Alien Velocity (3 page)

Hushed voices and a strong smell of new leather filled the room. Phoebe patted his shoulder but he ignored her.

Come on, Daddy, start the engine already.

Miles away, the
Bluebird
suddenly nudged forward, an orange blaze tonguing the ice behind her as she seemed to skid. The wheels were invisible beneath the side panel, while two white commas rose where the spikes tossed up fragments of ice. The hushed voices trebled into loud speech around him.

It was difficult seeing much of anything except a surprisingly slow-moving blue bug in the jaws of a white wave. He kept watch, though. It was his duty. He couldn’t miss one second of the run. Reginald Thorpe-Campbell was his dad. The idea widened his eyes. A low thunderclap in the distance made him think a storm was coming, but he heard someone shout to his right, “Punch it! There goes the sound barrier!”

Suddenly the race was thrilling. The
Bluebird
now seemed to be shooting forward, even pulling away from the white wave. The wheels had to have retracted by now, letting the sharp skis take over.
Go, Daddy, go!
Faster and faster—a blue bolt rocketing over the smooth ice—it passed Camp Shackleton half a minute later at close to Mach 7, according to another person to his right.

“Son of a bitch, he’s gonna do it!” yelled another.

Phoebe clasped her hands together, rocked them rapidly back and forward. “Please, Reggie, please, please.”

Charlie swallowed hard. His dad whooshed past him faster than any bullet ever fired in the history of mankind. The orange flame appeared twice as long as the
Bluebird
itself, and Charlie now gasped when he realised how powerful the rocket really was. Both frightening and amazing, racing was bigger than he’d ever dreamed—his dad, the fastest man alive.

He roved his viewer to the left, across the plateau, following the wave and the orange tongue. He couldn’t see the craft anymore. No hint of blue. Then the tongue vanished, and high up over the white wave…a flash of blue.

“Eh?” he said.

A chorus of loud gasps answered him. Then a shrill scream from Phoebe Watts cleaved his world in two.

It was all white and empty out there. Inside, deafening darkness, closed doors.

Someone told him the
Bluebird
had flipped at Mach 8.

“Daddy?”

No answer.

The entire room fell silent. All eyes were on him after all. He didn’t say a word about the metal stud.

No one could ever know.

Only Charlie.

He wanted to run away over the ice and never stop.

* * *

He felt a delicate shimmy when the outermost racer uncoupled from the giant arm. One at a time, over the next few minutes, each RAM-racer would be set free along its own orbital track. Onboard navigators were accurate to within half a millimetre per lap of the earth. There would be no danger of vehicles crossing lanes, or collisions. All the runner had to worry about was his own stamina, and in the unlikely event of a stray object wandering onto the racing lane, the autopilot would use the half dozen thrusters located around the vehicle’s exterior to dodge it.

Seven or eight shimmies later, the voice on the com-link announced, “
Bluebird,
RAM booster to ignite in ten, nine, eight…” Charlie touched his toes then rose to take a deep breath. The butterflies roused at “four, three, two, one…commence.”

His ears popped when the artificial gravity spiked, holding him in place in an invisible vise as the rear booster drove the
Bluebird
forward. He glimpsed the young lad’s orange runner ahead to his right but instantly turned away. The gravity’s grip loosened and, for a few moments, he felt as light and soft as an eiderdown pillow.

“Right, here we go.” His first step almost lost him his balance. Crouching low to steady himself, he thumped the cyclic conveyer with an angry fist, but quickly apologised by kissing the ends of his fingers and touching the same spot. No need to test providence so early. Within two dozen strides he had his rhythm—that veteran metronomic timing newscasts often joked was more accurate than the British Admiralty clock in Greenwich. No more than a steady warm-up, his early pace would probably put him near the back of the field after his first orbit but no one ever won a race in the virgin lap.

On the other hand, it might be best not to dawdle. How fast were some of these new guys? He hated letting anything invade his private keep, but the simple fact remained that Charlie was thirty-three. His physical peak was behind him, and whatever cute aphorism he might trot out for the public, being over the hill was never an advantage. Not in RAM-running.

