A Planet for Rent

by Yoss

  The Day of Departure

  Lift-off has been cleverly scheduled for Sunday night.

  There’s always plenty of weekend traffic, and the exhausted air traffic controllers can hardly wait for the relative calm of Monday.

  The morning before D-Day, H-Hour, each of the three crewmembers of the Hope wants to be alone.

  Adam stays onboard the Hope.

  His child, his creature... the best piece of work he’s ever done.

  He proudly runs his hand over its patched plastisteel armor and its heterodox control panel.

  He daydreams of a future when he will design and manufacture prototypes of high-velocity ships for some xenoid corporation...

  Every now and then he looks outside the hangar that hides the Hope from prying eyes and catches a glimpse of Jowe, walking along the horizon.

  The hangar is just a large shed on a small island in Hudson Bay.

  In the middle of a bunch of buildings, which thirty years ago formed a town, which grew up around a chemical plant.

  Later the xenoids shut the plant down because of the pollution, and the town died.

  There’s not a soul for miles around.

  Not a human soul, that is.

  There are swarms of gulls and rats building nests and romping in the empty buildings and tall chimneys of the dead plant, which will probably soon be demolished.

  The sea roars and breaks against the beach, which is as unspoiled as if man had never existed on the face of the Earth.

  Jowe is wandering down the line of surf, skipping stones across the water and shouting words that Adam can’t make out, between the wind and the distance.

  Could be anger. Or frustration. Or hope.

  Or all of it together.

  As evening falls, Jowe comes back, silent, unsmiling.

  Almost voiceless.

  Adam shrugs: little as he normally talks, there’s not much difference...

  When it’s two hours before lift-off and Friga hasn’t shown up yet, the men start to worry.

  One hour to lift-off, Adam, chain-smoking one cigarette after another, mutters that if they have to leave without her...

  Jowe looks at him without a word; they both know they’ll wait.

  Half an hour before time’s up, Friga returns.

  She is limping, her clothing in tatters.

  Bruised bump over one eye, her lip split, a black eye, and red, swollen knuckles.

  In the soot covering her face there are traces of tears.

  But she smiles almost beatifically.

  They don’t ask whether she’s coming back from a fight or from making love.

  They know that for Friga, there’s not much difference.

  But they both suspect that her daughter must have something to do with that happy smile.

  And no doubt with the tears as well.

  It must be hard to leave your family behind, no matter how little you care about them...

  Of course, neither of them says any of this.

  Sometimes Friga can be very... sensitive.

  Nervous, they take the Hope from the hangar and start filling the enormous pear of the balloon disguise.

  Fifteen minutes later, when everything is ready, Adam and Friga board.

  Jowe, not caring whether they see him, kneels down, kisses the sandy Earth of the island, and collects a little in a small bag, which he stuffs into his pocket.

  Then he starts the time fuse that will release the balloon from its moorings, and he too boards.

  Now they can lift off.

  Lift-off

  After a tense half-minute, the fuse works perfectly.

  The anchor ties come undone and the balloon rises at a dizzying speed.

  Inside, the three fugitives shout for joy, leaping and hugging.

  Friga gives thanks to God.

  To any god, nobody cares which.

  They’re on their way.

  The altimeter reads 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 35 kilometers, and Adam, listening so closely to his headphones that sometimes he gets confused by the sound of his heart beating, hears no alarms going off in the ether.

  Everything’s going fine.

  Though on two occasions they freeze when the bleep, bleep of the radar receiver indicates that they are being tracked by a terrestrial radar.

  At an altitude of forty-five kilometers, Friga fires the Hope’s plasma reactors.

  The exhaust, burning at hundreds of degrees, sets the skin of the balloon ablaze and rips through it.

  Well-placed explosive charges detonate and finish opening the balloon like the peel of a squashed banana.

  Weather balloons normally use hydrogen for lift, since it is cheap and effective.

  The ballon disguising the Hope used helium.

  It is slightly less effective—and much more expensive.

  But if they had used hydrogen, the explosion when the engines switched on could have destroyed the Hope before they reached orbit.

  Adam had thought of that.

  As expected, when the balloon rips open, they go into a spiraling fall.

  They lose altitude and free themselves from the rest of the balloon’s skin.

  Finally, the Hope’s sturdy delta wings find support in the thin upper atmosphere, and the spiral turns into a dive.

  At an increasing speed, but completely under control.

  Acceleration forces grow: two g, three g.

  Friga counts to ten, lowers the ailerons, and gives full power to the reactors.

  More cheers when the Hope describes an elegant curve upward.

  Just exclamations; g-forces prevent the woman and the two men from getting out of their overstuffed hydraulic armchairs.

  Feeling his jowls down around his waist, Adam thinks how much easier it would have been if they had artificial gravity and an antigrav propulsion unit, like a real Tornado class...

  Only the xenoids make them, and their importation to Earth is too tightly controlled...

