by Victor Koman
The lessons and tests he had received over the last three weeks surprised him. He knew far more than the calculus of his youth. And every unlearned memory came to him at just the moment he needed it. What other bits of Jord Baker, he wondered, lurked inside his head, dormant for now?
The steady, machinelike rhythm of the equipment soothed Virgil by blanking out other sounds: the whisk of elevator doors, the rustle of clothing and scrape of shoes of the people who walked through the lobby, the subsonic rumble of the wind-compensating pendulum near the top floor.
As he built up his body, his mind grew in strange and unan
ticipated ways. Quietly. Unnoticed even by Virgil. His surface thoughts, though clearer, were as mad as ever.
Pilot a spaceship? I’d be a man in a can, really. Just put in the coordinates they give me and punch one button. And if I put in the wrong coordinates, I appear in something solid maybe, and kapow! Like an atom bomb. He smiled.
“It’s today, Virgil.”He turned. Delia Trine stood in the door of the access shaft.
Death Angel’s hair still tries to strangle her. Lovely Death Angel, I know you work for Nightsheet…
“The test?” he said. “I’m ready?”
“As ready as you’ll ever be.”
She’s right. The roar that clouds my mind fades with every moment. I crack all ciphers I hear. I’ve almost cracked Death Angel’s code, too.
“All right.” He wiped a handful of hair from his eyes. “Big question: why did you pick me? Out of all the billions in the solar system, why choose someone who’s been locked up for over a decade? You don’t do this every day. I know what you had to do to Baker’s body to get the RNA after he killed himself. The fall must have mashed him up a bit, but you had to mince him into strawberry jam to get that stuff.”
Delia looked at him, considering. “Let’s go.”
The lift descended. “Jord was mentally well-balanced,” she told him. “Cool, level-headed, not the sort to panic under any circumstance. When a man most people would call normal suddenly decides to kill himself after testing the Valliardi Transfer, something’s wrong-and not with Jord. We picked you because your psychological profile is the opposite of Jord’s. You behave in an unstable manner, are prone to wild mood swings, and are violent in a narrowly specific way. You’ve tried to commit suicide several times but never succeeded for some reason. Our psychologists suggested that you may survive long enough to give us some idea of what’s wrong with the device.
Do you have any memory of what happened on Jord’s flight?”
Virgil leaned against the rear of the lift. “No. All I feel are snatches of images that are not part of my own memory. Aircraft and spacecraft, mostly. Views from on high.” He stared with an eerie fixedness at Delia. “And women.”
Her gaze broke away from his. She cleared her throat to say: “Our floor.” They stepped out into the ground level atrium. Port Velasco lay only a short flyer-hop south.
The Brennen Trust executive shuttle squatted like a tick on the personal spacecraft field a dozen kilometers away from the towering freightcraft. The stubby forty-meter rocket pointed straight up in liftoff position awaiting the pair’s arrival.
Kinney wore the Brennen trademark gray jumpsuit with maroon test-pilot’s piping. Trine wore gray with executive-white piping, her hair wrapped for freefall in a matching gray-and-white turban.
He hesitated at the entrance hatch.
“What’s wrong?” Delia asked.
“I’ve never gone orbital before.”
She placed a gentle hand against his back. “It’s less scary than a flyer. Come on.”
He stepped over the threshold. The flight deck contained plush sudahyde acceleration couches arranged in a circle, feet toward the central structural column, heads under windows in the tapering nose cone. I have no memory of this, yet I know that the pilots sit in that pie-wedge section to the left and that the safest place to sit is the seat next to the hatch. Baker-ghost in my head-are you watching?
A portly man in gray and umber reclined in the first couch. Kinney stood at his feet and gazed at him.
“What’re you staring at?” the man asked.
“You’re in my seat,” Kinney said in an odd voice.
“Says who?”
Kinney’s eyes widened into a mad stare. “Says God.”
“Virgil”-Delia tried to direct him away-“any seat will do.”
“Not on a doomed flight,” he said, gazing with unblinking intensity at the man.
