by Konig, Artor
“Good show, Cassandra.” The Doctor told me quietly, “The targeting system seems to be accurate. At our present rate of travel it will be almost two days before we get close enough to engage them in close-combat; but those beams would have landed in almost two hours’ time. We’ll hope it will all be over by then.”
“I hope so.” I replied, “Look, Doctor, this is the programme I’ve worked up,” I told him briefly what I was proposing to do and my timetable. He seemed to think it was a good idea and simple enough to carry out. As yet there was no sign that the aliens had noticed us; there probably never would be. It was rather like spotting a germ on a rugby field after all. Even if they knew we were out here somewhere it wouldn’t really help them too much. The Doctor then suggested that I take some time off; he would see to the next two sessions and then awaken me. I thought it was a good idea; though this eighteen minute day and night cycle could get to me after a bit, all things considered.
I was right; it did get to me, the waking, firing, sleeping, eating, firing, on and on, meaningless aggression giving way to bold and aggressive futility, as the third-hours and eventually the hours slipped past.
20. Last Leave-taking
I was jolted awake by a loud burst and the rush of cool air on my face. For what seemed like a long time I didn’t move, hearing the sound of air hissing and the blare of one of the Wren’s alarms. I looked around me; the visor of my helmet was down so I didn’t need to move my head to do this. On the small window of the co-pilot’s door, there was a long and narrow crack as if something very hot had been drawn quickly across the clear pane of carbo-holmium-nitride. I scanned the systems, seeing that the craft was already siphoning off the air in the cabin into its reserves so as not to lose the entire atmosphere in the relentless drain of the void.
I reached out for one of the repair kits, slapping a long patch over the crack. The vacuum outside and the remaining pressure within the cabin fixed the patch in place, giving me a bit of time in which to open one of the tubes of sealant. While I was doing this, the Wren sucked up the last lungful of air from her cabin, bringing the pressure down to zero. I squeezed out some of the goo from the tube, smearing it carefully over the score on the glass with its little plastic spatula. It was then that the Doctor’s voice came over the tight beam.
“What’s happening, Cassandra? Why has your alarm gone off?” He asked, a note of concern in his voice.
“I’ve sprung a leak; nothing serious; but the cabin was getting awfully empty and Number Three was protesting.” I replied carefully; there didn’t seem to be any need to overplay the incident.
But the Doctor thought otherwise; he was peering over my shoulder by aid of my helmet camera, his attention focussed on the wound that I was patching up. Even as we watched, the score and the patch fused into glassy uniformity. But the Doctor obviously knew what had caused the wound.
“You’ve been hit; that’s the sort of damage that a very intense short-wave u. v. laser would do if it was of sufficiently high power.”
“That means that they’ve been watching us.” I replied, almost dumbfounded, “But how can that be?”
“They haven’t been watching us in particular.” The Doctor replied slowly but his mind was obviously racing ahead, taking in the implications as he dealt with the notion of this golden hit. “They’ve been hit themselves, although the first salvo that you targeted when we came into range wouldn’t have arrived there yet. I think you had a lucky hit with one of your earlier shots, maybe one or more, but enough to make them realise that they’re under attack. They probably worked out more-or-less where the beam or beams came from and plotted our course approximately. I’d say they’ve been saturating this particular stretch of space with as many heavy beams as they can afford, in the hope of getting us; and one of them happened to hit. They may have been shooting randomly, of course, but I think they have a slight idea of where we are and how fast we’re moving. It’s a jolly good thing that it didn’t do any serious damage:”
“I think we should ride with evacuated cabins for the next hour while I do a bit of serious dodging and diving.” I told him thoughtfully, “And I’ll let them have another salvo with my kind regards.” I was already feeling somewhat claustrophobic, knowing that I couldn’t open my visor until I had re-gassed my cabin; but I was in no hurry to do that just yet. The Doctor agreed with most of my plan, all but the ‘me’ bit. He told me rather firmly to go back to sleep for the rest of my twenty minutes; he would see to everything. He also told me that it was most unlikely that they would score another hit; our flight was too erratic. But I was stubborn; they had hit me so I was going to hit them jolly well back even though I may have hit them hundreds of times already; I may have already destroyed them, even though the jolly old radio-waves were a bit slow in bringing us the news.
Therefore I took control and activated the war mode tracker. We were both at our controls; both looking as those red dots, now much closer and larger, came onto the screen. Old Jupiter was right over our heads; the aliens were halfway across the horribly empty gulf that separated the two gas giants. I digested the salient of the situation for a full thirty seconds, trying to shake the shock and fear that had grasped me at my grim awakening and the frightful reminder of just how dangerous my position was. After all, if that beam had struck five feet to the right and seven feet higher it would possibly have split the platinum casing of Number Three’s reactor, instantly killing both of us. Or it could have gone seven feet to the right; and there would have been no more me. That was an upsetting thought, I felt. At last I found a grip on my nerve and activated the pre-programmed laser format.
