The Eridani Convergence

by Alastair Mayer

  She set the display’s origin at Tau Ceti and centered the image on 82 Eridani. There was a bright yellow star just a few degrees away from it, the sort of thing that could get you messed up if you were sloppy about lining up on your target before engaging warp. She knew that star. It was actually a loose binary. Zeta Reticuli. She, Carson and Marten had been there just two months ago. Jackie wondered if there was more to this pick-up job than Ducayne had told her. It’s Ducayne. Of course there is, she thought.

  She continued to review the 82 Eridani data. The habitable planet was Tanith. The nearest other star was a brown dwarf at 1.3 parsecs, well off her course and not particularly interesting. There was the usual sprinkling of red dwarfs but nothing close enough to worry about. At almost twelve light years, 82 Eridani was just beyond her there-and-back range without refueling, but that wouldn’t be an issue; she’d refuel at Tanith. Then she remembered the “and back” wouldn’t be back here. Ducayne wanted the package delivered to him at Sawyers World, Alpha Centauri. On her pad, she moved the origin to 82 Eridani and set the display to look back at Alpha Centauri. 19.17 light years. Close enough to her full range that she would want to stop somewhere to top up the fuel tanks.

  She scanned the route. There really wasn’t much without being way off track. The Epsilon Eridani system was roughly equidistant from Alpha Centauri and 82 Eridani, the three stars making a shallow triangle, but the detour was an additional six light years, or four-and-a-half days. Hmm, that would be nearly the same for return via Tau Ceti. She checked the numbers. Yes, hypothetically returning via Tau Ceti would take all of six hours longer than via Epsilon Eridani, but with Eridani’s thick dust disk and dual asteroid belts, in-system maneuvering would more than exceed that. Maybe she could stop back here on the return leg after all.

  On the other hand, with stopover and refueling time, taking either indirect route would add five or more days to the trip back, and it wasn’t strictly necessary. She wondered just how urgent Ducayne’s pickup was. He’d had the Sophie equipped with a few extras. In addition to a message torpedo, she had a range booster. A kilogram of anti-matter and the conversion equipment to let it power her warp modules added several light years to her range. But that was only for emergencies.

  Okay, the direct route it would be. If she found herself dangerously low on fuel a light year or two short of Alpha Centauri, that would constitute enough of an emergency to use the antimatter.

  That was another subsystem she’d need to run checks on. Antimatter storage was reliable—it had to be—but she had the irrational feeling that antimatter would slowly evaporate in storage if it wasn’t used. Actually, she realized, it wasn’t such an irrational feeling. The containment was designed to let the antimatter “evaporate” slowly, to power the container itself. A kilogram could power it for thousands of years. It wouldn’t run out that way in her lifetime.

  She was contemplating that when her omni’s alarm tweedled at her. It was time to clean up and change for dinner.

  CHAPTER 15: GOING FOR A RIDE

  Carson

  Now: An autocab, near Sawyer City

  AS THE AUTOCAB headed back toward campus, Hannibal Carson reviewed what little Sawyer had told him about the Kesh contact—he was sure that’s what it had been—and about Finley’s peak. Could it be a pyramid? Had there been one under their noses all this time?

  Nothing Sawyer had said proved it to be a pyramid, but neither was anything he recalled about it inconsistent with it being a pyramid either. He didn’t remember much. He’d have to read the reports before talking to Finley. That it was completely covered in soil and vegetation was odd, but not impossible. The Verdigris pyramid had been partially buried, and the Mayan pyramids of the Yucatan were vegetation-covered before they’d been excavated, although the stepped-nature of those pyramids made that easier.

  Carson glanced out the window of the cab. The surroundings were unfamiliar; this wasn’t the way he had come.

  “Cab, destination Drake University, Archeology Building.”

  The cab acknowledged the command, but continued on-course.

  “Cab, specify destination.”

  “Acknowledged,” was all the cab said.

  Great, thought Carson. The cab’s software has a glitch. There were no manual controls; this was a city cab, not an off-road vehicle. But there would be an interface to connect via an omniphone. Carson tapped an icon on his.

