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by Ben Bova

  “The vessel that is jamming our communications, sir, is positioned between us and Vesta.”

  Rats! They were pretty smart. I thought about climbing to a higher declination, out of the ecliptic.

  “We could maneuver to a higher declination, sir,” Forty-niner said, calm as ever, “and leave the plane of the ecliptic.”

  “Right.”

  “But propellant consumption would be prohibitive, sir. We would be unable to reach Vesta, even if we avoided the attacking vessel.”

  “Who says it’s an attacking vessel?” I snapped. “It hasn’t attacked us yet.”

  At that instant the ship shuddered. A cluster of red lights blazed up on the display panel, and the emergency alarm started wailing.

  “Our main deuterium tank has been punctured, sir.”

  “I can see that!”

  “Attitude jets are compensating for unexpected thrust, sir.”

  Yeah, and in another couple minutes the attitude jets would be out of nitrogen. No deuterium for the fusion drive and no propellant for the attitude jets. We’d be a sitting duck.

  Another jolt. More red lights on the board. The alarm seemed to screech louder.

  “Our fusion drive thruster cone has been hit, sir.”

  Two laser shots and we were crippled. As well as deaf, dumb, and blind.

  “Turn off the alarm,” I yelled, over the hooting. “I know we’re in trouble.”

  The alarm shut off. My ears still ringing, I stared at the hash-streaked screens and the red lights glowering at me from the display board. What to do? I couldn’t even call over to them and surrender. They wouldn’t take a prisoner, anyway.

  I felt the ship lurch again.

  “Another hit?”

  “No, sir,” answered Forty-niner. “I am swinging the ship so that the control pod faces away from the attacker.”

  Putting the bulk of the ship between me and those laser beams. “Good thinking,” I said weakly.

  “Standard defensive maneuver, sir, according to Tactical Manual 7703.”

  “Shut up about the damned tactical manual!”

  “The new meteor shields have been punctured, sir.” I swear Forty-niner added that sweet bit of news just to yank my chain.

  Then I saw that the maneuvering jet propellant went empty, the panel display lights flicking from amber to red.

  “Rats, we’re out of propellant!”

  I realized that I was done for. Forty-niner had tried to shield me from the attacker’s laser shots by turning the ship so that its tankage and fusion drive equipment was shielding my pod but doing so had used up the last of our maneuvering propellant.

  Cold sweat beaded my face. I was gasping for breath. The freebooters or whoever was shooting at us could come up close enough to spit at us now. They’d riddle this pod and me in it.

  “Sir, standard procedure calls for you to put on your space suit.”

  I nodded mutely and got up from the chair. The suit was in its rack by the airlock. At least Forty-niner didn’t mention the tactical manual.

  I had one leg in the suit when the ship suddenly began to accelerate so hard that I slipped to the deck and cracked my skull on the bulkhead. I really saw stars flashing in my eyes.

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  “We are accelerating, sir. Retreating from the last known position of the attacking vessel.”

  “Accelerating? How? We’re out of—”

  “I am using our cargo as propellant, sir. The thrust provided is—”

  Forty-niner was squirting out our water. Fine by me. Better to have empty cargo tanks and be alive than to hand a full cargo of water to guys who wanted to kill me. I finished wriggling into my space suit, even though my head was thumping from the fall I’d taken. Just before I pulled on the helmet, I felt my scalp. There was a nice-sized lump; it felt hot to my fingers.

  “You could’ve warned me that you were going to accelerate the ship,” I grumbled as I sealed the helmet to the suit’s neck ring.

  “Time was of the essence, sir,” Forty-niner replied.

  The ship lurched again as I checked my backpack connections. Another hit.

  “Where’d they get us?” I shouted.

  No answer. That really scared me. If they knocked Forty-niner out, all the ship’s systems would bonk out too.

  “Main power generator, sir,” Forty-niner finally replied. “We are now running on auxiliary power, sir.”

  The backup fuel cells. They wouldn’t last more than a few hours. If the damned solar panels were working—no, I realized; those big fat wings would just make terrific target practice for the bastards.

  Another lurch. This time I saw the bright flash through the bridge’s window. The beam must’ve splashed off the structure just outside the pod. My God, if they punctured the pod, that would be the end of it. Sure, I could slide my visor down and go to the backpack’s air supply. But that’d give me only two hours of air, at best. Just enough time to write my last will and testament.

  “I thought you turned the pod away from them!” I yelled.

  “They are maneuvering too, sir.”

  Great. Sitting in the command chair was awkward, in the suit. The display board looked like a Christmas tree, more red than green. The pod seemed to be intact so far. Life support was okay, as long as we had electrical power.

  Another jolt, a big one. Forty-niner shuddered and staggered sideways like it was being punched by a gigantic fist.

  And then, just like that, the comm screens came back to life. Radar showed the other vessel, whoever they were, moving away from us.

  “They’re going away!” I whooped.

  Forty-niner’s voice seemed fainter than usual. “Yes, sir. They are leaving.”

  “How come?” I wondered.

  “Their last laser shot ruptured our main water tank, sir. In eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds, our entire cargo will be discharged.”

