Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  A moment of fire, a muffled roar, barely heard through Mars' thin atmosphere, and the shuttle was out of sight. Derek was on his way. But only on a supply trip. New Earth Seeker wouldn't launch on her journey until early next spring. Derek would be returning, this time.

  Brenna became aware that Yuri was watching her, looking worried. She shook off her melancholy. "I'm okay. Full attention." Yuri's gaze was disturbingly intent. Not doubting. But understanding more than Brenna might have wished him to. She felt guilty, then relieved when he finally turned away.

  Morgan arrived shortly after that, and Tumaini Beno a half hour lgiter, barely in time to get ready for the PR show. The Affiliation of the Rift expatriate was miffed when he found out Morgan had checked in first. Apparently they had had some private bet going, and Tumaini had lost. He flung a few choice Mwera curses, and Morgan laughed and retaliated with the same in other languages, including a Vahnaj epithet or two.

  George Li poked his head in the pilots' room. "On stage, everybody. The newshunters are here. Publicity hour!"

  Among themselves, the pilots had pithier names for this sort of display: "Dashing and Daring Bastards Show." "Glamorous Idiots Revue." "Smile for the Cretins, You Fuckers..." They donned their tunics and precisely tailored pants and polished boots and made sure the Breakthrough Unlimited patches on their shoulders and breasts showed prominently, then paraded into the small theater near the main office. Hector's and Tu-maini's wives and kids were there. That was part of the show. They were the only married members of the pilots' team, since Rue had broken up with her husband a couple of years before. And the kids were cute, always good for a lot of human-interest copy for the media newshunters.

  The vid session came first. Brenna and Morgan posed by themselves and with other pilots and George Li, Tumaini and his little nuclear family, Hector Obregon with his, women and children standing by their men. Carmelita's smile was shy, Aluna Beno's was hard, and she placed her hands firmly on her sons' shoulders, as if she and Tumaini were in competition for the boys' loyalty.

  Then the various flight teams posed. Morgan, Tumaini, and Rue—the lucky ones chosen to fly Prototype II. They had won the coin toss, in other words. Brenna and Yuri Nicholaiev would fly Chase One. Hector and Shoje Nagata would be backup, in Chase Two. They smiled on cue, but with some of their envy of the Prototype II team showing. Adele Zyto and Joe Habich wouldn't be at the test-flight area at all. When the main shuttle took off later today, they would be aboard the second section's shuttle, heading out on a different vector. It would take the second shuttle, a converted Chase ship stripped for speed, considerable time to get to the "completed hop" point. Adele and Joe had been through all the preliminaries in advance, in order to make the long trip out to the asteroids. An emergency crew was already out there on Breakthrough Unlim-ited's small satellite. Backup med staffers and com techs, mostly. During the series of unmanned tests, there had been little need for those people—just for someone to fetch the unmanned FTL test vehicles if they had refused to obey programmed commands and reverse course. They hadn't. Five times the lonely "completed-hop"-point pilots had sat out there, waiting uselessly for a drone vehicle. This time, they hoped they wouldn't be needed, either. A successful test! Nobody wanted to be put out of a job worse than those standby crews heading for distant orbit.

  It griped Brenna that the reporters didn't understand the importance of their mission. But that was typical. The pilots expected it, and gnashed their teeth a bit.

  Morgan and Tumaini and Rue didn't lord it over them. But there was no mistaking their joy.

  Brenna wanted to tell Adele and Joe and Shoje, the youngest members of the pilot team, that as bad as it was to be on the outside looking in, it was worse when you were fully qualified— as she and Yuri and Hector all were—yet had lost the flip of a coin to your fellow pilots. Equally qualified, but second in line.

  Somebody had to be second. That was the way it was. Fate. Bad luck.

  There would be other faster-than-light flights, sure. But there would be only one successful first one, ever!

  The photos and posing were the easy part. Then came the interviews. ComLink's Ife Enegu was a pet media person, one of Saunder Enterprises' hired hands, though a very well-paid and famous one. Others, like Charlie Dahl of Nakamura and Associates' TeleCom and independents such as Navarro and Pickard and Reilly, were sharper, looking for chinks in Breakthrough Unlimited's armor.

