“That’s good, but I couldn’t concentrate on finding you at the same time.” He looked out ahead at the stars that seemed to just float there. “It really takes it out of you, doesn’t it?” He slumped down into the chair on the left and gestured for Karen to sit in the middle one.
“That’s why I’m so lucky we blend together so well, I never could have done the things I did on our ‘beryllium shopping trip’ without the energy I drew from you.” Karen squeezed his hand in gratitude once more. “You must be related to one or other of the Scouts who left Citadel and never returned, so many hundreds of years ago,” she concluded with a flash of insight.
“Yeah, I was beginning to think that,” Richard admitted. “I wonder which one?” He looked out at the stars, noticing the band of the Milky Way that showed off to the left. “Shouldn’t we be heading more towards that?” he asked finally.
“Negative,” Tutor responded. “The physics of the alternate dimensions through which we will travel are quite different from those with which you are familiar. Scout Craft Seven will enter at this approximate orientation, varying about a degree an hour for any further delay in implementation. Shall I show you the calculations once more?”
“No, don’t bother,” Richard stated hastily.
Richard and Karen found themselves looking into each other’s eyes, wondering a little apprehensively about the unknown hazards that they imagined for the journey they were about to take.
“Tutor, how long will we travel under full Star Drive?”
“My calculations indicate approximately seventeen hours twelve minutes, again dependent on our precise point of entry, the variation in power under load, and several other, related factors of lesser magnitude.”
“Where will we emerge?” Richard scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Do we have to drop back into normal space as far out from the Arshonnan star as we now are from the sun?”
“Negative, as the effect is entirely related to the other dimensions, once we have entered them the Star Drive does not affect Normal Space, as you have chosen to call it. I have selected a point a little further out than Arshonna’s orbit for our re-entry, as a precaution against any error in the data which may have multiplied in the centuries since this Scout Craft’s last flight.”
Karen laughed. “You mean there aren’t any official terms, any jargon for all this?”
“Much data was lost in the past few centuries, as storage systems were not maintained. That information must have been lost, also.” Tutor sounded sad.
“Hey, Tutor!” Richard began cheerily. “I don’t suppose it matters, as long as you know enough to get us to Arshonna, and the ship holds together until we get there!”
“I can find nothing to indicate any likelihood of structural failure,” Tutor said, taking his comment literally. “I was not sure the Drive would work when I used the last few hundred nanograms of beryllium to jump this Scout Craft over the tank that was attacking you, as the indications were that all systems were functioning at a nominal level only,” Karen’s mentor explained. “Nevertheless, it did, and all systems are still functioning at the same level, so therefore I can compute no reason why we should not complete the trip successfully.”
“In that case,” Karen began, after taking a deep breath. “Let’s get started!”
“Yes, let’s,” Richard agreed. “I hate this not knowing; if it doesn’t work, I guess we’ll know soon enough.”
“Complying,” Tutor responded shortly. “Entry will be in five seconds.”
A faint hum became audible, then the stars appeared to slip sideways, then start to rotate rapidly across the forward screen. Karen looked to the side just in time to see the stars start to blur, then the viewscreens went dark.
A grey mist became visible, floating around the ship. Beyond the mist were vast cloud-like walls that seemed to enclose them. Richard found himself gripping the armrests of his chair tightly; the scene looked hauntingly familiar to him.
“What is that?” Karen asked finally, after a minute or so of deathly silence. Her mind supplied an overlaid view of Richard’s dream, and she shivered.
There was no reply.
“Tutor, don’t you know?” Richard asked hesitantly.
Silence.
He checked the control panel in front of his chair. All the displays read nominal. On one, a series of letters or numbers was moving across the screen faster than he could focus on it. He looked over and saw that Karen had found the same status indicated on her panel. “Check the other one,” he suggested urgently.
Karen got up to move over, and as she did so, the displays flickered. Orange lights started to glow all over the panels, and the words ‘sub-critical’ appeared. Suddenly stars scorched across the viewscreens, and a giant gas planet appeared before their craft, filling over half the forward screen with its orange-red glow.
“What happened?” Karen screeched, falling back towards Richard and clutching at him as she slipped off his lap onto the centre seat once more.
Richard struggled to dampen down the fear that he felt from both himself and Karen. “Tutor?” He said hoarsely.
Still no reply.
“Try the Moss Room,” he urged her. Perhaps she’ll calm down when she can’t see it any more. Richard leaned over the controls, trying to determine what had happened, as Karen managed to pull herself away from him and shimmered out of the Control Centre. Several displays now showed a flashing orange glow, perfectly matched with the nebulous surface of the astronomically huge body floating alarmingly close outside.
Karen returned and sat down next to Richard. She was breathing heavily, far more so than she had at any point in their game of squash.
“The data system down there is ‘sub-critical’, too. I can’t contact Tutor, there’s just a mass of numbers - equations, maybe. None of them are changing anymore.” She turned away from the compelling vision before her and looked desperately at her only living protector, who now appeared to be her only companion, also. “What do we do?”
