Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  "Hell, no!" The question roused her out of the last of those post-crisis shivers. "Think of the talk that would stir up. We want to keep this under wraps. Just a little trouble on the flight into Mojave, right? Don't even tell Joe and the others. Besides, I promised the kids a party at one of my aunt's famous affairs. We can't disappoint them. You all earned it, during last week's media stints. Let's go!"

  She threw an arm over Yuri's shoulder. He smiled and fell into step beside her, his arm around her waist. They walked toward the emergency vehicle, intending to hitch a ride back to the tower—two swaggering Breakthrough Unlimited pilots united against the "Earthling" ground crew. Brenna revved up her emotions, biofeedback working. She wanted them to think she was cocksure, and in moments she was—no pretense. Somebody had tried to stop her, and he had flunked. Whoever was behind that sabotage and whatever he hoped to gain by it—it wasn't going to work, now or ever. This elite bunch of Spacers was on its way to ultimate success, in one short year from now!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Saunderhome 2075

  It was incredibly easy to get full, fast clearance for departure from Mojave Spaceport Authority. Too easy. Brenna had a lot more trouble putting off the junior pilots' questions than getting the clearance. No one from Traffic brought forms up on the monitor screens; no inquiries as to why Brenna Saunder had brought a flier in on a non-glide strip area. No accident reports. No red tape at all. The nameless Space Fleet pilot, and his general, certainly had taken care of everything, as promised. Mojave was positively eager to get rid of the Breakthrough Unlimited bunch. Brenna wryly wondered if they were afraid trouble was following her around and might hit again—while she was on Mojave Spaceport property. As soon as Space Fleet gave someone the high sign, the Authority was ready for Brenna's group to board the trav-carts and get to the SE hangar. She declined, preferring to walk the half-kilometer between the V.I.P. lounge and the waiting shuttle. Space Fleet said okay; that must mean the shuttle was free of "devices." No more nasty surprises! And the "kids" had given up asking questions, too, finally!

  Brenna relished the exercise. After the adrenaline-drenching her system had taken during the fight to keep the flier aloft, she had had to sit still and be ultra-cooperative with the spaceport personnel. Now she stretched her legs, almost loping along the tunnel.

  Brenna complimented her companions on the public appearances the four had been putting on for Breakthrough Unlimited around the globe. "Caught as many of your shows as I could. You sure kept busy! And you looked great," she said, hurrying down the ramp into the main parking section. Voices echoed off the soaring roof of the hangar.

  "We just tried to follow Morgan's style," Joe Habich said modestly. The others nodded agreement. They meant it. They weren't trying to flatter. They genuinely idolized that man in the isolation room on Mars.

  "Hiber-Ship Corporation stole some of our time," Adele grumbled. "They stole some applicants for Breakthrough we had almost convinced to sign up, too."

  "It's a touchy time for us to recruit," Brenna reminded them. "Morgan and I had to go through the same thing when Prototype I failed. It takes a lot of guts to sign up with a project that's suffered a spectacular mishap. We only get the best ones," she added with a smile that included all four. Recruitment was a lousy job. She had done her share of it. And they would have to keep it up, casting their nets in anticipation of the years to come. Once they made the breakthrough, they would need a lot of personnel. Habich, Zyto, and Nagata would then be "old-timers." They could brag, then, with justification, that they had followed the dream when others had hesitated.

  "Did you know they've already signed up several hundred volunteers for New Earth Seeker II and III?" Shoje Nagata asked incredulously. "I cannot see why so many flock to be frozen and wake up in the next century, to colonize a planet they have never seen."

  "Well, at least some of them are willing to leave Earth," Brenna said. She felt obligated to give Derek's dream its due, too.

  "That's the star route for the fainthearted," Joe retorted. "They'll never even know they've been in interstellar space."

  Brenna didn't correct him or argue that it took a certain kind of courage to trust your life to cryo stasis. Not an FTL pilot's courage, though! Someone made a crack about the male-female ratio on board the Hiber-Ships, and the joke was bad enough so that Brenna joined the laughter without even thinking about Lilika Chionis and Derek's other nubile shipmates. By the time their quintet reached the SE shuttle, they were giggling helplessly and elbowing one another. The mechanics and check-in personnel at the boarding elevator gawked at them. That stimulated even more laughter. The pilots knew the joke. The outsiders, including their fellow Saunder Enterprise colleagues, didn't. The in-group nature of the crude anecdotes made them special, like the tight-knit and cocky group of pilots themselves.

