by Konig, Artor
With that, I plotted the exact moment we should turn away. Deep in the Earth’s shadow we plunged away, into the void.
19. Contact
I looked dry-eyed at the image the rear-view camera was letting me see; a sea of stars with a huge orb of blackness occluding the sun. We were too far away to see those splashes of light on the world’s surface, too close to see the fiery corona of the sun. But it wasn’t for long that way. Soon occurred that strange and magnificent dawn, where the corona of the sun appeared, grew and took over the sky behind me. I made myself even more comfortable at the controls, looking ahead at the star-blazoned darkness of the inner void. Before me was the moon, well to my right. Somewhat behind me and much closer was Wren Number One. I radioed over to the Doctor the modification I had made to the flight plan which he cleared at once. I told him to take a break; I would stay awake and keep an eye on the autopilot of both craft. This as well he agreed to, keying Number One over to my control.
I went over all the systems again before turning my attention to what the radio-telescope had to tell me. The moon with its two stations and various selen-scapes of craters and junk, was rather old hat, as were the few craft on the way in or out. The shuttles were all going rather slower than the two Wrens; but then they didn’t have as far to go. Beyond the moon the void was rather empty; Mars wasn’t on that particular part of its orbit, so we had a relatively clear run all the way to the asteroid belt; which definitely wasn’t clear. I peered through the windscreen, seeing the orb of the moon gradually becoming larger before me, heading down to my right hand side. My hands were off the controls but I was ready to take over at a moment’s notice. I tested the war system, keying in the full combat mode then the ultimate war mode, seeing each system activate, checking the operation for any flaws or sloth in response. The ramjets were burning evenly, the sure flow of power pushing the speed of the craft rapidly into more incredible figures.
Already the miles per second looked like serious speeding on a land-bound vehicle. The shuttles we swept past all looked like they were going towards us, both those on their way to the moon, and those on their way back. The only difference between them was that those on the outward journey looked slower than those on their way back to the earth. Whether or not they noticed us I didn’t know; they certainly gave no sign of it. The moon was beginning to look rather huge on the starboard side, rather than in front of us. I looked thoughtfully down at the old silver orb, noticing that it looked dusty and brown from close up. I kept a careful eye on the autopilot, which seemed intent on us skimming the surface of the moon as we swept past. I corrected the course slightly, easing us past the sister-planet.
With ramjets screaming, we pounded through the tenuous atmosphere of the moon, close enough clearly to see some of the larger landmarks of the lunar surface. We cleared the surface, leaving the moon behind us as the craft surged up, swiftly attaining a meaningless altitude beyond. Once beyond the moon’s gravity well we were truly out in the void of deep space.
I started playing around with the seeker system, keying in and out various targets, seeing what lay between us and our primary targets still a good way beyond the Jovian orbit but now well inside that of Saturn. I focussed on each detail as it presented itself, seeing that we were booked for a good hundred and forty-hour stretch before we had a decent line-sight on our targets at our present rate of acceleration.
I practised working with the predictive targeting programme; the system that worked out where the enemy would be by the time my beams reached that particular area. Fighting at such a long range struck me as being nearly tedious. A fellow had to wait nearly half a day before a ray of light covered these intra-stellar distances. Even at two-hundred thousand miles a second, light took a good long time to cover the breadth of the system; with poor old Pluto and Charon having to wait a good five hours for the same spot of light which took only eight minutes to arrive at Earth.
Knowing full well that we were several million miles out of sure targeting range, I nevertheless did a bit of target practise, unleashing some serious maser-backed x-laser volleys at where the systems thought the enemy would be by the time my hours-old beams had arrived there.
It was rather like shooting arrows at the moon as far as its overall futility value was rated; but it at least made me a bit more comfortable with the system. It occurred to me that the signal I was receiving was already a couple of hours old, telling me where those craft were a long time after they had passed by. But the position they gave was relatively accurate; if they had been any closer the signals would have said so. This was very confusing for me and I made no pretence to understand it; but I decided that as they were not travelling at anywhere near the speed of light, an hour’s travel in the void would make relatively little difference to their actual position. I let off another fusillade just to relieve my feelings, then sat back to watch the emptiness speed past.
