“Will they be able to catch up with us?”
“You’ll be able to keep the head start. You just have to be sure to accelerate as fast as they do.”
“That we can do,” Adam said. “We’ll need a food preparation device and two spacesuits.”
“The food preparation device in the canteen weighs around 45 kg. You’ll find spacesuits in your cabins.”
“Thank you, Omniscience. Could you prepare the barge?”
“I will. I wish the both of you all the best. During your flight we won’t be able to communicate. It would be too conspicuous.”
“We’ll speak again when we’re back aboard the Majestic Draght.”
* * *
“On one!” said Adam. “Three, two, one!”
He hoisted the food preparation device from one side, with Eve assisting him on the other. The heavy machine hovered between them. It was a good thing he was wearing the spacesuit gloves, because it prevented the narrow metal edge from digging in too hard.
“Phew, it’s heavy,” said Eve.
“I’m going to turn around so that I’m walking forward,” Adam said.
He turned himself around and the machine pressed into his back. He was breathing heavily as he took one step after another. But collecting food from storage would have been even more conspicuous. The machine was able to provide any living organism with food for the long term.
Adam turned a corner, and suddenly there was a Grosnop in front of him. He said something Adam didn’t understand and then stepped aside.
“Repairs,” said Adam.
Perhaps he’d understand some words of their language. The Grosnop waved its load-arms and pointed forward. Damn. A ladder. They’d never manage to get the machine up there. They’d have to look for a different way. The Grosnop tapped him gently on the shoulder.
“Elp,” he said.
“I think he wants to help us,” said Eve.
“That’d be great,” said Adam, stopping and nodding vigorously.
The Grosnop appeared to understand the gesture. His touch-arms wound around the machine and pulled the heavy device a bit toward himself. Then he extended the touch-arms, and the food preparation device fell gently into them.
“This way,” Adam said, forging ahead.
Adam paused at the ladder, but the Grosnop didn’t seem to have any problems. He balanced the load so that it was now behind his back, and then climbed up the ladder amazingly fast with his muscular legs. They encountered another Grosnop, and the two appeared to have a brief exchange. Perhaps the other also offered to help. Then they went on. Adam led the small group through the ship until they were about 100 meters from the dock.
“We can manage the last few meters on our own, thanks,” said Adam.
They’d have to take care of the rest, or they were sure to arouse suspicion. Eve didn’t object and probably had thought the same thing. Adam stopped and pointed to himself and the machine.
The Grosnop seemed to understand. He set the device down, bowed, and left.
“I’ll stay at this end,” said Adam.
He tucked his gloves under his arm, and they carried the machine to a round door.
“Set it down!”
The gloves fell to the floor. He accidentally kicked them, causing them to slide down the corridor. Then Adam pushed the button to the right of the door, and it opened to reveal a dark space. Lights flickered.
“Watch out for the threshold,” he said.
They hoisted the food processor over the threshold to the airlock. If he’d had four arms like a Grosnop, then he’d have had one free to press the next door’s button. But he didn’t, so they had to set the machine down again. Adam pressed the button and the inner door of the airlock opened with a whistle. A cool breeze blew in his face.
“Heave,” he commanded.
They transported the food preparation device into the cabin, which had a cylindrical shape and was around six meters long and two meters in diameter. There wasn’t much room. The cargo holds had to be further in front but didn’t appear accessible from the cabin.
“I’m sitting on the left,” said Eve, pointing to the front.
Adam counted six seats arranged across three rows. In front of each seat, there was a desk. He hoped he’d be able to manage the controls! Could the Omniscience help him if he couldn’t handle it?
“Aargh. Eve?”
His voice was shaky. Surely Eve noticed?
“Yes?”
“I must have forgotten my gloves outside. Could you go and see?”
Eve was closer to the exit, and the device was standing tall and wide between them. It made sense for him to not have to squeeze past it.
“Sure, just a second.”
Eve turned around, then exited the cabin and entered the airlock. He followed her cautiously, hoping she wouldn’t turn around. But his plan worked. Eve reached the corridor leading to the dock and disappeared around the corner.
“Got ‘em,” she called.
At that moment he reached the outer airlock door. Then he pressed a button and the airlock closed, blocking it from being operated from the outside. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. The air suddenly seemed very thin.
Eve knocked on the door. He could only hear her voice faintly, but he was able to understand her words clearly.
“Adam, what’s going on? Stop messing around!” she shouted. “Let me in this instant! I’m ordering you!”
“No, Eve, it’s better this way. It’s enough if just one of us goes into danger.”
“And you’re the one to decide, or what? You asshole! Don’t do this!”
“Yes, I have decided. I don’t want you to go out there. Who knows what’s happened to Marchenko? At least one of us ought to survive. I can only guarantee that if I fly by myself.”
“You only want to play the hero! You have no right to decide about me! Open the door immediately, or...”
Yes, or what? Eve had every right to be this angry. In her place, he would be too. But this was the best decision, and there was nothing she could do about it. She knew very well that she couldn’t call Gronolf for help. Then they could just forget about the whole mission.
