Galaxy Blues

by Allen Steele

  “So Ash is Morgan’s ringer,” I said, and Rain nodded. “Sounds like Jas got wind of it, though. Are you going to tell him?”

  Rain shook her head. “Not if I don’t have to,” she said, pushing herself toward the deck hatch. “None of my business, and I’d just as soon not have anything to do with Ash if I can help it.” She looked back at me. “And neither should you. The Order is…well, if they really do exist, then they’re not something you’d want to mess with.”

  That sounded like good advice. “Okay,” I said as I followed her toward the hatch. “I’ll take your word for it. Thanks for being straight with me. I appreciate it.”

  Rain paused just before entering the access shaft. “You’re welcome,” she said, then favored me with a smile. “What are friends for, right?”

  ( TEN )

  A matter of trust…

  transit to Rho Coronae Borealis…

  Talus qua’spah…

  an indelicate request.

  XIV

  It took about ten hours for the Pride to reach Starbridge Coyote. Time enough for both lunch and dinner in the wardroom, plus a long nap in between. Ted could have cut it in half if he’d ordered the engines to remain at full thrust, but that would have meant spending fuel we might need later. The only person impatient to reach Hjarr was Goldstein, and Ted made it plain that, although Morgan might be the ship’s owner, it was the captain who called the shots.

  That gave us nearly half a day to kill. Since the Pride was on autopilot, there was little reason for Ali to remain at the helm. Regulations called for a flight-certified crewman to be on duty in the command center at all times, though, and Ted, Emily, and Doc all wanted to be relieved. So Ali sat me down at his station and gave me the quick-and-dirty on how to drive the ship. The helm wasn’t much different than that aboard the Victory: although the controls were a bit more complex, the thrusters controlling yaw, pitch, and roll were operated by the same sort of trackball I’d learned to use in the Academy.

  Ali had already laid in the course for rendezvous with the starbridge; he told me that Morgan had assured him that, once we were through hyperspace, the hjadd would transmit a signal that would interface with the newly installed nav system and automatically dock the Pride with Talus qua’spah. Even so, Ali had taken the precaution of programming an emergency override into the Pride’s AI; two finger-strokes on the keyboard, and he could resume control of the helm at any time.

  “I don’t care what Morgan says,” Ali said. “I’m not quite ready to trust the hjadd.”

  I remembered the way he’d recoiled from Jas when heshe had inserted the key. “With the ship, or anything else?”

  A wry smile crept across his face. “Let’s just say I prefer to err on the side of caution, especially when dealing with a race that looks like it might possibly eat its young.”

  I considered reminding him that the hjadd were vegetarians, but decided against it. Nonetheless, I wondered how someone so xenophobic had come to be hired as command pilot for this particular mission. Perhaps the same reason why Goldstein recruited me; pickings were slim on Coyote when it came to experienced freelance spacers, and Morgan had to settle for what he could find.

  Once Ali was confident that I knew what I was doing, he left the bridge to grab some lunch and observe his midday prayers. For the first time since we’d departed Coyote, I found myself alone on the deck; everyone else had gone below. Through the starboard windows, I could see 47 Ursae Majoris-B as an immense blue-and-purple disc, its silver-yellow rings casting a broad shadow across its cloud bands. Hard to believe that, little more than ten days ago, I’d been in the same place, only aboard a stolen lifeboat. Fate had dealt me an odd hand, to be sure.

  I was still gazing at Bear when the deck hatch opened. Looking around, I saw Doc pull himself up through the manhole. Seeing me seated at the helm, he nodded with satisfaction.

  “Good man…you’re at your station.” A perfunctory nod, then he reached to his utility belt and unhooked a squeezebulb. “Here’s your reward…catch!”

  He tossed the bulb across the deck. I reached up to snag it from midair. Hot coffee, just what I needed just then. “Thanks,” I said. “Why, did you think I wouldn’t be here?”