  The shuttle was one of the new, light, Mach 6 models, an eight-seater. They piled their hand kits onto the three extra seats and started hooking up their safety webbing. Brenna headed for the first seat, then stopped and glanced at Yuri. "You've never flown her all the way to Saunderhome, have you? Be my guest." Yuri's smile was ingenuous, showing how delighted he was with the opportunity. Brenna didn't reveal the real reasons for her magnanimity—delayed reactions from the wild flight-far-life catching up with her. She was quite content to take the second seat and ride backup. The temptations of handling the speedy ship might have been a bit much for the trainee pilots. However, Yuri made a quick takeoff and kept her under steady control. He even resisted the urge to buzz the traffic tower. The programs were on the boards, but Yuri switched her to manual, enjoying himself. They arced up toward their vector, heading east by southeast.

  Brenna hadn't been on a PR tour this past week. She had had to meet a lot of the "right" people, though, prior to the franchise hearing. She sank back in her couch now, muscles loosening. With Yuri at the helm, there was no need for concern. If he required help, he would ask for it, unlike a good many pilots.

  The kids and Yuri had turned over a list of thirty possible future employees—would-be pilots, techs, mechs, medical personnel, a bit of everything they needed. And the Terran Worlds Council session had gone easier than Brenna had expected—except for that slight contretemps of a sabotaged flier afterward. No more business for a while. The selling job was over.

  At least until August 2076.

  What if...?

  She tried to shut off that train of thought. Worse coming to worst. Another failure. The franchise lost. The financial wells run dry. More injuries. More deaths. And Breakthrough Unlimited out of business. Graviton spin resonance drive would revert to Space Fleet's labs, where it would probably be filed, indefinitely, because of interstellar politics. Nakamura might keep working on the matter-antimatter drive, with poor promise of success. Little wonder Hiber-Ship Corporation was gathering recruits. They had proved cryogenic stasis worked. Their recruits would travel to the stars—or at least to one particular star, and to other planets.

  Brenna didn't know which threat scared her more—mankind not achieving faster-than-light travel for centuries to come, or someone like Nakamura achieving it before she did. There would be only one winner of this race, and time was running out for Breakthrough Unlimited's crack at the finish line.

  The shuttle was above breathable atmosphere now. The sky was almost black. Sunlight reflected dazzlingly off the wings. As the Mach speeds climbed, they were telescoping time zones. The angle of the Sun's rays increased as they chased the clock. Traffic at these altitudes was minimal, only a few intercontinental and private, quasi-nation shuttles like this one, and a scattering of Space Fleet ships. They lanced across the continent. A map flowed past them, below. Green markings on the nav screens showed the outbound vectors from Orleans Spaceport. One of the visual scans framed a view of a single-stage spaceship rising from the spaceport, heading up and out. The interplanetary craft was bound for Goddard Colony and Lunar Base Copernicus. Golden fire spewed from her tail, lifting the m
assive ship out of Earth's gravity well. Brenna watched her go with regret, wishing she and Yuri and the other pilots were aboard her. They weren't due for departure for another couple of days, though. Then they would take the regular Saunder Enterprises space shuttle up to parking orbit and pick up the Mars-run ferry there. Not many spacecraft, these days, were built like that big bird now disappearing down range above Brenna's ship. They were too expensive, those single-stage monsters with old-style engines. Experts predicted they would all be modernized or phased out within ten years. There was a glamour about them, but their days were numbered.

  Ten years. By then, many interplanetary transfers would be from a parking orbit to a faster-than-light ship—which would leave the world's vicinity and reappear, scant days or weeks later, in the neighborhood of another star!

  The terminator was out over the Atlantic, creeping toward them as the shuttle started her descent. They were dropping down into a more congested section of the sky. Brenna took over traffic monitoring to free Yuri for piloting. "Air-Sea Rescue Surveillance ship at plot 34G-8, proceeding northwest. The Orleans-to-Buenos Aires shuttle's bisecting our vector twenty kilometers aft..."

