by Nancy Kress
Bad words were shouted from the bridge, a very lot of very bad words. Mr. Stubbins. Colin didn’t know what to do. Then Mr. Stubbins said, “I’m lifting,” and Dr. Taunton yelled, “No!” and Grandma grabbed Colin and he screamed, too, because all the grown-ups were so scared.
The spaceship made different, new noises, coming to life.
* * *
Dear God, the Venture was taking off.
Marianne grabbed Colin, who stood with his jeans around his ankles, pissing into a pipeless toilet. Stubbins cursed from the bridge, loud raspy noises as if the very words choked his throat. Judy yelled something—
Judy. What had Judy said, months ago? “A very real fact—no one knows what will happen the day we finish the ship and press the button to start her.”
But nothing seemed to be happening, not even motion. No press of gees on Marianne’s body, no tilt to the floor, nothing to say the ship was lifting except the clanging shut of the airlock and shuttle bay doors and the two images on the wall screen, now split between the twisted face of the ground officer and the land falling rapidly, silently away beneath them.
“My pants!” Colin cried. “Let me go!”
“Twenty, nineteen, eighteen—” said the ground officer.
An aerial view of the building site, then the no-man’s land around it, then the perimeter fence and guard towers.
“Grandma, my pants!”
“Thirteen, twelve, eleven—”
Hills and farmlands coming into view. Frightened cows raced away from the thing in the sky.
Marianne released Colin, who yanked up his jeans. On the bridge Stubbins still shrieked and Judy matched him in volume. The door to the storage bay flung open and a man stumbled out, his face ashen. “Jonah—”
“Seven, six, five—”
Marianne threw Colin into one of the seats—as if that would help anything! The ashen-faced man, she knew him, from somewhere.… “No one knows what will happen…” Incoming incoming.…
“Three, two—”
Far below them, something streaked white across the landscape, and then the place where the Venture had been exploded into light and flame, almost immediately obscured by thick smoke. Marianne forced her eyes to stay open, to watch … no mushroom cloud. The weapon had not been nuclear. But how much of the site had been taken out? Jason and Luke—
She dashed to the bridge. The ship rose steadily, light as a soap bubble. Stubbins stood in the middle of the bridge, meaty hands gripping the back of the captain’s chair, with Judy and Eric Wilshire in the two side chairs facing consoles, studying data displays just as if they knew what they were doing. Stubbins said, “How bad?”
The ground officer’s face, pupils dilated as if on drugs, said, “A direct hit, probably from a high-explosive Scud. Hard to see through the smoke but it seems … two buildings severely damaged. Casualties unknown. Havers, come in, Havers … Johnson … Olvera…”
But Wilshire, even paler than the man in the main cabin, said desperately, “Mr. Stubbins! What—”
“Stop the ship!” Stubbins roared. And then: “Do you know how to stop the ship?”
“No one knows what will happen—”
The ship stopped.
Marianne clutched at something, anything, to keep herself upright. Her hand found the back of Judy’s chair. There was no lurch beneath her feet, no sound of grinding engines. The ship simply stopped; again her dazed mind thought of a soap bubble, gently hovering. A soap bubble with perfect Terran gravity inside it.… My God, what forces must be contained here! How had human engineers built this?
Below, in panoramic sweep and brilliant Technicolor, lay Pennsylvania as it might be seen from a jet liner thirty thousand feet up. Life-support machinery must have switched on somewhere; there was warmth and oxygen and light.
Stubbins began to laugh.
The sound was shocking, unreal—more unreal even than the alien ship around them. “We did it!” he cried. “We fucking did it!”
Marianne felt something clutch her legs. Colin. She found her voice, although it didn’t sound like hers. “Jonah—the children? On the ground?”
Stubbins didn’t hear her. She had seen faces like that in medieval paintings, on stained-glass windows. His broad features and small eyes shone, transfigured with unholy joy.
“Jonah! The children!”
She might as well have spoken to the bulkhead. But Judy, who’d been talking in low, rapid tones to unseen people on the ground, said, “The kids were nowhere near the impact, Marianne. Jonah, NASA codes coming in.”
