Limbo System

by Rick Cook

  Sharon snorted, almost as loud as a Colonist. “I have trouble with that,” she said, ignoring the Grim One and Young One standing by the wall. “They won’t even look after their own here. They leave that to you.”

  “That’s not really fair, you know. The prisoners here are terribly demoralized. They’ve been deprived of everything, even their names, and this place is worse for them than it is for us.”

  “Father, you’re full of it! They’re at least in their own system among their own kind.” She stopped, her fists balled and her arms pressed tight to her sides. “Sometimes you’re nearly as bad as Aubrey!” she blurted and ran from the room in tears.

  Father Simon watched her go. Then he sighed and sadly returned to eating his cold porridge.

  “These things you do are not approved of by the other humans?” the Grim One asked the next morning as they started out on their rounds.

  “Generally not. They feel I am too close to you.”

  “Then why do you do them?”

  Father Simon pursed his lips. “I’m trying to remember something Saint Paul said about this,” he sighed. “It’s times like this I really miss my Bible. Anyway, the gist of it is that you do what is right no matter what your friends may think.”

  “This book you mention. It is the wisdom book of your cult?” the Grim One asked.

  “You could put it that way, yes.”

  The guard snorted and looked even more willing to tear into Father Simon.

  Four days later, the Grim One sidled up to him while the Young One was several steps away down the corridor.

  “Here,” the guard said roughly and thrust a cube into Father Simon’s hand. “It is a copy of the special book of your lineage. But keep it close.”

  “Thank you,” the priest said fervently. “May God bless you.”

  Without another word, the Grim One turned and stalked after his companion.

  “The guards make you more important,” Jawbone told him one day as they made their rounds visiting. “Among us it is the habit for elders to go escorted. Those ones cannot distinguish between an escort in consequence of your dignity and guards to keep you close.” He hissed in laughter.

  “I don’t understand why he didn’t just lock me up.”

  “He dares not. You and all your kind are too valuable to damage. The Other One says that confining you too tightly or injuring you might kill you or make you turn your face to the wall.” He twitched a shrug. “So he does this instead.”

  “The Other One?”

  “The one of your kind who is kept separate from you.”

  “Aubrey! He’s here too, then?”

  Jawbone shrugged.

  “Do you know if our ship is still in the system?” the priest asked as they walked on.

  The alien hissed. “How would I know such a thing? Fathersimon, in this place it is best to forget that there is a place outside. We are dead and buried here,” Jawbone told him. “For those elsewhere we do not exist.”

  “God knows we exist,” Father Simon told him. “He never forgets us.”

  “Then God is truly alone,” Jawbone said. “For there are no others who would bring us out of this place.”

  “Hope, Jawbone. Where there is life there is always hope.”

  Captain Peter Jenkins faced the President of the Colonial Council on the screen.

  “Can you locate the humans on Hasta exactly?” he asked.

  “There is only one base on the planet,” the Council President said. “They must be there.”

  “How much overpressure can that base stand?” Jenkins asked.

  The Council President paused and stared fixedly for a second. “Approximately twelve pounds,” the voice came out of the speaker. “I can find out more precisely if you need to know.”

  “So more than twelve pounds per square inch of overpressure would utterly wreck the base?”

  Again the glassy stare. “Say about fourteen to be certain.”

  “Thank you,” Jenkins said and broke contact.

  So they plan to destroy the base, the Council President thought as the human’s image flicked out of existence. Crude, but then they are a crude lineage. Yes, that would solve the difficulty. And nicely weaken 246. With that settled he turned away to other business.

  PART VIII: SEMEAI

  Billy Toyoda came caroming onto the bridge. “I got it, Captain!”

  Jenkins looked up annoyed. “Well, Mr. Toyoda? What have you got? And put your damn feet on the floor!”

  Billy drew himself up and touched the floor with both feet. “Yessir. I’ve got the answer sir.” Then he lapsed back into his more usual enthusiasm. “Look, the Owlies want the drive, right? So how do they know if we give them the real thing or something that just looks good?”

  “A forgery?”

  “Sure. With some help, I can rig up something that will look so good they won’t know they’ve been screwed until we’re well outta here.”

  “It might work at that,” Jenkins said thoughtfully. He reached over and hit a stud. “Ask Dr. Takiuji to join me in my office, will you?”

  Suki listened impassively as Billy spun out his plan of deception.

  “What do you think?” the captain asked when Billy finally ran down.

  Suki smiled apologetically. “Very clever. But there are perhaps difficulties.”

  By now Jenkins knew the Japanese well enough to know what that meant.

  “Could you enlighten us, Dr. Takiuji? Please speak frankly.”

  Suki nodded and Billy Toyoda fidgeted. “Two things. First, we do not know how much physics the Colonists actually do know. It is very hard to know how much we can lie to them. If we tell too big a lie . . .” he made a fluttering gesture with his right hand, like a bird flying away.

  “They are very good. Very clever. It will be hard to lie to them believably.”

  “Hey, by the time I get through, it’ll take them weeks to figure out which end is up.”