“I understand that you’re angry,” he said. “But it’s better this way. That’s what Marchenko would say, too.”
“Marchenko’s just a stupid guy like you, always playing the hero! You chose the wrong role model. If you had some balls, you’d have let me fly alone. I know the Grosnops’ technology better than you do. On Proxima b, I spent a long time by myself in their installation. I’d have a much better chance than you!”
Adam sighed. He’d known it wasn’t going to be easy. And it was the truth. He wasn’t so confident that he’d understand how to steer the barge. Hopefully the Omniscience would be able to help him. Eve probably wouldn’t be willing to. But she seemed at least reasonable enough not to alert the Grosnops of the imminent theft of the ship. Eve was the better person here, and that was why she deserved to survive. But she wouldn’t understand this reasoning.
“You’re right about everything, Eve, and that’s exactly why I’m not going to reopen this door. I should be back in two weeks, and then you can punish me however you want. Until then, I need you on the Majestic Draght. Together with the Omniscience, maybe you can somehow send me the information I’ll need. Gronolf doesn’t know we’re in on this together. At least he can’t prove it. So he’ll give you complete freedom.”
“I see right through you, Adam. You’re trying to sell your treachery to me, but it’s not working. You’re putting yourself above me. I hate you for this, and if you do come back, I swear to you that our reunion won’t be a party.”
It almost sounded forgiving. He’d known that Eve would come to terms with the facts once he’d presented them to her.
“I’m going to sit down at the controls now,” said Adam. “We’ll see each other again in two weeks. Perhaps the Omniscience can set up a channel for you.”
“Open the door, Adam.
I’m begging you. Don’t leave me alone with all these strangers.”
Eve’s plea hit him in an unexpected way. He saw a seriously wounded deer that he had to leave by itself. Was she serious, or was this a new strategy? He couldn’t let himself be swayed. Adam turned around and exited the airlock.
“Adam, please stay here.”
These were Eve’s last words, because now he was closing the inner airlock door. He sat in the first row, in the seat on the left. No, Eve had reserved it for herself. He switched to the one on the right, pulled the console toward him, and buckled up. It was time to prepare for takeoff. Marchenko had a head start of three days.
* * *
“General, a freighter is trying to leave from Dock 12.”
What was going on over there? Gronolf looked over the lieutenant’s shoulder. It was one of the tube-shaped cargo shuttles with a range of approximately 5,000,000 kilometers.
“Lock down the dock.”
“As you command.”
“No, wait just a second.”
“But if I wait too long, it will be gone. This is already the second—”
“I know, Numbark,” he interrupted the lieutenant. “Don’t lecture me. I have to think for a moment.”
“Excuse me.”
It had to be Adam and Eve. What were they up to? Did they want to help Marchenko, or follow him? Did they know something he didn’t? He should have asked them long ago.
“Give me a connection to the human woman.”
The Majestic Draght’s systems searched for Eve. They did indeed find her near the dock, but not aboard the ship. Was the lieutenant mistaken? A communicator should come out of the wall near her current location. Please, Eve, answer us before it’s too late.
“Gronolf?”
It was Eve’s voice, and he was glad. Of all the aliens, he’d known Eve the longest. She’d woken him up on Proxima b, though it had been indirect and unintentional. Had she accidentally launched a ship?
“What’s happened? There’s a ship near you that’s about to take off.”
“A ship? I have no idea,” she said.
Gronolf didn’t know much about the human voice, but when they’d first met, it had sounded different. She didn’t seem to be excited—or she was able to control it.
“I see,” he said. “Then it’s just got to be a false alarm. We’ll just ignore it.”
The lieutenant protested with waving arms. Of course it wasn’t a false alarm. If Eve wasn’t on board, Adam had to be sitting in the pilot’s seat. But why had they split up? He’d find out. He liked tactical games.
“Should we meet later for dinner?” he asked.
“I’d love to,” Eve answered. “Has there been any news from Marchenko? Adam and I are really concerned.”
“Is he there with you now?”
“He’s in the restroom.”
There was no room just for resting on this ship.
“What do you mean?”
“In the toilet, he’s in the toilet.”
“So you’ll bring him along to dinner, right?”
“Of course,” said Eve.
The connection dropped.
“The ship is leaving,” Numbark said.
“We’ll leave it. I want to find out what he’s up to.”
“We can always catch up with him,” said the lieutenant.
“We can’t do that. He chose the type of cargo ship that has the highest engine performance.”
“Ah, very clever,” Numbark said.
“Adam was never interested in our shuttles. Somebody must have helped him make his choice.”
“Marchenko?”
“No, Numbark, Marchenko had already left the ship by the time Adam woke up.”
“Now someone is transmitting to the freighter using our high-gain antenna,” said Numbark.
“Can we listen in?” asked Gronolf.
“No, it’s encrypted. Not a chance.”
Gronolf hesitated. Adam and Eve must have discovered a way to communicate via radio. Perhaps it had been Marchenko who had set it up. But if Adam had left the Majestic Draght without Eve, that could only mean one thing—he intended to return.
