Galaxy Blues

by Allen Steele

  “Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but”—Ted grimaced—“well, we now know that they didn’t exactly do this out of the kindness of their hearts. From what Jas told us, the Talus High Council never intended to take no for an answer.”

  “Of course,” Doc continued, “we may need a tow by the time we return to Talus qua’spah, and I can tell you right now that Mr. Goldstein is going to have to pay for a major overhaul…but, yeah, I think we’ll make it.”

  “At any rate,” Ted went on, “this means that our ETA will be approximately thirty hours from now. That should give you enough time to prepare for your part of the mission.” He hesitated. “And here’s where things become a bit dicey.”

  He magnified the image within the holotank so that Aerik and its satellites increased in size. “There’s Kha-Zann,” he said, pointing to a large moon at the periphery of the system. “Approximately the same mass and diameter as Europa, with much the same surface gravity. Carbon dioxide atmosphere, but not very dense…about a hundred and fifty millibars at the equator…but enough to give you some measure of protection.”

  “Protection?” Although I’d had experience with landing on atmospheric planets, I would have preferred to set down on an airless moon. “Against what?”

  Ted took a deep breath. “By the time you get there, Kasimasta will only be about eight hundred thousand kilometers away…”

  “Oh, hell!”

  “I told you this was the dicey part.” A humorless smile played across his face. “At least the atmosphere will provide you with some radiation protection while you’re down there. And Kasimasta will be coming in hot…mainly X-rays from its accretion disc. So the less time you spend on the surface, the better. In fact, I’d recommend landing close to the daylight terminator, if at all possible.”

  “Uh-huh. And how long will I have to…?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First things first.” Ted pointed to the red thread of the Pride’s trajectory. “Here’s the game plan. Once we’re on primary approach to Aerik and the Pride has initiated its braking maneuver, you’ll take Lucy away. Our trajectory will bring us within a hundred and thirty thousand kilometers of Kha-Zann, so you shouldn’t have to consume much fuel getting there.”

  The holo image zoomed in again, this time to display Loose Lucy’s departure from the Pride and its rendezvous with Kha-Zann. “In the meantime,” Ted went on, “the Pride will continue toward Aerik and swing around it, initiating a periapsis burn at closest approach to the far side of the planet. That’ll put us on a return heading that’ll bring us back toward Kha-Zann, where we’ll pick you up.”

  “Why not go into orbit around Kha-Zann itself?”

  “We thought of that,” Ali said, “but when we ran a simulation, we discovered that it would take too much time to establish orbit around Kha-Zann. Not only that, but once we broke orbit, we’d have to build up enough thrust again to achieve escape velocity, and by then Kasimasta would catch up with us. This way, we use a slingshot maneuver around Aerik to keep from shedding too much velocity. Once we fire the main engine, we blow out of there before Kasimasta reaches Kha-Zann.”

  “If all goes well, that is,” Ted added.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What could go wrong?”

  “Well…” Doc began, then shook his head. “All this means you’re going to have a very tight window. No more than an hour on the surface…and believe me, that’s stretching it.”

  I stared at him. “An hour? You’ve got to be…”

  “No, he’s not.” Ted’s face was serious. “And neither am I. You land, you drop off the probe, you take off again. If everything works according to plan, you should be able to reach the rendezvous point just in time to dock with the Pride as we swing by again. Otherwise…”

  His voice trailed off. Not that he had to spell it out. If I failed to reach the Pride, then the captain would have no choice but to leave me behind. By then, the ship would be racing just ahead of the Annihilator, with no time left to make orbit around Kha-Zann and wait for me to show up.

  “Yeah. Got it.” I let out my breath. “So I’m the poor mouse who gets to put the bell around the cat’s neck.”

  “Mouse? Cat?” Ali’s expression was quizzical. “What are you talking about?”

