He jerked free of her and went through the door. She stared after him. She had better let him out; no, the key had been left in the bulkhead lock. She had no excuse to follow.
You aren’t alone, Joshua, she wanted to call. Every one of us is beside you. Time is the bridge that always burns behind us.
Part 3: And Yet So Far
1
In itself, the accident was ridiculous. The damage could have been repaired in a week or so. There would have been no permanent harm to anything except pride.
But because it happened where it did, Fleet Captain Nils Kivi took one look at his instruments and read death.
‘Jesu Kristi!’ Vibrations of impact and shearing still toned in the metal around him. Weightlessness, as the ion blast died, was like being pitched off a cliff. He heard a wail as air escaped, then a clash as the pierced section was automatically closed off. None of it registered. His entire self was speared on the needle of the radiation meter.
A second he hung there. His mind returned to him. He grabbed a stanchion and yanked himself to the control console. His finger pushed the intercom button. He said, ‘Abandon ship!’ in a gasp that was amplified to a roar.
The drill had not been carried out for a long time, but his body drowned panic in adrenalin and he went through efficient motions. One hand slipped free the spool of data tape from the autopilot and stuck it in a pocket of his – coverall. (He even recollected reading somewhere that the captain of a foundering ocean vessel on Earth, long ago, had always taken the log with him.) His foot shoved vigorously against a recoil chair, sent him arrowing toward the bridge door with a slight spin which he corrected by slapping a wall. Once out in the corridor, he pulled himself hand over hand until the rungs he grasped at seemed blurred with his speed.
Others joined him from their posts of duty, a dozen men with faces hardened against fear. Some had already entered the ferry, which was now to be a lifeboat. Kivi could hear its generators whine, building up potentials. He hung aside to let his men stream through the linked airlocks. Engineer Abdul Barang was last. Kivi followed him in, asking: ‘Do you know what happened? Something seems to have knocked out the atomics.’
‘A heavy object. Ripped through the deck from the after hold, into the engine room, and out the side.’ Barang looked savage. ‘Loose cargo, I’m certain.’
‘The colonist—’
‘Svoboda? I don’t know. Are we waiting for him? He might have killed us.’
Kivi nodded. ‘Strap in,’ he called, unnecessarily, for the men were finding their places. Barang sped aft to take over the power plant from whoever had had the presence of mind to start it going. Kivi went to the pilot board at the head of the passenger section. His fingers flew, adjusting his harness. Each instant he delayed, death sleeted through his body. ‘Call off,’ he said, heard the names and knew the tally was full. He got settled and punched the airlock controls. The boat valve started to close.
A final man burst through. He screamed in English: ‘Were you going to leave me there?’
Kivi, who understood him, replied coldly: ‘Why not? You might have been dead for all we knew, or had time to discover. And you’re responsible for this.’
‘What?’ Jan Svoboda floated in the aisle like an ungainly, wildly gesturing fish. The eyes of men raked him from the seats. ‘I’m responsible?’ he choked. ‘Why, you self-righteous jackass, you personally agreed that—’
Kivi hit the launching button. The ship released the ferry. Repulsors boosted the smaller hull free of the larger. Kivi didn’t stop to take sights. Any direction is the best way out when you are in the middle of hell. He simply crammed down the emergency manual lever. The boat rumbled and leaped. Svoboda was thrown back by the acceleration. He hit the after bulkhead of the passenger section hard enough to crack its plastic. There he lay, pinned down, his face one mask of blood. Kivi wondered if his neck was broken. Almost, if not quite, the captain hoped so.
2
Men finding places for themselves on the Courier made her passageways buzz with their unease. Pulling himself along toward sickbay, Kivi threw out a bow wave of silence. Bad enough to be any master, losing any ship. But since old Coffin had so inexplicably resigned to join the settlers, Nils Kivi was in command of the entire fleet. The vessel lost was the Ranger, flagship of the other fourteen. The spacemen could do without her, since the disembarkation of the passengers had left ample room. But almost forty-one years of voyaging lay ahead of them, from e Eridani back to Sol. Anything might become an obsession during a year-watch, destroying minds, even destroying men. Surely an admiral who lost his flagship was a dark symbol.