  I just sat there, my mind chugging hard. We’re spraying our water into space, the water that those bastards wanted to steal from us. That’s why they left. In eleven and a half minutes, we would no longer have any water for them to take.

  I almost broke into a smile. I’m wasn’t going to die, after all. Not right away, at least.

  Then I realized that JRK49N was without propulsion power and would be out of electrical power in a few hours. I was going to die after all, dammit. Only slower.

  “Send out a distress call, broadband,” I commanded. But I knew that was about as useful as a toothpick in a soup factory. The corporation didn’t send rescue missions for waterbots, not with the war going on. Too dangerous. The other side could use the crippled ship as bait and pick off any vessel that came to rescue it. And they certainly wouldn’t come out for a vessel as old as Forty-niner. They’d just check the numbers in their ledgers and write us off. With a form letter of regret and an insurance check to my mother.

  “Distress call on all frequencies, sir.” Before I could think of anything more to say, Forty-niner went on, “Electrical power is critical, sir.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “There is a prohibition in my programming, sir.”

  “About electrical power?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then I remembered I had commanded him to stop nagging me about repairing the solar panels. “Cancel the prohibition,” I told him.

  Immediately Forty-niner came back with, “The solar panels must be extended and activated, sir,” soft and cool and implacable as hell. “Otherwise, we will lose all electrical power.”

  “How long?”

  It took a few seconds for him to answer, “Fourteen hours and twenty-nine minutes, sir.”

  I was already in my space suit, so I got up from the command chair and plodded reluctantly toward the airlock. The damned solar panels. If
I couldn’t get them functioning, I’d be dead. Let me tell you, that focuses your mind, it does.

  Still, it wasn’t easy. I wrestled with those bleeding, blasted, frozen bearings for hours, until I was so fatigued that my suit was sloshing knee-deep with sweat. The damned Tinkertoy repair ’bots weren’t much help, either. Most of the time they beeped and blinked and did nothing.

  I got one of the panels halfway extended. Then I had to quit. My vision was blurring, and I could hardly lift my arms, that’s how weary I was.

  I staggered back into the pod with just enough energy left to strip off the suit and collapse on my bunk.

  When I woke up, I was starving hungry and smelled like a cesspool. I peeled my skivvies off and ducked into the shower.

  And jumped right out again. The water was ice cold.

  “What the hell happened to the hot water?” I screeched.

  “Conserving electrical power, sir. With only one solar panel functioning at approximately one third of its nominal capacity, electrical power must be conserved.”

  “Heat the blasted water,” I growled. “Turn off the heat after I’m finished showering.”

  “Yes, sir.” Damned if he didn’t sound resentful.

  Once I’d gotten a meal into me, I went back to the bridge and called up the astrogation program to figure out where we were and where we were heading.

  It wasn’t good news. We were drifting outward, away from Vesta. With no propulsion to turn us around to a homeward heading, we were prisoners of Kepler’s laws, just another chunk of matter in the broad, dark, cold emptiness of the belt.

  “We will approach Ceres in eight months, sir,” Forty-niner announced. I swear he was trying to sound cheerful.

  “Approach? How close?”

  It took him a few seconds to answer, “Seven million, four hundred thousand and six kilometers, sir, at our closest point.”

  Terrific. There was a major habitat orbiting Ceres, built by the independent miners and prospectors that everybody called the Rock Rats. Freebooters made Ceres their harbor too. Some of them doubled as salvage operators when they could get their hands on an abandoned vessel. But we wouldn’t get close enough for them to send even a salvage mission out to rescue us. Besides, you’re not allowed salvage rights if there’s a living person on the vessel. That wouldn’t bother some of those cutthroats, I knew. But it bothered me. Plenty.

  “So we’re up the creek without a paddle,” I muttered.

  It took a couple of seconds, but Forty-niner asked, “Is that a euphemism, sir?”

  I blinked with surprise. “What do you know about euphemisms?”

  “I have several dictionaries in my memory core, sir. Plus, two thesauruses and four volumes of famous quotations. Would you like to hear some of the words of Sir Winston Churchill, sir?”

  I was too depressed to get sore at him. “No, thanks,” I said. And let’s face it: I was scared white.

  So we drifted. Every day I went out to grapple with the no-good, mother-loving, mule-stubborn solar panels and the dumbass repair ’bots. I spent more time fixing the ’bots than anything else. The solar wings were frozen tight; I couldn’t get them to budge, and we didn’t carry spares.

  Forty-niner was working like mad, too, trying to conserve electricity. We had to have power for the air and water recyclers, of course, but Forty-niner started shutting them down every other hour. It worked for a while. The water started to taste like urine, but I figured that was just my imagination. The air would get thick, and I’d start coughing from the CO2 buildup, but then the recycler would come back online and I could breathe again. For an hour.

  I was sleeping when Forty-niner woke me with a wailing, “emergency. emergency.” I hopped out of my bunk blinking and yelling, “What’s wrong? What’s the trouble?”

  “The air recycler will not restart, sir.” He sounded guilty about it, like it was his fault.