  "I see them," Yuri noted. "Approaching loss of signal. Plots are on the boards. We are cleared for atmosphere re-entry. Everyone strapped in?" A formality. They weren't passengers. They knew the safety regs.

  It was always an eerie sensation, losing audio, an Earth-flight effect. It wasn't a problem near satellites or planets with tenuous atmospheres. After the steady chatter on the com, the sudden wipeout gave the effect of a door slamming between the ship and the rest of humanity.

  That must be what it was like to enter faster-than-light space. The labs had to come up with sub-space radio soon, or it was going to be a rough deal, talking across the light-years while Homo sapiens explored the galaxy.

  Out of stress zone. Acquisition of signal. Orleans Traffic connecting with their ship. New plotting data rippling up on the screens. Brenna glanced at the chronometer: 5:18, local time zone. They had beaten the sunset, thanks to Mach speeds. Saunderhome came on the monitors. "SE Shuttle, we have you in visual scans. You are cleared to approach on strip East Five. ETA, twelve minutes."

  "East Five, Saunderhome," Brenna said. "We copy. See you soon."

  The island complex was straight ahead of the ship's glide path. Brenna cued the viewports, dropping the shields so she could see in "clear," not on the screens. She had made this approach so many times, ever since she was an infant sitting on Dian's lap! Brenna dimly recalled other landings, when she was strapped in a child's safety webbing and standing up to see better—breaking the rules and getting scolded. She had strained to see over the cockpit screens. Todd and Dian had talked to each other, grown-up jabber that meant little to a toddler. But she seemed to hear her father saying, as if it were days ago, "Look! They're rebuilding Saunderhome. It's almost like it used to be, before..."

  Before his mother had destroyed it in that murder-suicide disaster of 2041. The holocaust that killed Jael Saunder and her older son had also wiped out the original Saunderhome. Nothing was left but a deep bay in the coral reefs to show where Ward Saunder had built his island kingdom. There were other islands, though, not too far away, and they had survived. When the scandal settled down, and Carissa Duryea Saunder was emerging from the mess smelling like a rose, she had hired the best marine engineers and architects and ordered them to recreate the lost palace in the tropic sea. And they had. The new Saunderhome was much bigger, sprawling across an archipelago of once-barren natural islets and man-made reefs. From the air the new complex looked rather like an octopus surrounded by a broken wheel—the outlying hurricane walls and wave power generator cofferdams. Within those impressive seawalls, along three sides of Saunderhome, landing strips stretched out like welcome mats. Ships lay anchored at the docks; Saunderhome was a legitimate port, rivaling many full-sized nations' harbor facilities. Most travel to Saunderhome, though, was by air. That had always been so. But comparing the current Saunderhome with holo-modes of the original had told Brenna that air traffic was now much heavier, to and from Carissa's castle, than it had been thirty-four years ago.

  "Do you wish to take her in, Brenna?" Yuri asked deferentially.

  "You're doing fine."

  Yuri Nicholaiev had never landed at Saunderhome, but no one observing him would have guessed that. Touchdown was flawless. He brought the ship to a stop right in front of the service hangars.

  Brenna could see a lot of activity over on the main island. The pilots climbed out of the shuttle, letting servants load the big luggage onto trav-carts. Brenna offered to give the junior pilots a walking tour and sent the trav-carts off to deposit the suitcases in the cabanas. Nicholaiev had visited here before, but he tagged along interestedly as Brenna pointed out the sights. Saunderhome was famous from countless vid documentaries and newscasts, of course. Up close and real was another matter. Joe, Adele, and Shoje tried not to rubberneck, but they couldn't help it. This place—and the island that had once stood here— was the stuff of myths.

