The Blue Marble Gambit (7 page)

Honor. Another long-outmoded concept, a
hallmark of that lost era I tried so hard to recapture.
Two combatants, each
saluting the other jauntily.
A chance to gloat.
How could I resist?

A
few days later I arrived. Just for
practice I snuck up on the Admiral's ship; at the time it was the half-mile
long
Very Impressive
. I wafted across the gun-bristling skin
to the
nav bridge
and announced my arrival by rapping
on the windows. A startled sentry
almost shot me, but soon enough I was in the Admiral's private quarters.

After the ritual introductory wrestling
match, we pulled apart. He was
twisting a kink from his neck, and I was rubbing the sore spot on my biceps
where he'd bit me, when he hauled down the flag of truce. And stomped on it.

"Court,"
he smiled, starlight flickering off that eerie dental diamond, "I'm afraid
you're now bound for a life sentence mining the pores of giant slugs in the
Orell 2 penal colony."

"Our
truce!" I cried, as I felt the cold stab right in the back. I'd always thought the term 'penal
colony,' through some tragically serendipitous lingual twist, to be an
unpleasant reflection on a common inmate pastime.

"Truce,
schmuce. You're trapped in another
century. I'm doing this for your
own good. To save you."

Oh,
please. Throughout human history
more trouble has been caused by people trying to save each other than perhaps
any other way. It's best just to
leave well enough alone.

"You
have a curious notion of saving," I pointed out.

He
smiled and poured us each smoking blue drink from a blastproof clearsteel
cylinder.

I
tried it, and understood the need for the container when it began busily
dissolving me from the inside out. It was excellent.

"There
might be an alternative," Uncle Admiral hinted.

"You
seem to have my attention."

"Much
more than that, actually." He
told me about the Fist, its need for good recruits, the piss-poor selection
among Earth citizens, blah blah blah.
Ad nauseam, through nauseam, and finally well beyond
nauseam.

"I
could probably pull some strings for you," he
said,
in what I would later learn to be a masterful understatement.

I
pretended to think about it,
then
shook my head. “I'll take jail," I said, and held
my wrists out for the binder cuffs. “I don't go for coercion or trickery. To join you now would only encourage
your nefarious games! No! No! And most of all, No! I am ready to pay my debt to society! Woe is
me
! If only I had been raised
differently! More school! Less school! Different schools! It's not my fault! If-"

"Are
you through?" interrupted the Admiral.

"Just
warming up, actually."

"There's
something you should see before you're so quick to, ah, embrace the penile
colony lifestyle." I swear he said it that way.

I
pretended to consider. “Well,
although I am eager to begin re-paying society, alright." The something took
three days to review. It consisted
of secret reports and data, a mountain of
evidence which
supported one conclusion, a conclusion carefully kept from the public: we
SpaceChimps were on the interstellar ropes. The Insect Galaxy viewed humanity with
the warm affection a Prom Queen for a spider on her toothbrush. The Crunchy bugs were out to get the
Squishies, who lacked a decent shell. And even the other Squishies didn't much care for us.

So
far their plans were mostly casual and disorganized. But that could change, and even if it
didn't, it might not matter. Even a
casual swat from some of the ancient, powerful Old Galactic Races could be
devastating to Earth.

The
Home Planet needed its best and brightest; Mother Earth needed those with
operational experience to sally forth and do battle with the multi-eyed
exoskeletal thingies of the universe. Unfortunately there weren't many with operational experience; GovCorp
itself was a majestic experience in hypermanagement. So Admiral Uncle was collecting Fingers
for the Fist, calling the sons and daughters of Earth to action.

Sounds
hokey, but it was the kind of cause one couldn't refuse. The Admiral later stressed - accurately,
as it turned out - that he was doing me no favor, for as an agent of the Fist I
would probably be killed. But, he
said, at least it would be more interesting than the pores of giant slugs, and
the unhealthy and unhygienic fascinations of the other inmates.

A
series of trainings and jobs followed. Travel, combat, danger, lightened by occasional piracies in spare
moments. The Admiral's instincts
had been sound: I was good, or at least good enough to earn the notice of a few
alien races,
who
decided I had overstayed my welcome
on this plane of existence. And
then, while en route to a leave on the fabled fun-planet of Eros, I'd stopped
for a quick game of holopoker at the Round-N-Round. Which led me into deep space.
And to Trina.

I
turned back to her. She licked her
lips. Somehow she managed to do this
at
me. “A noble heart beats in the savage's
breast. How touching."

"Isn't
it?
But enough
about me.
Let's talk about
you. How did such a nice lass end
up in Astrotemporal physics and the Brain?"

She
smiled coyly. “Fair enough. You showed me yours. I'll show you mine."

"Then
I
'm
all eyes
. Like the Fluxl of Flaxl." That odd
creature, which had evolved on a very dim and flat planet, was a grape-like
cluster of eyes dangling over three large and disturbingly human-looking feet.

"Not
much to tell," she said demurely, blinking her eyes into gold and green
strobes. “I grew up on Mars, in the
Tharsis colony. Went into Astrotemp
Physics when I found out I had the Light. Of course I didn't have much choice."

"Of
course." The Light was a mysterious, unteachable, natural ability
occurring in only one in fifty million humans.
A spark of theoretical
genius against the dark universe.
If you had it, GovCorp drafted you as a planetary resource and plugged
you into a research program. This
was because, oddly enough, high-level astrotemp physics couldn't be
learned. Some people - those with
the Light - were born already knowing it, and for them a minor amount of
academic effort could uncover that knowledge, which was inherently
indescribable but was said to be almost like taking an edge-on
trans-dimensional view of the universe. Anyone could have the gift, from street bums to Presidents, and perhaps
not surprisingly it had been more of the former than the latter. But if you didn't already have it, there
was no way to acquire it. Several
of the best and supposedly brightest at major research institutions had been
driven mad after being unable to master equations and paradoxes that were
child's play for - children. Children with the Light, that is.