  “Not really, but you never know.” Doc closed the hatch, then turned a somersault that put him upside down to me. “One time, when we were going through the Belt on the way from Jupiter, the skipper put a rookie on watch during graveyard shift.” He tucked the toes of his shoes within the ceiling rail. “I came up here to get something and found him catching z’s, with an asteroid only eight hundred klicks off port bow. Stupid kid had turned off the collision alert so that it wouldn’t interrupt his siesta. Never turned my back on a new guy since.”

  “If I’d done that in the Union Astronautica, my old captain would’ve put me out the airlock.”

  “That kid was Union Astronautica, too.” Doc unhooked another squeezebulb from his belt and opened its nipple. “So am I, for that matter.”

  I’d gathered as much; his accent was Norte Americano, from somewhere out West. Which wasn’t surprising; I was hardly the first UA spacer to have defected. “Morgan recruited me from the European Space Agency,” he went on. “He’d just expanded his company and needed people to build ships for him. After a while he let me leave the desk and do what I really wanted to do.”

  “Why the name? This ship, I mean.”

  “Pride of Cucamonga? After my hometown…Cucamonga, California. And before you ask, Loose Lucy was named after my ex.” Doc shook his head. “Word of advice…never christen your ship in honor of your wife. Not unless you intend to stay married, that is.”

  “I take it that’s why it’s called Loose Lucy,” I said, and he gave me a rare smile. “Well, I have to hand to you…the Pride doesn’t look like much, but she flies just fine.”

  “Looks aren’t important. It’s how they’re built that counts. Only thing I don’t like is having to add equipment that I don’t know how to operate.” Doc scowled as he gazed past me at the black box on the console. “It came to us just as you see it. A few cables in the back, with instructions on how to hardwire them to the console. Soon as we turned it on, though, it interfaced with the main AI bus. But we can’t open it, and there’s no way for us to change its settings or anything. Only Jas can do that.”

  I hesitated, wondering whether I should let him in on Ali’s secret. Doc was the chief engineer, though, so it was his job to know what was going on with his ship. “Ali told me he rigged a manual override. Says he can…”

  “Did he now?” A sip of coffee, then he reattached his bulb to a vest loop and twisted himself until he was right side up. “Actually, that’s my doing. Ali’s just taking credit for it…and don’t worry, Ted and Emily know about it, too. Just don’t let on to Morgan…he’d throw a fit if he thought we didn’t trust the hjadd.”

  This was beginning to sound like a familiar refrain. “I take it you don’t?”

  “Oh, I trust ’em, all right…just not with my ship.” Another smile that quickly vanished. “Like with you. I have no problem with having a wet-behind-the-ears ensign standing watch, so long as I know you’re not going to take a snooze.”

  “Yeah, well…” I shrugged. “Trust seems to be in short supply on this ship.”

  Doc didn’t reply at once. Instead, he regarded me with what seemed to be sympathy. “Son, this isn’t the Academy,” he said at last. “They do everything by the book, and that way they minimize the risks. Out here, though, the book doesn’t apply. We’re pretty much making it up as we go along. Especially on this flight.”

  As he spoke, Doc pushed himself over to one of the starboard windows. “With any luck, this’ll be pretty routine,” he said, gazing out at Bear. “We deliver cargo, we pick up cargo, we go home. But I’m not going to count on it, and neither should you. So if we don’t completely trust the Prime Emissary…well, it’s because there’s a first time for everything, and trust is something you earn only from experi
ence.” He reached up to fondly pat the ceiling. “But if you put your faith in this ship, and the people you’re working with, then you’ll get through this just fine.”

  If I’d heard that from anyone else, I would’ve considered it to be hopelessly saccharine. Yet sweetness and light clearly weren’t part of Doc’s character; he was a pragmatic old spacer who’d been doing this for a very long time. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Uh-huh…well, that’s all I have to say about that.” Turning away from the window, Doc pulled himself back across the command center. “Okay, kid, the conn is yours. Don’t wreck my ship, or I’ll kick your ass.”

  He opened the deck hatch and floated headfirst down the access tunnel. The hatch closed behind him, and once more I was alone on the bridge. Yet I found myself remembering something Ash had said to me:

  Out here in the great beyond, everything is strange. The sooner you get used to that, the better off you’ll be.