  "Is it true Dr. de Groote's computers expressed some concern over the hull strength...?"

  "Is it true you have secret access to Vahnaj FTL techniques through your connections with T.W.C.'s diplomatic negotiators...?"

  "Isn't this the same propulsion system which Space Fleet dropped in '69 because of unsurmountable power problems...?"

  The questions were ones that had been answered many times, and some were deliberately obtuse or outrageous, designed to chew up footage—so that the newshunters' vid teams could feature their reporters on screen.

  Brenna took over part of the question-fielding. That job went with the glamour. "Graviton spin resonance is a working theory, people. It's been thoroughly tested. If you'll check your releases, which George Li handed out earlier, you'll see the entire record." Morgan and Yuri were cueing diagrams and charts on the wall screen terminal behind Brenna, pointing out significant aspects as she and George Li traded the lecture back and forth.

  "Here you see the field barrier specs. Resonance field is developed and interchanges energy between electromagnetic and gravitational spin fields," Brenna explained. Morgan's big hands made swooping motions. He was grinning, amused at the repetitive program. Brenna half expected him to make a crack about taking this show on the vid-entertainment circles, they were becoming so expert at it after five years—three under the present Breakthrough Unlimited team. Yuri traced the critical layer in the outer hull as Brenna added, "The barrier field lies here, creating a thin near-singularity on a momentary basis..."

  George Li spoke up. "There will be no speed gain in the physical frame. But graviton spin resonance field, fully engaged, results in a 'hop' of length dependent on the amplitude of the pulse and of duration determined by frequency...

  Many of the media types were looking slightly glazed. But the holo-mode dutifully took it all in. It sounded impressive to laymen, and to those knowledgeable in celestial flight mechanics, the solid theory made a very good case for Breakthrough Unlimited.

  Yuri's slight accent lent a colorful touch as he continued the explanation. "The ship will move along a ballistic trajectory determined by initial velocity, local gravitational fields, and 'interhop' timing. Ordinary high-efficiency spacecraft engines-such as those used by our Chase ships and most Space Fleet ships—will maneuver Prototype II and set direction. When the field is turned on, pseudo speed will develop..."

  "And it's worked perfectly five times now, with unmanned test craft," Brenna finished. "On a single jump, we can send an unmanned graviton spin resonance equipped vehicle to Jovian orbit in four minutes ... or considerably less, people. Calculate that with current top-speed flight specs!"

  George stressed, "We have run thirty-six general equipment tests and eighteen unmanned tests over the past three years, including those five successful unmanned flights quite recently. We are ready."

  "But there were some failures, weren't there?" Charlie Dahl of TeleCom persisted.

  "One failure," Morgan said, with heavy emphasis. "Ask the experimental programmers. They'll tell you that's nominal, Charlie."

  "But aren't you worried that..."

  "What about the other faster-than-light projects?" several reporters demanded. No one heard the rest of Dahl's query.

  "We don't consider them serious competition," Rue Polk stated boldly.

  Tumaini Beno's black face split in a cheery smile. "Indeed! The experts agree, too. Hosi No Miti Kaisya's matter-antimatter attempts have, shall we say, not been exactly fruitful." Dahl and the other TeleCom staffers scowled at that accurate reference. Hosi
No Miti Kaisya was, of course, Nakamura and Associates, their employer. Tumaini Beno went on. "And Exo-Trans' tachyon employment has had a long succession of failures. Their theory is okay, but under present levels of propulsion technology, that form of FTL simply is not practical. It would be better applied to achieving sub-space radio capability, such as the Vahnaj and more advanced galactic civilizations currently enjoy…

  "Yes," Yuri said, "and when we achieve faster-than-light travel, we will need sub-space communications more than ever."

  The junior pilots were fidgeting, unable to contribute too much at this stage. They knew who ranked, and they didn't. But they presented a united front with the others. The pilots, all friendly rivals when it came to in-flight glory, were allies against outsiders. And newshunters, even the ones on their side, qualified as outsiders. Passengers. Stowaways. Non-contribs, in pilots' slang.

