At the railhead Martinez was treated to a view of the giant drilling machine that bored the tunnel, and the other machines that cleared the rubble, braced the tunnel, and laid the track. The machines were sophisticated enough, and their operators experienced enough, that everyone seemed confident that their tunnel would meet the northbound crews, coming from the other side of the mountain, well ahead of schedule.
“So we can earn that big completion bonus from the Chee Company,” Ahmet grinned. “Isn’t that right, my lord?”
“Good for you,” Martinez said. He waited for a moment alone with Ahmet before he asked the next question.
“Wasn’t there a big delay a month or so ago? Can we stop there on our way back?”
Ahmet gave Martinez a wink. “Let me talk to the engine driver.”
They took a ride back on a small engine that was shuttling rails to the construction site, and the Lai-own driver was amenable to a brief delay. “Marker 593,” Ahmet told him, and the engine slowed and braked. Ahmet, an electric lantern in his hand, hopped off into the dark tunnel, and Martinez heard a splash.
“Careful, my lord,” Ahmet said. “It’s a bit damp here.”
Martinez lowered himself to the roadbed and followed the bobbing lantern. Upheaval of the mountain range had tipped the geologic strata nearly vertical here. “They called it a pluton, or a laccolith, or something like that,” Ahmet said. “Whatever it is, it’s damn hard. The drill couldn’t get through it. There it is.” He brandished the lantern.
A deep gray stripe lay along the strata, a river of mica flecks gleaming in the lantern like a river of stars. “That’s it?” Martinez asked. He could span the layer with his two arms. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a pluton.
“Yes, my lord. They had to do a redesign of the drill head.”
Couldn’t they blast it? Martinez bit back the question.
Of course they could have blasted, he thought; but explosives wouldn’t have added a hefty enough overcharge. Then Martinez remembered, during the party held in his honor at Rio Hondo, a conversation between Lords Pa and Mukerji. Something about the geologist’s report …
Suddenly Martinez wondered if Mukerji — the plunging gambler — had been the Chee Company official responsible for approving the cost overruns. He was president of the company, after all; very possibly he could approve such things.
But Mukerji had never been to Chee—the requests would have had to chase him all over the empire as he went off on his quests for funds. Mukerji had never been to Chee, and wouldn’t have been available to fill most spending requests.
Unless … unless Mukerji was part of the conspiracy. Receiving payments from the conspirators in order to relieve his gambling debts.
“Interesting,” Martinez said.
Ahmet’s eyes glittered in the lamplight, the admiration of one thief and confidence man for a job well and professionally done. “Fascinating,” he said, “isn’t it? Geology?”
The question was how to reveal to Eggfont the relationship between Lord Mince and Lady Belledrawers. If Eggfont was told by the valet Cadaver, that would tell Eggfont something about Cadaver that for the present should remain hidden. Yet how else could Eggfont find out in time for the Grand Ball … ?
A token, Severin thought. A mysterious token, which Eggfont would understand but which would be opaque to anyone else. But introduced by who?
Severin tapped Lady Liao’s ring on the arm of his couch in slow accompaniment to his thoughts. He had to admit that his invention was flagging. It was three hours past midnight in Surveyor’s official twenty-nine-hour day, and Severin was tired. He could call for a cup of coffee from the wardroom, he supposed, but that would mean waking up someone.
Perhaps Severin should put his puppet show aside and find something else to occupy his thoughts. Commanding the ship, for instance.
Surveyor’s control room featured the usual stations, for navigation, for controlling the engines, for communications, for the captain and the pilot and the sensor tech. Each station featured a couch balanced carefully in its acceleration cage, and each couch was equipped with a hinged control board that could lock down in front of the occupant.
At the moment the sensor station was occupied by a very bored Warrant Officer Second Class Chamcha, and the screen that occupied his desultory attention wasn’t tuned to the spectacular starscapes of Chee’s system, but to a game called Mindsprain, which he was losing through inattention. The sensor station had only been crewed because regulations required it, just as regulations required someone at the engine station, at the moment Lily Bhagwati, another at communications — Signaler Trainee Jaye Nkomo — and yet another, qualified to stand watches, in the captain’s couch—Severin himself.
Severin’s watch had finished the hour out of each watch for hard acceleration, and breakfast was still hours away. Severin’s attention drifted vaguely over the smiling pictures of Lord Go’s family that the captain had attached to the command board — the captain was lenient that way, and each station in the control room was decorated with personal items belonging to the various crew who served at that station. Pictures of family, notes from loved ones, paper flowers, jokes, poems, pictures of actors and singers and models, someone pretty to dream about when you were three months away from the nearest ring station.
Severin realized that he’d been staring for many minutes at Lord Go’s family, the smiling wife and waving children, proud parents, the pet dog, and the stuffed Torminel doll. He raised his head, shook it violently to clear his mind, and scanned the other stations. Nothing seemed to warrant his attention. No alarms sounded, no violent colors flashed on the displays.
He called up Warrant Officer Chamcha’s game onto his own display, saw the comprehensive rate at which Chamcha was losing, and sighed. Perhaps when Chamcha conceded, he’d challenge Chamcha to a game of hypertourney, or something. Anything to keep awake.