This it did for a rather long time. Eight hours is a very long time to sit at the controls of a super-charged space chopper, especially when the view wasn’t changing and the old adrenalin was beginning to see the futility of the whole setup. I created a mapping sequence on the navigational system which showed me clearly where everything was, including me. It was a sort of electronic orrery. I watched the out-of-scale dot which represented the two Wrens; the large dot of the moon, the Earth behind it, behind that the sun. Mars was over to my left, Venus over there as well, Mercury way long gone behind me. The map showed a blur in a wide Taurus where the asteroid belt was supposed to be; at this range it wasn’t going to commit itself on individuals. Jupiter was plain enough; slap on our proposed flight path should we end up going that far. I supposed that I should think about planning a way around the huge sub-star but as our nearest ranging-point was well within the orbit of Jupiter, I wasn’t sure that it would be worth the trouble. Beyond Jupiter, almost as far out as the orbit of Saturn, were the seven small but malignant dots. The light of the sun would take almost three hours to get that far; hence my laser beams would also take that long to reach them. Their relative motion, now that I was able to keep a continuous eye on them, was very slow. Beyond them and well to the left of our flight path there was the enigmatic ringed giant, Saturn in his golden gloom.
I knew that there was a good long while before I so much as knew if my first fusillades had even come close to the targets; the way I had worked it out, we would have been fighting for a good few hours before we even knew if we’d struck our targets.
This whole idea of light-minutes, even light-hours, upset me intensely. I didn’t like the idea of blasting away from my safe little spot for maybe a day before I received the news that I’d had a hit, or far worse than that, a few misses. After all, if the laser took three hours to get there and start doing damage, it was logical to assume that news of this naughty temper would take another three hours to get back to where I was sulking. I wasn’t sure as well how I was going to dodge laser beams that were directed at me as I was quite sure they would be. If a laser beam was coming at you at the speed of light; as you’d expect it to, you’d need a pre-emptive set of nerves to do anything about it. Dodging made a certain amount of sense, I realised, dodging in the sense of keeping the craft’s path erratic so if they had the same sort of tracking system as we did, the resultant targeting would be off by that critical fraction.
And with our targeting system, even the tiniest bit counted. We were small targets to begin with, and proof against random radar tracking; even against radio-telescope spotting; but I decided that I wasn’t going to take even a small chance. I had a look over the tight beam link to see what the Doctor was up to. He was fast asleep, so I decided to tell him my course of action when my shift was over. I programmed a slight deviation around the general flight path, moving the craft first above then below then to either side of our track in a random sequence, every few seconds. The slight shift could not be felt through the covering blanket of the inertialess drive; and there was no sign of it on anything bu
t the craft’s flight monitor. Certainly the view through the windscreen didn’t change.
That solemn map of stars seemed changeless for all we were hurtling through the void at nearly five hundred miles a second. Another strategy occurred to me, seeming rather like a good idea. I plotted another change in the flight plan, one which would mean our contact point would be delayed by a matter of a couple of hours, so the targeting computer assured me; but would give us a slight advantage as far as overall positioning was concerned. At once I prospected the other advantages, one of these was that we would travel through a less dense part of the asteroid belt should it be necessary for us to pass through that formidable web of stone.
Happy at last that I had done as much to secure the mission as I could at this early stage, I took the joystick of Number Three, plunging her nose so slightly down, to take the twain below the planetary disc of the solar system. I replotted the route according to this change, keying the entire flight-plan into Number Three’s navigational system, watching as the new sequence mapped itself on the monitor before my eyes. I realised that the point of meeting, the ultimate end of the voyage, was made that much more tenuous by me changing the approach from head-on to under-the-belly; but I felt that the targeting system of the Wren was accurate enough to make any error obsolete and it would correct itself as we gradually came closer to the enemy. I targeted the war system for the third time since the trip had started, focussing on those far off craft, at the point the co-ordination system felt they would be heading towards, unleashing the hundreds of gigawatts of X-laser energy along that carefully plotted line. I felt a sense of futility as once again the war-system assured me that the everything of all had been unleashed on the enemy, with no apparent effect.