Behind him, Trine made dismissing motions for the passenger to see. What he saw and noted was her white piping. Muttering about “cush-pampered test-pilot blowheads,” he rolled off the couch and made his way to the far side of the ship where the pilots’ cabin and central column blocked the view.
Kinney reclined on the couch, the upholstery still warm from the other man’s body.
Why did you want this seat, Baker? Are you waking up?
Delia strapped into the seat beside him. She stared at him, hoping not to appear as if she was staring.
Five more people boarded shortly before blastoff. Virgil eyed each one with severe scrutiny, as if he were in judgment of their lives.
Candycane walks in hunched over from the low ceiling, his red-white jumpsuit rumpled and twisted, his eyes goggling at me. He sits like a crumpled bag next to Gooseflesh, who’s all prickle-hair nervous at the prospect of rocket flight. Or maybe at sitting near me. Why are they watching me while trying to avoid watching?
Virgil grinned strangely during the shaking at engine ignition and the sudden pressure of blastoff. His grin became a wolfish grimace at the period of maximum dynamic pressure.
Crush me, giants, he thought while the world thundered around him. Try to squeeze me into nothing. I shall break free.
Suddenly, he did.
The engines cut off and he gazed out of the viewing port at star-riddled blackness.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot announced over the intercom, “we’ve broken the law of gravity again and are in orbit.”
Trine smiled at the pilot’s superstitious phrase, a saying that went back more than a century to a time when launching a spaceship without Fetter permission was an actual crime. She glanced over at Kinney. He stared with wide eyes at the planet’s surface rotating into view. The reds, browns, and deep greens of AfricaLand marched past with silent grace. The verdant checkerboard and circles that marked the Sahara Cooperative drifted next into view.
Virgil drank in the broad vista through the tiny polycarbonate window for long moments until a buzzer announced their arrival at the Texas Spaceways terminal.
“What the hell is this?”
Virgil floated in the staging area dressed in a skintight pressure suit. The outer radiation/meteor armor of loose-fitting, overlapping lead and Kevlar plates made him look like an ancient knight-from the neck down, at least. His head craned around the interior of a tough plastic sphere coated with gold mined from the Belt asteroid lodes.
Delia, identically attired, pulled along the hand rails to float at his side. Neither could actually see the other’s face behind the reflective golden globes. Inside their helmets, though, tiny fiberoptic vids sent a view of their faces to each other, which were then superimposed on their head-up displays to look as if their faces were visible. The HUDs projected all manner of information, most of which did not concern Virgil, who only alternated between observing Delia and the Earth.
“The trip to the experimental ship has to be made by taxi,” she explained.
The term “taxi” implied a level of luxury not offered by the minuscule spacecraft at which Kinney stared. A taxi, at least, had such amenities as doors and windows. The vehicle they faced in the docking bay was not much more than tanks of hydrogen and oxygen with seats in tandem down the center of mass.
Virgil strapped in between the pilot and Delia. He noted that the pilot’s armor was twice the thickness of theirs.
The pilot’s voice rumbled gruffly in
their headphones. “Sit back, strap down, shut up, and hang on.”
The docking bay doors slid aside. With a roar that was felt rather than heard, the taxi kicked powerfully forward out of the Texas Spaceways terminal into the blinding glare of a sunny low-Earth-orbit noon.
Kinney squinted. The pilot rotated the taxi so that the dazzling sun was beneath their feet, blocked by the spacecraft. The Earth overhead, though, bathed them with a reflected glow that lit up the taxi with a diffuse illumination; it belied the harsh division between light and darkness in space. He could see every detail of his space suit, every scratch on the back of the pilot’s seat, every inspection note chalked on the tanks and engine.
The Earth hung five hundred kilometers over their heads for long minutes, then shifted suddenly to their side as the pilot rolled to align them with the attitude of the test ship.
It was unbelievably small. Virgil knew that it was only ten meters long and five wide, but it seemed like a toy, only slightly larger than a family flyer.
