The Colony Ship Vanguard: The entire eight book series in one bundle

by John Thornton

  “No, not really. It was quite jarring and the power was more than I expected. It also took all I could do to open one canister with both hands. Ideally I would place these cans into a rack and strap that onto my back. Then I would design a refined opening and closing method for the valves which would give much finer control of the release of the gas.”

  “Or, I could hold one can and you the other. If we faced back to back one could be the driver and the other could be the stopper,” Hugh suggested. “However, you are the expert at these things, and I do not know if that would work or not.”

  Sigmond was thoughtful.

  A moment later he replied. “It would fail if we tried to just hold onto each other. We need both hands to hold the can and release the gas, but if we were strapped together, I think it could work.”

  “My backpack would work for that, if I still had it,” Hugh said. “But I am not sure about flying across space. Maybe we should see if that Roe has gone and we can gather more supplies and find a different way?”

  “Agreed. We would be exposed to the Jellies, even if only for a brief time. So we go back to the chair control room and we reassess. Maybe that Roe is gone and we can use the hallways to find a shuttle at a hanger bay.” Sigmond pressed the rust colored button to shut the exterior door and re-pressurize the airlock.

  Nothing happened.

  Sigmond pressed the button again.

  Still nothing happened.

  “Are we going back inside?” Hugh asked.

  “The door does not respond.” Sigmond pressed the rust colored button again. He then floated over to the controls near the exterior door. There too he found the blue and rust colored buttons. He pressed the rust colored one. Again nothing happened.

  “What is happening?” Hugh asked.

  Sigmond pressed the blue button this time. Nothing happened. Carefully he tried each button again, but still there was no response. He pressed the buttons over and over and over. Nothing changed. He punched the buttons while holding onto the handrail, but no matter how hard he struck them, they and the airlock doors were unchanged.

  “The airlock is not working,” Sigmond said.

  “Has fate trapped us out here?” Hugh had no shake to his voice, but his heart was pounding. He looked out the open exterior door at the vastness of space and the distance across to where the main engines could be seen. He then looked back to Sigmond hoping for a reassuring answer.

  “I will not let us be trapped out here.” Sigmond floated over and closely assessed a door panel. “If I could open this, I would have a way to manually override the circuits and make the airlock cycle, but I do not even have an 11mm wrench to remove these simple bolts. I would only have to take out the macroactinide capacitor enhancer and re-channel the energy conduits. Oh, but for a simple tool.”

  “What about the machinery here,” Hugh pointed to the cargo crate.

  Sigmond looked though it all, but there were no tools of any kind.

  “These are just some random parts for automacubes, shuttle locking clamps, and part of an elevator control system.” Then Sigmond looked back and with his gloved hands he pulled one of the things out and looked at it more closely. Holding it just in front of the bubble helmet he nodded his head. Then with a twist he separated it into three sections. Two of those he set carefully back in the crate. The third one he held up close again. By prying the top loose, the wire inside was exposed. He began to unwind the wiring on that replacement part. The part was about the size of his thumb, and had a tightly wound wire spiraling around the small shaft at the center.

  “Will that help you get the door open so we can go back inside?” Hugh asked.

  “Trooper, I think we found something to connect us together.” The long yellow wire came off, coil after coil, as Sigmond unwound it. Soon the single piece of wire was roughly straightened out.

  Hugh looked at the thin yellow wire, and then at the spacesuit he was wearing. “You are going to tie us together with that wire. Then we use the canisters to propel ourselves over to the main engine, right?”

  “As I said, I will make a Free Ranger out of you yet,” Sigmond replied. “I hope you do not get dizzy easily.”

  Hugh swallowed hard but said nothing.

  “Turn around, but keep hold on that handrail,” Sigmond instructed.

  Hugh turned around and looked out into space and the distant part of the ship they hoped to reach. Sigmond looped the wire around their waists as he stepped up and placed his back against Hugh’s. The wire went around their waists twice, and had about twenty centimeter length left over.

  “I will just make a couple loops to hold extra gas canisters. Then we each hold one. Looks like we will have five to use to maneuver. That is more than I expected.”

  Hooking the valves through the loops Sigmond attached the canisters. He then handed one to Hugh who took it with confident hands. Turning sideways, the moved hand over hand toward the exit.

  “Ok Trooper friend, here is how this will work. I will face forward and you will face behind. You will open the valve on the first canister as tiny an amount as you can. Then shut it down. Just a wee little burst. Try very hard to point it directed straight back. If I say up, it is always toward your head, and down is always toward your feet. Pay no attention to the position of the ship. None. We will be spinning, but keep focused on my words. There is no friction out here so once we get moving we will not stop until I use my own canister to give us breaking bursts. I will be steering, you will be propelling. If I say a tiny bit more, open the valve again. Please do not try anything on your own initiative.”

