by Ellis, Don
“Um . . . how can we bring the nebula to Earth without endangering it? Last time we went through it, there were earthquakes and storms and—”
“It’s a matter of degree,” David said. “Sending the planet back through there is going to be dangerous, no doubt of that. But leaving it here is even more so. Look out there.” He pointed out the forward windows at the vast expanse of planets beyond Earth.
“It’s probably only a matter of time before an asteroid too big to deflect smacks into Earth. Or maybe another whole planet. And even if we get lucky in that regard, Harxae says everything eventually spirals into the center anyway.”
He rapped on the screen showing the nebula that pursued them. “And if we let that shrink to nothing, there’ll be no going back to the solar system ever again. That’s our only link with home. Even if we manage to punch our way out into normal space again, without that link, we could wind up anywhere.”
He watched Raedawn as well as Rick while he spoke. Neither of them looked convinced, but they were both thinking about it.
“What if we just drag the anomaly close for now and give them time to prepare before we actually hit ’em with it?” Rick asked.
“Can we do that?” Raedawn asked David.
“No. Well, actually, we can drag it anywhere we want if it doesn’t quit responding to us in the way it has, but it’s going to hit us no matter what.”
All three were silent for a moment.
David finally said, “Look, I don’t think I want to let that thing possibly kill us for nothing. We haven’t come this far to just disappear into the black without at least trying to complete what we set out to do.”
Rick swallowed hard. “So we know it’s only a matter of time before that thing catches up with us. But won’t we be able to get back out again? Earth did. You guys did.”
Raedawn shook her head. “We came through one. Maybe we could get back out, but maybe not. The missile the Kalirae shot into our little mini-anomaly went in, but it just stretched the other side out until it came to a stop. I get the feeling these things are one-way doors.”
David nodded. “One way, and we’re trying to go the wrong way, which is why we have to blow up the door we come through once we’re inside. But it’s the only chance we’ve got.”
Rick looked at him, then at Raedawn. He bit his lower lip, then said, “We’ll all be court-martialed if this doesn’t work.”
“We’ll probably be dead if this doesn’t work,” Raedawn said.
Rick looked to David for confirmation.
“She’s right.”
He swallowed again. “So what do we tell Earth?”
Raedawn let out a harsh laugh. “How about, ‘Duck!’ ”
“That ought to just about cover it,” David said, feeling himself relax slightly at the realization that they were going to go for his idea. The thought of going into danger didn’t bother him nearly as much as the thought of missing their only opportunity to save the world.
They all exchanged quick nods and began to prepare. He felt a thrill of excitement run up his spine as Raedawn brought their flight path back in line with Earth.
“We’d better get busy expanding this thing so it takes in the whole Earth-Moon system when it gets there,” he said, “or we’ll do more harm than good. Rick, what do you say to shots of three EMPs at a time, placed at the points of an equilateral triangle for maximum spread per bomb? How many shots would that give us?”
“We loaded a hundred even. I’ve got ninety left, so we could do thirty spreads.”
“Once every six minutes, then. That’s explosion time, not launch time. We’ll have to launch ’em closer and closer together toward the end because they’ll have farther to travel.”
“Right. I’m on it.” He started work, firing the first three after just a few seconds of calculation, then working on the next shot, and the next.
David watched until he was sure it was going to work. The nebula expanded with each EMP blast, but now that they had veered away from their initial path and back, he could see the backside of it, and he confirmed that it was pulling together with the front. It was a long tube now, but by the time it reached Earth it would be nearly spherical again.
Another EMP pulse stretched it out another few hundred kilometers. The ship raced onward, drawing it along behind.
He turned the telescope forward, centering it on Earth. The tiny blue-and-white planet floated serenely in space, the Moon just beyond it. David wished there was a better way to do this, but he was stuck between an onrushing space warp and a hardheaded bureaucracy.
He reached for the radio controls, turned the incoming audio all the way down, then opened a channel to Union Space Command. Then he proceeded to tell them what they had to do.
21
Shouldn’t we, um, shouldn’t we listen for orders?” Rick asked.
“What for?” David replied. “We know what we have to do. They know what they have to do. Argu—talking about it will just slow us all down.”
“I’m not supposed to be out of touch with my commanding officer.”
“I’m your commanding officer on board this ship, aren’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. We’ve thought this through, and this is the only course of action open to us. Let’s just do our jobs and not worry about what people might say until we’re back home.” David hoped appealing to duty was the right approach. This was the guy who was willing to die yesterday to follow his orders, no matter how much he disliked them. The question was where his loyalty lay: to the military hierarchy, or to humanity.
“Twenty minutes to rendezvous,” Raedawn said.
David looked at the distance and velocity figures of the nebula. “Eighteen minutes to impact.”
“Are we, um, at full velocity?” Rick asked.
“Flat out,” Raedawn assured him. “Don’t worry; we can survive a couple of minutes inside it. I’ve been thinking it over and I think we’re better off this way anyway. Since we’re leading the anomaly to Earth, there’s no way we can slow down fast enough to be alongside Earth when that thing engulfs it. So our best chance is to actually let it catch us just beforehand, and be inside of it when Earth blows their bombs.”
