The Praxis

by Walter Jon Williams

  If she went in for the rendezvous again, she’d have to do it faster, finish it before she passed out.

  What do you mean if? she demanded of herself. Surely she wasn’t going through with this.

  “Display: go virtual,” she commanded.

  Space expanded in her skull as her view of the cockpit faded. The yacht rolled in the void of stars.

  “Display: show only images within one light-second.”

  The stars, and the brighter star that was Vandrith, winked out. When the pinnace was tumbling, the frenzied dance of the stars were both a distraction and a temptation to motion sickness.

  “Display: freeze motion. Display: link pointer to hand controls. Display: pointer is now at target. Display: attach artificial horizon to target at pointer. Display: resume motion. Display: link hand controls to maneuvering thrusters.”

  With these commands, Sula used her attitude controls to manipulate a virtual “pointer” in the display, attaching an artificial horizon—a flat open gridiron colored a highly artificial fluorescent orange—to the skin of Blitsharts’s boat. This now rolled and pirouetted along with the yacht’s motion, a flat plane that danced in a frenzied circle around her.

  With further commands, she narrowed the artificial horizon until it was only a strip, an orange carpet that led right to the point on Midnight Runner where she could successfully grapple.

  “Display,” she commanded, “reverse angle.”

  Instantly, her perspective faced directly away from the yacht, and she saw only the artificial horizon in its frenetic dance around her. There were no distractions in the display, no massive prow coming around to threaten her. All she would have to do was match her own boat’s motion to the artificial horizon, then back up along the orange carpet till she met the Runner.

  And of course do it without getting killed. That being the sticky part.

  She realized then that she had decided to make the attempt, and wondered when that decision had come. She had every justification in the world to back off—she had no reason to think that Captain Blitsharts was alive—and had every cause to fear the outcome.

  But still, she thought. But still…

  Maybe she was just stubborn.

  She closed her helmet and triggered the comm unit. “Cadet Sula to Operations Control. I’m going to try once again.”

  As soon as she ended the transmission, her hands went to the maneuvering controls and—before she could change her mind—she began triggering jets. She wasn’t going slowly this time, no cautious addition of yaw to roll to pitch, but moving in all three planes at once. Don’t think about it, she told herself, just do it.

  Vertigo surfed through Sula’s skull. She felt gravity tug at her lips and cheek, felt her suit clamp down on her arms and legs. She kept her eyes focused on the strip of dancing bright orange, on making the dancing orange carpet stand still.

  The orange horizon moved only in two planes now. Stinging acid rose to her throat, and she fought it back down, clamping her jaw and neck muscles to send blood to the brain. Now the horizon moved only in one plane, bobbing up and down like the bow of a rowboat, until she stilled that movement as well. Her stomach took a sudden lunge into her throat, and she battled it back down.

  “Display: reverse angle.” The words fell from her lips like a faint prayer. Suddenly the angle was reversed, and she saw Midnight Runner standing still in the blackness, the bright orange carpet fixed to its back. She nudged both controls, and the yacht crept closer. She could feel tears whipping across her face as the boat’s frenzied gravities tore them from her eyes, and was thankful that tears could not blur the virtual display burning in her mind.

  But gravities would. The orange carpet was not as bright as once it had been. Her vision was going black. She could barely see the Runner’s shiny black prow as it slid under her. She braked, hoping she had slowed her boat’s movement to a crawl, and as her vision darkened she cried out, “Grapples: engage!”

  Both the yacht and the Fleet pinnace were made of layers of resinous polymer stiffened by longitudinal polycarbon beams—nothing a magnetic grapple would adhere to. But ferrous degaussing strips ran the length of the hull, charged to repel radiation, and these provided a lodging for the grapples.

  There was a shuddering boom as the two hulls came together, followed by a tone in Sula’s headset that told her the grapples had successfully adhered. And then she was working the thruster controls again, fighting the two boats’ mad tumble through emptiness.

