Broken Wing: A million deaths were not enough for Cassandra!

by Konig, Artor

  At last I took it out of the analyser and shoved it into one of my suit pockets. I settled down to the serious business of the flight; we were now almost into the grim Taurus of the asteroid belt and here both my skill and foresight would be tested. I cast from my mind everything but for the information that the war-targeting system was sending my way.

  Up above our heads, meaninglessly far away, was the tortured net of hurtling rock but even that stygian river of stone had a few tributaries out here, far below the planetary disc of the system. I spent a nerve-ripping twelve hours, dodging rocks huge or small, some too small to be tracked in time, some too large to be easily slipped by, all of them filled with the same message of blazing death. But they passed us by; they passed us by and went their weeping way, their eternal sojourn around the sun, trapped between two giants and able to answer neither.

  Those twelve hours ended but I stayed at the controls; there was not much of this journey left. The bulk of the trip was behind us and I was feeling curiously refreshed. The two days of flight after the battle was won had passed swiftly, the more so for me spending four hours out of every eight asleep. I found my mind to be turning from that war to more mundane concerns; and in its new orbit not to be at ease. After more than six hours, when the orbit of Mars was below, or above, however I chose to look at the matter, I gave tongue to one of my main worries.

  “I wonder how Byrtle is.” I mumbled disconsolately, thinking that he had probably pined away or managed to suffocate himself in an empty cake tin. The Doctor gave a bellow of laughter, much to my dismay; I had thought he was asleep, not even dreaming that he was alert, much less keeping the link between the two craft open.

  “That bird.” He said heartlessly, “He’s a crafty beggar; there’ll be nothing wrong with him. He’s probably made free with the larder that I don’t think you locked.”

  “I think I might have left the stove on.” I told him despairingly.

  “Good. The kitchen will be nice and warm when we get home. I hope you didn’t leave the urn on or we’ll be having no tea.” There seemed to be nothing that could perturb the Doctor; he had found another mission on which to go, he had the taste of the freedom of space; I knew at once that he would be off again as soon as it could be arranged with his new, souped up Wren and a forever of recyclable food stashed away. I realised then that it was going to be lonely at the Crag when at length we returned, lonelier than anything else I had ever experienced.

  Day nine elapsed; before us we saw the twinned crescent of the Earth and moon, before and above us. We were swooping up to them rather fast. At once I took over active control of both craft, engaging system after system in rapid succession. I reversed the thrust, spinning the craft’s monstrous speed down in a pall of silver fire. The retro-thrust surged out before us, the flames becoming longer and more searingly bright as the power mounted.

  The windscreens had opaqued themselves a good couple of days ago as the rays of sunlight mounted to a dangerous intensity. I was flying using the multi-view of the helmet visor. For miles ahead the flames seemed to surge, the retro-system handling the load easily. I kept an eye on the airspeed indicator, one other eye on the rapidly nearing orbs of home and her sister. The speed certainly dropped a lot faster than I had believed possible; but the Doctor was in enough of a cheerful frame of mind not to remind me that he’d told me so. Soon the speed backed down to mere thousands of miles an hour and we were all set to spiral down to the Earth. I settled into a parking orbit, poking about with nosy microwaves to see just where the Crag was and if it was still sitting pretty. I also checked on the war satellites, informing them of whom we were and that we were not enemy aliens. I looked below at Black Crag.

  It was far beyond the terminator, well into the night side but that had never bothered me. I sent the two craft down, leaving Number One on autopilot as the Doctor didn’t seem to feel like flying the craft himself. The Crag loomed up before me, a dull needle in the weird light of the full moon. The wrinkled wave showed below, the eye of the moon reflected back up, the whole scene pencilled in black and silver. Taller and closer the island came, more magical and gloomy, more alien for the strangeness I had been through for the past few days. But it was joy that up-welled within me, joy so huge that it could not be contained, flavoured with both victory and relief for all the mixture had a strangely bitter taste. Carefully I lined Number One up to the entrance of the Nest in front of me, guiding both craft down through the convolute passage into the well-lit and well-remembered chamber in the heart of the Crag. The two craft extended their undercarriages and settled down as one. I shut down the hard-used inertialess drive, the jets, the rotors, life support; everything; then lay back against the soft comfort of the couch I had been lying on for nine days.

