Outward Bound

by Juanita Coulson

  The fire was still raging inside Prototype II.

  The explosion had decelerated her and thrown her off vector, adding to the stresses the crew must be suffering. Brenna knew she would have to get there fast. Without conscious thought, she was reprogramming, her propulsion systems adjusting to fit. Retro thrusters fired and vernier thrusters altered her track, trying to match the hurt Prototype's radically distorted course and come alongside it.

  Sixty kilometers away, Hector Obregon held his position, hating it, but following the rules. Chase Two stands by. Chase One goes in to help until the emergency medical team can get there.

  A dissipating fireball, snuffing out in vacuum, boiled away from Prototype II. And in the middle of that holocaust Morgan and Rue Polk and Tumaini Beno were fighting for their lives.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Condition: Critical

  They had rehearsed this countless times, never expecting to need it. Never wanting to. But the training paid off. Brenna was part of the machine, moving on automatic.

  "Breakthrough Unlimited, FTL Station, we have a problem," Yuri said with deceptive calm. A tremble in the words betrayed him. "Internal fire and explosion aboard Prototype II. No faster-than-light jump made. Repeat: No FTL. We are en route to assist. Stand by, Med Staff..."

  George Li's slightly delayed signal was reaching them. It wasn't aimed at the Chase ships, however. "Coordinate, Breakthrough Unlimited Mars HQ. Impound and duplicate all incoming data at once. Full emergency schedule is now in effect. Pull all memories. Feed data directly. We will try to recover the spacecraft for examination..."

  Recover the wrecked spacecraft. Standard operating procedure in cases like this ...

  Failure!

  And far more important, what about the crew? Could they recover them?

  Three years ago, replaying, a living nightmare. Mariette, Kevin, and Third Pilot Cesare Loezzi. Primed for what they believed would be a successful faster-than-light jump, and then ... failure.

  There had been nothing to pick up then, no spacecraft worth salvaging, just mountains of recorded data to show where three good people had died with terrifying suddenness. They and their ship were debris, part of Sol's perpetually orbiting veil of galactic dust.

  Brenna was piling it on, risking collision in her frantic desire to get alongside the wounded Prototype.

  There had been no further communication since those last cries for help. Bio systems were getting through. So were internal recording data. They told a grim story. Safety systems faltering. Two-thirds of the power plant open to space. If anyone was alive, fee would have to be in the forward emergency sections, now sealed off, the readings said, though badly damaged.

  The emergency medical vehicle was moving in slowly. But the pre-test safety regulations put it badly out of position. The craft, simply lacked the capability of the Chase ships. Brenna cursed the penny-pinching that had put them in this bind. Her people on Prototype II needed help now! But it would be an hour, at least, before Dr. Helen Ives and her staffers would be close enough to do any good!

  As she drew near, Brenna saw with relief that Prototype II wasn't tumbling. None of them needed any additional problems during this rescue attempt!

  The fireball was gone now. Only gaseous residue hovered around the wreck's orbit. Maybe, Brenna hoped, with the fire out, the worst was over for Prototype II. Any moment, Morgan would come back on the com, cursing his failure, making plans for the next run-through.

  But the ominous communications silence continued.

  Brenna's screens were eyeballing the damage. Hull compression, Morgan had said. Bad. It showed. The once-sleek faster-than-light spacecraft looked as if a giant had kicked her, then scorched her in a star's heat. Sensors probed, checking Prototype II's integrity. Some air leakage, but she hadn't lost all her life-support yet. And the crew was wearing full suits as a safety precaution.

  Brenna brought Chase One in fifty meters to starboard. Radiation detectors complained, but the readings weren't fatal.

  She shut off the annoying sound. The lights continued nagging at her, anyway.

  "We're full-suited, too," Yuri said, pointing out the obvious. Like Brenna's, his deep concern for the other pilots overrode the rules. "We can take five hours at this radiation level."

  With fading hope, Brenna tried the com. "Prototype II? Do you read? This is Chase One. We are ready to launch emergency rescue sled."

  "N ... no." The protest was pathetically faint. Brenna punched gain to the top. At first she couldn't identify the hoarse whisper. Then she made out Tumaini's accent as he gasped, "Stay out. Fire ... radiation."