Trina
described what might have been a sheeplike life, except for the unusual muscle
in her brain, and the rough and tumble life of Mars.

Then
she did something most un-sheeplike. She shifted in her seat, and the small tattoo of a
snake
which usually graced her stern suddenly
peeked over her collar. It coiled and hissed at me, then smirked
and vanished downward.

I
suspected Ned, before I realized it was nano ink.
Expensive and
fashionable.

"Like
it?" Trina asked.

The
snakehead appeared again, vanished again. There was something beckoning about it. I had the impression that Trina found my
criminal past a bit more than intriguing.

Two
ideas met in my head and collided with a bright spark.

Ned
appeared. “Do you think that's good
for the mission? After all-
" I
visualized, quite vividly, my
head smacking a steel bulkhead. He
vanished.

I
scanned the gravity interferometer, charting the heavens along our path. I found my quarry only a little bit off
our flight path; the disturbance was, I saw with delight, the perfect
size. I reprogrammed the nav
computer - we'd transect the storm in exactly seventeen minutes.

"What
are you doing?" Trina asked.

"Pilot
stuff," I replied. Then I made
an indecent suggestion.

She
acted shocked but her golden eye sparkled.

"I
thought you'd never ask."

I'd
noticed that the galley had
tables which
folded away
and padding on all surfaces. It
wasn't a galley at all, but a sexual playroom where one could eat between
bouts. We left a trail of clothing
across the cockpit, down the tube, and even into the galley itself - I found it
shocking that the tiny tiger-striped garment floating across the cabin could
actually reign in Trina's small but devilishly taut breasts. Part of the fun in zero g is matching
orbital paths and mastering Newton's laws. After all, every action has a reaction, and every reaction has its own
reaction, and so on, and so forth, so that before you know it you're literally
bouncing off the walls. As a
physicist, Trina of course knew all this in an abstract intellectual
sense. But I could see she was
gaining a new and intuitive appreciation for it. Tiny droplets of perfect sweat broke out
on her golden forehead.

I
had a feeling that the seventeen minutes was just about up.

I
was right.

The
good ship
Blue Bean
ran smack into
the center of a Category-3 gravity storm.

"Ooop!"
Trina giggled, as a sudden gravity wave smushed us together with a fleshy
whuff. The next instant another
wave pulled us apart. Then we
mushed together again. We tossed
up, down, back and forth, like puppets in the hands of some perverted and
extremely naughty puppeteer.

"Oh!
You bad boy!" Trina gasped, figuring it out. “You steered us into a gravity
storm!"

I
didn't reply. I couldn't, for
somewhat indelicate reasons upon which I won't expound. The pulsing gravity storm seemed to give
Trina new energy, and she was transformed. She was, in one word, incredible. In many words: athletic, acrobatic, tireless, eager, flexible,
ingenious, creative, daring, playful, accommodating. And, finally, exhausting. Though not exhausted.

The
storm ended, though we continued our contortions for some time. Eventually we crawled slowly back to the
cockpit. I looked like
I'd been mauled by a team of man-hungry Amazons
. Trina appeared pleasantly cool and
refreshed.

"Diz,"
she purred. “I have some questions
about this mission."

Diz?
No one, ever, called me Diz.

"Launch
when ready," I said.

"We're
going to Boff to steal the Time Oscillator. I understand that. But the Boffs hate us. One look and they'll start
shooting. And I hear they look like
broccoli-"

"Asparagus."

"Whatever. I can't help noticing that we don't look
like asparagus. So how are we going
to handle that?"

I
gazed at her in amazement, hoping she was kidding. She wasn't. The Admiral hadn't told her. Of course, the mission had been thrown
together quickly, and she'd been occupied studying theory and what little was
known about the Time Oscillator until the last minute. But still.

"Well,"
I began-

"Captain
diz Astor," broke in Ned. He
stood beside me, dressed as an ancient
bell-boy
. I wondered what permanent damage was
being done to my brain by these constant visions. Then I realized that Ned was calling me
Captain. Of course, it was my rank,
and I was in command of a vessel. But the term implied respect, a concept totally foreign to my
relationship with Ned. Which meant
either:

1. Ned had completely malfunctioned, or

2. Something was very wrong.

As
much as I hated to admit it, if Ned had malfunctioned, that in
itself
would be something very wrong. Ned was perhaps more important than any
of us. But as it happened, it was
something else.

"There
seems," Ned was saying, "to be a problem."

I
raised my eyebrows. Hurry up,
damnit, I shouted inside my head. Where I knew Ned would hear it.

"We're
being tracked."

"Tracked?
By who?"

Ned
pointed up.
Through
the hull.
Into
space.
“It appears to be an
Etzan fast cruiser."

By
Venus' hot and steamy butt - that was the worst news possible. I began scanning the control panel. “Range? Time to intercept?"

Ned
shrugged. “The cruiser is close,
but not closing. It seems to be
holding station."

"Holding?
That's strange," I said, scanning the nav panel for nearby space debris to
dodge around. Nothing!

"That's
what I thought," Ned agreed. He was suddenly sitting on a stool, hands folded on a knee. He leaned forward intently. “Especially considering the range it's
holding at. At least, it seemed
strange until I checked our external hull cams."