by Allen Steele
Susan was there, too. Once again, I found myself surprised by just how quickly my little girl had grown up. Coyote’s long years had that effect on those of us who’d been born on Earth; although you eventually became used to the fact that a single summer lasted nine months by the Gregorian calendar, it was more difficult to accept that a child could age three years between one winter and the next. I tried not to start crying again as we gave each other a hug, and although she and her father hadn’t been on good terms lately, they managed to put aside their differences long enough for a final embrace.
By then, Captain Tereshkova was becoming impatient. We had a narrow launch window to meet if we wanted to rendezvous with the starbridge without burning more fuel than necessary. Our luggage had already been loaded aboard the skiff; looking up at the forward windows, I could see Gabriel Pacino seated in the cockpit, preparing the Isabella for liftoff. So I nudged Carlos’s elbow, and he finished his conversation with Tomas Conseco, his chief of staff: pretty much politics-as-usual, nothing that he and Fred couldn’t handle while we were away. A last round of good-byes and good-lucks, and then Carlos, Chris, and I walked up the ramp.
The skiff’s cabin was small, just large enough to seat the five of us. My hands trembled as I fastened the seat harness around me, and I had to take a deep breath as Pacino powered up the engines. Through the starboard porthole, I could see townspeople backing away from the Isabella. I caught one last glimpse of Susan, standing next to Marie and her kids. They’d raised their hands to wave farewell, and I was about to do the same when there was a dull roar, and suddenly the craft rose from the ground.
Liftoff was rougher than I expected. Pacino was a good pilot, and after a minute or so the turbulence eased off, once we got above the clouds. I thought I was accustomed to spaceflight, but as soon as the Isabella cleared the atmosphere the bottom fell out of my stomach. Fortunately, Carlos saw it coming; he had a paper bag ready for me, and into it went the hearty breakfast I’d unwisely eaten earlier that morning. Yet my husband didn’t get sick, and when I looked over at Chris, he was calmly gazing out the porthole. So much for experience.
My guts finally settled down, though, and after a few minutes I was able to raise my head and peer out the window. We weren’t on a low-orbit trajectory, but instead were headed for the recently completed starbridge, established in trojan orbit between Coyote and Bear. So it wasn’t Coyote that I saw through the cockpit windows, but Bear itself. Carlos, Chris, or I hadn’t seen 47 Ursae Majoris-B from this perspective since we’d been aboard the Alabama; we watched in silence as the gas-giant slowly grew in size, its blue cloud-bands and silver rings taking on hues that couldn’t be seen from the ground.
It took ten hours to reach the starbridge. Long enough to take a nap, review my notes, chat with the others, even feel a little hungry even though I decided not to put any more food in my stomach. The cabin was cramped, so we didn’t unfasten our straps unless it was absolutely necessary, and then only to visit the head. Carlos and I were discussing the terms of the trade proposal when Gabriel announced that we were on primary approach.
Starbridge Coyote consisted of two independent components, both cannibalized from what had once been the EASS Columbus. The ship’s primary hull was now Station B, otherwise known as the Gatehouse: a long, spindle-shaped structure, over four hundred feet long, which used to be the starship’s payload and service modules and now served as a command platform. It was positioned about twenty miles from Station A, which was the starbridge itself: a thick ring resembling a bicycle tire a hundred and thirty feet in diameter, reassembled from sections of the torus that had once contained Columbus’s diametric drive.
I don’t understand the physics of hyperspace travel, so I won’t try to explain how it worked, lest to say that the starbridge created a temporary wormhole between 47 Ursae Majoris-B and Earth by locating and isolating a point of singularity within the quantum foam of Bear’s gravity well, then enlarging it to form the hole’s mouth. When another starbridge near Earth did the same thing at the same time, a tunnel through hyperspace was created. Eureka: faster-than-light travel.