  “Perhaps this will be not so easy with physics,” Suki said politely.

  “You mentioned a second reason. What is that?”

  “A more subtle difficulty. By what we do not tell them, we give them clues as to where to look.”

  “Huh!” Toyoda snorted.

  “Consider. We do not wish them to know the truth of the drive so we must lead them away from that knowledge. But in doing so we leave gaps, openings. When the false information is examined, what is missing points our enemy toward the truth. A lie that leaves no clues at all is a difficult thing.”

  “Yeah, but if we make it confusing enough they’ll never figure it out.”

  “That may be so,” Suki said politely. “However I foresee difficulties.”

  Jenkins scowled down at his desk. Toyoda’s idea had seemed so logical. It had looked so much like the key he needed to unlock the situation. He looked up at the two Oriental faces in front of him, the older one calm and smiling slightly and the younger one scowling.

  Two Oriental faces . . .

  “Mr. Toyoda, you may be on to something.”

  Billy beamed. “Then we’ll do it?”

  “We’ll do something like it. If you’re willing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got a notion. But there’s a risk. A lot of personal risk for you. Would you be willing to volunteer?”

  Billy shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You could get killed.”

  “No biggie,” the computerman said breezily. “I just get run through the simulation again.”

  Jenkins hesitated. The kid doesn’t have the faintest goddamn idea what it means to die, he thought. He’s as innocent of death as a puppy. Or one of his computers.

  Still, he needed Billy for this one.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Jenkins told DeRosa. “I think I know a way to get our people back!”

  “Deal with the Colonists?” Iron Alice asked.

  “After a fashion. What are the chances of getting our shuttles repaired?”

&n
bsp; “None, none, none and none,” the pilot told him. “Jewett’s little surprise packages wrecked them good. Number One is scrap and the other three aren’t much better. All of them lost the same critical parts so we can’t even cobble a good one together out of the wrecks.”

  “Damn! I’ve got to have shuttles to make this work.”

  “Well, ours aren’t going any place. Say! What about the Colonists?”

  “No good. They don’t have craft designed to land on a planet. Well, 246 does, but I doubt Derfuhrer is going to give us any shuttles.”

  “Maybe not,” Iron Alice said thoughtfully. “But who do you suppose controls the Colonies’ gas mining ships?”

  “Those things that fly down into the Jovians’ atmosphere and scoop in gas? They’re not designed to land anywhere.”

  “No, but they’ve got an aerodynamic shape, they can take lots of stress and they’ve got plenty of power.”

  “Yeah,” Jenkins said. “It just might work at that.”

  The team gathered hastily in the small conference room, buzzing about the sudden summons. They quieted expectantly as soon as the captain came through the door.

  “Mr. Kirchoff,” Jenkins began without preamble, “can we use the drive to get from here to Hasta?”

  “Nossir. The drive doesn’t work well this close to a star.”

  “Forgive me, I was under the impression that the drive functioned adequately in a gravity well. That the problem was in the positioning.”

  The engineering officer shrugged. “It comes down to the same thing.”

  “Perhaps not in this case.”

  “Captain,” Carlotti interjected, “you cannot use a KOH drive this deep in a star’s gravity field. The distortions of space increase the quantum uncertainty and it becomes impossible to determine your position accurately enough.”

  “But it will work, physically?” Jenkins persisted.

  Carlotti looked as if he had bitten into something unpleasant. “Physically, yes, but the positioning problem is insuperable.”

  “Need I remind you that we have had the gravity array deployed and functioning for some months?”

  “No, Captain, you don’t need to remind me of it. So for that’s been the only astronomical science we’ve done on this entire trip. And yes, you’re right, that helps because it gives us a pretty good gravity map of this system. But that’s not enough.”

  “What that comes down to is that position and velocity will be even more uncertain than they usually are. If you’re willing to accept that, you can use the drive.”

  “Yes, but you’re going to have a lot of uncertainty. It’s not safe, especially not when you get close to a planet.”

  “All right. Assuming you had to jump. How would you minimize the uncertainties?”

  “Well,” Carlotti said slowly, “we could do it by a series of small jumps. That would cut the observational error. But there’s nothing we can do about the quantum uncertainty. There is an excellent chance we could emerge from the last jump within the atmosphere.”

  “Can we choose which side of the planet we approach?”

  He shrugged. “Of course. We would approach the side of the planet that was turned toward us. But I don’t see why it matters on which way we’re facing when we go to glory.”

  Captain Jenkins smiled grimly. “It matters a lot if the explosion smashes the base and sprays the survivors with hard radiation. Not as clean as a rescue, but satisfactory enough.”

  No one said anything.

  After the meeting broke up, Jenkins called the Council President.

  “Can your gas mining ships land on the surface of that planet?” Jenkins asked as soon as the alien came on the screen.

  Again the fixed stare the Earthmen had come to know so well.

  “Yes,” the President said finally. “If you added landing gear. It would probably damage them, but they should stay atmosphere tight and be able to take off again.”

  “Fine. I need six of them. As quickly as you can get them to me.”

