Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  What worried Jamie about this run was not so much the navigation as the ship-handling--and that was no knock on Hannah's admittedly limited skills as a pilot. The Sherlock-class ships might be constructed in such a way that the ships could be docked together nose to nose and flown that way, but that didn't mean they were intended to be flown that way. If they had been designed from the ground up to fly in tandem, Gunther's people wouldn't have felt the need to rig six reinforcing cables between the ships.

  But it went further than making the ships strong enough. The Sholto's jump generator was designed to transit one ship from star system to star system. It was asking a lot of the generator to handle an off-center mass twice that size. One thing they had going for them, oddly enough, was that the Sherlock-class ships were just about the smallest starships ever built by humans. Several of their components, including their jump generators, had originally been designed for much larger vehicles. Various other components were also more robust than might be expected, for similar reasons. But that didn't mean the integrated system was tuned, optimized, or fully rated for flying two ships instead of one. In theory, nothing ought to go wrong. But they weren't flying inside a theory.

  Hannah and Jamie rushed through the last-minute prep for the transit-jump, powering down every possible system on both ships and closing the hatches between them.

  Hannah had judged, and Jamie had agreed with her, that during the cruise phase of their flight, either the acceleration compensators would hold or they wouldn't. If they failed, and the interior of one or both ships were suddenly exposed to double-digit gees, it really wasn't going to matter if the hatches were open or shut--and keeping them shut and sealed would have slowed down their searches and investigations.

  But they weren't going to be doing any searching or investigating during the transit-jump, and the jump would be, by far, the part of the journey that put the greatest stress on the ships.

  Jamie drew the hatch-closing duty--and almost immediately ran into trouble. In order to pull shut the Adler's nose hatch, he had to brace his legs in the netting in the zero-gee section of tunnel between the two ships, then stick his body out into the topside end of the Adler's cabin, undog the hatch from the hold-open clamps that anchored it to the wall of the Adler's cabin, then retreat back into the tunnel, holding on to a handgrip on the hatch and pulling it along with him.

  The first time he tried the maneuver, the hatch refused to swing to, and instead bounced out of his hand. The hatch had caught on something hard. He let the hatch go and checked for obstructions. It was only then that he discovered that the stanchions holding the top of the rope ladder were on a set of short rails, about half a meter long, allowing them to slide back and forth between two positions.

  When slid to the end of the rails closest to the hatch, it was an easy straight-line climb up the ladder and into the hatch tunnel--but the ladder obstructed the outside edge of the hatch. When the stanchion holding the ladder was slid to the end of the rails closest to the wall of the cabin, there was plenty of clearance to close the hatch--but to get from the top of the ladder to the lip of the hatch would require an extremely awkward and dangerous backward lunge.

  Two knobs held the stanchion in place. Jamie loosened them, slid the stanchion into the outer stowed position, tightened them back down, closed and sealed the hatch manually and checked it carefully, then retreated down the tunnel, back into the Sholto. He had to perform some further gymnastics to reposition the stanchion of the Sholto's ladder, undog her topside hatch, and then close and seal it as well.

  Hannah, seated in the pilot's chair in the upper deck of the Sholto and busy with her own part of the prep for transit-jump, didn't notice Jamie's minor struggles until he was almost done. "Would that be any easier if I cut the internal gravity?" she asked, raising her voice so he could hear her. "I'm going to have to do it anyway."

  "Thanks, no," Jamie said as he wrestled with the hatch latches. "I don't do all that well in zero gee."

  "You still get a queasy stomach?" she asked, the amusement plain to hear in her voice.

  "No, I don't," Jamie said, stretching the truth just a trifle. "But I'm just more comfortable doing this kind of work with some weight under my feet. I can brace myself better."

  "Okay, fine."

  "Anyway," said Jamie as he pulled the hatch to, "that's just about got it. Closing up now."

  "Check that seal," Hannah said absently as she checked the status displays on the pilot's control panel.

  "Thanks, Mom," Jamie said as he checked the seal. "Don't know how I'd make it through the day without you reminding me to keep breathing."

  "Ha-ha," said Hannah. "Just for that, you can double-check them, and make sure we will keep breathing."

