Godspeed (40 page)

"After a while there were no ships left to send. Every stellar system became isolated. Then you had hundreds or thousands of populated stellar systems, all totally cut off from each other. They might all be in trouble, but they wouldn't be able to help each other. They weren't even set up to
talk
among themselves without the use of the Godspeed Drive. It's no accident that the word that has come down to us through history to describe the disaster is
Isolation.
The Maveen system is isolated. But so is everyone else."

Isolation.
Jim Swift could talk theory and see that word in the abstract, but as he went babbling on I stared up at the nearest display screen. It showed nothing but barren space in all directions. I had spent sixteen happy years on Erin and I hadn't for one moment suspected that I was isolated from anything or anyone—or even in any kind of trouble, except sometimes for skipped chores or homework. Real isolation was here and now: lost in the Maze, without a working ship or the hope of contact with any other humans.

I turned to scan the other screens. We were still in the middle of the Net. I could pick out dozens of nodes as tiny points of light. Tom Toole had told me that this hardware scrap-heap was hugely valuable, enough to make any scavenge-and-salvage crew rich. If they were alive, and hadn't been thrown into another universe as Jim Swift believed, the crew might return here—eventually. Maybe an experienced spacer like Danny Shaker could even sort through the junk pile of the hardware reservoir, and repair the battered
Cuchulain
enough to fly it home. But that sort of work was far beyond our talents. And no one else was going to do it for us.

The four of us were truly isolated. And eventually, when our supplies ran out, the four of us would be dead.

CHAPTER 31

All
over. No hope. No chance of escape.
The person who snapped me out of that hangdog attitude was not, oddly enough, Jim Swift, or Mel Fury, or even Doctor Eileen. It was Danny Shaker and his Golden Rule:
Don't give up.

Even before I thought of that I had a personal proof that I was far from dead. Doctor Eileen insisted that as a first priority Jim Swift and I must have our wounds attended to. She swabbed his temple and his closed eye, then tackled his bent and broken nose. I heard the bone crack horribly when she straightened it. His forehead went pale beneath his thatch of red hair, but he didn't utter a sound.

So then I couldn't let it show, either, not with Mel looking on. Not even when Doctor Eileen probed far up inside
my
nose, to do what she called "a remedial septum straightening."

The inside of my head, from my nostrils to up behind my eyes, caught fire. I thought to myself,
I'm not dead yet. Dead people don't hurt like this.
I didn't cry out, though, but when she was done and had given me a quick injection I muttered that I had to take a look at the
Cuchulain
's engines. I fled. When I reached the cargo area I stayed there for a long time. I felt dizzy and sweaty, as though I wanted to throw up but couldn't.

When I got to the drive unit the monitors gave me the same bad news as those on the bridge. Of five clustered main engines, three would never fire again. The other two were in poor shape, but by using them in short bursts and turning the whole ship between thrusts, I might be able to move the
Cuchulain.

The acceleration would be miserably low. I made an estimate. If we used the remaining engines until they both died completely, then coasted all the way to Erin, we would be on our way for seven or eight years.

Could our supplies last so long? I didn't think so. We had provisioned for a dozen people when we set out, but for a far shorter period. Once we were clear of the Maze, though, we could send a distress signal. With lots of luck we would be heard at Erin's Upside Spaceport, and a ship might come out to meet us. If it didn't, the
Cuchulain
with its dead drive would float by Erin and off to nowhere.

I returned to the control room, to tell the others that we faced the problem of surviving for many years in space.

Doctor Eileen was not there. Instead Mel and Jim Swift were crouched together by the control panel. He had Walter Hamilton's electronic notebook in his hand, while Mel was holding the little navaid that we had been given on
Paddy's Fortune.

"Just the person." Jim looked awful, but he sounded full of pep. I wondered what kind of shot Doctor Eileen had given
him,
and wished I'd had the same.

"Can you fly the
Cuchulain
again?" Jim asked.

"I think so. But not very well."

