by Garry Ocean
“Excellent, and I am asking you again, please treat this urgent matter with all seriousness, I feel that even the smallest details will be important here. Don’t see me off, but let’s touch base every 24 hours.”
A tall figure emerged at the door. The man gave the cadets a tenacious glance and graciously stepped toward the pnemo-elevator. Nick suddenly felt an itch between his shoulder blades. He tried to take a better look at the stranger, but the latter slid right past him and in one swift move turned up behind Nick’s back. When Nick turned his head, he only saw the closing elevator doors. “Wow, what a move!” he said involuntarily.
“A pro!” Paulo confirmed his guess, letting his breath out.
“Nick, come in, don’t stand there like a statue!” the Chief, Gleb Ivanovich Shulgin, the commander of Tau Kita-1 Space Base named so after its stationary location in the Tau Kita system, invited Nick inside with a wave of his hand.
Shulgin had a spacious office. In the center, there was a large oval-shaped table made of a non-reflective material. The entire back wall was taken up by a 4D holo-screen. It was glistening and blinking with myriads of lights, and the dashed lines of various colors and hues were running across the screen, lighting up and disappearing here and there. This was a miniature Universe model, or, obviously, the more or less known part of it. The gray haze edging around the entire projected image stood for the unexplored Deep Space.
“No time to sit down,” Chief pointed at his left wrist for some reason, even though he never wore a time piece. “Your task is to deliver a cargo to the research base in Sector F-14056. As always, Peter will give you detailed instructions and the exact coordinates. Any questions?”
He of course had a question, just one. It was a small question, a tiny-tiny one that should not be even asked of serious people, “With all due respect, does Gleb Ivanovich remember that just the other day, or the day before yesterday, he approved my leave?”
Nick pulled his courage together to remind the Chief about this small detail, but something stopped him. The Chief looked different today, or, to be more exact, Nick had never seen him like that: tough, collected and alert. “On the other hand, I still have two weeks before the leave, I can try and swing there and back,” Nick decided for himself and replied, “No, sir! Permission to leave?”
“Granted,” the Chief waved his hand tiredly. “No, wait a sec. Didn’t you train on the Berserker?”
“A hundred hours of flying time.”
“That’s good. The Valkyrie is basically the same in terms of driving, just a different engine. All right, go now, Peter has been waiting for you.”
Nick must have looked dumbfounded, as neither Emil nor Paulo, patiently waiting in the reception area, asked him anything, but silently followed him with their eyes as he was leaving.
“Gee, what’s going on! Good thing I didn’t say anything about the leave, otherwise I would have been turned down for the assignment. I definitely am a lucky one, it makes my head spin. If I tell anyone about this, they won’t believe me. Flying the Valkyrie! No, not that, performing a top-secrete mission! Who would have thought! Not only the interns of the courier service, but also experienced starship pilots will be greatly interested to find out about the details and characteristics of the shuttle. Upon return, I will definitely send a holo-report to everyone. Especially to Paul, let him go green with envy. Although, this may be prohibited. Everything is so top-secret here, I’ve been here for a whole year now, but still can’t get used to it. Who do we guard these secrets from? Reminds me of my childhood games when we played Aldebaran spies. But I still need to clarify this. And, the most important thing,” here Nick almost started to dance, “with this shuttle, I will be able to swing the trip there and back in five days. How did Emil put it? – It’s not just like walking.”
“Oh, shoot, I must have lost my mind with joy, I should just take Umka with me, it will record the entire flight. Because I know all these sharp-tongued punsters like Lenka Sinitsyna. ‘Nicky,’ she’d say, ‘did you accidentally take the Valkyrie for your mom’s glider? Yes, the same one that you drove into a 300-year-old oak, the pride of our school principal. And then you lied to everyone that you had taken special pilot courses to fly with your eyes closed. Or, perhaps, it was that very 50-ton loading robot that you managed to flip on a practically smooth road? As the rescuer from the rapid deployment unit said then, no one had ever performed a stunt like that before!’ Ha-ha-ha! When they finally exhaust all their wits, I’ll pull out my Umka and voila! It’s important not to forget to record their faces at that moment.”