They want me to go to Saturn in that! Kinney suppressed a shudder. Death Angel serves Nightsheet well. This will kill me for sure. But I’ve got a secret. He fingered the crumpled piece of paper jammed in the third finger of his right glove and smiled. The blues and whites of Earth glittered and reflected off the polished body of the stubby, wedge-shaped device.
“Not much to it, is there?” Virgil’s voice had a raspy, breathy sound over the ’comm.
Delia reached forward to pat him on the shoulder. “It’s not actually a spaceship; it’s a dimension ship. It has vernier rockets and emergency thrusters, but no main engines. It’s really just a needle that finds where two pieces of universe fabric touch and pushes itself through.”
The pilot tapped at the braking rockets, shoving them forward against their harnesses. They stopped, motionless relative to the test ship. Texas Spaceways’ terminal shone unevenly about a hundred kilometers away.
“Where are the camera crews?” Virgil asked. “The dignitaries?”
Trine shrugged and fumbled with the restraint harness. “Nobody knows except us three and the monitor team at Brennen Orbital.” She reached forward to undo Kinney’s.
“How can you keep a spaceship secret?” he asked.
The taxi pilot laughed in the newcomer’s ear. “It’s both crowded and empty out here. Lots of people coming and going tend to make individuals anonymous. Lots of open space to lose yourself in. With every piece of orbital junk down to the size of a pea being tracked, no one has the time to query the comings and goings of every ship. Act innocent, play dumb, and everybody else is working too hard to notice you. Up here, you stay busy watching your step with Nature. It’s a long drop back to the ground.”
Kinney looked to his left, toward Earth, and suddenly felt extremely dizzy.
With the aid of Delia and the taxi pilot, Virgil climbed inside the tight, cramped compartment and strapped into position. Delia clamped down the hatch, sealing it from the outside. Circuits completed by the lockdown, the ship came to life. A small scrim before him glowed. The image of Trine appeared in a corner of the screen. Earthlight washed out her left side while reflected light illuminated her right. The vid’s computer balanced the image quickly.
“Straight, Virgil,” Trine said. “I’ll be heading over to Brennen Orbital now. They’re uploading the computer and you should be ready for transfer by the time I-oof!”
The taxi kicked into motion and whisked past the test ship, receding orbitward until its engine became a tiny star that drifted amid the other harsh, bright points of light barely visible in the earthglow.
“Bye,” Kinney said. Air hissed slowly in as the cabin pressurized. Kinney fumbled with his right glove to remove it, dragging the piece of paper out.
“Something wrong with your hand?” Delia asked.
Her eyes are turned downward to watch me on her HUD. It looks as if she’s gazing right at my hands.
“Just nervous.” Got it. He palmed the paper and held it tightly. They’ll be watching me all the while I’m here, Death Angel and Master Snoop. Any attempt to change the coordinates and I’d be cut off at once. Except that when I’m out in Saturn’s orbit and it’s over an hour before they know I’ve reappeared-relative to their snailpace Einstein eyes-I’ll be safe. Free of their mind control for an hour while my laser signal slowpokes through space to let them know I’ve arrived. If I take only a minute or two, though, to input new coordinates, I could beam the laser and transfer. An hour or so later, they receive the transmission, followed shortly by me.
Virgil’s smile transformed into a feral grin. No time for me to get there, none to come back, which will take an hour of their time each way. I’ll be totally out of their control. I could race my laser signal back and almost win. Come in an explosive second, at least. They’ll get a laser message in teleport-plus-two hours-their time-saying that I made it to Saturn. A few moments later they’ll learn that DuoLab has blown up in a blinding fireball. Master Snoop wiped out once and for all. He gently rolled his middle finger against the note in his palm. That was the hard part, to choose between Master Snoop and Nightsheet. You knew where Master Snoop was, but Death Angel was only a clue to Nightsheet’s whereabouts. And besides, Master Snoop never let me go free.
That’s her code! Part of it, at least. I’m helping Nightsheet destroy Master Snoop. Maybe then he won’t take me. Stupid- he’s a winner, takes all. Even Death Angel, someday.
