Firmament: Radialloy

by J. Grace Pennington

  Without losing his composure, Guilders pried the pilot’s arm from his neck. “I’m thankful to say you’re right.”

  I took pity on the older man. “Crash, hadn’t you better go say hello to Almira?”

  “Whoa, not so fast.” Standing up, Crash faced the Captain with a business look on his face. “What’s your heading, and why are you going through uncharted sectors?”

  “Alpha fifty-four-thirty-three. We had some apparent reactions to our probes there, so we’re on our way to have a look. This is the shortest route, and you know the owner doesn’t like to be kept waiting. We’re already having trouble with one of the smaller thrusters.”

  “Remind me, this is the hundredth time you’ve had so-called ‘reactions’?”

  I was afraid the Captain might launch into a long discussion on the subject of the probability of life on other planets, but he only laughed good-naturedly and said, “Only the twenty-third, Mr. Crash, and don’t be the skeptic, I have enough of that with your uncle.”

  “I am my uncle’s nephew, Captain.”

  “Forgive me, I didn’t know. Spare me the debate; I’ve had my fill for today.”

  “You talked to Uncle about it?”

  “You might say he talked to me about it.”

  “I thought as much.” Crash winked at me again. “One of these days, you’ll give up, and you’ll have to admit we’re right.”

  The Captain would have retaliated if it weren’t for the interruption of the science exec at that moment. “Obstruction ahead, Captain.”

  “Element scan, Mr. Whales.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Propulsion 10, Mr. Guilders.”

  “Adjusting to IPP 10, sir.”

  “We’ll discuss this later, Mr. Crash,” the Captain took the time to say, and then turned back to the fore. “Mr. Guilders, prepare to maneuver around the object.”

  Guilders switched control from navigation to the helm, and I relaxed somewhat. Navigation was not my favorite task.

  “We’re still out of range of the comm towers?” the Captain asked.

  “Yes sir. We won’t be in range again for another...” Mr. Yanendale checked his computer. “Five sectors.”

  Five sectors. That was somewhere around 5000 light years. A long time to go without being able to communicate with Earth or any distant ships.

  “Andi, no records for this area in the database?”

  I leaned forward and scanned the records upon which navigation depended. “No sir, we just passed the last officially charted sector in this direction.”

  The Captain leaned back in his chair and muttered an oath. “We should have gotten records from the Comet III before we went out of range.”

  “Should we turn back, sir?” Guilders asked.

  “No. Let’s see just what it is first.”

  Crash stepped to the Captain’s side and said, “Request permission to operate the helm, sir.”

  I groaned inwardly. Not again. Glancing at Guilders, I watched in vain for a change of expression.

  The Captain seemed to hesitate, but finally said, “Mr. Guilders is doing a sufficient job, Mr. Crash. I don’t see the need...”

  “But I do. If we’re approaching a nebula or an asteroid belt, you’re going to need someone with experience.”

  “Mr. Crash, our helmsman has had ample experience.”

  “But not in this area. If I am correct, sir, the Surveyor has never ventured beyond sector forty-eight-ten in this direction.”

  “You are correct; nevertheless, I do not see the need to change helm control at this time.”

  “But Captain...”

  “Mr. Crash, I believe the answer I gave you was no.” The Captain raised his voice in irritation. “If that is not sufficiently clear...”

  “Four minutes to impact,” came the science exec’s voice. “Instruments aren’t finished registering.”

  “Slow to propulsion five.”

  “Aye sir.”

  “Power up the navicomputer, Andi, and plot a course to the edge of this sector.”

  “Yes sir.” I sat up and began to follow his command. The navicomputer always took some time to compute a safe course, so I was surprised when, moments after I’d told it to begin plotting, it beeped at me.

  I read the error message from the panel aloud. “Error, computation impossible. Cluster approaching, mark 104.57.”

  The Captain frowned. “Cluster?”

  “Confirmed,” spoke up Mr. Whales. “Space trash ahead, various elements.”

