by Allen Steele
Ted, you bastard…Emily felt her face grow warm and prayed that no one noticed the innuendo. “Roger that,” she replied, trying not to smile. She waited a second, studying the gauges to make sure that the seal was tight and there were no air leaks, then turned her head to look back at the passengers. “All right, now, I’m popping the forward hatch. Might be a slight pressure difference, so I suggest you swallow a couple of times. But don’t touch the hatch…someone aboard will let you through.”
The science team murmured; they were already unclasping their harnesses and reaching down to pull their baggage from the nets beneath their seats. Collins reset the comp and put the engines on standby mode; since she’d be the last person to exit the craft, it was her duty to make sure that the harbor pilot had a safe craft to fly home.
“Nice work,” Ramirez said. “You’ve got a real feel for this sort of thing.”
She’d almost forgotten about him. “Yes, well…it’s a small job, but it’s mine.”
“And you do it well.” Apparently at ease with where he was, he patiently awaited his turn to leave the ferry. “Not like other individuals, at least…”
Collins cast him a hard look. “Let them do their work,” she said, “and see to your own.” She paused, then lowered her voice. “Sorry, but there’re no Savants aboard. You’re just going to have to make do with us normal humans.”
He scowled and looked away, and Collins left him alone. She didn’t know whom she distrusted more: him or the captain.
With six extra passengers aboard, Deck C was more crowded than usual. Emily carefully made her way through the circular passageway surrounding the hab module’s central core, trying to avoid collision with scientists searching for their assigned quarters while, at the same time, adjusting to microgravity. The Millis-Clement field wouldn’t be activated until the diametric drive torus was deployed; until then, everyone aboard would have to maneuver around each other in free fall. This didn’t pose a problem when Galileo’s complement consisted of nine seasoned spacers. Add six eggheads who’d only recently completed deep-space training, and the potential for chaos was magnified a hundredfold.
Fortunately, Ted was on hand to get the mess under control. Emily found him directing the members of the science team to their compartments while trying to deal with their individual problems. At the moment, it appeared to be Tobias Rauchle’s turn to lodge a complaint.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Rauchle, but we don’t have any rooms with connecting doors.” Holding on to the ceiling rail, Harker spoke to the team leader as if he was a hotel concierge handling an irate guest. “Dr. Kaufmann is in the next compartment, though, so…”
“No, that’s not satisfactory.” Rauchle glared at him in a way that might have been intimidating if the physicist hadn’t been upside down; as it was, Rauchle was making his demands to Harker’s knees. “Robert and I are research collaborators. We have important discussions that we need to do in private…”
“Then you’ll just have to go to his quarters, or him to yours. Or you can talk in the lounge on Deck D when no one else is…”
“Toby, it’s all right.” Kaufmann hovered behind the senior scientist, his arms laden with their duffel bags. Although he didn’t have hold of the handrail, at least his head was in the direction of the ceiling. “We can work this out.”
“No. That simply will not do.” Trying to reposition himself upright, Rauchle spread out his hands and, touching the narrow walls of the passageway, attempted to perform a cartwheel. Right idea, wrong technique; all he succeeded in doing was bumping his head and nearly kicking Kaufmann in the face. “If you can’t give us connecting compartments, then you could at least reassign one of us to a larger…”
“No one aboard has larger quarters,” Emily said. “Except the captain, but I wouldn’t try talking him out of it.” Then she slipped her hand around Ted’s waist, letting her fingertips brush his rear. “Besides,” she added, smiling at both men, “I’m sure the two of you can work something out. We always have.”
Rauchle’s face became scarlet, while a smile briefly flickered across Kaufmann’s. Jorge Cruz chose that moment to flounder through their midst, muttering apologies to everyone as he clumsily hauled his bag behind him. Rauchle waited until the astrogeologist was out of earshot. “Yes, of course,” he muttered. “My apologies, Commander. I suppose you’re right.”