I tried to explain my idea of coasting toward Erin, but Jim cut me off before I got halfway. "Wrong direction, boyo. We'd never make it. If we're to have any chance at all, we have to go
there.
"

He was pointing to the dark pupil of the Eye. The last place, it seemed to me, that we wanted to go. It was a dull, glassy black, and it made me think of a dead fish eye.

"Why there?" I said. "Suppose we get in, and the
Cuchulain
's engines are too far gone to get us out again? You can't even send a signal from inside the Eye."

"It's the Slowdrive," Jim said, as though that explained everything.

"You won't find a drive much slower than what we've got now," I said. I told him about the three dead engines, and the dying pair that remained. "Seven or eight years from here to Erin. If we could last that long."

"Which we can't. Doctor Xavier and I have already talked about supplies. No more than two years, and that's starving ourselves." Jim Swift had killed my only hope, but he went on cheerfully, "Maybe the Slowdrive, even if we find it, will be no better. But I don't have enough information to prove that. The evidence is inconsistent. This"—he held up Walter Hamilton's electronic notebook, and cackled like a madman—"suggests that 'slow drive' hardware was in an experimental state when the Isolation took place. And
that
"—he pointed to the navaid that Mel was holding—"indicates that what it terms the 'slow option' should be here, somewhere within the Net."

"We'll never find it before the drive dies." I was staring despondently at the huge array of nodes.

"Not if we look there," said Jim. "Danny Shaker said there was nothing but bits and pieces at the Net nodes. I know he was a villain, but he was plenty smart when it came to space. So I believe him, there's nothing useful for us in the Net. That leaves the Godspeed Base itself—inside the Eye."

"We already looked there."

"No. Shaker and the crew explored the big lobe, and the three of us found the Godspeed ship in the smallest one. No one ever explored the middle region."

"The flickery one? You said it would be dangerous."

He gave me a horrible one-eyed leer, peering like a lunatic owl around the plaster beak that Doctor Eileen had placed on his swollen nose. "You sound like Mel. That was then. This is now. The definition of dangerous has changed. Can you fly us in?"

"Of course I can." I found the question insulting. Wasn't I a "natural," according to no less an authority than Danny Shaker?—wherever he might be.

I had changed, too, and in the last five minutes. It didn't occur to me that my injection was doing as much to me as Jim Swift's was to him. But I was certain that I could fly anything, including the collapsing
Cuchulain.

How far
could I fly it? That was a different question. I didn't even care. It was flying time.

Here's my advice: If you have to pilot a ship that you don't know how to fly, into a situation that you've been told is deadly dangerous, first go and ram your face into a wall and break your nose. Then get yourself shot full of drugs. After that you may be out of danger—or at least dead—before you know you're in it.

* * *

When we first went into the Eye I had heard Danny Shaker's quiet comment: The
Cuchulain
was
slowed
in its passage through the membrane. Now, nursing failing engines and surrounded on all sides by dense grey fog, I realized how much Shaker had left unsaid.

The power draw of the drive had doubled, but our rate of progress was slowing—and we were not yet to the Eye's interior.

I had to make a choice. Keep going, and ruin the engines forever? Or try to pull back?

It was really no decision at all. We might not survive within the Eye; we would die for sure if we remained outside.

I ignored the screens and kept my eyes on the status monitors. Both engines were about equally bad. Both of them were red-lining. All I could do was balance them as closely as I could; and when Mel, watching the displays, quietly said, "Coming clear," I knew it before she spoke. The engines were in their death rattle, but in spite of that the
Cuchulain
's speed was increasing. We were through.

I cut the drive. We drifted on toward the base. If I had stared before at its globular middle section, now I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Or keep them
on
it. Flashes of light ran within the surface, with bright afterimages that fooled me into fancying strange shapes within the globe. I could imagine a giant human ear, a human face, a great fist clutching a twisted caricature of a Godspeed ship.

"Who goes inside Flicker, and who stays?" That was Mel, naming the middle region at the same time as she voiced my own question: Who would go? With the drive dead, the
Cuchulain
was no better than a derelict adrift in space. This time I wouldn't remain behind.

"Can we leave the Eye again?" asked Doctor Eileen.

