*
By the time they were inside Mars’s orbit, they were moving so fast that Earth’s orbit seemed to be mere minutes away. Bandicut scarcely had time to readjust his thinking. Before, time had crawled; now it was running away from him. The inner planets were much closer together than the outer planets. Earth would be next, then Venus, then they’d whip across the orbit of Mercury to skim the sun, and from there it would be a smooth arc out . . . smack into the comet. Boom. They would nail it somewhere outside the orbit of Mercury, on the far side of the sun.
He hoped he wouldn’t spoil the show for all those people on Earth who were dusting off their cam-goggles. With luck, he might produce an even better show, if a briefer one.
The sun grew large and bright and hot in the viewer. He kept Napoleon and Copernicus busy running checks on the ship’s systems, particularly as they drew inward toward the sun. It was unlikely that Neptune Explorer had been designed to survive the kinds of conditions he was about to put her through—such as the intense heat of a close solar approach. The translator’s threading field was capable of excluding excessive radiation, but if they dropped out of threading during their approach to the sun, he’d be fried long before they reached the comet.
An hour after they crossed Earth’s orbit, Bandicut roused Charlie and asked him to darken the threading field; it was starting to get uncomfortably warm inside the spacecraft, and nastily hot on the outer hull. Charlie, muttering to himself, passed on the request, and told Bandicut that next time he could just address the translator directly.
/// Talk to the white stone.
It’s the communications element. ///
/Oh./ Bandicut noted, on the instruments, a drop-off in ambient radiation. He fingered the silent stone in his right wrist and muttered, “Can you darken it a little more, please?” There was no answer that he could hear or feel, but he saw a sparkle of red fire in the black stone in his left wrist, and the field darkened a little more.
Venus’s orbit flashed behind them, and he began to think seriously about preparing for the end. He found himself worrying about how he was dressed. He imagined the planets gathered around, watching and applauding as he smashed straight into the comet, and he wanted to look right for the event. He hurried amidships to put on clean clothes for the final plunge. He was amazed at his own calm in the face of near-certain death.
The glowering image of an enormous sun swam in the window, filtered by the threading field, as they streaked in past the orbit of Mercury. Bandicut imagined himself a performer on stage in some great cosmic theater, spotlights beaming and dancing upon him as he spun and sang. The planets loved his song and clamored for more. He was into his third song when he heard the quarx shouting hoarsely,
/// John . . . can you hear me? ///
He reeled back in his seat, trying to sort fugue from reality, as the quarx wheezed at him,
/// You have to get ready! ///
/Eh, what?/ he gabbled. /I’m ready! I’m ready! But for what?/
/// To do the flying . . . ///
The quarx’s voice faded a little.
/// . . . get ready to link with
the translator! ///
/What?/ he asked, thoughts spinning back down into reality. He felt a burning sensation in his wrists, and he looked down and saw both stones pulsing with light. /I thought you guys were flying./
/// I can’t any more.
John . . . you have to take over now. ///
He felt a knife blade of fear, as the quarx gasped an explanation. He didn’t want to hear it—really didn’t want to hear it—especially once he understood what the quarx was saying. All the nav data had been going to the translator-stones through Charlie; but it was getting too hard—Charlie was weakening fast and didn’t trust himself to get it right anymore. /Are you telling me that the translator can find its way through spatial threading, but it can’t track a comet around the sun?/
/// It can follow it . . .
but not if it can’t see it.
And we have some . . .
equipment problems. ///
/Equipment problems—?/
/// We, uh . . . burned out the main . . . nav sensors.
I guess I shouldn’t have pointed them . . .
at the sun . . . ///
/You wha—?/ He gulped back his own question and looked at the nav display. Charlie was right. The sensors had failed, and the navlock was lost. /Why did you do that?/ he gasped.
/// We didn’t know.
Sorry . . .
it was . . . a mistake. ///
He felt his hopes sliding. /How do you expect me to fly without any nav?/
The quarx struggled to answer.
/// The basic trajectory’s . . . fine.
It’s the final approach . . . we need you . . .
to steer us, at the end. ///
Bandicut blinked, trying to absorb Charlie’s words.
/// Think of it as . . . docking . . .
high-speed docking. ///
He couldn’t answer. Was Charlie telling him that he was supposed to eyeball the ship in to impact—that it was all going to depend on his being personally linked to the stones?
He thought of his linkup with the translator in the cavern and shuddered. Don’t worry, came a whisper from Charlie. It would be just like a game of EineySteiney, only here the stakes were a little higher.
A little, he thought. Indeed. But if there was no other way . . . /What do you want me to do?/ he whispered.
The quarx’s answer came in broken words.
/// As soon as we’re . . . outbound . . .
past the sun
. . . use the telescope to find the comet.
I’ll link you . . .
you make corrections through the translator
. . . biggest game of . . . EineySteiney . . .
you ever played. ///
Bandicut swallowed hard and turned to the computer charts to determine where to point his telescope to find the comet. They would be at perihelion—closest approach to the sun—within the hour.
Neptune Crossing Page 73