I realised that it was going to be a very long journey, everything considered, causing me to wonder if my nerves would make the trip. I looked at the monitors then plunged down my visor, looking ahead with the dancing crosshair sweeping across the field of my vision. The war-system was still active, as it would be for the duration of the trip, the eager lights glinting within the protective lenses of the lasers. The murky black hull of Number One, that was scarcely a hundred yards to my left and slightly behind me, was not visible either to the war-system tracker or to the naked eye. I looked ahead again, through the visor tracker, seeing marked as a blue dot the mass of Jupiter, the smaller scattering of dots marking the asteroids on which the system was willing to commit itself. Beyond them all, so slight as to be nearly invisible, was the seven red dots of our primary targets.
At this range the war-system wouldn’t commit itself to a sure targeting, it being a bit more conservative and less wishful than myself. It was rather doubtful that the beams I had already released would even have enough energy to do any damage even if they were as spot-on as I hoped. Empty though the void appeared to be, there was in actual fact quite a good deal of matter floating about. This I could see for myself, noting that as the Wren’s ultimate actual speed increased, so did the temperature of the hull. The increase was slight, only a matter of forty or so degrees; but it spoke loudly of little hydrogen atoms pounding determinedly on the tough outer skin of the Wren.
I glanced at the airspeed indicator, seeing that we were going a lot faster than I was comfortable with. I flipped up the visor of my helmet, looking at the stars to see if they were beginning to blur at the edges. But at eight-hundred miles a second, there was no appreciable difference in their appearance. I sighed to myself, looking around me thoughtfully. The chronometer told me that my first stint on duty was just about over. With ten meaningless minutes to go, I flashed the wake-up call to the Doctor. Once I was sure he was awake and in control, I gave him a report of all that I had done. He digested my report in silence for a few minutes before wondering if I wasn’t taking caution to rather ridiculous lengths. I patiently explained my reasoning in the matter of dodging incoming laser beams and my strategy in coming up under the enemy. He conceded that it did make a certain amount of sense. He then asked me to remain in control while he had a meal; then he took over from me.
I released my buckles, wondering how I was going to manage any food in this zero-gravity environment. I was also rather uneasy about leaving the controls; but this I soon got over, finding that the craft didn’t plunge into a helpless nosedive the moment I left the controls. Not that she had anywhere to plunge to other than the place she was already plunging to at eight-hundred miles a second; it was simply that I wasn’t used to the craft maintaining its level flight when I was the only person in the cabin and not actively in control. Autopilot on helicopters takes a certain amount of getting used to; and the Wren was an uncomfortable craft to be alone in. At least I found it to be then.
I carefully fed myself, transferring the contents of a tin into a plastic feeding-bag, from which I fed myself. It was an undignified process but it was better than having random bubbles of baked beans and peaches floating around the cabin. I found the juice I fed myself to be more than welcome, feeling rather as if sitting at the controls was going to be very thirsty work.
I transferred a good supply of food to a spot more at hand to the pilot’s couch, strapping it all into place. Thereupon it occurred to me to strap on one of the suits just in case there was an accident. This I did, hooking the suit up to the craft’s air supply so that when I had the helmet on the suit would be completely sealed. The bottles were just behind the navigator’s dash, ready to be hooked in just in case the craft’s independent emergency supply was breached. Once I was comfortably strapped up in the pilot’s couch I had a look at what the Doctor was doing at the controls. After a few minutes I managed to convince myself that he knew what he was doing and that nothing could go seriously wrong during my eight hours off shift. This was extremely difficult to do as I didn’t care not to be in control.