I narrowed down my eyes, looking at the lead craft of the alien seven, wondering once again who and what they were, if they were indeed like the Master, spiders given formidable mind and the will to unite their resources; a race of intelligent beings with that ruthless predatory nature. Their planet was too small for their numbers or their ambitions; so they were tripping through the echoless void in search of other worlds to suck dry. I felt my finger tighten on the laser control but not hard enough to send those perilous beams out. For as I watched, near the back of their formation, the fifth craft suddenly emitted a ball of quickly-expanding white light. My finger relaxed, fascinated by this news that the tardy waves of light were finally bringing to me. For as the fifth exploded, so too did number two, then the fourth, the seventh, the third. One after another the alien craft exploded as that first three-minute salvo I had launched once we were within clear targeting range did justice to the Wren’s formidable confidence.
I watched those quickly-expanding balls of utterest hellfire explode, lose their fierce whiteness, merge into a single, erratic mass of argent, yellow, orange then red flame, my hand still on the trips that would send further destruction at those who had already passed beyond any fury that yet I dared to know. That hellish blaze of dissipating gases and cooling nuclear fury simply grew on, relentless but unheeded by the cold uncaring void. In that ball of fire nearly four million souls found their rest; and I felt nothing; or so I thought. At last I shook from my mind the horror and the chill hand of futility, keying out the ultimate war mode of the two craft, letting those eager lasers rest at last.
“Jolly good shooting, Cassandra. You’re the only person on Earth to have hit a target at over three hundred million miles.” The Doctor told me jubilantly.
“I’m not on Earth.” I replied glumly; I was feeling flat, wrung out. It then occurred to me that I could get the cabin back up to pressure; those aliens weren’t going to be doing any more shooting and the beams they had shot would have already passed us by. It also occurred to me that we may as well start back for home. I wondered what sort of turn the inertialess drive would let me do, taking into account the fact that the Wrens were trotting along at almost two percent C. If we’d tried to turn without the inertialess drive, we would simply have fallen to bits, supposing that we had been able to get going that fast in the first place.
To find my answer I at once had a go at it. I cut out the main drive on both craft; the speed settled down to a constant figure. With my eye on the progress monitor I pulled the stick back, gently at first then more fiercely. The two craft responded amiably enough, the plane of their flight arcing up in a soaring surge until we were headed first right up towards the threatening bulk of Jupiter then back towards that lonely little ball of golden fire which was our sun. Through all this the speed of the craft remained constant at one point eight five percent of C.
I felt a surge of awe from myself and from the Doctor. I had rather expected that we would have to spend a good ten or more days slowing down, another ten building up speed again in the opposite direction. As it was food was beginning to look rather scarce on my side though I hadn’t been too lavish with it. We had spent about twenty days getting this far and looked booked for about that long belting back home; I had only packed enough food for a fortnight. My habit of having a meal each time I had awoken had cut into my stores; during those six days I had eaten almost forty times.
I focussed my attention back on the still expanding ball of fire behind us, now showing as the tiniest speck to the naked eye, a desolate dot of fire in the cold of this void. It was lost amongst the myriad scattering of other stars, only its new and mobile nature showing that the inferno was far closer than the nearest star.
Back to the windscreen I looked mapping and plotting our route home. I set the course much lower than the path out had been; we were going a good deal faster than before and the trip back would be about three or four days anyway but I didn’t want to look for more problems in the asteroid belt than there would be to begin with. It had taken almost two days to get through before though the return could be less than fourteen hours. But there would be less time to dodge than before and last time I had cut things a bit fine. I decided to keep to the four hour watch routine we had both accustomed ourselves to and told the Doctor as much, “But you’re to awaken me at once if anything out of the way even seems to be happening.” I told him firmly. He complied meekly enough; but he seemed to be a bit stand-offish; as if I had offended him in some way. He was, I later found, occupied with taking a magnificent set of snaps of old Jupiter and his moons, devoting almost eight discs to the series. He seemed to think that we ought to go closer and have a proper poke around, maybe passing over the top of the brown star. When I pointed out to him that we were rather low on food as matters stood, he seemed even more displeased with me, wanting to know why I hadn’t packed more food and water and air and all the rest of it.
We spent more than an hour gnawing over that particular bone, with me pointing out with some heat that there was a limit to what I could pack by myself. All the while the huge gas giant was speeding away and his temper seemed the more irrational. Fearing that this was the case, I at length withdrew. At that time I put it down to the terrible tension we had been under for the past three days and that the two old warhorses now had no battle to attend anyway.
We hadn’t even seen what the jolly old alien craft had ever looked like or the aliens themselves. All that we were leaving behind us, a gloomy and short-lived star of no consequence; it was already an angry and sullen old wine in the pitiless black of that empty ocean. The Doctor was probably quite hurt at not having a really close look at the craft, the reactors or anything. But he did have the whole event recorded and beyond doubt he would be able to deduce a whole lot of juicy bits of science from the whole thing; how I hadn’t a clue but I knew that the recording would have kept him happy for ages; if he had wanted to be happy. But it seemed rather as if he had a grudge against that sort of happiness, or as if he thought another trip into space would be a whole lot more fun. I settled down to the first watch, my eyes on the monitors, alert for any problems which would need my attention.