  Now it came down to it, I wasn’t eager to open that door or step out of the craft in case it wasn’t real. I fought down my reluctance for a few minutes before finally cracking open the sealed door at my side.

  For a person who has spent a good long while in a sealed, recycling environment, there can be no words to describe the awesome beauty of fresh air, sea air in particular. And once that person has smelt fresh air of any sort, there is a powerful desire not to place the said nose back in the said stale air.

  I discovered that I and the inside of Number Three really needed a very thorough clean. In fact I found that I quite disliked the odour I had spent nine days studiously creating; I disliked it quite a lot. I resolved never to go back into space, or if I did, to take half a ton of something pleasingly fragrant with me. I shouldered the two bags from within the cabin, the bag of clothes, both used and not used, and the refuse and opened tins that I had carefully emptied during the trip. I found my case as well and then dumped everything on the concrete floor so that I could open the other doors and give the cabin a good airing.

  The Doctor seemed to have done more or less as I had, before staggering across to lower control with all his discs on which he had made a record of our epic journey. I suddenly realised that I wasn’t going to do much walking; gravity seemed rather fierce and I wasn’t sure how to cope with it. Also I was in my space suit. I spent a few minutes fighting it off, getting slowly used to feeling like I weighed ninety-three stone. After that I shouldered my three burdens, my golden pebble in my tracksuit pocket. I unloaded myself at the foot of the stairway, giving it a poisonous glance. Nine days had not erased my dislike for those stairs, nor so had my joy at being home once again. But I had thought of a brilliant idea. Even though it was midnight of what day I didn’t know, I was going to have a very strong cup of tea.

  The Doctor had pre-empted me on that one; the kettle was already issuing forth a pillar of steam when I entered lower control. However, having taken the matter so far, the Doctor seemed to have lost the mettle of his resolve. He was sitting at the console making copies of his discs for our files, taking a look at this still or that, cooing over his pictures of Ganymede and Io and all the others. I snook in behind him, getting the tea together from the supplies I had brought down ages ago. He scarcely knew that I was behind him but he noticed the cup of tea quickly enough. Hot though it was, he drank off the entire mug before immersing himself in his new labours, “I must get back, I must see the other side; let me see now; of course if I built a larger craft I could get a couple of the chaps from the institute to come along; we could set up a base there; let me see now what would I need for that?” He took up his cup of tea which had been magically refilled by me and drank it off again but that small miracle was quite lost against the magnificence of the huge miracle he was planning.

  I felt cold, irrationally cold; I could quite well see that he would manage this feat with the knowledge and tools he had at his disposal if nothing got in his way. But I had this nasty feeling that something would get in his way, seriously so; but there was nothing concrete on which I could put my finger.

  I could warn him; I had warned him before; but he was a scientist, a professional sorter of facts and I was only
too disconsolately aware that I had no facts with which to present him, only that feeling, that miserable, cold feeling.

  I found then that I was tired, desperately so. I doubted that I had the strength to make it up those hateful stairs. But that I resolved to do. Everything, more or less, could be done later. After checking that the Doctor had logged the two craft in I checked the stores aboard the craft, rapidly making a list in my mind of what was needed to restock the two space vehicles. For the Doctor was on his way out of the crag as soon as possible and I saw no purpose in getting his back up with petty insubordinations. After I had done that I closed the two craft and keyed in their locking sequence. I told the Doctor to hurry up and get up to the kitchen so we could have a hot meal; it was as if I had dropped out of the sky with the sole purpose of upsetting him. He glared at me, his eyes alive with some foreign emotion, one that I cared for not at all.