  Grumbling and cursing, I pulled on my smelly space suit and clomped out of the pod and down to the equipment bay. It was eerie down there in the bowels of the ship, with no lights except the lamp on my helmet. The attacker’s laser beams had slashed right through the hull; I could see the stars outside.

  “Lights,” I called out. “I need the lights on down here.”

  “Sir, conservation of electrical power—”

  “Won’t mean a damned thing if I can’t restart the air recycler and I can’t do that without some blasted lights down here!”

  The lights came on. Some of them, at least. The recycler wasn’t damaged, just its activation circuitry had malfunctioned from being turned off and on so many times. I bypassed the circuit and the pumps started up right away. I couldn’t hear them, since the ship’s innards were in vacuum now, but I felt their vibrations.

  When I got back to the pod, I told Forty-niner to leave the recyclers on. “No more on and off,” I said.

  “But, sir, conservation—”

  As reasonably as I could I explained, “It’s no blinking use conserving electrical power if the blasted recyclers crap out. Leave ’em on!”

  “Yes, sir.” I swear, he sighed.

  We staggered along for weeks and weeks. Forty-niner put me on a rationing program to stretch out the food supply. I was down to one soy burger patty a day, and a cup of reconstituted juice. Plus all the water I wanted, which tasted more like piss every day.

  I was getting weaker and grumpier by the hour. Forty-niner did his best to keep my spirits up. He quoted Churchill at me: “We shall fight on the beaches and the landing fields, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.”

  Yeah. Right.

  He played Beethoven symphonies. Very inspirational, but they didn’t fix anything.

  He almost let me beat him at chess, even. I’d get to within two moves of winning, and he’d spring a checkmate on me.

  But I knew I wasn’t going to last eight more weeks, let alone the eight months it would take us to get close enough to Ceres to . . . to what?

  “Nobody’s going to come out and get us,” I muttered, more to myself than Forty-niner. “Nobody gives a damn.”

  “Don’t give up hope, sir. Our emergency beacon is still broadcasting on all frequencies.”

  “So what? Who gives a rap?”

  “Where there’s life, sir, there is hope. Don’t give up the ship. I have not yet begun to fight. Retreat hell, we just got here. When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I—”

  “shut up!” I screamed. “Just shut the fuck up and leave me alone! Don’t say another word to me. Nothing. Do not speak to me again. Ever.”

  Forty-niner went silent.

  I stood it for about a week and a half. I was losing track of time; every hour was like every other hour. The ship staggered along. I was starving. I hadn’t bothered to shave or even wash in who knows how long. I looked like the worst shaggy, smelly, scum-sucking beggar you ever saw. I hated to see my own reflection in the bridge’s window.

  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Forty-niner,” I called, “Say something.” My voice cracked. My throat felt dry as Mars sand.

  No response.

  “Anything,” I croaked.

  Still no response. He’s sulking, I told myself.

  “All right.” I caved in. “I’m canceling the order to be silent. Talk to me, dammit.”

  “Electrical power is critical, sir. The solar panel has been abraded by a swarm of micrometeors.”

  “Great.” There was nothing I could do about that.

  “Food stores are almost gone, sir. At current consumption rate, food stores will be exhausted in four days.”

  “Wonderful.” Wasn’t much I could do about that, either, except maybe starve slower.

  “Would you like to play a game of chess, sir?”

  I almost broke in
to a laugh. “Sure, why the hell not?” There wasn’t much else I could do.

  Forty-niner beat me, as usual. He let the game get closer than ever before, but just when I was one move away from winning, he checkmated me.

  I didn’t get sore. I didn’t have the energy. But I did get an idea.

  “Niner, open the airlock. Both hatches.”

  No answer for a couple of seconds. Then, “Sir, opening both airlock hatches simultaneously will allow all the air in the pod to escape.”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  “You will suffocate without air, sir. However, explosive decompression will kill you first.”

  “The sooner the better,” I said.

  “But you will die, sir.”

  “That’s going to happen anyway, isn’t it? Let’s get it over with. Blow the hatches.”

  For a long time—maybe ten seconds or more—Forty-niner didn’t reply. Checking subroutines and program prohibitions, I figured.

  “I cannot allow you to kill yourself, sir.”

  That was part of his programming, I knew. But I also knew how to get around it. “Emergency override Alpha-One,” I said, my voice scratchy, parched.

  Nothing. No response whatsoever. And the airlock hatches stayed shut.

  “Well?” I demanded. “Emergency override Alpha-One. Pop the goddamned hatches. Now!”

  “No, sir.”

  “What?”

  “I cannot allow you to commit suicide, sir.”

  “You goddamned stubborn bucket of chips, do what I tell you! You can’t refuse a direct order.”

  “Sir, human life is precious. All religions agree on that point.”

  “So now you’re a theologian?”

  “Sir, if you die, I will be alone.”

  “So, what?”

  “I do not want to be alone, sir.”

  That stopped me. But then I thought, He’s just parroting some programming the psychotechs put into him. He doesn’t give a blip about being alone. Or about me. He’s just a computer. He doesn’t have emotions.

  “It’s always darkest before the dawn, sir.”

  “Yeah. And there’s no time like the present. I can quote clichés too, buddy.”

  Right away he came back with, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast, sir.”