  "We see that. We're coming to help," Brenna replied stubbornly.

  Tumaini Beno coughed, a sound that dug knives into Brenna's lungs. "Don't come ... don't come aboard. Get a tow on us..."

  "Forget it! We'll pick up the damned ship later!"

  "Incoming," Yuri cut in. He fed the voice to Brenna's headphones.

  Dr. Helen Ives's distinctive pronunciation rattled, harsh with the surgeon's keyed-up emotion. "Chase One! We're getting the biomed readings. Don't wait on us. Repeat: Don't wait! We'll set up a rendezvous. Get them out of there and into Emergency Pod Carriers as fast as you can!"

  That was all the okay Brenna needed. She had intended to move ahead, but the doctor's urgings acted as a spur. Yuri was on the com, trying to get a further response out of Tumaini. "What about the others? Tumaini?" There was no answer. Brenna suspected the Rift pilot had fainted.

  "Let's go!"

  The Russian already had his safety webbing off and the compartment bulkhead open. He and Brenna pulled themselves aft to the equipment bay at flank speed. They bumped into each other at first, awkward in their haste, ignoring all the free-fall movement tricks they had known since they were kids. Then, without a word, Brenna and Yuri regained control. Years of training made them concentrate. They went on into the bay smoothly, acting in unison. Brenna started the air-lock cycling while Yuri unshipped the rescue sled. She hit the trigger too hard, momentarily sending herself spinning in the opposite direction. Brenna swore, steadying down expertly. Yuri hooked a Carrier to the tow bar. Brenna hated the spacesuit's gloves, though they were vital. The things made her clumsy. She forced the connectors of two more Emergency Pod Carriers onto the bar, then shoved off against the wall, sailing up over Yuri, steering herself with a hand on his shoulder. Brenna dropped into the forward sled seat and locked the safety strap, disengaging the tether that had held her to the equipment bay's guide rails.

  Yuri fired thrusters and they scooted out of the bay, heading to the other ship. "We're free of Chase, Hector," Brenna said, as much for the recorders as for her fellow pilot. Her own biomed readings, and Yuri's, including their exposure to residual radiation, would be showing on Chase Two's monitors. Hector and Shoje would be keeping an eye on them, in case they started getting into serious trouble during the rescue operation. Brenna knew her breathing and heart rates were elevated. How could they not be?

  Tension knotted her gut as they slowed and drew close to Prototype II. A blackened cavity loomed large in the sled's lights. Part of the metal near the graviton spin resonance power plant was peeled back, splitting both strong hulls. A comet's tail of junk danced around the rupture, orbiting with the wrecked ship. Smears left by smoke and fire stained the once-shiny ship.

  "Gear down," Yuri warned. He decelerated sooner than Brenna would have, but that was a wise precaution. They wouldn't do the injured any good if they piled up. Radiation counters were grumbling on the sled's small screens. Neither of them paid any attention to the alarms.

  Brenna fired the anchoring tether. They used the cable as a safety line and towed the Pod Carriers with them, making their way across the Prototype II.

  "Can't use the rear access," Brenna announced. She turned her head, letting her helmet's cameras record the extent of the disaster. Most of the drones they had sent out had been fried when the graviton drive blew. These shots and the long-range ones from the Cha
se ships would be the first post-disaster scenes George Li and the support team would receive. And all such data were essential if they were going to figure out what went wrong. "Generator blasted open both hulls. We're heading forward now."

  She and Yuri crept the length of the ship, laying out parasite lines from the anchor cable and setting self-riveting posts as they went along one hull. An ordinary ship would be studded with convenient cable holds and tie bars. Prototype II had none. She had been buttoned up for FTL flight. Robbed of power and wrecked, she could not even help her rescuers reach her forward air lock.

  Imagination? The hull seemed hot to the touch, even through Brenna's multilayered gloves and suiting. Readings said the internal fire was extinguished. Surely the outer skin wasn't that hot, not in vacuum and near absolute zero. Heat exchanges would leach out the energy fast.

  There was another kind of heat, though, unfelt, but a deadly threat.

  Time. Five lives at stake—hers and Yuri's and the three injured crewmen. They were racing against wounds and radiation-exposure limits.

