The Great Race

by Tom Clancy

  ‘Hal Fosdyke said they might use scenes of us racers in the production/ Leif objected.

  Kyra laughed. ‘And whatever they use, the special-effects people will probably redub and enhance like you wouldn’t believe. You’ll be amazed at what you look like when they’re through with you.’

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘But you still haven’t explained why can’t you enjoy any of this fabulous food.’

  ‘Changing the subject, are we?’ Kyra laughed. ‘I still have to fit into the costume. That never changes. Besides, in the days of flatfilm, they used to say that the camera put ten to twenty pounds on the actors.’

  ‘They also used to say there were faces that the camera loved,’ Leif said. ‘But when you get an exact 3-D replica—’

  ‘But you don’t!’ Kyra cut in. ‘On a standard holo-suite, everything is a little larger than life. You’ll see big vistas, alien cities with huge moons hanging in the background, mountain passes crawling with soldiers, a spaceship swooping past a planet bigger than your head. And when the focus pulls in for a close-up, the people are always larger than you are. It’s some kind of psychological thing, I think. Drawing on the audience’s memories of childhood to hold their attention.’

  She grinned wryly. ‘All I know is this. If you’re going to lens something larger than life, it’s better to start with something a little smaller than real life.’ She patted her nearly anorexic stomach. ‘At least in some ways.’

  The blond girl from the Carpathian Alliance stepped by with a plate frill of goodies.

  ‘I feel sorry for her if they lens her team,’ Kyra said. ‘She may look gorgeous in person, but as a holo character she’ll probably end up looking like a blimp.’

  Chapter Nine

  Milos Wallenstein arrived to make a brief speech at the dinner party. ‘Don’t go filling yourself up so much that you’ll want a nap!’ he warned. ‘We’ll be recording the first racing scene tonight.’

  Leif knew this race wasn’t going to be something like the Kentucky Derby, finished in two minutes. Or even like the Indianapolis 500, running over a weekend. Operating under the technology of Ultimate Frontier, traveling to a different star system - even a nearby one -meant a journey of several days.

  The racecourse that Wallenstein and the Ultimate Frontier writers had come up with would take weeks to traverse if they were doing it in real-time^ but there were only a few hours of ‘exciting parts’ that the show had to record. Hollywood rarely worried about the real laws of physics - so star-traveling vessels as they were presented in Ultimate Frontier used two kind of drives. The first was a sublight drive. This drive could only maneuver the ship at speeds below or approaching the speed of light. The drive warped the fabric of space, curving it ahead of the ship so that the vessel literally ‘fell’ downhill along the curve. Increasing the engine power steepened the curvature of space and made the ship fall faster. Decreasing the power reduced the curve and slowed the ship down. As the ship approached light-speed, its hyperdrive engines kicked in. These engines, once the ship reached a velocity sufficiently close to the speed of light, could stress the boundaries of space and time, already tenuous at that speed, and send the vessel into an alternate dimension, something called hyperspace. In the strange, fictional universe of hyperspace

  - a mass-less no-man’s-land not subject to the laws of relativity, or to any laws at all but those the writers imposed

  - vessels could vastly exceed the speed of light by hooking onto flows of space/time called hyperspace currents.

  On the show, these hyperspace segments were quite beautiful, which was undoubtedly a consideration when the universe of Ultimate Frontier was set up. The star cruiser Constellation would throw out umbrella-shaped force-fields to catch a current. The fields might look as delicate and shimmering as a soap bubble, but they were incredibly strong. Shifting the field like the sails of an old-fashioned windjammer, the star cruiser could race at many multiples of light-speed.

  David had charts that showed the nearby hyperspace currents for each of the systems they had to visit. The tricky part for any captain was figuring out where to burst into hyperspace and catch his ride to the next star. Do it too soon, and you might imdershoot your current and be stuck motionless in hyperspace; then you’d have to drop out and try it again from scratch. Wait too late, and the other racers would be cruising on ahead of you.

  Once they were in a hyperspace current, according to the conventions established on the show, they’d all follow along the stream at the same speed. The question then became where did they break out into the normal universe to tag the space-buoys.

  Again, timing was everything. Breaking out prematurely meant popping micro-hyperspace jumps to get closer to the intended target. But if the ship overshot its destination, the captain would have to search for a new hyperspace-current route to bring the vessel back to where it was supposed to go, or proceed to the target slowly using the sublight drive. Since the currents only flowed in one direction, it was impossible to ride the current that had gotten the ship there back to the intended target.

  For the most part, the excitement of the race would come as the crews set up jumps from hyperspace, checked in with the space-buoys, then jumped back into the current. The crews wouldn’t have to live - and Ultimate Frontier didn’t have to record - every minute of the voyage.

  Well, Leif thought, I expect we’ll be busy enough during the minutes they do record. They had spent the time between the end of the tour and dinner checking out the Pinnacle Studios computer system. Each team had been given a corporate address. Leif smiled. As if they expect us to get memos and inter-office mail.

  Somehow, he didn’t expect a lot of electronic note-passing between the various contestants.