  He seemed to surface from wherever he had gone to with a certain amount of trouble before he shouldered his tackle, his discs safely in his case for a bit of midnight reading. Slowly and painfully we forced our space-slackened muscles to get into the scheme of this gravity business once again. Those three-hundred steps was no way of acclimatizing a person to gravity, I concluded, but on the other hand I wasn’t going to spend the night down in the Nest, not for anything at all. Strangely enough, for all it was solid gold and ruby, the orb in my pocket seemed to be the least burdensome of my burdens.

  Byrtle took his head from beneath his wing as we weaved into the kitchen and turned on the lights. Far from being overjoyed to see us, he muttered something deprecatory and rather rude before tucking himself up again. The room was rather cold as the window was open and the stove hadn’t been left on. This being remedied, we shovelled the refuse down the chute to the incinerator and the dirty clothes were deposited into the washing machine.

  This disturbed Byrtle, who finally conceded that he was awake; and where were the grapes anyway?

  That meal wasn’t memorable; not for me anyway. It was in a brown haze that I found my biscuits and milk, after the Doctor had trotted off to upper control, and fumbled up the stairs to my cold and lonely suite. For all that I was weaving on my feet I nevertheless forced myself to shower and change. There was no way that I was going to deprive myself of that. When I realised that I had been without a shower for nine days, I decided that it was one record I wasn’t happy with. I like showering anyway.

  I finally put myself to bed, heaving back the curtains to let the magical silver fingers of the moon come creeping across the eiderdown. I didn’t set the comlink; I didn’t want to be awoken in the morning until I was damned well ready to get up. It was about then that the comlink was supposed to go off give or take an hour or so. I was fully resolved to sleep the day away if possible; the prospect seemed to hover deliciously before me. Drawing the eiderdown up well beyond my ears I had a jolly good go at going to sleep.

  The fatigue was great, the luxury of feeling my body cosseted by that huge round bed as great; but my sleep was broken and patchy, my dreams filled with spiders and hellfire, futile war and sudden painful blows filled with remorse. It was then that the guilt of what I had done came home to me. It occurred to me that the creatures in those space craft had been intelligent, possibly wise and compassionate creatures; I had only the Doctor’s word about their plans after all; and the example of the Master and his two minions.

  Maybe those in the craft had nothing to do with the Master after all. Maybe they were completely different creatures altogether, maybe the Master had seen what the Doctor was doing and had created those coded messages, knowing what the Doctor’s response would be. The thoughts whirled wildly and uselessly in my mind, guilt warring with conviction, fear warring with relief. My state of mind as that night and morning slipped past finally settled; conviction that what I had done was the only acceptable thing that could be done, and fear. Where the fear came from I was none the wiser than I had been before, ever before, but the acid of that emotion ate away at my resolve. By the time I was ready to face the day it was already nearly noon. I shook myself into my old routine, as much of it as I could salvage from that short winter’s day through my weary state of mind.

  The Doctor was nowhere to be found when I came down to the kitchen; I didn’t think of prowling the wires with the help of the comlink. I set the washing on, made a fuss of Byrtle and made myself some breakfast. Byrtle was in a better frame of mind and was quite willing to forgive me my long absence as long as I made sure he was properly fed. And since it was a glorious day, as glorious as could be expected from the northern Pacific in the chill end of winter, I decided that today I was going to get some fruit in. The moment the washing was pegged on the line I found another larger satchel and trotted down the Mango Route, feeling at peace with myself for the first time in a long while. I made three trips during that afternoon, pleased with this bit of freedom and the exercise that enabled me to get myself back into shape. I found a goodly variety of fruit, not as much as I had hoped for but quantity made up for the few sorts of fruit I could nose up. I plonked down the fruit to be debugged then turned my attention to supper.

  The Doctor, when he came, was clearly displeased with my late awakening and truancy during what was left of that day, but he said nothing about it. He ate his meal in silence before asking me, politely enough, to assist him with the loading of Number One; he was through with the modification of both craft and he had tested them. All that was left to be done was the loading up with nine weeks’ supply of food, some more bottles of air and other consumables. This I agreed to amiably enough, pointing out that I had found some fruit and maybe he’d want to take a bagful along with him. He simply grunted at that before leaving me to my thoughts.

