Chapter 10
The inventor and the pilot stood in the hangar. It wasn’t one of the cavernous aircraft storage facilities Lex used to tend to envision when people used the word hangar. At least, not currently. It had a massive, towering roof that led all the way from the subbasement to the ground level, where the bay doors were--but thin, temporary walls were dividing the full hangar up into a few dozen spaces just large enough to house a single ship and various pieces of repair and diagnostic equipment. It gave the place the overall atmosphere of the intensive care unit at a hospital, each bed separated off with curtains. In a way, that’s what it was. Right now the patient was a mangled pile that the automated rovers had hauled in. It took a trained eye to even recognize it as a ship, let alone the one Lex had been piloting. Karter let out a low whistle.
“That’s a CA double I revision . . . 34D, right?” he asked.
“Uh . . . yeah, actually.”
“Ni-i-i-ice. They don’t make them like this anymore. Well, they never made them like this. Too many engine mounts. You got the schematics?”
“No, there aren’t any. I sort of just grafted stuff on, you know?”
“Freeform. Nice. But a bitch to repair. I’ll just pull up the schematics on file, then. Ma! Get the diagnostic cart out here and draw up the schematics.”
“I don’t know how useful the official schematics are going to--”
“I’m not putting it back together the way you had it. Obviously the way you had it sucked. It needed fixing before it even crashed.”
“Look, it might not have been top of the line, but it did what I needed it to do.”
A small, motorized cart appeared from an access tunnel on the far side of the hanger. It was heavily hung with tools, both from its sides and from a gantry that was supported over its work surface. As it puttered along the floor, a roll of paper that jutted from one edge dispensed a sheet, which was clamped down and cut to length. A pen plotter descended from the gantry and danced quickly across the poster-sized sheet, so that by the time the cart jerked to a halt in front of Karter, a full structural schematic was completed. He pulled it free, grabbed a pen from the rack on the cart, and started awkwardly folding and notating the plans.
“Paper? Seriously?” Lex asked doubtfully.
“The problem with engineers today is that they don’t think on paper. So you had, what, four engines?”
“Six. Double the usual complement of Cantrell engines, plus--”
“Yeah, I see. Two of those little ones. Any steering considerations?”
For a few minutes, the pair worked through the various changes Lex had made. When they were through, Karter scribbled down some calculations.
“Those specs look about right?” he asked.
Lex looked over the numbers.
“Well, it’s been a while since I benchmarked it, but yeah, that’s close.”
“Okay, meet or beat,” he said. “What sort of direction were you thinking for upgrades?”
“Speed. I need this thing fast. And a little more maneuverability would help.”
“Weapons?”
“Absolutely not. If I get caught, the last thing I need is them being able to claim I opened fire on them.”
“Nothing obvious, then. Plausible deniability and all that. Defenses?”
Lex glanced at the twisted metal that had been the cockpit.
“A shield upgrade seems appropriate, I guess. Other than that, I usually depend on not being seen.”
“Stealth, right. Countermeasures?”
“Nothing fancy.”
“Okay,” he said, finishing off his notes, pulling up a chair, and staring to sketch out plans.
After a few seconds of standing quietly, the pilot cleared his throat.
“Are you still here?” Karter asked, without looking.
“Yeah. What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t care. Busy.”
“So I should just--”
“Don’t care, busy!” he said, standing up and ushering Lex away. “If you need anything, ask Ma.”
With that, he slammed the rickety door to the temporary room, leaving Lex outside. The pilot stood still for a moment, not sure what to do. There were a few things he needed, one rather urgently, but judging from the general attitude the computer had shown, he wasn’t eager to speak up. As if detecting his reluctance, the system spoke up.
“Do you require anything, Mr. Alexander?” it asked, with the mechanical politeness that was the hallmark of voice recognition systems.
“Bathroom,” he said, sheepishly.
“Of course. Please follow the blue line.”