  XV

  Six hours later, we were on primary approach to the starbridge. By then Ali had relieved me at the helm, and everyone had returned to the command center—including Jas, whom Goldstein had escorted up from Deck Three. Doc had installed a specially made couch for the Prime Emissary, into which heshe strapped himherself; I noticed that, although Jas tried stay away from Ash as much as possible, Morgan traded chairs with his “interpreter” so that Ash was seated next to the hjadd. Funny how even the smallest of coincidences gained significance, once I knew what was going on.

  If Ted was aware of all this intrigue, he paid no attention. “Emcee, open a channel to the gatehouse,” he said, keeping an eye on the screens above the control console. Once Emily told him that she’d made contact, he touched his headset mike. “Starbridge Coyote, this is CFS Pride of Cucamonga, requesting permission for hyperspace transition to Rho Coronae Borealis.”

  A moment passed, then a voice came over the loudspeaker. “Roger that, Pride. Standing by to receive destination code.”

  “We copy, gatehouse.” Ted glanced over his shoulder at his wife. “Send the key, please.”

  Ali typed in a command that relayed the key code to Emily’s station; she transmitted the signal to the gatehouse, which in turn sent it via hyperlink to Rho Coronae Borealis. A minute went by, then we heard from the gatehouse again: “Code received at destination and confirmed. You have permission to commence final approach.”

  “Roger that, gatehouse. Thank you.” Ted let out his breath. “Right, then…Ali, interface AI with the gatehouse, then fire main engine on my mark.”

  Ali tapped at his keyboard, studied his comp for a moment, then looked back at him. “Interface completed, skipper. Ready when you are.”

  “Mark.”

  A brief surge as the engine ignited. Looking up at the nearest screen, I saw Starbridge Coyote grow in size. Above the console, a holographic miniature of the Pride moved toward a three-dimensional funnel that grew from the ring. Remembering the turbulence I’d experienced a few days earlier, I cinched my harness a little tighter, then glanced over at Rain.

  “Hang on,” I whispered. “This could be rough.” She nodded and gave her own harness a quick yank. Although she said nothing, the perspiration on her face showed just how nervous she was. I remembered then that she was the only person aboard who hadn’t made a hyperspace jump; everyone else had gone through this at least once before, if only from Earth to Coyote. “Don’t worry,” I added. “It’ll all be over in just…”

  “I know, I know.” Her voice was tight. “Don’t remind me.”

  She didn’t want to be babied, so I left her alone. Ali had taken his hands from the console; with the Pride’s guidance system slaved to the gatehouse AI, there was nothing for him to do. Yet Doc continued to study his board, alert for any signs of trouble, while Ted and Emily watched the comp displays at their stations.

  The engine cut off a few seconds later. Another glance at a screen told me that the Pride was only a few miles from the starbridge. Any moment now, we’d be entering the event horizon…

  A sudden flash from within the ring, and then it felt as if we were being pulled into the wormhole. I was about to close my eyes when someone grasped the back of my wrist. Looking down, I was surprised to find that Rain had grabbed hold of me.

  “Don’t watch,” I said quietly, taking her hand. “Just shut your eyes. You’ll be…”

  I didn’t get a chance to finish, for at that moment we entered the starbridge.

  This time, I saw what happened. Bright light in every color of the visible spectrum streamed through the windows as the command center turned upside down, becoming a barrel that some malicious giant had decided to kick down a slope. For an instant, it seemed as if everything stretched, like matter itself had become little more than warm taffy. The holo flickered and went dead. From the other side of the bridge, I heard someone scream—Ash, perhaps, or maybe it was Morgan—and Rain’s grip became so hard that I almost yelped.

  And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The light faded, the spinning stopped, everything resumed its normal proportions. We were through the starbridge.

  Rain let out her breath, slowly opened her eyes. “Oh, god, that was…” Then she realized that she was still clutching my hand. “Sorry,” she muttered, and quickly released it. “Didn’t mean to…”

  “That’s okay.” I couldn’t help but grin. “Anytime.”

