Zero-G

by William Shatner

  McClure stared through the viewport. One thing was for certain: space was not Earth. That seemed obvious, but it seemed more obvious out here when the mind was supported by the senses. When he was on EVA, sledding outside the station, there was still an earthward orientation. Here, facing out, there was slippery nothingness, emphasized by the crushing accelerations of the thruster in back. The sled responded to his touch, but McClure knew geometry, knew that while facing the open cosmos, the tiniest adjustment here could broaden to something vast as he rocketed along. A millimeter shift one way or the other could cause him to entirely miss his target.

  The sky was dark and the stars were vivid and the planets stood out clearly from the other distant lights. The only sound was in his helmet. Even the burn of the thrusters could not be heard inside the sled.

  He couldn’t see the Empyrean, only the other vehicles and the curve of Earth. Their home world seemed to turn slowly, ponderously, as he moved across the distant sphere. There was nothing else—until, after about twenty minutes, there suddenly was.

  Off in the distance he saw an ominous cloud where the Chinese station was supposed to be—an undulating, dusty fog that seemed to glint with hidden teeth.

  He raised a finger toward a sensor array on the control board in front of his chin. Various tools surged to life at his touch.

  “Dr. Lyons,” McClure said. “I am picking up a gamma signature from a region near the Jade Star.”

  “I’ve got that, McClure,” Lyons said. Of course he did. That would have been programmed into the mission parameters as well.

  “Is it telling you anything?” Lyons asked.

  “Not yet—the spray is too wide, interfering with pinpoint readings.”

  “Stay on it,” Lyons said. “The others have been briefed. Once we know where the SAMI is, we can send CREWs to power it down. If they cannot, if it looks like it’s about to act up again, we demolish it with PHGs.”

  Those were Pod HEL guns: high-energy laser cannons.

  McClure wasn’t sure about the plan: he understood the political reason Lyons would want to dispatch the nondestructive Coordinated Robotic Endosmotic Workers, whose SimAI brains were designed to learn as they engaged unknown technology, and to store that new knowledge; but time mattered more than diplomacy. It was essential to shut the device down as quickly as possible.

  McClure continued to scan the rippling cloud for some sign of the weapon’s position: the emission lines of a helium leak on a spectroscope, or some artifact of the thing’s colossal magnetic field. But there was nothing yet in the haze of that debris cloud.

  “We’re going to have to go in, aren’t we?” Lyons said, reading the data.

  “It seems so,” McClure agreed. “We can’t send the CREWs in blind.”

  Suddenly the control panel went wild.

  “We’re not blind anymore,” Lyons said coolly. “Point, what’ve we got?”

  “Incoming,” came the voice from the pod in front. “A wide spread.”

  “I see it!” Lyons shouted as hot white flashes tore through the cloud like dozens of tiny comets. “What is it?”

  “Neutral particle beam,” McClure said, watching IC indications.

  “There’s a reactor still online somewhere in the station,” Lyons said. “Must be some failure in the stripping stage; instead of separate salvos, every few shots is basically a lightning strike.”

  “Odd up!” he shouted as the sizzling flares bore down.

  McClure reacted instantly, nosing up hard. The force of the rapid ascent heaved him down into the feet of the suit, but his eyes remained fixed on the viewport. It was as if the rest of the fleet had shifted, not him. The other vessels rose or fell away but, save for the cloud and those invisible arrows and jagged bolts of light, the rest of the universe seemed stubbornly unchanged. Even Earth didn’t appear to move.

  As the team dodged the assault, a second, then third, wave of white flashes shot from the cloud, one fanning above the first salvo, the other below.

  “Odd left, hard!” Lyons barked.

  McClure’s hand seemed to spasm on the controls, jerking him left as he tried to keep from wailing with fear. The communication link was eerily silent as, now, the vista before him turned on its side. Instead of lying horizontally the cloud was now vertical, jutting across the viewport like an ancient tombstone.

