Zero-G

by William Shatner

  Lord was caught off-guard again. Not by the fact that the government wanted an absurdly overmuscular weapon but that she was only informing him now about the extent of their coercion. Lord was angry that she hadn’t shared it with him earlier, though he was angrier with himself that he hadn’t asked. Now, it had all the earmarks of a deathbed confession. The only positive impact was that it seemed to put Colonel Franco in the clear. He was a thug but a patriotic one; he would never have given SAMI to the Chinese. He must have been desperate to find out who did.

  “So, the problem at hand,” Lord said, trying to focus. “Can’t someone just send this doomsday device corrected data? Order it to stand down?”

  “As you can imagine, every new technology we create is typically keyed to operator DNA and other passcodes,” Saranya said somberly. “The people in charge of this device? Those individuals probably no longer exist.”

  “All right. Then if this wave generator can’t be shut down, I’m assuming it can be shot down.”

  “I wouldn’t assume that at all,” Saranya replied. “If it is intact—and we don’t know that—but if it is, then the SimAI can command an army of neutrinos. Possibly other matter, as well—ions are larger, would be easier to handle. In theory, any number of particles can be organized to dematerialize whatever comes toward the device. And I mean take them apart on a very basic level, entering the nucleus of every atom and just ripping it apart.”

  Lord shook his head. Build a better doomsday device and the world will beat a path to your lab.

  “Doctor, tell me—what good was this research supposed to do?” Lord asked.

  “I had hoped to use neutrinos to study the core of the sun and other astrophysical phenomena,” she said. “The particles are too small to be stopped or distorted. I want to use them to acquire a detailed, accurate picture of the cosmos.”

  Lord had no response to that. It was the most heartfelt expression he’d heard in the past twelve hours.

  Lord became aware of the increasing acceleration as the Grissom sped toward the moon. He shifted in the doorway, tightened his grip a little as the moon’s gravity failed to give him any noticeable weight. As he moved, he happened to spot the vast gray-and-white expanse as it rolled into view of the shuttle, filling it with brilliant light. It had a quality that transcended the moment, crushed all other concerns with an almost religious authority: like the moment the door of the cave in Jerusalem had rolled back to reveal the light of God.

  They could use some of that now.

  “Do you have any measurements, any readings at all, about the potential swath of the gamma activity?” Saranya asked the pilot.

  “Only what I’m getting from the Empyrean and from Armstrong, and they’re still scraping for additional details. All we’re sure of is that the disturbance is narrow—it seems to have stopped spreading—but that oblique cone includes us and part of the moon.”

  “The Armstrong Base?” she asked.

  “Unless whatever this thing is slices through a piece of lunar radius longer than fifteen kilometers, it should be all right.”

  Lord fired Dr. May a look: Can it?

  She shrugged back with a look of I don’t know.

  He turned away thinking, I was wrong, Carter. I need a geologist.

  The copilot informed the pilot that they had just entered lunar orbit and the pilot ordered an immediate deorbit sequence, also informing Armstrong Base.

  “If we can set down, hopefully we can ride out whatever this is,” the pilot said. He glanced back with a half-smile that he probably hoped was reassuring. “The shuttle is designed like a tank. It can take some—”

  “Will you look at that!” the copilot shouted, pointing toward the port side of the vehicle.

  Lord followed his finger. The area where Lord had seen the moon was distorting like a runny watercolor painting before going black, as if it were experiencing a total eclipse—but one of utter blackness, without the reassuring, ruddy glow caused by the filtering and refracting quality of Earth’s atmosphere.

  “It’s still there,” the pilot said incredulously, checking his drop-down. “We just can’t see it!”

  “The image is shrouded . . . like Japan,” Saranya said thoughtfully.

  “You got a less funereal-sounding explanation?” Lord asked.

  “It’s got to do with a spontaneous, parity-time symmetry-breaking effect—”

  “Doctor—” Lord interrupted.

