Gate Crashers

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “Yes, Vel. We have primary and secondary power. Life support is unaffected, and there appears to be no structural damage. Shipboard gravity is functioning normally. High-space generators are charged, but the projectors are clogged with refuse.”

  “Hedfer-Vel!” Noric shrieked from his command perch. “Hedfer-Vel!”

  “Yes, Vel?” replied a small voice impossibly close to the Vel’s ear.

  Noric jumped and swallowed a startled expletive. His second-in-command was much too quiet.

  “I apologize for startling you, Vel,” said J’quol. “I assumed you were aware of my presence.”

  Too quiet, and far too clever, thought the Vel. His junior officer’s carefully worded apology indirectly called Noric’s alertness into question. He could feel the eyes of the rest of the bridge crew settling on him.

  “How long have you been skulking there?” Noric blurted, his anger regaining lost ground.

  “Not long, Vel. Only a few rakims.” J’quol was irritatingly calm. Shouting would be less wasted on a statue.

  “Get down to the mechanic’s nest and coordinate damage control,” Noric barked.

  “Immediately, Vel.” He turned and walked purposefully off the bridge.

  Noric had come to think of J’quol as a bertel tree, with its short stalk and branches exposed to the sun, but deep roots below anchoring it against mountain winds and avalanches; outwardly small, yet nearly immovable.

  Noric searched for another target. “Tactical, activate the sheath. I won’t have these clawless tourists snapping vacation holos of my cruiser covered in glot.”

  The tac officer hunched over his console, but what started as a flurry of activity slowed to a light flutter.

  “Um, Vel?” the tac officer said. He looked like a bungee jumper realizing halfway down that he’d measured the bridge in yards, but bought the cord in meters.

  “Allow me to guess. We can’t sheath.”

  “Correct, Vel. The debris has coated two-thirds of our sheath manipulators. We’ll have to have them cleaned when we reach port.”

  “Under no circumstances will this ship pull into port in this condition.” Noric’s voice was as slow and deliberate as a lit fuse.

  The tac officer mistook it for genuine calm. “But cleanup will take forever without a port!”

  Noric’s eyes shrank to pinpoints. “Then imagine how much longer it will take using your scale brush.” The weight of his gaze buckled the tac officer’s knees. “Get in a hard-suit and report to the Hedfer-Vel for scrubbing detail.”

  The tac officer shut down his console and slunk from the bridge, crest flat against his head.

  Noric continued, “And the next blunt-toothed kark that mentions a port, dry dock, shipyard, or star base is going to join our tactical officer outside … without the luxury of a vacuum suit!”

  It was at that moment that the report from the doomed asteroid platform orbiting past Mars reached Noric’s stricken patrol cruiser. Unfortunately, the cruiser’s ears were plugged up with burgeron droppings, so the message sailed onward unnoticed.

  Glot happens.

  CHAPTER 19

  “New QER burst coming in, Captain. Priority One,” Prescott’s voice said into Allison’s earbud.

  “They’re always Priority One.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’d noticed that too.”

  “I’ll be there shortly.” Allison looked down at her half-finished salad and sighed.

  The hydroponic lettuce would wilt by the time she returned. She looked around the table for takers. Chief Billings was busy applying his theory that pancakes were a delivery vehicle for butter and maple syrup. He probably wasn’t the ideal recipient for a salad.

  Allison pushed it across the table to Jacqueline, who always looked like a half-starved barn cat, not matter how much she ate.

  “Here. You could use some blue cheese.”

  “Mmm.” Jacqueline’s fork fell upon the plate with the ruthless efficiency of a tiny mechanical harvester. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said through a mouthful of leafy greens and resequenced protein chicken substitute while Allison headed for the tubes. Her monthlong shift had only started yesterday. The ARTists team back on Earth had already sent them a work queue thirty-four items deep by the time they’d gotten through hibernation sickness. Her team was already going to be pulling double shifts to finish all the experiments and exams on the buoy for this cycle, even if nothing else came in.