Stubbins took her seat. Judy grabbed Marianne and dragged her off the bridge, Colin still clinging to her. “You don’t belong here. Classified. They don’t need me in there. Kid, you all right?”
Colin nodded. The man who’d burst out of the storage bay stood uncertainly beside a crate. Judy said, “Who the fuck are you?”
“I know who he is,” Marianne said because, all at once, she did. “Wolski. Samuel Wolski, the geneticist. You did that work on HFRS infecting Mus!”
Judy started back toward the bridge but stopped as if shot when Marianne said, “The infected mice. They’re aboard, aren’t they? To release on World.”
Wolski, cowering, moved behind the crate, as if Marianne might attack him. Every organ in her body turned to mush. She’d been right, then—Stubbins had weaponized mice and was prepared to deliberately cause a plague on World if he thought it might help him get what he wanted. And now the Venture had lifted and was on its way to … oh, God, was the ship steerable? Or was its alien technology preset on one route, a sort of interstellar trolley on fixed and unalterable tracks?
Judy exploded, “Infected mice? Here?”
“Judy,” Marianne managed to get out, “is the Venture—”
But Judy had turned away. She had heard, as Marianne had not, the shouting on the bridge, even through the thick metal door. Judy flung it open and bolted back to the bridge.
Marianne hesitated, then grabbed Colin and dragged him with her. She wouldn’t leave him with Wolski. And if the Venture was about to self-destruct, or vanish into some other dimension, or plummet to Earth, she wanted to be holding Colin when it happened.
The Venture did none of these things. The bridge had the focused air of a high-stakes poker game, the shouting suddenly over. Stubbins sat in the captain’s chair, facing a screen showing a room full of people in uniform. Wilshire occupied the second chair, Judy the third.
“No,” Stubbins said, quietly. Yet the word had the force of an avalanche. He touched something and the room full of uniformed men and women, suddenly moving very fast and with faces rigid with anger, all disappeared. Stubbins’s ground officer reappeared.
“Confirmed, Jonah. I’ll put it on tracking.”
The central screen in front of the captain’s chair split into two, with the officer on one side and a graphic on the other. An arc of the Earth, looking like a blue marble—had the Venture resumed flight? Marianne had felt nothing. Beside the arc were two dots, one blue and one green, moving toward each other.
Judy made a low sound that Marianne had never heard anyone make.
Marianne’s mind raced. Human communications systems on the Venture—and what else? As long as the drive machinery and life support and other technical aspects of the Deneb plans weren’t altered, anything could be added to the ship. Military tracking systems? Military weapons? Yes, of course. If homegrown terrorist groups could obtain Russian Scuds, what couldn’t Jonah Stubbins obtain on the international black market?
Or was it the black market? Had the US Army … No. That room full of angry soldiers had not approved of whatever Stubbins was up to now.
“Judy,” Marianne said, because it was clear that no one else would answer her, “what are those blue and green dots?”
Judy didn’t reply. She was rapidly typing on a keyboard and examining data brought up on her screen. But Stubbins heard Marianne and he said, still in that deadly voice, “Get off the bridge. Now.�
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Marianne stayed where she was. But she said to Colin, “Go back to your seat and stay there. Do you hear me?”
At her tone, he stuck out his lip, but he went. No time now to worry about Wolski.
“You, too,” Stubbins said, without turning around. Marianne didn’t move. Judy suddenly sank into her chair and her head snapped back as if she’d taken a blow, but a moment later she was back keying in commands.
“Stone!” Stubbins bellowed.
The bodyguard moved toward Marianne. Effortlessly, as if she were Colin, he picked her up and carried her, flailing pointlessly, to the door. He shoved her through and slammed the door to the bridge. A second later she heard the lock click.
Colin cringed in his seat, looking very small. Marianne, scarcely knowing what she was doing, went to him and he crawled onto her lap. Wolski had disappeared. Colin began to talk, but she didn’t hear him.