  “Old fable, courtesy of Aesop,” I said, and Ali shook his head. Chalk it up to cultural differences. “Never mind. Just do me a favor and download everything into Lucy’s comp. I’ll run a simulation from the cockpit, make sure that everything…”

  “Just one more thing.” Ted looked at the others, then back at me again. “You’re not going to be able to do this alone. Someone’s going to have to help you unload the probe and place it on the surface, so you’re going to have to take another person with you.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, but now that he mentioned it, I knew he was right. I’d have to use the cargo elevator to remove the probe from Lucy’s hold and put it on the ground. I could conceivably do it by myself, but not within the short amount of time I’d have on Kha-Zann. Like it or not, someone else would have to ride down with me.

  “Yeah, okay.” I glanced at Doc. “You up for this, chief? I know it’s a lot to ask, but…”

  “Sorry. Not me.” Doc shook his head. “I’ve got to stay aboard, try to keep the ship from rattling apart at the seams.”

  “And don’t ask for Emily, either,” Ted said. “I know she’s qualified, but there’s no way I’m putting my wife at risk.” He hesitated. “Besides, we already have someone…Rain.”

  A chill ran down my back. “Skipper…Ted…please don’t do this. I can’t…”

  All of a sudden, I found myself unable to finish what I wanted to say—I can’t put her life in jeopardy any more than you can put Emily’s—because that would’ve meant admitting more than I was willing to these men, or perhaps even to myself.

  So I played stubborn instead. “Look, I can take care of this on my own. No reason to get her involved.”

  Ted frowned. “Are you telling me you’re still not able to work with her?”

  That looked like an easy way out. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Cap, you don’t know what a pain in the ass she…”

  “Well, that’s just too bad…because she’s already volunteered.” A sly smile; Ted didn’t have to be a telepath to know a lie when he heard it. “And here I thought the two of you were getting along so well.”

  “Nice try, though,” Doc murmured.

  My face grew warm, but before I could respond, Ted nodded toward the manhole. “Right, then…unless you have any more questions, you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you. All of us do.”

  There was nothing left to be discussed, so I headed for the access shaft. I waited until I shut the hatch behind me before, still clinging to the ladder, I threw my fist into the nearest bulkhead.

  III

  The rest of the day was spent preparing for the mission.

  Before that, though, I tracked down Rain and gave her a piece of my mind. Not that it got me anywhere. She was having lunch with Emily when I found her in the wardroom; seeing the look on my face, the first officer quietly excused herself and gave us the room, and once the door was shut I blew up. I don’t remember most of what I said—I was just venting, really—but Rain just sat there and took it, silently regarding me with solemn eyes that I couldn’t quite bring myself to meet. And when I was done, she polished off the rest of her coffee, stood up from the table, and quietly suggested that we head down to the shuttle and check out the probe.

  And that was it. We never had an argument because she refused to argue in the first place. Besides, she’d already received Ted’s blessing, so my opinion didn’t really count. That’s the trouble with women: they’re smarter than men, and therefore enjoy an unfair advantage. And the hell of it is that they know it, too.

  The hjadd probe was located in Lucy’s cargo hold, strapped to the deck right where Jas said it would be. Hisher people had smuggled it aboard inside a cra
te identical to those they’d used to pack the gnoshes; even if I’d spotted it before we left Talus qua’spah, I probably would have assumed that it was a box that somehow got misplaced.

  Before I could open it, though, Rain stopped me. “Perhaps we should ask Jas to do it for us,” she said. “No telling what other tricks heshe has up hisher sleeve.” So I got on the comlink and asked Ted to relay our request to the Prime Emissary, and a little while later Jas came down from hisher quarters.

  I noticed that heshe still wore hisher weapon around the left wrist of hisher environment suit; apparently Jas wasn’t quite ready to trust anyone aboard not to take revenge for hisher actions. Remembering what Ash had said to me earlier, I couldn’t blame himher. Nonetheless, I didn’t say anything about it. Rain saw the weapon, too, but kept her mouth shut. Like I said, a smart girl.