  "Okay, okay. Double-checking--and seal confirmed. We're good."

  "Then get down below and strap yourself in," said Hannah. "We're getting close to time--and the sequencer's going to be cutting lights and gravity in about three minutes."

  "That's making it a little too exciting," Jamie said. He triple-checked the seal and hurried down the ladder. He paused at the upper deck and reached out to the pilot's chair to give Hannah a quick pat on the arm. "Good luck," he said, then climbed the rest of the way down the ladder to the lower deck.

  "See you on the other side," Hannah said. "Hurry up now and get strapped into that flight chair."

  Jamie didn't need any more urging. He got off the ladder and into the acceleration couch that Gunther's crew had installed so hurriedly. He couldn't keep himself from glancing at the brightly colored self-destruct bomb they had installed at the same time--but it wasn't always best to dwell on such things. He strapped himself in, double-checked his belts, and let out his breath with a whoosh. "Here we go," he muttered to himself, before raising his voice and calling out to Hannah. "Secure and ready for transit-jump."

  "Stop kidding yourself," she called back. "No one's ever ready for a transit-jump. Stand by for ninety more seconds--mark--and we'll see what happens this time."

  Jamie, fidgeting in his acceleration chair, looked up toward Hannah on the flight deck. She had rotated the pilot's chair around so that she was in effect lying flat on her back, her spine parallel to the deck, her feet elevated and pointed toward the nose and the centerline of the ship, and her head right in and under the viewports. The position gave her the best forward view possible from the pilot's chair.

  From his angle, Jamie couldn't see much more than the back of her head, a bit of her chair, a small slice of the control panel, and a sliver of the view out the pilot's viewport. He could only see a small patch of stars and sky in the corner of the viewport. With the two ships docked together nose to nose, mostly what he could see was a section of the Adler's hull and one of the six reinforcing cables strung between the two ships.

  He felt as if he were in the bottom of a pit looking up. Hannah had done nearly all of the piloting on their previous missions, but they had flown on ships designed to carry two people. He had flown the transit-jumps in the copilot's seat on the flight deck, where he could see out the viewport, see the status displays and controls, and lend a hand if anything went wrong. Strapped into a jury-rigged acceleration couch on the lower deck, he was blind and helpless.

  Well, it wasn't as if Hannah was much more in the know, or even the least bit in control. The Bartholomew Sholto's automatic sequencer was running everything at this point anyway. Hannah wouldn't even want to risk a manual abort this deep into the jump sequence.

  "Throttle-down complete," Hannah announced. "Zero acceleration. Stand by for internal gravity system shutdown--now."

  Jamie felt his stomach do a sudden flip-flop. It wasn't zero gee itself that bothered him. It was the sudden shifts back and forth that scrambled his insides.

  "Life support shutdown--now. Interior lighting shutdown--now."

  The ventilation system sighed to a halt and the inside of Jamie's barrel suddenly turned black. The only light left was a faint glow from a few essential displays th
at would remain powered-up during the transit-jump and the ghostly pale image of part of the Adler's hull, now lit only by the distant stars. Hannah moved her head a bit to check one of the displays, and he saw her head as a jet-black silhouette in front of the viewport. "All nonessential systems now safely powered down," Hannah announced. "Transit-jump in twenty seconds. Fifteen. Ten. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Jump!"

  The universe turned flaring bloodred with light that blasted in through the viewport, illuminating every nook and cranny of the Sholto's interior in blinding bright crimson. Jamie covered his eyes and gritted his teeth, bracing himself for whatever else might happen. But nothing else did. Not so bad this time, he told himself. Just a little light show. As long as the light didn't leave them dazzled or blinded--and as long as there wasn't some other invisible, nastier sort of radiation along for the ride--they ought to be all right.

  There was nothing left to do but wait it out. It was almost impossible to predict how much subjective time a transit-jump would take, but usually it was no more than a few seconds, or a minute.

