Ghost Riders in the Sky

by Timothy Zahn

  “He saw a group of them,” Elaine said. “It was…a little more traumatic than usual.”

  “On a normal tunnelship you’re in the cup, with the ship’s hull surrounding you everywhere except directly in front,” McDerry said. “With the Pathfinder’s setup, the disassociate needs to be visible to Chandra, which means you’ll need to travel farther out in front.”

  “How much farther?”

  “About fifty meters.”

  Skoda thought about that. With the edges of the cup on all sides, it was easy to tell that the ship was still there. Fifty meters out in front was an entirely different situation. “How does he know the ship’s still behind him? It’s not like he can look back over his shoulder.”

  “It’s Chandra’s job to watch your movements,” McDerry said. “As long as you signal correctly when the ship starts drifting, we’ll stay with you.”

  “So what happened with your navigator and the stargulls?” Skoda asked. “Did they attack him or something?”

  “It’s hard to explain,” Elaine said. “He wouldn’t talk about it afterward, and all Chandra could see was a group of them pacing him.”

  “Pacing? Or swarming?”

  “I couldn’t tell,” Chandra said. “They’re apparently more visible up close than they are at a distance. But he didn’t seem to be injured when he came back.”

  “Seem to be injured?”

  “We had him thoroughly checked out before he left us,” Elaine said. “No one could find anything wrong with him.”

  “Uh-huh,” Skoda said, looking back and forth between them. “You don’t think stargulls exist, do you? You think he just went crazy on his own.”

  “We didn’t say that,” McDerry said firmly.

  “It’s just…” Elaine trailed off.

  “What?” Skoda demanded. “It’s just that no one except navigators can see them?”

  “Basically,” McDerry said. He lifted a hand, let it fall back into his lap. “You have to admit it stretches credibility a little. As far as anyone’s ever been able to ascertain, nothing exits in hyperspace: no matter, no energy, not even starlight. Nothing but the tunnelship itself.”

  “And no one ever reported seeing them until ten years ago,” Elaine added.

  “So like everyone else you think they’re a sign that a navigator’s cracking up?” Skoda suggested acidly. “Or that it’s an excuse to try to get out of our indentures?”

  “Chandra saw them, too,” Elaine reminded him.

  “Or said she did,” Skoda shot back.

  “Mr. Skoda—”

  “Never mind—doesn’t matter.” Skoda took a long drink from his glass. “Believe whatever you want.” He turned back to Chandra. “So what did you see the stargulls doing to what’s-his-name?”

  “Alan,” Chandra said. “His name’s Alan. And they didn’t do anything except fly around him. Like…” She lowered her eyes. “Like vultures circling something about to die.”

  “Wonderful,” Skoda growled. “And this is what you want me to walk into?”

  “Alan didn’t die, and he wasn’t injured,” Elaine reminded him. “You need to remember that.”

  “Yeah, I’d like to hear that from him,” Skoda said. “Where is he?”

  “He’s in a care facility on Moscone,” McDerry said, his voice under careful control. “They’re calling it a burn-out. It happens.”

  “They say he’ll recover,” Elaine added.

  “Eventually?” Skoda prompted.

  McDerry’s lip twitched. “Eventually,” he conceded.

  Skoda nodded. That was what they always said. Sometimes they were right. Sometimes they weren’t.

  Not that it mattered. If the burn-out had broken Alan’s indenture, his life was over anyway.

  “Well, I appreciate the honesty,” Skoda said. He took a moment to drain his glass and got to his feet. “Time’s up. I trust you won’t be offended when I say there’s no way in hell I’m coming aboard this lunatic plan.”

  “Please reconsider,” Elaine said, standing up as well. “You’re far and away the most qualified person we’ve met in the past month, and there’s no indication that’ll change anytime soon.”

  “You’ll be doing humanity a great service,” McDerry added. “Not to mention your fellow navigators—”

  “I’ll look forward to reading about it on the nets,” Skoda said. “Meanwhile, I have more drinking I need to get back to. You all have a great evening.”

  #

  Usually four or five drinks were enough to ensure Skoda fell asleep quickly and stayed there at least ten hours.