  Automatic systems activated the lock hatch, but the mechanism resisted. Obviously it, too, had been damaged. Brenna murmured a prayer. After agonizing suspense, the thick seal finally opened. She and Yuri crowded into the air lock, dragging the deflated Pods with them. There was a heart-stopping moment when it appeared that the outer lock wouldn't close. If it didn't... Brenna and Yuri would be okay, safe inside their spacesuits. But without air-lock integrity they didn't dare open the inner door. They would kill their helpless friends by explosive decompression as the remaining ship's atmosphere rushed into space. It took twenty long seconds for the circuitry to do its job, another ten before the controls came on, feebly, telling them the air lock was tight once more.

  Yuri's expression was morose. "We have to make it in one trip—get them all out now."

  "Agreed. We can't rely on those doors," Brenna said. "We'll probably have to blow the damned things off."

  The inner lock, too, gave trouble. Once opened, it stayed that way. What was left of its readout panel flashed failed. More than ever, there were no options. Nothing at all keeping the crew from instant death.

  Pockets of smoke were sucked out into the air lock as that door opened. Brenna tried to wave the stuff away. It merely separated into smaller spherical clouds, obstructing her field of view. She and Yuri made their way through the shambles, swimming past junk and dirty mist.

  The three individual cockpits had ceased to exist. Dividing bulkheads had been blasted to pieces. Through the smoke clouds, Brenna saw the flight couches had been wrenched out of their moorings and twisted around the stanchions. The stress tests hadn't done that to the equipment! Power overloads had melted the panels and some of the circuitry, proof of tremendous heat feedback. Residue coated everything. The walls dripped. Whole sections of duraperm alloy had disintegrated in the thermal storm. If the fire had done that to plating, what had happened to the crew's protective spacesuits? Shattered monitors and broken fairings were embedded in the black excrescence on the walls.

  Brenna knew the specs. She gazed at the ruin, appalled, imagining the gees and the temperatures involved.

  Within the crumpled garbage that had been the cockpits were the three bodies. They drifted in free fall, now and then jerking spasmodically and moaning when particles of floating debris touched them. Their helmets, suiting, and gloves had been destroyed, as had the ship. The new and radical systems on board Prototype II had made hash of normal heat and impact-resistant materials. The protective gear had been a weapon turned against its wearers. Plexi and silicate were melted into skin, and the pilots' skins were sloughing off in hideous blackening patches. It was difficult to tell who was who at a quick, horrified glance—Morgan and Rue were as dark as Tumaini.

  Brenna and Yuri scissored their legs, moving expertly. They had been through somewhat similar crises in emergency mock-up training. Their first-aid training had to pay off now. They examined without touching, talking to the distant backup crew and to Dr. Helen Ives's med team, acting as their eyes. Yuri applied the biomed scan from the kit they had brought with them —the original sensors had been lost when the suits and helmets burned. According to those scans, Tumaini Beno was the least hurt of the three, and he was in critical condition.

  "Extreme caution," Dr. Ives warned. She was interpreting the data they were sending her, feeding back an expert opinion. "We'll be there as quick as we can ... have to get them some airways. Not you. Don't try it. Too risky. Get them into the Pods and out of there."

  "We copy, Dr. Ives. Will do." Brenna wondered if that was she, talking so coldly. She sounded like a robot! It was the only way to keep her personal emotions out of this. She couldn't acknowledge that the biggest form, so terribly burned, thrashing in agony, was Morgan; and the others, equally in pain, were good friends.

  She was two people. One was stricken with angry grief, fighting nausea and tears. The other person was functioning as part of a highly trained team and performing gruesome tasks.

  Vital signs very low on McKelvey and Polk. Slightly better on Beno. Indications of internal injuries and fractures. Severe fluid losses. Polk's pupils uneven. McKelvey's eyes too badly involved to check.

  Brenna and Yuri inflated the Carriers and blew away clinging smoke with negative pressure systems. They moved Tumaini first. Triage. He had the best chance. Free fall helped enormously. They paused until he had quit reacting to his pain and was momentarily quiescent, then guided the floating pilot into the expanding bubble. Stera-gel surrounded him, seeping through every rent in his suit and helmet, coating the seared flesh. Breathing apparatus provided more negative pressure around his face, waldo arms and tiny jets holding the thing in place without touching Beno. That was as much as Brenna and the Russian could do to help him. The surgeon would have to insert a better airway, if Tumaini survived until Dr. Ives reached him.