  There was no response. His omni didn’t register the presence of the cab. What the hell?

  Carson raised his voice. “Cab. Stop here please.”

  “Acknowledged.” The cab increased speed.

  That word was beginning to annoy Carson. He flashed on Edgar Allen Poe’s raven, forever quothing “nevermore”. He’d have laughed if the situation weren’t so serious.

  He had no idea where the cab was taking him. The map on his omni was useless; somehow the cab must be interfering with the positioning system, which shouldn’t be possible. He had to get out, even though the cab was moving faster than any sane person would try to jump from.

  He tried the door. It was locked, and the release did nothing.

  “Cab, slow down!” He might as well try that again while he thought of something.

  It said “acknowledged,” but otherwise failed to respond. By now the cab was in open countryside, rolling down a narrow gravel road at speed.

  Carson looked at the cab’s interior light. Maybe a short circuit would drain the battery, or reset the computer? He pulled out his folding knife and attacked the lamp fixture. The wires sparked violently when he shorted them, and grew hot enough to burn his fingers, but he held on as the whine of the motor dropped in pitch. It was slowing down!

  Then a circuit breaker tripped with a click and the cab sped up again, the wires cooling. Damn it, now what?

  Knife in hand, Carson looked around the interior of the cab. He was more angry than scared. He stabbed at the back of the rear seat and slashed at it. Maybe he could open a way into the trunk. He’d figure out what to do then when he got there.

  The synthetic fabric and padding yielded under his onslaught, and he tore great chunks of it away, revealing the metal frame of the seat back. The diagonal cross-members of the frame had big triangular gaps between them, but it would be a squeeze.

  He squeezed. With his head through the gap, he pushed and pulled himself forward, but couldn’t get his shoulders through. He backed up and pushed one arm through first, then his head and other shoulder. No good, he got stuck part way. He tried to back out, but the awkward position of his limbs made that nearly impossible. He squirmed and wriggled, finally pulling himself loose, tearing his shirt and some skin in the process.

  He tried the doors again. Maybe the locks had been on the same circuit as the light. He tugged and pushed at the handle and lock switch, but to no effect. The inside of the door, like the rest of the cab, was lined with a fabric like that of the seat cover. Maybe?

  He grabbed his knife up from where he’d left it on the floor of the cab and slashed at the door covering near the switch. It cut easily, but there was metal behind it. Of course. The switch had to mount into something. He kept slashing at the door until he found a gap between the frame pieces, and ripped the fabric away.

  Yes! The lock and latch mechanisms, and their wires, were exposed. Carson hacked the wires apart. There was no time for finesse. He didn’t want to still be in the cab when it arrived wherever it was taking him, and that might be any minute now.

  Carson pried at the mechanism until it released, and the door . . . stayed closed. Now what? The force of the slipstream was holding it closed, of course. Carson pushed hard and it opened a few centimeters, the wind and road noise coming in with a roar.

  Why the bloody hell isn’t this cab designed to come to a stop if someone opens the door? Carson wondered, but realized that could have been overridden too. He looked through the gap at the rough surface of the road rushing by, with the grass verge just beyond. This is going to hurt. />
  He jammed a piece of torn seat cover into the edge of the door to keep it from latching shut. Then he cut two long strips of the fabric, which he managed to wrap around his hands. He was not dressed for this—it had been a social call, not a field trip—but the wrappings should help save his skin.

  Carson curled up in the seat beside the unlatched door, the roar of the wind and crunch of the gravel loud through the gap between door and frame. He curled his hands over his head, his fists balled and gripping the insides of the seat-cover wrappings, put his back against the door, then drew his knees up, planted his feet against the edge of the seat supports where he had cut away the cover, and took a deep breath. He gave quick silent thanks that this wasn’t a flying autocab, then as hard as he could, pushed himself out.

  CHAPTER 16: DESSERT

  Roberts

  Sherwood’s Chophouse, Skead City

  DINNER HAD BEEN wonderful. Jackie had ordered the elk medallions, which weren’t really elk but a native Skead animal that resembled it, in a tanberry sauce with roast potatoes. It had been delicious. She was just taking a sip of her dessert coffee, a hot sweet drink piled high with whipped cream, when a familiar voice came from behind her.