She had caught a snatch of Wilshire’s conversation with the tracking station on the ground. She knew what the two moving dots on the screen, so small beside Earth, were. One was the Venture. The other was the Russian ship Mest’.
The Revenge.
* * *
Colin was scared. Nobody was acting right. It should have been thrilling to be up on the ship out in space—especially since Jason and Luke and Ava didn’t get to go, only him—but it wasn’t. Grandma was holding him too tight and that big man who was always with Mr. Stubbins had locked them out of the bridge and Colin had peed in a toilet with no pipes so that he couldn’t even flush his pee away. It was just sitting in there for anybody to see because there was no door on the bathroom.
And the big wall screen had nothing on it to look at.
But at least that changed. Somebody on the bridge must have done something because all at once a picture of Earth—Colin was proud that he knew what it was—came onto the screen, with two dots moving near it.
“Grandma, is that a video game? Can I play? Where’s the controller?”
Grandma didn’t answer. A second later sound got added to the picture, but it was just Aunt Judy and Mr. Stubbins and that other guy on the bridge. Aunt Judy whispered, “Marianne, one-way comm,” and then there was only the other two grown-ups, saying things Colin didn’t understand.
But maybe Grandma did, because she got even weirder. She went all stiff, like the mice that had died, and for a horrible minute Colin was afraid that Grandma was dying, too. But she wasn’t, so he said again, “Where’s the controller? Can I—”
“Be quiet,” she said, so mean that Colin was shocked. Grandma was never mean to him! Nothing was right!
He jumped off her lap. She said to him, “Sit down and don’t say anything.” It was her obey-me-or-else voice, so he did. But he picked a seat behind her so that when she wasn’t looking he could leave the room and go hide again. That would show her!
Tears prickled his eyes. He hated everything.
After a moment he got up and moved—carefully, soundlessly—toward the storage bay. He could hear the mice someplace in there. Right now, mice were nicer than Grandma. Quietly, Colin opened the door, slipped through, and closed it behind him.
* * *
Judy had routed audio-visuals to the screen in the main cabin. Marianne listened, and looked, and found she could barely breathe.
The Mest’ had lifted because the Venture did. To the Russians, it must look as if the Venture was going to beat them to World. Or were they afraid of some other kind of attack that these ships were capable of but ordinary weapons were not?
She knew nothing about weapons, ordinary or alien. But Noah and Ambassador Smith had both told her that the Denebs were peaceful, did not engage in warfare. Had Noah been deceived and Smith lying? Or had Stubbins’s engineers, as well as those on the Mest’, discovered ways to use the drive machinery as a weapon? Dark energy, Judy had told her. Quantum entanglement.
No. There was no reason for this much paranoia. The Venture had lifted because of the Scud, and the Mest’ lifted because the Venture had. In a moment the Venture would set back down in Pennsylvania, and the Mest’ would set back down at Vostochny because even if vengeance was the Russians’ motive for building their ship, they weren’t any more ready for an interstellar voyage than Stubbins was. The UN would be working on this mess right now. Vihaan Desai was no longer Secretary-General, but the newly chosen Lucas Rasmussen of Denmark was a man of peace. In just a moment the Venture would return to Earth … dear Lord please let Wilshire know how to actually control this thing.…
Stubbins’s voice said over the open channel, “Eric, get close enough to fire.”
“Yes, sir,” Eric said.
Marianne’s throat closed so suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Fire? Fire what? Why?
“How long?” Stubbins said.
“Assuming they don’t return to Vostochny—”
“They won’t,” Stubbins said grimly. “Not until we do. They don’t want us warning the Denebs what’s coming. Those Russky sons of bitches aren’t going to destroy my trade partners, much less my ship. We’ll get them first. Maneuver into firing range.”
“We don’t know the range of anything they might—”
“Do it!”
“Yes, sir.”
Breath whooshed back into Marianne’s lungs. Why didn’t Judy object?
Then she knew. Judy had opened the channel so Marianne could hear all this. She had not objected because she did not want to be thrown off the bridge and have it locked behind her. Judy’s paranoia had paid off—she suspected this might be Stubbins’s course of action. And now she and Marianne would have to stop it.