“Sorry we can’t be more accommodating.” Harker leaned past him to push the button that caused the pocket door of Rauchle’s compartment to slide open. “If you have any other concerns…”
“Nein. Danke.” Still upside down, Rauchle pushed himself headfirst through the door. Kaufmann gave them an embarrassed smile, then followed the older man inside. Harker waited until they were both inside, then touched the button again, shutting the door behind them.
“How did you figure that out?” he murmured. “I mean, I thought this was only…y’know, a professional…”
“C’mon. You think they only want to compare notes?” She couldn’t blame them for wanting to be discreet; one of the unfortunate consequences of the recent religious revival had been the return of intolerance. “I just let them know it’s all right, so long as they keep it to themselves.”
“Yeah. Right.” Releasing his grip on the ceiling rail, Harker pushed himself down the corridor. All of a sudden, it seemed as if the corridor had emptied out. Everyone had found their quarters, save for Cruz, who tugged against the recessed handle of his compartment door. Harker took a moment to show him how to use the door button and explain that the handle was only there for power-loss emergencies, and Cruz entered his quarters with a grateful smile. “You realize, of course, that could come back to bite us,” he continued once they were alone again.
“What do you mean?” Emily couldn’t help herself; with a saucy grin, she grabbed Ted’s ass. “Oh, you mean this…?”
“Yes, I mean that.” He swatted her hand away, then glanced back to see if anyone was watching. “Emcee…”
“Oh, come now. They’re not going to tell.” Collins gently pushed him aside as she found her own compartment. “Besides, it’s not like the rest of the crew doesn’t know…”
“Ian doesn’t.”
Collins pushed the door button, waited until it opened, then pulled herself inside. What Harker had told Rauchle was the truth; all the crew and passenger quarters aboard Galileo, with the sole exception of the captain’s, were exactly alike, at least in terms of size and furniture. A wedge-shaped room, narrow at the entrance and wide at the outer wall, with a fold-down bunk, a collapsible desk and chair beneath a bookshelf, a comp with an intercom phone, and a tiny closet with hanger space above three drawers. Its most valuable luxury was a privy that, once its sink and commode were folded against the bulkheads, could double as a shower stall. But only when the Millis-Clement field was in operation; until then, they’d use sponges for baths and plastic bags for answering the call of nature.
Small, functional, and barely comfortable. Yet, like the rest of the crew, she’d managed to personalize her quarters a bit during Galileo’s shakedown cruise. A few favorite paper books on the shelf. Pictures of her mother and two brothers, the former long since deceased and the latter whom she barely knew anymore, taped to the wall above the comp. A Martian tapestry with an abstract reddish gold design, both enigmatic and sensuous, that lent the room a touch of mystery. A toy spaceship, resembling a fighter craft from a twenty-first-century fantasy fic, that her flight instructor had given her several years ago.
“If we’re careful, he’ll never know.” Sliding open the closet, she pushed her bag inside, then shut the door before it could float out again. “No connecting doors here, either, but since you’ve managed to assign yourself to the next compartment over…”
“Don’t count on seeing too much of me. Discretion is the better part of…”
“Oh, shut up and give me a kiss.” Grabbing hold of a hand rung above her bunk, Emily pulled him closer. Ted grinned, then put his arms arou
nd her. The kiss was sweet, but like all things stolen, it was furtive and all too brief. “Enough of that,” she said softly, pushing him away before temptation could get the better of either of them. “You’ve got things to do upstairs.”
“Yeah. Like making sure we get out of dry dock without crashing into something.” Harker sighed as he gazed past her. Through the porthole, they could see a cargo pod maneuvering into docking position, carrying more supplies they’d need for the voyage. “What do you think?” he asked. “Can we get there and back without Ian killing us all?”
At first she thought he was joking, but one look at his face told her that he was serious. “Don’t have any confidence in him, do you?” Raising his right hand, Ted closed his thumb and index finger an inch apart from each other. Emily shook her head. “Give him a chance. Maybe he’ll surprise us.”
