Jaydium

by Deborah J. Ross

  “And you’re recruiting for this thing?”

  He nodded.

  She took a deep breath and looked away. “I can fly surface, yes, but space — that’s something else. I don’t have any formal training, my astrophysics is ten years out of date —”

  “Never mind the rest,” he said, trying to keep his voice smooth. “You’ve got what it takes, all right. Compared to a coriolis, space is a vacuum, remember? You kept your head in that storm, so I know you can think straight.” It was a risky thing to say, but if she was going to hold what happened against him, he might as well know now.

  Kithri scowled, her face flushing. “Why me? There must be more than enough out-of-work veterans begging for the job.”

  “Can you picture Hank on a diplomatic mission?”

  “Skies, no!” The scowl vanished into a fleeting grin.

  “Actually, that’s not the real problem,” he said. “The training sessions will teach you whatever you need to know. The problem is finding the right people, and it’s even harder when you’re looking for pairs who can fly duo. Yes, we can recruit from within the Service, but too many of those pilots are like Hank, and those that are left are spread even thinner than before, with all our losses and the number of trouble spots to watch. Eades wants new, fresh blood.”

  He studied her face and saw mostly confusion. But there was something darker behind her eyes. Something he could but not put a name to. He decided to take a chance and push harder.

  “What do you say? Or are you so afraid of trying something new that you’d choose a jaydium tunnel over the stars?”

  “No! I — I — ,” Kithri stammered. “I’m not afraid. It’s just that I don’t like to be pushed into things.” She was talking too fast, her words tumbling over one another. “Of course I’d jump at the chance to get off this dust-chip. Your offer sounds good — too good. There’s got to be a hitch somewhere. Like — like, Why should I give a damn about your Federation?” Her voice turned harsh. “They were the ones who left us here to rot, cut off the lithicycline, stuck Port Ludlow there when the jaydium was here because they didn’t give a shit about what the miners had to go through to scratch out a living. I just want off this rock, not into someone’s Do-Good Club!”

  Eril brushed the rest of the bread crumbs from his fingers to give himself time to think. He’d expected her to object to him personally or else to vent some vague resentment against the Fed. He hadn’t expected this raw hostility.

  No, not hostility, he realized with an echo of their brief duo rapport.

  Pain.

  “If that’s the way you feel about it,” he said quietly, “we’d better get this jaydium back to the Port.” The muscles behind his shoulders felt tight, as if the only way to release them was to hit something. He forced gentleness into his voice. “Think about it, would you.”

  She looked away. “Maybe I will, maybe...when I’ve got a choice.”

  Chapter 5

  For a moment Eril considered telling her the truth, that he had as much chance of getting into the Corps without her as she had getting off Stayman without him. In the mood she was in, she’d probably tell him to stuff a comet up his pitouchee. The only thing to do was to keep his mouth shut and wait for another opening. He hoped he’d get one.

  Kithri picked up the water bottle, took a long swallow and then dropped it, sputtering. She pointed down the tunnel.

  As he followed her gesture, Eril’s mouth went electrically dry. The last time he’d looked, the tunnel had been empty except for the two of them and the scrubjet. Now a man-shaped mist hovered in the middle of the ‘hole, one moment diaphanous, then condensing into near solidity. In stark contrast to the rosy glow of the partly-sealed jaydium, it was a clear, untinted gray. Eril made out a bulbous head, two arms, and two splayed-out legs. He thought he saw markings on the head section, but they faded so quickly he could not be sure.

  “What the hell is that?” Kithri whispered. “I’ve been running these tunnels for years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Space ghost,” he said, dredging his memory. “They’re sighted along the old interstellar routes. There are only about six or seven documented cases known, never this close to a planet. By our best guess, they’re relics of early attempts to exceed the speed of light. Residues of energy that just happen to be shaped like humans. They probably don’t actually exist in three-space.”

  As he spoke, the figure descended until its feet seemed to touch the tunnel floor. For a moment it stood there, motionless. Then it began to move. First one leg and then the other stretched out and swung back as it drifted along in a mechanical parody of walking.