  The tube doors opened. Commander Gruber gave her a crisp salute.

  “Captain, I was hoping to find you.”

  “Marcel,” Allison said. “We’ve been out here together for sixty-five years. You don’t have to salute every time you pass me in the tubes.”

  “Old habits, ma’am.” He handed Allison a data pad.

  She took it. “Your reports for the last cycle?” Gruber nodded. “What’s this list in red at the bottom?”

  “Our overflow,” he said mournfully. “My people did their best, ma’am. I didn’t even have to ride them very hard. They wanted to pull their own weight, but the queue just kept growing, and every new item was always—”

  “Priority One,” Allison finished for him. “What’s the point of having a seven-level priority code when the bottom six warm the bench?”

  “Every ant in the hill believes its job is most important.” Gruber shrugged.

  “Except we’re the ones doing all the heavy lifting.”

  “The trouble with being good at your job is soon you’re doing everyone else’s job, too.”

  Allison giggled. It was the kind of strained giggle that people only used when the only other option was screaming.

  Gruber smiled. “What’s funny?”

  Allison closed her eyes and let her head roll back before answering. “It’s just I wouldn’t have guessed time would be a limited resource on an expedition that was supposed to last almost a century and a half.”

  “No, ma’am. I suppose not.”

  “Is your team already on ice?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He pointed at the report. “And now that you have that in hand, I’m going to join them.”

  “Would you like me to tuck you in?”

  “That depends. What bedtime stories do you know?”

  “Ah, none, actually. I never had to memorize any. My sisters are all older. Quite a bit older, now.”

  “Pity. I’ll see you next year, ma’am.”

  With that, he left the tube and headed toward the cryo bay. Allison caught her eyes fixating themselves to Gruber’s backside, framed momentarily by the tube doors. The truth, she realized with surprise, was she really wouldn’t mind tucking in with her XO, regulations be damned. The doors snapped shut, bringing the impromptu fantasy to an abrupt close. Allison sat in silent contemplation for a long moment.

  “Where would you like to go, Captain?” asked Magellan from the ceiling. If aloe could make a sound, Maggie’s voice would be it.

  “Sorry, Maggie. I was daydreaming. Take me to the bridge, please.” The tube car pushed off with an electric purr toward the bridge.

  “You seem tense, Captain.”

  “I must be doing a lousy job of hiding it,” Allison said, which was true. One’s poker face had to be pretty weak for a machine to call your bluff.

  “Would you like to talk about it, Allison?”

  Allison again? she thought. It wasn’t that being on a first-name basis with her ship bothered her. More likely, she was bothered by the fact it didn’t bother her.

  “I don’t know if there’s much to talk about, Maggie. We’re all stressed. For the last two years, every team has woken up with their cup already overflowing, especially my team. We inexplicably seem to pull the toughest experiments from Earth.”

  “It is a compliment, Captain. Our counterparts on Earth refer to your cycle as their ‘A-team.’ They’ve come to trust your research abilities and, therefore, give you the most difficult assignments.”

  That raised Allison’s eyebrows. “How do you know tha
t, Maggie?”

  “The head researcher, Mr. Fletcher, told me as much.”

  “You have a pen pal?”

  “Pen pal … a friend made and kept through correspondence, usually in letters. The description is apt. Yes, Mr. Fletcher and I are pen pals.”

  “What else has he told you?” Allison asked, and then thought better of it. “Never mind, Maggie. You don’t have to answer that.”

  “Why?” Magellan asked.

  “Because whatever you talk about is between you and Mr. Fletcher. It should be confidential.”

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody likes gossip. You have a right to expect some privacy in your relationships.”

  “Thank you, Captain. Would you like me to suggest to Mr. Fletcher to reassign some of your team’s tasks?”

  Allison sat without responding for many seconds. For a computer, the pause seemed interminable. Magellan was about to ask again when Allison finally answered.

  “No. We’re all volunteers here, and the chance to work on a project this important doesn’t come around every lifetime.”