But thirty-three wasn’t that old. He was still the fastest in this field. He was Charlie Thorpe-Campbell, for chrissakes.

The
thud, thud
of his trainers on the cyclic conveyer overpowered the whir and crackle of the RAM propeller at the rear. Like his running, the propulsion system was both simple and formidable. The track’s motion rotated the rear propeller, infusing each blade or shaft with psammeticum energy. Like the wheel of a tramp steamer through water, these in turn would churn the localised antimatter created by a Pei-McMillan field just behind the propeller. Psammeticum being rare, and also the only energy to remain constant across the matter-antimatter barrier, it was an incredibly expensive engine to operate. Fortunate then, that RAM-running, in terms of popularity, superseded every sport in human history. It wasn’t just the runners’ celebrity status or the extraterrestrial nature of the race, or even the mind-boggling speeds. The real excitement existed in seeing mankind and technology push the envelope further than ever before. RAM-running operated at the limits of man’s endurance. No question. These were the fastest humans who had ever lived. Some said if Hermes were to descend from Mount Olympus and challenge the world to a foot race, he would go by the name of Charlie Thorpe-Campbell. It was that thrill of watching gods race their chariots, and betting on the outcome, that had kept the sport in the heavens for decades. No matter what happened elsewhere, there would always be RAM-running.

* * *

Charlie scratched an itch on his forearm as the computer announced, “Lap one—fifteenth position.” He could check his lap time and the virtual map of his competitors’ positions on the monitor, but he preferred not to. Not at this early stage. Pacing was the key, the transference of energy…from him to the cyclic conveyer to the antimatter propeller. Racing in space was all about acceleration. The more steps he took, the higher his top speed would become. If he suddenly stopped for a rest, the
Bluebird
would not slow down. She would maintain a constant speed. The vacuum of space offered no resistance. It therefore became a question of velocity. Whoever could push it the highest, for the farthest, would win.

He forgot all about the micro-cameras dotted about the interior, scrutinizing his every move. It was moot now anyway. The world knew his anatomy and his peccadilloes by heart. He had nothing new to show them, nothing to hide from them.

The memory of the metal stud bouncing inside his dad’s
Bluebird
stung his rhythm. He pursed his lips and quickened his pace. The blue and white of Earth spun like a whirligig in the corner of his left eye.

* * *

“Lap four—ninth position.”

Head down, up tempo. Existence no longer occurred in heartbeats but in the rubbery rhythm, the tit for tat of breathing out and in on the verge of asphyxiation. Christ! He’d pushed it sooner than he’d planned. Plenty of laps to go yet before the grand finale, but something had his heels. Slowing at all now seemed unconscionable. The others had smelled his blood and were closing in. In a panic, he glanced at the monitor display. Crap. Still ninth. Crap. Early days, but it sure didn’t feel like it. His throat tightened. His calves hardened like wet concrete.

“To hell with this!”

He drifted backward on the track. Smoothness filled his brain as he decelerated to a walk. By the time he grabbed his towel and sucked in a few mouthfuls of Lucozade from the flexi-straw, the panic had passed.

“All right, idiot, time to regroup.” The cool air refreshed him while his breathing wound down. “It’s all in your mind. You can beat this. Just do what you always do—run the bitch into the ground, and focus on the track under your feet. She’s the
Bluebird,
but you’re the engine driving her. Forget everything else. This is what you were both built for. This is it. Dad’s watching.”

For a few moments, all was blue—the side panels and the ceiling and the Pacific Ocean filling the left window. He reached the jog spot and immediately restarted his warm-up cycle.

“Lap seven—fourteenth position.”

His eyes widened against his furrowed brow until they ached—riveted and focused.
Thump, thump.
The cyclic conveyer adapted to his quickening steps in kind. Much easier, automatic breaths now kept his stamina-sucking adrenaline about his shoulders and away from his legs. Faster and faster and…

Now! He pressed a small green button on his wristwatch. The track ahead quickly curled up and retracted toward him, segment by segment, with a series of metallic claps and clicks. This shortening of the conveyor precipitated a shift in the angle of the gravity revolver. The track folded itself up until it was a smooth curvature, from floor to ceiling, directly in front of him. When he stepped onto the curve, the gravity field shifted with him, rotating slowly until he could jog horizontally.