A line in the floor, what Lex initially thought was simply the gap between two rows of tiles, began to pulse blue. The lights streaked steadily forward. There was a fifty-fifty chance that these lights were going to lead him somewhere unpleasant. Considering the sort of stuff he was likely to encounter if he were to wander blindly around, though, what the computer had in mind couldn’t possibly be worse. With a shrug, he followed the lights.
Five minutes later, he was still following them. He had taken four elevators, six flights of stairs, and was fairly certain his bladder was about to explode.
“Okay, stop. Message received,” Lex said, fidgeting.
“I do not know what you mean.”
“There is no way we haven’t passed at least one bathroom. You are screwing with me.”
“Mr. Alexander. That would be petty.”
Lex sighed and tried to stand still for a moment.
“Ma. When I first spoke with you, I was not aware of the depth of your intelligence and the complexity of your role. As such, I did not treat you with the courtesy and respect that you deserve. For that, I apologize,” he said, steadily, “and I’m sorry if my sentiment seems rushed or insincere, but I’m now crossing over a whole new threshold of urgency, so if I don’t get to a bathroom soon, there is going to be a mess.”
There was a handful of short bursts of sound, as though the first few milliseconds of a reply had been played and cut off a few times. Finally, the blue lights running down the hall abruptly shifted their path, leading down a hallway to the right, and up to the top of a clearly marked bathroom door.
“Thank you,” Lex said gratefully, rushing inside and beginning the complicated process of opening enough of his flight suit to make use of standard bathroom facilities.
“Karter estimates time to repair is seventy-two hours,” the voice said at the precise moment he was about to begin.
Once he recovered from his body’s stinging reprisal for interrupting a necessary function, Lex replied.
“Yeah, uh, that’s great . . . Are you watching me right now?”
“My local sensors are active.”
“I can’t pee while you’re watching me.”
“Interesting. Karter is not similarly afflicted.”
“Could you, I don’t know, turn around or something?”
“I can deactivate the visual sensors. It would be a strictly symbolic gesture. I am still aware of what you are doing and where you are doing it.”
“It is a psychological thing.”
A moment later there was a faint beep. “Deactivated.” The voice came from the hall outside the door.
The pilot finally took care of some very pressing business. He heard the cameras blip back on while he was washing his hands.
“Ma?”
“Yes?” replied the voice, now clearly from the nearest speaker again.
“Well, first off, should I be calling you Ma? It seems kind of personal.”
“That is my designation.”
“Okay, then. Would you please show me the way back to my stuff? And maybe lead me someplace where I can catch a few hours of sleep?”
“Follow the red lights upon leaving the bathroom.”
A refreshingly short walk and an elevator ride later, Lex found himself on a floor that looked like just about every army barracks he’d ever seen. It was broken up into
a handful of long rooms, each lined with a row of double bunks along each wall. On the opposite side of the room was a bank of lockers and a doorway leading to a white-tiled room. Every bed was made and immaculate, and none of them looked as though they had been used recently, if ever. He opened his mouth to ask where he could find his things, but before he could make a sound, the packages and his helmet were carted in by a pair of the same robot grippers that had delivered Karter’s arm.
“Bathroom and shower facilities are at the far end of the room. Jumpsuits are available in the lockers.”
“Thanks, Ma.”
“Processing . . . You are welcome, Mr. Alexander.”
The lockers were unlocked, and it only took a little bit of digging to find an outfit that was roughly the right size. In his search, Lex also found a towel and some toiletries. He stripped out of his blood-soaked--and more than a little rank--flight suit and cranked up one of the showers. The result wasn’t what he was used to. His own apartment had what could charitably be called a shower, but the pressure and temperature made it more seem like the wall was peeing on him. Hygiene on the ship came in the form of a periodic rubdown with glorified moist towelettes. In comparison, the facilities here were like a piping hot pressure washer. The almost-scalding water hammering on his muscles released knots that had been there for weeks.
Nearly half an hour under the hot spray finally left Lex feeling halfway human again. Granted, wearing a second-hand jumpsuit commando style wasn’t how he’d planned on spending the night, but you win some, you lose some. By rights, he probably should have been trying to find some way to get back to the task of delivering his package, but getting shot down and torn up had done a number on his body. The inevitable crash after all of that adrenaline was making a bed that didn’t serve double duty as a pilot’s chair sound awfully good.