  So it was always mere speculation.

  Over the headphones of all three comes a question from a controller at some astroport:

  “Unidentified Tornado-class shuttle, Gander Astroport here. Attention: you have entered the Regulus corridor... Your trajectory is odd... Are you having trouble? Please identify yourself.”

  Adam gulps: the moment of truth is here.

  The Moment of Truth

  Gander lies within the realm of possibility, though Toronto had seemed more likely, given the latitude.

  Trying to keep his voice from being overly distorted by the five g of inertial lift into orbit, Adam gives the answer they had previously agreed upon:

  “Gander, Tornado LZ-35 from Wellington here. Have jet stream and problems with ailerons. Collision with weather balloon, destruction likely. Requesting guide beam to the point of embarkation for Regulus and free corridor.”

  For an instant there is no response.

  Just the crackle of static filling the cabin.

  The fugitives look at each other, going pale.

  Is everything lost?

  So soon?

  Friga fiddles with the triggers of the ship’s weaponry and nervously watches the radar screen, as if expecting to see a suborbital patrol ship appear at any moment.

  At least she’ll make them pay a high price for her life.

  Jowe turns pale but doesn’t move a muscle.

  Adam sweats; could he have made some mistake?

  He’s sure he hasn’t: it’s very unlikely that the controller would check up on them with Wellington, New Zealand, on the other side of the planet, and who would be crazy enough to enter an orbital corridor if everything wasn’t one hundred percent in order?...

  “Tornado LZ-35, Gander here. Guide beam activated. The corridor is free. W
e detect the falling remnants of the balloon. You’ll have to be more careful! Have your ship checked over at the point of embarkation, and give my regards to Regulus.”

  The road is clear.

  Incredulous but relieved, Friga releases the triggers with a sigh and focuses once more on the controls of the Hope.

  For now, the danger is past.

  Or so it seems...

  Just as they reach escape velocity, all the homemade welds on the Hope begin to vibrate.

  It seems like the vehicle will be torn to pieces at any moment.

  Friga turns to look at the shipbuilder questioningly.

  “It’ll hold up, I swear it will!” Adam shouts, as terrified as the pilot but trying to fill her with confidence.

  Jowe is unfazed.

  Finally the display shows 11.2 kilometers per second, and Friga turns off the plasma reactors to let them rest and cool off.

  Their supply of hydrogen is eighty-five percent spent.

  But they’re already in hyperbolic escape orbit.

  Every second takes them farther and farther from Earth.

  A minute passes.

  On the radar screen, the great echo marking the point of embarkation for Regulus, where hyperships wait for their passengers to arrive on shuttles to take them to that distant star, is being left behind.

  But another echo, much smaller and faster, is growing closer.

  It isn’t coming from the atmosphere of Earth.

  It’s coming from another orbit.

  A patrol ship.

  Friga swears and turns on the hydrogen collector field to reactivate the reactors.

  Jowe calmly calculates the relative trajectories and velocities of both space vehicles.

  Adam complains about his bad luck: did they have to get detected so quickly?

  Friga reminds him that only the weak believe in luck.

  The invisible magnetic maw of the collector field which stretches out before the Hope traps the hydrogen atoms floating in space at a rate of one or two per cubic meter.

  The remaining fifteen percent of hydrogen in the tanks would be enough to reignite and heat the reactors, but not much more.

  The collector field becomes more effective as their speed grows: twenty seconds later, it has already stabilized the rate of supply to the engines.

  The ship is capturing and consuming hydrogen at the same rate.

  Jowe breaks his silence to state hoarsely that the patrol ship is gaining on them.

  Adam, hysterical, tells him the Planetary Security guys have antigravity-based inertial engines, which don’t need an external source of fuel and don’t have to be warmed up... but even so, they won’t get caught, because they’re way ahead.

  Jowe disagrees.

  According to his calculations, the patrol ship is following a flawless interception orbit: it will reach firing range before the Hope has entered far enough inside the Escape Tunnel to activate the hyperengine and get it to work.

  And that will be more or less within an hour.

  Adam blows up and says that as far as he’s concerned, Jowe can go to hell right now: all he has to do is open the airlock, enter it, and jump into space, if he’s so scared.

  Friga quiets them with her booming voice, reminding them that it’s just a patrol ship and that the Hope is armed and armored...

  She fiddles with the triggers again.

  The patrol ship must have positively ID’d them as a fugitive ship by now: it is keeping complete radio silence while continuing to approach.

  Just in case, Adam throws up a curtain of interference to keep their pursuer from asking other Planetary Security ships for help.

  Manipulating the controls with the dexterity of a pianist, Friga corrects the Hope’s course with plasma jets at full blast.

  At ever-increasing velocity, the ship leaves the plane of the ecliptic; in a couple of hours it will be far enough away for hyperspace travel.