  Pedestrian and trav-cart bridges connected the landing strips and the sheltered inner islands. Guest quarters consisted of cabanas or bungalows set along curving arms of the main complex. White beaches, lapped by crystalline waters, fronted every cabana. Saunder Enterprises Security patrolled the grounds, as unobtrusively as possible. Gardeners kept the foliage at its peak. The tropical plants would have pleased any drama producer, a perfect setting, and all completely real. Brenna showed the pilots a businesslike building on the far side of the complex, just barely in sight. Waterways linked that area with every other one throughout the archipelago. "That's Sea-Air Dolphin-Assisted Rescue Division," Brenna explained. "They have a permanent base here, just beyond the outer line of palms over there. It's a handy location for them. They're near the sea lanes, where their services are likely to be needed. And since Saunderhome is a quasi-nation and Carissa gave them the land in perpetuity, they won't have any problems with politics. One of my aunt's good deeds," Brenna said, not hiding her cynicism.

  "The charming little bridges, the precisely cared-for gardens and groves, remind me of—" Shoje Nagata broke off, reddening. "I ... I did not mean to compare..."

  "Why not?" Brenna said amiably. "Carissa's architects copied Japanese structures and landscaping. Your home islands provided the model. This is the imitation."

  "Most skillful. So beautiful!" The others chimed in with similar compliments. They understood the intrafamilial friction between the Saunders. But they couldn't hold back their praise, sincerely impressed.

  Brenna led the way through an arcade of palms and flowers to the guest quarters. Servants stood at every door, eager to please. The pilots blinked when they realized they would each have a separate small house for their exclusive use. Brenna ignored the fawning help and sent the maid assigned to assist her away. She used the cabana's shower to scrub off travel sweat and ease tension, then dressed in the fashionable clothes she had brought to wear at this event. Normally, she didn't bother with the trends among Earth's designers. But she had made a special effort to find out who was "in"—and bearable. That hadn't been easy. SE's Earth-based experts had finally pointed her to one of the new United Ghetto States stylists who was coming up with striking concepts. U.G.S. wasn't decadent, and its fashions had a vigor and freshness Brenna rather liked. She studied her reflection in the mirror, approving. Flowing green, diaphanous draperies did nice things for her hair and complexion. Not bad! She wished Derek were here. But if he were, they might never get to the party at all!

  The other pilots had showered and changed, too, and met Brenna outside the row of cabanas. They were watching the party on the lawn of the main house. A sparkling moat separated the guest island from the central one. Again servants offered the use of trav-carts, and again Brenna refused. "It's only half a kilometer or less. We aren't helpless. Come on."

  They walked through a miniature jungle lining the shore. Saunderhome sometimes reminded
Brenna of her father's solarium, though this was a hundred times larger and far more ostentatious. Birds of bright plumage scattered and flew in wheeling flocks and settled again amid the trees. Pet monkeys jumped and swung on vines and chittered at the humans walking below them. The bridges over the moat let Brenna's pilots see the fish darting through filtered water. The place was a tropical paradise, pruned, tidied, and completely shorn of its wildness. Beautiful, and artificial, as were the grassy slopes of the main island —and the islands themselves.

  A ComLink reporter—one of the properly behaved ones-awaited them on the shore, just beyond the blue-water moat. He had been assigned to do spot interviews of Carissa's illustrious guests, including Brenna and her entourage. He knew his place and how to ask the right questions. His woman assistant adjusted the reporter's camera pendant for the best fighting effect, and he took pains to introduce each of the pilots and talk about their flying careers. When he talked about Breakthrough Unlimited, the tone was upbeat, no inane inquiries about whether Morgan would be flying on the next test flight or anything like that.

  "The franchise hearing went well, we understand. Then you don't anticipate any problems in meeting the Terran Worlds Council's deadline?"

  "We're getting very optimistic reports from our metallurgy specialists. The new hull material will be ready for testing in October."

  "I take it you'll be hoping to fly the test craft, Joe...?"

  The setting for this "off the cuff" yet carefully planned interview was perfect. Saunderhome, that magnificent castle, was the backdrop. A just-rising nearly full Moon hovered on the horizon behind the palms. Halo-lights were starting to come on as night descended. Brenna hoped the reporter's tiny button mikes were picking up the distant calls of tropical birds and the high-pitched cries of the dolphins from the Sea-Air Rescue Station. With luck, Breakthrough Unlimited might even get a few more prospective recruits out of this "candid" session.