  “Is that Jackie Roberts? It is you! How long have you been back on Skead? And how’s the Sophie?” The voice belonged to Andrei Sarsfield, who’d been her co-pilot for the better part of a year. There was another man with him.

  “Andrei, what a surprise! It’s good to see you. Sophie is doing fine, in fact I’m lifting in the morning.” Better get that out up front, to justify leaving early if she needed to. “Join me, please,” she said, gesturing at the empty seats at her table.

  The waiter looked momentarily nonplussed, but accommodated them.

  “What about you?” she asked Andrei as they sat. “Still with Nakamura?”

  “Nope. Ben here,” Sarsfield gestured to his companion, “and I went partners in a C-class, the Cerulean Cloud. I missed the freedom we had with the Sophie.”

  “Don’t you miss the regular paycheck? I thought that was one reason you left Sophie to join Nakamura.”

  “It was, but I got bored doing the same run all the time. Speaking of, where are you headed?”

  There was no reason not to tell him, anyone who really wanted to know could get the information from the cargo office. “Eighty-Two Eridani. Know of any cargo headed in that direction?” Even though technically they were competitors, it sometimes made sense to subcontract a load to another ship, particularly on a long run with unknown chances of a return load.

  “Tanith? What takes you out that way?”

  There was a hint of, what, concern? incredulity? in Andrei’s voice. “Why? Is something going on there I should know about?” And if so, why wasn’t it on the net?

  “Nothing really. It’s just coincidence. Ben and I were out there seven, maybe eight weeks ago. Nothing more than the usual frontier world hassles. Some talk of imposing landing fees, that kind of nonsense.”

  “Landing fees? They need us more than we need them, surely?” Except for the purpose-built spaceliners intended for high-traffic routes like the Earth-Alpha Centauri run, most small starships could land on almost any flat stretch of ground, and a few could also land on water. Which wasn’t to say that there weren’t amenities in a developed spaceport worth paying for—sewage connections for one, and a cargo office for another—but on many planets the local spaceport was just a cleared field. The inhabitants, whether temporary or permanent settlers, generally needed the goods and data brought by small time charter and freight operators more than those operators needed any particular location’s business.

  “It’s just talk. Anyway, we operators would roll it into the price of the service,” Ben put in.

  “And at the margin, folks wouldn’t ship or travel as much, which still hurts us in the long run,” Jackie said. “The independent freighters and traders compete a little harder, cutting our margins even more, and we’ll tend to avoid places like Tanith. Either way the colonies grow a little more slowly, or even shrink. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Jackie was born off-Earth,” Andrei said in an aside to Ben. “She’s seen it happen.”

  “Really?” Ben said. He looked at her. “Then you are as young as you look. Hard to tell these days.”

  Jackie wasn’t sure how to take that. Yes, past adolescence, physical appearance didn’t correlate much with age anymore, but she knew she was young for a pilot. Never mind that she was literally born on a starship. “The Sawyer colony is over fifty years old,” she said.

  “And I don’t recall any of the original settlers being named Roberts,” Ben said. “But no offense was intended, I’m sorry if it sounded that way.” He didn’t look particularly sorry, but Jackie let it pass.

  Andrei turned back to her. “How is Renee, by the way?”

  “Mom? She’s fine, the last I heard. It’s been a while, she’s on another expedition.” It had been on a multi-year, extended expedition that Jackie had been born, not that she had any personal memory of that. But her mother was a field astrophysicist, and Jackie had grown up in and around starships.

  “Ah. Anyway,” Sarsfield continued, “Kakuloa’s problem wasn’t exorbitant landing fees; the economy collapsed when the pharmaceutical companies on Earth learned to duplicate the biologicals Kakuloa was exporting.”

  Jackie shook her head, smiled, and raised her hand in a gesture that was part surrender, part halting further discussion. “We’ve had that argument before, Andrei, let’s not get into it again. Not my fight. Besides, I really can’t stay. I have a ship to prep for departure in the morning.” She pushed her chair back from the table.