Within seconds of plopping down on the nearest bed, he was dead to the world. Unfortunately, his nap was hardly a pleasant one. It turns out having his ship blown out of orbit and sent crashing to a barren planet’s surface was the sort of thing that stuck with him. He jerked awake at the moment of impact for a third time before he decided a distraction was in order.
Lex wandered over to the spot on the floor near the shower where he’d left the jumbled mess of his flight suit. He’d had his slidepad in his pocket, but hopefully it hadn’t been too badly damaged during the fall. The suit wasn’t where he left it. Instead, it was neatly laid out on a nearby bed. The blood stains were conspicuously absent, and the slashed leg had only a faint line of fine stitches and sealant to suggest it had ever been damaged at all. The contents of his many pockets were arranged with care beside it, including casino chips in neat piles, a fresh roll of duct tape, and an unopened pack of gum. The helmet was there, the damaged visor replaced and polished.
He picked up his slidepad to find it whole and functional. The battery had even been charged.
“Um . . . Ma?”
“Yes, Mr. Alexander?”
“Did you do this?”
“Yes, Mr. Alexander.”
“Thank you.”
“You are very welcome. I thought you’d intended to sleep.”
“Can’t. Bad dreams.”
“I can offer you a sedative if you like. We have a full chemical synthesis facility, and I keep a ready supply of many potent narcotic, anti-psychotic, and analgesic compounds.”
“No, thank you,” he said, taking careful note of the presence of anti-psychotics on the short list. “Why are you being so nice all of a sudden?”
“Because you apologized, and you thanked me. Neither Karter nor any of his rare guests have ever done that. I appreciate a gentleman.”
“Wow. Thanks. That’s . . . kind of a quick turnaround.”
“As an artificial intelligence, I am capable of assessing and altering my disposition and the resultant attitudes quite rapidly.”
“Like mood swings?”
“That is an adequately similar human emotional phenomenon.”
“I will try to stay on your good side, then.”
“That is advisable. If you have any more requests, do not hesitate to ask.”
Lex poked at his slidepad for a bit. It was more responsive, too. Improvements aside, though, the data connection was down, and it wouldn’t come back up.
“Um, actually, before you go--” he said quickly.
“I am everywhere, always. I do not go anywhere,” Ma replied.
“Oh, right. Not to be a pest, but I can’t seem to connect to the net.”
“I am afraid the debris field makes stable connectivity to the network impossible with small-scale devices. Once a week, a local cache of data resources that Karter considers relevant is pulled down. The next differential replication is scheduled immediately following the remapping of the field. If you have a request for additional information, I can add it to the data list.”
“What sort of stuff do you have on the local cache?”
“Approximately one percent engineering periodicals, one percent general reference material, one percent contact information directories, two percent multimedia entertainment and news feeds, and ninety-five percent pornographic materials of the following subcategories--”
“That’s fine!” he said quickly, not terribly interested in what sort of tastes Karter might have in that area, “Thanks. I should have figured. I’ll just look at what I pulled down before I came through.”
He pulled up the saved data and started to chew through it. Most of it was the usual stuff. Cantrell was issuing a new model of pleasure cruiser. Half a dozen messages offered him vast wealth and/or massive genitals in exchange for his bank account info. He was about to shut the slidepad off and try to find something else to do when he saw that there was a news alert saved. He tapped the file and a pert young anchorwoman all the way back on Earth began to work her way through her “solemn” routine.
“Tragedy struck the planet Golana today, as a small commuter shuttle succumbed to pilot error while on a routine trip. The transit hub oversees thousands of passenger and cargo flights per hour, and this is the first such accident in more than five years. Links below lead to the profile pages of the twenty-seven passengers and crew who lost their lives in the event.”