  “It’s self-cloaking,” she replied.

  “Ah,” Lord said. “That I understand.”

  But before either the crew or passengers could consider the matter further, the drop-down data ceased flowing as, with a whisper, the cockpit of the Grissom, and then the rest of the interior, went very, very dark, as close and silent as a cave.

  “That’s not a visual phenomenon,” Lord observed.

  “No, sir,” the pilot said. “Our spacecraft just died.”

  FIFTEEN

  SAM LORD HAD been in dead aircrafts before. Once, thirty thousand feet over New Mexico, Lord was testing one of the next-gen Mist fighters, with active camouflage covering every inch of the fuselage and wings, when the cloaking system failed and took the rest of the plane’s avionics with it. The ship didn’t just nose down, it rotated around its central axis because the dedicated gyroscopes were still functioning. Lord was able to operate the flaps manually and used the atmosphere to counter the turn. He steadied the ship long enough to bring it down on a ski slope in Mescalero, earning the rare distinction of having landed a windowless plane in a cockpit blackout. The lumpy scar in the mountain was still there, named Lord’s Mogul.

  But this was unlike any other.

  Technically, this situation was probably as elusive as the others. He remembered stepping from the Mist, and Purvis, his Lackland-trained flight engineer, looking more sheepish than excited to see him. Hours before, Lord had refused to set foot in the plane until Purvis agreed to speed-tape a secondary horizon and steam-gauge altimeter to the glareshield. He’d brought paper charts aboard in his flight bag. She muttered something about magic crystals and dreamcatchers, but the ancient instruments had guided him safely to the ground.

  Experientially too, the status of the Grissom was new to him. In a fighter, there was air outside—noisy and screeching, in the old days punching the nose down just before Mach 1, or buffeting you on approach to stall. You could feel your way out of the crisis sometimes—there was none of this frictionless, Newtonian, helpless coasting.

  The Grissom was not just dormant, all primary and backup systems were utterly nonresponsive. Even the emergency batteries were gone. The vessel sank in free fall through a void that didn’t make a single utterance, didn’t offer any kind of physical resistance or support. It was as though they didn’t exist. And with the spreading darkness outside, neither did anything else.

  Lord hovered at the cockpit door. He remembered the pilot’s name—Kodera—from when Saranya had mentioned it back in his quarters. Now he saw the copilot’s nameplate: Landry. In times of crisis, it was always good to keep conversation personal, supportive.

  “Captain Kodera, you boys need any help?” Lord asked.

  “Thanks, we’re getting there,” Kodera replied.

  The pilot exchanged a look with his copilot. The look was one of encouragement, but also one of personal concern. Maybe the copilot had a family on the moon.

  Lord felt Saranya touch his arm. She was either getting her bearings in the dark, afraid, or both. “What are they doing in there?” she asked.

  “Pressure suits,” Lord said. “Tough to put on, sitting.”

  He hadn’t intended to be glib but it came out that way. It offset the pressure he felt coming from the cockpit.

  “Your gear is under the seats,” the pilot said tensely. “Landry will get them as soon as he’s secure.”

  “Don’t worr
y about us,” Lord replied. “I’m one of those guys who actually checks the safety data at takeoff.”

  “Old flight checklist habit, sir?” the pilot asked.

  “You bet, captain,” Lord replied. “How’d you know I was a Zoomie?”

  “Your Mist recovery was taught at Fourth SC,” he replied. He added innocently, just making conversation, “I loved my aviation history class.”

  Lord grinned. “Captain, forty years from now, when this flight is taught, you’re gonna know exactly what that feels like.”

  Lord meant his tone to be casual and reassuring, and he succeeded—even as they both knew how desperate their situation was. The ship was not the Vampire or the Mist. It was a falling anvil, without wings to glide on or use to decelerate—even if the moon, which was still invisible to them, had a buoyant atmosphere worth speaking about.