  “Display: kill the artificial horizon! Display: show the plane of the ecliptic!” The words came from her in a choked scream. Two boats were heavier than the pinnace alone, and sluggish to respond to the controls. She could barely see the plane of the ecliptic even as it was projected onto her visual centers, a green gridiron that flashed over and around and across…

  She battled the swinging weight of the locked boats, and then a new jolt of terror shrieked through her nerves as she felt something else resisting her—Runner’s thrusters were firing again. Blitsharts was fighting her. Fury at this treachery raged in her heart. She battled on, struggling against the chaotic movement, battling to remain conscious as her vision darkened…A wail rose to her throat, a bubbling cry of frustration and anger.

  The boat juddered and moaned as gravities warred within its frame. Then Sula gave a shout of triumph as she realized her vision was returning. She saw the plane of the ecliptic rolling around her in a simple pattern…she applied thrust, damping the ship’s oscillations, then felt a surge of weary triumph as the gridiron plane stilled, stretched like a carpet beneath her feet from one horizon to the other.

  Blitsharts’s boat gave a single blast from its thrusters, and Sula corrected easily, feeling little but irritation at this last rebellion.

  She discontinued the virtual display, then had to shake tears and sweat from her eyes before she could see at her cockpit. Wearily, gasping for breath and fighting the rebellious stomach that still pitched and rolled inside her, she called up ship diagnostics. No damage, no hull punctures, antimatter safely contained.

  She opened her faceplate and wiped her face. Acid burned in her throat, on her tongue, and she took a long drink of water. Maybe it would settle her stomach.

  She wiped her face again, reached for the comm board, and began to transmit.

  “Cadet Sula to Operations Control. Rendezvous completed. Both craft now stabilized. In a moment I will grapple to Midnight Runner’s hatch and then try to enter.”

  Once the transmission was over, she took her time before moving, waiting for the vertigo to stop swooping through her head and her stomach to stop trying to climb out her throat. Then she ungrappled, rolled her boat over onto its back, and slipped it forward along Midnight Runner’s hull until the two dorsal hatches could mate.

  She closed her faceplate again and touched the transmit button. “Cadet Sula again. I have successfully grappled hatch-to-hatch with Midnight Runner. I am going on board.”

  She switched on her helmet camera to give everyone at Operations the same view she had herself, unstrapped from her acceleration couch and floated out into the weightless cockpit. Careful not to let her useless legs hit any controls, she rolled over, rolled away the plug of radiation shielding that blocked the exit at the back of the cockpit, then ghosted down the tunnel that connected the cockpit to the pinnace’s small airlock. Once there, she sealed the tunnel behind her, triggered her helmet lamp, and ordered the outside hatch to open.

  The hatch obediently rolled back, presenting her with a view of Blitsharts’s own glossy black dorsal hatch. She floated to the hatch, looked at the controls, and told the hatch to open.

  It did so in silence. Sula pulled herself head first into Runner’s tiny airlock, braced her feet against the sides and wrenched the lever that should open the airlock to the interior. It refused. The controls made an annoying meeping sound. She looked at the airlock control display and surprise rang along her nerves.

  “This may take a whi
le, Control,” she said. “There’s hard vacuum in there.”

  THREE

  A cold weight lay on Sula’s heart. She knew what was inside.

  She turned off the airlock alarm. “I’ll have to close and depressurize the lock,” she told her distant audience. “With the hatch shut, you won’t be receiving my transmissions, so I will record and transmit later.”

  She closed the yacht’s hatch behind her and listened to the hiss of air flooding out into the vacuum, the hiss that grew fainter and fainter, until there was nothing left in the airlock to carry any sound. Sula braced her feet outward against the lock walls again and pulled the lever. The inner hatch opened inward in perfect silence, then caught half open.

  Unlike that of the pinnace, Midnight Runner’s lock opened directly into the cockpit. With her helmet jammed against the hatch coaming, Sula could see the back of Blitsharts’s acceleration couch, with his helmet nestled in webbing. Blitsharts’s left hand floated above the thruster control, as if ready to pounce and initiate another chaotic maneuver.

