by Jerry Oltion
"All right," he said, "if you need a statement, let's get started. It was a dark brown General Electric van, couple of years old, with Wyoming plates. Didn't see the number. It was definitely beefed up for vacuum, and the guy inside was wearing a spacesuit . . ."
2
It was a couple of hours later before they finally pulled up in front of the brew pub. They had gone home for a change of clothes after the cops were finished with them, and Trent had nearly said to hell with it and just stayed there, but Donna still wanted to go out, so here they were. You could tell where the pub was just by looking down the street. There were more cars parked in front of it than anywhere else along the five blocks of downtown Rock Springs. Even when the economy was going down the tubes—maybe especially then—people could always find a few extra dollars for a drink.
Apparently they could always find a few extra dollars for a gallon of gas, too. Trent scowled at all the gas-powered pickups and SUVs parked side-by-side in the wide diagonal slots that lined Main Street. Some of them were old, from back when that was the only form of fuel available and everybody thought the Arabs would keep selling it forever, but some of them were new, and those were the ones that particularly chapped Trent's ass. A person could maybe be excused for driving a gas-guzzler if that's all they could afford—and the used ones were definitely cheap if you didn't count the operating expense—but a new one cost just as much as a new electric, and it still burned a gallon of gas every ten or fifteen miles. There were a few fuel-efficient cars around—Volkswagens and Toyotas and the like that people restored for fun—but most of the people who liked those kind of cars also cared about the environment, so they generally converted them over to electric anyway.
Somebody in a flat-black Suburban was just leaving as Trent and Donna drove up. His exhaust pipe belched a blue cloud of smoke when he started up the engine, and the noise was like machine-gun fire. If he had a muffler at all, it was just a glass pack. He revved the engine a couple of times just to make sure everybody knew he was an obnoxious bastard as well as a selfish one.
"Must have a little teeny dick," Trent said as the guy backed out of his spot and roared away. "If the government wants to ban something, they ought to go for those damn things." Donna laughed. "What, little teeny dicks? I'd be for banning those."
"You know what I meant, woman." He poked her in the side, an easy move since she was sitting right next to him on the pickups bench seat.
She poked him right back. "Don't go calling me 'woman.'"
"What should I call you, then? 'Girl?' 'Sweetie?' Or how about 'honey bunny ducky downy sweetie chicken pie li'l everlovin' jelly bean?'"
"Chicken pie?" she asked dubiously.
"Hey, I'm quotin' literature here. Don't blame me if it don't make sense." He pulled into the vacant parking spot and the two of them climbed down to the pavement. Trent almost never locked his pickup, but this time he waited until Donna was right in front of it, then he clicked the remote. The sharp squeal of the alarm activating was almost as loud as her squeal of surprise.
"Beast!" she said.
"I'll take that as a compliment." He held out his arm and they strolled into the brew pub like royalty. The place was busy, but there were a few tables free in back. Their waitress sat them down next to one of the big stainless steel brew kettles that stood in a row down the middle of the pub. Trent picked up the beer menu and tried to remember which beer was closest to Budweiser. Most of the stuff they served here was way too thick and dark for his taste.
A bright yellow flyer fell out of the menu. It showed a picture of a stream running out of a forest, and the caption said, "The fishing is excellent, too." He flipped it over and saw the title: "Alpha Centauri, Land of Opportunity."
"Samizdat," Donna said.
"Gezundheit."
"I said 'samizdat,' dummy. That's what it is."
"I know." The Russian word sounded strange coming from a blonde Wyoming girl, but Trent supposed it was the the best term to describe the recruitment ads and political tracts that people kept passing around in defiance of the United States' ban on all things interstellar. The Russians had developed an entire industry around banned literature back when they were trying to get the truth out past the socialist stranglehold on the press. Trent was embarrassed to think that such a thing had come to the U.S., but the government pissed him off on such a regular basis anymore, it was hard to work up much of a lather over it.
"Let me see that," Donna said.
Trent slid the flyer across the table, glancing up to see if anybody was watching. He didn't suppose the people in the bar would rat on him or Donna, but it was a two-hundred-dollar fine if somebody did. Donna held it up to the light. "Looks pretty out there. We ought to go check it out."
"Here," Trent said, handing her a regular menu, but another flyer dropped out of that. She giggled at his obvious discomfort, but she took the menu and covered both Alpha Centauri flyers with it. "I'm serious," she said. "We're running out of money, and all the jobs are on other planets nowadays. We should at least go have a look."
"Yeah, I know we should." He looked at the beer menu again and decided to try the India Pale Ale. If the name meant anything, it shouldn't be one of the dark ones. That and a bacon cheeseburger might salvage the evening.