  “Sam?” Saranya asked anxiously.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, taking her hand. “Follow me.”

  They traversed the length of the shuttle in seconds. It was eerie, almost like wading in a pool at night: Lord’s feet barely touched the floor and he floated back toward their seats. He bent, felt for the latch under Saranya’s seat, and popped it. Moments later he had slid out a one-foot-by-two-foot-by-six-inch rectangular pack. He popped the top and handed her the contents.

  “You feel the feet?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Insert your toes there, then press the seams together to seal the rest. The helmet and oxygen are overhead.”

  “I know. I’ve had the training,” she said.

  It was not a rebuke. She was trying to be reassuring—to herself.

  Lord retrieved his own suit. Silently, they slipped their arms, legs, and heads into the proper openings—soft gloves and foot coverings attached to the ends. The contractile fibers in the fabric—simpler versions of artificial polymer muscles—would aid the wearer in bending and flexing the suit’s joints against the stiffness of air pressurization. The fibers, along with the chemical seal for the helmet, did not require any power beyond body warmth. As long as the wearer was alive, the suits would operate.

  “In case the communications don’t work,” Lord said before they secured the collars, “we’ll have to work out some rudimentary hand signals.”

  Saranya nodded.

  Happily, that wasn’t necessary. Whatever had knocked out the Grissom hadn’t entirely penetrated the shielding—they were still alive, after all—nor had it depleted the self-contained power in the suits. As soon as the helmets were locked on, the illumination device above them glowed, a kind of opalescent IC, giving each a soft, 360-degree halo.

  “Everything looks so ghostly in here,” Saranya said.

  “Well, it’s not and it won’t be,” Lord assured her. He rapped on his helmet. “It’s here, we’re here, alive and solid as a moon rock.”

  “Some of them are actually quite porous,” Saranya pointed out.

  Lord grinned. “That’s why you’re the scientist and I’m the bodyguard.”

  He was already on his way back to the cockpit. The glow was not ghostly but angelic, a welcome relief from the pitch of eternity.

  Lord arrived in time to hear the copilot, Landry, address the pilot.

  “I’m not getting any response from the braking systems,” Landry said. “Not a spark.”

  “Copy.”

  “Acceleration ditto.”

  “Copy,” Kodera said, adding disconsolately, “and mea culpa.”

  “No way, Bob,” Landry shot back. “I seconded the maneuver.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lord asked.

  Kodera replied, “If the shutdown had happened before the burn, we could’ve just orbited until rescue, survived on the air we have on board. But I tried to outrun the wave and now we’re on a collision course with the moon. Free fall. There won’t be enough of us left to collect.”

  “It was a sensible risk, right option,” Lord told him.

  “It’s my fault,” Saranya told them all. “I should have considered the inverse relation between ionization and penetration. Your caution was reasonable.”

  Kodera replied with a crooked smile, “Phew. And here I thought I just screwed up.”

  Saranya said, “Do you have Thrombo or APC?”

  “Those drugs are not in our first aid locker,” Kodera said. “Why?”

  “These ships have a shielding layer,” Saranya said. “But even with that, and the suits, that’s a ticking dosimetry clock.”

  “You know,” Lord said, “I actually almost understood that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kodera said, “but I meant—why are you even asking? I don’t see a way to set this bird down.”

  “There has to be one,” Lord said. “We just haven’t thought of it.”

  “I’m open to suggestions, sir,” the pilot said.

  “Well, I’m just an old fighter jock but I believe the first thing we should do is assess the condition of our craft.”

  “To what end?” Kodera asked. There was an edge in his voice. Understandable.

  “To land,” Lord told him. “Whatever hit us killed the main engine. Okay. But did the concussion destroy it? Or the ion thrusters?”

  “We don’t know,” Kodera admitted.

  “Right. We need those to land so we have to find out. What are we like on time?”

  “Lunar impact in about twelve minutes,” Kodera said, consulting the handheld rangefinder. Because they still couldn’t see the physical moon yet, the rangefinder would have to be their eyes.

