by Homer Hickam
Crater was dumbfounded. “What?”
Maria instantly regretted her loose tongue, and didn’t know what to say. “I . . . I know it wasn’t your doing.”
Crater looked around. “Where is she? I should talk to her.”
“She’s in command of this station and plenty busy. There will be time later for her to explain.”
Crater’s mind was reeling with the news of the baby, but he fought for focus. Whatever madness had occurred without him knowing it, he’d have to sort out later. He reached in his pocket and handed Maria the gillie. “It was stabbed by a shard of litesteel,” he explained. “I think it will be OK, but it needs a warm, dark place.”
“I’ll take care of it. My gillie—I mean Crescent’s gillie—is also sick. It killed the Trainer who was running things here and used up its stored energy doing it. Don’t worry. I’ll have both gillies on the mend.”
Crater kissed Maria again. “Save the Earth.”
Crater crossed over to the cockpit of the Jan Davis where he found Riley and Tiger. “Riley? What are you doing here?”
“Money can take a girl to the far reaches, Crater, m’boy. This here is Tiger Tramon, a fine fuser pilot if ever there was one.”
Crater smiled and turned toward the pilot. “Hello, Tiger. Is your fuser in good shape?”
“Well enough. What do you have in mind?”
“I think we can catch that asteroid, but we’ll need a big explosion to deflect its course. What do you have?”
“Conventional warheads only,” Tiger replied.
“I thought that was likely the case,” Crater replied. “We’ll need nukes to move that big rock but, fortunately, the aft remnant of our smashed fuser contains nuclear-tipped missiles. It won’t be easy, but I think we can get inside and bring them out.”
“How many nukes are needed?” Riley asked.
Crater turned toward her. “I have to be honest. There are too many variables to be absolutely certain. We’ll just have to guess and hope we’re in the ballpark. If Petro agrees to it, he and I will do the walk to retrieve the missiles. You’ll drive us over there. After that everybody gets off except me and my brother. Petro will fly it. I’ll rig the nukes.”
Tiger was dubious. “I would prefer to fly this fuser. I know her better than anyone.”
“This is not up for discussion,” Crater replied. He’d already risked too many lives. He was only sorry he still had to risk Petro’s . . . and his own, especially now that he had so much to live for. A baby? Crescent’s and his baby? Had he actually heard that or was he losing his marbles? He supposed at this point it didn’t matter. Marbles or not, it was up to him to save Earth.
Within a few minutes, Crater and Petro had gathered their gear and rejoined Tiger and Riley in the fuser. “Stow your kit over there, gents,” Riley said.
“How did a smart girl like you get mixed up in this craziness, Riley?” Crater asked. “It has to be more than money.”
Riley grinned. “For the adventure, of course!”
Tiger laughed. “Adventure is right! This pert lass did the impossible. She drove a jumpcar into orbit!”
“ ’Tis not the time for stories,” Riley replied. “Off ye go to the jumpseats, Crater and Petro.” She somersaulted into the copilot’s chair. “Ready to detach from the auxiliary airlock, Tiger.”
“Make us go, Riley.”
The fuser detached, its cold jets spurting. As soon as it was clear, Tiger throttled up the fuser. Within five minutes it was next to the remnant of the Linda Terry. Riley whistled. “Now, ain’t she a sight! You’re lucky those nukes didn’t go off!”
“They’re safe, although the conventional explosives in them might have exploded,” Crater acknowledged. “That would have been ugly. Guess we were lucky.”
“Or blessed,” Riley said, crossing herself.
Crater and Petro climbed into their suits. “We’ll shove the racks out,” Crater explained. “Then use the fuser’s robotic arm to move them to the cargo hatch.”
Crater and Petro went down to the cargo hatch of the fuser and opened it. It was a huge door and faced deep space. “Well, here we go again,” Petro said. “Taking a step into the abyss.”
“Aw, come on, Petro,” Crater joshed. “Do you want to live forever?”