  "LeFevre Society's photon bypass..."

  "Theory. Only theory," George Li insisted. "They don't even have a working model. No, people, graviton spin resonance is It. In about a week from now, everyone will know it. As for Terran Worlds Council's Space Fleet's 'letting' a civilian outfit take over the project—well, people, we all know about appropriations and intergroup politics. Ours is not to question why. We just produce."

  Morgan summed it all up: "And you can bet that when we do produce a working faster-than-light ship, the military will be right there to pick our brains. Bigger and better propulsion systems to catch asteroid hijackers farther and farther out from the Sun, huh? You might say we're doing our bit for everyone—for the commercial trader who hopes to do business on a regular basis with the Vahnaj and other species, for the Space Fleet, and for the ordinary citizen, who can spend his future vacations on some really exotic worlds, light-years from Mars!"

  There were a few more requests for pictures. Pilots, support crew, in different combinations. Brenna, Rue Polk, and Adele Zyto posed together, because there was still a reactionary element, on Earth, which was fascinated by the idea of women test pilots even though women had been flying at equal risk with their male counterparts for a century and a half. Brenna's red head was next to Rue's blond one, with Adele's sleek dark hair framing the other side of the threesome. Brenna made sure, too, that Adele and Nagata and Joe Habich got heavy coverage. They were juniors now. Someday they would be on the main line. They were the future. She treated them as her proteges.

  The onerous PR chore out of the way, the pilots and support crew who were taking the first shuttle up to FTL Station headed for Suitup. The mood grew edgy, despite the jokes. It didn't matter that they had been through hundreds of flights. Safety regs were in full effect. That was how people stayed alive. Every step was checked, double-checked, and triple-checked. Life packs. Emergency procedure rehearsals, the works. Spaceflight wasn't yet boring. Even civilians had to go through this routine on an interplanetary trip or a ride from planet to station.

  Boarding. Launch. Right on time at 1800.

  Brenna had first solo-piloted a spacecraft when she was fifteen. But each takeoff remained a fresh, exhilarating experience. The noise, the shuddering of the beautiful machine around her, the pressure of the extra gees—it all added up. This was when she and Morgan and every other pilot really started to come alive.

  Their view monitors split the scenes, showing scans in all directions from the ascending ship. A launch from Mars was distinctly different in "feel" from one out of Earth's deep gravity well or a satellite's tiny one. Mars had a much lower density than Earth, but it was a planet, one on which Brenna now spent a great deal of her time. She watched the red, rocky terrain fall away. The rapidly shifting perspective filled the screens. Horizons stretched and began to curve as the rocket climbed, adding its thrust to Mars' rotational velocity. Amazonis Planitia shrank. Beacons marking the hangars and the spaceport's upper structures dwindled and were lost in the Marscape.

  As the ship's track angled over more steeply, Tharsis Montes' shield volcanoes swam by below, looking very tiny, as they had to Earth's first unmanned Mariner vehicles scanning from Mars orbit. The awesome craters seemed little more than pockmarks on the ancient world's face.

  Then they were passing that continent-wide rift—the Valles Marineris.

  The living map appeared to turn as the spacecraft pierced the tenuous Martian atmosphere. At the surface, Terraform Division was making some progress in enriching that air. Out here, it had never been worth considering and soon was high vacuum.

  Gravity and acceleration balanced. Free fall. Safety webbing held the crew and passengers in their couches. Programs were on automatic, but Yuri and Rue Polk had the backup controls for this flight, ready to go to manual if necessary.

  At this altitude, only the navigational scanners could pick out any signs of human habitation down on the planet. Infrared outlined patches of Mars' changing ecology—genetic manipulation of Earth life forms, plants which would break down soil and rocks and release their own by-products and materials trapped in Mars' elements for thousands of millennia. It was a start. In a hundred years or so, humans would walk on Mars' surface without need of special life-support equipment. And pilots could fly non-rocket craft through Mars' air. They would tame Mars and make it a sister Earth.