  “I understand. Will I become an official smuggler when this works?” Hugh actually laughed. “I feel like I am about to ride a poitevin seated backwards, wearing a bucket over my head, down into the Velky Weap.”

  “Nope. This is going to be much more fun than that. Those donkeys can buck you off and they have minds of their own. Here we will be tied together, and as long as you do what I say, we will be of one mind.”

  “You are the expert. I am ready!”

  “Let go of the handrail, then point the canister, open the valve and…”

  They shot away from the airlock doors of Exterior Repair Station XV610.

  “We fly away!” Hugh yelled as he opened and shut the valve. The trail of gas shot from them and quickly was dissipated in the vacuum.

  The two men began to pinwheel round and round, but overall their flight was right toward the main engines. They were spinning as they moved. Sigmond held his own canister and was ready to open that valve as needed.

  “This is wild!” Hugh cried out. “The airlock has almost shrunk to nothing in my sight. Any sign that the Jellies have seen us?”

  “Negative. They are still carving up the constituent joint with their pink cutting beam. We are right on course.”

  They rotated round and round, and Hugh wanted to shut his eyes to the whirling world about him, but as the habitat cylinder behind him grew smaller, he found he was watching for clusters of the same stars as they rotated by. There were three which were bright and at the points of an imaginary triangle. Every rotation he looked for that celestial triangle as it seemed to roll up and around him. It was hard for him to think that he was spinning when the whole of the heavens looked like they were the ones moving around him.

  “About half way,” Sigmond reported. “Our spin is not messing with our orientation too much. You did great blasting us straight away from the airlock.”

  “I told you Free Ranger, I am a good shot. I aimed.”

  Sigmond watched as the main engines grew in size. He did not tell Hugh that they were drifting just a bit with some axil spin. He hoped it would not swing them too far about before they reached the target. He was calculating how soon he would be facing sideways by comparing a section of the main engine to the marks inside the base of the bubble helmet. Each time he spun about he compared the two landmarks. There was a slight but noticeable alteration.

  “Hey Fre
e Ranger, is this what flying one of your shuttles is like?”

  “Sort of,” Sigmond hesitated to say how much he was enjoying the wild flight. He loved space and zero gravity was more comfortable to him than the softest of beds in a biological habitat. “The shuttles are more spacious and I can see who I am talking to.”

  “I can now see the glow from that one Jellie ship at the extreme edge of my vision. Did it move?”

  “We have moved a lot, and yes the Jellies did as well. It seemed to be opening a different section, this time in the hull of the ship and not the constituent joint. I doubt they have seen us. We are just a speck to them in the huge background of space.”

  “And all those stars are just different intensities of light. They are so beautiful. Can we see the one the Vanguard is flying toward?”

  “Trooper, I might be able to find it on a star chart, and then direct a fixed telescope on it, but I cannot pick it out from here right now.”

  “I just am in awe thinking all those lights are where different worlds are. I never expected to ever see the stars at all. Here I get to watch them swim around me like minnows in Lake Orsk.”

  “We are about three-fourths of the way. I will give us a bit of a break in velocity.” Sigmond opened the valve on his canister and shut it down as quickly as he could.

  There was no jet of gas.

  He opened the valve again and gave it a slight bit more time to expel the compressed gas.

  Still no jet.

  “Trooper, I am tossing an empty canister away.” Sigmond gave the canister a tiny flick and it floated off on its own trajectory.

  “Empty? Why did you bring an empty canister?”

  “I did not know it was empty. I will use another.”

  Sigmond took one from the wire loop at his waist. He opened the valve. It gave a satisfying small jet of gas. It slowed them down, but also increased their spin. Now they were wobbling as well as pin-wheeling.

  “That changed my view a lot. Should I try something with my canister?” Hugh asked.

  “No. I will give us a correction.” Sigmond pointed the canister in the proper direction, opened the valve and clamped it shut. Only the valve did not shut. Gas jetted out rapidly and intensely. Their forward motion was halted and then reversed before Sigmond could toss the malfunctioning canister away. It rocketed off in a crazy arc. Sigmond reached for another canister when he felt a shove from behind him.

  “Did that help?” Hugh asked.

  They were now again heading toward the main engines, but were flipped and flopping and spinning around. Sigmond could see the engines, and then the far away habitat cylinder. Then back again as they tumbled about.

  “Trooper. Point straight down and fire when I say for a moment. On three. One, two, now!”

  Both men opened the valves nearly simultaneously. Sigmond’s fired up, and Hugh’s fired down.

  “Now close!” Sigmond yelled.

  Hugh closed his valve, the extreme spinning had slowed.

  Their course stabilized somewhat, but Sigmond kept his valve open slightly, and pointed it in different directions as they continued to spin and swirl. Each time he saw the engines he gave a spurt to slow them down, but angled it such that the spray would also correct the roll, or spin, or wobble. He finally slowed the summersaults enough that he was facing the main engines as they approached.