Jonas Whittaker, the physicist who’d invented the starbridge, was aboard the Gatehouse; he’d flown up last week to oversee its final test phase, which included opening it just long enough to launch a probe into hyperspace. The probe successfully traversed the wormhole; seconds after disappearing from our side of the junction, it beamed back a radio signal, indicating its safe arrival in cislunar space near the Moon. Two days later, the test was repeated, this time with an identical probe launched from Starbridge Earth; once again, it arrived intact. And during each test, brief radio messages had been exchanged; for the first time since humankind arrived in the 47 Ursae Majoris system, people on Earth directly heard from those who’d settled Coyote.
So we didn’t need a massive starship to reach Earth; our little skiff was sufficient to make the journey. Nonetheless, it was pretty tense aboard the Isabella as it assumed a parking orbit five miles from the starbridge. Through the cockpit windows, we could see it as a small silver ring among the stars, its navigation beacons flashing red and blue. A brief exchange between Ana and the Gatehouse team, then Gabriel entered commands into the comp that slaved the skiff’s onboard guidance systems to the Gatehouse AI. A final rundown of the prelaunch checklist, then we commenced final countdown for what was being called “hyperspace insertion maneuver.”
It took fifteen minutes for the starbridge to power up. At T-minus two minutes, Ana looked back at us to make sure we’d securely fastened our harnesses; she also warned us not to look directly at the starbridge as we went through. At T-minus one minute, the Gatehouse informed the Isabella that they’d received telemetry from Starbridge Earth, confirming that the starbridge on the other side of the wormhole had been successfully activated. At T-minus forty-five seconds, the Isabella fired its aft thrusters and began moving toward the ring. And at T-minus thirty seconds, I took Carlos’s hand in mine and silently began to pray.
I forgot to look away, so the flash nearly blinded me: starlight from the other side of the galaxy, defocused as it entered the mouth of the wormhole, came out on our side like a silent nuclear blast. Dazzled, I yelped as I whipped my left hand in front of my face; even with my eyes tightly shut, my retinas retained a black-on-white negative afterimage of the flash.
By then, though, that was the least of my worries. Everything around me shook violently, and then the craft turned upside down, spiraling around its axial center as if caught in a maelstrom. An invisible hand pushed me back against my seat. Intellectually, I knew what was happening—the Isabella had passed the wormhole’s event horizon and now was plummeting headlong through the hyperspace tunnel created by the two starbridges—yet in the deepest, most atavistic corner of my little monkey-mind, I knew that I was about to die.
I may have screamed. I can’t remember. All I knew was that I hoped death would come quickly, so that I wouldn’t suffer much.
Then there was another hard lurch, and suddenly I was pitched forward against the shoulder straps, hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs. Gasping for air, I forced myself to breathe. For a few seconds, everything continued to swirl, then I felt a few quick jolts as the skiff’s maneuvering thrusters automatically fired to stabilize our trajectory, and gradually everything began to settle down.
Opening my eyes, I took stock of the situation. Carlos had fainted; his hand still loosely held my own, yet his head lolled back against his seat, and saliva floated upward from his agape mouth. On the other side of the aisle, Chris clenched his mouth as he fumbled for the relief bag beneath his seat; he barely got it to his face before he vomited. Pacino’s hands were unsteady as he reached forward to grasp the control yoke; Tereshkova’s dark hair was sweat-matted against her forehead and the nape of her neck, yet she managed to touch the wand of her headset and murmur something in Russian.
Through the cockpit windows, I saw stars amid the darkness of space. They didn’t seem any different from th
ose I’d seen only a few seconds earlier; indeed, for a moment I wondered if the attempt had somehow failed, and we’d returned to where we had started. But then I turned my eyes toward the porthole next to my seat, and caught sight of something I hadn’t seen since I was fourteen years old…
Earth.
A marble in the cosmos, a couple hundred thousand miles away: one-third covered by darkness, the rest bathed by the sun. Blue oceans, green continents, white polar icecaps, with everything masked here and there by thin clouds. A world so familiar, and yet so alien.
We’d made it. We’d left home, only to come…home.