Angrily, Kivi suppressed his own thoughts. He was a short, stocky man, with the high cheekbones and slightly oblique blue eyes of the Ladogan. Normally he was cheerful, talkative, a bit of a dandy. But at the moment he was going to see Jan Svoboda.
He stopped at a certain one of the ship’s flimsy interior doors, opened it and went through into a cubbyhole that combined anteroom and the medic’s desk space. Another person was just emerging from the sickbay cabin beyond. They bumped together and cartwheeled aside. For an instant, Kivi hung staring. When words came, they were idiotic: ‘But you are down on Rustum.’
Judith Svoboda shook her head. Loosened by the collision, her hair made a brown cloud about face and shoulders, with red gleams where it caught the light. She wore a plain coverall whose bagginess in zero gravity did not entirely hide a trim figure. ‘I heard about the accident, and that Jan was hurt,’ she said. ‘The last ferry unloading the Migrant carried the word. Of course I hitched a ride upstairs again.’
He had always liked women’s voices to be low, as hers was. Not that a spaceman saw many women. He roughened his own tones: ‘Who’s the pilot? You made him violate four separate regulations.’
‘Have a heart,’ she pleaded. Though English was still important enough in space that Kivi’s. fluency paid off, he was momentarily puzzled by the idiom. ‘Jan is my husband,’ she said. ‘What else could I do but come to him?’
‘Well.’ Kivi stared at a microfile of medical references. ‘Well. So you have just now seen him? How is he?’
‘Better than I feared. He can get up soon — Up! Down!’ she said bitterly. ‘What does that mean in orbit?’ With haste: ‘Why did you take off so fast, Nils? Jan said you gave him no time to strap in.’
He sighed with a sudden weariness. ‘Are you, too, about to heap fire on me for that? Your husband said enough nasty things about my action when he first regained consciousness. Spare me.’‘Jan’s been under a great strain,’ she said. ‘And then tobe so shocked and hurt….Please don’t blame him if he’sintemperate.’
Kivi jerked his head around, startled, to look at her. ‘Do you not accuse me?’
‘I’m sure you had a good reason.’ Her smile was lopsided. ‘I just wondered what it might have been.’
Kivi harked back to the days and the nights down on Rustum. He had come to know her, while spacemen and colonists worked together; he had seen her smeared with grease, wrench in hand, helping assemble a tractor, and he had seen her beneath green leaves and by the cold hurtling light of the moon Sohrab. Yes, he thought, she would give any man a chance to explain. Even a spaceman.
Heavily, he said: ‘We were in a radiation belt. We had no time to spare, not a second.’
‘Was the radiation that intense? Really?’
‘Perhaps I was hasty.’ He must push those words out. Looking back, he could not give a full logical defense, in terms of the instrumented data, for having acted so fast that he might have abandoned Svoboda, or killed him in the blastoff. At the time, he had known only a whirl of hatred for the one who had wrecked his ship. And yet Svoboda was the husband of Judith and the father of her children.
It boiled up again within the captain. ‘After all,’ he snapped, ‘had it not been for his carelessness, the situation would never have arisen.’
The heartshaped face before him grew tense. ‘Is he actually responsible?’
Judith asked, her tone becoming hostile. I ‘He says you gave him permission to work on the cargo.’
Kivi felt himself redden. ‘I did. But I had no idea he meant to unsling a piece as massive as —’
‘You could have asked him exactly what he intended to do. How was he to know it could be dangerous?’
‘I assumed he had a normal amount of common sense. My mistake!’
A while they glared at each other. The cubicle grew very still. It was almost as if Kivi could sense the hollowness of the ship around him, empty holds, empty tanks, the vessel was a shell chained in orbit about Rustum. So am I, he thought. Then he remembered the nights down in High America, when campfires leaped to tint this woman’s face against a great rustling darkness. Once he and she had been alone for a few hours, walking along the Emperor River in search of a wild orchard he had found on the first expedition, some ninety years ago. It hadn’t been a notable adventure, only sunlight, bright water flowing beside them, glimpsed birds and animals. They hadn’t even talked much. But he could not forget that day.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the captain. ‘Doubtless he and I were both at fault’
‘Thanks.’ Judith caught his hand between her own.