I shook my head. "Not in this ship."

"Then we may as well stick together. Collect anything that you want to take with you. I'll start loading food and drink. There's nothing to be gained by anyone staying here."

She was right. The
Cuchulain
would be our tomb if we stayed. All the same, I hadn't expected her to give the order to leave
permanently.
I had an odd feeling of security abandoned as we closed down the
Cuchulain
's energy and life-support systems and went one by one into the cargo hold, adding our little packages of personal possessions to the pile of provisions in a cargo beetle; and soon I was piloting us clear, convinced that I was doing a better job of flying than I ever had before—with no one able to appreciate it.

"Stay together, or separate?" Doctor Eileen asked Jim Swift the next important question as we approached a dark part of the middle sphere, closing on what I hoped might be entry points.

"Both." Jim Swift had thought it through. "We go into Flicker together, and divide up the interior search when we get there. We'll check back at the entrance on a regular schedule. Anyone who finds something interesting waits at the beetle for the others."

"And
nobody
"—Doctor Eileen was staring at me—"plays with something he finds that might be a drive, or anything else, until we've discussed it together."

If anyone was likely to get in trouble with a new gadget, it wasn't me—it was Mel. But there was no time for argument, because the middle section of the base was looming up in front of us like a great, smooth wall. The internal lightning flickered brighter. It showed three dark openings where we might be able to lodge the beetle. I headed for the biggest.

Our arrival was reassuring. The port contained a lock, little different from the airlocks at the other lobe, or even at Muldoon Upside Port. We had been in suits since we left the
Cuchulain,
so the pressure change didn't affect us when the lock cycled us in.

"Close to Erin surface pressure," said Jim Swift. He was examining a wall monitor. "But we won't be breathing this one. Helium, neon, and xenon. Nice inert atmosphere to preserve things, but no trace of oxygen. Keep your suits tight."

The inner door of the lock was opening. It revealed a featureless corridor, which thirty yards farther on branched into four.

"North, south, east, west," Doctor Eileen said. "I guess that settles one question. Jay, how long do you have?"

I glanced at my air supply. "Thirteen hours, nearly fourteen."

"Mel? Jim?"

"Sixteen hours."

"Twelve."

"So I'm lowest, I've got a bit more than eleven."

"Back here in nine or ten, then?" Jim Swift was itching to get started, his eyes glinting behind his visor.

"No!" Doctor Eileen was in charge again. "What happens if one of us gets into trouble and can't make it back? We have to give ourselves enough time to help."

Gets
into trouble, I thought. You mean we're not in trouble already? But I didn't say anything, and Jim Swift came back with, "All right. How about six hours? Don't forget we may have to do a lot of looking before we find anything. And the longer we stay here talking . . ."

"Six it is." Doctor Eileen was moving forward. "Prompt. Anyone who isn't back here by then and hasn't met some sort of problem
will
have one—with me. I'm talking to you, Jay, and you, too, Mel. I'll skin you alive if you're not on time. Let's go."

I hung back, making the final series of suit checks that Danny Shaker had drummed into my head time after time. I was the last to arrive at the corridor branch. The other three had taken the top, left, and right forks.

I was left with the bottom branch. The "south" branch.
"Going south."
It was Uncle Toby's favorite expression to describe dying. "Old Jessie, she just packed her bags and went south." Let's hope it didn't apply to me on Flicker.

My branch of the corridor was plain walls, with no rooms or exits leading off it. It headed downward for no more than twenty or thirty yards before it leveled off to run parallel to the way that we had entered. That was puzzling, because I felt as though I was again moving straight toward the center of Flicker. Had I lost my sense of direction?

Soon I had a bigger problem. My corridor was ending. In nothing. Or rather, in a fish-eye circle of misty dark-grey, like the membrane that surrounded the Eye itself.

The gravity inside Flicker was too small to be useful. I had to use my suit controls to slow my forward progress, until I hung just a couple of feet from the dead circle. Ought I to try to go on through? It wasn't just Doctor Eileen's warning about taking risks with new things that held me in place. The circle itself scared me.