“Should I prevent communication? I could block the channel or interfere with it.”
“That won’t be necessary, Numbark. Let them talk.”
“As you like, general.”
If Adam was planning to come back, he wasn’t going to betray them and certainly didn’t want to escape. So, what Adam wanted to figure out was exactly what he was dying to know, too—what happened to Marchenko? It would be stupid to get in his way because Adam knew Marchenko better than all of them. But they should get going quickly. Adam might be better at tracking down Marchenko, but getting Marchenko out of the trouble he might be getting himself into—this was the perfect job for a Grosnop.
“Murnaka, I’m putting you in charge here,” Gronolf said. “Numbark, I want to see you aboard the shuttle in half an hour. Choose two others whom you trust.”
Darknight 22, 3890
He was on his way straight to hell. There was a dark red mass in front of him, just within reach. Its surface consisted of areas bordered by somewhat lighter lines that looked like a mystical dragon's scales. They moved against one other rhythmically as if the dragon were in flight. He was far too close to be able to tell what shape it had. He was an insect heading for a mountain-high monster, even if it wasn’t its real target. He thought that if he were to lean forward and extend his hand, he could touch the dragon’s skin. He had to be careful not to burn himself on it.
So this is what Marchenko had referred to so casually as a brown dwarf? After the amazingly uncomplicated launch, the huge screen in front of him had switched on automatically. Perhaps the Omniscience had helped. So far, only Eve had been in touch. In a chillingly cold voice, she'd explained how he could set the flight destination for the planet Luhman-16A c by using the sector controls that weren’t exactly intuitive for human hands.
Eve hadn’t been able to prepare him for the image he was staring at constantly, as if hypnotized. He’d found a button that he suspected was for turning off the display, but how would he get the screen back on? The Omniscience wouldn’t always be able to help him. And there was just one thing that seemed worse to him than racing with open eyes into hell—the notion of blindly heading toward his fate.
The cargo ship didn’t have portholes or proper windows to the outside. He also had to keep in mind that it wasn’t free space lying out before him, but a projection presumably recorded by cameras on the bow and created by projectors in the ceiling or behind the wall. If an asteroid were to appear on the screen right in front of him, the obstacle would be directly in front of the ship’s nose.
But this knowledge didn’t lessen the tremendous impact of the image. It intensified when he turned off the light in the cabin, as he’d done a few hours ago, thinking he would fall asleep more easily. Less than ten minutes later, he’d had the lights back on low. The dragon toward which he was heading had seemed too powerful. And this being a problem for him, of all people, who usually took the side of numbers and facts! What would Eve have had to say about this? If she ever talked to him about anything other than the freighter’s course, he’d have to share his impressions with her.
A brown dwarf! A name had never seemed this wrong to him. Luhman-16A, the slightly larger of the two stars orbiting each other, didn’t glow brown but rather red. And it was no dwarf. Even though there was no comparison with the Earth’s sun or Alpha Centauri A, it was still 33 times as heavy as Jupiter, the “giant planet” of the humans’ solar system. Marchenko would have explained that it was all a question of perspective.
And the perspective changed when you got up close, just like he was now. With its surface temperature of 1,300 degrees, Luhman-16A emitted far less heat than the sun, for example. This was why the habitable zone was 150 times closer than in the humans’ solar system. The planet on which he wanted to look for Marchenko was orbiting t
he star from just 1,000,000 kilometers away. This was 50 times closer than the orbit of Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, and only two and a half times further than the distance between the moon and the Earth.
“You’re not a dragon,” Adam whispered. “You’re a shitty star with two shitty planets.”
He was angry, but he didn’t know who he was mad at. It irritated him that he was talking to this brown dwarf, that the numbers he knew and could recite from memory weren’t helping him to conquer his fear, and that he was traveling alone because that was what he’d chosen to do, for some idiotic reason.
* * *
“You’re approaching an area with a higher-than-average number of asteroids,” said Eve.
“Thank you for the warning. How dangerous is it?”
“Not very. The risk of collision is less than two percent.”
“One in fifty, I see.”
“You could decrease it to one in a hundred and fifty.”
“How?”
“The freighter currently has a profile that’s rectangular in relation to the direction of the asteroids’ movement. If you turn the ship 90 degrees, the profile will decrease drastically.”
“But then I’d have to switch off the engine.”
“Yes, you’d have to let yourself drift through the field at your current speed.”
“Then that’s out of the question, Eve.”
“That may have been how Marchenko did it.”
“All the more reason to keep the engine going, because then maybe I can catch up. He’s still at least three days ahead.”
“Unfortunately, I have to agree with you here. If you turn the engine off, that also allows Gronolf to catch up in his ship.”
“How far behind is he?”
“Around two hours. But you shouldn’t let him get too close. He’s not faster than you, but he’s flying a military shuttle.”
Proxima Logfiles 1: Marchenko's Children: Hard Science Fiction Page 8