Nearly as soon as Jonas Whittaker told us that it was possible to reach Earth via hyperspace, we’d begun to make preparations for this trip. True, there were quite a few who were reluctant to have anything to do with our home world; the United Republic of America may have long since collapsed, but the memory of the Union occupation was still fresh for everyone older than seven Coyote years, and some believed that nothing good could come of ending our isolation. During the course of public hearings before the Colonial Council, though, it became clear that this was a minority opinion; a large majority believed that the benefits of resuming contact with Earth outweighed the potential risks.
They had a point. Much of the high-tech equipment left behind by the Union was getting old; weardown had become a common problem as comps failed, machines broke down, and precision tools suffered metal fatigue. We’d learned how to get by through swapping parts or fashioning crude substitutes, but every incident in which a gyro failed to take off or a memory cell crashed was a bitter reminder that even frontier ingenuity had its limits. It wasn’t hard to foresee a time, only a generation or two in the future, when our grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be struggling along with bone knives and pieces of flint, while the devices once used by their ancestors rusted away in farm fields.
So while engineers and technicians aboard the Columbus began building the starbridge, an executive committee convened to discuss the means by which the Coyote Federation could establish peaceful relations with the governments of Earth. In the end, a draft set of protocols was decided upon, and the members of a diplomatic envoy were selected to undertake the first voyage to Earth.
To no one’s surprise, Carlos was tapped to lead the mission. As president, it was only natural that he should represent the colonies; because he’d also once been an explorer, he had the advantage of being able to describe the new world from the perspective of someone who’d seen it as few others had. It took a bit more debate, though, before he managed to convince the committee that I should join him. Several members suspected Carlos was indulging in nepotism by wanting to bring along his wife; they preferred to send a Council member instead. However, Carlos argued that since I myself had once belonged to the Council, I’d be able to represent its interests. And besides, Jonas had warned us that the first flight would doubtless be rough. While most of the Council members were either too old or too inexperienced, both Carlos and I were veterans of the original Alabama party, yet still young enough to endure a hyperspace jaunt.
It took a lot more persuasion before the committee decided that Chris Levin should be the third person on our team. Nearly every member wanted to be part of the mission, but what we needed more than another politician was a good right-hand man. Although Ana Tereshkova assured Carlos and me that the European Alliance would treat us as honored guests, we weren’t ready to take her word at face value. So while Chris was officially our aide, the fact of the matter was that he was really our bodyguard. He and Carlos may have once had their differences, with me being the girl in the middle, but that was a long time ago; since then, he’d become a trusted friend, and I was glad to have him watching our backs.
So there were the three of us, sitting in the passenger seats of the Isabella, quietly watching as Pacino maneuvered the skiff away from the starbridge. Starbridge Earth was positioned at L4, a Lagrange point in a halo orbit near the Moon, about a quarter of a million miles from Earth. Not far away, we could see a small cruciform-shaped space station; at first I thought we were headed for the Gatehouse, but when Ana finished her conversation on the comlink, she said something in Russian to Gabriel. He gave her a questioning look, then shrugged and began entering coordinates into the keyboard.
“We’ve been instructed to proceed to Highgate,” she said, turning to us and speaking in English. “That’s the station at L1, in high orbit above the Moon.”
“I’ve heard of it.” Carlos raised an eyebrow. “But isn’t it controlled by the Union?”
“It was when we left. Apparently it’s come under international control since then.” She glanced at Gabriel. “I’m not sure what the situation is, but the person with whom I spoke is an Alliance officer, and he insists that we rendezvous with Highgate. A ship will meet us halfway and escort us in.”
“If he insists…” Gabriel finished punching in the new coordinates, then engaged the autopilot. The aft and starboard thrusters fired; Earth glided away from our windows, and we found ourselves pointed in the direction of the Moon. “I would’ve thought that we’d head straight for Earth and dock with the New Guinea space elevator instead.”
“I asked about that.” Ana paused. “I was told that it no longer exists.”
Gabriel’s eyes widened. “For God’s sake, what happened?”
“No idea. It wasn’t explained to me.” Ana looked back at us again. “It seems that much has changed since we were last here.”
