Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  If I'm going to end up like Morgan ... at least I won't take anyone with me.

  Cold, calculated confidence. She had never felt so calm. Shouldn't the excitement be feeding itself? Her biomed readings were flabbergasting the doctors back at FTL Station.

  "I am approaching test-point start," Brenna announced tonelessly. She allowed herself no hope, and no doubt. This was it. No special Space Fleet boosters on her ship. Those wouldn't be needed. Graviton spin resonance drive was going to work. In a few minutes, she would surpass, by many times, the very best speed that Space Fleet could get out of its spacecraft.

  "Graviton spin resonance drive ... switch on." There was no switch, of course. The terminology was traditional, though. Brenna watched with strange detachment as the graph lines started to go vertical.

  Just as they did when I was monitoring from Chase One, and Morgan was piloting Prototype II.

  A different ship. A different oscillator. A different pilot.

  "She's at the top..."

  "Spirit of Humanity go with you, Brenna!" Yuri shouted. The energies were interfering with the com signal. She saw his likable face blurring out of recognition. Only the audio remained, full of static but understandable. "Bring us back a souvenir." He added, with painful sincerity, "Bring us back you."

  Brenna raised her hand over the controls that would engage the graviton spin resonance drive. She was aware of no forward motion at all. Time seemed to stand still. The systems were steady. The new oscillator showed no stress.

  "Bring the frequency above the resonance point," Morgan was telling her, "and she'll do the job."

  Her hand swept forward. No turning back.

  Amplitude—under control. Frequency—at the level Morgan selected. Length of pseudo-speed hop—fourteen times the speed of light.

  Gauges that had never been used suddenly registered impossible energies and distances. No speed gain. Not in real space. But the ship was removing the barriers of time and infinity. The barrier field between the hulls was at near-singularity—and holding!

  The universe appeared dim, stars visible but seen through an illusionary veil.

  The hop ended. Brenna checked the exterior scans.

  Jupiter was a disk, "below" her and off to the starboard. Two minutes before, Jupiter had been a dot, identifiable mainly by navigational grid plots.

  SE FTL One waited, in effect. She had dropped back into normal space. Her speed was what it had been before Brenna engaged the drive. Off to her port, the scanner screens picked up the small Breakthrough Unlimited emergency rescue station and the standby Chase ship waiting nearby. For the first time in Breakthrough Unlimited's hectic and tragedy-filled six years of existence, they were seeing a manned FTL ship materialize in their section of space!

  Brenna touched the com before they could. She could hear the crew yelping and howling in delight, over on the adjacent ship and on the little satellite. A skeleton crew. All she had been able to afford or hire. They had been loyal. And now they were part of a success! She suddenly loved them and wanted to share her joy with them.

  "Relay back to FTL Station and Mars. Send coordinates of successfully completed hop. Time: 1237 Mars Central. Notify Yuri and George Li that the field engaged perfectly—and I feel great. I am now proceeding with further FTL jumps..."

  That wasn't by the book! The lure was irresistible, however. Brenna moved her hand over the oscillator controls once more. The universe dimmed. Seconds ticked away. She could cut in and out at any moment she chose. At five and a half astronomical units. At six. At eight. The temptation overwhelmed her. She let the minutes pass. Twenty A.U. Thirty A.U. She was now at the position, near Neptune's orbit, where the Vahnaj messenger beacon had first been contacted by Todd Saunder, before Brenna Foix Saunder was born.

  Forty A.U.

  Fifty.

  Brenna stopped the advance. Slowly, she opened her helmet faceplate, then removed the helmet. She tugged at her suit's seals, opening those as well until she sat in her pilot's jumper, vulnerable to explosive decompression or fire. A spacesuit hadn't helped Morgan in that sort of holocaust. She wasn't going to depend on it to help her.

  Anyway, it wasn't needed.

  She was outside Pluto's orbit. She was outside the Solar System. There was enough fuel on board to travel another fifty astronomical units before she reached the point of no return.

  Far enough, for a first successful FTL jaunt.

  A ... first... successful... faster-than-light ... jaunt!