Presently she asked: ‘What did happen? I’m so confused. The ferry pilot said one thing, Jan said another, and they speak about poison belts and none of it makes much sense to me. Do you even know yourself what the truth is?’
‘I believe so. I’ll have to inspect the derelict, but everything seems clear enough.’ Kivi grimaced. ‘Must I explain?’ ‘No. I wish you would, though.’ ‘Very well.’
When the fleet arrived at Rustum, it took up orbit around the planet, well beyond the Van Allen radiation zones and the primary meteorite hazard. Huge, frail, and ion-driven, the interstellar ships could never land. First crew, then colonists were roused and taken to High America in the ferries – rugged boats with retractible wings, propelled by thermal rather than electric jets. Since cargo discharge would be a slower process, the ships were one by one brought down into low orbit, scarcely above the planet’s atmosphere, where they could be unloaded with more speed and convenience. This job engaged a certain proportion of their crews; other spacemen were on Rustum refining reaction mass for the homeward journey; the remainder – a majority – were told off to help the colonists with the labor of establishing a settlement.
But a few colonists must also be assigned to help in space. Much of the cargo was unfamiliar to astronauts: mining, agricultural, chemical equipment. Mass ratios were too high to allow conventional crating and padding. The stuff must be transferred to the ferries piece by piece, under knowledgeable supervision. Otherwise something thermoplastic might get stowed next to a heat shield, or a set of crystal standards get iiradiated and ruined, or … There weren’t going to be any replacement parts from Earth.
As an engineer, Jan Svoboda was appointed one such cargomaster. When the Ranger started from high orbit to low, he requested permission to begin preparing the material for discharge, even during deceleration. As anxious as he to finish a miserable task, Kivi agreed.
The Ranger swung herself on gyros so the ion blast opposed her orbit. Thus checked, she spiraled inward at a safe, easy pace. She was in a nearly equatorial plane so that the ferries could take full advantage of the planet’s rotation. The spiral therefore took her through the densest sections of the poison belts.
Like any world with a magnetic field, Rustum was surrounded by high-energy-charged particles which formed bands at various distances from its center. Even through safety screens maintained at full strength, Kivi noticed an increase in the radiation count. Nothing to worry about, of course —
Until the detectors registered a meteorite approaching along a possible collision path.
The few seconds of five-gravity blast by which the autopilot got the Ranger out of the way should have been routine. A warning whistle blew. Every man had ample time to lie down flat and grab hold of something solid. Rocks big enough to be worth dodging aren’t exactly common, but neither are they so rare in planetary neighborhoods that the maneuver is news.
This time, however, Jan Svoboda had taken the slings off an object massing over one ton, part of a nuclear generator. He had wanted to gain access for purpose of disassembly. Only a light aluminum framework supported the thing. At five gravities, it tore loose. It went through the thin after deck, caromed off the fire chamber shielding, and smashed a hole in the engine room wall through which stars peered.
No one was hurt. The damage was not extreme. But it did involve a good deal of equipment auxiliary to the thermonuclear power plant. Designed to fail safe, the fusion reaction blinked out. Batteries took over, but they could only maintain the internal electrical system: not the ion drive or the radiation screen.
Suddenly the ship was full of roentgens.
The ferry had no room for antiradiation apparatus. It could only be used to escape before the crew got a serious dose. The Ranger drifted in orbit, abandoned. Invisible and inaudible, the poison currents seethed through her hull.
‘I see.’ Judith nodded. A rippling went along her hair.
Thanks.’
Kivi’s mouth seemed more dry than a few moments’ talking warranted. ‘Happy to oblige,’ he mumbled.
‘What are your plans now?’
‘I—’ Kivi’s lips pressed together. ‘Nothing. Never mind.’
‘Did you come to see how Jan is? I was about to go arrange shipboard accommodations for myself till I can get another ferry back. I’m sure Jan would be glad if you—’ Her voice trailed off. Svoboda had been curt enough with the captain, when they were all working down at camp.
Kivi put on an acid smile. To be sure.’