  “Whatever you are,” Kithri called out, “you stay away from my ship!”

  “There’s no danger. The ghost can’t interact with ordinary matter,” Eril said with a confidence he did not feel. It was one thing to listen to a lecture on “quasi-dimensional oddities” when you were sitting safely in an Academy classroom, and quite another to confront one in the middle of a jaydium tunnel.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” he repeated. “It’ll dematerialize again in a moment.” I hope.

  Moving one awkward step at a time, the shape continued to advance, not toward the two humans, but the scrubjet and its precious cargo. Kithri jumped to her feet, as tense as a coiled dust-viper.

  “I don’t care what that thing is, if it messes with my ‘jet —”

  Eril grabbed her hand. “You stay here. I’m going in for a better look before it disappears.”

  He shoved her bodily behind him and took a couple of steps towards the diaphanous figure. For a moment he wondered if her instincts might be right about the thing’s innocuous nature. A familiar thrill shot down his spine, reminiscent of the moments before his first battle in space. He’d been just as terrified as all the other rookies, but he’d never before felt so intensely, exhiliratingly alive.

  Maybe Eades was right. Maybe he was some kind of thrill junkie, a real glory-boy.

  The ghost was close enough to the scrubjet to touch it, still floating stiff-legged, as if all its joints were frozen. It stretched out one thick-fingered hand, now clearly visible as it took on greater and greater solidity. Eril saw the arm reach for the curved side of Brushwacker —

  “No!” Kithri screamed. She shoved him aside with surprising force and lunged for the scrubjet.

  Eril grabbed her shoulders and jerked her to a halt. She pushed against him, hard. He wrestled her around to face him, holding her close to his chest. She wasn’t trying to hurt him, just struggling ineffectively to get free.

  “Calm down!” he said. “There’s nothing to be —”

  Kithri twisted away and dropped her weight, breaking his hold. Too late, Eril realized that in their struggle she’d slipped his force whip out of its shoulder holster and was now pointing it at the shape leaning towards her ship.

  Ineffective, indeed! He’d never underestimate her like that again.

  Aiming mostly by instinct, Kithri pushed the force whip trigger, a broad, flat lever set in a protective groove. Eril grabbed for the weapon, but the beam of the whip was already arcing through space. It touched the phantom shape and exploded in a tiny noval flare.

  Eril gasped as a shock wave rattled his teeth. Tears blurred his vision, but not enough to obscure the figure still looming towards the scrubjet.

  Kithri raised the whip again, this time holding it in both hands and carefully sighting down the barrel. Eril caught her hand, pulling it backwards before she could press the firing stud again.

  “You idiot, it’ll go away on its own!”

  “Skies damn you, Eril! If you won’t do something about it, I will! I won’t let that thing mess with my ship!”

  Kithri yanked the force whip around again. It lashed out, this time in a wide, unfocused sweep. She clung to the firing button, despite Eril’s attempts to pry her fingers free. The whip beam spiralled downwards to touch the point of the specter’s shoulder.

&nbs
p; A blast of air and searing brightness, many times more powerful than the first, stunned Eril. In an instant, the breath was stolen from his lungs, the strength from his muscles. He staggered under the sudden impact of Kithri’s weight and they both went down.

  The light gave way to enveloping darkness. For an agonizing moment, Eril was afraid he’d been blinded. He struggled to sit upright, blinking furiously.

  “Of all the comet-brained things to happen...” moaned Kithri.

  “I warned you,” Eril grumbled. “We had no idea how the whip’s energy would interact with that thing. I’ll bet your damned heroics haven’t even touched it. The ghost will disappear in its own sweet time when the dimensional gap shifts. Meanwhile, there’s no way we can duo that jaydium back now. We’re half blind — hardly fit to fly — or at least I am. Can you see anything yet?

  “No...yes, I think that blob is ‘Wacker.” Her voice took on a new urgent tone. “Eril! There’s something on the ground next to it.”

  Eril forced himself to concentrate on the gray soup before his eyes, with very little success. “Don’t trust your vision, not so soon after a blast like that. Our eyes were pretty well dark-adapted —”

  “Stuff it!” She pulled herself free and clambered to her feet. “There is something. Something that wasn’t there before.”