  Not this time.

  He didn’t care about humanity. He didn’t care about his fellow navigators, or the Meerians, or economic strangleholds. He barely cared anymore even about himself.

  But there was something about Chandra that refused to go away.

  Maybe it was the old pain in her eyes. Maybe it was the soul he’d glimpsed in her face, weary and defeated, yet trying to hold onto some semblance of hope.

  Or maybe it was the fact that she’d made it through her full indenture, and was free of the Sue Ann chair forever, yet was still willing to go back for more. Either she was wounded beyond even basic self-preservation, or she truly believed this crazy scheme could succeed.

  Finally, he came to a decision.

  McDerry answered on the fifth ring. “Yes?” he said, his voice groggy. He caught sight of Skoda’s face, and suddenly the sleep was gone. “Yes, Mr. Skoda.”

  “You really want me aboard?”

  “Yes, of course,” McDerry said. “I thought we made that perf—”

  “Prove it,” Skoda cut him off. “I’ve got three hundred fifty-seven trips to go. You want me, buy out my contract.”

  McDerry’s eyes widened, just noticeably. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “It isn’t,” Skoda said. “If you want me, find a way to do it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. If I break indenture the Meerians will take away everything. I’m not going through that. Find a way, or forget about me.”

  “All right,” McDerry said. “Let me make some enquiries and see what I can do. I’ll get back to you in the morning.”

  “Make it the afternoon,” Skoda corrected. “I plan to be seriously hung-over in the morning.”

  “On second thought, let’s make it the day after tomorrow,” McDerry said. “And stay in your room, if you would. I’ll have Elaine bring you some food.”

  “There’s a perfectly good cafeteria here.”

  “Elaine likes to keep busy,” McDerry said. “She’ll see you tomorrow, and I’ll see you the day after. Sleep well, Mr. Skoda, and thank you.”

  #

  Skoda’s last thoughts before falling asleep were to wonder why McDerry was putting him under house arrest, and to wonder whether or not he should be angry about it.

  To his surprise, house arrest proved to be more like a vacation than any actual vacation he’d had in the past seven years. With his food and liquor being brought in there was no need to rub shoulders with any of the other navigators, serving people, or wandering Meerians. There was no schedule to keep, no flight lists to look over and bid on, no questions or hooded looks or false smiles. He took advantage of the break to sleep, read a little, sleep some more, and catch up on his drinking.

  It was nearly dinner time on the second day when McDerry finally made his promised appearance.

  “Well?” Skoda asked as he closed the door behind the older man.

  “You’re out,” McDerry said. “Nathan Skoda is no longer under the thumb of the Navigators Guild or the Meerian Transport Authority. Now, if you’ll collect your things, we’ll be on our way.”

  Skoda frowned. “What, just like that?”

  “Just like that,” McDerry assured him. “The Pathfinder is fueled, checked out, and ready to fly. As soon as you and I are aboard, we’re leaving.”

  “And no one’s going to get in my face?”

&n
bsp; “Not at all.” A muscle in McDerry’s throat tightened. “Though you may run into a mourner or two along the way.”

  “What are they mourning?”

  “The death of Navigator Nathan Skoda,” McDerry said. “I’m afraid you died in your sleep last night.”

  “I what?”

  “You wanted out of your indenture,” McDerry said evenly. “You’re out. Here.” He held out an envelope. “Ident, passport, and travel papers for Nathan Detroit.”

  “Wait a second,” Skoda said, making no move to take the envelope. “You can’t just—I mean, how did you arrange a story like that?”

  “I didn’t,” McDerry said. “But I have friends. Now, if you please…?”

  Reluctantly, Skoda took the envelope. “Yeah. Friends. Must be nice. Fine.” Reaching under his bed, he grabbed his duffle bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Ready.”

  McDerry’s eyebrows twitched, but he just nodded and retraced his steps to the door. “Needless to say, don’t talk to anyone along the way.”

  McDerry had been wrong, Skoda reflected as they headed down the corridor to the hostel door. Nathan Skoda had just been a navigator, a cog in an uncaring machine.