In such a good mood, Nick fastened Umka on his wrist. Then he thought a little and covered it with his pilot’s jacket sleeve. “If Ovsyannikov sees it, he will drill me on the regulations non-stop.” Nick looked over his reflection in the mirror. The flight suit fitted him like a glove. Pleased with himself, Nick smiled at the reflection. “So, old-d-die,” he winked at himself, “Last mission and then – home?”
Not waiting for the cabin door to close behind him, Nick went almost skipping to the elevator shaft. All the way to the lower deck of the base everyone he met was smiling at him and followed him with their curious eyes. “I could show you a triple somersault right now, but my status, I’m sorry, wouldn’t allow it now,” he thought to himself and playfully winked at an overly serious girl from the software department.
********
Never in his life Nick had met a person more boring than Peter Ovsyannikov. The situation was worsened by the fact that he was the courier service commander and the immediate supervisor of intern Nick Sobolev.
Peter looked not older than 60. He was very powerfully built, but his constitution did not affect the speed of his reaction, which Nick was a witness of many times during the training exercises in sparring and sub-fights. In general, Peter Ovsyannikov was, as people say, a man at the peak of his form. His service list was impressive as well. And had he not been so incurably boring, serving under his command would have been quite prestigious. When he was young, Peter worked with Alberto Starggioni himself, participated in the famed Third Expedition to the Black Pulsar. On that mission, for the first time in space exploration, the crew managed to have captured the original quark matter, thus having confirmed empirically the theory on synthesis of protons from the quarks of the ancient Universe.
Before his transfer to the Tau Kita-1 base, Peter was serving at the Rapid Deployment Unit and deservingly enjoyed the fame of a courageous and experienced pilot. It was rumored that he, risking his own life, landed at the nearest satellite of the mysterious Ghost planet and managed to evacuate eight scientists from a research base in distress. Then he went back to get the valuable soil probes. He was a hero, undoubtedly. But boring like no one else.
Every time before the scheduled flight he performed the same ritual!
“Intern Nick Sobolev, cite paragraph 174, point 8 of the safety instructions for the inter-galactic flights on Class A ships!”
“What the hell, which flights? I will never be allowed anywhere close to Class A ship,” Nick thought to himself. “He knows perfectly well that my security clearance is for Class D only. It has been just two months since I was allowed to fly solo.”
“What’s the sequence of your actions, cadet, in case a meteorite hits the life support compartment?”
“Cases like this, since all ships are equipped with the OKO anti-meteorite location system, have not happened for the last 200 years,” Nick would think again.
And so on and so forth…
In short, he tormented Nick every time before the flight, and now it must have been more than a hundred. At first, Nick thought he was the only object of Peter’s affection. As it turned out, no, he picked on everyone.
“A real space pilot must be always prepared for unforeseen situations,” Ovsyannikov liked to repeat. And then he would add, with a heavy sigh and in a lower voice, “And they, those situations, happen sooner or later. Most of the times at the most unsuitable moment.”
This time, there was no preaching. Peter was grumpy as always. He nodded in response to Nick’s greeting and headed toward the hanger without turning around. Nick followed him without a word, trying to spot the legendary shuttle. When Ovsyannikov finally stopped in front of one of the many space vehicles, looking no different than the others, Nick was hardly able to hide his disappointment. The Chief was right: the Valkyrie looked just as the other shuttles, Berserkers, parked in rows along the launching shafts. Nick always liked the darting and somewhat predatory forms of these shuttles, but at the back of his mind he expected more from the Valkyrie.
“This time, your assignment could not be simpler: to deliver the cargo. The recipient, Chief of Research Base Krotov, must accept it in person, with a mandatory check of identification,” Peter said, while tenderly striking the Valkyrie’s matte paw. Then he patted its body with his hand, gave a long sigh and finished, “And return in one piece.”