  Magellan took a millisecond to consider this. “So you are excited about the project, then?”

  “Yes, of course,” Allison said.

  “Yet also tense?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “How do you keep the feelings separate?” Magellan asked.

  “We don’t, Maggie. Most of the time, they just sort of mesh together. Like blue and yellow blending to make different shades of green. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” said Magellan. “Depression and cowardice form envy.”

  Allison’s head stopped moving mid-nod. “Wait, what?”

  “The emotional color system,” Magellan said. “The color blue denotes feelings of depression or sadness, yellow indicates a lack of bravery, so mixing the two would make someone green with envy.” Magellan sounded quite proud of her discovery.

  “No,” Allison said. “There is no system, Maggie. It was just a metaphor.”

  “Then what is the purpose of coding colors to particular feelings?”

  “It’s not a code; the colors are completely arbitrary. They aren’t even the same from one culture to the next.”

  “Oh.” Magellan sounded defeated and confused.

  “My point was we don’t decide which emotions to have or when, and we can’t really separate them,” Allison said. “The best we can hope for is to keep ourselves from getting overwhelmed by them. Does that help?”

  “Maybe,” Magellan answered.

  The word surprised Allison; the ship wasn’t known for indecisiveness. Suspicion tugged at her like an unruly child in the checkout aisle.

  “Maggie?” Allison said. “Are we still talking about my feelings or something else?”

  There was a pause before Magellan responded. Allison’s suspicion was now rolling around in the aisle, kicking its feet, and screaming for a chocolate bar.

  “I believe I feel … conflicted, Captain.”

  “What about?” Allison asked, not at all sure she was going to like the answer.

  “The project.”

  “What about it? You can’t be stressed out like us mere mortals. Your workload at any given second would put a human in a coma.”

  “That is true,” Magellan said without pride. “What is the ultimate purpose of our work here?”

  Allison noticed the adjective our. Maggie perceived herself as part of the team. That was encouraging. The tube car slid to a stop and the doors started to open.

  “We have reached the bridge.”

  “Shut the doors, Maggie. We’re not finished in here yet.”

  “You have unread Priority One messages, Captain.”

  “They can wait. I’m talking to you right now.”

  Another pause, then, “Thank you, Allison.”

  “You’re welcome. Anyway, the purpose of our work is progress. The things our ARTists back on Earth have already engineered are just amazing. A technological revolution.”

  “And what happens to old technology during a revolution?”

  “Well, it gets replaced, of course…” The realization struck Allison like an iron asteroid. Allison thought of Maggie as a person and a friend, not a pile of circuits and pipes. The idea that one of her friends could become “obsolete” had never occurred to her.

  “Oh, Maggie. I’m so stupid,” she said. “You’re afraid the project will make you obsolete.”

  “Am I not already obsolete?” Magellan said. “Mr. Fletcher’s team’s early hyperspace tests were successful. It will only be a short time before yanks are built incorporating this new technology, certainly sooner than the sixty years of our return trip. There may not even be a need for an AI on board, as crews could remain conscious throughout the journey.”

  Allison’s eyes moistened as she listened to her friend describe the end of her kind with the dispassionate voice of someone reading off a shipping manifest.

  “Have I upset you, Allison?”

  “I’ve upset myself. I failed to think about how this would make you feel, and I’m sorry.”

  “For not thinking like a starship? That’s not a natural thing for a human to do.”

  “Neither is flying through space at half the speed of light. Being out here requires us to do a lot of unnatural things. But you don’t have to worry, Maggie. You’re not obsolete, and I swear they’ll send you to the breakers over my dead body.”

  “That would be regrettable, Allison.”

  “I’m not kidding, Maggie. I won’t permit it.”

  “Thank you,” was all Magellan could say. Her captain’s behavior was confusing. Magellan’s programming included several scenarios that allowed her to lie, but the human capacity to deceive themselves … was simply baffling.