  Morgan was next. His large body and inertia gave them some trouble. Awful gargling sounds emerged from swollen lips. His entire face was a massive oozing blister, dotted with bits of fried plexi. As they gingerly steered his twisting form into a Pod Carrier, Brenna whispered, "It's us, Morgan. Take it easy. We'll get you out of here. Calm down..."

  How to tell a man who was suffering the tortures of the damned to "calm down" and make matters easier for his rescuers? Burns! Every human's worst fear!

  Rue gave them the least trouble of all. She was barely moving now, and Brenna knew that was not a good sign. The once-lovely blonde was hairless and cooked within her own hide, unresponsive even as they gently pushed her inside the third Pod.

  Tumaini was rousing, fighting his lifesaving prison. As Yuri strung the loaded Pods together, Brenna hovered beside Beno's carrier, talking through the Pod's intercom. "Tumaini? It's okay. We've got you. Relax. Going to tow you back to Chase One . .

  Distorted mumbling. "Bad ... bad ... fire. Can't get loose ... bulkhead's giving way ... overload! Have to ... have to get out! Morgan? Morgan, help! Rue!" His eyes focused on Brenna for a split second, faint recognition dawning. "Brenna ... ?" The breathing apparatus forced air over his burned skin around mouth and nose—necessary, but hurting him. Tumaini gasped and cried hoarsely. "Morgan ... Morgan got Rue out of that... oh, God! She hit the bulkhead so hard. Her neck ... I think ... he pulled me out, too..." The pitiful voice faltered, faded away in labored breathing.

  Shoje's paging frequency chirped in Brenna's headphones. "Data feed shut down on board, Brenna. The book says to locate and remove on-board recorder if possible..."

  The book. What they were supposed to do, in the event of the never-could-happen disaster. Mustn't lose the data. They had to find out what to correct, so that the next time...

  The next time!

  Brenna refused to give in to her bitter heartache. Time blurred. She was doing all the right things without conscious thought. She and Yuri sealed the Pods, putting the bubbles on self-contained life-support. That was necessary before they took their comrades out
to the sled, because they would have to blow the air-lock doors to get free of Prototype II. The outrush of released ship's atmosphere made the carriers bob, even though Brenna and Yuri had anchored them well before firing the door bolts. The stera-gel cushioned the wounded crew members, fortunately.

  They left beacons on the battered hulk, homing signals for the salvage crew that would be coming out to get her.

  No way for a proud lady to end her voyage to the stars...

  Carefully, Brenna and Yuri made their way over to Chase One, Yuri handling the sled while Brenna floated on a tether and kept the three Carriers from jouncing too much in action-reaction movements. Once they were inside the equipment bay, they tied the Carriers fast. Yuri hurried forward, taking the controls. Their computer-calculated rendezvous point with Dr. Ives's med team was on the boards, but no pilot quite trusted the programs to do the job as well as a human could. Brenna felt the thrusters firing, altering their vector once again. Hector and Shoje would be following them, leaving Prototype II behind and running escort for Chase One, just in case something else went wrong while they were on their way to meet Dr. Ives.

  "Slow and steady," Brenna cautioned everyone. Not needed. They were all very much aware that acceleration stress might add to the victims' pain and detract from their chances for life. Yuri and Hector built the Chase ships' speed with skill.

  At this closing range, communications lag was minimal. Dr. Ives was hurrying to meet them, her medical announcements preceding her. "Brenna? We've got the latest biomed data you fed us. Rough. Not good. But you know that. Once my team's aboard Chase One, set vector for Mars orbit, the Wyoma Lee Foix Space Hospital. Do not head for FTL Station. We can't begin to treat them there. We simply haven't enough equipment."

  Brenna was badly shaken. FTL Station had a modern sickbay, one of the best available. But now Helen Ives was saying it wasn't good enough, not for Morgan, Tumaini, and Rue. Mars was far away. Too far? Could Morgan and the others hang on till Chase One reached the W.L.F. Space Hospital orbiting the red planet?