Carlos nodded silently, and Chris shifted uneasily in his seat. Nearly three centuries had passed since the three of us had left Earth, yet it’d been almost fifty years since Columbus’s departure. I knew that the EA had built a beanstalk in New Guinea, just as the WHU had erected one of its own in Ecuador; if the New Guinea space elevator was gone, then that left only the one operated by the Union…and there was no way an Alliance ship was going to dock there.
Ana turned away from us again, her expression pensive as she gazed through the cockpit windows. I’d never warmed to her very much, although she and Carlos had become friends during their trip together to Barren Isle the previous month. To be truthful, it was probably because my husband had established a relationship with a younger woman—however cordial it might be—that I instinctively distrusted her. Long-married couples are apt to suspect one another of having affairs, but Carlos and I had crossed that point many years before. All the same, though, something had happened during the week they’d spent together that my husband still wouldn’t tell me about. Maybe he hadn’t slept with Ana—and Barry, who’d also been on the boat with them, had positively sworn that he had not—yet nonetheless…
Even so, I couldn’t help but feel a certain sympathy for Captain Tereshkova. When she’d left home, everything had been a certain way; deep in her heart, she’d probably believed that the world would remain unchanged upon her return. I’d received that same sort of shock when the Glorious Destiny had arrived at Coyote; now it was her turn to find out otherwise.
Yet she wouldn’t be alone. Many more surprises awaited us.
It was a long ride to Highgate. Once again, I tried to kill time by taking a nap, even though I wasn’t tired at all; I just shut my eyes for a while and tried to ignore my sense of unease. At some point, I must have actually dozed off; when I woke up, I looked out the window and saw a small, cylindrical vehicle keeping pace with the Isabella off our starboard side. About half the size of the skiff, the tricolor flag of the European Alliance painted on its forward hull, it looked somewhat like a spark plug; harmless, until I noticed the missile rack protruding from its starboard side. An armed spacecraft: not the most comforting introduction to the twenty-fourth century.
But it was Highgate itself that threw everyone for a loop. I’d seen pictures of the original station, from the datafiches brought to Coyote by the Columbus. It had been impressive then, yet sometime during the last half century it’d been replaced by something far larger. Almost three miles in diam
eter, it vaguely resembled an enormous fan, with a saucer-shaped hub and three giant spheres at the ends of long booms that telescoped out from the hub at equilateral distances. Two drum-shaped modules rose from the top and bottom halves of the hub; the spheres were opaque, but light gleamed from hundreds of portholes within the hub and cylinders. Along the curved sides of the spheres were vast hatches; as the skiff drew closer, I peered inside one, and caught a glimpse of a streamlined spacecraft floating within a skeletal dry dock.
Many years ago, when I’d accompanied Captain Lee to the Glorious Destiny after it had arrived at Coyote, I’d been stunned by the sight of a vessel that dwarfed the Alabama. Yet Highgate made even Union starships seem like toys by comparison. Back home, people considered the Garcia Narrows Bridge a major feat of engineering, yet even James Alonzo Garcia would have been awestruck by the size of this thing.
I wasn’t the only one who was amazed. Gabriel could barely keep his attention on the controls, and Ana was so shocked that she had to ask the traffic controller twice where the Isabella was supposed to dock. As it turned out, Alpha Dock was the same sphere where I’d seen the ship during our first flyby. Red and blue beacons flashed on either side of a small-craft hatch, and the escort craft peeled away as we slowly entered the sphere. A tethered figure in a hardsuit waved luminescent batons above his head as he guided us toward a small docking cradle; Pacino brought the Isabella to a halt, and there was a sudden thump as the cradle closed around the skiff.
Ana slowly let out her breath, then cupped a hand around her headset and listened intently. “We’re to disembark through the top hatch,” she said after a moment. “A gangway is being extended.” Then she frowned as she listened further. “I don’t believe this,” she murmured. “We’re going to be put in quarantine until we pass sterilization procedures.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Nothing new here. I had to put up with much the same when I went aboard the Destiny.” Gabriel gave me a dark look, and I shrugged. “Can’t blame ’em for being careful. They don’t know what sort of cooties we might be carrying.”