“I want to, but I guess if I keep hanging around you, I won’t make thirty.”
Crater grinned but replied seriously. “See that old world down there? There’s a lot of people who’d like to live a little longer too.”
Petro took the step. Crater was right behind him.
Once aboard the wrecked fuser, they climbed through a rip in its skin, then turned on their helmet lights to see inside the gloomy interior. Going hand over hand along exposed cables, they reached the racks of nuclear-tipped missiles. “Now what?” Petro asked.
“We move them into the firing slots. The sprockets that move them have a catch that releases them. See it?”
“Yeah. Looks like that could pinch your fingers if you’re not careful.”
Crater laughed. “Pinching our fingers around nuclear-tipped missiles on a derelict fuser is probably the least of our worries.”
Petro returned the laugh. “I’m glad you’re my brother,” he said. “Life would sure be dull without you.”
“Brothers forever,” Crater said. “Now let’s move these big things and save the Earth.”
FIFTY-FOUR
When the Jan Davis returned to the L5 station, Crater headed to the warpod bridge to see Crescent. There were only a few minutes before he would have to leave and there were a few things he needed to say. “You heard about the child?” she asked as he floated up beside her.
“Yes, and I don’t know what to say to you, Crescent. You shouldn’t have done it, whatever you did. You know that, don’t you?”
Crescent couldn’t look him in the eye. “I’m ashamed for what I did.” She touched her belly. “But I will never be ashamed of this child.”
Crater’s heart went out to her. “Is it all right? I heard what Truvia did to you . . .”
“The baby is unharmed.”
“Look, if I had more time, I guess I’d yell at you and do my best to make you feel bad about the whole thing, but I don’t. I’ve got to get going. Just know this. I’ll take care of the baby, and I’ll take care of you.”
“That won’t be necessary” Crescent replied defiantly. “You need not ever acknowledge the child in any way. She’s a girl, by the way. Absalom knows about her. We will raise her as our own.”
Crater was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’m glad you didn’t get transformed into another Maria. One is enough for this universe. Anyway, I like you just the way you are.”
“You are being excessively kind,” Crescent said. “It is all right to hate me. I deserve it.”
“No, you don’t!” Crater swore. “I’m the one who deserves to be hated. Deep in my heart, I always knew you loved me, yet I let you go on without hope. I’m sorry, Crescent. The truth is”—he squared his shoulders—“I would be lost without you.”
Crescent looked up into his eyes. “I heard Maria tell you that she loved you,” she said quietly. “I think this time, for a change, she meant it.”
Crescent’s words snapped a portion of Crater’s heart back to reality. “She and I have a lot to talk about,” he said as much to himself as Crescent. “I’m not sure we can get there from here.”
“Don’t let your pride get in the way, Crater. That bank account she opened for you should tell you her real feelings for you. Maria’s not the type who’d let a johncredit slip through her fingers unless she was in love with the fellow who was getting it.”
Crater allowed himself to smile. “Good point.” He glanced at the warpod viewport when he saw a taxi go by. “There goes Tiger with the taxi. It will be attached to the fuser and we’ll be ready to go.”
“Be careful out there. The Lunar Rescue Company is going to get a lot of good publicity out of this. We’ll be swamped with
people wanting our services, but we can’t do much without you and Petro.”
“I don’t intend on getting killed,” Crater said with more confidence than he felt. “I’ve got a lot to live for.”
“So do I. I’m not going to die, Crater, at least not like the rest of the Phoenix Legion. I am free of that curse. Truvia told me.”
Crater erupted with a huge grin and moved to hug Crescent, but she held up her hands. “No. It is not appropriate.”
“I don’t care,” he said, still holding out his arms.
Crescent couldn’t help herself. She fell into Crater’s arms, and after he’d released her, she kissed him on both cheeks. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you too,” he said. “And that’s the truth.”
Crescent couldn’t stop her heart from jumping. “But there’s Maria.”
“Yes. There’s Maria. No one understands why I love that girl, but I do. And yet I love you too.”