She went on to fill in details that they couldn’t possibly know about the pilot that made him out to be solely responsible for the crash. That was always the way. When in doubt, throw the pilot under the bus. Lex pulled up the list of victims and began to scroll through it. There were over a billion people on his planet, and many billions used the transport lanes around it every year, so the likelihood of him recognizing a face or name was pretty slim. Regardless, it was a big galaxy, and when something happened as nearby as his home planet, he always took a look.
It was for that reason alone that he found himself looking at the face of a woman named Sarah Jones. She was thin, with unremarkable features and mouse-brown hair . . . and he’d seen her before. She hadn’t said her name, but there was no mistaking her face. This was the very woman who had handed him the package. His heart started beating faster as he tapped his way back to the main article and searched the transcript.
. . . after investigators were able to contact VectorCorp, owners of the shuttle, for comments regarding the disaster . . .
VectorCorp. Granted, it wasn’t a long shot that VectorCorp would have been the owner. They probably owned half of the ships that used those lanes. But in the time he’d been running packages, he’d only had two people even threaten to pull the trigger on him. Now he’d been shot down carrying a package sent by a woman who had been killed in the crash of one of their shuttles just hours before? It could be a coincidence . . . or it could be the package.
He looked to the silver case on the floor beside his bed. Unlike the package Blake had given him, which was somehow mostly intact, the special delivery had taken a hell of a wallop when he slid down the cliff side. One of the locks was a mess of broken metal, and the other was hanging on by the sk
in of its teeth. It would probably pop open if he looked at it wrong. Taking a peek inside would be easy enough. He walked slowly over to it, leaned down, extended his hand . . .
“No,” he said, slapping it down and forcing the lid tight.
“Were you addressing me, Mr. Alexander?” asked Ma.
“No. Thank you. Where is Karter?” he asked, starting his fresh roll of tape and wrapping a few layers around the damaged case.
“He unleashed a short sequence of profanities in his workshop before ordering me to prepare an array of replacement struts and some burn ointment. I suspect he will be taking a break until fabrication is complete. Did you want me to repair the metal case? I presumed it was one of the packages you were delivering, and thus should not have been touched.”
“Uh, no, no. Can you lead me to Karter, please? I need to talk to him,” Lex said, gathering up his things.
“Certainly; follow the red lights.”
The pilot managed to catch up to his unusual host as he was headed down the main corridor toward the exit.
“Karter!” he called, hustling after him with arms loaded down. “I need to talk to you!”
“Are you still here?” Karter said, as he pulled on a coat and adjusted a fresh bandage on his non-prosthetic wrist.
“Yes, I’m still here! That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I need to get the hell off of this planet and get rid of this package.”
“It can wait.”
With a whistle, Karter summoned his pet and headed for the door.
“No, Karter, it can’t. This is my reputation we’re talking about. Plus, I’m pretty sure that VectorCorp has a problem with the contents of the package.”
“And you want to toss the hot potato before the music stops.”
“And collect the rest of my money, if I can.”
Karter silently considered for a moment.
“Fine,” he said, continuing toward the door. “If it will shut you up and get you out of my face for a few days, I’ll toss you a loaner. Solby needs to drop a deuce, so we’ll swing by the hangar and see what I’m willing to part with. Ma! Open the front door and pull the bus around.”
“Opening. Please remember to prepare yourself for local gravitational intensity, and move swiftly to the bus. Ambient temperature is approaching danger levels,” the voice replied.
A sudden change in gravity was a tricky thing to prepare for. Stepping out of the facility and its accompanying artificial gravity felt vaguely like climbing a staircase that has one step fewer than Lex had expected. The human brain had been trained to cope with things like a sudden shift to zero-G, like stepping off a cliff, or the gradual slide up and down in acceleration that in an old-fashioned elevator. Moving suddenly from normal gravity to just a bit more than half of that locked the brain into the “Oh, my god, the ground is falling out from underneath me!” mindset for a good thirty seconds. Even though Lex knew it was coming, he still found himself taking ridiculous, exaggerated steps and trying to get his stomach back down where it belonged. Or, at least, that’s what happened when you haven’t been doing it day in and day out for who knows how long, apparently, because both Karter and his adorable little furball made the dismount flawlessly.