  There would be no mourning.

  From the interior layout, the Pathfinder looked to be a surplused freighter: light on comfort, heavy on cargo capacity. Still, as Skoda and McDerry headed forward Skoda spotted a few areas that had been made into actual crew quarters.

  None of which was necessary for a single five-hour run. Clearly, McDerry was looking at a lot longer time commitment. Weeks, maybe months. Something he hadn’t thought to mention?

  Elaine was waiting in the pilot’s chair on the bridge when they arrived. “Welcome aboard, Nathan,” she greeted him, her smile a bit brittle. Maybe she was still getting used to Nathan Skoda being dead, too. “Strap down at the monitor station, if you would. Walker, we’ve got clearance to leave.”

  “Good,” McDerry said as he took the copilot seat beside her. “We marked for Bashan Prime?”

  “Yes,” Elaine confirmed. “Five light-years away, no navigator needed.”

  Skoda felt his lip twitch. Bashan Prime was a human-run station, with only a token Meerian presence. That might be a good thing when it came to presenting Nathan Detroit’s new ident.

  Depending on how thorough McDerry’s friends had been, it could also be a very awkward one.

  “Good,” McDerry said again. “Let’s get out of the approach sphere, and then, Mr. Skoda, we’ll show you to the Sue Ann chair.”

  “Nathan Skoda is dead,” Skoda corrected. “Remember?”

  “Of course,” McDerry said, his smile as brittle as his wife’s. “Nathan it is. Elaine, as soon as Galen’s finished with the engine trim, have him head up and check on the chair. We’ll want Mr. Sko—Nathan—in position as soon as possible.”

  Skoda had wondered if there would be any last-minute challenges by Station Control, possibly something having to do with a suspicious death. But apparently the Meerians weren’t interested in a dead navigator either. Twenty minutes later, they were clear of the traffic pattern and ready to go.

  “Remember, you’ll need to stay about fifty meters off the bow so that Chandra can see you,” McDerry reminded him as Galen ran the final checks on the chair.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Skoda said, wiggling his arms inside their restraints. Same arm cuffs he was used to, except that there were no glide rudder microswitches buried inside the thick plastic. It felt odd, rather like when he’d had a tooth knocked out as a teen and become obsessed with the gap where it used to be.

  “You’ll need to gesture with both arms in the direction you want the Pathfinder to shift,” McDerry continued. “We won’t need to do any actual maneuvers, but if you want to do a test or two along the way feel free. Chandra will be handling any vector changes using the bubble’s repeater controls, but we’ll of course be monitoring everything from the bridge.”

  “Just don’t go too far off the mark,” Galen warned. “Bashan’s a pretty easy star to spot, but there are a few much more distant ones along similar sightlines.”

  “You’ll be fine,” McDerry said, throwing a warning look at his son. “The big thing to remember is that if something goes wrong, don’t panic. Just hang with the ship and we’ll get there all right.”

  “Yeah, got it,” Skoda said again. “We doing this, or not?”

  “We’re doing it.” McDerry reached past Skoda to the monitor console and tapped the intercom. “Elaine? Everything buttoned down?”

  “Auto’s engaged and locked and Chandra’s ready,” Elaine confirmed. “You?”

  “All set.” McDerry looked at Skoda and raised his eyebrows. Skoda nodded confirmation, and McDerry nodded back. “Prepare for suspended animation.”

  The chair gave its usual warning chime, and Skoda felt the sleepiness tugging at him. “Ready,” McDerry’s now distant voice came through his fading consciousness. “Navigator: disassociate.”

  A moment later, Skoda found himself floating in the darkness of space in front of the ship. There was no sign of the usual bow cup that navigators rode inside on standard tunnelships, but then that wasn’t the plan here anyway. He moved forward, looking back as he tried to adjust his distance to the fifty meters McDerry had specified.

  “Activating tunnel drive,” Elaine’s distant voice came. Another chime—

  And once again Skoda was riding inside the black tunnel, heading toward the bright and distant star ahead.