  “They’re compensating for IAM!” the point pilot cried, referring to incoming avoidance maneuver. “The first wave was a diver—!”

  He didn’t get to finish, his voice buried by Lyons shouting, “Free flight! McClure—”

  “On my own,” the special agent said, “I know.”

  The vessels flew in every direction, like a barrel of roman candles that had suddenly been ignited. McClure’s eyes settled back on the ominous, deadly cloud. Almost at once the purpose of the mission came back to McClure. He screwed in his wits and his courage. Then he checked to make sure the data feed was going back to the Empyrean—and to the FBI command center.

  “Dr. Lyons,” he said, adjusting his flight path, “I’m going after that cloud.”

  “Four-A,” Lyons said resolutely, meaning the rogue action was acknowledged and accepted and that he had the pilot’s ass.

  The tableau shifted again as McClure chose a high, arcing path that avoided a field of what looked like tin cans being torn apart by high-­powered rifle fire. Through McClure’s viewport he saw nearly a half dozen ships get punctured by the merciless light, while a half dozen others slammed one into the other in an effort to escape, the sleds snapping, the pods coming apart like dropped eggs before being shredded by the third wave of defensive bolts. Each piece of metallic debris became a new projectile, briefly flaring with white heat before going dark. The collision-avoidance advisories in McClure’s helmet went berserk; the only choice was to ignore it all. Doing nothing was as viable as taking the wrong evasive turn.

  McClure thought sadly of Stanton and Adsila Waters watching the disaster unfold through Lyons’s IC. The Empyrean commander was stoically silent, doing the only thing he could do: leaving the mission in the hands of his chosen leader.

  “Team, sound off!” McClure heard Lyons say, his voice shaking. The man was an engineer, not a military officer.

  “McClure here,” McClure replied.

  “Hasen here,” a woman responded.

  The voices were followed by an awful quiet. That meant eleven ships were already destroyed or disabled.

  “Kate, hard about—return to base,” Lyons ordered.

  “Immediately,” she replied.

  There was a slight, dull flare in the distance as the woman swung away in a tight arc and headed home. At that same moment, McClure saw a sled pass over his head and settle in front of him. It was Lyons.

  “I’m not after your glory,” the flight leader assured him, his voice once again steady. “I’ll take the first hits so you can gather intel. Every word, every scrap matters.”

  McClure’s heart leapt at the gesture as he saw Lyons’s sled immediately take scraping hits from space flotsam. Each one careened away, giving McClure free passage. His hands tightened on the controls, afraid that fear would make him twitch. He saw pieces of space suit shoot by, glinting in earthlight. There were ruddy beads of what looked like frozen blood. The scene was all the more macabre for the silence as his sled continued its slow, careful, measured drift through the shattered, deadly formation.

  And then, as they closed in on the charcoal darkness of the cloud, the fourth and fifth assaults burst from within.

  These fresh attack waves were more tightly packed than the first three. McClure did not believe that the Chinese intended to destroy the fleet ship by ship on purpose, without a warning. That meant the Jade Star sighted them with its machine vision and was fortified with weapons programmed to react automatically to incoming enemies; and that these armaments were
being run by the SimAI, which was now immediately adjusting to pick off survivors. Anything that didn’t resemble any wave band; an approved Chinese spacecraft would be targeted. Probably incoming meteors as well, since those could be used to conceal explosives. Making things even worse, the intact fusion reactors aboard the station meant unfaltering energy for these attacks.

  Not only is the damn neutrino death ray out of control, McClure realized, the damn automatic defense systems are impregnable.

  There was nowhere to bank, rise, or drop. The lethal spread was like a net expanding as it came toward them. Lyons remained in position. So did McClure.

  “Empyrean,” Lyons remarked, “I just have to say, my professional hat’s off to whatever sick bastard came up with this system.”

  As they waited for impact, the young scientist could not help but think that his preacher father would be either transfixed or horrified: the neutralized streams and wild arcs of electrons from the cloud were like some wrath-of-Jehovah event from the Old Testament. The seventh plague of Egypt, hail and fire, came instantly to mind.