  These thoughts consisted mostly of nameless worries and washing that I hadn’t brought in from the line. I turned on the outer flood-lamps to assist with this. By the time I had sorted the washing into its various components I was very tired. I found my milk and noted that we were getting low in biscuits. This lack I resolved to get up early and correct, as I was having a fairly early night. I loaded up only two of the bread-makers as I had the feeling that I would be on my own with more than enough time on my hands, time in which I could make biscuits or take up knitting or hang in the trees beating my chest; if I felt like it.

  I woke up early, managing to get many biscuits made before the Doctor showed up for breakfast. His aspect was softened by my apparent concern about his well-being, obviously under the misguided impression that I was making all the biscuits for him to take on his latest mission. I allowed him that little delusion, knowing that I could make more biscuits later anyway. We had our breakfast then went to loading the Wren Number One with her supplies with a good heart.

  It took two days to get enough supplies down and loaded; the Doctor was largely in the way when it came to loading, though his huge physical strength made the getting of the food and bottles of air down the stairs relatively simple. After all the consumables were aboard and in place he wasted no time; he hardly even took the time to say goodbye. At half-past three on the afternoon of the fourth day since we had returned home, he strapped himself into the mahogany-coloured couch of Number One and keyed in her flight sequence. The day outside was nasty, the wind erratic and blustery; but not enough to challenge his flying skill.

  I stood on the concrete floor of the Nest and watched as the dark craft lifted off, turned and passed sedately through the rough stone passage. Soon even the sound of the roaring turbines was lost in the roaring wind. I turned from the Nest, walking into lower control where the flight plan was mapped. On that pale line on the flight-display monitor, the little dot that was the Wren was making its careful way. I felt terribly alone, almost fearfully so; but I turned my attention to the task of loading up Number Three with as much food as I had the strength to manage in two days. For I had the feeling that Number Three would be needed; and if she wasn’t ready and fitted out completely, well, I would simply find mysel
f getting hungry at the end of it all.

  Having resolved that much, I turned away from the console where the legend of the flight was starkly lettered, feeling a huge weight on my mind. It occurred to me then that the Doctor had not packed his case of clothes. It gave me a horrible jar, realising that anything at all had been forgotten. A nasty feeling crept up, its clutching fingers at my back; I wondered what else had been forgotten.

  I walked over to lower stores just off lower control and peered into the gloom of the unlighted workroom. Lying neatly on the floor was something I hadn’t noticed before when I had taken out the recycling gear from the main room.

  I trotted into the workroom, flicking on the large overhead lights. I wandered over to the pieces of finned tubing, wondering what on earth they were. That they had been made by Frank; and as a consequence were something to do with the Wren; I didn’t doubt. They bore the neat and professional appearance that was his hallmark. At length it dawned on me, seeing the dimensions of the tubes. They were flare-baffles; one each for every rocket port of two Wrens. Frank’s work had been interrupted halfway through the second baffle of set number three, never to be resumed. It occurred to me then, sharply and with a mortal stab of fear, that here was something else the Doctor in his haste had forgotten, not known of or possibly not even bothered about. And I suddenly realised that it was very important. I quickly worked out just how the flare baffles were supposed to be fitted, before heaving them along to the last Wren, my Wren, Number Three.

  They were heavy, those solid tubes of Alex’s mixture; for the large exhaust ports, the main exhaust, I could manage only one at a time. The smaller retro-baffles were a bit easier and the tiny tubes to be fitted on the manoeuvring rockets were little more than three double-handfuls. Teatime came and went, sadly forgotten, while I fought those heavy and stubborn baffles into place over the vents. I was shaking with haste-induced fatigue, my hands nearly numb in the cold of the Nest, crying after speed that my solo endeavours could not muster.