While waiting for Chamcha’s position to collapse he called up the navigation screen. Surveyor, heading straight from Wormhole One to Wormhole Two, was well outside of the normal trade routes that ended at Chee.
No navigational hazards threatened.
Severin looked at Chamcha. Hadn’t he lost yet?
Something flashed on the sensor screens, and Severin looked down at his display, just as the lights and the display itself went off, then on …
“Status check!” Severin shouted, as the lights dimmed, then flashed bright again.
Warrant Officer Lily Bhagwati gave a sudden galvanic leap on her acceleration couch. There were shrill panicky highlights in her voice, “Power spike on Main Bus One! Spike on Main Bus Two!”
Severin’s fingers flashed to his display, tried to get the ship’s system display onto his board.
The lights went off, then returned. The image on Severin’s displays twisted, slowed.
How very interesting, he thought distinctly.
“Breaker trip on Main Bus One!” Bhagwati said. “Main engine trip! Emergency power!”
Whatever was happening to the ship was happening too fast for Bhagwati’s reports to keep up. Automatic circuits were responding to protect themselves faster than the Terran crew could possibly act. Severin did catch the words “main engine trip” and had time to register their impact before the all-pervading rumble of the engine ceased, and he began to drift free of his couch.
He reached for his webbing to lash himself in and every light and every display in the room went dark, leaving him in pitch blackness save for the afterimage of his displays slowly fading from his retinas.
“Emergency Circuit One breaker trip!” Bhagwati shouted unnecessarily.
In the ensuing silence Severin heard the distant whisper of the ventilation slowly fade, like the last sigh of a dying man.
This never happens, he told himself.
And because it never happened, there were no standard procedures to follow. An absolutely cold startup of all ship systems, including the ones that had been mysteriously damaged?
> This also never happens, he thought.
“Everyone stay in your cages!” he said. “I don’t want you drifting around in the dark.”
He tapped Lady Liao’s ring on the arm of his couch while he tried to think what to do next. Little flickers of light, like fireflies, indicated here and there where battery-powered flashlights waited in their chargers. They weren’t intended for emergencies, since the emergency lighting wasn’t supposed to fail, but rather for getting light into odd corners of the displays that were undergoing repair.
The flickering lights were inviting. Severin thought he should probably get a flashlight.
“I’m going to get a light,” he said. “Everyone else stand by.”
His fingers released the webbing that he’d never quite fastened down. Then he unlocked his display and pushed it above his head, out of the way, a maneuver that also pushed him more deeply into his couch. Now free, he reached out, found one of the struts of his cage, and tugged gently till his head and torso floated free of the cage.
With careful movements, he jackknifed to pull his legs out of the cage, a movement that rolled the cage slightly. He straightened his body and his feet contacted the floor.
He couldn’t push off the floor to approach the flashlights: that would send him the wrong way. Instead he flung the acceleration cage with both hands, a movement that sent the cage spinning on all three axes while he drifted gently to the nearest wall. Severin reached out a hand and snagged the handle on the battery charger.
He became aware that he was breathing hard. Even this little exertion had taxed him.
There was a distant thump. Then another. Severin realized that someone outside the control room was pounding on the heavy shielded door, slowly and with great deliberation.
He released the flashlight from the charger that was designed to hold it at high gee. He turned it on and flashed it over the control room.
Three sets of eyes stared back at him. The others were awaiting his orders.
From outside the command room door, Severin began to hear the muffled sound of screams.
Screams could still be heard faintly through the door.
Severin shone his light on Chamcha long enough for the sensor operator to work his way out of his cage and push across the room toward another flashlight. Then he turned to the problem of the door. He pulled and locked down a handgrip installed for the purpose, then—floating on the end of the handgrip—opened an access panel, removed a light alloy crank, and inserted it into the door mechanism. With one hand on the grip, the flashlight stuck to the wall on an adhesive strip, and a foot braced against the bottom of an instrument panel, Severin began to crank the door open.
The screams had stopped. Severin didn’t know whether to be encouraged by that or not.
By the time Severin had cranked open the heavy door he was puffing and throwing off beads of sweat that floated like drops of molten gold in the light. The control room crew clustered around him, hanging by fingertips onto cage struts or instrument displays, and their lights were turned to the outside corridor. Severin heard a series of gasps, and the single cry, “Lord captain!”
Severin looked out and saw Lord Go hanging weightless in the flashlight beams. He was wearing turquoise satin pajamas. His skin had turned bright red, and his eyes were hidden amid scarlet swellings. Large blisters were forming on his face and hands. His expression was slack.
Burns, Severin thought. But he saw no fire and could smell no burning.
“My lord!” Severin called. With one hand still on the grip, he swung himself toward Lord Go, reached out, and took his captain’s hand. Another crew member, he saw, was hovering motionlessly a short distance down the corridor, and from the golden hair that floated in the absence of gravity he knew it was Lady Maxine Wellstone, the ship’s junior lieutenant.