  Maybe Dad was correct. McClure thought incongruously of their many long discussions about the Bible—the man of faith versus the blossoming young scientist. Maybe these things happened as described. The authors of Deuteronomy wouldn’t have known about particle accelerators and magnetic collimators, though they did get the ferocity right: “The mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens. . . .”

  For a moment McClure was back in a pew in his father’s church in Fairfield, Connecticut, Long Island Sound glinting outside the window. When would that be? A springtime Sunday, with renewal in the air, a congregation-wide sense that life was near and very dear—

  Two flashes hit Lyons’s lead ship hard. The sled was upended and flung backward fast, as if it had been kicked by a giant. With a cry, McClure dove hard to avoid being struck. He maintained his grip on the controls even as he took a hit on the maneuvering system ­engine—the projectile must have knocked something loose from Lyons’s stricken sled, since the hit was from above. The rear-mounted cone spit ­yellow-orange flame as the engine’s whole warning annunciator matrix lit up red in McClure’s IC. To prevent further eruptions, McClure cut all power, including the IC—realizing, too late, that the ship’s avionics were one less thing for the SimAI to target. To its machine eyes, he now looked, appropriately enough, like debris.

  Dead in space, McClure felt perspiration pool in every cranny of his suit as the sled slowly and silently disappeared into the opaque, undulating cloud around the Jade Star.

  NINETEEN

  WHO’S THERE?” DR. Diego demanded, turning slowly.

  His IC had been silent while he donned his space suit. There was always a “blackout” period when two different systems interfaced—in this case his personal IC and the NASA IC of the suit.

  Still very much on her guard, Dr. May looked back a little too quickly. She overspun and had to put her foot down hard to stop. Through her helmet she saw the familiar form of Sam Lord maneuvering between stored construction materials, heavy machinery, and ERBs undergoing maintenance.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I’m protecting you,” he said, coming forward. “That is why I came to the moon.”

  Diego’s eyes were in motion, fidgeting with his IC. “I do not see authorization from Commander Tengan.”

  “You won’t,” Lord assured him. “She has more urgent business. But I’m coming with you. I’m here to protect Dr. May and I also want to see the facility.”

  Lord couldn’t quite make out Diego’s expression through the sun-filtering amber hue of his faceplate. But his words left no question how he felt.

  “No,” the scientist barked. “That is eyes only—our eyes.”

  “Not anymore,” Lord replied. “And why exactly do we need you?”

  Diego shook his head defiantly. “Typical military-aerospace complex bully.”

  “You’re the one trying to push me around,” Lord quietly pointed out.

  In flight, this was known as a stall—the moment when the airfoil lost lift and the jet began to plummet earthward. Lord had been there many times; a point at which only the pilot could save himself, his craft, and his passengers. It required a seasoned hand, a supernaturally calm head, and steady wits.

  Lord shouldered past them. “We’re wasting time,” he said as he walked toward the airlock-garage.

  “Space sheriff, the buggy is a two-seater!” Diego said, grabbing Lord’s suit.

  “In that case,” Lord replied, “we’ll know each other a lot better by the time we reach the lab.” He eased his arm from Diego’s grip, then looked into the man’s visor until he could see his eyes. “Don’t push me again.”

  Saranya gently pulled Diego around. She stepped between him and Lord.

  “Ras, there isn’t time for this,” Saranya said. “Director Lord is coming. Sam, I just want to gather my data—he and I can do this twice as fast. He knows the system, can help me download what we have to send to Earth for help.”

  “Is that the plan?” Lord asked, surprised. “Take what has already caused so much havoc and make it available to everyone? I thought you were the only one who could fix this.”

  “I am, but if anything should happen to me . . . others must have the data to work with. There are select people we can trust.”

  “You hope,” Lord replied.

  “No, I am not relying on hope,” she told him. “After the crash—things have changed. We nearly didn’t make it. I have to take precautions. I just want to stop this thing.”