  Or maybe I’m wrongs he thought, watching a couple at one of the empty tables. It was the pretty blond girl from the Carpathian Alliance team, sitting very close to the dark-skinned boy in the buzz cut who’d joined in the jeering at the late, decadent, crime-ridden American team.

  The boy looked to be in a considerably better mood as the girl spoke with him. ‘Ludmila,’ he said in his careful Enghsh. ‘That’s a pretty name.’

  He’d probably say the same thing even if her name were Griddalafunkadenka, Leif thought scornfully.

  ‘Thank you, Jorge.’ Pretty name or not, Ludmila had a charming smile - and a pair of dimples that appeared when she used it.

  They were rubbing shoulders as Leif got up to join his team. Ludmila glanced up, but her eyes seemed to go right through him as he passed.

  What has old Jorge got that I haven’t? Leif wondered as he made his way through the crowd. Or maybe I just left my pocket Invisibility Shield on.

  ‘Ready?’ David asked when he caught up with the others.

  ‘As I’ll ever be,’ Leif assured them.

  They headed out of the commissary and along the path that would take them to Casa Falldown. There was still plenty of time before that had to get ready for the race. But like several other teams, the Net Force Explorers wanted to get used to the compulink couches and any peculiarities that might exist in the Pinnacle computer system.

  Leif’s couch had worn upholstery - and its electronics were nowhere up to the standard of his personal link-chair back home. He gritted his teeth at the buzz that seemed to erupt behind his eyes as his implant circuitry tried to synch with the innards of the compulink couch.

  They finally did, and in the blink of an eye Leif was in the system, sitting at a desk in a virtual office. It was a pretty bare-bones simulation, similar to what a lot of corporations offered to entry-level employees. The ‘room’ in which Leif sat looked like a slightly cleaned-up version of the writer’s cubbyhole where the compulink couches were located. The desk was black-painted steel, the top some sort of recycled plastic. Leif could feel a slight slickness to the simulated wood grain under his fingers.

  He always wondered why corporations couldn’t dummy up a nice teak executive-style desk in a fancy virtual setting. Maybe t
he bosses don’t want to give the workers ideas, he thought. Or maybe they’re afraid the work force would spend the whole day in veeyar, I’ll have to ask Dad,

  Leif looked down at his desktop, a name for ‘work space’ that had survived from the early days of personal computing. In personal systems, some people went to a lot of trouble souping up this area. Matt Hunter’s desktop back home was a marble slab floating in space. Leif’s own personal veeyar was an authentic Scandinavian stave house.

  But in this veeyar office, Leif had only the fake wood top of his desk to work with, with three small glowing objects - icons - sitting on it waiting for him to call them up. The nearest icon was a small replica of the star cruiser Constellation suspended in what looked like crystal, except for a vibrant hint of electric-blue energy flickering within. Picking that up would launch him into the racing scenario. There was a small black icon, a stylized image of an old-fashioned telephone. That was direct inter-office communication. Pick it up, say the name of anyone in the company, and he’d be in holophone contact with them -or more likely, with their assistant. Possibly even their assistant’s assistant.

  Finally, there was an icon that looked like a note-sized envelope, which caught his attention with a winking reddish glow. That was his mail file, something Leif had never expected to use.

  Maybe I really am getting company memos, he thought, reaching out to put his hand on the icon.

  ‘List and categorize,’ he ordered.

  A sultry female voice - the trademark of a Pinnacle star of about five years ago - responded to his command.

  ‘One message - category personal.’

  He almost expected the sexy voice to call him ‘baby’. Did Ludmila and Kyra have the voice of some old beefcake actor speaking out of their desktops?

  Leif quashed the thought. ‘Display message.’

  He immediately recognized the letterhead on the page that materialized at eye level - his father’s company.

  The note read:

  Leif,

  I was stuck in a meetings of course, when your note arrived, but I didn’t want the day to end without responding. It seems that you’re finding Hollywood an interesting place, at least, I’m not sure how to wish you good luck. Actors say, ‘Break a leg’ which doesn’t seem exactly appropriate for a race. Your mother and her ballet friends use a rather vulgar French word before performing. Again, not the best choice.

  Perhaps I can rework something from one of my more colorful drivers, Smitty started out on the stock-car circuit in his youth. He always spoke of ‘blowin’ the doors off’ the competition. I’ll try to go one further. Blow their airlocks off, son.

  Your loving father

  Leif laughed even as he ordered the message deleted. He’d only sent the note to his father to test out the system. The last thing he expected was a mail response to this address. But he had to admit, the encouragement came at a good time.

  All right, Leif he told himself. You’re synched in, you’ve played with your desk, and even read the mail. Time to stop delaying and get down to it.

  He reached out to the crystal star cruiser, and the flicker of energy within suddenly turned into a lightning flash, blotting everything out.

  When Leif opened his eyes, he was on the bridge of the Federation Interstellar Vessel Onrust, He was wearing the forest-green tunic of an Engineering cadet, and stood at his post by that control console. An automatic run-through of the displays showed that the racer was presently motionless, that all systems were on-line and functioning well, and that the engines were ready to go.

  David turned around in his command chair. His tunic was gray with red piping, the sign of a Command cadet. ‘Thought you might have encountered some technical difficulties,’ he said.