  Brenna threw back her head and laughed, the sound booming within the cockpit, a cockpit large enough to house three pilots. She was alone, with the ship, and with the universe.

  Brenna floated in her safety webbing, laughing, tears streaming down her face. She reached out, closing her hands on the air and bringing them to her breast.

  The stars!

  The entire universe!

  Such a simple phrase! As Morgan had said, "It works."

  Brenna didn't know how long she had been sitting—floating-there. She had no more tears. She was hoarse from laughing. Joy and pain mingled.

  "For you, Rue. For you, Tumaini. Aunt Mari. Uncle Kevin. Cesare. We made it. All of you made it with me. We're here. And it's just the beginning!"

  Finally, Brenna set up the computers. Delicately, the straight-space-travel thruster systems realigned the sleek, but-toned-up craft, turning her nose toward a golden star—the Sun. So far away! The Sun was a star, seen from out here beyond Pluto!

  Ballistic trajectory. She mustn't exceed her scanner's reach. One short hop at a time. She would have years in which to experiment. New inventions that Saunder Enterprises had to come up with to smooth out this operation. Sub-space radio. Scanners that could search beyond ten astronomical units. A whole new method of navigation.

  The Vahnaj will have to help us now! Share their star maps, as we've shared ours with them.

  You'll have your ship, Quol-Bez! You can go home to Vahnaj, via Saunder Enterprises Transport Company, if you want to! Stuart can't pay you back. But I can! My ship will be just as good as the one you lost. Better!

  Brenna retraced her route. The Sun and Jupiter grew in the scanners, then Jupiter dwindled once more as she passed it, heading Sunward. The last hop was critical. The orbital plot had to be precise. She was using the computers' calculations, advancing the point at which she had left FTL Station's near-vicinity—and the Chase ship's.

  "Stay put, Yuri," Brenna begged. "Right where you should be. I don't want to come out of a pseudo-speed hop on top of you. By the book, just the way you always are..."

  Except when he was losing his temper at the mighty Stuart Saunder!

  SE FTL One winked back into the "real" universe. Chase One was forty-five kilometers off the port bow.

  Not bad! A drift of fifteen kilometers, when she had been millions and millions of kilometers outside Mars' orbit and back again.

  The computers' calculations needed a bit of fine-tuning, though. They would need to do better than that. Put a ship right where it was supposed to be, to the last meter.

  It could be done. It would be!

  A cacophony exploded from her com screens. Yuri Nicholaiev, yelping like a madman. And from the Station, whole groups of team members, crowding toward the monitors, dancing up and down and singing and crying.

  Brenna knew the feeling!

  George Li leaned toward the screen, shouting to make himself heard. "We just got ... just got your relay from Jovian orbit, Brenna. You did it!"

  "We did it," she corrected him, smiling from ear to ear.

  Yuri was mouthing "I love you," not caring who saw him. His new co-pilot was pounding him on the back, creating fearful problems for them both in the effects of action and reaction.

  Nobody had noticed that she wasn't wearing her helmet or suit—that didn't seem important now. They would have to work up a whole new set of safety regulations. A whole new way of thinking about space and the universe ... and about Homo sapiens' place in that universe.<
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  "I've got a message to send to Breakthrough Unlimited HQ on Mars," Brenna said.

  George Li straightened up, forcibly quieting his aides. He tried to speak seriously, but his wide grin spoiled the stern manner. "Yes? Anything at all! The data's going through right now. The media are screaming for an immediate update."

  "This is personal." Brenna felt tears falling again. She didn't wipe them away. Death could know he had looked her in the face. She didn't care. This time, she had beaten Death, and conquered the road to the stars. "It's for Morgan. Tell him he was right. We new dogs do know some old tricks, and some new ones, too. Tell him ... we own the stars. We're big kids now. We can leave the backyard of Earth. We can go anywhere we want to! We won, Morgan! We won!"

  And on Mars, a man forever trapped in his artificial body, seeing with eyes that weren't his own, would understand. Brenna prayed it was worth it to him. She could never give him back what he had lost. But she could give him this, the thing they had both dreamed of for so long.

