by Greg Keyes
Then there was that sudden stop at the end…
“Is there any way I can tow him with my EVA line?”
“Negative,” Control said. “We’ve thought of that. The tensile strength of the cable isn’t great enough.”
There followed a silence in which Rain stared at her controls, thinking furiously. There had to be something she could do. She couldn’t just let Heng die.
“What are the odds?” Heng said softly. “Space is so big.”
“Hey, stay cool,” Rain said. “We’ll think of something.” Her fighter began to vibrate, however, and the heat sensors on the hull were starting to get worried.
“I’m sorry I spoiled your moon trip,” Heng said.
“You haven’t spoiled anything,” she said. “Control? What have you got?”
There was a long pause.
“Chang’e One, your orders are to establish a stable orbit.”
“I can’t just let him fall!” she protested.
“Captain Heng, you’re going to make a dead stick landing,” Control said. “We’ll try to talk you through it.”
Rain looked over at Heng, and saw the resignation on his face. Like her, he had run the dead stick simulation over twenty times—landing without power, using only the aircraft’s ability to glide. In simulation, no one had ever managed it, even with a fully functioning computer—not from space, anyway. The velocity was just too great.
“Control, there has to be some other way,” Rain said.
“Captain Lao, achieve orbit. That is an order.”
“It’s okay,” Heng said. “I can do this. I’ll see you on the ground.”
Both craft were bucking now, and their noses were beginning to glow.
“I’ll buy you a beer,” she said.
“I’ll let you,” he replied.
“It’s just like landing a space shuttle,” she told him. Only it wasn’t. The old shuttles came into atmosphere in a sort of belly flop, using their blunt, shielded undersurface to build up a shock wave to protect them from the worst of the heat. They achieved and maintained the right angle using steering jets until they were deep enough in the atmosphere for their wings to become useful.
The H-7s were meant to reenter under power.
And Heng was coming in at a bad angle, anyway.
“Good luck, Heng,” she said softly, feeling more and more helpless as she saw a stream of hot gas begin to form a trail behind him.
* * *
The hybrid transport flew so smoothly that David could close his eyes and imagine he was on a train. It was in essence a middle-sized jet that had been retrofitted with AG drive and an energy-propellant system. It wasn’t capable of space flight, but it made ground-to-ground travel swift and painless.
For people who didn’t mind leaving the ground.
For David, it was still a horror show.
Fortunately the flight from the Center for Alien Technology to the Centre Spatial Guyanais was only about a three-hour jaunt in the company ship. Being the director of the ESD had its perks.
He had been director now for five years, and wished desperately he had taken up the task earlier. If he had, Steve Hiller might still be alive—but he had avoided the responsibility until it was too late.
Tanner and Jacobs had opposed him, of course, but that opposition was never made public, and there wasn’t much of a fight when he pointed out that he could either expose their complicity in rushing to test a design before it was ready, or they could put him in charge. That Whitmore stood with him on the issue hadn’t hurt.
More than a decade of the most intense military spending in the history of the planet had been starting to take its toll on the morale of the average person. They had just seen one of their heroes go up in a fireball of the technology that was supposed to save them, which they were paying for in a hundred ways. The administration needed David Levinson on their side, and they knew it.
Strain was their scapegoat, and he accepted his lot without complaint, resigning in disgrace. It wasn’t entirely fair, but then if Strain had had the guts to fight them in the first place, probably none of this would have been necessary, so David couldn’t work up much sympathy for him.
He took off from a desert and landed in a jungle, or near one, anyway. Like most functioning space facilities on Earth, the site in French Guiana that serviced France and most other European nations had grown considerably over the last decade or so. He had been here only two years before, and hardly recognized it.
Max Martell he easily recognized, however. He was short, dark-skinned, in his sixties with a startling shock of white hair and a mild, even demeanor.
“Director Levinson,” Martell said. “So nice to see you again.”
“Likewise, Max,” David said. “Looks like things are jumping here.”
“We’re doing our best to stay on schedule.”
“I saw the timeframe was looking like, what, three years? That’s fantastic.”
“Phobos in two, maybe three—a functioning defense system on Mars in three to four,” Max said. “I hear the Russians are pushing ahead on the Rhea project.”
“Yes,” David said. “Things are looking up. If the bad guys don’t come back, we’re all going to look pretty silly.”
He stopped when he saw the expression on Max’s face. His wife and two-year-old son had been in Paris.
“Sorry, Max, you know me. Mr. Sensitive. I’ll be as happy as anyone if this all turns out to be for naught.”
“Well, it’s not for nothing anyway, is it?” Max said. “Clean power sources, anti-gravity—carbon emissions are way down. Automakers think that within a year or two they can produce affordable cars with crash shields…” He trailed off, and now it was his turn to look mortified.
David brushed past it. “You’re right,” he said. “We’re doing well. Now let’s go explain that to the people who write the checks.”
