Joan D Vinge - Lost in Space

by Unknown

  Lost in Space

  Joan D. Vinge

  * * *

  HarperPrism

  A Division ofHwpetCoWinsPublishers 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022-5299

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1998 New Line Cinema

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information address HarperCollinsPKWis^ers,

  10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022-5299.

  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1998 by HarperPrism.

  ISBN 0-06-105908-0

  HarperCollins®, tt ®, and HarperPrism® are trademarks of HarperCollins.P«Wi5&ro Inc.

  Cover illustration courtesy of New Line Cinema

  First paperback printing: May 1998 Printed in the United States of America

  Visit HarperPrism on the World Wide Web at http://www.harperprism.com

  ♦ 10 98765432

  * * *

  To Lister and Mary

  and the

  Clarion Class of 97

  I wouldn't say it if I didn't love it

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author is extremely grateful to

  Melanie Orpen, for her help in unravelling the Gordian Knot; and also to Rich Miller and Jim Frenkel, for getting the elephants over the Alps.

  * * *

  Prologue

  "HLjpergate Onching,this is Grissom One. Request final descent vector." The pilot of the Grissom One looked out at the view slowly filling the bubble dome of the ship's bridge, and smiled. There was no other choice, when you first saw this view. No matter how many times you saw it, it was like nothing else: the Earth hanging in space, a blue opal on black velvet… and in the nearer distance the spires of the space station sitting like a crown on the surreal, ten-mile-circumference construct of the hypergate.

  Construction workers looked up, their helmet faceplates mirroring sunlight as bright as their laser torches, to watch the ship's silhouette pass overhead. The gate's structure was almost finished; soon it would be humanity's first conduit through hyperspace.

  "Roger, Grissom One, this is Hypergate Docking Control." Bill Randall's familiar voice was comfortably serene in her headset speakers. "You are cleared to land. Hope you got some Partagas in that rust bucket, Sal."

  Sal grinned as she fed landing coordinates to the onboard computers and felt the ship's thrusters fire in response. The cargo vessel's trajectory began to shift slowly and precisely, aligning its angle of approach to the designated docking platform. "I brought you the most amazing—"

  Randall never found out what. Death fell out of the starry night and exploded the Grissom One's bridge, swallowing the freighter in a ball of fire.

  Major Don West shifted in his gyroscopic harness, working the heads-up holographic display as his V-winged craft launched from the ASOMAC fighter base. The ship cut through the night like a silent scream as he vectored toward the expanding cloud of debris. The cockpit was a bubble of transparent alloy, set like a pearl at the nose of his craft; his controls gave him almost a 360 view of the hypergate ring, the freighter's remains at its center… and the enemy.

  The gaping work crews vanished behind him in a heartbeat, while ahead of him the expanding blizzard of jagged shrapnel hurtled toward his ship… and toward the surface of the half-finished hypergate structure. Two blunt-nosed Sedition ships burst through the tumbling debris—the same ships that had just blown the freighter to bits.

  "Who hit us?" Jeb Walker's voice demanded over his comm link.

  The Ranger One entered West's peripheral vision, its extended wings taloned with gleaming weaponry; the twin of his own Eagle One except for its markings. He smiled as he saw the shark-toothed grin painted on Walker's right wing, and the cosmic Hand of Fate on the left.

  His own wing bore an eagle's shadow and an eagle's eye; everything a hunter needed, nothing more. Sometimes Jeb thought too much___But there was nobody he trusted more. Jeb had been his buddy, back watcher, and cheerful rival ever since their Academy days.

  "Sedition raiders," West said grimly. "They've never come this far out before."

  Walker grunted. "This cold war just got hot."

  The enemy ships vectored across the hypergate's arc; their plasma cannons blasted gaping holes in its superstructure. West spun his controls, seeing the entire scene in one giddy rush as he veered off after the closest raider. "Last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer." He activated his targeting computer.

  Whatever else the Sedition raiders were, they were good pilots. The insectoid ship, its angular arms bristling with weaponry, danced infuriatingly in and out of the crosshairs inside his holographic array. West fired, cursing in frustration as the attacker jagged upward at a ninety-degree angle, and his laser burst burned vacuum.

  He dodged hurtling debris, closing in on the fleeing raider as if he and his ship shared a single mind. The fraction of his attention that was always watching his partner's back told him Walker had engaged the other attacker; the lancing bolts of energy were a psychedelic light show below his feet. "Hey Jeb," he called, glancing down, "I can see your house from here—"

  The split second of distraction almost cost him, as the raider up ahead made a sudden coin-flip and hit its thrusters, firing nonstop as it came back at him.

  A game of chicken. West grinned without feeling it as the enemy ship burned toward him. He'd never lost one yet. He returned fire, pushing his ship's speed, holding the collision course as the distance between his ship and the enemy fighter closed precipitously. "The band is warming up___" he murmured, and music was the furthest thing from his mind.

  He didn't check his displays, didn't need to now; his gaze was locked on the closing ship. "The crowd begins to roar___" His grin widened. His eyes were filled with the dazzle of pulse lightning. He felt more alive now, on the brink of death, than he ever felt any other time.