  Hiber-Ship was obsolete. Mankind wouldn't need to enter cryo stasis and sleep its way to the stars. Not seventy-five years to a nearby star—now seventy-five days!

  Too late, for Derek and for the other twenty-four hundred colonists on New Earth Seeker. They were on their way, dinosaurs, extinct before they would reach their destination.

  Problems to be solved. What would Quol-Bez and the Terran Worlds Council do about Hiber-Ship? What would the Vahnaj do with their Ambassador, who had been altered so that he couldn't fit in among his own kind anymore?

  The stars, in her hands.

  And Derek, forever beyond her reach.

  Brenna slumped in the webbing, trying to gather herself to complete the operations procedure and return the ship to FTL Station. Not yet, though. She was crying too hard to see the screens.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Outward Bound, At Last!

  "On this glorious occasion, we must pause to reflect where we have been, and where we will be going..."

  Brenna had always thought speechmaking in free fall was a spectator sport. Watching orators bob about awkwardly, trying to control their movements and get the most mileage out of their platitudes, was better entertainment than most vid comedies. She didn't begrudge the dignitaries their moment, though. She smiled for the media. Dozens of holo-mode camera pendants took her image and preserved it and sent it to Mars and Earth and the colonies. Day side and night side made no difference, as billions of human beings watched their vid screens, enthralled at what they were seeing.

  But all they were seeing was a bon voyage gathering. The real party would be a private one—out there, beyond the "rim" of the Solar System.

  "... day of glory, for Saunder Enterprises, and for mankind. We will remember this day, and our children will commemorate it forever..."

  Forever was a long time. Brenna Foix Saunder would settle for being remembered in her lifetime. A hundred years? That seemed about right. Long enough to roam among the stars and learn and love.

  FTL Station was jammed. People who rarely ventured into space floated beside those who were thoroughly at home in this environment. Team members, friends, and relatives, well-wishers, important people who now wanted to be hangers-on. They had clamored for a ticket to this event. They wanted to say they had been here. This would happen only once.

  The first Earth ship to travel to a Vahnaj planet.

  Brenna caught Quol-Bez's glance and returned his wise smile. SE FTL Five would be carrying a diplomatic pouch from Ambassador Quol-Bez to his government. Brenna had offered, many times, to take the Ambassador with her, as supercargo. After all, she had promised him a ship to replace the one her misguided young pilots had accidentally destroyed. Quol-Bez had gently refused. Chin Jui-Sao had watched him solemnly, loving him, worried for him. And Brenna had wondered if she would ever really understand this gentle alien being from the Vahnaj stars. Not even Sao could reach him. Only Morgan could do that.

  Morgan. She had fulfilled her promise to him as best as she could. He couldn't survive an interstellar voyage as lengthy as the one Brenna was about to set out on. But earlier this year, she and Yuri and their new trainee Breakthrough Unlimited pilots had helped Dr. Ives's medics convert the cargo area of SE FTL Three into a space-going hospital. They had still been using Morgan's first design on the oscillator then, and it had taken almost twenty-four days to travel to Proxima Centauri. Morgan had stood up to the trip rather well, though Helen had been adamant that he mustn't try that again, not until he was stronger. Morgan and Helen Ives and Brenna knew that wasn't going to happen. But Morgan had visited another star system. He had seen—after a fashion—a sun and its planets far beyond Earth's Solar System.

  "I promised you the stars, Morgan. I guess we'll have to settle for just one star, for the present."

  Morgan hadn't complained. Quite the contrary. Through the pli-wall protecting him from direct contact, he had gripped Brenna's hand gratefully. The computerized eyes had revealed a kind of joy.

  And now Morgan Saunder McKelvey was busy on a new project—FTL radio developed from Homo sapient technology. Everyone was betting he would solve that riddle, too, in the same way he had broken the problems with the graviton spin resonance drive. In more ways than one, Morgan's name would go down in history. They were the cousins who were giving the entire universe to mankind.

  Brenna's parents were at FTL Station; it was the first time they had been there in more than four years. Smiling, holding hands like young lovers, bursting with pride as they watched their daughter accepting the plaudits of the crowd.