If the aliens did come back, and wanted to strike a crippling blow to the ESD, the place to start would probably be the ESD Spring Expo, which was what brought him to French Guiana. Despite—or perhaps because of—the disaster that had cost Steve Hiller his life in the 2007 Expo, the event had continued to grow, becoming truly international. Leaders from the European Union, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia—every major and minor nation engaged in the collective defense initiative was represented, both as a public show of support and engagement and as a practical matter of sorting out priorities.
For David, politics was the least interesting aspect of the Expo, although it was unfortunately what he spent most of his time doing. What he really enjoyed were the presentations, the solid and just-crazy-enough-to-work applications individual researchers and research teams had worked out, hypotheses regarding the aliens themselves, where they were from, what the nature of their last signal was, and speculations about alien civilization in general. The budget for SETI had been quintupled and they had vastly better tools for probing the heavens in search of alien transmissions.
Tantalizing evidence presented itself, was analyzed, and was largely shot down as irrelevant. Even though they now knew beyond debate that humans weren’t alone in the universe, they still didn’t know where the aliens had come from. Space was too unimaginably vast.
In short, it was the largest meeting of space and technology nerds on the planet. About eighty-to-ninety percent of what was heard at the panels was rubbish, but there were always a few moments of real genius, too. The problem that had been the cause of Hiller’s death was definitively solved by a lone mathematician working out the intricacies of the subatomic oscillation in the grown energy source. For him, it had been a purely mathematical problem, something he was working on only because it intrigued him. For the ESD, it was the final breakthrough they had been looking for.
He sat in on a general discussion about progress on the moon base, along with Commander Lao Jiang and several of his project engineers. They had already established a minimal presence on the lunar surface. In terms of po
wer it was already self-sustaining, and within a few months, as the water-mining operation came up to speed, they would be able to produce oxygen through electrolysis.
“On a related note,” Lao informed the audience in his conclusion, “as we speak, one of our hybrid fighters is on a course which will circumnavigate the moon. It will be the first truly long-range test of the craft and their ability to defend the moon base until the cannons are in place.”
“Is it true the pilot is a relative of yours?” a reporter asked.
“I’m pleased to confirm that,” Lao said. “She is my niece. My brother—her father—died on the Fourth, defending the world against the enemy. However, Rain wasn’t chosen for this honor due to her birth—she finished at the top of her class in flight training. I am very proud.”
“And she is only twenty-one, is that correct?” someone asked.
“Also correct,” Lao said.
That opened the floor for a rising tide of questions. Lao linked a newsfeed to the projector, which was updating the progress of the Chinese mission to circumnavigate the moon. David took the opportunity to duck out of the back door and escape the reporters. Inevitably, though, there were a few waiting. He waved them off with a few polite comments, and then, turning to beat a hasty retreat, slammed into someone.
“Oh! Ah, I’m terribly sorry,” he began, reaching to help the dark-haired woman back to her feet.
“It’s okay,” she said, skootching up to her knees so she could pick up a ream of papers she had just spilled from a folder. “I suppose I may have been standing too close.”
“Here,” he said, kneeling. “Let me help you with those.” He collected several of the loose sheets. All seemed to be sketches or paintings of a circle. One looked like a smiley face sans eyes.
They both straightened up as he handed them to her. She was probably in her late thirties, but there was something waifish about her. Her hair was long and brown, her dark eyes large and animated. She looked a bit familiar.
“Director Levinson,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “How do you do?”
“My name is Catherine Marceaux,” she said. “Dr. Catherine Marceaux.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Yes. You’re the psychologist.”
“Psychiatrist,” she corrected.
“Sorry,” he said. “You wrote a book or something, didn’t you? On alien behavior?”
“My specific interests are in the interaction between the human and alien psyche,” she said. “I would very much like to bend your ear for a bit. Is this a good time?”
David didn’t get a chance to answer, because the room behind him erupted into bedlam.
“Excuse me for a moment,” he said, and he ducked back into the conference hall. He pushed past Lao, who was furiously barking into a cell phone.
Everyone was staring at the projection screen.
David turned his own attention that way.
“Houston,” he said, “we’ve had a problem.”
26
“Screw this,” Rain muttered under her breath. She engaged her engines and fired herself toward Heng like a bullet.
“Chang’e… what are… doing?” Control demanded.
The communications were already breaking up due to the ionization caused by her entry into the atmosphere. Heng’s fighter was engulfed in white flame. She saw he had somehow managed to turn belly-down—which was a good start—but the angle was too steep, and his craft was beginning to yaw dangerously. If he spun, it was all over.
The comm crackled again, this time unintelligibly.
Rain plunged on, her ship tremoring as if it was having a seizure. The force field automatically tripped on, but it caused too much wind resistance so she overrode it until she managed to overtake Heng, and then pass him. By that time they were at twenty kilometers above sea level.