I set the alarm on the Wren’s chronometer for eight hours ahead then stretched out on the couch. Not that I was actually lying on the couch; if it wasn’t for my straps I would have been floating all over the cabin. But pretending to lie on the couch went a long way towards re-establishing a sense of normalcy. At length I allowed myself to drop off to sleep, feeling that relentless plunge into the infinite emptiness; but for the moment ignoring it. So went the time as I took watch; and relaxed; or tried to. Time does not fly when there is so little to do; and so much at stake.
There was that dark, those spots of light, this fear that seemed to have no source. Then the craft appeared before me, lasers blazing as I struggled to dodge and dive. My own weapons seemed to have no effect and the spiders that seethed in the fell light within those precisely mapped craft had boundless energy beyond my own. I saw their evil eyes, row upon row of them; their carious fangs glittering in the space-lorn gloom. Beyond the eleventh hour my weapons seemed to react, blasting the fell creatures to pieces but not before one had leaped upon me with vitriolic poison dripping from its fangs.
I jerked myself awake, looking about me, sweat slick on my face and body.
At first the emptiness of the cabin reassured me; but soon that loneliness disturbed me. I checked the monitors, seeing that everything was more or less as it should be. The tracking system was still locked onto the enemy, who were still so far out of range that the mere thought of striking them seemed ludicrous, here so many millions of miles closer to the targets than I had been when I had first released those futile fusillades.
The chronometer told me that I had fifteen minutes worth of nap before it buzzed me awake; so I turned it forwards another sixteen hours. I beguiled my time by feeding myself, conceding the Doctor’s point about the futility of extra clothes. I was rather comfortable and certainly it didn’t feel as if I had done anything sufficiently stressful to warrant a wash and brush-up. However, I managed to induce myself to do so, giving myself a sort of dry scrub before putting on another tracksuit. I zipped up my suit over all my other clothes before strapping myself onto the couch once again. Almost immediately the Doctor let me know that my stint of d
uty was on; so soon after I had strapped myself in that the suspicion that he may have been watching me at once took root.
It was entirely possible, since the craft equipped with a full visual coverage. I shook the thought from my mind, concentrating instead on the course and how far along it we were. We were happening on the asteroid belt; that I saw at once; close enough to require that I take active control of the two craft. There wasn’t all that much dodging to do as I had plotted the course sufficiently below the old orbit of that shattered world to avoid most of the drifting debris. But dodging boulders almost like moons at that speed was trying work; and I found eight hours of it to be more than enough. I found the presence of those stones portentous; and extremely disturbing.
Some of the asteroids had been small enough for me to zap out of the way, but most of them were many miles wide. They had come up so shockingly fast; it had taken every bit of my self-control to decide which way to dodge and whether in fact I needed to dodge at all. But at the end of eight hours; the first forty-eight hours of that flight; we were beyond the inner asteroid belt. Our speed, already formidable, was mounting ever higher. The clarity with which I perceived Jupiter and those red dots beyond was greater.
As yet the war-system wouldn’t commit itself on a definite targeting but I let the seven craft each have another seven beams, just in case it would help matters at all at a later date. The first beams I had sent were still on their way to wherever they were going; they hadn’t arrive at their alien-proximity so it seemed they were on their way out of the system instead; but it was the thought that counted, I felt, as I signed over to the Doctor. He was halfway through his breakfast and I held on patiently until he had finished.
I found myself counting my thumbs for all the last stint on duty had been tiring. Although the Doctor was now in charge of both craft I couldn’t settle down. I kept my place, my eyes on the view presented by both the seeker monitor and the dark of the windscreen. I knew where to look for those seven red dots, but there was nothing at all to be seen. Jupiter was plain enough, the enigmatic sub-star a steadily-growing point of light up and ahead of me. The other stars were relatively more stationary than Jupiter, all but one. Almost as I had perceived the hurtling ray of silver I took over control of both craft and sent them swooping beneath the speck of broken planet that was on a definite collision course with us. The Doctor’s voice came over the comlink, sounding rather hurt, “Thank you Cassandra; but I was about to do that.”