  Eril’s vision cleared as he stumbled after her towards the nebulous shape of the scrubjet. Tone-on-tone gray replaced velvet black, slowly resolving into the outlines of objects. No rosy glow came from the cut jaydium face. It must have become sealed under a layer of protective ash, quicker than he’d thought possible.

  They were almost on top of the sprawled figure before he was able to make it out. The thing was flat gray instead of its previous luminous transparency. The bulbous head absorbed light without any hint of gloss.

  Eril touched it cautiously with the tip of one boot. The surface yielded like stiffened cloth. His vision cleared a little more and he saw — not a ghost, nor any inhuman figure — but a Terran spacesuit of ancient design.

  “There’s someone inside!”

  “He’s not a space ghost, that’s for sure,” came Kithri’s voice from beside him. “But what — who is he?”

  Without waiting for his answer, she knelt down. Eril crouched beside her and began searching for the seals of the globe helmet. In a few moments, he found the primitive lock-clasp. As they wrestled the helmet free of its moorings, he wondered what they would find inside — a human spaceman, in all likelihood long dead — or something else, some horrendous relic from the depths of space? A thrill raced along his nerves.

  The opaque globe came free with a snap and a burst of humid but not stale air. Inside was no desiccated corpse, but the fully fleshed head of a living man, lolling in unconsciousness. Eril shoved the helmet into Kithri’s hands and ran his fingers along the man’s neck. The flesh felt warm and resilient under his touch. “I’ve found a pulse, slow but he’s alive.”

  Kithri sat back on her heels. “Where did he come from? How did he get from deep space to the middle of this tunnel? And, more to the point, what are we going to do with him?”

  “Take him back to Port Ludlow,” Eril said. “He seems stable enough to move. He’s breathing regularly and his pulse is steady. Do we have room for him in the hold?”

  Kithri considered for a moment. “We’ve more than half a load of jaydium, but if we leave the sealing equipment here, we can make it. It’ll be a tight fit.”

  “Don’t worry. Our friend here is in no position to object.”

  Kithri insisted on reorganizing Brushwacker’s hold by herself. She managed to create a space large enough for the spaceman. Together they lifted him in and strapped him in place.

  As they flew back through the tunnel maze at duo speed, Eril marvelled again at the sensitivity of Kithri’s handling of the tiny ship. By all the powers of luck and space, he wasn’t wrong in what a great team they’d make! Look at the way they’d gone into action together to detach the spaceman’s helmet. She might be impulsive, but that was no crime. So was he. And to fly duo with her, not down some cramped jaydium tunnel in a patched-up scrubjet, but through the starfields in a proper ship...

  They burst from the tunnel into solar brightness. Kithri cried aloud and dropped them jarringly out of duo.

  The pain of Eril’s watering eyes blanketed a fleeting moment of erotic backlash. He squinted reflexively. The quality of the light was too vivid, as if somehow cleansed of the omnipresent dust. He leaned forward and looked down over Kithri’s shoulder.

  No barren plain lay at the foot of the Manitous, no endless expanse of rock and drought-tortured scrub. No curling plumes of dust where trails had carved through the fragile crust.

  Forest.

  Lush, exuberant green stretched as far as his eyes could follow. Shade upon shade of it filled the bowl of the Plain and spilled on to the sheer sides of the mountains. Trees massed so close and dense they seemed to be a single growth.

  “Eril...”

  “I see it,” he said in the same hushed tone. “I see it. But I don’t believe it.”

  Chapter 6

  “What’s happened?” Kithri gasped. “Where the bloody hell are we?”

  Eril didn’t answer. For the moment, he had no ready answers. Adrenalin thrilled through his veins, bringing his vision into sharp focus — every instrument on the scrubjet’s panel, every tone of green filling the endless Plain, every brilliant mote of sunlight.