“Virgil,” Delia said. “I’m about to dock with Brennen Orbital. I’ll just listen and let flight control take over.”
Her image moved to a small segment of the ship’s viewscrim, superimposed in the corner of the undistorted image of a dark-skinned, dark-haired man.
“Good morning,” he said. “This is flight control. Prepare for transfer. All systems nominal, transit time approximately two hours, twenty-seven minutes. Following simulator procedures, engage checklist alpha-”
Virgil stared down at the tiny image of Delia. His face turned grim. “Goodbye, Death Angel.”
Before she could react, he pressed the glowing TRANSFER button.
The Valliardi Transfer was supposed to be instantaneous. It took only the first instant for Virgil to realize that it would last an eternity.
The tiny space in which he sat seemed to contract even more. A familiar terror gripped him. He had been through this before.
The roar! his mind screamed. It’s returning!
All other sounds vanished, consumed by the drone in his mind. Time and space tornadoed into a swirling funnel of black madness. I’m dying again, he thought, seeing his body from a million different perspectives all at once. His entire being was visible from the godlike vantage of higher dimensions.
My legs! Hands! Everything numb, unmoving. I can’t hear myself scream. Can’t breathe. The dead husk lays immobile before me. Nightsheet, you fooled me. Tricked me with treats of murder and revenge. Blackness closes in, bulkheads hyperbollix inward and outward. My eyes! They no longer see, yet I watch and watch and watch.
Time suspended its forward motion. All of space unfolded before him, the black and bejeweled petals of infinity opening like the most seductive woman.
The Universe rolls into a corridor: impossible hues of black on black. Can’t breath.
A sensation of unbelievable acceleration overcame him. His mind swam. Hear my blood not flowing, feel my heart not beating. The corridor stretches and I race through it. I’ve never gone this far before! They’ve always pulled me out. Out of the snow, out of the rocks, out of the water, the glass, the brick and pavement, out of the crushed steel and burning plastic. No one to pull me out now. Death Angel, you seduced me too well.
Still the dizzying speed pressed against something that was not his body, yet was somehow intimately part of him. Visions roiled past him, images horrific and beautiful; his mind surrendered to their power.
At the end of the corridor-Jen! Nightsheet took you and made you an agent; now you wear his deathly white robes. No
, I won’t be calm. My death will never come calmly, Jen. Your death guaranteed that.
The vision said nothing, yet Virgil replied voicelessly.
Yes, I know this soothing, this roaring silence at the end. I’m soothed, but I don’t want to go. I want to join you, but I know that I can’t. Not the ways I’ve used before. We can never be together that way. I’ve seen the corridor branch away from you every time I tried my own way. This time, though-something is different about this time. No rift in the tunnel. I can reach out this time, Jen, and almost… almost…
NO!
A broad band of yellow-white stretched before him, a royal arch bigger than Earth. Below it, Saturn shone gibbous in the weak sunlight. It drifted away from him ever so slowly. As predicted, he had retained the intrinsic velocity and direction of his Earth orbit, moving tangentially to the point from which he had transferred. Saturn’s mass now acted upon the tiny spacecraft, influencing its motion through space. The thrusters switched on, compensating for the short period he would be near Saturn, maintaining the ship’s original vector so that its point of return would not endanger the crowded space around Earth.
Virgil Grissom Kinney sat very still, breathing shallowly.
Jenine was the only word that passed through his stunned mental web.
JenineJenineJenineJenineJenineJenineJenineJenine.
He gazed at Saturn. So that’s it, a thought finally broke through. That is the true death. The deaths that I chose before always split me away from Jenine. I came back because I could never reach her. I can reach her now.
Memories of another transfer suddenly surfaced as if they had always been part of him. Jord Baker couldn’t endure being wrenched back to the universe. He couldn’t abandon the ecstasy of death. I can. I’ve had to do it so many times before.
Jen. I can be with you now. Touch you for at least an instant.
