by Laer Carroll
“You can speak here. All these are trusted colleagues.”
“My instructions were to deliver it to you alone. It’s short.”
The woman gazed at her for long moments, stood straight, and pointed to a woman at the table.
“Olivia, it’s your watch. Don’t wait for me.”
She strode across the room toward Beth like a great jungle cat. The shapechanger backed out of the room and held the door for her.
Beth let the door close. The two of them were alone in the hall now.
Prince wasted no breath on words. She just looked at Bethany and waited.
To the shapechanger the woman’s presence was almost shockingly vivid. She seemed to be in no hurry whatsoever, as if she had centuries to wait on events. There were no facial or bodily clues to what she was feeling or thinking. To Bethany, who was used to reading at a glance dozens of tiny clues to the insides of people, it was unsettling. It was as if the woman was herself a shapechanger able to still all those outward signs.
Perhaps she was. But people’s lives were in danger.
“I can get to Mars inside of 30 minutes.”
She shielded and rose to hang half a foot in the air.
Prince was utterly calm as she spoke. “You’re not human.”
“No. ”
“What amount of cargo can you carry in your ship?”
“I’m the ship. I surround myself with a force field and just go. About three tons is all I can carry. Accelerations and decelerations are instantaneous. Nothing harmful can get past the shield.”
“Sophisticated. How large can the shield stretch?”
“Twenty meters at the greatest extent. The shield will conform to the cargo, including me. It will assume any shape but tries to remain an eggshell shape.”
“What payment do you want?”
“Nothing. Except one. You must do whatever you can to keep it secret that an alien helped you. It would not do this planet any good to know that a being from out there was visiting here.
“Unless secrecy would endanger the expedition crew. That is paramount.”
“Agreed. Now let me think.”
And think she did, for several minutes, leaning against a wall with a distant expression on her face. Bethany let herself down to stand calmly on the carpet, only moving to breathe while she watched the woman.
Then Prince stood upright and said “Come with me.” She re-entered the conference room, pointed at a seat for Bethany to sit in, and walked to the end of the table near where she’d been standing before.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have good news. An experimental program I’ve been funding out of personal funds has produced a device we can use to get to our rescue craft. There are certain limitations.”
Three hours were to pass before the meeting was finished and the larger and smaller issues of the rescue were decided. Some smaller issues would be researched and presented at an 8:00 am meeting back at the briefing room .
Before she adjourned the meeting Prince said, “I know many of you will continue working on this. But you absolutely must leave time to get a good night’s sleep. Take pills, drink warm milk, have good sex, whatever it takes. But REST. We need you at your best tomorrow.”
She came over to Bethany as the rest of the room emptied.
“Do you have a place to stay? We’ll need you here tomorrow.”
“My time is yours. But yes I have a place to stay. I’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Good night. Sleep well.”
“You too.”
·
The shapechanger was comfortable anywhere, even without the shield for a bed. But she took a middling-nice hotel nearby and walked around till midnight in the more picturesque parts of the city, eating large meals three times.
·
The next day was a busy one for all but Bethany. At the first coffee break Ana Prince suggested she leave and come back at 1:00 when the meeting would adjourn to the Long Island Prince Enterprises complex. This was a huge old military base which the US had used in the Global War of the 1930s. Bethany took her up on it and did some more tourist sightseeing.
At a little after 1:00 several air buses convoyed the rescue team across the East River to the complex. Various people separated to handle parts of the business of the rescue. Prince took Beth to a huge barn-like structure from the war. Its peeling grey sides had been sandblasted (Prince said) and repainted in grey with blue accents. Inside parts had been partitioned off for engineering research. Prince showed her to one such large room .
“This is the cargo you’ll be taking. Let’s double-check that you can handle it.” Bethany nodded then walked around the big box with various pipes and blocky machines attached to it, consulting the robot as she did so.
“Stand back Ms. Prince. I’m about to activate.”
Ana Prince walked a dozen yards away and turned to watch Bethany.
The shapechanger stood near one end of the box looking away from it. Then she turned on the shield.
She and the box rose till the bottom of the shield was above the floor. She floated forward and turned till the front of the shield was near Prince. She descended till the box and she touched the floor, turned off the shield.
“Let’s go inside and take it up for a brief shakedown ride.”
“Very well.” Prince walked over to a bench and took up a small device. It was an ordinary garage-door remote control. With it she opened two large double doors at one end of the room.
She and Bethany entered the box through the air lock door and sealed it. The interior was very plain, just large enough to hold a couple of dozen people and some minimal luggage. There were no seats, only tethers to keep them from drifting. The people she brought back to Earth would be in zero gravity for no more than an hour.
There was a window at one end of the box. The two women positioned themselves near it and tethered themselves near it looking out.
“As I said earlier, I don’t really need this. My robot projects all sorts of data and images into my brain. But it does give us a nice view out.”
Bethany brought up the shield again and eased the box out of the miniature hangar, then up into the air. She explained that she could monitor other air traffic nearby and so avoid it. She also kept her flights below the local speed of sound except in emergencies.