David tried to picture that in his mind. Their ship racing toward the planet, the nebula catching up and passing them, then enveloping the Earth two minutes later. Earth would detonate every bomb they could in low orbit, and Lunar Command would do the same. They had no choice; it was either that or be stuck inside the nebula with everything merging together again until it shrank to nothing or spit them back out again. But if they fired their missiles, the shock wave would rip the nebula open, and a patch of normal space would sweep the Earth and the Moon—and their ship—back where they belonged.
Whereupon the ship would crash into the Earth at about six hundred kilometers per second.
“Uh . . . make sure we’re not aimed right at the planet when we go in, okay?”
“Duh,” she said. “I’m aimed halfway between Earth and the Moon. Otherwise we’d have to make the anomaly even bigger to hit both of ’em.”
“Oh. Right.”
Rick paused in his bomb-launch calculations, a thoughtful expression on his face. “What happens if the Moon and the Earth each blow separate holes in the nebula, but the middle part doesn’t tear open?”
David felt a moment of panic, but then he remembered something that calmed him back down a bit. As calm as he could be in the situation, at any rate. He said, “When the Kalirae missile blew our little one open, the whole thing burst like a soap bubble. I’m betting the big one will work the same way.”
“Betting?” said Raedawn. “Can’t we maybe hedge that bet a little?”
“How?”
“What if we blow our own hole in it?”
He thought that over. “We’d have to get the timing exactly right. If we blew it too soon and it does rip the whole thing open, we could leave the Earth or the Moon behind.”
“We won’t be able to see from inside there, and time doesn’t work the same as it does out here, either. We won’t know when we’ve passed.”
“I’d say if we haven’t come out in a week, we could feel pretty safe in figuring we’ve gone far enough,” Raedawn said.
“Maybe.” David stretched a kink out of his neck. “I don’t know. We lost a week in a few minutes last time. Going the other way we could gain that much or more. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”
“I’d rather err on the side of living through it,” she said.
He nodded. “If it comes to that choice, we can make our decision then. Who knows, maybe we’ll have more data to go on. But for now, let’s not plan on doing anything that might screw this up.”
Rick kept firing the EMP missiles, but David noted that he’d activated a separate tactical screen with six “ass-busters,” which was what Space Command affectionately called the high-yield fission-fusion bombs they had developed to shatter asteroids on collision course with Earth. If anything would open a hole in the nebula, those would do it.
Raedawn looked down at her navigation display again. “Fifteen min—shit! Incoming!” She hit the attitude thrusters at full blast, rotating the ship through ninety degrees while the engines were still pouring out fifteen gees of thrust. The agravs compensated for most of it, but David felt a queasy hollowness in his stomach.
It might have been sheer terror. There was an explosion so close to the window that he felt the heat from the flash, but they were moving so fast it was gone in the blink of an eye.
“Those stupid sons of bitches,” he whispered.
“Two more! Rick, can you intercept them?”
“I’ll try.” He already had three EMP bombs ready to fly; he canceled their programmed course and launched them straight forward. “Range?” he asked.
“Two thousand.”
“Get ready to dodge again. They’ll still be coming blind even if we fry ’em.”
Raedawn held her hand over the attitude jet control. Rick held his over the manual detonate spot on the tactical screen.
“One thousand,” she said.
“Almost there.”
“Seven hundred.”
He stabbed at the trigger, and an instant later three bright flashes erupted directly in front of them.
“Go!” he shouted.
Raedawn spun them another ninety degrees. They held their breaths for five or ten seconds, but when nothing hit them she turned them back on course.
David checked the nebula. “That drew it ahead even more than our drive was doing. Impact in nine minutes now.”
“There’s more missiles coming!”
David switched on the radio. “What are you idiots trying to do?” he yelled. “You’re not going to stop the nebula even if you hit us! And if you hit it, you’re liable to blow it open too soon.”
He heard a tiny voice buzzing furiously in the console and turned up the volume in time to hear “—what we’re trying to do, you stupid son of a bitch!”
“Negative! Don’t do that! It’s your only chance to get home. You’ve got to blow it right on top of you, not before!”
“That’s what you think. We’re not going through that thing again!” In the background they could hear another voice shout, “Fire! Fire everything you’ve got!”
“Jesus H. Christ,” David said, switching off the radio again. “What can we do?”
Raedawn and Rick both looked at him with stunned expressions.
“We can’t let them blow it up early.”
They still said nothing.
“Come on, think! There’s another wave of missiles on the way. If they get past us, we’re all stranded here forever.”
Rick looked back at his tactical screen. “We’ve still got eighteen pulse bombs. What if we shot them straight ahead like the last three? Send them all out in a line and fire them in sequence toward Earth? That ought to fry everything they send toward us right up to the moment of impact.”
“And it would drag the nebula over us minutes early,” Raedawn said.
