Galaxy Blues (26 page)

“What's it like down there?”
Rain asked.

I stopped to look up at her. She was standing in the open hatch, watching me from above. “Like Kansas,” I replied, “only without cornfields. Ever been there?”

A short laugh.
“You kidding? I've never even been to Earth.”

I'd forgotten that. “I'll take you sometime. To Earth, I mean…believe me, you can skip Kansas.” I started to pick up the case again, then paused. “Hey, if you're not doing anything, patch into the long-range com and see if you can reach the
Pride
. They might be back in range by now.”

“Wilco.”
There was a click as she switched from one band to another. I didn't wait for a response, but instead went back to work.

The terrain was rough, its coarse sand strewn with rocks the size of baseballs. Every so often I'd have to veer around boulders or haul the crate through small pits formed by micrometeorite impacts. Through my helmet, I could hear the faint moan of the wind; the atmosphere wasn't dense enough to hold up a kite, but still, I had to use my free hand to clear silt from my faceplate.

It took about fifteen minutes for me to drag the crate about a hundred yards from the shuttle; I figured that was far enough to keep the probe from being damaged by
Lucy
's exhaust flare once we lifted off again. I checked the chronometer on my heads-up display; we'd been on Kha-Zann for a little more than a half hour, so time was getting short. I opened the crate and tossed away the lid, then reached inside. The probe wasn't hard to remove; a couple of hard tugs at its rungs, and it came straight out of its packing material.

“No word from the
Pride
yet,”
Rain said,
“but that's probably because I'm getting a lot of static. How are you doing out there?”

“Almost done.” I grunted as I carried the sphere a few feet from the crate, then gently placed it on the ground. It rolled a couple of inches, forcing me to roll it back so that its top hexagon was positioned right side up. Once I was satisfied that it wasn't going anywhere, I pressed the blue button on the control hex.

The button lit up, but nothing happened. I waited a second, uncertain whether or not the thing was working, then I pushed the red button. This time, the reaction was immediate; the panels surrounding the lower hemisphere sprang open, and small multijointed legs unfolded from within the sphere, their horseshoe-like pads firmly anchoring the probe against the ground.

I pushed the white button, and had to jump back quick to avoid the rest of the panels as they peeled apart to reveal a smaller sphere hidden inside. From the probe's core, a narrow cylinder raised itself upon a stalk, then unfurled to become a dish antenna. The hyperlink transmitter, no doubt. As it swiveled around to point toward the sun, two more cylinders rose into view; judging from the lenses at their ends, I figured they were multispectrum cameras. One of them rotated toward me, and I took another step back. Realizing that it was looking straight at me, I restrained an impulse to wave at whoever might be watching. Or perhaps give them an obscene gesture.

A slender wand shot out from the core, then buried itself in the sand; that must be the seismometer. And meanwhile, valves opened and fluttered, wands were elevated, lights began to flash. Like some weird toy that belonged to an equally weird kid.

“Jules…”

“Wow.” I stared at the probe in amazement. “You should see this thing. It's like some kind of…”

“Jules…look up.”

Something in Rain's voice gave me a chill. Turning around, I raised my eyes toward the sky and immediately forgot about the probe.

While I'd been busy hauling the crate out into the desert and deploying the probe, the sun had begun to set. Aerik had fully risen into view, yet that wasn't what got my attention, but Kasimasta instead.

I couldn't see all of the Annihilator, but what I could was enough to freeze my blood. The edge of its accretion belt was coming up over the horizon, with the nimbus of its ergosphere just behind it. The damn thing was four or five times larger than when we'd first seen it, and no longer looked like an eye but rather the storm front of a hurricane mightier than the wrath of God.

And it was heading straight toward us.

“Hell with this.” I forced myself to breathe. “We're outta here.” And then I turned and began to hightail it back to
Lucy
.

VI

No longer encumbered by the crate, there was nothing to prevent me from bunny-hopping. The gravity and atmospheric pressure were just low enough for me to make broad jumps that covered five or six feet at a time, just as I learned to do in Academy basic training on the Moon. Yet I hadn't covered half the distance between the probe and the shuttle when I went sprawling face-first across the ground.

Under other circumstances, it might have been funny. Spacer fall down, go boom. And my reflexes were good; I managed to raise my arms and cover my helmet faceplate before it was cracked open by a rock. But nonetheless, I knew at once that this was no mere accident; I hadn't tripped over anything, nor had my last jump been misguided.

The ground had moved beneath my feet.

I was picking myself up when I felt it again, a mild tremor that caused the sand beneath my hands and knees to shift ever so slightly. At that instant, Rain's voice came to me through my headset:
“Jules, get back here! We're getting…!”

“Earthquakes. I know.” I struggled erect, continued running toward the shuttle. Fortunately, it had remained stable, its landing gear still firmly resting upon the ground. I knew, though, that if the tremors became much more violent, there was a good chance that the craft would be rocked so hard that one of its legs might snap…in which case, we wouldn't be leaving Kha-Zann.

Rain remained at her post until I reached the elevator; I'd barely climbed aboard before she put the crane in reverse and began to haul me back upstairs. The wind had picked up as well; I had to hold on tight as the cage swung back and forth, and I didn't feel safe until it reached the top and she'd retracted the T-bar into the hold. Yet that safety was little more than temporary; we had to get off Kha-Zann PDQ.