Once Lex had gotten a grip on the new physics and recovered from the slap in the face that the sudden cold had given him, he caught up to the others. Karter was crunching across the gravel with his hands in his pockets, head down against a stiff wind, heading toward the school bus. Solby did his business, finishing off the whole process by making a half-hearted effort to kick some dirt over the evidence. He then commenced prancing about, taking full advantage of the reduced gravity to turn his already prodigious leaps into something just slightly absurd. Once Karter and Lex had climbed into the bus, a quick pat on the leg brought the little creature bounding through the door.
“Ma! Clean up!” Karter called out before he shut the door.
Almost instantly, there was a flare of light and the mess left behind vanished in a burst of smoke and flames. Lex leaned against the window just in time to see one of the roof-mounted lasers shift back toward the sky
“You vaporize dog doo with lasers!?” Lex scoffed.
“Give a man access to a turd and a laser and there can be but one outcome.”
They set off toward the opposite side of the compound at a leisurely pace. Solby took the opportunity to assault Lex, diving onto his lap, flicking his little tongue over his face, and rolling onto his back to beg a belly rub. Lex ruffled his incredibly soft fur and scratched at his neck for a few seconds, to sounds of general delight.
“You know, this thing is pretty neat. Too bad about the smell, or this would be a pretty awesome pet.”
“Eh, there’s a pill I made that takes away the smell for six months at a time.”
“Then why don’t you give it to him?”
“I realized that I don’t care. It only really stinks when he sprays, and he almost never does that anymore,” he said, adding in baby talk, “Isn’t that true, little guy? You’re too smart for that, aren’t you?”
“How smart is he?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t any reliable IQ tests for non-verbal quadrupeds. Very smart, though. By design. Now, if you were to ask me why he’s all over you right now? No idea. There’s been no other people on this rock besides me in years. I’d have figured he’d be territorial and vicious.”
Currently, he was gnawing gently on Lex’s fingers, which seemed to be the extent of his vicious territoriality. Lex was doing his best to resist the almost toxic levels of cuteness when something strange caught his eye. On the back of its neck, between the twin white lines of fur running along its spine, Solby had what looked to be a small glass marble. Periodically, it blinked a faint red.
“What is this? Some kind of fancy collar?” he asked.
“We’re getting into proprietary information territory again.”
“Seriously? You think I’m going to steal your ideas and genetically engineer my own?
“It is called industrial espionage. It used to be a problem for me.”
“How’d you take care of it?”
“With extreme prejudice. We’re here.”
The bus dropped to the ground outside of a building that was, for all appearances, identical to the lab--except for the label, which was, in this case, an equally crude rendering of the word “Hangar.”
Solby made his way to Karter’s shoulder, curling his enormous fluffy tail around his master’s neck like a scarf. The icy air had a vicious bite to it that didn’t seem to faze Karter or his pet in the slightest, but sent Lex sprinting for the doorway, which was opening of its own accord.
“Please brace yourself for artificial gravity,” came Ma’s voice from the new building.
Granted, this time the warning was not spitefully late, but in his haste to get out of the cold, Lex ended up playing the same trick on himself that the computer had managed last time. He crossed the threshold mid-stride and landed far more quickly and heavily than he’d expected, turning his sprint into a sprawling slide that sent his packages bouncing all over the entryway.
“Dumbass,” Karter muttered, as he stepped over Lex and into the building.
Solby hopped down and investigated the fallen guest as he hauled himself to his feet again. Lex gathered his things and ended up with the creature hitching a ride on his own shoulder as he trudged inside.
“Karter, I’m pretty sure you screwed up somewhere along the line while you were making this thing. I don’t remember reading anything about skunks or foxes hanging out on people’s shoulders,” Lex griped.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe your designer creature came out better than mine. How did you deal with the nucleotide sequencing fidelity issue when you were creating yours? Oh, that’s right, I’m the only one here playing god. So quit being an armchair engineer. Man, I hate people. Lights!”