Crescent forced a smile on her face. She understood. “Friends can love each other too.”
“Yes. I think they can.” He gave her a small smile.
Tears formed beneath Crescent’s gray eyelid folds. “You must go. Hurry. Save the world.”
“I will be back.”
“I know you will.”
Crater headed for the fuser hatch, meeting Maria, Petro, and Tiger on the way. “I can’t believe it, Crater,” Maria said. “He’s gone!”
“Who’s gone?” Crater demanded. But one glance through the viewport gave him the answer. The Jan Davis was detached from the station, its cold jets pulsing as it moved away. “Who’s aboard?” he asked.
“The Colonel, my father, and the sheriff.” Maria sounded panicked.
Crater headed for the bridge, grabbing the comm mike. “L5 to the Jan Davis.”
“Jan Davis here.” It was the Colonel.
“Colonel, you don’t know all that needs to be done.”
“I trust you’ve got everything wired,” the Colonel replied.
Maria arrived on the bridge. “You turn around and come back right now, Grandfather!”
“I would for you, Maria—almost.” His voice cracked slightly, and he cleared his throat. “But I caused this mess, me and Junior, and it’s up to us to clean it up.”
Crater knew the Colonel well enough to know that nothing he could say was going to change the old man’s mind. “You’ll have to position the fuser no more than a hundred feet from the asteroid,” he said. “It will be precision flying.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Crater. After all, one of my companies built this fuser. I know what to do in the cockpit.”
Maria turned to Crater. “Can your warpod catch it?”
“Not with just one engine. Actually, even if I had two, I couldn’t do it. Fusers can go a hundred times faster.”
The Colonel came back on. “I’m on my way to fix things, Maria,” he said.
“Grandfather . . .”
“I know, Maria. It’s all right. This will give your father and me a chance to talk. It’s going to be rough for him, for all of us in the family, but we’ll get through.”
“I believe you, Grandfather,” Maria said, even though she didn’t.
FIFTY-FIVE
CC2241 rolled through space, the giant blue, green, white, and brown planet called Earth in its sights. CC2241 was mindless and had no thoughts. It was just a remnant of the formation of the solar system manipulated by the one intelligent species capable of such engineering in that system. The irony, had CC2241 been capable of irony, was that it was aimed at the place that was the cradle of the existence of that species.
The fuser Jan Davis rushed through space, hot on the trail of CC2241. Packed inside its cargo space were twelve nuclear missiles, each with a lump of plastique explosive attached to their individual warheads, a blasting cap inserted inside each lump, and wires leading from the caps to the fuel cell power plant used to start up the auxiliary power plants that in turn powered up the fusion engines. The Davis’s primary puter was programmed to send a signal to the fuel cell power plant, which in turn would send an electrical current to each of the blasting caps, which would then detonate the plastique, which would then send a shock wave through each individual warhead that would detonate the TNT-derived torpex inside, which would then implode the uranium core, producing an atomic blast. It was all ad hoc, all Crater Trueblood jerry-rigged, and would have been considered crude by any exacting engineer. It also had a high probability of working.
Behind the Jan Davis and CC2241 was a crowhopper-crewed warpod with but one engine. On board the warpod were Crater, Petro, and Maria.
“I wonder what they’re talking about,” Maria said of her grandfather and father.
“No use worrying about it,” Crater said. “You’ll find out after we pick them up.”
Maria pondered Crater. “You don’t really think we’ll pick them up, do you?”
Crater thought about telling her a comforting fib but knew she needed to hear the truth. “I’m not sure. They’ll have to position that fuser just right, then tell the puter to give them enough time to detach the taxi and get a good distance away. It will take some skill, and the Colonel’s the only one who can fly the fuser and probably the taxi too.”
“My father can also pilot a fuser.” When Crater didn’t respond, she said, “You don’t expect him to help, do you?”
Crater didn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know him, just his reputation.”