  “Anything dangerous?” the Captain asked.

  “No sir. But it’s large. At least ninety astronomical units.”

  “Ninety? Are you sure?”

  “Cluster visible,” announced Guilders, who hadn’t spoken during the discussion about helm control.

  I looked up and watched the massive field of trash approach. Asteroids mainly, at least that’s all I could pick out. We were still a few thousand kilometers away from it, and already it spanned the entire fore window.

  The Captain paused for half a second before ordering, “Propulsion to one, Mr. Guilders.”

  I watched as the rapid approach of the cluster slowed to a crawl, wondering what the Captain’s decision would be. If the cluster had been stable—an asteroid belt or a small system—then it would have only taken a few minutes, even seconds, to go around it at almost any warp factor. But the instability of the trash made it more difficult. Warp was dangerous, because one of the rocks might jump out in front of us, resulting in a crash that would probably be fatal. Using plasma propulsion, however, would take a couple of hours, and we were on a tighter schedule than usual, with one thruster out of commission. The owner of the Surveyor was not a particularly patient man, and I knew that Captain Trent’s punctuality was one thing that had kept him in command for so many years.

  I turned to look at his face as he pondered. He took so long that Guilders dared prompt, “Parabolic course, Captain?”

  No one except Guilders or the Doctor would have been allowed such a liberty. The Captain sighed. “I don’t suppose it’s safe to go through?”

  “No sir,” Guilders answered.

  “Trent,” Crash broke in, “I’ve gone through trash fields safely before.”

  There was a silence on the bridge for a few seconds. Then the Captain shook his head. “No. We’ll go around. IPP ten, Mr. Guilders, and keep a sharp eye. Andi, be ready to plot course to the next sector once we’re on the other side.”

  “Yes sir.” I’d already set the destination, so there was nothing more I could do until Guilders had worked his maneuvering magic.

  “Wait!”

  Crash again. I frowned, wondering at his persistence. Did he not trust Guilders? Or was he just trying to prove himself?

  “Mr. Crash...”

  “I can take us around at warp 8.”

  There was another momentary pause. The Captain stared. Guilders didn’t turn around, didn’t twitch an eyebrow—nothing.

  Crash was an exceptional pilot. No one could dispute that. But Guilders had years more experience. I bit my lip.

  “Stability level of the field, Mr. Whales?” the Captain requested.

  “Calculating... level two, sir.”

  Level two. That was extremely unstable.

  If he hesitated too long, it would be moot. He cleared his throat and finally said, “Very well, Mr. Crash.”

  I felt for Guilders as he stood up and stepped aside. His face showed no anger or frustration, but I knew he must be hurt by the decision. It wasn’t my place to remark, however, so I kept silent and turned my face towards the fore.

  Crash slid deftly into the chair and laid his hands on the controls with a smile. Taking the control column with one hand, he reached to adjust the warp slider to eight.

  I gripped the navigation panel and tensed. Crash was good, but—something didn’t feel right. Cocky as he was, there was some kind of subtext to his insistence on taking the helm that I couldn’t put my finger on. F
or some reason, he was out to prove himself.

  Smoothly, the ship accelerated, through the earlier warp levels and up to warp eight. The massive trash cluster moved to the starboard window, and I barely felt the motion as Crash maneuvered us around it.

  I realized I had been holding my breath and I let it out softly as we moved by the trash. Sometimes a rock whizzed so close by the window that I winced a bit, but the path ahead stayed clear.

  Twice, a stray asteroid flew too close to us, and the ship swung away, but we were moving so quickly that the danger was over almost before I’d noticed it. A thick silence and suspense hung over the bridge, and I stole a sidelong glance at Guilders. His eyes were focused on the fore window, and he didn’t move.

  “Halfway there,” Mr. Whales announced from the science station.

  “Good...” the Captain began, but at that moment a rock the size of the bridge swerved in front of us.