  It was only after about twenty seconds that Jamie sensed the vibration, the rhythmic shudder, that seemed to be coursing through the ship, fading out, and then reappearing, a little more powerful each time, each pulse coming faster and with greater intensity. What had begun as a barely perceptible background sensation built rapidly into something that seemed certain to shake the ship apart. The structure of the ship began to creak and moan. The interval between periods of vibration shrank until the shaking was nonstop. The noise was getting worse as well.

  "Hannah!" Jamie called out.

  "I have no idea!" Hannah yelled back, answering the question Jamie was about to ask.

  "Can you do anything?"

  "I don't dare try!" she shouted back. "Any change right now would probably just make it worse. All we can do is hang on!"

  Jamie resisted the temptation to ask how much longer. Hannah could have no better idea of that than he did.

  Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the lurid glare of bloodred light vanished, dropping him back into darkness, and the shaking ceased so suddenly and completely that it was as if a switch had been thrown.

  Jamie was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when the whole world abruptly lurched hard to the left and dropped into a violent spin. Jamie could see the stars streaking and whirling past that one little patch of black sky. Suddenly he was being spun and tumbled about violently enough to pull him half-out of his acceleration chair, held in place only by his restraint harness.

  They had gotten through the transit-jump. But the ship was out of control.

  TWELVE

  VACUUM UNDER PRESSURE

  The sky and the stars were whirling past them, spinning and gyrating wildly. Hannah blinked hard and tried to concentrate, forcing herself not to be affected by the mad tumbling whirl that was scrambling her inner ears.

  "What happened?" Jamie shouted from below and behind her.

  "Stand by!" Hannah called back in a tone that she sincerely hoped relayed the message shut up and let me work the problem. She was forced to wait and watch as the automatic sequencer brought the ship's systems back online. If the maneuvering system didn't get back online quickly, she wasn't sure she was going to be sufficiently alert and conscious enough to deal with the problem.

  Just as the controls powered up, Hannah found something else to worry about. The reinforcing cables she could see out the pilot's viewport were flexing, bouncing and twisting, stretching and recoiling.

  "Dammit!" Hannah cried out. "The cables are going! Hang on while I try to damp out this tumble. Attitude thrusters on!" The Sholto had no sophisticated automated tumble recovery system--and certainly not one that was up to autorecovery with the deadweight of the Adler strapped to the nose of the ship. Hannah was going to have to do it on manual. Somehow. One axis at a time. Kill the end-over-end pitch-down tumble first. She fired her stern Y-axis thrusters hard, at full force--and saw the number three cable snap in two right in front of her eyes, sending an echoing bang resounding through the hull--and, more disturbingly, she saw a plume of gas jetting out from somewhere beyond her field of vision. Whatever that was would have to wait. She had to get the ship out of its tumble before it tore itself apart.

  She gritted her teeth and kept the thrusters burning, even as she heard another almighty bang from somewhere belowdecks, and then, a half moment later, a terrifying loud thump and a prolonged scraping noise. Something had just broken loose and slammed into the Sholto's hull. She glanced at the strain meters and saw that cable six had dropped from off-scale high to zero. Too late now. She checked her rates and saw that the tumble was slowing, though not fast enough to suit her. She brought the tumble through pitch down to a rough first approximation of zero, then worked to kill the smaller Z-axis spin through yaw. It wasn't as bad as the tumble had been, but it was still a fast rotation. It took some time for the Z-axis thrusters to bring the rates down enough so that they weren't scary.

  That left her with the X-axis spin along the long axis of the combined ships. She didn't kill it at once. She had another job to do first.

  She had two broken cables out there, and both ends of each were no doubt flailing about wildly, likely to swing around and smash into the hulls of the ships or do other mischief in unpleasant and unpredictable ways the moment Hannah relit the engines. For the moment, the barrel roll might keep the broken cables safely at bay, thanks to the centripetal effect--unless there was some weird harmonic resonance in play that would keep them swinging and oscillating unless or until they smashed into something. She didn't dare take the time to power up the external cameras and do a visual inspection--precisely because a broken cable could smash into either ship at any moment.

  Furthermore, she couldn't keep even the uncertain protection of the spin going forever, and the broken cables would be a menace as long as they were attached to the ship. She had to get rid of them. And the cables were an all-or-nothing deal. She would have to jettison the two broken sets and the four unbroken cables all at the same time.