There was a sign over the archway that led to the bathrooms: Make Beer, Not Bombs. Trent agreed with that sentiment, even if it was ferny beer like what they served here. He agreed with Donna, too, that they should go look for a better place to live, but he wasn't ready to pack up and go just yet. For one thing, now that it was illegal, they couldn't simply take off for a weekend. The hyperdrive would take you away from anywhere, so long as you were jumping int6 vacuum, but it couldn't put you back onto the ground, or even into the atmosphere. You had to pop into orbit just above the atmosphere and fall the rest of the way under a parachute, which meant that the U.S. would blast your chute with its laser satellites before you even came close to the ground. That's what had happened to Trent and Donna the first time they tried it. It was an automated shot from the missile defense net, and they'd managed to jump back into space and call for help before they'd hit the ground, but rather than apologize and reprogram the lasersats to let parachutes pass, the government had instead made shooting at them official policy. That meant any trip a U.S. citizen took had to include a stopover in Canada on the way home, and it was getting harder to get back across the border. Trent had heard that you needed a visa nowadays even if you had a U.S. passport, and of course the government wasn't handing out visas to interstellar travellers. The waitress came by and took their order. Donna slipped one of the Alpha Centauri flyers into her menu when she gave it back, but she stuck the other one up between the salt and pepper shakers like a flag. "So when are we going to go?" she asked.
Free land! the flyer promised. Emigrate now.
"I don't know," Trent said. He wasn't just being evasive, either. He honestly didn't know, and there were a million reasons for his indecision, starling with the word "emigrate." He didn't like that word. It sounded funny, and not funny ha-ha. It made him think of people dressed in ragged clothes pulling carts full of chickens and pigs. It practically screamed "defeat." The construction industry might have tanked, and the country might be going to hell in a hand-basket, but Trent wasn't defeated.
"We've got a whole galaxy to choose from," Donna said. "Shouldn't we at least see if we can find someplace better than Rock Springs?"
Trent snorted. "Hell, we could probably find places better than Rock Springs a hundred miles up the road."
"I'm serious."
"All right." He drummed his fingers on the table, wishing the waitress would get back with their beer, but she was nowhere in sight, so he said, "I certainly don't have much love for the government, but this is still my country. And this is my town. I grew up here. Everybody I know is here. Half of 'em may be right-wing idiots who think it's okay to tell everybody else how to run their lives and kill anybody who disagrees, but t
he other half are pretty decent folks. Hell, the city council damn near voted to defy the federal ban on hyperdrives. They were only one vote short. If we emigrate, we'll be giving up on that half, too."
For once, Donna didn't have a snappy comeback. She pursed her lips and cocked her head to the side, looking at him thoughtfully. "That's a good point," she said.
"Thank you."
"Not good enough to make me want to stay here, but it's a good point." He shook his head. "So what do you suggest we do? Move to Alpha Centauri? It'll be just as full of idiots as America within a decade."
"I bet it'll take longer than that. It's a whole planet, after all."
"Maybe. But still, that's where everybody's going."
The waitress finally showed up with their beer. Trent's was considerably darker than he'd hoped, and when he tasted it, the intense bite of hops nearly made him choke. "Damn," he said after she'd gone.
"About the only thing this stuffs got going for it is it's strong."
"My, but you're in a cranky mood today, aren't you?"
"Gettin' blown into a launch crater does that to a guy."
"You know what I think? I think sittin' around on your butt all day does that to a guy. You haven't been happy since, hell, I don't know how long. Certainly not since since the Palkos cancelled their house contract."
"Considerin' that was my last paycheck, I imagine you're not too far off." She looked down at the tabletop.
"Hey, it's okay," he said. "I'm not pissed about that." She raised her head again, and her eyes were glistening. "How about if I lost my job?"
"Huh?"
"Would you be pissed if I lost my job?"
Donna worked in a jewelry store in the White Mountain Mall; probably the most stable job in America at the moment. People were dropping their money into gold and gems as fast as they could, before the value of the paper dropped all the way to zero. Donna only worked three days a week, but her job was why they were still able to eat out once in a while.
"You didn't lose it, did you?" he asked.
"Not yet. But Cheryl told me to take next week off. Apparently the government has seized our inventory. 'To prevent panic buying,' they say."
Trent would never understand how Donna could sit on news like that for hours, waiting for the right time to deliver it. When Trent lost his job, she'd known about it the moment he got in the house. Hell, before that, probably, by the way he'd slammed the garage door. But she—she hadn't given him a clue until just now.
"Damn it," he said. "Those sons of— Aw, damn it. I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"Not your fault." He reached across the table and took her hand in his. "I know just what you're thinkin' right now, and it's not true."
"What, you mean the U.S. government isn't made up of selfish bastards who couldn't give a shit about what's actually best for the average person?"
He couldn't help a wry grin. "Okay, that's true enough, but I was thinkin' about you. It's not your fault."
"I know that. But we're going to be getting mighty hungry in about a month even so."
"Don't worry," he said, wishing he could feel half as confident as he forced himself to sound. "We'll figure out something."
"I hope."
He gave her hand a squeeze. "Now I know why you're so hot to head off into the wild blue yonder."
She shrugged. "Yeah, well. If nothing else, it'll be a good vacation, and lord knows, we could use one."
"I suppose we could."
The waitress showed up just then with their hamburgers. Trent looked at the half pound of beef in a bun and the pound or so of "freedom fries" surrounding it on the plate. He'd been hungry before, but suddenly he felt ravenous.
