A Sudden Departure (April Book 9)

by Mackey Chandler

"It has the benefit of being totally true, and Earth Control doesn't care what we are doing if it's not in past L1. We can go make our test run and come back as they are expecting, land to get you some annual time in the first seat for landing, and visit Heather. You know she'll be delighted. We don't see her near enough."

  "Tomorrow? Let's call and make sure she isn't holding some big pow-wow or something and can spend some time with us," April said.

  "Yes, tomorrow, early. That's when I told them I wanted the Chariot prepped. But we won't get back and landed at Central until later in the day. The Chariot doesn't have a run scheduled for three days so we have some leeway when we come back. As far as everybody is concerned we're doing a freight run to make it cheap to visit Heather on the company's bit. That will cover us loading and unloading the modulator. Not even Chen knows what we are really doing. You call Heather. I called her for our last visit, I don't want it to always be me."

  * * *

  "Roger Dionysus' Chariot. You are clear to burn as filed on your mark. Call Central Control before your orbital burn please Miss Lewis. Be safe out there."

  April acknowledged the pleasantry with assurances they would be safe. They did a long easy quarter G burn. The moon was off their left out the port, and it would take a while for it to grow at their moderate velocity, as they aimed at where it was going to be.

  "I had Dave make a few changes to the Chariot," Jeff said. "I'm not sure if he understood the technical ramifications or not. I want to use a gravitational variable when we finally do make a quantum transition, but it will be easier to do a hybrid solution than one or the other. We now have slight change to the drive chamber to create a positive ion cloud behind us. We have to run out a point now to safely equalize charges when we come back to dock. That was something we never wanted to do on purpose before, but will benefit us eventually. The landing pads can conduct it without any changes."

  "Won't the regular crew wonder what it's for when they see it?" April asked.

  "It's all software activated. The system will never show on their screens without the correct key at startup to activate it."

  "Wouldn't it be better to change one variable at a time?" April asked.

  "If you want to make extra test flights," Jeff said. "We have instrumentation for both, and they don't interfere with each other. We read the gravity pulse when we activate it and read the full charge number when we ground the ship again."

  April 'flew' the Chariot, which meant she didn't allow herself to become engrossed or distracted with other things. She watched the readouts, looked occasionally at the radar and even looked out the ports now and then, for all the slight possibility that would tell her anything meaningful. The only thing that might matter was if the moon didn't continue to grow and slide in front of them as expected. But if they got a radio call or a system went wonky she wouldn't lose precious seconds reading instruments and switching back mentally to piloting.

  Jeff on the other hand pulled up work on his screen and used the time. He wasn't talking to anyone, but he had that air of concentration that said was involved in something.

  "When you get close to your burn, you might as well tell Central Control we will only be doing a partial orbit and lifting from their control space on the backside," Jeff said. "So they aren't alarmed when we don't come back around."

  They were close enough so April went ahead and did that, Jeff staying silent since it was April's hours they needed credited. Central acknowledged as polite as can be and tacked on the end, Armstrong advised, since they still insisted on a separate traffic authority. Then Armstrong came on the frequency and said, Armstrong copied. It was kind of silly but it made everybody happy.

  The burn didn't slow them into a circular orbit, rather they were aimed at the moon and would have crashed into it at a shallow angle if they hadn't done anything. The burn sped them up and lifted them as they went around to the back side and sent them into uncontrolled space behind the moon from the Earth. The loss of mass as they rose in the lunar gravity improved their performance slightly.

  "Where are we aiming?" April asked. "I didn't run your numbers to see."

  "Just, out there," Jeff said waving a hand at the stars. "We're not going to make a transition so why aim at anything?"

  "It seems like you should make everything as realistic as possible. You might get different readings if you aren't aimed at a star," April objected.

  "I don't know why it would, but it's been about a month since Weir's drone flew. Centauri still has to be pretty much ahead of us somewhere. I can't see the star field that well with the interior lights up. Punch it in the computer and aim at it if you like. We're only using about a quarter of our delta V. That's not going to alter it significantly."

  "OK, comp actually will end the burn a little early," April said in a moment. The Chariot pivoted a little, they barely felt it, and then cut off the burn about two minutes later.

  "Permission to deploy test equipment?" Jeff asked, careful of her command.

  "Do your thing," April said very casually.

  The hold opened and the gravitational modulator was released from the grapple installed on the deck of their hold. On camera they watched four small drones slowly move it from the hold to the nose of their craft and nudged it back until its pin could be grasped by the grapple on their nose. The power connections mounted on each side were lined up and forced together by the same motion.

  "And we have power and data," Jeff informed her. "Deploying drones now."

  The four drones that eased the module into position detached and flew off perpendicular to their course as they coasted along.

  Two stopped five hundred meters away on each side. The other two continued until they were a full kilometer away opposite each other, and braked to a stop.

  "OK, I'm going to pulse the thing and we'll get some readings and pull the drones in," Jeff said.

  "Will we feel anything?" April asked.

  "I'd be really surprised if we do," Jeff said. "No more than you do behind a gravitational lance when you shoot it. But I'll count it down and you tell me if you notice any sensation."