  Vector launch point. Everyone checked safety gear. Mars wouldn't slingshot them, as Hiber-Ship would be helped into launch out of the Solar System by Jupiter's enormous gravitational field. But the smaller planet gave them some help. There was no sense wasting fuel—yet! They would gulp fuel like spendthrifts during the upcoming test.

  Mars faded with startling rapidity. Zoom screens had already located an irregular orbiting lump off to port—Deimos. Brenna couldn't see Hiber-Ship's ferry warehouse, of course. She knew Derek was there, but there was little cross-system communications, beyond necessary navigational talk between their different computers. In a few seconds, Mars' outer moon was beyond the remote lenses' reach, and they were on the way.

  The vidcasters described this sort of voyage as "rocketing up from Mars." To an Earth-bound point of view, it was. To a space traveler's eyes, however, the shuttle was moving from one minute spot to another on an infinity-wide grid. Technically, there was no "up" or "down" out here. Yet from Earth's plane, the ship appeared to move northward, toward the galactic pole. Ambassador Quol-Bez had sometimes noted that, to the Vahnaj, Earth was "northward" from the Vahnaj home world. Now that he lived among humans, Quol-Bez abided by their star maps and spoke in their terms. When in Rome ... And on those maps the Vahnaj Ambassador's closely guarded faster-than-light vehicle was parked "below" the Solar System, in Lower Quadrant Sector Eleven of Space Fleet's charts. Breakthrough Unlimited's test-run area, franchised to them for their exclusive use, was in Upper Quadrant SectorFive, well out of the orbital paths of any major bodies or space traffic. Prototype II would need plenty of elbow room when it made its leap to FTL.

  Brenna envisioned citizens on Earth watching some of Breakthrough Unlimited's publicity material right about now. They would see a model of planets whirling around a ludicrously undersized Sun. On the model, Breakthrough Unlimited's high ecliptic FTL Station would loom very large, looking "down" on the busy microcosm of the Sun's family: Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroids, Jupiter, and so on. In actuality, there was nothing to see, from FTL Station or from the shuttle heading "up" toward that Station. The shuttle was racing through tens of thousands of kilometers, surrounded by nothingness. Earth was a faint light showing only on the navigational screens. Mars was a shrinking disk. Venus and Mercury were washed out by the Sun's golden presence. Jupiter was a yellowish blob at five o'clock aft, as the quaint old-time expression went. There was little else but space junk, and not much of that, since now they were out of traffic vectors. Their destination, FTL Station, was much too small and too far away for the scanners to detect it as anything but a com signal yet.

  Emptiness. And nothing between Brenna and that but the ship's triple hull. People like her aunt Carissa loathed spacing and never left Earth'
s sanctuary because of their fear. That reaction was more alien than Quol-Bez was, to Brenna. She had loved spacing ever since her first ride, as a baby, in her father's private shuttle. All of gravity's restraints and narrow planetary horizons swept away. Complete freedom. How could anyone not love it?

  Brenna cupped her hands symbolically, drawing that wonderful, limitless void to herself. She glanced around. Yuri was smiling at her, comprehending and sharing the emotion. Morgan, too, had noticed Brenna's gesture. His gray eyes shone. He copied Brenna's action, closing his hands into big fists.

  "Seven more days, and we'll own the whole damned universe," he said.

  Or die in a fireball…

  No! Brenna would not let the stresses break out of the dark part of her mind.

  But she knew they were going to. The only thing she could try to do was control them, tamp them down, make that tension work for her instead of against her, if possible.

  The trip to FTL Station chewed up most of a twenty-four-hour Earth-type day. Along the way, the calendars rolled up.

  Day Six, and counting.

  Ahead lay a long, busy schedule. There were delays built in, necessary ones Brenna would have to suffer through. No skipping them. George Li and the med staffers and everyone else insisted the delays were essential to the preplanned program. They had to do this right. For history's sake, if not for the pilots' impatience.

  And not only the pilots were impatient. They would all be chewing the equipment, before the final moment clicked into the timers.

  Deceleration began at 1545. People had been napping in the shuttle or catching up on their homework en route. Gradually, those who were sleeping awoke. Those who had been running computers finished their programs. Everyone checked gear, fidgeting, wanting to dock at the Station and get started.