Three men on the bridge, two of them big, Stone a trained fighter. Wolski somewhere aft. The chances of she and Judy—middle-aged, unathletic, female—overpowering the men was nil. What did Judy expect her to do? Judy was the one on the bridge! But over and over Judy had told her “I’m a physicist, not an engineer.” Marianne had no idea of how well Judy understood the human equipment Stubbins had installed on the ship, or what Judy could or could not do with the Venture. And Marianne had far less understanding of the ship than Judy did. So what the fuck could Marianne do?
She could use her brains. It was all she’d ever had.
And … Where was Colin?
Marianne pressed her hands hard against the sides of her face. Then she tried the door to the storage bay. Inside the vast space were pallets of boxes and crates; the liftoff had been so smooth that they had not shifted a centimeter. Marianne said softly, “Colin?”
No answer.
Neatly stowed against the wall on hooks and in straps were tools for opening wooden crates. Marianne freed a crowbar, then tried the door at the far end of the area. It opened.
Exactly what she had expected: a small genetics lab. The familiar equipment—autoclave, sequencer, thermal cycler—looked jolting in this unfamiliar setting. But it was she who was the jolt, who was unfamiliar even to herself. The thudding of her heart melded with squeaks and rustles from the mouse cages lining one wall.
Wolski, bent over a bench, turned. “You! What are you doing—”
“Lie down on the floor,” Marianne said. “Right there. Or I’ll hit you with this.”
Wolski didn’t move. His eyes slid sideways, looking for a weapon of his own. He stood maybe five foot eight, not muscular—could she overpower him if she had to? A close call.
“I said lie down!”
Her tone, so effective with undergraduates and grandchildren, made no impression on Wolski. He started toward her. At the look in his eyes, she struck him on the shoulder with the crowbar.
He cried out and went down, grabbing at her legs. One of his arms got around her knees and she felt herself wobble. Fury filled her. This man—this son of a bitch travesty of a scientist who would set a plague free on strangers, on Noah, for potential profit—this insect would not get the best of her. Even as she was collapsing on top of Wolski, she swung the crowbar at his head.
A sickening crack.
He slumped to the floor and she fell on top of him.
Marianne scrambled away, still clutching the crowbar. Blood streamed from Wolski’s head. But head wounds always bled a lot, that didn’t mean he was that badly injured, didn’t mean he was dead.…
She crept back toward him, took his limp wrist in her hand. He was dead.
She, who opposed the death penalty even for serial murderers, had just killed a man.
Weirdly, in numb shock, a line from an old novel came to her: “I won’t think about that today. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Who? What book?
Then she pushed Margaret Mitchell’s potboiler out of her mind and staggered to her feet. This was an animal lab, which meant mice were sacrificed for autopsy, for tissue extraction, for DNA sequencing. What she needed would be here, somewhere.
She began opening cupboards and drawers. None were locked. Wolski had not anticipated anyone in here who might be a threat.
* * *
Colin heard Grandma call him, but he didn’t answer. He had wedged himself between two big mountains of boxes in the storage place, and he was still mad at Grandma. Let her look for him!
But she didn’t. He heard her open the door to the room where the mice were, then close it. The spaceship was so strange—Colin could hear every sound it made, but never in his whole entire life had he not also heard noises from the ground and the plants and the clouds. There wasn’t any ground or plants or clouds. He didn’t even have to put the sounds he heard in rows. The sounds in here—
The sounds got ugly.
Low talking, then louder talking (although he couldn’t make out any words), and then a scream! A crack! Something heavy fell to a floor.
Colin whimpered and shrunk back into his hiding place. But—Grandma had gone in there! What if that mouse man had hurt Grandma? Colin would have to rescue her, just like Brandon rescued the baby elephant in the basement. It was his job.
Still, he wished Jason and Luke and Ava were here to help.
In another minute he would go.
Somebody was slamming doors around in the mouse room. Then, a really loud smash.