The inside of the building was pitch-black, save for a small pool of light near the entran
ce. At his command, the vast, echoing thump of breakers engaging filled the air, and lights flickered on, revealing an interior completely unlike that of the lab. There were no walls, no ceilings, and no real floors. The whole of the place was hollow. Metal grill catwalks spiraled up and down the walls, leading to dozens, if not hundreds, of identical docking bays. Most bore a ship, though the conditions ranged from stripped-down framework to immaculate showpiece.
The docking bays continued several stories up to the roof, at least ten floors downward, and ran half of the length of the building. The other half was filled with a mix of larger docks, benchmarking and testing rigs, massive fabrication machines, and a few launch bays.
Seconds passed before Lex realized that Karter had continued walking. To another man, this place might have been a curiosity, or perhaps simply an impressive sight. To Lex, it was a cathedral. Machines he had lusted over throughout his youth stood proud and pristine in their docks. Glorious triumphs of form and function hung like ornaments along the walls. He felt like an explorer stumbling upon an untouched tomb of a forgotten pharaoh.
“These are all yours?” Lex uttered, his voice hoarse.
“Yep. Restorations on the right, upgraded reproductions on the left. You’ll be taking a reproduction.”
“How can you afford all of these . . .”
“I own the goddamn planet. A couple of ships aren’t going to bankrupt me.”
“Wait, you own the planet?”
“I’m pretty sure I told you that this was my planet,” he said with a scowl.
“I thought you meant it like, you know, ‘my home town’ or ‘my country.’ You can’t actually own a planet!”
“It was a hazardous waste zone. I got it for cheap. Never mind that, though. Ma! Bring down the ships I’m willing to risk on this yahoo.”
“I am unfamiliar with that particular classification of ship,” the voice replied.
“Fully functional, single-seat reproductions of ships still in regular circulation.”
“You have sixty-three ships that fit that description, and only twenty-four display bays.”
“Put them up on the console,” Karter said, gesturing toward the large touch panel beside the entrance.
Lex turned to see a grid of ship makes and models appear on the screen. Evidently, Ma had a generous definition of “regular circulation.” There were ships ranging from bottom of the line econo-boxes to limited edition concept ships. The idea of any single facility having access to all of them, let alone any single man, was mind-boggling. One by one, he tapped the check boxes next to the ships he most wanted to see.
“These specs are wrong. The Shetti 8080 never came near that kind of power output. All of them are kind of high,” Lex said as he browsed.
“Upgraded. Modern guts. You done?”
Lex quickly finished picking his two dozen favorites. As soon as he’d chosen the last, there was a distant whine of mechanical arms and conveyor belts. One by one, gleaming and spotless replicas of the ships he’d selected were plucked from their docks and deposited in the display bays that ran along either side of the central catwalk in front of them. He practically ran down the narrow metal walkway, eyes wide and mouth watering.
“The NVS MacDonald! This was my first ship! The Demeter 83i, I set the track record on Meedle Speed Loop in one of these. That’s the Cantrell body I built Betsy on. This Mobius Armistice was--”
“I don’t need a life story. Pick one.”
Lex jogged along the line until he stopped at a sleek, distinctive ship. In a way, it looked the way Betsy would have if she’d been designed by scientists and engineers instead of necessity and availability. A classy, smooth fuselage, aerodynamic even though it didn’t need to be, with lines that flowed like silk into a bank of purpose-built engines. More powerful than it needed to be, more streamlined than it needed to be, and bristling with weapon mounts. It was a DAR.
“The prick who shot me down was piloting one of these. It’ll be nice to see what he was working with.”
“You have selected the Delta Astro-Recon, Type D,” Ma proclaimed.
Automated lifts returned the other ships to their slots.
“All right, Ma. Where do we stand with the debris remapping?” Karter asked.
“Approximately thirty-one hours remaining.”
“No, no, no. I can’t wait that long,” Lex said. “The sooner I get rid of this package, the better.”
“Relax. Ma, remind me, what are we remapping toward?”