  "Setting a five second delay. It will active from now," he said, pushing the button.

  "Four, three, two, one, mark! Well crap, I've lost telemetry on my drones. Pinging them. . . "

  "Jeff?" April looked over and he was looking down at his screen frowning.

  "Jeff?" she said with a little more urgency. He looked up, curious, and April pointed out the port.

  "Where the hell did that come from?" he asked. There was a star straight ahead and the really significant fact was not only how bright it was but that it showed a disc.

  "I'm pretty sure we did the coming and it has just been sitting right here," April said. "A couple of the brighter stars. . . shifted when it appeared."

  Jeff didn't say anything for a few seconds. "It wasn't supposed to do that," he objected.

  "I'm really, really irritated with you," April admitted.

  "So am I. Here we are in a different star system and I didn't bring any decent instrumentation. I don't have anything to look for planets, not even the one we know is here. I'm never going to find those drones again! The readings are lost and it's going to be a major pain in the butt getting the drive back in the hold without them."

  "Jeff!!!"

  He looked at her surprised.

  "Can we go back?"

  "Well sure. If it worked one way it'll work the other."

  April let out a deep sigh of relief.

  "We're in one piece and if we hadn't retained our motion as an object I'm sure we wouldn't be. No way to check it because nothing is in range of our radar, but I'm certain we are headed in system. We'd be a cloud of loose particles otherwise. So we need to get flipped over and kill our motion. Build up velocity again and jump back."

  "Oh, so it's jump, now?" April asked.

  Jeff opened his mouth, regarded the expression on April's face, and shut it before answering hastily.

/>   "Sweetie, it's anything you want to call it forevermore."

  For once he said the right thing.

  "The navigational computer is going to complain some of the stars don't match position, but four or five light years is a gnat's whisker. Most of them won't have shifted position significantly at all. We'll tell it to accept a majority match and get pointed right." He typed away on the keyboard, not trusting voice for such a critical task.

  The ship rotated gently and when it came to a stop there was a bright yellow star dead ahead.

  "Wow," April said.

  "Yeah, first people to see it like this," Jeff acknowledged. "Tuck your arms in, the drive is more efficient at 3 Gs, and I want as much fuel as I can retain when we go back."

  "We should have near half, shouldn't we?" April asked.

  "Yeah, but I have no idea how close to our previous track we'll reenter the solar system going back. We shouldn't even be here. If we come out half way to Mars it's going to be a problem. You didn't pack a picnic lunch by any chance?"

  "We have ration bars in the survival kit in back, for if there was a bad Earth landing," April remembered. "Water and air is no problem. If we can get close enough to somebody to talk to them on the radio in a month, month and a half maybe, we're fine."

  "Arms in and safe now!" Jeff said. "Boost in twenty seconds from. . . mark!"

  Three G isn't bad. They didn't waste power on spinning the compensators up, but neither was it comfortable to chat. Jeff didn't try to jump out under boost. He cut the drive when they should have sufficient velocity and coasted again to exactly duplicate the previous event.

  Jeff called off the time to jump as calmly as if he'd done it a hundred times. When it jumped this time he was looking forward and saw the sun appear. Also the moon, a little smaller than it should be and on the wrong side, but certainly within range to return without even getting any hard numbers.

  "I can get a radar return at this range," he said relieved. "Near a seven second lag," he added when he got the return. "Coming in a little hot and retrograde, but we will have plenty of margin to orbit and land. A couple hours late, but we don't have to divert to go back to Home."

  The ship turned and burned at an angle to their target.

  Chapter 14

  "The plot is on your screen," Jeff said. "You'll need to talk to Central Control through the satellite net, since we're on the back side, and inform them of your plan for orbital insertion. Don't commit to a landing plan yet. I'm going to have to suit up and get the drive module back in the hold. It may take more than one orbit to do. I'm not that good at zero G work and I want to take it slow and safe. Would you call Heather and let her know we'll be a little late, and we'll explain it all when we see her?"

  April just looked at him.

  "You do have to approach in command or some stickler will check the logs and say we switched the conn and you can't claim the hours."

  "How can you be thinking of that?" April demanded. "We just did an interstellar flight. It's historic. Who cares who has the conn and how the hours will be logged?"

  "You'll care next year if you have to recertify, and I hadn't decided about making any big announcement. Why don't we just go talk to Heather and see what we want to do?"

  "You want to keep it secret?" April asked.

  "At least for right now, yes. Let's talk about it. All three of us. If we want to do it publicly we can do it again properly equipped, so we. . . " he grimaced, and changed his statement. "So I don't look like a flaming idiot."

  "You may be throwing away your place in history," April warned him. "Like Neil Armstrong going back up the ladder and sending the other guy down."

  Jeff laughed. "The other guy. See how thin the margin of fame is? Anyway it's your fame, I was just the payload tech running the experiment and you still had the conn when we jumped."

  April screwed up her face. "Buzz something. I can't remember his real name. James Weir may very well do it soon, and he'll be the ones in the history books."