Severin drew Lord Go toward him by the hand, and his stomach queased at the slippery way the captain’s flesh felt under his fingers — it felt unattached, as if he could peel the skin from Lord Go’s hand like taking off a glove. He tried to brake Lord Go as gently as he could and brought him to a motionless halt just inside the door.
“Bhagwati,” he said. “Tether the lord captain to an acceleration cage or something. Try not to touch him.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Nkomo, go find the doctor and bring her here.”
Surveyor’s doctor was no doctor at all, but a Pharmacist First Class. She would have to do.
“Very good, my lord,” Nkomo said. He made an agile dive into the corridor over Severin’s head, and Severin pushed off to Nkomo’s acceleration cage, where Lily Bhagwati was tethering Lord Go to a cage strut with her belt. Severin held himself a short distance from his captain’s face, and tried not to look too closely at the scalded, weeping flesh.
“My lord,” he said, “do you know what happened?”
Bloody eyes moved beneath the swollen lids. Lord Go sounded as if he were trying to talk past a tongue twice its normal size.
“Don’t … know,” he said.
“Was there a fire?”
“No … fire.” Lord Go gave a long sigh. “Hurts,” he said.
Severin bit his lip. “You’re in pain, my lord?”
“Hurts,” the captain said again.
“The doctor’s on his way.”
“Don’t know,” Lord Go said again, and then fell silent, lids falling on his dull eyes. His breathing was harsh. Severin looked at Bhagwati and saw his own anxiety mirrored in her wide brown eyes.
He had to get the ship working again.
“Right,” he said. “Bhagwati, Chamcha, check the main breakers. We’ve got to get power on.” He remembered the flash of blonde hair in the corridor outside. “I’m going to check on Lieutenant Wellstone.”
He pushed off the floor with his fingers and drifted into the corridor outside. He tried not to look at Wellstone’s burned, tortured face as he touched her neck in search of a pulse.
There was none. When he returned to the control room, he felt a tremor in his hands.
“My lord,” Chamcha said as Severin returned to the command cage. “My lord, it’s radiation.”
Severin’s heart turned over. He turned to Chamcha. “You were monitoring the sensors. Did you see the spectra?”
“I saw spikes, but I didn’t get a clear idea of what was happening before everything blew out.” Chamcha licked his lips. “But it’s got to be radiation, my lord, not a fire. It’s the only explanation.”
Severin felt a cold finger touch his heart. Chamcha was right.
There were several areas on the ship that had heavy radiation shielding. The control room, and also engine control. There were also hardened radiation shelters where the crew could hide in the event of a solar flare, but they were small and crowded, and unless there was a radiation alert the crew never slept there.
“We’ll look at the recordings once we get power,” Severin said. “Get busy with the breakers.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Radiation, Severin thought. But what kind? And from what? They were alone in space, in transit from one wormhole to another, bypassing the one inhabited planet in the system. There were no other planets nearby, no stations, no other ships.
The electronic failures could be explained in terms of a solar flare. The fast protons fired out of a solar flare had a deadly habit of actually traveling along electric field lines until they could find something to blow up. But a solar flare so massive that it could knock out all electric systems in a ship the size of Surveyor, plus seriously irradiate any un-shielded crew, and do it all in a very few seconds, had to be a solar flare larger than any recorded in history.
A solar flare so huge it might be ripping the atmosphere off Chee right now.
Such a flare, however, seemed very unlikely. Normally under a radiation alert the crew had plenty of time to get into their cramped shelters. Plus, Surveyor when under way generated an electric field from metallic strips planted along its resinous hull, a
field intended to help repel any high-energy charged particles coming their way.
Which left uncharged particles …
“My lord!” Bhagwati called. She’d pulled her head out of an access hatch, and her face was angry. “These breakers are slagged. Whatever hit them destroyed them before they could even trip. We can’t just reset them; they have to be replaced.”
“Get replacements, then,” Severin said.
Severin turned as he caught the gleam of a light dancing in the corridor outside. A grey-haired woman floated past the doorway, and reached out one hand to snag the doorsill in passing. The woman halted and drew her body into the control room, and Severin recognized Engineer First Class Mojtahed.
“Reporting, my lord,” Mojtahed said. She was a burly, middle-aged, pot-bellied woman with her hair trimmed short and a prominent mole on one cheek. Severin felt relief at the very sight of her: at least one of the two principal engineers had been in the shielded engine control station when Surveyor had been hit.
“What’s the situation?” Severin asked.
“A power spike tripped the engine,” Mojtahed said. “We’ve reset breakers, and replaced some others, and I’ve ordered the engine countdown started. We’re at something like twenty minutes.”
“You’ve got enough power for that?”
“Emergency batteries are good, so far.” She glanced around the darkened control room, and realized that Severin wasn’t in any position to be able to command the ship, and wouldn’t be for a while.
“We can stop the countdown at any point,” she said.
“Hold at one minute, then.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Severin looked at her. “How many were in engine control with you?”
A hard sadness settled onto her face. “Minimum engine crew on this watch, my lord. Two.”
That gave Severin at least seven people he knew of who had been in hardened areas of the ship when the radiation hit.
The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004 Page 101