She flipped the force field back on and began to decelerate, knowing that what she was doing was more or less insane. But it was the only thing she could think of.
Heng’s ship hit her, much harder than she had expected. His craft glanced off. Everything started to spin, and for a moment she had no control at all—she didn’t know where the horizon was. Finally she was able to kill her rotation, and saw that he was still above her.
This time she managed to ease up under him and start putting on the brakes—with his ship piggybacked on hers.
There was no way she was going to be able to kill their velocity in time. The AG thrusts weren’t powerful enough to decelerate two ships, not at the speed they already had achieved, and not with the ground so near.
Fifteen kilometers.
Ten…
Seven…
Her instruments were going crazy.
Then her right AG thruster went dead.
“Well, that’s not perfect,” she murmured. “Heng? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said. “What the hell?” His voice was staticky, but the most intense part of the ionization was behind them.
Her other thruster cut out.
“Time to use your wings,” she told him. “Get off my back.”
“Copy,” he said. “For the record—you are the craziest person I’ve ever known.”
“I really want that beer,” she said.
He lifted off of her, and she immediately engaged her rudder and wing-flaps and banked, hard. The idea was to kill more of her speed by using the atmosphere—sort of like running switchback down a steep slope rather than straight down it—but they were already so near the surface it was anyone’s guess how this little jaunt would end.
She banked again, cutting a long “S” shape through the sky, scanning the terrain below for someplace to land, but all she saw was mountains, coming up fast.
One kilometer.
She turned hard to avoid spattering against a peak, and then hit a column of air. She felt momentarily weightless as the craft dropped, uncontrolled, for twenty meters before slapping back against a thermal. She dodged another cliff side and saw treetops coming up fast.
This is going to hurt, she thought. It seemed like the time to eject. What that would be like at this speed, she didn’t know. Besides, that would be sort of like losing.
Then she was past the trees, and land like a table top appeared. She pulled up her nose, full flaps. This time her landing gear didn’t break right away—instead she hit tail-first so the AG units took the hit and broke off. She skipped, came down on the gear. Then they broke. The Chang’e One plowed a furrow through the short grass and came to a stop.
Dots dancing before her eyes, Rain desperately checked the fusion containment and found that it had shut down quietly. After the explosion that killed Steven Hiller, that part of the plane was arguably the safest, at least in theory.
“Heng?” she said.
Nothing.
She looked around, and across the plain, maybe two kilometers away, she saw a huge column of smoke rising.
“Heng, do you copy?” she said, urgently.
“Yeah,” he finally replied. “Had to eject. I’m hung up in some trees. You?”
“I’m well,” she said. “My ship has seen better days.”
“Where the hell are we?” he asked.
She checked her instruments.
“North America,” she said. “Montana, I think.”
Off in the distance, she saw what she thought might be a herd of buffalo.
Her comm crackled again.
“Captain Lao?” It was Control. By the sound of it, the signal was bouncing off a satellite.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m on the ground and unhurt.”
“I’m patching Commander Lao through,” Control said.
She quickly snatched off her headphones and held them a few centimeters from her ears as Uncle Jiang went off furiously for about two minutes, seemingly without taking a breath. When he settled down a little, she put them back on.
“… multi-million dollar vehicle!” he said, then there was silence.
“Co
mmander Lao,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in French Guiana?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I’m on my cell phone.”
“Are we being broadcast, sir?”
“No,” he said. “Right now it’s a private line.”
“Then I love you, too,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m still having trouble with landings, but I think you’ll agree I did better this time.”
He sighed audibly enough that she could hear it.
“There are choppers on the way to recover you and Heng,” he said. “Say nothing of your insubordination, do you understand? And try to stay away from reporters until we’re ready.”
“Yes, Uncle Jiang,” she said.
“And just for the record,” he said, “what you just did was perhaps the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Also the bravest.”
“Thank you, Uncle Jiang.”
“It was not a compliment,” he said.
But she could almost sense the faint grin on the other end of the line.
* * *
“Drilling?” David said.
He glanced around the room, from face to face. There were exactly four people present. One was a man named Lucien Ondekane, a refugee from the National Republic of Umbutu. Another was a South African intelligence field operative, a young woman named Molly DeBoer. Number three was Secretary of Defense Tanner, and David made four. Tanner had summoned him from a discussion on quantum uncertainty and AG fields, just as it was getting interesting. That was after everyone calmed down about the Chinese pilot, and things started rolling along back on schedule.
He hadn’t seen the French woman again, and he felt rude for having left her hanging. He had checked the program and saw she was speaking, but her presentation conflicted with his schedule.
As for his current discussion, it was… kind of interesting. Probably more interesting than whatever psychobabble an attractive—well, a ridiculously attractive—psychiatrist had to offer.