“Wise,” said Prince. “Sonic booms don’t please the neighbors.”
Bethany took them out of the atmosphere and circled the globe. It took 30 minutes, most of the time spent getting discreetly out of and back into the atmosphere.
“What is the power source?” asked the billionaire.
“The best explanation my robot pilot can give me is that it ‘unbends space’ and is effectively infinite.”
“Impressive. Now, a few final details before we return here tomorrow. I’d like you to wear this ship suit.” She went to a tall metal supply cabinet and brought back an ordinary looking coverall of light blue with blank black Velcro patches on each breast.
“When you get to the spacecraft you’ll represent yourself as Dr. James, part of an experimental propulsion research team. If you want you can bitch about me throwing away three billion dollars on them. That will make you unpopular and they’ll be less likely to question you.
“Here is a user’s manual to the rescue module. It was quickly cobbled together by engineers. I hope it’s not too confusing. Read up on how to dock the module to the airlock of the spacecraft and cycle into and out of the vehicle.
“That’s it. See you here at 9:00 o’clock, OK?”
“I’ll be here. Ah, we’ll go through more details of the mission briefing then?”
·
The briefing was attended by about a hundred people, many of them important onlookers, not part of the rescue team, who’d been cleared by Prince Enterprises. There also was a Prince photographer to take pictures to be released to the press if the rescue mission was a success. Or not, Bethany guessed, if it was not.
After th
e two-hour briefing Bethany felt doubly comfortable with what she must do. She entered the pressurized box, activated the shield, rose in the air to excited murmurs from the onlookers, and exited through the double doors.
·
The trip to Mars was routine to Bethany and took a half hour. She stopped when the situation display projected into her brain by her pilot showed them nearing the distressed ship.
She got on the short-range radio cobbled together by some engineers. Make-shift though it was, it worked. Because after several minutes of repeating a greeting she was answered.
“WHO did you say you were?”
“Dr. Cynthia James of Prince Enterprises. I’ve come here to help you out of this situation you’ve gotten yourself into.” She spoke in a crabby voice, getting early into Prince’s suggestion to make herself unpopular.
“Who?” “For God’s sake, Joseph! Pull yourself together.” “Dr. James” was not the only crabby one in the neighborhood, obviously.
“Please explain.”
“I’ve arrived with an experimental propulsion system. We’re going to get you into a safe orbit around Mars, then take everyone back to Earth who wants to go.”
There was a lengthy silence. Then: “What do we do?”
“Go to the airlock. I’m going to position myself by it and try an IVA.”
Voices at the other end argued briefly. Then the first voice (Astronaut Captain Joseph Hardwood, no doubt) returned.
“People have been dispatched to the airlock. Do you know how to operate it from your end?”
“I have a for-shit users manual. Let’s hope I can open the airlock.”
Bethany was inside the box. It had no airlock built in. For this emergency the rescue team had calculated (maybe foolishly) that the spacecraft’s airlock would mate properly with the box and work properly. As soon as Bethany turned off the shield.
Now the box was exposed to space unguarded by the unbreakable shield. Of course, the shield would go with her when she entered the vehicle, so she herself was still protected whenever she switched it on.
The airlock door worked. It swung into the box, wafting cold and stinky air into it. The clearance was crowded but she could swing around the door and float into the craft.
Inside it Bethany examined the controls for the airlock. They supposedly would block her from going further if there was not air on the other side. She read the display panel. It said there was air there. She pushed the big red mushroom-shaped OPEN button.
The oval door swung into the space vehicle. Four crew members floated in the air.
They wore the same blue ship suit Bethany did, but all the worse for wear in one way or another. There were three men and a woman. She recognized them from their photos.
She nodded to them and pushed herself against the door jamb and entered into the spaceship, grabbing one of the several red hand-holds on the wall to keep from floating off into the middle of the craft.
“Explanations later. Now take me to the critical patient.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“Yes. Let’s go please.”
Her greeters seemed dubious but began to take her down a corridor. The shapechanger quickly shrugged off the too-helpful suggestions. Because of her bubble she was no stranger to weightlessness and she was superhumanly in control of her body.
The corridor ended in another. Bethany followed the woman who had assumed the lead position by caroming expertly off the end of wall at the end of the corridor into a new direction.
The infirmary was through a closed oval door. Bethany grabbed a handhold just inside and swung out of the way of those following her. The woman and one of the men crowded inside while the other two men stayed outside looking in.
The shapechanger took in the small room, noting how there were frequent handholds to let occupants get around in it. There were three “beds” for patients arranged in a row. There were various instruments in the walls. One set of them had several hoses and wires leading from them to the one patient, an East Indian woman in a white robe of some kind like a hospital gown.
Her head was bandaged. One swath of them covered her eyes. She turned her head toward the door.
Bethany ignored the man she knew was the chief of the two medical personnel and floated over to the woman.
