  His eyes focused. There was a hole in the world. There were stars on the other side of the hole. A starsuited figure was hung up on the jagged edge of the hole. His face was blue. Lambda. He was twisting and turning. In a moment, he would work loose and plunge out the hole. Armstrong was sure of it.

  Armstrong struggled forward; he pulled at Lambda’s leg, pulled him away from the hole in the world. Lambda’s suit was ripped. Armstrong swung him around. His mouthpiece was secure though—but the air bottles were punctured. Had the safety seals closed? Yes!