  George Li and the crew were looking as pleased as punch, enjoying their own share of the adulation. The loyal ones. The ones who had hung on through thick and thin and the bad times ... and now, the good.

  Councilman Ames, grinning slyly at Brenna. "I always back the winning side." He had this time, too.

  Councilman Yan Bolotin was also there, looking wistful. He was a good loser, even though Breakthrough Unlimited's success was costing him untold amounts of investment capital. Hiber-Ship Corporation was abandoning all work on the New Earth Seekers and was dickering, instead, with Saunder Enterprises to convert cryo stasis hibernation ships to faster-than-light drive. That would take some time. Brenna would have to deliver Ambassador Quol-Bez's diplomatic pouch to Vahnaj; the Vahnaj government would have to make some adjustments in the Earth-Vahnaj treaty. Humanity was now a full partner. Trade would begin.

  Vahnaj no longer could look down or patronize.

  Brenna glanced at Quol-Bez again, wondering. Rapport. Had Quol-Bez broken some Vahnaj rules? Had he unintentionally planted ideas in Morgan's head, ideas that aided Morgan in modifying the flawed graviton spin resonance oscillator? Brenna would never know. But she suspected the Vahnaj wouldn't be expecting to see a mission from Earth, in an FTL ship, show up on their doorstep quite so soon after they had assigned Quol-Bez to a backward group of planets around a star named Sol. Quol-Bez's future as a trusted diplomat might be as uncertain as Morgan's.

  No matter! He would always be welcome among humans. His magnanimity in the matter of his destroyed ship had earned mankind's affection and respect. An accident. Three too-eager, lied-to young pilots, and a heroic older pilot who had given his life to protect them. ComLink had taught Homo sapiens not to fear the Vahnaj. And Todd Saunder's network had smoothed the reputations and polished up the deeds of the family for two generations. At Brenna's request, her father's interplanetary corporation had done the same for three contrite young fliers— who very soon would have their pilots' regs re-established!

  Someday, when they got the sub-space com system really working, Todd Saunder's ComLink would be interstellar as well as interplanetary.

  It was time to go. Most of the dignitaries didn't try to shake hands with Brenna and Yuri and the crew; they were learning their lessons about action and reaction. Brenna's parents risked that, though, and pulled it off quite successfully, embracing her. Spacers! Old hands at this! George L
i and the others who had stayed with the program through its darkest days ignored awkwardness, too.

  "Spirit of Humanity go with you!"

  "Take our good wishes to Vahnaj!"

  The faces that weren't in the crowd seemed just as significant as those that were. Carissa had sent the expected form message, no more. Stuart hadn't even sent that. The Earth-based branch of the Saunders was eclipsed, in disgrace, being swept under mankind's rug in favor of a new and glorious Martian branch of the illustrious family ... Carissa and Stuart, hiding in their tower in the sea.

  Charlie Dahl wasn't there. He was recuperating from a skull fracture in a hospital in Brasilia. One of his celebrity interviews had turned out very badly. Brenna had thought it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. She didn't miss his presence at this happy occasion in the slightest.

  Hector Obregon wasn't there, though he had sent sincere good wishes. He had bailed out too soon. His name wouldn't be in the history tapes. Yuri Nicholaiev's would.

  Aluna Beno wasn't there, but nobody objected—and she was doing much better for herself on Earth than any of Tumaini's friends would have dreamed. The media loved Aluna Beno, the woman who was making a career out of telling her tragic story: "My husband was murdered by Protectors of Earth fanatics!" Just what the gypsy newshunters panted for.

  Cameras, everywhere, watching as Brenna, Yuri, and the three lucky crewmen who would accompany them boarded the skidders for the ride to the hangars.

  They were expert at this now. The only difference this time was the attendant publicity surrounding the diplomatic pouch— and the ship's destination: the Vahnaj near-planet.

  Graviton spin resonance had been improved. No doubt once the military finished elaborating on the patent, it would be even better. Breakthrough Unlimited had always known Space Fleet would be right there, eager to pick the civilian team's brains, after it took the risks and achieved results. That was the way things were.

  "Engaging standard drive..."