His stomach felt a twist and a twinge, nothing more, as the poles flipped. Soon he found himself running upside down, his weight just the same as a minute ago. Only the speed of the track had changed. With the cyclic conveyer folded, it had now shortened by a third, which meant the same running pace would rotate it that much quicker. Conversely, it felt like running uphill, and required far more effort to keep said pace. RAM physics in action. While the track’s full cycle mitigated the resistance of the Pei-McMillan field, this shortened circuit, with its higher propulsion rate, bore the brunt of that resistance. Hence Charlie had to run harder. A distinct advantage could be gained, though, if he managed to keep a steady rpm on this shorter track. The energy buildup transferred through the psammeticum propellers and ratcheted the antimatter output up several notches. It was all about acceleration, and this was the steepest, toughest curve.

Charlie gritted his teeth and focused on the RAM propulsion unit at the
Bluebird’
s tail. Silver aluminium casing, four feet wide, five high. Through a small elliptical grid he watched the purple light created by psammeticum energy crossing through the Pei-McMillan field. Beautiful. Crucial. The more intense it grew, the more it crackled, the more energy he was creating. Cyclic conveyer coolant wafted through his hair. Upside down? It might be showy, but the fresh perspective always did wonders for his resolve. The crowd would be going nuts. Forget ’em. The only things that mattered were the whir of the track, the RAM crackle and the
thump, thump
of his trainers driving him on to infinity. No finishing line. Only speed mattered.

Thump, thump.

Lactic acid tore his left shoulder to shreds. He slackened for a minute, long enough to massage the pain, discover his second wind, and hated himself for letting the purple light wane even a single watt.

“This time—to the death.”

A one-way trip. He kicked into a punishing rhythm. The roar of his gasps drowned out the computer’s lap update. His next was the gravest orbit of his life. Charlie knew that if he didn’t make this a superhuman effort, he would probably fail. The inversion was usually a runner’s last throw of the dice—digging in for a spectacular dash to the finish. Charlie had inverted very early, and he had spared no effort for the final laps.

* * *

Metallic shapes whooshed by on either side. One or two reflected the sun dazzlingly, like flares through a camera lens. He had to be lapping people, but whom? How many? Was he in pole? If so, how far ahead was he? He didn’t even know how many laps he’d spent inverted. The reserves of energy he’d summoned had been staggering.

He was spent. His heart thrashed like a whale floundering on coral. The thuds pulsed through his arms and rang through his brain. He staggered sideways for a moment, almost blacked out, before he slowed to a walk and, finding the green button on his wristwatch, manoeuvred himself backward onto the curve of the track. Gravity lifted his stomach through the one-eighty, returning him to his upright position. Very pleasant. Being centred—just what he’d needed. Then, like clockwork, the cyclic conveyer unfolded into its original shape, as if nothing had happened.

If only it were that easy for him.

With his hands on his knees, while gathering breath, he let the conveyer carry him back to his respite at the rear. Upside down, he’d had no opportunity to refresh. Now he could make up for it. He’d just been through hell inverted. The blackcurrant juice went down sublimely, making him shudder with delight. He coughed. It went everywhere. He didn’t give a goddamn.

Wiping his face, neck, legs and armpits with the towel, he felt dizzy but still determined. He muttered, “That was insane.” The purple psammeticum light barely flickered, let alone crackled. He made his way forward on rubber legs with crepe joints. A gigantic breath precipitated the biggest sigh of his life. He wiped his eyes and checked the computer monitor. Garbled. He rubbed his eyes. Still garbled.

“Okay, what’s happening?”

He tapped the screen and tried every function on the keypad.

“What the hell?”

A brilliant orange glow lit the windows, forcing him to shield his face. The tinted glass filtered out harmful sunlight, so it had to be something far brighter. Jesus, it had imprinted on his retinas—an iridescent splodge with tentacles.

“Blue…there’s…nex…emerge…quick!” Someone tried to warn him over the com-link. But what of? It was a staggered, panicked message. The frightened voice and his temporary blindness clicked his brain into gear.