  Jas assured us that the crate wasn’t booby-trapped, and I opened it just the way I had the others. Tucked inside was a compact sphere, about three and a half feet in diameter, its burnished-silver surface lined with hexagonal panels. Arranged around its equator were rungs suitable for either hjadd or human hands; recessed within the topmost panel were three small studs, blue, red, and white. Once the probe was in place, Jas told us, we were to press first the blue button, then the red, and finally the white. That was it—the probe would do the rest.

  “Of course,” I said, “you can make sure that we get it right by coming along with us. We’ve got lots of room for passengers.”

  I was only half-joking when I said this, yet apparently I struck a nerve, for the faceplate of hisher helmet swung sharply toward me. “My suit is not meant to be worn outside an atmospheric environment,” Jas replied, as if that explained everything. “The probe is designed for simplicity of operation. My assistance is not necessary.”

  “How interesting.” Rain bent over the probe to study it closely. “Your people build a device to study a black hole, but you make it so that it can be operated by another race.” She looked up at himher. “Guess you’re just lucky we happened to come along at the right time.”

  Jas was silent for a moment. Hisher suit concealed the mannerisms I’d learned to interpret—the attitude of hisher fin, whether or not hisher throat sacs were inflated—but nonetheless I had a sense that hisher reticence stemmed from embarrassment. “My people have others assume risks on our behalf,” heshe said at last. “It’s our way.”

  “So that’s how we…” I began, but before I could finish, Jas turned away from us. Without another word, heshe left the hold, climbing back up the ladder toward the top hatch.

  “Coward,” I murmured, once heshe was gone.

  “Don’t blame himher,” Rain said quietly. “Morgan told us about the hjadd, remember? They’re not accustomed to taking chances.”

  “Yeah, well…why is heshe aboard, then?”

  “I have a feeling that being here isn’t hisher choice either.” She swatted my arm. “C’mon. Back to work.”

  We made sure that the cargo lift was operational, then returned to the flight deck. I downloaded the mission program from the Pride and began to put Lucy through a complete diagnostics check. Rain stayed for a little while, but there wasn’t much she could do, so after a bit she returned to the ship with the intent of outfitting our suits for surface work.

  I remained in the shuttle for the next few hours, repeatedly running simulations of our flight plan, tweaking the variables with each iteration so that I’d have practice dealing with whatever problems we might encounter along the way. I was feeling a little more confident about the mission, but I still wasn’t satisfied that I’d considered everything that might possibly go wrong. Yet I also I knew that if I didn’t get some rest, my reflexes would be sluggish by the time I had to do this for real. So I put Lucy to sleep and returned to the Pride.

  The ship was quiet, save for the background rumble of the main engine, and I figured that everyone had sacked out. On the other hand, I was still wide-awake; as I opened the hatch leading to Deck Two, I realized that, even if I went back to my cabin, I’d probably just stare at the ceiling. I was thinking about going up top to visit whoever was on watch—Doc, probably, or maybe Emily—when a familiar sound came to me: Ash’s guitar, its melancholy chords gently reverberating off the corridor walls.

  What the hell, I thought. Might as well see what the ol’ geek is up to. Before I had a chance to knock at his door, Ash’s voice came to me from the other side. “C’mon in, Jules. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  We? Ash usually kept to himself. When I slid open the door, though, I found that he wasn’t alone. Ash was sitting in his hammock, his guitar cradled in his lap, and seated on the floor next him was Rain.

  She smiled up at me. “Don’t look so shocked. We figured you’d show up sooner or later.” She patted the floor next to her. “Here. Sit.”

  “And while you’re at it, have a drink.” Ash picked up a jug of bearshine and offered it to me.

  “Umm…no thanks.” I shook my head as I squatted down next to Rain. “Better not.”

  “Oh, c’mon.” Rain took the jug from Ash. “We still have”—a quick glance at her watch—“sixteen hours before we have to leave. Plenty of time to get properly pissed and sober up again.”

  With that, she pulled out the cork and, using both hands, tilted back the jug. For a woman who once told me that she didn’t drink, Rain certainly knew how to swallow. A long gulp that seemed to last forever, then she gasped. “Hot damn, that’s good.” She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, then held out the jug. “Go ahead. Don’t be shy.”