  Her face had been pale; then it became red, and she looked away in embarrassment. Hearing the sound of someone retching, I turned to see Ash blowing his cookies into a bag while Goldstein regarded him with disgust. Everyone else was shaken and sweaty, save perhaps for Jas, whose turtlelike visage remained invisible behind the opaque mirror of hisher suit helmet.

  “Well, now…that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Ted glanced around the deck. “Everyone all right? No casualties, I hope?” Satisfied that we were all in one piece, if perhaps a little worse for wear, he looked over at his wife. “Send a message back home. Tell them we’ve arrived in one piece.”

  Emily pushed a damp lock of hair from her face as she opened a hyperlink channel to Starbridge Coyote. Ted turned back toward the helm. “A fix on our position, Ali, if you will.”

  Our pilot seemed to shake himself awake, then hunched over the console. It took a minute for him to reactivate the holo and match it against the charts in the comp’s stellar catalog. “We’re in the HD 143761 system. Approximately one and a half AU’s from the primary, one thousand miles from…”

  His voice trailed off as he slowly raised his eyes to the nearest window. “Allah’s blessings,” he muttered. “Will you look at that?”

  I followed his gaze. Through the window, we could see a nearby planet, oddly Earth-like but with oceans larger than those of our own world. Hjarr, apparently, but this wasn’t what got our attention. In orbit above the planet was something that appeared at first to be a small constellation, yet obviously wasn’t of natural origin.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Rain stared at it in astonishment. “I mean, I’d heard that it was big, but…”

  Emily put a 3-D image up on the holo, and we could see the object more clearly: a vast, snowflake-shaped structure, perhaps two hundred miles or more in diameter, like an elaborate toy cobbled together by some infant god. It slowly rotated upon a central axis, catching the light of a distant sun; all around it moved tiny specks that, I suddenly realized, were starships larger than the Pride itself.

  A space colony, but much, much bigger than any built by humans. Even Highgate would have been dwarfed by this thing. I’d heard of it, of course, yet in real life it was more awesome than anything I’d imagined.

  “There it is…Talus qua’spah.” Ted looked over at Jas. “Welcome home, Prime Emissary.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” The hjadd had already unfastened hisher harness and was floating free of hisher couch. “First Officer, will you please open a channel? The proper frequency has already been programmed into your system.”

  �
��Sure.” Emily reached to her keyboard. “But what do you want me to…?”

  “There is no need for you to speak. I will communicate for you.” Jas pushed himherself over to the console. “If you will…?”

  “Skipper?” Ali continued to stare at the holo. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Move us away from the starbridge, then hold position.” Ted watched as Emily entered commands into her keyboard. “Just wait.”

  Emily raised an eyebrow, then looked up at Jas. Apparently the Prime Emissary had switched off hisher translator and activated an internal mike, for when heshe spoke again, it wasn’t in Anglo but rather the unpronounceable rush of hisses, clicks, and croaks that I’d heard in hisher quarters. A few seconds passed, then from the speakers we heard a response in the same tongue. Jas gave a short reply, then turned toward Ted.

  “Our arrival has been acknowledged, and we have been welcomed,” heshe said. “If you will kindly relinquish control of your ship, our traffic control system will guide it to the appropriate docking port.”

  From across the compartment, I saw Ali trade a wary glance with Ted. The captain gave him a wordless nod, and Ali entered a command into his console. “Helm control free,” he said, not at all happy about it. “But I don’t know how…”

  A second later, there was an abrupt sensation of lateral movement as the maneuvering thrusters fired on their own, bringing the Pride around a few degrees to starboard. “Do not worry,” Jas said as heshe returned to hisher couch. “Your ship is quite safe, so long as you do not interfere. All you need do is complete final docking procedures.”

  “Thank you.” Ted looked over at Rain and me. “Right, then…you know the drill. Go below and prepare for arrival. We’ll be using the primary docking port on Cargo Two.”

  I unbuckled my harness and pushed myself out of my seat. “Do you want us to open the port hatch?”