“Remember the botch he made of the rendezvous maneuver with Deimos Station? If Simone hadn’t corrected his orders…”
“I’m sure he’s learned something from that.” She smiled. “Besides, you said it yourself…there are seven other people aboard who know their jobs, yourself included…”
“Only seven?” Harker raised an eyebrow. “You don’t count yourself?”
“I’m just the shuttle driver. My job doesn’t begin until we reach Spindrift.” She shrugged. “Even then, chances are it’s only a lump of rock with some…I don’t know, something floating around it. If that’s the case, I’m just along for the ride.”
“Yes, well…” Harker glanced at his watch, then backed toward the door. “Look, I’d better go. Come upstairs when you’re done here, all right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Ta.” She waved her fingertips, and he gave her a wink before pushing himself out into the corridor. Collins closed the door behind him, then reopened the closet and, pulling out her bag, began to unpack her things.
She hoped she was right, that their mission would be uneventful, save for a practical demonstration of the starbridge’s hyperspace capability and perhaps the establishment of a cooperative relationship between the European Alliance and the Western Hemisphere Union. Yet it was hard to ignore the fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach, or the sense of unease she had when glancing through the porthole to see an Earth that she might never lay eyes on again.
“T-minus thirty seconds and counting.” Simone Monet’s slender hands ran across the board of the helm station, tripping a set of toggle switches. “Disconnecting from external power sources.”
Green lights blinked along the panel above the engineering station. “Confirm that,” Martin Cohen said. “Galileo now on internal power. Stand by for main-engine ignition in twenty-nine seconds.”
“All stations, sound off.” Ian Lawrence turned his head to gaze at the members of the flight crew, seated around him in the horseshoe-shaped compartment of Galileo’s command center. The view of the dry dock through its wraparound windows was all but ignored; everyone’s attention was focused upon the screens above their consoles.
“Life support, go.” This from Werner Gelb, seated next to Martin.
“Telemetry, green for go.” Arkady had his left hand clasped against his headset, listening to last-minute communiqués from the dry dock.
“Helm is go.” Although Simone was moments away from ceding her responsibilities to the ship’s AI, she wasn’t about to surrender without a fight.
“Engineering is go.” Martin was the most nervous person in the room; his eyes didn’t move from the screens displaying the condition of Galileo’s fusion reactor.
“Logistics, go.” As executive officer, Antonia Vincenza’s primary task at that point was making sure that the ship’s AI and computer subsystems were fully functional. An almost redundant task, since those systems would have long since alerted the crew to any anomalies. Indeed, the case could be made that Galileo itself was the smartest member of the flight team.
“Medical, standing by.” Nick Jones sat in his chair, arms folded and legs crossed together, observing everything with calm detachment. No one would need his services unless everything went to hell, at which point he’d become the most important member of the crew.
Next it was Emily’s turn. “Shuttle on standby,” she said. Like Nick, her job was redundant unless there was a dire emergency. Then she’d be responsible for packing everyone aboard the Maria Celeste and flying them to safety. Unless we’re so far away, she thought, that it’s a useless gesture. She didn’t want to think about that. Instead, she sat alone in a chair at one end of the command center, watching the rest of the crew as they went through the countdown procedure.
“All stations affirmative.” Ted sat next to Lawrence, his eyes on the lapboard he’d unfolded from the left arm of his chair. “Mooring lines detached. Galileo floating free.”
“T-minus ten seconds.” Simone turned a key on her board, then flipped open a tiger-striped safety cover to expose a single toggle switch. “Main-engine ignition in nine seconds. Eight…seven…”
“Hey, guys,” Arkady said aloud, “I think I left something behind.” No one laughed, and the grin vanished from his face. “Sorry. Bad joke.”
“Four…three…two…one.” Simone clicked the switch. “Ignition. Main-engine start.”
From somewhere behind them, a low rumble, steadily rising in volume. A subtle tremor passed through the hull. Emily felt it through the seat of her chair and the soles of her shoes, and she grasped her armrests as weight descended upon her, just enough to push her back into her chair. Through the windows, she could see the scaffolding of the dry dock slowly move away from either side of the ship until only the black abyss of space lay before them.