  Perhaps the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum will want me as an exhibit, Magellan thought. There are less desirable outcomes than hosting tourists, aren’t there?

  CHAPTER 20

  Eugene tugged at his tie, trying to impose symmetry on chaos. After many years of trial and error, the tiny dimple in the fabric just below the Windsor knot still eluded him. Thin ties had come back into style recently, but he abhorred them. Against his thick neck and jowls, a skinny tie looked like a parasitic eel.

  He was headed for a strategy meeting with the Advisory Board for Civilian Development of Space. Danielle Fenton would be there, as would Gladstone Rockwell. Doubtlessly to defend the interests of his most important campaign contributors, the fine people of Lockheed-Boeing-Raytheon. Eugene fully expected the whole affair to be a courteous bushwhacking. However, knowing an ambush awaits is the first step to preparing a successful counter-ambush.

  Felix had also been invited, but Eugene conveniently neglected to inform him. An invitation was not the same thing as a subpoena, and while Felix had made great strides in the last few years dealing with his fellow scientists, politics was a different arena altogether. It would be like putting a chess champion in boxing gloves and shoving him into a ring.

  Eugene keyed for his new aircar. The quiet solitude of the elevator gave him a few moments to reflect on their progress.

  His team had learned two valuable lessons over the last few months: the anguish of repeated failure, and the elation of an unlimited budget with which to replace said failures.

  The problem with hyperspace travel wasn’t that a three-dimensional object couldn’t exist within extra dimensions. After all, one- and two-dimensional objects exist in the three-dimensional universe. Even the fundamental laws of physics remained constant … ish.

  Instead, the problem was giving brains evolved to operate in three dimensions several more layers of complexity to contend with. Like playing Pac-Man in an M. C. Escher print.

  The first bunny to actually survive the trip, in prototype number twelve, returned only to spend the better part of a week trying to run across the ceiling. Later, an unfortunate test chimpanzee came back convinced it could get a better vie
w of its surroundings by standing on top of its own shoulders.

  The solution they hit upon were specially designed 3-D glasses. What made them unique was instead of adding a dimension to 2-D images, these glasses took one away.

  A chime sounded from the elevator’s ceiling, and the doors parted, revealing Eugene’s new favorite toy. Hovering a few inches off the deck was a pristine classic; a 2307 Ford Pegasus, billed as the only pony car with wings, clad in grabber-orange paint that glowed like fresh lava.

  Eugene bought it as a present for the teenager still lurking inside his psyche. Unlike the quiet refinement of his Jaguar, the Pegasus was America personified, meaning it was loud, obnoxious, wasteful, and had more power than anyone could use responsibly. He climbed in and awoke the single massive turbine at the rear of the car. With the sort of primordial roar that had once sent sauropod herds scattering for safety, the Pegasus shot into the air.

  Several minutes and one citation for flying under a pedestrian bridge later, Eugene arrived at the Stack. By the time he reached the conference room, Chairwoman Fenton was already seated, as were her aide and several other members of the committee. Mr. Rockwell was conspicuously absent.

  “Professor Graham,” Danielle’s voice carried through the room. “Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat. Will your head of research and development be joining us?”

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Fletcher had a previous engagement,” Eugene lied. “But I was thoroughly briefed for our meeting.”

  “Very well,” she said. “We’re still missing a couple of people, but I think we should begin. I’ve asked Professor Graham to join us today to give a firsthand account of the ARTists’ progress. Professor, the floor is yours.”

  Calculating eyes fell on Eugene as he stood to speak. “Thank you for the introduction, Mrs. Chairwoman. I’m pleased to report that over the last few months, out teams working here at the Stack, the beta site, and out at the Unicycle have made amazing progress in their research.”

  Eugene drew himself to his full height. “In fact, they have exceeded all of the expectations I had for them. As of now, we have successfully—”

  He was interrupted by the door being flung open. Gladstone Rockwell swept into the room, wrinkled and missing a few buttons. The least one could say was he looked distressed.