  "And once he does there's a couple billion Earthies down there who are going to want to do it too. I'm not sure how many will make it, but a whole lot more than all of us on Home I think. I'd be happy to let him have all the fame, and give me the stars. Why not get a little head start on the mob and get out there and grab some of it for ourselves? Everybody will start close and cautious. We can be bold, go out further and own it. One hopes there is some decent real estate. Shucks, it's so big out there it will take them a long time to even find us and know we're out there."

  April was open mouthed at the audacity of it.

  "We're coming in the wrong way too fast. I'm pretty sure there isn't any possible rational maneuver to explain that. What will I say when they notice?" April asked.

  "Brass it out. Say you've been testing advanced drive systems if they won't drop it. Tell them it's proprietary information and you don't intend to explain. God only knows that's the truth," Jeff said.

  Central Control was silent for several long unbelieving seconds when April uploaded her numbers and stated her intended orbit. Then the fellow just slowly and carefully repeated the impossible numbers back to her.

  "Confirmed, Central Control. We need to do an EV and shall file for landing after an indeterminate number of orbits," April warned him. "Permission to burn on my mark?"

  "Burn as filed," Central agreed. "Armstrong copied," he added. From Armstrong there was silence. They probably didn't believe it and didn't want to acknowledge it.

  Jeff was slow. It took three orbits, and April maneuvering the Chariot so the drive module was hanging in front of the open hold hatch before Jeff could rig a cable on the grapple pin and reel it in dead slow. She had to activate the grapple in the hold on Jeff's command over the radio. There wasn't a remote or controls in the hold. They hadn't planned on needing to operate it from there. She didn't like doing that with Jeff in the hold, but there was no way around it.

  They clamped the grapple right over the cable and crushed it rather than have that much mass loose even for a few seconds. It was about four times Jeff's mass. Just enough to be really dangerous. People treated huge objects with respect. Smaller things were where they got careless and got hurt. What if it drifted back out a few centimeters and the grapple failed to grasp around the pin cleanly? Once activated the claw could pop it out with tremendous force like a pinched seed if it wasn't inserted deeply enough.

  When Jeff came back into pressure he didn't unsuit. He was exhausted. Extra-Vehicular work used different muscles that protested being called to unexpected service. He strapped down still in his pressure suit and took his helmet off. There was a rack right there for it and he clamped it down. April noticed his hair was matted wet from sweat and could hear his suit fans were still running to deal with it.

  Jeff leaned back and closed his eyes. "I don't ever want to do that again," Jeff assured her. "We'll make changes so nobody ever has to manhandle it like that again."

  "If it isn't secret we can just build it right on the nose and leave it there, can't we?" April asked.

  "Yes, but we're not there yet. I didn't want it perched out there on the Chariot's nose for a couple days. Somebody would notice and start asking questions. Somebody not totally stupid might hear we had an unusual return approach and put that together with the strange extension on our nose to start asking too many questions. It was worth doing, honest."

  He rolled his head over and looked at her. "Go ahead and put us down at Central. I'll be fine by the time we arrive. I'm tired but it's only lunar gravity, and I'd much rather a real shower and a night in a decent bed than sleeping a few orbits in this stinky damp suit."

  He closed his eyes and stayed silent while April dealt with Central Control. Even Armstrong acknowledged their tacked on landing clearance like they hadn't had a snit before. April thought Jeff might be sleeping despite what he said, but after the burn started she looked and his eyes were open.

  When they settled on the landing jacks April asked Jeff.
"Did you get your discharge readings?"

  He looked sheepish. "I forgot to turn it on."

  * * *

  It was deep in the third shift when Jeff got his shower and fell into bed. Heather had stayed up to greet them, concerned, so she was tired too. Jeff got her guest room so he could sleep as long as he needed. Even that small guest room was a luxury for the Sovereign of Central, one she rarely used, but it was a palace level perk by lunar standards. The furniture more so than just the cubic, which they had in abundance. Mo insisted it be furnish at an appropriate level for her station. That amused her.

  April listened as Heather called Dakota on her pad, informed her that she was just getting to bed, to cancel any appointments for the entire day, and not call her unless it involved war or insurrection.

  Heather listened to something April only heard as a murmur. "You are my Hand," Heather said. "If anybody demands an immediate ruling they will accept your judgment or get none. You have the power of life and death and may bind the nation in my name. You're one of the most sensible people I've ever known and I will sleep easy knowing you won't do something thoughtless."

  Heather smiled and thumbed the pad off. "I should have done that ages ago. I've missed you two so much when you're both just a couple hours away. But I got like so many people do, who think they are indispensable, and proceeded to make myself miserable."

  "My goodness. How did she respond to that speech?" April asked.

  "Aww, shucks," Heather quoted.

  April couldn't help it. The stress of the flight. The shock of the unexpected jump. The relief flooding her gut at seeing the moon again. The absurd humor that was just so Dakota. . . She started crying and laughing at the same time. Just totally broke down in the flood of emotion and let Heather hold her until it ran out.

  "It must look stupid," April said finally. "I haven't even told you what happened yet."

  "A lot obviously. Tell me tomorrow. Come on to bed. You'll have to share, I'm not about to send you off to the singles barracks. It's been awhile. Remember when you slept over at my mother's house about a hundred years ago?"