“In order to maintain our status as a licensed salvage and recycling facility, we are required to comply with the Intersystem Transport Accord’s Guidelines for Navigable Debris Fields. Under current accord regulations, we must identify voids in the debris that are a minimum measurement of the ship’s maximum dimension, plus five hundred percent, and a minimum duration of fifteen seconds. Those are the outside requirements for autopilot navigation.”
“Are you kidding me? I could fly this building through a hole that big,” Lex snapped.
“Yeah, he could,” said Karter, nodding.
The pilot eyed his host suspiciously.
“Why do you believe me?”
“Because the flight computer of your ship was partially intact. I pulled the telemetry from the last few minutes of your flight. It was good stuff. Savant stuff. I think we can assume you’ll make it through a hole that an autopilot couldn’t. Ma! Make that fifteen percent instead of five hundred, and minimum duration of, say, three hundred milliseconds.”
“That’s more like it,” Lex said with a grin.
“Exit windows fitting those specifications can, at this point in the processing of the data, be reliably identified to occur approximately once every seventeen minutes,” she said.
“Great. Ma, grant pilot privileges and show him the door,” Karter said. He then turned and headed back toward the entrance, snagging Solby as he went. “When I’m done with your ship, I’ll let you know. Bring that thing back in one piece or I’m charging you.”
“Wait! If I’m going to be using this, I’ll need a way to turn the transponder off!”
“It doesn’t have a transponder. Just grab one from the bucket,” he said, gesturing vaguely at a crate by the door as he left.
Upon inspection, the crate was filled with dozens of metal cylinders. Each was about the size of a flashlight and had a serial number and vehicle name written on the side in permanent marker. He picked one up and twisted the base of it. A brilliant red light began to blink on one side. Lex grinned, rummaging through the crate and making some choice selections. It wasn’t the same thing as having a handy programmable transponder like Betsy had, but a pile of manual ones would allow for some interesting options.
After a quick change into his repaired flight suit, Lex started loading his things into the cockpit. When he started to climb inside, Ma addressed him.
“You have been given level 1 access to this vehicle. The next exit window will be at the coordinates displayed on your flight computer. I will plot a visual trajectory.”
Finally, Lex plopped down to the control seat and strapped in. It just wasn’t fair. Even the seat in this thing was better. He worked his way through the start-up procedure, activating engines, running diagnostics, checking life support and communications. When the engines were purring and the systems were go, he eased it up out of its bay and toward the retracting hangar doors ahead.
“You handle the ship well,” Ma spoke over the com system.
“What can I say, Ma? There’s just about one thing in the whole universe I’m actually good at. This is it,” he said, beginning to run through his own personal start-up procedure.
First, he ran the ship through a series of turns, backing the inertial dampener down a notch or two each time until the acceleration felt just right. Then he reached back and popped open the access panel, letting the whine and buzz of the hydraulics and electronics fill the cockpit. He guided the ship over a long, empty expanse of rocky ground and pushed engi
nes a bit. The sounds of the ship took on a new rhythm, like the heartbeat of a runner getting into a groove. He breathed deep, smelling the wires and lubricants as they started to warm up. He closed his eyes and let his senses take it all in. It was a symphony, a banquet. Too many pilots flew with their eyes. He wanted to feel it, hear it, smell it. Try as he might, he couldn’t find a way to taste it. That’s what the gum was for. He opened the fresh pack of gum and popped a stick into his mouth, the final sense engaged.
“The window is ahead. I have prepared a timer. It has been a pleasure hosting you, Mr. Alexander. I look forward to your return.”
“Good meeting you, Ma. Don’t let Karter get to you. You want anything while I’m out?”
“If I think of anything, I’ll let you know. Window opening now.”
With a careful nudge of throttle, Lex brought the DAR into the debris field. It wasn’t the simplest exit he’d ever made from a planet. The path that Ma traced out for him was incredibly precise, but her calculations were sound. Not once did a single fragment of debris larger than a speck of dust brush against his ship. It was disorienting having clusters of metal whisking by in his peripheral vision, and crisscrossing ahead and behind, yet not once being rocked by a collision.
In no time at all, he was into clear space. Now all he had to do was get rid of the case before anything else could happen.
Bypass Gemini Page 13