  A quick glance at the strain gauges convinced her that wouldn't be a bad idea. At least two of the surviving cables looked ready to snap themselves. There would be consequences--real and serious consequences--to dumping the cables, but Hannah saw that she had no other choice.

  She set up the jettison-cables command. She wanted to activate it the moment the command was ready, before she could have second thoughts. "Cable jettison!" she shouted, as if Jamie was going to be able do anything about it. No time for any chitchat. A display lit up, announcing COMMAND SEQUENCE READY, and she slammed her palm down on the button.

  Bang bang thud Bang bang thud and the four whole cables and two broken ones were cut loose from the Sholto and the Adler simultaneously.

  No need for the barrel roll anymore. After all the rest of it, killing their long-axis spin and their residual pitch and yaw seemed almost too easy. Hannah let out a deep sigh of relief and slumped backwards against her pilot's chair and called back to Jamie. "All right," she said. "We're secure. I think."

  There wasn't any answer for a moment, and she popped open enough of her restraint harness to let her twist around and look down at him. The autosequencer hadn't brought the main cabin lighting back on yet, and the lower deck was little more than murk and shadows. "Jamie?" she called out. "You still with me? Jamie?"

  "Oh, yeah," said a muffled voice. "Just about. I didn't want to answer before my stomach decided whether to hit the eject button. Ah, you'll be--mmphhm--glad to know it decided against. But it was a close vote."

  Hannah grinned and twisted back around to face her control panel and the half dozen warning lights that were blinking for her attention. "Special Agent Mendez, my friend--you don't know a thing in the world about how close things can get."

  She remembered the venting she had seen just after the cable snapped. They were going to have to check that next, before anything else happened. She released her harness the re
st of the way so she could get up close to the viewport and see more of her ship's exterior, and the Adler.

  What she saw proved that she hadn't known how close things could get, either. She immediately shut down the autosequencer before it restarted the environmental systems or the ship's internal gravity. They didn't need any more variables at the moment.

  The spaceside end of a broken cable was floating motionless outside the ship, about ten meters away from her face.

  The other end had smashed clean through the Adler's starboard viewport.

  Ten minutes later, with Jamie at her side, she had every external camera available pointed at the problem, but none of them told her much that she didn't already know. She had very carefully brought the Sholto's ventilation system back online while leaving the Adler in vacuum and left the grav systems on both ships shut down. The artificial-gravity fields were supposed to stay inside the hull, leaving the exterior of the ships unaffected, but the induced gee effect could leak outward at times, and both ships had been knocked around enough to detune any grav system. Until that hunk of cable was clear of both ships, she didn't want to try any experiments.

  "It's the Adler end of cable number six," she said quietly. "When the cable snapped, that half of it whipsawed somehow, and smashed right through the starboard panel of the Adler's viewport. A hole that size must have vented every millibar of pressure out of her cabin in twenty seconds. And no, there's no reason besides dumb luck that it wasn't the other end of the cable, or that it didn't smash through our viewport instead and leave us breathing vacuum."

  "The venting didn't cause that violent a tumble, did it?"

  "What? Oh, no, not at all. I'm sure all that atmosphere blowing out added to the tumble, but not by all that much. This"--she gestured at the cable smashed through the viewport--"was pretty much the last domino to fall. Nowhere near the first. The only noticeable transit-jump effect we got was a very mild red-lighting. Perfectly harmless. But what I can read from the autolog, we also ran up against a very slight pseudogravity field during the jump--not enough for us to feel, but enough to cause trouble. Not all that rare, but not common, either. The Sholto's jump generator could handle the jump effect pseudogee field, or the off-balance mass of the Adler, but not both at once. The interaction between the two induced just enough of a gravity flux to induce a tumble that built up during the jump, but that had no effect on us until we were dumped back into the normal universe. Probably the techs back home will be able to read our event logs, figure exactly what went wrong, and tweak and twiddle and tweedle the jump generators so it won't happen next time--but that doesn't do us much good. But, anyway, I figure we were already spinning in three directions inside the jump--but we just didn't feel it until we popped back out here."