Inwardly he realized, with a jolt, that he didn’t know why he had come here. To take out his own despair by railing at the injured man? He was afraid there had been some such idea in him, not far below the surface of consciousness. But why? Svoboda was moody, short-tempered, short-spoken; but not really more irritating than any other of his ground-grubbing fellows. As a Constitutionalist leader he had helped bring this colonizing project about – and surely no spaceman wanted the wretched assignment – yet a job was a job, to be completed rather than cursed.
‘I … yes, I wanted to see how he was,’ blurted Kivi. ‘And, and confer with him—’
‘Well, you can now!’
Kivi twisted himself around the stanchion he gripped, to face the inner door. It stood open. Jan Svoboda hovered there.
He was in hospital pajamas, his features almost hidden by bandages; tape swathed his chest; the framework of an action splint was spidery around his broken left collarbone, to give him some use of that arm. ‘Jan!.’ exclaimed Judith. ‘Get back to bed!’
Svoboda grunted. ‘What’s a bed in free fall, except a harness to keep the air from blowing you away? I heard you talking.’ His eyes stabbed past his white mask, toward the captain. ‘Okay, here I am. Say what you want to say.’
‘The medic—’ protested Kivi.
‘I’m not under his orders,’ said Svoboda. ‘I know how much I’m able to move around.’
‘Jan,’ said his wife. ‘Please.’
‘How polite am I supposed to be to a man who tried to murder me?’
‘That will do!’ rapped Kivi.
He could imagine the mouth sarcastically bending upward behind that cloth. ‘Go on,’ said Svoboda. ‘I’m in no shape to fight Or you can simply have me arrested, you being the captain. Go on, do whatever you came to do.’
Judith grew quite pale. ‘Stop that, Jan,’ she said. It’s not fair to call a man a coward if he doesn’t attack you, and a bully if he does.’
Silence came again. A minute had passed before Kivi realized he was staring at her.
Finally, rigidly, Svoboda said: ‘All right Conceded. I suppose we can talk about a practical problem without tantrums. Can that ship be recovered?’
Kivi pulled his eyes from Judith. ‘I do not believe so,’ he answered
.
‘Well, then, when tan we start unloading her? I can still supervise that though I may need an assistant’
‘Unload?’ Kivi trudged back from other thoughts. ‘What do you mean? The Ranger is in a poison belt. She can’t be unloaded.’
‘But wait a minute!’ Svoboda grabbed the doorframe. His knuckles whitened. ‘She’s carrying stuff the colony has to have.’
‘The colony must do without,’ said Kivi. Anger returned to him, cold and flat.
‘What? Do you — No, that’s impossible! There must be a way to get those materials out of the ship.’
Kivi shrugged. ‘We’ll make an inspection, of course. But I see very little hope. Believe me, Svoboda, it is just as serious for me to lose the Ranger as for you to lose her cargo.’
Svoboda’s masked head shook violently. ‘Oh, no, it isn’t We have to stay on Rustum for the rest of our lives. Lacking some of that equipment the lives will be short. You’re going back to Earth.’
‘Earth is a long way off,’ said Kivi.
3
The Migrant eased in on the barest whisper of jets. Svoboda felt the bridge deck thrum faintly beneath his shoes. The existence of an ‘under,’ however small his weight, seemed a marvel.
Kivi looked up from his seat at the control console. There she is,’ he said. ‘Have a look while I bring us alongside.’
‘What acceleration are you going to use?’ asked Svoboda sharply.
Kivi’s laugh barked at him. ‘No more than half a gee. You needn’t strap in.’ He gave his attention back to the ship, tapping switches, speaking commands on the intercom. The vast bulk of the Migrant was guided primarily by the autopilot, even in maneuvers as close as this. Kivi’s job amounted to telling the robot: ‘Go toward yonder object.’
Suppressing a retort, Svoboda bent over the viewscreen. At top magnification, the Ranger seemed almost a toy; but she grew rapidly to his sight. The hull spun end for end, wobbling along the invariable plane. Shadows and harsh sunlight chased each other across the ugly awkward shape. Not for the first time, he thought that even the streamlined ferries were unhandsome. God, to stand on Rustum again and see the last ferry go skyward!
Orbit Unlimited Page 8