  Sula tilted her body to scan the cockpit with her helmet lamps, and her heart surged in shock.

  The cabin interior was beautifully laid out and proportioned, custom-designed for Blitsharts himself, made for the reach of his arm, the comfort of his eye. The colors were cream accented with stripes of red, green, and yellow. But something had smashed the cockpit—it looked as if someone had gone over it with a sledgehammer. There were dents and scratches on the instrument panels and cabin walls, and even some of the readouts—built to resist heavy accelerations—had been smashed.

  Worse, there was hair, and what looked like blood, smeared over the displays. Sula wondered in shock if someone had murdered Blitsharts. Chopped him up with—With what? What could create such a horror?

  She tried to shove open the hatch, felt increasing resistance. Something had broken loose and was caught behind it, preventing it from deploying.

  Sula groped blindly behind the hatch door with a gloved hand. The obstacle was not within range at first, and she had to float in the airlock while sweeping her hand along the rim of the hatch. The movement was difficult and awkward in the vac suit, and her bruised muscles strained. Her breath rasped in her helmet, and she felt sweat prickling her forehead. Finally she found the trouble, something wet and bloody and hairy, and very, very dead.

  The dog Orange. Not that he was recognizable as a dog; he was a battered mass of bloody meat, and had apparently been hurled like a missile around the cockpit as the boat tumbled, the erratic spin subjecting the poor animal to one ferocious acceleration after another.

  It was the dog that had bludgeoned the interior of the cockpit, battering the instruments and smearing the compartment with his own blood. It was the dog that had hit the thruster controls and triggered the boat’s erratic tumble.

  After seeing Orange, Sula had no hope for Blitsharts. She found the captain strapped into his acceleration couch with his faceplate up, open to the vacuum. It had been Orange who fired the maneuvering thrusters, not the captain. Blitsharts’s face, though smeared with dog’s blood, had been protected by the frame of the helmet and was undamaged. His expression was pinched and accusing. He had been dead for some time.

  It was said that hypoxia was a good way to go, that as the brain slowly starved of oxygen, it gave way to euphoria, that the victim’s last moments were blissful.

  Sula’s memories were different. She remembered the body twitching, the heels drumming, the diaphragm going into spasm as the lungs labored to breathe…

  She remembered weeping onto the pillow as her friend fought for life. The feel of the pillow in her hand, soft as flesh. The pillow drawn over her friend’s face to finish her off.

  Enderby called Martinez out of Operations Command at the beginning of the shift, but gave him permission to monitor the rescue mission when he wasn’t busy forwarding or filing the Fleet’s communications.

  And so Martinez watched the displays as Sula braked her craft to match velocities with Midnight Runner, as she maneuvered closer for a better view of the tumbling yacht.

  He halfway hoped she wouldn’t attempt it. He didn’t want his plan to kill anyone.

  And then came the message, addressed specifically to him. Sula, her astonishing good looks unimpaired by the faceplate that closed her helmet, saying, “I haven’t ever screwed in quite this way before.” With an eyebrow tilted, and wicked amusement in her green eyes.

  Martinez thought he’d smothered his burst of laughter, but he caught Enderby giving him a sharp look from his desk, and Martinez drew a solemn mask over his amusement.

  Sula’s face faded from the display, and Martinez watched the telemetry signals as she began using her thrusters, matching her boat’s roll to that of the yacht. His hands twitched as they maneuvered imaginary controls. Martinez’s heart leaped into his throat when Runner’s thrusters fired, when Midnight Runner began to roll into Sula’s pinnace like a great whale breaching over a fishing boat…Get out, get out, he thought furiously, and fear shivered along his nerves as he saw the collision. He didn’t breathe until Sula had escaped and stabilized her craft.

  “I’m going to try once again.” Sula looked composed enough in her vacuum suit, but this time there was no mischievous twinkle in her eye—she’d learned well enough that this was no laughing matter. Admiration for her courage warred in Martinez with despair over her foolishness.