Maria shook her head. “When he’s around the Colonel, he’s a different man. He’ll do his duty.”
Crater wasn’t certain what her father’s duty was except to be punished for his crimes. He looked over at the bridge where Petro sat with Captain Valence. In another minute, they’d have to shut the lone engine down to conserve fuel, but the fuser had no such constraint. The Colonel could go full throttle until he had to flip the fuser over and decelerate to catch up and match the asteroid’s velocity. As he’d told Maria, it would require perfect timing, which was another reason he wished he was sitting in the Jan Davis’s pilot seat. Tiger had programmed the Davis’s puter to accomplish the flight profile, but tweaking would be required. Crater felt agonizingly helpless. He needed to be aboard that fuser, and so did Petro!
“Come have a look,” Petro called. “The pulsdar’s got a good signal.”
Crater and Maria flew over to the bridge to take a look. The gigantic blob that marked CC2241 in the center was shrunk down as Petro took the pulsdar scope to a wider range. “There’s the Davis,” Petro said, pointing at a pinprick of luminescence. “Acceleration complete. It’s in the drift phase before flipping over.”
“Anything showing up around Earth?” Crater asked.
“Nothing. Looks like they didn’t have time to get their act together down there.”
“Then it’s up to the Colonel to save the world,” Crater said.
“And the fuser’s puter,” Petro said. “Which is worrisome. We didn’t have much time to program it.”
Crater agreed, his worry and concern growing. “There’s always something you forget when you’re in a hurry.”
“Well, if we did, I guess the Colonel will find out pretty soon,” Petro said.
“And so will the world,” Captain Valence added.
“You can do it, Grandfather,” Maria whispered. “I know you can.”
FIFTY-SIX
All right, Junior,” the Colonel said. “We only have a few hours before this operation begins. I’m going to need your help.”
His son looked up from the bunk where he’d been strapped in. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
The Colonel sighed. “Why not?”
“Because I’ll be dead in a few minutes and I’d prefer to go into oblivion listening to my own thoughts, not yours.”
“You’re not going to be dead. We can do this.”
Junior smiled. “Yes, I am. I took something. I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.”
The Colonel reached acr
oss the bunk and grabbed his son by his shoulders. “What’s the antidote?”
“There isn’t one, at least not anything on board this ship. Too bad, Father dear. You’re not going to get the chance to interrogate me like a stern schoolteacher to an errant child, nor lecture me like a wise man to a fool. All you get to do is watch me die with hate for you spewing from my lips. Of course, what I feel is more than hate. I despise and detest you. Get away from me so I don’t have your smell in my nostrils as I go on to the next place.” He swatted at the Colonel’s grip on him.
The Colonel desperately clutched his son to him. “I wasn’t going to interrogate or lecture you, Junior. This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I love you, son. That’s all I wanted to say.” Tears dribbled from the Colonel’s eyes, tiny translucent spheres that fell slowly to the deck in the light artificial gravity caused by the accelerating fuser.
Junior was not impressed. “I hope I’ve made it perfectly clear that I don’t love you.”
The Colonel released his son, then bowed his head. “I should have been a better father.”
“You should not have been a father at all,” John High Eagle Medaris Jr. said, then closed his eyes and breathed his last.
The Colonel slowly pulled himself back to the cockpit where the sheriff sat staring at the controls set on automatic. “I’ve lost my boy, Sheriff,” the Colonel said, settling into the pilot’s seat.
“You lost him a long time ago, Colonel. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I thought we would have time to talk.” The Colonel felt stunned.
“How’d he do it?”
“A drug the Trainer woman gave him.” The Colonel was lost in gloomy thoughts for a while, then said, “I wish he’d slit his wrists or stabbed himself or even shot himself. Taking a pill seems a cowardly way out.”
“Well, Colonel, he couldn’t meet your expectations, no matter what.”
The Colonel paused. There was truth to what the sheriff said. “No, he couldn’t. At least he gave me Maria.”
“Did you tell him that?”