“Away from dry dock.” Arkady listened intently to his headset; he was all business now. “Trafco reports our attitude looks good. We’re clear to proceed to rendezvous with starbridge.”
“Copy that.” Antonia tapped a command into her console. “Mission recorder started. Helm, stand by for starbridge AI interface.” She glanced at Lawrence. “On your mark, Captain.”
“Thank you, XO.” Lawrence stared straight ahead. “Com?”
“Receiving uplink from gatehouse.” Arkady typed in a couple of commands, then glanced over at Antonia. “Ready when you are, Captain.”
“Thank you, XO…mark.”
“Copy that.” The executive officer entered the code prefix that would slave Galileo’s AI to the one aboard the starbridge control station. She studied her screens for a moment, then nodded with satisfaction. “Interface complete. Helm, stand down.”
“Yes, ma’am. Helm standing down.” Simone clicked one more switch, relinquishing control of her station to the comps, then let out her breath and folded her hands together in her lap. Until Galileo completed its hyperspace jump, there was little for her to do other than sit and watch. Emily felt pity for her; no pilots like to feel as if they have no control over their craft.
The initial vibration subsided, the roar of main-engine ignition lapsing into a background rumble. Although there was sufficient gravity for the flight crew to stand up and move around, none left their seats. Emily hoped that the science team had obeyed Ted’s instructions to remain on Deck C; they didn’t need any visitors just then. Through the windows, they caught a brief, final glimpse of Earth—three-quarters full, its daylight terminator somewhere above the Pacific—before lateral thrusters fired to correct their trajectory and put them on a correct heading for rendezvous with the starbridge. Then their world slowly swam away, to be replaced by the distant crescent of the Moon.
On the overhead screens, they could make out the starbridge, a tiny silver ring that grew in size with each passing minute. Until ESA began its construction two years earlier—along with its prototype companion, KX-1, robotically built in orbit around Eris—the hyperspace program had been one of the European Alliance’s most closely guarded secrets. Although the Western Hemisphere Union loudly proclaimed that its development, along with that of a second-generation diametric drive, wa
s the result of espionage, the EA dismissed this as propaganda, insisting that its scientists had come up with it on their own.
Yet perhaps there was some truth to the charge. Although the facts were still classified, Emily had heard the rumors: that a former United Republic of America physicist, one who’d been involved in the construction of the URSS Alabama and long since assumed to be dead, had been discovered in biostasis, reportedly in a former URA lunar research station that had been lost after the collapse of the Republic. No one knew who he was, but the story had it that he’d carried with him not only his own knowledge of hyperspace physics but also a disk containing his research notes for the development of wormhole travel, and that it was only lucky happenstance that caused him to be found by the Alliance instead of the Union.
Well, that was only hearsay. Reality was something else entirely. Emily let out her breath, loosened her seat harness, and stretched herself. She caught Ted’s eye, gave him a nervous smile. He responded with a sly wink. They were on their way.
At constant thrust, it took Galileo less than six hours to reach the Lagrange point where the starbridge was suspended between the gravitational pulls of Earth and the Moon. What had once been a tiny ring had expanded to a torus, forty meters in diameter, its blue and green navigational lights flashing along its outer surface. One hundred kilometers away, a small cylindrical station was positioned in close orbit, the gatehouse that controlled access to the starbridge.
“Gatehouse confirms final approach, Captain.” Arkady looked up from his console. “All vectors nominal, and starbridge powering up for hyperspace insertion.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rusic. Give them our regards.” Lawrence paused, then added: “Status of KX-1?”
“All systems clear, sir.” Arkady’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if he’d never thought his commanding officer would ever ask. “Status nominal.”
Emily glanced at Ted, saw him briefly raise an eyebrow. Nice of the captain to double-check. Unless the twin starbridges were properly synchronized, the wormhole wouldn’t be formed and Galileo would vanish into a singularity. In which case, their last thoughts, just before their bodies were crushed into streams of subatomic particles, would be the confirmation of their suspicions that their captain was an idiot.