  A nova in the neon starfield of his displays was warning him of imminent collision as the attack ship's image flashed on his screen, captured in the targeting hash marks. The display expanded around him, becoming a tactical grid.

  "Target lock," the computer said.

  "The lights are dimming…" He laughed, his voice rising with elation. "The curtain's coming up. Showtime!" He fired.

  The laser bursts converged on the attacking ship, barely meters ahead of him. It exploded just off his bow. West screamed in exhilaration and giddy terror as his ship tore through a swarm of debris.

  A spacesuited body slammed into the transparent wall in front of him. West jerked back; sucked in a deep breath, face-to-face with the anonymous corpse that would have been his own if his luck hadn't held. "While you're at it," he muttered, "check the oil."

  In another moment the body was gone, and only the gleaming curve of the hypergate lay ahead, cradling a lagoon of stars.

  The second attack ship roared past below his feet, weapons firing, locked in a pinwheeling battle with Jeb's fighter. He watched Walker jag sharply, clearing the lethal fireworks of a high energy volley—almost.

  A lash of energy grazed Jeb's ship; West grimaced as he saw the glowing furrow it
plowed in the fusilage. jeb's attacker looped the loop and was back on his tail already, firing.

  "Weapons are off line." Walker's voice came through the headset phones, sounding as matter-of-fact as if he'd lost a pair of socks. "I'm gonna jettison the main drive core."

  The thruster core of Walker's ship blew free in a bolus of flame, and West watched it fly back with the uncanny accuracy of an avenging sword blow to collide with the pursuing craft. He hooted with glee as the raider ship exploded in a ball of light.

  "Am I good, or what?" Jeb crowed triumphantly.

  West opened his mouth to reply, broke off as he heard Walker's sudden curse, half drowned in a burst of static. "Jeb… ?" he said.

  The echo of a computer's synthesized voice answered him through Walker's open mike: "Warning. Failure in redundant drive systems."

  West swore as he looked up and realized where they were heading: on a collision course with the hypergate.

  Static stung his ears, and an alarm began to sound aboard Walker's ship. "Impact in ninety seconds," the onboard computer said.

  "Damn," Jeb muttered. "Gate Control—" He broke off, as the sight of the hypergate coming at him like a mailed fist emptied his thoughts, "—this is Ranger One," he finished, his voice straining. "Engines will not respond. Require assistance. Repeat…"

  West watched and listened, barely breathing; trapped in his best friend's worst nightmare and unable to wake up. A stranger's voice over the radio said, "Ranger One, this is Grissom Base. Rescue craft have been dispatched."

  West shook himself out, angled his position until he could see three rescue ships streaking toward them.

  "Impact in sixty seconds ..."

  They would be too late. He looked ahead again. The hypergate filled his vision; he could make out every detail of the scorched, twisted metal and the dangling entrails of ruptured lines where enemy fire or flying debris had found their marks. He opened his comm link. "Grissom, this is Eagle One. Those Pugs will never reach him in time."

  "Eagle One," the radio spat, "clear this frequency, and return to base."

  West hung motionless for a handful of heartbeats, staring down at his friend's ship, watching inertia's irresistible force sweep it toward the hypergate's immovable object.

  "This is Eagle One. I'm going after him."

  "Negative, Eagle One," the controller said sharply. "Your craft is not equipped—"

  West hit his thrusters, sending his craft in a headlong dive toward Jeb's ship and the massive structure that was rising with unbelievable speed to meet them both.

  "Impact in thirty seconds—"

  A section of flaming debris exploded outward from the gate's surface and hurtled toward them. Jeb's ship would never even survive long enough to hit the gate-West hit the firing stud, grinned in satisfaction as his lasers fragmented the massive chunk of debris and he watched it scatter harmlessly. He was still accelerating, closing faster all the time with Jeb's ship; his mind and the displays told him it still wasn't fast enough.

  "What the hell are you doing?" Jeb's voice demanded suddenly, hurting his ears.

  "Making balloon animals," West snapped. He could actually see Jeb in his harness now—the precise curve of his shaven skull, his dark face looking out in disbelief through the Ranger's transparent dome. '"Saving your ass!" he hissed.

  But the vast pockmarked surface of the gate was all that Jeb saw now, all that he could see —

  "Major West!" the radio blared; West's jaw tightened. "You are not authorized to jeopardize this asset. Return to base. That is a direct order. Acknowledge — "

  West slammed his hand down, shutting off the radio. "Never liked that station, anyway," he muttered, to the naked mass of twisted metal that was about to vaporize them both, ship and all. He was one with the ship again, dodging debris, blowing fragments of gate out of his path with a laser burst. Jeb's ship was directly below him now. He could almost reach out and grab it…

  "Impact in five seconds — "

  "Don, man," Jeb whispered, "I'm really scared…"

  West pulled ahead at last, shooting past Jeb's fighter as he drove his ship toward the wall of steel and alloy in an ever-steepening dive.

  "Warning, proximity alert—"

  "Jeb," West murmured, "I'm going to give you a little kiss. Don't take it the wrong way."