  “The main engines are just ahead. Be ready for impact!” Sigmond yelled as he opened the valve to slow them down. “This one is empty! We are too fast!” Sigmond tossed the empty away and reached for one of the spares.

  Hugh placed the canister he was holding down between his legs pointed it behind him, then opened the valve. It sprayed out the last of its gas, but was aimed blindly. He could only see the habitat cylinder far away in the distance. It was hard to imagine they had crossed all that way so quickly.

  The last molecules of gas escaped from the canister and spewed out in front of Sigmond. He felt the slowdown, but it happened just as they crashed into what now looked like a huge wall of dark gray and light blue permalloy. Sigmond’s head and neck jerked inside the bubble helmet but the force had been reduced enough to not shatter his bones. They struck at a low angle, not perpendicular as he had suspected they would, and sort of rolled along among the apparatus of the great engine. Sigmond watched for something to grab unto as the two of them rebounded off. He desperately hoped the seals on the spacesuit would remain closed. He missed a handhold by mere millimeters. As they began to bounce along, Hugh’s arm shot out from behind Sigmond but he also missed any handholds. Sigmond then grabbed as far as he could reach was able to snag onto the long whip of an antenna and his grip tightened.

  “You got it!” Hugh yelled in triumph.

  Sigmond felt the angle of their flight change and he grabbed for the antenna array with his other hand. Squeezing as tightly as he could he held on. Their legs swung around, but neither man let go.

  “Here we are,” Sigmond said, as he felt blood seep into his mouth from where he bit his lip in the impact. “Secure yourself to anything else you can hold or grab.”

  “I am on it! Free Ranger you got us here! We did it!”

  The two men, still wired back to back, settled down into the mass of antenna whips, and spines, and other projections. The array was about forty meters wide, and hexagonal shaped.

  “I will unhook the wire, and untie us. No, I will keep us linked by the wire, but just unwind it from around us. That way it will serve as a sort of safety line should one of us accidentally let go.” Sigmond worked at the wire and as they untwisted, he hooked one end around his left hand and the other around Hugh’s right hand. The wire gave them about two or so meters of distance apart. For the first time in the bizarre flight, Sigmond could see Hugh’s face through the bubble helmet. “You look pretty messed up.”

  Hugh’s eye was swollen and only partially open. His lip was split and some blood was caked to the side of his face. “You are not the prettiest thing in there either!” Hugh laughed. “But we made it here. You did it! What now?”

  “I saw where the Captain’s gig is docked, and we are not too far from there. It is in that direction.” Sigmond pointed by a gesture with his face.

  “Wow, you kept your wits and watched for where that ship was?” Hugh was impressed. “Lead on Free Ranger. Lead on.”

  They crawled down the antenna array and hand over hand they picked their way along the outside of the main engine. Most times there were things to hold onto, but that often meant meandering around the large and smooth projections of permalloy.

  “As we landed, did you see any Jellie activity?” Sigmond asked. “So close to the hull here it blocks our view.”

  “Sorry, no. I did not think to watch for that.”

  “You did think to spray that gas between our legs and that probably saved our lives. Great job Trooper.”

  The Captain’s gig became visible as they maneuvered around a large block of permalloy. The various lights which were scattered about on the main engine complex shinned onto the gig, even though there were no visible lights anywhere on its surface. The ship was different colored than the engine complex all around it. To Hugh it reminded him of a fish in some ways. It was long and sleek and gave off the sense of power and motion, even as it rested there in the shadows of the light from the Vanguard itself. They crawled up to it from the rear and the thruster nozzles, with their open cones in a triangular pattern looked more like motors and real engines to him than the main engine they were crawling about. “Free Ranger? How do we get inside that Captain’s gig?”

  “A very good question my friend,” Sigmond replied. “I thought we would need to look and find an External Repair Station airlock so we could enter there, or if there was a hanger bay I might be able to use an override code to open the hanger bay exterior doors. But this gig is not docked at either one of those places. It looks more like it is jury-rigged here.”

  “It is larger than I thought it would be,” Hugh said as he looke
d along the greyish silver tubular side of the Captain’s gig.

  “It is no runabout. I know that is true,” Sigmond replied. The Captain’s gig was longer than the other shuttles Sigmond was used to flying. Its wings were not as wide spread as was a Class 9 shuttle, but it was also more stocky than that streamlined design of a Class 9. “You see those cables which are connected to the rigging and suspension system at the superior part?”

  “I cannot tell up from down out here. So I do not know what is the top or bottom of that craft,” Hugh said. “I really cannot tell what part is what. I know automacubes have the drive wheels on the bottom, mostly, and I suspect that the funnels at the end of that craft are some part of its propulsion system, but you will need to be more precise for me, sorry.”