She obviously didn’t like that idea, but David said, “That might not be a problem. If they blow it early, at least we get to go back home. We’ve given them their chance; the rest is up to them.”
Rick said, “The nebula isn’t wide enough for both Earth and the Moon to squeeze through.”
David looked at the figures on his screen. He was right. But it was close. “All right, give it two more shots, but just to the sides at this point. Draw it out in a line. Four bombs will do that. Use the rest to stop their missiles.”
“Roger.” Rick got to work, and the ship shuddered with more launches.
“More incoming!” Raedawn suddenly said.
Rick stabbed at the trigger for the closest bomb. It flashed like a strobe going off right in front of their eyes, and a moment later Raedawn took evasive maneuvers, but one of the missiles came through live. She veered again, then cut the power, then ran it up to full again, but she needn’t have bothered. This missile wasn’t aimed at the ship. It streaked on past, heading straight for the nebula.
Rick kept his eyes on his job. More flashes erupted at increasing distance, and two more winked far to the sides, drawing the nebula out ever wider.
David watched the rear ’scope screen as Raedawn brought them back on course. The nebula was racing toward them like a hurricane toward shore, and the tiny spark of the missile shot out to meet it. It disappeared into the rolling white surface, and for a moment it looked like nothing would happen, then there was a bright flash and a circle of darkness stretched out like an ink blot.
“Dammit!” David cursed. “They did it, but it’s too soon!” He zoomed in on the circle even as it widened, saw the silvery twinkle of stars shining through it, and growled deep in his throat. “They blew it. They blew it!”
But the ragged hole in space stopped expanding, and a moment later it started to collapse on itself again.
“Holy shit. Raedawn, turn us around. Aim for that opening before it’s gone!”
“We’d never make it,” she said.
She was right. It closed with the speed of a camera iris; one moment there, the next gone.
“They didn’t ruin it, though,” David said in amazement. “It’s resilient. We’ve still got a chance!”
“Do you think they’ll actually take the big shot when they’re supposed to, or are they going to try it early?”
“If they try it early after seeing that, then they’re even more stupid than I think they are.”
Even so, there were more missiles on the way, and Rick’s EMP bombs had scrambled their electronics. They watched as the missiles swerved every which way, some detonating early, but others roaring deep into the nebula before ripping open more holes into normal space.
The explosions were playing hob with his calculations, but David checked the nebula’s velocity one last time and said, “Impact in one minute, more or less.”
“Any last words?” Raedawn asked.
He looked at her. She looked at him, her eyes reflecting Earth light, nebula light, and more.
“We’re going to survive this,” he said.
He didn’t know what he expected from her, but whatever it was, it wasn’t laughter. She leaned back and roared, then shook her head and said, “That’ll look good on your tombstone.”
He supposed it would at that. “Okay, I give you permission to chisel it there yourself, but only after we’re both old and gray.”
“Deal.”
He nodded toward the window. “Aim for the next opening. To hell with waiting. We’ve done our job.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Raedawn brought the ship around, and they waited for another missile to strike. The sight of the huge wall of white cloud bearing down on them made all three of them gasp and lurch back in their chairs, and Raedawn was a second slow when a patch of blackness opened off to
their left.
She recovered instantly, but the wall was upon them just as she turned the ship. They were blind just as quickly, at first in the bright fog, then in the grainy gray darkness that slowly robbed the light from around them.
Then there was a brilliant flash of light and they burst into clear space. For just an instant they saw the blackness of open space, dusted by bright points of light, then the opening snapped shut on them and they were once again in the fuzzy gray interior of the nebula.
There was another flash of light below them.
“There!” both Rick and David said.
Raedawn turned the ship toward it, but after thirty seconds or so under thrust, she throttled back the engines and said, “We missed it.”
“Should we make our own?” Rick said.
“Not yet.” David looked at his display. The velocity figures were meaningless now, but he remembered the last real ones before they had been swallowed up. “They still had five minutes to impact. Let’s give them that much, at least. More if we can.”
“Then brace for zero gee,” Raedawn said.
“What?” asked Rick. “Why?”
“Because we’re going to start slipping into our chairs if I don’t shut it off. It’s one of the things that happens in here. Things blend together.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Last time we had to strip down and float free.”
David shoved his finger against the console in front of him. When he pulled it back, there was a faint tug, but hardly more than normal. “I don’t think it’s as bad as it was before,” he said. “It’s certainly not as dark this time. Maybe the larger size of the anomaly dilutes the effect.”
“Or maybe we’re just not near the middle of it yet,” Raedawn said. She reached overhead and flipped the toggles she had used to startle David before, and the gravity once again vanished.
Or maybe the rules had changed again. Here, there was no telling.
“Don’t use the drive on full with the gravity off,” David told her.
“Good point.” She moved a slide control on the panel in front of her. “There. One gee max if I do.”
They floated in silence for a few seconds, waiting to see what would happen next. Rick fidgeted, holding his hand up before his eyes and squinting at it through the speckled gray air. He lowered his hand and peered out the window.