  Andrei looked as though he were about to protest, but Ben looked relieved. Andrei caught that too. “Sure. Ben and I need to order dinner anyway. Keep in touch, we’ll have to catch up next time our paths cross.”

  Jackie caught Ben’s scowl at that. Jealousy? He didn’t have anything to worry about. Jackie’s only interest in Andrei was that he’d been a great co-pilot, and as far as she knew, the feeling was mutual.

  “Sure,” she said, then had a sudden thought. “Oh, by the way . . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Just curious, when you were at Tanith did you happen to pick up anything bound for Sawyers World?”

  Andrei raised his brows. “Not that I recall, certainly that wasn’t our first stop after leaving there. Ben?”

  Jackie saw Ben’s scowl but couldn’t decide if it was the same one continued or a new one at the question.

  “That was a while back. Without going back through the manifest I’d have to say no. Why?” There was a suspicious tone to Ben’s question, but considering most ship owner-operators considered manifests as trade secrets—everyone had their own favored customers and routes—that wasn’t surprising.

  “No particular reason. I’m picking up a small load bound for Sawyers and wondered what the odds were that there might be other cargo to be had.” Put that way, her question seemed legitimate enough and her answer seemed to satisfy Ben.

  “Sorry, can’t help you there. Good luck, though.” The latter lacked any genuine enthusiasm.

  Oh well. “Thanks. Um, one other question, and please don’t take offense. I wouldn’t mention it but since Andrei and I go back a way, I wouldn’t want to step on any toes.”

  “What’s on your mind, Jackie?” Andrei asked.

  “A contact at the port recommended a local grower for some on-spec, small lot coffee loads. If I don’t have another cargo lined up for Tanith, I’m thinking of pursuing that. That wouldn’t undercut you, would it?”

  “I thought you didn’t like being the middleman, just the delivery person?”

  Jackie shrugged. “As a rule, yes. But my pick-up contract doesn’t say I have to dead-head, so why not?”

  “Go for it, Jackie,” Andrei said. “We do take coffee when we’re headed out that way, but I don’t think you’ll hurt our business. A lot of coffee drinkers on
Tanith.”

  “Andrei!” Ben sounded annoyed.

  “Relax, Ben,” Andrei said to him. “She didn’t have to bring it up in the first place. And you’re a little too paranoid.” Andrei turned back to Jackie. “Sorry. Ben’s last captain played business really tight to the firewall. I think it rubbed off.” He turned back to Ben and glared at him.

  “No, forgive me,” Roberts said. “I don’t want to cause a fuss.”

  “My fault,” Ben said. “Andrei is right, I do get a little paranoid about business sometimes. But you’re a friend of his, I should mind my manners.”

  Jackie wondered at this sudden solicitousness. She wouldn’t have challenged anyone, let alone a friend of Andrei's, over something so trivial, nor was she conspicuously armed at the moment, but Ben didn’t know her. On the other hand, space could be a lonely, dangerous place. Business aside, small ship owner-operators tended to stick together. Ben seemed sincere.

  “Your manners were never an issue,” she said. “Perhaps mine were. Can we forget it?”

  Ben nodded. Andrei looked back and forth between him and Jackie and, wearing a wide-eyed expression of innocence, asked “Forget what?”

  “Nothing,” Ben said.

  “What he said.” Roberts looked at her omni. “And I’ve delayed your dinner long enough, gentlemen. You can keep this table if you like, but I need to get back to the Sophie.” She rose and took a step back. “It was good to meet you, Ben. Next time, Andrei. Enjoy your dinner.” With that she turned and left the restaurant.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Riding in the autocab on the way back to the spaceport, Jackie pondered the conversation again. She didn’t see how it could be anything but coincidence that they’d met at the restaurant, or that the Cerulean Cloud had recently visited 82 Eridani. They’d surely done a couple of other trips since then, and back before Andrei left the Sophie they’d eaten at Sherwood’s together before. A cut above spaceport fare but still reasonable.