“Check your displays, maybe something will stand out that makes sense.” With an effort, Richard broke out of the shock that had held him and started to check the controls in front of him methodically. Within a minute, he had determined that he was sitting in the pilot’s chair, and that the Star Drive monitor still indicated that full power was being applied, despite the evidence of his eyes. He glanced at Karen to confirm his decision, then switched off the Drive. The monitor dropped rapidly to zero, and the orange flashing glow around it faded away to nothing.
Richard looked up; the gas giant was now filling all the forward view. The side monitors showed orange crescents that rapidly expanded across the screens. We’re falling into it!
Karen grabbed both his hands. “There must be some kind of back-up system or something,” she suggested desperately, as she searched through the memories he had shared with her just a few days before.
Richard felt her confidence, faint though it was, and it was enough to break the panic which had until that point been threatening to overwhelm him. He leaned towards the middle, finding a display that showed power was still available.
“See if there’s another pilot position there,” he pointed at the third seat.
Karen checked it, searching through the various displays rapidly. Above, the giant planet swirled close; patterns of subtly different-hued clouds raced in opposite directions around its massive circumference. The entire panel flashed twice and a message was displayed. Karen sat down and read it.
“Operator required.”
“That’s what my one says, too,” Richard replied in exasperation. “Give me lessons, someone!” He reached out tentatively and activated the controls. A small yellow sphere with black hexagonal patches, reminiscent of a soccer ball, but only a couple of inches in diameter, appeared above the panel, floating in mid-air; Richard pushed it gently away, an alarm sounded, and the ball moved back towards him rapidly several inches, while it rotated and twisted slightly.
> On the forward screen, the racing cloud pattern slipped around in a slow circle as the emergency power system rotated the ancient Scout Craft. The clouds appeared to speed faster in one direction, while the ones travelling in the reverse direction slowed almost to a standstill. Finally, the violent vapours were sliding from the top of the screen to the bottom at tremendous speeds, forming a blurred smudge, with the other, opposing clouds now rotating slowly the same way.
Belatedly he realized some kind of automatic pilot had taken over, and the Scout Craft had been placed in a low orbit. He sat back and sighed with relief.
Karen caught his thoughts easily and she slid over to the seat next to him.
“I told you there’d be something,” she said quietly.
“Phew!” Richard shook his head slowly in amazement. “I feel like I’m a moth, and that’s a light out on someone’s back porch on a summer night.”
“Even moths fly away sometimes,” Karen reassured him, her memory of his dream… No! Premonition! If they had but recognised it as such, convincing her that his abilities were greater than either of them realised. Someday we’ll find a way to use this gift, understand the warning, before it ever happens… and then we’ll skip the whole episode!
“Yeah.” Richard checked the displays, eventually finding one that gave an indication of distance from the planet below. In his distracted state, he entirely missed picking up on her revised evaluation of his mental powers, due to the ‘night vision’ that she had intercepted, just hours earlier. “Well, look at this!” He activated the memory on the instrument, and another area just above it coalesced into a video monitor; several other displays changed, as the panel automatically adjusted to keep the complete selection of information visible. The video monitor displayed an orange disk with an off-centre ring around it. Leading down to the ring and joining it was a curved line which would have intersected with the centre disk, had it not swerved to connect with the ring. “This must be our orbit, not exactly concentric, but it will probably do until we get Tutor back on line again.”
Karen nodded, glancing up at the huge planet in awe. “How big is that thing, anyway?”
Richard checked his instruments. “It’s really huge, much bigger than Jupiter. That’s why it’s glowing, I think; this thing is almost big enough to be a star.”
“I’m sure glad it didn’t quite make it; I wouldn’t like to be this close to a star!”
“I guess that would be even worse,” Richard agreed after a couple of minutes staring at the orange glow.
“Say, didn’t Tutor mention something about diagnostic systems?” Karen remarked hopefully. She studied the central section of the controls with great care. “Ah! I’ve found it.” Karen activated the device, only to have it inform her that it was inoperative. “Apparently we need a ‘Macral’ seven-three-four; they are stored in the rear wall, on the left side.”
Richard got up and went to the rear panel and scanned the information displayed there. He reached out and a section shimmered, releasing a small cylindrical device about three inches long and an inch in diameter, apparently made of solid chrome, as it seemed to weigh about half a pound. A similar, presumably broken one, slipped out of the panel at knee level, below the right pilot seat, and fell with a dull thud to the floor. Once he had inserted the replacement, several orange lights stopped flashing.
“That seems to have fixed a few things... oh! The display here shows possible combinations of actions to reactivate the Drive.”
“Go ahead,” Karen urged. “Maybe this orbit is going to decay after a few hours; let’s see if we can get a little higher now.”
Richard selected the simplest combination and watched intently as the displays flickered. Several went back to their normal off-white back-lit effect, but only temporarily. Within a few seconds they were back at orange, with one fading out completely, leaving a blank section of panel where a listing of beryllium conversion rates had previously been displayed.
“Maybe we should fix Tutor first,” Richard began nervously. “If I carry on fixing things, we may end up down in that squash stew of a failed star!”