"Eat up," he said. "Sounds like we're going to be up half the night packin'." The moment they got home, Trent plugged in the truck to recharge the batteries. They hadn't used much power just on a trip downtown and back, but he liked to keep them fully charged, and he always started a trip that way. You never knew when your next chance to plug in would be, especially when you were going off-road, and interstellar travel was about as off-road as you could get. While Donna started packing food and clothing into the camper, he dug out the components for the hyperdrive and mounted them into their places. The field coil went into a cubbyhole between the camper and the cab, where it would be as close as possible to the center of the truck. The actual electronics went behind the seat, where they could get to it in an emergency even if they were in space. Not that they would be able to do much if anything went wrong. Neither he nor Donna were techie enough to troubleshoot more than a burned-out fuse, but they could at least do that much. The computer that controlled everything would sit on Donna's lap during launch and on the dashboard afterward, Velcroed down so it wouldn't drift loose in free fall.
The power to run the hyperdrive came straight from the truck's plasma cells. They were good for about 200 miles on the ground, or maybe fifty hyperspace jumps, depending on how close to a planet you were for each jump. According to Allen Meisner, the more mass you were near, the more energy it took. It had something to do with the way space was bent around planets and suns and stuff. Trent had a hard time seeing how you could bend something like space, but Allen had sworn it was true, and the guy had designed an engine that not only bent it but folded it in two, so he ought to know. Trent plugged everything in and tested the connections, then went inside to see if Donna had the computer ready. She was still working at it, her face glowing pale blue in the screens light.
"I had a hell of a time finding a copy of the control program," she said when she noticed him standing beside her. "Homeland Security has been shutting down U.S. websites that post it, and of course most of the foreign sites I checked had the program in their language."
"How about England, or Australia?"
She shook her head. "England can't spit without permission from the U.S. anymore, and Australia's sites are under pretty much constant hack attack from HomeSec. But I finally found an English-language version on a ten-minute mirror site in Denmark."
"Good. Let's plug in the computer and make sure it can talk to the drive." They went out to the pickup and set the computer in place on the dash, then connected all the various cables and powered it up. Donna loaded the program and ran a diagnostic routine, which reported everything ready to roll.
"Good enough," Trent said. He felt his heartbeat quicken, and he looked out to the street, half expecting to see Tom the cop drive up in his patrol car. There wouldn't be much defense if he did; the pickup was pretty clearly capable of interstellar flight now.
"You got enough food loaded?" he asked.
"There's at least a couple month's worth, if we don't mind ramen noodles for the last week or so."
"That ought to do." He certainly hoped so. You never packed for a day in the mountains, not when a broken axle could strand you there for a week, and you didn't pack for a week on an alien planet, even one with people already living on it. A mishap on landing could put you out of touch for anywhere from a month to forever, depending on the mishap.
Donna went back inside to finish packing their clothes and random other stuff. While she was doing that, Trent powered up the compressor and filled the air tanks. There were two of them, both under the seat, each one good for about three hours of breathing. More than enough time to jump from star to star, find a planet, match velocities, and land, provided everything worked right. If things didn't work right, well, that's why there were two tanks.
While the compressor huffed away on the tanks, he checked the door and window seals to make sure they hadn't gotten scuffed in the five months since he'd installed them. Had it really been that long?
He supposed it was. He'd poured all his time and money into fixing up the truck for space, but they hadn't actually gone anywhere since their first trip. He couldn't have said why not; they'd survived the experience well enough, and they'd had tons of fun in the process. There'd been a few harrowing moments, but no more than happened
on any four-wheeling trip. Of course the government had done their best to discourage more trips, but that wouldn't have stopped them if they'd really wanted to do it. They just hadn't gone again.
Maybe he'd been afraid of scratching up the truck. Parachute landings didn't give a guy a whole lot of control over where he came down.
It didn't matter. They were going now. He whistled softly while he made his pre-flight check, stopping occasionally to look up at the starry sky.
3
They left first thing in the morning. Trent drove them out of town a ways, then found a spot way off the road and between a bunch of rocks where their launch crater wouldn't get in anybody's way. They got out and put on their Ziptite suits—human-shaped plastic bags that would theoretically hold air long enough for them to get back to the ground if something went wrong—then climbed back into the cab, keeping their helmets rolled down around their necks so they wouldn't waste the internal air. The suits weren't any more legal in the U.S. than the hyperdrive, but there was a lively black market business in them, along with electronic parts and air tanks and the various other equipment a person needed to build and fly an interstellar vehicle. Trent just hoped there was some quality control on all that stuff. It would have been a whole lot safer if the government regulated it, but of course they didn't care about that. Just like they did with drugs, once the feds outlawed something, they figured it was your own damned fault if you used it and got hurt.
The only thing a person could do was to inspect everything as carefully as he could himself, and have a backup for as many systems as possible. The suits were like that; with any luck, it wouldn't matter if they worked or not, because they were the backup for the truck itself. So they checked all the door latches and the window seals, then overpressurized the cab to 20
p.s.i. and waited for ten minutes to see if the pressure would hold. Trent checked to make sure the .270