  If the patrol ship doesn’t destroy it first.

  It hasn’t even asked them to surrender.

  Not that they’d surrender without a struggle.

  A dogfight is inevitable.

  The Dogfight

  The hour passes. Friga, impatient, burns with a desire to open fire.

  Despite the Hope’s significant initial advantage, the faster-moving Planetary Security ship has significantly closed the gap between them.

  Jowe reminds Friga that the masers onboard the Hope have a range of one or two kilometers farther than the particle projectile cannons that patrol ships carry.

  But on the other hand, they’ll need nearly half a minute to recharge after each shot, compared with just ten seconds for the enemy’s weapon.

  Adam nods and looks expressionlessly at their pilot-leader.

  Friga smiles: at least she’ll have the advantages of surprise and taking the first shot, and she intends to make the most of them.

  Besides, she has a few tricks and secrets up her sleeve...

  Xenoids may have built the patrol ships, but that doesn’t mean their design is perfect...

  She doesn’t aim at the Planetary Security ship’s ultra-armored cabin or at its super-protected inertial engine, but at the gun-ports from which its terrible weapons emerge.

  When the distance-to-target indicator reaches the set point, she squeezes the triggers on her masers with determination.

  Then immediately flicks off the engines.

  They stop accelerating, and in the sudden weightlessness they all float, restrained only by their seat straps, and they are unable to observe the effect of their shots on the other ship.

  “Turn the engines on! Why did you do that?” Adam shrieks hysterically.

  On the radar screen, the enemy looks completely unharmed.

  “Turning off the reactors is logical; it saves power for our shields, and changing our rate of acceleration should make it harder for them to calculate our position,” Jowe replies. “Fasten your seatbelt, Adam...”

  Eight seconds after carrying out its attack, the Hope becomes the target of the charged-particle beam fired by the patrol ship.

  On radar, the shot looks like a stream of bright dots linking the two ships for nearly a whole second.

  In spite of the force field network that serves as their shield, the impact is right on target—and disastrous for the Hope.

  The homemade ship’s plastishield plates rip from stem to stern, several structural reinforcements shatter to bits, the hydrogen tanks (fortunately almost empty now) explode and send huge flames into the void.

  The worst of all is that the force field inexplicably ceases to function.

  Adam, terrified, bangs away desperately at the system control keyboard, trying to reactivate it.

  Without success...

  “One more like that and the voyage is over,” says Jowe, strangely calm.

  Friga says nothing, just watches as her weapons recharge: if she has to die, she’ll go down fighting.

  Apparently, her stratagem didn’t work...

  The adversary will take its second and final shot before the Hope can respond.

  And with no force shield, it will destroy them for sure.

  Time’s almost up: seven seconds, eight, nine, now...

  The woman and the men close their eyes...

  Three seconds later, they’re still alive.

  Apparently, the enemy couldn’t fire...

  On the radar screen, the patrol ship is taking evasive action.

  It seems to be surrounded by myriads of blinking bright dots.

  Friga gives a savage war cry and opens fire again.

  “I knew it!” she roars, laughing. “If I could just damage the insulation on their particle projection cannon, their first shot would be their last! Take that, Planetary Security!”
/>   The two men realize that their pursuer did fire.

  The bright dots are its “cannon balls”: charged particles.

  They couldn’t be projected as intended because Friga’s shot had shortcircuited their weapon.

  And, attracted by the static electricity of the patrol ship’s own hull, they are gathering around it, while its force shield prevents them from adhering.

  The second shot by the Hope’s masers has no visible effect.

  All the same, the enemy retreats, prudently.

  There are no other patrol ships on radar.

  With no more pursuers to evade, no need for haste, Friga does not turn the reactors back on.

  They follow their inertial trajectory to the Escape Tunnel.

  The three would-be hyperspace travelers, with infinity and eternity before them, release themselves from their seats and play like little kids in the weightlessness.

  They’ll repair the damage caused by the patrol ship’s attack later.

  For now, they have to release some tension.

  To forget, at least for a few moments, that compared with what comes next, everything they’ve done so far is just that: child’s play.

  Their personal skill and the precautions they’ve taken may have made all the difference so far, but everything will depend on sheer luck when they enter the Russian roulette of hyperspace.

  And, even more so, when they exit it...

  Hyperspace

  They’re back in their overstuffed armchairs, panting.

  On the radar, far away, two dots, getting closer.

  Friga and Adam are exhausted from their extravehicular activity, in spacesuits as homemade as the rest of the ship.

  Muscles that they were never aware of before ache horribly now after two hours spent repairing the damage from the dogfight.

  They’re just paying the price for their lack of practice, and they know it.

  But how could they have practiced moving in space without antigrav simulators or costly tanks?

  In any case, they’re hoping they won’t have to do it again.

  Very soon, the Hope, more patched-up than ever, will be activating one of its two “disposable” hyperengines.