  “Then we’re all agreed,” Lord said with a last look at Diego.

  She nodded and they made their way to the vehicle storage area.

  The garage was a small, dull, gunmetal-gray affair in which the transit buggy loomed modern and large. Marked Lunar Armstrong Base One, the conveyance was a beast. The cab was inside an emerald-green polyhedral cage designed to rotate around the entire vehicle. It served as a tread that would conform to any terrain up to eighty degrees off horizontal, all the while keeping the cab perfectly upright within. The vehicle could self-steer and was designed to outthink, intimidate, and overcome anyone or anything that might try to stop it, including anything from the moon’s unforgiving topography to a theoretical explosive dropped from hostiles in lunar orbit.

  “All its vertices are jointed,” Lord admired as they walked over. “This is extraordinary.”

  The thoughtful silence of Dr. May and the brooding sobriety of her colleague could not dull his enthusiasm.

  There was no further argument about Lord accompanying them. Though there were only two seats, the polyhedral cage was relatively spacious.

  “That’s a specimen bay in back, correct?” Lord asked. Not expecting an answer, he said, “I’ll crouch there.”

  “Don’t be fooled by the high ceiling,” Diego said. “If we roll over a boulder, that exterior is designed to give. It will be pushed upward. We will be protected by the bars over the seats.”

  “Then I’m grateful that you’ll be driving,” Lord said. “You’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Lord watched while Saranya opened the passenger’s door and ushered him in. He squeezed past the seat and stood on the four-by-four-foot platform, leaning on the aforementioned bar—a sturdy T-frame rising a little more than head-high from the back of the seat.

  Lord’s eyes quickly scanned the panels in a semicircle around the driver’s station. “Fusion?” he asked Diego as the scientist pressed the power button. The entire vehicle seemed to stir like a waking rhino.

  Diego didn’t answer. Saranya did.

  “It’s an He-3 reactor,” she acknowledged curtly.

  “Very, very powerful,” Diego contributed as if he were talking to a first-grader. “It can easily carry us as well as someone with your—­authority.”


  Lord ’s IC started to inform him that helium-3 was a single-neutron variant of ordinary helium, fairly abundant in the lunar regolith, a radioactively harmless fusion fuel. He shut it down. As he did, he noticed that there was an urgent message from Adsila. He mentally fingered the secure button so the content would not be shared. Then he punched the private comm.

  “Go ahead, Adsila,” he said.

  It was the strained male face of his EAD that appeared. Lord knew immediately that something bad had happened. Something that had caused her to shift. Something that made her want to feel a little less empathetic.

  “Director, the Empyrean mission was attacked by what appears to be automated station defenses,” Adsila informed him. “Twelve casualties, one turn-back. McClure is MIA. We lost his signal as he entered what appears to be a plasma cloud around the Jade Star, a thin mix of semifrozen fluids and gases from the module. It left them sluggish and near-blind.”

  Adsila’s words registered immediately; the sickness in Lord’s gut took several moments more to settle in. Then he realized something else: if the module were that badly damaged, the Chinese almost certainly weren’t controlling the weapon—and were quite possibly as helpless as the pilots had been.

  “The device?” Lord asked.

  “Still operational, as far as we can tell.”

  “Plan B?”

  “Not yet,” Adsila said. “They’re waiting to debrief the survivor. The one known survivor,” Adsila corrected himself.

  “Thank you,” Lord said solemnly. “I’m in a transit buggy en route to the lab. ETA”—he checked his IC—“twenty-two minutes. Update me when you have it.”

  “I will, Director.”

  Lord signed off but waited a moment before reconnecting with the scientists. The buggy was being lifted to the surface on an elevator platform that rose through a cone barely wide enough to accommodate it. It was a smart security precaution: only the buggy could use it. The hatch recognized only a precise series of movements, executed by the cage, that worked like tumblers in a lock. Presumably changed on a regular basis, the buggy had to assume the right polyhedral shapes in succession to be recognized and then to fit physically through the lock.