  I yelled “Look out!” as Crash pummeled controls, but it was too late, and the asteroid slammed into the Surveyor’s main body.

  IV

  The ship jolted violently, knocking everyone out of their seats. My head hit the back of my chair and I fell to the floor, landing with my shoulder to the ground. At first I wasn’t hurt, only shaken. Smoke came from somewhere on my right, and a confused mass of voices rose around me as everyone tried to get back to their stations. Above them all, the Captain’s steely voice rose, trying to keep everyone calm and organized. But before I had time to take any of this in, a searing pain shot through my right knee.

  It was unlike any pain I’d ever known. Burning, unbearable pain as if my kneecap were red hot. Agony exploded in my leg, causing me to scream and clutch at my knee with both hands. Just seconds after the first pain, another spasm wrenched through my leg and I crumpled, crying with the intense misery.

  In a second, Guilders was at my side. He laid his hand on my shoulder and tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t focus on what he was saying.

  The Doctor’s voice, more worried than I’d heard it in a long time, came from my wristcom, breaking through the fog of pain that enshrouded my mind. “Andi? Andi, where are you?”

  I couldn’t answer, as another spasm grabbed my knee. Just when I didn’t think I could stand the intensity of the pain another second, it died off suddenly, leaving a throbbing heat.

  Guilders grabbed my wrist and spoke into the com. “Gerard, something’s wrong with her.”

  “Guilders!” The Captain’s voice rose out of the confusion. “Take the helm.”

  At the same time a voice struggled from my wristcom. “I’ll be right there.”

  I heard shouting; Crash shouting, the Captain shouting back, but the words wouldn’t come into focus. With a hurried, soft touch on my shoulder, Guilders stood up and walked away. I opened my eyes and saw the Captain yank Crash from the helm and pull back the warp slider, and then step back to allow Guilders to work the panel.

  I closed my eyes again and began crying, still clutching my knee. I didn’t dare take my hands away—I was afraid the pain would come back. I felt like a little child.

  The commotion around me just sounded like a solid buzz, and I smelled smoke from somewhere on my right. I was still sobbing when a shaking hand was laid on my head.

  I looked up into Crash’s eyes. They held a mix of anger and fear, and his voice trembled as he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t let it come back,” I whimpered.

  He stood up and bent down to lift me. I was still gripping my knee and I shut my eyes tight again, but I felt his arms close around me. He lifted me, and then I had the sensation of being carried along. Confused voices kept up the chaos, and after a moment I heard a door slide open. A gentle hand was laid on my forehead.

  “Andi?”

  I opened my eyes to see the Doctor standing there, with such a lovingly concerned face it made me want to cry all over again.

  “Dad... it’s my knee...” I began. “Dad, I...”

  He grasped my hand just as everything turned to black.

  ………

  “That’s all?” were the first words I heard when I regained consciousness. They seemed far away and somehow vague, but I knew it was the Doctor’s voice. “And that sent you up here like the Devil was at your back?”

  “That was all I heard from him.” Crash’s voice. “It was Leeke’s departure that worried me. I think it’s connected somehow.”

  “But what would they want with an old country doctor?”

  “I don’t know. But he said to warn you.”

  There was a silence, and footsteps echoed through the room. I realized I’d been brought into my quarters, and was now lying on my bed. A hand rested on my shoulder. “How is she?”

  “She seems fine.” The Doctor’s voice held a hint of confusion. “Crash, you...”

  I opened my eyes and looked up at the two men. “Dad? What happened?” I felt normal now, although there was a slight numbness in my knee.

  Instead of answering, he asked me an abrupt question. “Andi, did you hit your knee when you fell?”

  “No sir. I fell on my shoulder. That knee wasn’t anywhere near the floor.” I was a little annoyed with myself for not knowing what the problem was. I thought the Doctor had taught me everything about medicine and the human body, but my experience on the bridge didn’t fit in with any kind of ailment or injury I’d ever heard of. I was well up on prosthetic complications, especially kneecap replacements, and I had never heard of anything remotely like that.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.” The Doctor’s voice was so gentle it almost scared me. And he hadn’t called me sweetheart since my sixteenth birthday.