  The old pilot’s rule is twelve hours from bottle to throttle; I had that, with a few hours to spare. So I accepted the jug from her and raised it to my mouth. I’d never had corn liquor before; it went down like molten lava, burning my throat, and I nearly choked on it. But she was right; just then, it tasted pretty damn good.

  “There’s the man.” Ash grinned, then held out his hand. “Here, now. Time to pay the piper.” Rain took the jug from me and passed it back to him. A quick, thirsty slug, then he set it on the floor between the three of us. “All right, then…piper’s been paid. Let’s see if he can entertain the rats.”

  His hands returned to his guitar, but instead of the random progression I’d heard before, this time his fingers produced a slow, boozy ramble, like something that might come from a roadhouse band south of the Mason-Dixon. “Been working on that song,” Ash added, glancing up at me from his instrument. “Think I finally might have some words for it…”

  Then he sang:

  Ninety light-years from home,

  Lord, you gotta pay your dues.

  Ninety light-years from home,

  I got nuthin’ to lose.

  My spaceship’s a junker, and I’m out for a cruise,

  I gotta bad ol’ case of the Galaxy Blues.

  All right, so maybe it wasn’t Jelly Roll Morton. All the same, it gave me a reason to smile for the first time in days. “I thought you said music doesn’t need words,” I said, reaching for the bearshine again.

  “Changed my mind,” Ash muttered, then he went on:

  Stars all around me,

  And I got nowhere to go.

  Stars are all around me,

  And light moves too slow.

  I got planets in my pocket and black holes in my shoes,

  It’s another phase of the Galaxy…

  Wham! Something hit the door so hard that Rain and I both jumped an inch. My first thought was that there had been some catastrophic accident, such as the main fuel tank exploding, yet when it repeated a moment later—wham! wham!—I realized that someone was hammering at the door.

  Ash was the only one who wasn’t perturbed. Although he stopped singing, he continued to strum at his guitar. “Yes, Mr. Goldstein, you may come in,” he said, as calm as calm could be.

  The door slammed open, and there was Morgan, bleary-eyed and wearing only his robe. “All right, you punks, that’s enough!” he snarled. “Some of
us are trying to sleep here, and you three are keeping us…”

  “Mr. Goldstein…Morgan…” Ash sighed, still not looking up at him. “If you don’t shut up and leave, I’m going to tell my friends how you earned your first million dollars.” He paused, then added, “How you really earned your first million dollars.”

  Morgan’s face went pale as all the bluster and fury of his entrance suddenly dissipated. He started to open his mouth, but then Ash lifted his eyes to gaze at him, and he abruptly seemed to reconsider whatever he was going to say. The two men stared at each other for another moment…and then, without so much as another word, Morgan stepped out of the cabin and quietly pulled the door shut.

  For a second or two, no one said anything. I finally looked at Ash. “Y’know,” I murmured, “I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

  Rain was similarly impressed. “How did you do that?” she whispered, awestruck.

  Ash only shrugged as he went on playing his guitar. “If there’s one thing that scares guys like Morgan, it’s having people find out the truth about them.” A secretive smile. “And believe me, he’s got some pretty nasty skeletons in his closet.”

  I remembered the last time Ash had told Morgan to shut up, back on Talus qua’spah. I’d thought then that it was some sort of psychic trick…and perhaps it was, to the extent that the Order knew things about Morgan that he’d rather not be made public. But the fact of the matter was, all Ash had to do was verbally remind Morgan that he had the boss by the short hairs.

  “Oh, do tell.” Rain inched a little closer. “I’d love to know what…”

  “Sorry. My order prohibits me from talking about things like that.” Ash gave her a wink. “Not that Morgan knows this, of course. Now pass me the jug, and I’ll tell you about a sweet young girl from Nantucket…”

  And it pretty much went downhill from there. In deference to anyone besides Goldstein who might be trying to sleep, we tried to keep it down…but nonetheless, as the jug made its way around the circle, the songs became ruder, the jokes more coarse, as the three of us laughed and sang our way long into the perpetual night.