Nick immediately realized that Peter did not mean him saying this.
“Is the assignment clear?”
“Yes, sir! Deliver the cargo. Recipient – Krotov. Mandatory identification check.”
“Excellent, and now give me your fingers,” Ovsyannikov took a portable identification device out of his breast pocket.
Nick obediently stretched his right hand and put his palm into a five-finger notch. The device made a hardly noticeable sound, and in a second a green light went on. Ovsyannikov peered at the indicators, then gave a suspicious look to Nick, and only then said in an obviously disappointed tone, “Everything checks out.”
“If I may, what did you expect to see there?” Nick could not resist asking the question.
Peter pretended not to have heard the question and continued, as if nothing happened, “The exit point coordinates have already been loaded to the central computer of Board 103. In essence, you don’t have to do anything beyond identification of the recipient, cargo transfer and return to the base.”
Then, in his usual manner, Ovsyannikov took a pause, lowered his voice and added, “And no extra moves!” After this, naturally, Ovsyannikov gave out his trademark heavy sigh, but this time Nick was only annoyed.
“Everyone seems to be going crazy about this secrecy,” he thought. About two months ago, the base received the identification devices to determine, as Nick guessed, the identity of a person, and perhaps something else. Now everyone on staff was to go through the check two or three times a day. And the most annoying thing was that no one in the command explained anything, just saying it was an instruction from the Center. Some were against the measure, others were making jokes about it, and still others took it as a fact of life: if it is required, so be it, the Center knows best…”
Nick has given a usual salute and stepped onto the elevator. “To hell with all their secrecy! In a couple of weeks I will be back on Earth, in the normal world among normal people, not suffering from paranoid spy megalomania,” he thought.
Nick has completely calmed down when he reached the command cabin. When the Valkyrie smoothly left the shaft for the open space and started to slowly pull out from the base, he completely discarded this conversation.
Every time during undocking, Nick was in awe mixed with an unexplainable child's fear. This time was no different: he turned off the side view on purpose, and leaning back in the pilot's chair, he was observing the Valkyrie quietly pull out from the mother base. At first it was everywhere, filling all the screens, overwhelming the space with its mere size. And then as the shuttle pulled away, it was slowly taking its dumbbell-like shape, around which, like a swarm of bees, moved back and forth the lights of various ships – big and small – creating a false impression of a chaotic, random movement.
The Valkyrie was following the navigation ray from the base with a given acceleration. Nick had about three hours of free time until the shuttle reaches the needed distance away from the base, when he will have to take over the control. Although it was probably an exaggeration, to call this “taking over the control.” In essence, the program gave no free choice.
“It’s not at all like it was in good old days, when the FSG4 still existed,” Nick thought. “You complete a three-month pilot training course, take a class D ship and fly anywhere you wanted to. At your own risk, of course. Oh, those good old days! Why did they have to shut down the program, with the verdict of ‘inexpediency, great energy and resource costs, and unjustified human losses’?”
“Yes, a lot of people died, but the discoveries were worth it: during the fifty years the borders of Deep Space were pushed thousands of parsecs farther. The experts are still studying the findings and discoveries made at that time. And now I am sitting just as a tourist in the command cabin of an ultra-modern flying ship, the highest achievement of human thought, staring into the screens like an idiot. Nothing depends on me: the coordinates are loaded, the ship is on autopilot navigating by a pre-loaded program. By the way, I need to check the course, as the manual requires.”
“Navigator, show me the course on the central screen,” he gave the command to the shuttle’s computer.
The screen immediately displayed columns of incomprehensible symbols, and Nick corrected himself, “A graph, please. OK, thank you, this is better… and what do we have here? What is this? Damn it!”