  But he had to admit she did it beautifully—faster this time. She’d learned her lesson, her boat dancing in all three planes at once. And then the docking, the battle against the tumbling inertia of the yacht, and finally the great triumph in which the two boats flew, linked, through the silent glory of space.

  Martinez wanted to shriek and dance. He even found himself looking at Enderby, as if for permission—but the lord commander sat silent at his desk, a slight frown on his face, absorbed in whatever he saw on his own displays. Dancing was not going to be a part of the program.

  Sula’s next transmission showed a woman exhausted, limp in her couch, with locks of her golden hair pasted by sweat to her forehead. Martinez could imagine the battle she’d been through. But the gleam in her eye was back, and this time it was a gleam of conquest.

  “I am going on board.”

  The battle was over; now there was only the inspection of the prize.

  When news came that there was no air in Blitsharts’s cockpit, Martinez’s heart sank only a little. Having had hours in which to think about it, he’d concluded that it was unlikely that the yachtsman was alive.

  The next report came after the silence in which the airlock door cut off Sula’s transmissions.

  “Blitsharts and the dog are dead.” She was back in the cockpit of her pinnace, floating within close range of the cockpit camera. “There was a leak somewhere in the cockpit, and his faceplate was up and he’d turned off most of the cabin alarms. I suppose you shut off a lot of alarms when racing—proximity alarms, acceleration alerts—and when the depressurization alarm went off, he probably shut it off without noticing what it was. At some point he released the dog from its acceleration couch, but I doubt he was in his right mind by then—he’d probably lost it just before that long acceleration burn.” She seemed to shrug inside her vacuum suit. “I will follow this transmission with the recording I made aboard Midnight Runner. This is Cadet Caroline Sula, concluding her report.”

  Martinez watched in fascination. The Caroline Sula who uttered these words seemed neither the mischievous pilotcadet nor the weary, triumphant warrior, but someone somehow lost…almost misplaced in time, both older and younger than her actual age. Older, because she seemed timeworn, almost frail. Younger, because there was a helplessness in her glance, like that of a wounded child.

  Had she counted so much on Blitsharts being alive? Martinez wondered. Or perhaps she knew him, even loved him…

  He was tempted to replay the transmission, so he could better understand why her reaction seemed so exaggerated.


  “Lieutenant Martinez,” Enderby said.

  Martinez gave a start. “Lord Commander?”

  “Please convey to Cadet Sula my congratulations on her successful maneuver. It required both skill and courage.”

  Surprise swam through Martinez’s brain. “Yes, my lord.”

  “I have decided to award her the Medal of Merit—” Enderby hesitated. “—Second Class. Please have the necessary documents on my desk by the end of shift.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  Enderby had been watching all along, Martinez realized. Watching the transmissions while he sat at his desk, expressionless as always.

  Another idea occurred to the lord commander. Enderby continued, “Compose a document for release to the Fleet News Service, then send it to me for review.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  “Oh—another thing.”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “In your message, please admonish Cadet Sula for the inappropriate nature of one of her remarks. Official communications are not to be used for levity.”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  Martinez realized he would miss the old man when he was gone.

  Enderby sent Martinez and Gupta home early so he could attend the football match between the crews of The Glory of the Praxis and The Sublime Truth of the Praxis, two of the goliath Praxis-class battleships that formed the core of the Home Fleet.

  Fleet commanders were often as fanatic about sport as any cadet. Sport was the closest anyone in the Fleet was ever likely to come to real combat.

  Martinez had attended the games as often as not, but today he wanted nothing so much as a shower, a bed, and—come to think of it—a drink to help relax the kinks in his muscles. He stopped by the junior officers’ club on his way out of the Commandery and encountered Ari Abacha, fortifying himself before his shift at Operations Control. Abacha waved him over to the bar as he entered, and Martinez took a chair, wincing at the pain caused by that inhuman seat in Operations.