While Rain stayed below to shut the hatch and lock everything down, I scrambled up to the cockpit and got
Lucy
ready to fly. I'd just powered up the engine when she joined me on the flight deck. No time for a prelaunch checklist; I did my best to make sure that I hadn't neglected anything, but even as we were strapping ourselves in, another tremor passed through the hull, this one violent enough to scare me into thinking that the ship was about to topple over.

Rain felt it, too. Her eyes were wide on the other side of her faceplate.
“Jules…”

“Hang on, sweetie. We're gone.” And then I fired the engine.

Launch was more difficult than landing. By then the wind had picked up sufficient speed that, if I had been attempting to lift off from Mars, the ground controller would've probably called a scrub. But I didn't have the luxury of waiting for optimal weather conditions; no choice, in fact, but to root hog or die. So I kept the engine at full throttle all the way up and gripped the yoke with both hands as
Lucy
clawed her way into the sky, her hull plates creaking ominously with every bump and jolt she took.

In less than a minute, though, it was all over. The sky darkened, purple turning jet-black; the rattle faded away, and everything smoothed out. On the screens, the aft cams captured a brief glimpse of Kha-Zann falling away, our landing site no longer visible. Then the moon disappeared somewhere behind us, and we were back in space.

Rain let out her breath.
“Nice flying, pilot,”
she murmured.
“If I wasn't wearing this thing, I'd give you a kiss.”

“Save it for later.” I was still on manual, but since we were through the rough patch, I throttled down the engines and engaged the autopilot. “See if you can raise the
Pride
. We should be able to get her by now.”

“Right.”
She reached over to the com panel, patched us into the long-range relay.
“
Loose Lucy
to
Pride of Cucamonga
, do you copy?”

A moment of static, then Emily's voice came over:
“We copy,
Lucy
. What took you so long?”

I almost laughed out loud. “Sorry 'bout that,
Pride
. Had a bit of a…” I stopped myself. “Never mind. Mission accomplished, and we're off the ground. That's all that counts. What's your position?”

A brief pause, then Ted came online.
“We're on course for the rendezvous point, same coordinates as before. ETA in forty-seven minutes. Think you can make it?”

“Hold on.” I finished reloading the program, then checked the comp display. Everything was copacetic; we'd arrive with just enough time and fuel to spare. “Roger that. We're on the beam and on our way for pickup.”

“Very good. We'll see you there.”
Another pause.
“Good work, guys. And, by the way…Mr. Goldstein has asked me to extend his compliments.”

“Oh, how lovely,”
Rain muttered.
“Be still, my beating heart.”

“Repeat, please? I'm afraid we have some interference.”

“Negatory,
Pride
. Just some static.
Lucy
over and out.” I made the kill sign and grinned at Rain once she'd switched it off. “What do you want to bet Morgan gives you the pink slip for that?”

“Ask me if I…”
Her voice trailed off as she gazed toward the starboard side.
“Oh, god…”

I looked past her and was suddenly grateful for having had the foresight to wear diapers. Kasimasta filled the windows, its accretion belt now resembling a whirlpool of colored dyes, its ergosphere as bright as a star. Now that it had entered Aerik's orbit, the Annihilator's gravity well was beginning to affect the planet itself. Aerik's night side was turned toward the rogue, and even from this distance we could see brilliant flashes of lightning within its darkened skies, like the death throes of a swarm of fireflies, while the blue clouds of its daylight side seemed to writhe and roil in agony.

But that wasn't all. Aerik was no longer a perfect sphere; its equator was showing a pronounced bulge, as if it was a massive balloon that was being squeezed at its poles. As I watched, a wispy stream of blue-white haze slowly began to move outward from the planet's upper atmosphere. Kasimasta wasn't just a killer; it was also a vampire, the vast mouth of its singularity drawing blood from its latest victim in the form of hydrogen and helium. Kha-Zann would be little more than an appetizer for such a voracious appetite.

It was hard to be sure, but I guessed that Kasimasta was about a half million miles away. Way too close for comfort. I fought the impulse to throttle up the engine. Our rendezvous window had been calculated with precious little margin for error; if we arrived too early, we would miss the
Pride
just as surely as if we'd been marooned on Kha-Zann. I couldn't afford to take that chance; like it or not, I'd have to place my faith in Ali's calculations.

The next forty minutes were the longest in my life. There was nothing for us to do except wait for
Lucy
to intercept the
Pride
. If I'd brought a deck of cards, I might have broken them out and had a few hands of poker with Rain; as things stood, though, we could only stay on the lookout for our ship.

I was just beginning to regret not having written my last will and testament—not that I had much to bequeath anyone—when the lidar beeped; something was coming within range. A minute later, a tiny cruciform appeared through the starboard windows, its shape outlined by red and green flashes of its formation lights. Rain and I were still whooping it up when Emily's voice came over the radio.

“
Pride
to
Lucy
, do you copy?”

Rain toggled the com, then nodded to me. “Affirmative,
Pride
,” I said. “Great to see you again.” A quick glance at the nav panel. “On course for rendezvous and docking.”

“Roger that.”
Now we heard from Ted.
“Ready to match course and velocity.”

“Copy.” I disengaged the autopilot one last time, then put my hands back on the yoke. Next was the tricky part. Although the
Pride
had cut its thrust, its momentum was still such that
Lucy
would have to run hard to catch up with it. I'd have to expend the last of our fuel in order to do so. But if all went well, it wouldn't matter. And if it didn't go so well…