“Dr. Kaur. I’m Dr. James. I work for Prince Enterprises. I’ve come here to fix you up and take you home.”
The woman had pulled earphones out of her ears and set a remote into a niche beside the bed where it clicked and stayed.
“Fix me up? Can you make the blind see? Can you?”
Bethany placed a cool hand on the woman’s nearest hand and probed.
Her eyes had been damaged beyond repair by any of Earth’s medical science. But Beth commanded that of a civilization far in advance to that of Earth.
She said nothing, put the woman to sleep, and sent healing into her. She also did a couple of quick fixes to her eyes which the woman’s body could not fix. Now Dr. Kaur’s body would do the rest.
The chief medic looked the part, no doubt one of the reasons why he’d been picked. He would be tall in gravity, slender, with grey just touching his temples, and a handsome face with a long slightly hooked nose.
“What did you do to her?”
“I fixed her eyes. Now hold still.”
She touched the side of his face. It had a couple of razor cuts; apparently he’d not yet mastered zero-gravity grooming. They immediately ceased to pain him and began to heal.
She left him to whatever pondering and discoveries he might make and turned expertly in the air to look at the woman who’d assumed the role of guide.
“Take me to your leader.” She grinned at the age-old phrase, a catch phrase lately of a popular comedian.
The woman blinked, paused, then turned to lead again.
The control room was not unlike that of the Star Voyager TV show. It had several seats side by side in front of consoles, one of them behind and a bit above the others. Captain Joseph Hardwood sat in that seat, a belt across his lap. He was another type, an older man with wisdom etched into his face.
He was also enormously competent, she knew from the crew bios which she had read.
“What did you mean by ‘get you into a safe orbit’?”
“Captain Hardwood. I’m Dr. Cynthia James. I’m part of a secret research project that Ana Prince is funding. We’ve created a reaction-less drive. I’ve brought our most advanced prototype. I’ll dock it where the engineers decided it would do the most good. Then I’ll put you into the orbit you’d originally planned. Then I’ll take everyone home.”
He sat considering her, rubbing his chin. HE had learned to shave in zero gravity .
“That’s hard to believe. But the mere fact you are here suggests it’s true.”
He blew out a breath. “Whether you can get us into orbit is another matter. I’ll need to know the drive fuel capacity and other details.”
“I’ll not be giving them to you. I’ll do all the piloting. When we’re in orbit I’ll leave you, taking whatever personnel who want to go.”
“I can’t—”
“For God’s sake, Joseph,” said a squat astronaut, engineer Jean-Pierre Lafitte. “We’re in no position to dictate matters.”
Bethany ignored the two as they began to argue. She turned to Aurelia Thompson-Hall, the woman who’d been her guide so far.
“I brought a few items with me, luxury food and drink mostly. Someone decided you needed a morale boost more than more practical items.”
Another Distinguished Scientist type (English Edition), the woman smiled back at her. “They decided right. I hope they include some alcoholic drinks. We need something to help us celebrate we’re not going to die.”
The three men who’d been trailing them heartily agreed. So did the six other astronauts who’d been on the sleep shift when Bethany had arrived. The captain judged it was worth waking them to apprise them of the new situation.
·
The next day, ship time, the captain set a meeting which overlapped the changing of the “day” and “night” crew. More than half of them were hung over. But they became alert soon enough, helped along by the shapechanger’s discreet improvements to their health.
The first topic of discussion was the orbital insertion. There was not much to discuss. Dr. Cynthia James was going to do that. Then take home those who wanted to go.
No one did. They had risked their lives to get here after years of long training which weeded out the faint-hearted and (Aurelia said) those with more brains and less obsessive behavior.
A day later all the crew were awake. They took their stations while Bethany took hers, alone in the box, and moved away from the spaceship then back again to attach itself to the exact spot Prince engineers calculated would allow it to safely and efficiently push against the ship.
Questioned her robot assured her there would be no trouble pushing the spacecraft into where it should go. She was less sure. It had never adjusted the orbits of large masses.
But it was right. Several small thrusts adjusted the path of the makeshift assembly into the exact orbital groove it needed. One long sustained thrust over several hours several days later slowed the large craft just enough to put it into a high orbit around Mars. Several lesser periods of thrust shaped the orbit into the desirable circular orbit.
Then the crew began preparing to take one of the two shuttle craft inside the big ship and wing down to the planet where they would set up a living area and do research. They would not be able to return home since their big ship had lost most of its fuel. But they had faith that another expedition would be funded to come repair and refuel their ship, then to provide crew to take their place on Mars. Bethany was not so sure, but then she knew (and kept to herself) that she could always rescue them a second time.
No one took her up on her offer to take them home. Even Dr. Niral Kaur stayed. Her sight fully restored she was determined to remain to study Martian geology (or aerology as she called it).
Bethany was accompanied to the airlock by everyone on the ship when it was time to leave. There were hugs, kisses, and not a few tears. She even leaked a few tears herself. It was too bad she would never be able to visit her new-found friends as Bethany Rossiter.