  It was strange being so far in front of a ship. It was also highly uncomfortable. Skoda continually had to fight the urge to look back to assure himself the Pathfinder was still there.

  And not because the ship might drift and get lost. At the low maximum speed a tunnelship attained during a five light-year trip, drifting was virtually impossible. The question wasn’t the ship, but Skoda himself.

  What would happen if his disassociate went one way and his body went the other? Would they automatically come back together when the Sue Ann brought him out of his induced coma? Because if they didn’t, he was dead.

  And if that happened, thanks to McDerry’s friends, no one would even realize he’d died out here.

  Had anyone had ever done experiments to see how far a disassociate could be safely separated from its body? Or even for how long? Guild rules stated that a navigator couldn’t be disassociated for more than fifteen hours in a twenty-four-hour period, but Skoda had no idea whether that number was based on actual science or had simply been pulled out of someone’s butt.

  An instant later something shot past him from behind.

  Reflexively, he flinched. The object slowed, pacing him from about twenty meters ahead, wigwagging enough that all he could make out was a white creature with wings or wing-like appendages. It held position for a few seconds, then turned sharply, cut straight across Skoda’s path, and popped through the side of the tunnel.

  But unlike the rest of the universe, it didn’t simply disappear as it breached the tunnel wall. Instead, it seemed to freeze there, as if its image had gotten stuck to the wall, until it faded from view.

  “Could you see it?” Chandra’s voice came. “Elaine?”

  “We didn’t see anything,” Elaine’s voice came back. “Was it a stargull?”

  “I think so,” Chandra said. “I’ve never seen one move that slowly before. With Alan they were all fluttering around and never gave either of us a good look.”

  “We have cameras going,” McDerry joined in. “Galen?”

  “Nothing,” Galen said. “Do you want me to pull Nathan out and ask if he saw it, too?”

  “He saw it,” Chandra said, a hint of quiet fear drifting into her voice. She knew what close exposure to the stargulls had done to Alan, and she was probably worried the same thing would happen to Skoda. “He moved when it went past him.”

  So if Chandra was worried, should Skoda be, too?

  The problem was that he wasn’t even slightly worried. The stargull had start
led him, but it hadn’t seemed threatening in any way. Its disappearance had been a little creepy, and something he’d never seen before, but it hadn’t really bothered him.

  Had the other navigator overreacted? Or was Skoda simply so burned out and uncaring that nothing really affected him anymore?

  “Well, keep an eye out,” McDerry said. “You, too, Nathan, if you can hear me. As far as I know no one’s done much research on the things.”

  “Why would they?” Galen put in. “We can’t see them, and the navigators don’t seem to care.”

  “I suppose,” McDerry said.

  They were right, Skoda knew. The hell of it was that early in a navigator’s indenture there might still be enough spark of interest and curiosity that he or she would care about them. But it was only the older navigators, more experienced and more deadened, who could see the damn things.

  And who apparently were also the only ones who could see other people’s disassociates. Which meant McDerry’s Meerian-free navigation system was going to depend entirely on old-timers and burnouts.

  And was therefore probably already doomed. No one in his right mind would trust his life to loose cannons like Skoda and Chandra. Even if the loose cannons wanted the job.

  Which most of them wouldn’t. Once indenture was over, navigators invariably went as far off the map as they could to live out their shortened lives. Chandra, as far as he knew, was the only one who’d ever come back for more.

  He was still pondering that when the stargull returned.

  Only this time, it had brought friends.

  A lot of friends. One minute Skoda was alone in the tunnel; the next minute he was surrounded by at least twenty of the white, bird-like forms: swooping, circling, paralleling, and corkscrewing around him.

  Exactly the way they’d behaved with the previous navigator.

  Reflexively, Skoda waved his arms, trying to drive them away. A waste of time. They were maintaining a good ten- to twenty-meter distance, well out of his reach, and the sight of his useless flailing didn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. They continued to surround him, moving in and out, playing out their little dance.

  Or maybe it wasn’t a dance. Like a flock of vultures, Chandra’s metaphor came back to him, waiting for something to die. He waved harder, wondering if they could even see him.