  “So we have a little wiggle room,” Lord said. “How would you gentlemen feel about a little extra vehicular activity?”

  “Spacewalk?” Landry looked incredulous. “What happens if power comes back while we’re on EVA?”

  “We’ll keep the hatch open, get you back inside,” Lord said. “I assume there’s an autopilot.”

  Kodera nodded.

  “Director Lord has a point,” Saranya said thoughtfully. “The magnetic shield is dead. But the helium coolant around the superconducting coils is well enough insulated from the heat of the cabin to stay in liquid form.”

  “Got an idea?” Lord asked her.

  “I think so,” Saranya said. “If we can compromise that insulation, we can warm the helium inside to the point of quenching, and maybe use that as a descent engine.”

  Kodera flipped through the QRH, showed her the checklist for an emergency magnet-quench. “We can route this through the vents more or less facing the ground right now.”

  “That’ll be good enough,” Saranya said.

  “How long a burn does that give us?” Lord asked.

  She skimmed through the checklist card. “Wild guess: sixty seconds, at . . . I don’t know how many newtons yet.” She looked at the terrain that was now in view and on its way up to meet the spacecraft. “Can’t promise that’ll do it.”

  Lord regarded the woman with a blend of admiration, puzzlement, and a sudden crush. The knowledge, he expected. But given the frightened woman he had met on the Empyrean, her cool demeanor was unexpected.

  “But even if that works,” Kodera countered, “we’ll probably end up tumbling. We’ll have to stabilize.”

  “That’s why we need to know the degree of damage, if any,” she told him. “We may be able to jerry-rig enough power to fire the ion thrusters.”

  “Jerry-rig . . . with what?” Kodera asked.

  “The helmet displays,” Lord said, pointing to Saranya’s back. “We can use the battery pack under the O2.”

  “Sir, I don’t know about that,” Kodera retorted, sounding both hopeful and doubtful.

  “She can do the science, I can handle the rewiring,” Lord assured him. Assured them all.

  “Sam, no promises,” Saranya cautioned.

  “Try your
best,” Lord said. He winked. “We’ll get the same result, I’m sure.”

  “You’ll have to breathe cabin air,” Landry remarked. “It’ll be thin by then.”

  “I’ve had practice,” Lord replied. “Just today, in fact.”

  Kodera pulled a stylus from the QRH binding. “For your calculations,” the captain said. “One of those redundancies some NASA old-timers insisted on.”

  “God bless us veterans,” Lord said as he backed away to give Kodera room to exit.

  Before leaving the cockpit, Landry retrieved a toolkit from a compartment beneath his seat and gave that to Lord as well.

  “The panel’s down there,” Landry pointed to a spot beside the pilot’s station. “The big oblong thing that’s not working is the battery. MS3509 connector.”

  “Roger that,” Lord said.

  Kodera regarded the team. “All right,” he announced, already in motion. “As Yuri Gagarin said, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”

  Saranya backed up to let Landry out.

  “You understand what you have to do?” the copilot asked as he passed.

  “The two of us have to seal ourselves in the cockpit,” she said.

  “Correct,” Landry said. “It wouldn’t do to have us all sucked out.”

  “Get back safe,” Lord added. “You’re gonna be heroes when you bring this baby home.”

  The four switched places and the flight crew headed toward the hatch while Lord and Saranya eased into the seats. Lord naturally selected the pilot’s chair. Once seated, he craned around to shut the door. The cockpit door was solid and the visual electronics were dead, so they both had to settle for listening to the men over the helmet comm.

  Saranya punched buttons on her wrist to close Landry and Kodera from any distracting conversation. After removing the tools and letting them float around him, Lord did the same. They continued to listen to the men’s ragged breathing, their perfunctory comments about egress and procedure. Saranya was staring at the clipboard.

  “You okay?” Lord asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.”