  “To what end?”

  “The defeat of 246,” Captain Jenkins told him.

  “The humans have made some arrangement with the Council,” the Master of Bounds told Derfuhrer. “As part of that agreement they receive six gas-mining ships.”

  Fear clutched at the leader’s heart. Then he forced himself to relax. No, he thought, they would not trade their secret for so little.

  “What are the terms?”

  “The humans are trading general information. The nature is not specified but it does not involve the star drive.”

  “Find out what the terms are of that trade.” The Master of Cities indicated assent.

  “What do the humans intend to do with those ships?”

  “Use them to replace the shuttles they lost in the attack.”

  “To what end?” Derfuhrer asked sharply.

  The Master of Cities “shrugged.” “Not even the Council knows. Who can say what is in the mind of this lineage?”

  “Who indeed,” Derfuhrer said. “Who indeed?”

  Normally the room was used as an auxiliary mess for the crew. Now it was filled with men and women drawn from the crew and the technical staff.

  Carmella looked around and realized she knew about two-thirds of the people here. They were pilots or associated with the pilot force. But some of the faces were strange.

  What in the world is this all about? she wondered.

  At precisely 0900 by the clock on the bulkhead, Iron Alice DeRosa strode to the front of the room.

  “Okay, listen up. We’ve got a little job to do and you pilots are going to be part of it.”

  So that was it, Carmella thought. All the people in the room must be qualified pilots. All the crew was cross-trained and the ones she didn’t know must be the ones whose secondary specialty was piloting.

  “You all know the shuttles and most of the scooters got trashed in the raid. Well, we’re getting some replacements.” She reached out and flicked a switch. An image coalesced in the tank on the table and the audience gasped.

  The thing managed to be sleek, powerful looking and ugly all at the same time. And it was obviously not a human design.

  “Jesus,” Carmella said softly. “They want us to fly that?”

  “This,” Iron Alice told them, “is one of the Colonists’ gas-mining ships. They’re designed to dive into upper atmosphere of the Jovians and scoop up gas. We’re modifying four of them for this mission. The controls may be a little funny, but the mission is simple and these things have plenty of power.”

  The image in the tank rotated slowly, showing the stark, streamlined shape of the brute. DeRosa pointed to the stern.

  “The engines burn hydrox. Engineering is fitting these things with extensible landing jacks. Only two of you are supposed to land, but you never know.”

  “How much practice time will we get?” one of the other pilots asked.

  “None,” Iron Alice told him. “We can’t afford the risk. We have a simulator tricked up to respond like the alien shuttles—or how the alien shuttles should respond. You’ll do your practicing in those.”

  “Jesus,” Carmella muttered again.

  “All right,” Iron Alice said. “The rest is in your briefing books. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” said the tall blond pilot. “How do we know we can trust the Owlies? How can we be sure those shuttles aren’t gimmicked or something?”

  Iron Alice DeRosa smiled at him. “Because the captain made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. And we’ve got to be alive if they’re going to collect.”

  Carmella barely made it to the bathroom in time. Once in the stall she heaved and heaved until there was nothing left in her stomach. Jesus, she thought. Oh Jesus.

  Weak and sick, she staggered out.

  There was another pilot at the sink, combing her short brownish hair.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  Carmella looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was pale and
blotchy and she was still bent over from the after effects of the cramps.

  “Yeah,” she muttered. “Fine. Just something I ate.”

  “I hope no one else ate any of it,” the other woman said. “You look like shit.”

  Carmella shook her head. “Just allergies. I pushed it too far.” She leaned over to rinse the bitter taste of vomit out of her mouth.

  “Well, don’t do it again, okay?”

  Carmella nodded.

  It took time, of course. Getting the gas-mining ships back to the Maxwell from the outer system required a voyage of several months. The laws of orbital dynamics will not be mocked, even travelling in a high-energy trajectory with strap-on fuel tanks.

  Even before the ships arrived, the humans began work. The ruins of the shuttles were eased out of their bays. The bays themselves were enlarged by consolidating storerooms aft of them. They were deepened by eliminating the corridors beneath them. The bay doors were extended and enlarged. What had been a neat and ship-shape collection of spaces became an ugly void of openwork and girders.

  Once the ships arrived they had to be modified. Crews of humans swarmed over them, adapting them to their new roles. Structures had to be strengthened, landing jacks added, the cabins needed to be completely redone. Engineering and other services spent weeks studying the plans and developing modifications while they waited for the ships to arrive. Everyone from vacuum jacks to astronomers worked as construction crew. But even so, it took a long, long time.

  Meanwhile, there was other work to be done.

  “I wish to make a trade,” Captain Jenkins told Derfuhrer. “I wish to get my people back.”

  Derfuhrer didn’t even bother to deny that he had them. “I will entertain an offer.”

  “The knowledge of our star drive?”

  “Just so.”

  “This was forbidden,” Jenkins said, thinking out loud. “But I have my duty to my lineage. I cannot shirk that for the concerns of other clans.”

  Derfuhrer said nothing, waiting.