  I looked at Crash, who was knitting his brows and chewing on his lower lip. “What was that all about?”

  He had the audacity to stare at me as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. “What was what all about?”

  “Your performance on the bridge.”

  He flushed, and looked angry. “I’ve taken the Alacrity through that exact cluster a dozen...”

  “Starships aren’t the same as speeders, Crash. You should have let Guilders alone.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  “Crash,” said the Doctor with firmness definite enough to silence even Crash. “Ask Almira to send down some soup.”

  “See you later, Andi.”

  As my cousin turned to leave the room, I called out, “I think you could at least apologize.”

  He stopped but didn’t turn around. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

  “I meant to Guilders.”

  Crash stiffened and hurried out.

  “All right, tell me what exactly happened up there.” The Doctor pulled a chair up next to where I lay.

  I recounted the whole story, from the greeting between Crash, the Captain, and Guilders, to the first appearance of the cluster, to the jolt that had brought on the strange, intense knee pains. The Doctor kept quiet throughout, but when I finished, he took my hand in his and said, “If it happens again, you have to page me right away. And be sure to tell me immediately if you discover any other symptoms.”

  “You have no idea what could have caused this?” I asked again. I knew he’d already said he didn’t know, but that just didn’t seem possible.

  “It was the leg with your implant, right?”

  I nodded.

  “But you’ve never felt anything there before?”

  “Maybe a couple little twinges, but nothing like this.”

  He tilted his head a little to one side. “I’m going to look up the symptom. But I’ve never encountered anything like this out of the blue.”

  I sighed. I hadn’t either. But then, I wasn’t as experienced as a real doctor, I’d just done some nursing and some assistant-level treatments.

  He let go of my hand. “If I find out anything, I promise that you’ll be the first to know.”

  Trying to smile, I prepared to get up, but he laid a restraining hand on my sho
ulder. “No, I want you to get some rest.”

  He started to stand, but I found I didn’t want him to leave. I rifled my brain for a topic to keep him there. “Dad?”

  He paused. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry about Doctor Holmes.”

  He smiled sadly, the professionalism melting away into an unusually empathetic attitude. “You remember him?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “He was a good man. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep up with him more in the last few years.”

  “How old were you when you started working for him?”

  He considered for an instant, fingering his chin before he answered. “Twenty-nine. Still just a kid.”

  I tried to imagine him at twenty-nine, but couldn’t get past his gray hair. I pictured a small version of him with glasses—I knew he used to wear glasses—showing up at Doctor Holmes’s door in sneakers and a tee-shirt. I giggled.

  He frowned at me. “What’s so funny about being twenty-nine?”

  “Nothing. I wonder what Doctor Holmes has to do with Crash coming back?”

  He licked his lips and looked at me as if trying to decide something. At last he said, “Crash is going to talk to me more later, but apparently he told Crash to warn me.”

  V

  This wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all. I sat up and stared at him, wide-eyed. “Warn you? About what?”

  Shaking his head, he stood up. “We don’t know. He called Crash from the hospital just before he died, and Crash says he didn’t sound lucid. But he said Crash had to warn me.”

  I hesitated, then laid back down. “Do you think—well, maybe he didn’t know what he was talking about? If he had some kind of dementia... what did he die of?”

  “To the second question, Crash asked his doctor, and they don’t know. It was some kind of insanity, but they could never pin down a source. He was dead less than a week after they’d brought him in. As for the first question—that’s what I said. I have more respect for Emmett—Doctor Holmes—than almost anybody else I know, but he could definitely have been demented.”

  He paused here, and looked at me for a second. Then he went on. “But Crash says that he got a little worried because right after Emmett told him that, some scientists left Earth and headed this way. Some scientists he doesn’t like.”