  He dove past Walker's bow, blotting out Jeb's view of Armageddon with his fuselage.

  "You're too close!" Jeb shouted frantically. "Abort. Abort!"

  "Going up," West said, his voice inhumanly calm. His hands were white with tension as he angled the joystick up; his face was a mask of resolve so utter that he wouldn't have known it in a mirror.

  Sandwiched between the gate's surface and Jeb's fighter, he jagged sharply upward; the Eagle One's cockpit dome glanced off Walker's cockpit like a cue ball. Eight ball in the side pocket.

  The kiss knocked Jeb's ship off course, through a flaming gap in the gate's surface where the attackers had scored a direct hit, and onward into clear space.

  West's teeth gritted together over his wordless shout of elation as his own rebounding craft skreeled across the surface of the hypergate, sending up a red-hot plume of shaven metal.

  He goosed the thrusters; gasped in relief as the ship responded, arcing out and away from the gate's torn surface before he became the final statistic on its damage report.

  "Does this mean we're going steady?" Jeb asked hoarsely.

  West laughed; somehow his own voice held together as he said, "You weren't getting out of buying those beers that easy."

  He cut the thrusters, letting himself drift; watching the Ranger One until the rescue craft converged on it. Only when he was sure that Walker was safe did he put his own ship back on a trajectory toward Grissom Base.

  Chapter One

  The music swelled —heroic, triumphant, full of violins—its sound too large to be contained inside such a tiny monitor; like the image of outer space incongruously downsized to fit a palm-wide vid screen.

  Somber yet stirring, the voice-over intoned, "Since the dawn of history, men and women have searched for a land of plenty, where unlimited resources are available to all…"

  The image on the screen became a windswept dream couple—a handsome, bearded man and a dark-haired, beautiful woman standing side by side. Their faces were as familiar to the boy as his own hand cradling the monitor—and yet at the same time they were total strangers. The sight of them always bothered and depressed him, no matter how often he saw it.

  "This man, Professor John Robinson, inventor of the faster-than-light hyperdrive, will make that timeless dream a reality."

  The stylized blue-and-gold ovals of the Jupiter Mission logo flashed on the screen, framing the couple with their three perfect children: a blond young woman, a dark-haired girl, and a towheaded boy. They all wore equally unnatural, digitally altered smiles.

  "John Robinson and his family have been specially trained to make a ten-year journey across the galaxy in the world's most advanced spacecraft, the Jupiter…"

  Abruptly they all winked out of existence, replaced by the dome of a towering launch apparatus gleaming in the early sun.

  "The Robinson family will be the vanguard for generations of families to come. They will join our research colony on Alpha Prime. There they will become the first settlers on a world where unlimited food and water will be the birthright for all…"

  The scene shifted to a satellite photo of a world that was clearly not Earth. "Alpha Prime will be a new Eden. A chance for mankind to spread its wings across the galaxy." A computer simulation swept the viewer down from orbit, giving the watching boy the eyes of a bird in flight, soaring over sun-dappled cropland rich with magnificent harvests. "What kind of future can our children look forward to?

  "A future in paradise …"

  The boy blinked as the vision of a new Eden was swept aside by a new logo—a corporate logo this time— and the incongruous sight of a Coke bottle hurtling toward the stars.
/>   "This mission sponsored by the U.S. Army and the Coca-Cola Corporation."

  Will Robinson, the blond-haired youngest child of "heroic Professor John Robinson," screwed his imperfect ten-year-old's face into an expression of hopeless disgust. "'Coke,'" he mimicked, echoing the narrator's final words, "'saving the future for our children.'" His free hand went to the pocket-sized computer resting in his palm. "Give me a break," he muttered, and activated a new program on his hacker's deck.

  Peering out through the slats of the door, Will watched his mother morosely from his hiding place in the coat closet. Mom stood in the middle of the living room gesturing like a juggler, hand-signaling the movers what to take next as she simultaneously carried on a conversation with the pissed-off principal of his school. At least in his secret hiding place he was safe, for the moment, from the chaos that ruled his house and his life.

  Maybe too safe… As he listened to the principal's voice rise, and saw the look on his mother's face, his hand moved to the keypad of his deck again.

  "He hacked our main power grid to run his experiment," the principal was saying, waving her own hands. "The school was in chaos! We didn't even have lights."

  The living room lights suddenly dimmed around her. The principal flickered too; she was only a holograph, an avatar of the real person. When her image solidified again, her virtual head had been grafted onto the iconic body of Arnold Schwarzenegger, his biceps rippling. She ranted on, oblivious to the sabotage.

  Will contemplated his selection of other fantasy figures and grinned. "The changing shape of education…" he murmured, and set her head on the body of semi-emaciated supermodel Twiggy.

  Outside in the living room, his mother laughed out loud. Will peered through the slats in time to see her look of chagrin as she realized the principal had no idea what was happening. Mom began to drift casually around the living room, surreptitiously glancing behind couches and into empty cabinets.

  "This is no laughing matter, Professor Robinson," the principal said sharply. "Will is terribly gifted. His little time machines, though pure fancy, are the products of a truly brilliant mind."