Karen nodded with a smile, and together they walked through the rear wall and stopped in the centre of the still bare room below and behind it. “I prefer moss and stars,” she commented. “This reminds me too much of the Redcliff school.”
Richard let his thoughts of concurrence predominate for a few seconds, then he walked to the wall, activated a keyboard and started conducting a search for Tutor. Almost immediately, he realized something was seriously wrong with the memory system in the Moss Room.
Karen caught this from him and leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees so she could examine the display more closely. “There’s no reference to Tutor here! Half the other data which he collected to manufacture the mobile laser unit has been corrupted, also! Then there’s these endless numbers I mentioned.”
Richard ran through a diagnostic, but the report that appeared thirty seconds later indicated that certain data cells had been lost, and others had been converted to restore or maintain the capability of the Medic and access systems. A cold feeling seemed to drench his spirits.
Karen’s thoughts mirrored his: Tutor had been sacrificed, or perhaps had sacrificed himself, to maintain the essential functions of their Scout Craft. She found her eyes were not focusing; then she was sobbing uncontrollably in Richard’s arms.
***
Several hours later, Richard rubbed his eyes and got up from the floor of the Control Centre, where he had just completed the replacement of another in a long series of the singularly featureless (but clearly not identical) Macrals, after studying the computerized instructions intently. He leaned heavily on the chair arm, not wanting to watch the procession of changing glows on the panel in front of it, but finally turning and doing so. His worst fears were justified; the displays faded out one-by-one, leaving almost the entire panel a featureless blank. He slammed his fist into the arm in frustration, then became aware of Karen standing behind him.
“There’s nothing left of Tutor; much of the records created during our escape from Earth are gone, too,” she reported in a flat voice. “I took a closer look at those numbers we saw earlier. I think they must mean something; a lot of the space is filled with complex mathematical calculations, but those, too, are incomplete and interspersed with obscure number strings.”
“The more I do here, the worse it gets.” Richard turned and gestured dejectedly to Karen. He took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to send away the tension he felt as he did so. “The orbit appears to be stable, so we probably don’t need to worry about falling to our doom in the next few days. I think we should rig up an alarm in case anything changes, then hit the sack.”
Karen looked at him doubtfully for a moment.
“Sleep usually makes things look brighter,” he assured her.
Karen hesitated, then sighed her agreement. “Let me get you to look at these calculations first; there’s something familiar about them, but I can’t quite place it.” She took the hand that Richard held out to her and they shimmered back into the restored Moss Room. “See what I mean?”
Richard nodded after a couple of minutes. “These look like the stuff Tutor was displaying when he was trying to explain about that ‘Grey Space’.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought. But some of these equations look like they are pages long; I didn’t think he showed us anything that complex.”
Richard thought about it for a full minute, then turned to Karen with a look of intense sadness on his face.
“It means Tutor only showed us a simplified version of the equations for travel in that grey stuff,” he speculated. “And he spent those last few minutes, while we were there, figuring out the best point to drop us back into Normal Space.”
“He had to use his own memory space to replace the stuff which failed…” Karen stared back at him bleakly.
Richard took her in his arms once more and tried to project his
feelings of pride and gratitude concerning Tutor, in an attempt to override her feelings of loss. Finally she backed away and smiled faintly to let him know that she understood.
Ten minutes later, both of them had finished their preparations for their much-needed rest and were sleeping, the star divider ‘hanging’ between their very different beds like an expensive and showy evening dress, the kind once worn by a famous singer for a ‘Royal Command Performance’ in the London Palladium.
Outside the ship, the pale glow and faint warmth from the failed star passed over the dull surface of Citadel and on into the terrible cold of space without any noticeable effect. The rear sphere of the Scout Craft remained outwardly unchanged after their brief and uncontrolled trip through the unknown and incomprehensible greyness, looking like a perfect copy of the forward section of the Scout Craft, but inside it, more frightening symptoms of malfunction were easily discernible. The Eliminator reactor which powered the Star Drive was still radiating intense heat, gradually cooling from a near disastrous overload which had been unknowingly averted by Richard when he had selected the manual interrupt and shut the Drive down several hours earlier.
Chapter Four
Perspectives matter – Anon.
Dust swirled around the outside of the peculiar, long boxy object which was lying in the apparent centre of a barren plain of rock and sand, looking strangely reminiscent of an abandoned Railcar. Small rocks battered it intermittently as they were carried through the insubstantial atmosphere and mediocre gravity by the high winds. Two hundred yards away, the remnants of a burned-out trailer lay on its side, showing its blackened limbs to that cold, forbidding world whenever the wind dropped slightly. It looked faintly reminiscent of a monstrous Sunday roast, left in a heated oven for days by an absent-minded giant of a chef, but it was now as cold as the native rocks around it – and that is very, very cold. Already the wreckage was becoming buried in the reddish sand; soon it would disappear forever beneath the arctic wastes of Mars. The desolation was absolute; there was no hint of life on that weathered and sand-blasted world.
Passage Page 4