The screen showed the course as a dashed line connected by four big yellow pulsating dots. From the last dot, the line was climbing to the left and up, and it was about twice as long as the distance between the first and fourth points. It ended with a green cross standing for the final destination. But it wasn’t the unusual graph that confused Nick, but rather the fact that the last line started at the very border of the gray nebula and ended somewhere in its depth.
“Gees! Wow, Peter, son of a bitch! And the Chief was of course in the know, as he said, ‘Peter will give you detailed instructions and the exact coordinates. Any questions?’”
Nick had never leaped into such deep space before. Only once, together with Michael Fisher they had to deliver a cargo into the farthest sector of the Perseus constellation, and it would be a stretch to call it a border sector. By that time, it had been over ten years that humans established communication lines with it through wormholes (zero-tunnels).
As Nick understood, only well-prepared research star ships with the specially trained crews were meant to go into Deep Space. Or the FSG hotheads.
“And why are you so excited?” he asked himself. “Just five minutes ago you were admiring the FSG guys and condemning the World Council bureaucrats who banned such flights, and now you are afraid to leap 500 parsecs into the depth? But there is already a research base there, the Earth specialists found something there and now are exploring it. In the end, this is not a leap into the nothingness, where, if something happens, you may be waiting for the rescue team all your life. Or, to be more exact, till the ship depletes all its resources.”
He knew the answer to this question, he just refused to admit it to himself, but still asked, “Navigator, how much time will it take to complete this assignment and return to the base?”
“30 to 45 days, depending on the fluctuation at the exit points,” the mechanical voice reported, killing the last hope at the back of Nick’s mind.
“Distance to the final destination in parsecs to the third comma?”
“1,067,343 parsec.”
“This is the maximum for zero-leaps for this type of ships, is it not?”
“The leap coordinates have been calculated to ensure the least needed energy resources and safety of the transfers,” the mechanical voice continued.
“Re-calculate the possible transfers back and forth for me to manage to return maximum within ten days local time.”
The screen rebooted and produced a slightly straighter trajectory: two yellow points instead of
the four continuing into the same dashed line ending with a green cross.
“This is the estimate with a 95,555% probability to return within your time parameters,” the robot reported.
“Great,” Nick leaned back in his chair with a visible relief, “re-program the course and let’s go forward. It’s less than an hour to the leap.”
“This is beyond my authority. The coordinates have been put in by the base’s Chief Informatorium.”
“Who authorized this?” Nick still hoped that the coordinates had been put in by the IT staff from Steve Patterson’s department. He knew him from before enlisting in the courier service. Nick was sure he’d be able to reach an agreement if it were the case.
“It has been authorized by the Courier Service Chief personally.”
“Is that so? Why do they always need to make simple things more complicated than necessary? One, two max, leaps are enough to reach the border. A day there for a full re-charge. There, even the graph shows that clearly. One does not need additional estimates to realize that the fluctuation there is great and there will be no delays. And after that, just one leap to the final destination. Wow, Peter! Wow, Ovsyannikov, old reinsurer!” Nick did not notice how he jumped off the seat, thinking, “Calm down, Nick, concentrate, you just need to think this through. Who says you can’t use your Umka?”
“Navigator, remind me the flight code type,” he ordered.
“Green code.”
“So-o-o,” Nick was drumming his finders on the command panel; he always did it when he wad nervous.
Green code was assigned to ordinary, routine flights. Had the code been yellow or, moreover, red, there would have been no place to improvise. To tell the truth, he never had to fly under those color codes. And here, one could say, it was a settled issue.
Umka is a Universal Multifunctional Quantum Android (UMQA). The abbreviation was simplified to Umka when the first models came out. When Nick turned 10, his farther gave him the best present in the whole world. It was a first-generation computer, and their mass production started only two years later. Umka was indeed universal. Its designers made it completely compatible with all devices existing at that time. In any case, with all those known to Nick. It could work both in an autonomous mode and through the zero-network, by plugging into the Great World Informatorium and downloading the software and data it lacked from the net.