  Silent they circled back and brought Brushwacker to a halt on the wide, wind-scoured ledge. In contrast to the debris-strewn entrance they’d flown into, here they found ample room here to land. Otherwise, the treeless purple-gray mountainside looked just like the one they’d left, but that was the only familiar feature of the landscape.

  Kithri yanked the door open and jumped out, Eril at her heels. “The Plain, the dust — it’s gone, all gone!” she cried. “Where — oh god, where did all those trees come from? Even the sky looks different, it’s...” Her voice trailed off into a whisper. “It’s so beautiful...”

  Eril had to agree with her. Standing there open-mouthed and momentarily speechless, he could see for hundreds of miles, clear to where the dazzling azure sky melted with the forest in a thin, hazy line. From this height, the expanse of green resembled a felt-topped gaming board. He’d seen forests before, on Terillium where he was born and the two worlds where he saw ground action, but compared to this one they were nothing but pale, manicured gardens. He imagined tigers prowling the depths, hunted by spear-wielding woodmen who guarded the ruins of once fabulous cities, the last remains of a race of galaxy-spanning telepathic tyrants...

  Argh! I must have seen too many bad tri-vids as a kid. But his nerves hummed with a familiar tingle and his confidence soared. If it wasn’t woodmen out there, it was something else...something wild and wonderful...just waiting for him...

  “Wh-where are we?” Kithri grabbed his sleeve. “We can’t be still on Stayman, can we? Then how did we — What the hell is going on?”

  Eril put one arm around her shoulders and grinned. “One colossal adventure.”

  She jerked away from him, scowling. “Be serious.”

  “I am serious!”

  “Then where are we?”

  “Looking at it logically, we must still be on Stayman,” Eril said. “No insult intended, but your little ‘jet isn’t exactly spaceworthy. For another thing, look out there and imagine this place without all the trees. You’ve got the mountains here,” he pointed, “the Plain out there, just the way it was before. Come nightfall, I’ll bet we even see the same constellations. So what d’you think, have we fallen down a one colossal time-travel hole, or what?”

  “It’s — That’s just not possible. All we did was fly down a tunnel and back out again, the same as always.” She still sounded confused, but less panic-stricken than a moment ago. “That spacer’s suit is so old... You think we’ve somehow gone back to his time?” She hugged her arms to her body and shivere
d. “No! Things like this just don’t happen!”

  He grabbed her elbow and pulled her towards the scrubjet. “C’mon, let’s take a closer look.”

  Kithri’s voice suddenly regained its usual edge. “Not a chance, fly-boy. I’ve got a half load of jaydium that’s decaying by the minute. Not to mention what we’re going to do with our friend in the suit.”

  Eril clambered into the scrubjet and folded himself into the co-pilot’s seat. Kithri might have a point about getting back, but he refused to worry. In five years of dog-fights and sabotage missions, he’d always found a way out of the tightest corners. Now he figured his luck hadn’t deserted him, it had presented him with a plum.

  He looked back at her and said, as reassuringly as he could, “Trust me, I’ll think of something. But later, after we’ve had a chance to look around. We can’t just turn around and go back, not with a whole new world waiting for us out there.” He added, seeing the stubborn set of her chin, “You can have my half of the haul, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  The corners of Kithri’s mouth twitched in something that might have been a smile. It was more than Eril expected. She climbed into the pilot’s seat. “You owe me.”

  “I got you off Stayman, didn’t I?”

  She laughed, a little nervously. Activating shipbrain’s automatic radio frequency search, she began their descent from the ledge. Eril, thinking of his woodmen, added infrared and motion scans. Neither of them were much surprised when the first sweep turned up nothing more than small birds and insects.

  As they passed below the treeline, the first hardy conifers multiplied into a dense, exuberant mass, their needles almost blue-black. Down a little further, bright green deciduous species infiltrated the evergreens. Eril could almost smell the profusion of scents through ‘Wacker’s air seals. He marveled at how many shades of green there were, more than he’d ever imagined possible.

  The forest canopy no longer presented an unbroken appearance. Here and there the flinty, leafless trunks stood vigil over blackened patches, encircled by vigorous younger growth. Sometimes the forest thinned around patches of brush and grass.