  Leif shook his head. ‘Just stayed at the desktop to read some e-mail from my father. He hopes we blow the other guys’ airlocks off.’

  David’s teeth showed a sudden grin. ‘A little extreme, maybe - but I can go along with that.’

  Turning to the viewscreen, Leif found the forward outlook on display, a vista of deep space with the Constellation off to one side.

  Matt and Andy both sat hunched over their consoles, as if they could make time move faster by glaring at the starter ship.

  They went through diagnostics of the ship’s systems one more time, with special emphasis on the engines and the hull stabilization force-fields.

  Then Matt got to show his stuff on the scanners. He focused on each of the competitors in turn: the lethal length of the Thurien sword-ship, the graceful Laragant vessel, the almost spindly-looking construction of the Arcturan fast scout. The Arcturan ship reminded Leif of a praying mantis equipped with engine pods.

  ‘Speaking of blowing their airlocks off,’ Andy muttered. ‘I know we’re supposed to be overpowered for our weight, but what stops that thing from tearing itself to pieces?’

  ‘Inertia compensators and very little else. The ship’s consistent with Arcturan building practices,’ David said. ‘Their capital vessels, the Queen ships, are heavily armored dreadnoughts. But the drone-piloted scout ships are more agile … and fragile.’

  ‘Stepping from the mythical Co-Prosperity Sphere to the real Japan, it’s the difference between the battleship Yamato and the Zero fighter in World War Two,’ said Matt, who had an interest in military history.

  ‘If you say so,’ Leif said. At least Matt had shown he knew how to get and keep things in view.

  Next it was Andy’s turn. ‘The right course is already input. Here it is.’ He displayed their course as a dotted line receding into the distance on the viewscreen. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. Note - we go straight ahead. Maintain that line until we’d be just beyond the orbit of Uranus if this were the Solar System, a couple of billion miles. Then—’ he pointed to a spot on the viewscreen representation of the course - ‘right here, we go for hyperspace insertion, Leif brings up the sails, and we sit back and see how sweaty our uniforms get.’

  ‘Fine,’ David said, ‘unless somebody tries to cut us off.’

  ‘I’ve got all the standard evasion patterns we discussed already programmed for execution at an instant’s notice,’ Andy replied, a little exasperated. ‘And I will be sitting right here at the console.’

  ‘I think we’re all getting a little nervous,’ Leif said.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Matt said. ‘I think my antiperspirant is failing even as we speak.’

  But there were still long minutes to wait until the race was to start, lots of time for all the crew members to fret.

  Then the lights aboard the Onrust suddenly dimmed, and a loud voice came out of thin air. ‘All right, racers, we go with the sim in two minutes, counting now. Count off, please, and let us know you’re ready.’

  The illumination returned to normal. ‘I didn’t know they could do that - ‘ Matt began, but he was shushed as voices announced the tide of their vessels and the readiness to race.

  Then it was David’s turn. ‘Onrust - all systems ready.’

  The muscles in Leif’s stomach contracted as if this were an actual launch.

  Please, he prayed silently, don’t let me be the one who blows us up this time.

  David ordered the ship’s computer to go into the countdown. Everyone knew the equivalent of the starting gun. The Constellation would fire a non-warhead tracer torp high above the plane of space the racers occupied. When they saw that stuttering red flash, they’d be off!

  Less than ten seconds now. Leif checked the crucial systems. Force-fields. Engines. Inertia compensators. It wouldn’t help much if they took off like a bat out of you-know-where, only to have the acceleration smear them like peanut butter all over the rear wall of the bridge cabin.

  They were ready. They were out of time.

  ‘There it is!’

  ‘Deploy!’ David ordered with all the authority of a star-cruiser captain.

  They were off without even a jerk. The inertia compensators were doing their job. Leif kept checking his syst
ems. Everything in the green -

  On the viewscreen, the Thurien sword-ship suddenly lurched into the lead^ cutting across the courses of several other racers. The Arcturan scout tried to sheer off - a maneuver that didn’t quite work out as planned.

  An engine pod took itself out of harm’s way faster than the rest of the scout. It just tore loose from the spindly sponsors on the insectlike craft and took off like the Constellation’s blazing signal rocket. The Arcturan’s inertia compensators were clearly not doing their jobs.

  And the Arcturan’s engine pod was zooming right across the line of the race.

  The floor bucked slightly under them as Andy evaded the navigation hazard. Leif checked his own ship’s compensators.

  Matt was handling the scanners like a pro. The viewscreen broke into separate facets, showing the way ahead, what was happening on either side, and a rearview shot as well.

  As the Onrust dove below the line of the race, swooping down and then swinging back on course, the escaped engine struck one of the other racers broadside.

  The ship had the blocky construction of the Reorganized Ank’tay Empire - Ultimate Frontier’s equivalent to China. But it was a racer - lightweight in comparison to most spacers. The engine pod struck it like a torpedo and went up, converting itself and the imperial ship into a cloud of plasma that grew and spread across the rearview screen.

  ‘Anybody behind that will get fried,’ Matt said in a shocked voice.