I was using the targeting system instead of the proximity detector; the detector didn’t have the range I needed to keep ahead of trouble.
At the end of my watch the Doctor informed me that the moment we landed he would refit Number One and come back to have a longer look at Jupiter; he would maybe augment the acceleration of the craft so he didn’t have to spend so much time getting from one place to the next. He would find a way of making the food go further as well; he had an idea of how to do that. Oh yes, we were going to be busy when we landed; there was still a lot to do; more to see and learn, why, the galaxy lay before us if we were curious enough about it.
He nattered on for a while, seeming ridiculously pleased with himself. The more I listened, the more worried I became and the more helpless I felt about the whole thing. Quietly I checked the autopilot on both craft and set the alarm to awaken me in four hours, or if anything untoward happened. I listened to his plans for a little longer, simply unable to pin down anything that could be a concrete foundation for my worries. He was logical enough, what he said was without flaw as far as basic reason went, but somehow I could not listen to him without feeling a sudden growing alarm. Again the nagging little song about spider’s legs rang in my mind, causing me to look down at my left hand, safe in its silvery gauntlet. I drifted off to sleep wondering how we were going to slow the craft down at the other end; how long it would take to kill their formidable speed.
It wasn’t a matter of momentum; I understood that much because of the inertialess drive; but it had taken six days to speed up; I could not see but it would take six days to slow down. I put the matter to the Doctor but it didn’t seem to worry him. He told me reams about the alternative subluminar energy pathway, momentum kinetics and energetic displacement in the concept of linear acceleration; slowing down required much less time and energy because we were going with the subluminar dissipation energetics pathway instead of against it; it was really too simple for words and I wasn’t to worry about it. He pointed out how easily we had turned, retaining our forward speed in defiance of the delta velocity concept contained in the laws of preservation of momentum. It didn’t mean much to me though I knew my little share of physics; but his confidence in that area was reassuring. He knew his oats after all, and what he said that I actually understood made sense. With one last careful look around the cabin I drifted off to sleep.
My sleep was most uneasy; I wasn’t used to the darkness in the cabin with the jet and super-stage lights all off. In fact only the forward monitor showing the targeting seekers and the autopilot and speed indicators showed any life. The Wren seemed almost asleep herself, drifting serenely through the void with only the inertialess drive consuming its little two-gigawatt-hour segment in contented silence. Often during those four hours I woke up, looking at the switches on the cabin roof, most of them dark but for the drive and autopilot. The war-systems dash was under its cover, the calm dark green of the cabin showing the little life-support monitor beside those rows of death-switches.
The alarm chirruped me awake just before it was supposed to; there was a deep dent in the co-pilot’s windscreen, warping the tough substance into a crooked funnel, but not managing to breach the pane. Right at the bottom of that funnel, the material had ballooned out slightly. I know not why I reacted as I did, but my reaction was just as swift as any other had been. I reached out, slapping the quick-release of my straps and grabbing that bit of ballooned carbo-holmium-nitride in my left, gauntleted hand.
Having secured my hold on the tough material, I tugged open the repair kit and took out a long and narrow patch that I tied tightly around the thinnest part of the bubble. I whispered to the Wren, quieting the alarm and reassuring the Doctor who was wondering what was up. I opened the tube of sealant, using it to break off the bubble and close the hole that the patch was pinching shut. After a moment the window was flat and smooth once again, the scraps tucked back into the repair kit out of the way.
The piece of the pane in my hand was slowly, elastically returning to its original shape, rejecting as it did the tiny meteor that had perpetrated this indignity. Slowly in my hand, rather like a clear tulip with a golden heart, this hard l
ittle mineral blossom opened, revealing a small pellet of what seemed to be gold.
“Gosh.” Said the Doctor in my ear, “You’re a lucky person then. But that can’t be pure gold or it would have been a lot flatter. Pop it into that analyser in the navigator’s dash and we’ll see what it is.” I did what he asked at once, as anxious as he to see what this gift from the Gods actually was. I was peering at the X-ray diffraction spectrometer’s monitor while feeding myself a whole collection of Italian wafers with potted meat, cheese or marmite spread on them, an unusual dietary item of which I had become irrationally fond.
Au. Ir. AI. O. Cr. I digested this information for a few minutes before it began to make sense. The pellet, about the size of my thumb-joint, was made up of a very unusual alloy of iridium and gold; unusual because the melting point of iridium was higher than the boiling point of gold. Within this metal case there was a ruby. To confirm this I asked for a full-colour cross-section of the pellet.
The analyser thought about this for a few minutes, obviously wondering if I was serious and if so how to go about this bizarre request. At last it generated an image; a core of deep flaming red with a nimbus of pale gold around it. I saw at once that one side, obviously where it had impacted against the windscreen, was slightly thinner. The stone was rough, natural; a whimsical reflection of Nature’s strange sense of humour, a chilling, brief example of her power. The Doctor was quite obviously impressed with the whole thing; so was I, almost quiet and wondering what to do about this weird gift.
