Tomorrow’s Heritage (7 page)
“I’ve heard that one before, somewhere,” Todd said, hurting for himself and Pat and the victims. He reached for the key, intending to use manual cutoff to avoid further heartache. “I’ll believe it when it happens. If I’m going to catch my window for Goddard, I’ll have to leave—”
“Todd! Wait!” Jael broke in, staying his hand. “You’re mad because we couldn’t tell you. Forgive us. We apologize. We truly do.” A muscle twitched along Pat’s jaw-line, but he didn’t contradict her. “Whatever we have to do to make it up, we will. To you and Mari. Bring her home. I’m begging you.” Her voice shook. Todd wanted to touch her, console her, as she said, “I couldn’t bear it if she missed yet another of Ward’s birthday memorials. We didn’t time things this way. It wasn’t deliberate. It just happened. Please! Believe us!”
“I’ll . . . I’ll try.”
“Promise!”
“Mother, it’s not that simple. I said I’ll try. What happens depends on Mari’s reaction to Pat’s speech. It’s not exactly the sort of send-off I wanted.” Again he wanted to reach out to them, regretting the life styles and the distances that separated them. There were some things he couldn’t express with a word or even a look. “I’ve really got to go now. And Pat, Mother—don’t call Mariette. Let me smooth her feathers. If you call her, you’ll probably make things worse. Just trust me on this.”
Pat raised his hand in an oath. “Okay, kid. No calls. Just tell her . . . tell her I miss the brat. Will you do that?”
“Yes. I’ll tell her.” Todd broke the connections before they could say anything more. He wanted to hold onto the moment of affection they had shared toward the end of the three-way conversation. The screen returned to the media channels. He saw Pat moving away from the terminal, the busty blonde closing in and taking his arm again, squirming close as Pat shook hands with P.O.E. officers and the others gathered in the lounge. Jael was doing the same, on a lesser scale. She and Carissa, bodyguards in tow, guarded as Pat was, circulated through the happy crowd.
“Your mother is something impressive,” Dian said softly. “She’s a fighter. Special. Like . . .” She didn’t finish. Her grandmother had meant a great deal to the language tech. Her loving memories were mingled with an almost worshipful awe.
“Pat’s looking haggard. He’s not sleeping well. He looks worse than any time I can remember since Dad’s funeral,” Todd said. “His makeup experts must be frantic. He’s making it tough for them to pretty him up for the cameras.”
“He’s older than he was when your dad died, by eleven years, and under lots more stress.”
Todd sighed again and looked at his already-assembled luggage, wishing he hadn’t been so efficient. If he hadn’t packed during the night-rotation duty period, he would have some mindless activity to occupy him now. “Jael knew,” he said bitterly. “She knew. Pat told her, but not me. I doubt he even told ‘Rissa. So much for pillow talk. Jael’s his political bedfellow, not little Carissa. He owes Jael, and she won’t let him forget it. I see he’s starting to yank at the bit, though. I thought he owed me, too, but obviously not. I haven’t bought him a hundredth of the votes Jael has.” He paused, then remarked with wonder, “He’s really going to make it. The Chairmanship of Protectors of Earth. My brother. It doesn’t seem possible. Jael’s going to make him Un-crowned king of the world or die trying . . .”
He flinched at his own words. No. Jael wasn’t going to die. It wouldn’t happen again. They wouldn’t let it. There was a preservement chamber waiting for her in SE Antarctic Enclave if she fell ill or was hurt. They had never had a chance with Ward, but Jael would survive. All of them would.
Aware of Dian’s scrutiny, Todd forced a smile. “We’ve come a long way since the days when we had to correct reporters who insisted on putting a final ‘s’ on ‘Saunder.’ ”
“Cancel,” Dian said.
“I can’t.” She left the webbing and floated into his lap, kissing him gently. Todd was pleasantly surprised, then understood the strategy. “It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy it, but there isn’t time. I hate to rush things.”
“I know.” She kissed him again, lingeringly. “I could go with you.” They weighed the options silently, then she shook her head. “No, I’d better stay and finish the messenger data for the Science Council. Besides, Kevin can be a big blond bear when he’s mad. And I like your sis plenty, but when she’s takin’ off, she’s a terror—you and your brother and mama all rolled up in one!”
“The best and the worst. We all got a share of temper.” Todd grinned at her. “Okay, my cute coward, I’ll do the dirty work. Maybe that’s because I take after Jael. You tidy up that presentation on the alien signals.”
“Yes, sir! Full-range holo-mode, grid corrections, split feeds and shifts, the whole arsenal. Did you pack your gray medications?” Dian asked suddenly, shifting topics. “Coriolis countereffects? CV stimulants? Going from null to one can be . . .”
Todd pushed her off his lap, feigning annoyance. “Nag. Yes, I’ve got all the meds, and my clothes, and the tape files to update in case I get any spare time while I’m up there.” He forgot the rest, drifting up beside Dian as he released the safety belt. They rationed themselves to a few intense kisses. Then he washed up, put on a fresh, non-sweaty jumper, and collected his baggage.
At Suitup, Dian chatted with Gib Owens while Todd wriggled into his gear. The young captain was space-dressed, except for his helmet. “No side trips now, Gib,” Dian teased him. “We heard about you and that redhead over on the Pacific side Geosynch station. You gonna ditch the Colony and come down and play free-fall lover with the rest of us?”
Blushing, Owens said, “Nah! I don’t detour. She’s, well, she’s all right. Thing is, I’ve got to convert her to habitat living. You better plan on filling a vacancy on the ComLink roster.”
“Huh! Don’t bother us. We’ve got a waiting list of eager Spacers just shoving and scratching to get on board.”
“Goddard has, too,” Owens boasted. The banter didn’t hide his sincerity. His pride was typical of Goddard’s citizens. Not even Todd’s ComLink personnel were counted as “true” Spacers, because they rotated planet-side too frequently for the Colonists’ taste.
Dian had slipped into her thickest United Ghetto States dialect, winking slyly at the pilot. “Tol’ him not to read you poetry, this time up. I remember what you said, gripin’ ‘bout that.”
Owens blushed deeper, looking worriedly at Todd, who smirked at him, then put on his helmet. Owens followed suit, and they glided on their tethers into the air lock. Dian pressed close to the side viewport as they proceeded along the tunnel. She waved and Todd returned her good-bye, holding her image in his mind’s eye as the ship’s door closed between them.
He and Owens went through the final checks rapidly. “You want me to take her out, sir?” Owens asked.
“No, I’d better stay in practice or my pilot’s regs will lapse. You ride backup.”
“You’re the boss, Mr. Saunder.”
They went through this ritual every flight. The shuttle’s ownership papers were complicated. Licensing said a Goddard pilot had to ride with Todd or Todd’s designated substitute whenever the ship was traveling inter-orbit. In actuality, the entire upkeep of the vehicle fell to Todd’s accounts. Mariette couldn’t afford it, not with the other demands on her funds from Goddard Colony.
All the readouts were green. Hisses and clicks came through the earphones. Umbilicals and tunnels retracted, setting them free. Owens’s voice droned along on the final reports, confirming the data showing on Todd’s boards. They made a last check of their seat restraints and Todd cued the nays and propulsion systems. Just as the clocks hit 1430, the vernier thrusters fired.
“Good timing, sir,” Owens complimented him. That, too, was ritual.
Thrusters pushed them away gently from the massive satellite. They went from centimeter increments to half-meters to meters. There was almost no sense of motion. Todd gauged progress by the readouts and by the way Geosynch HQ was shrinking in apparent size on his screens. They were outside the perimeter patrolled by the little orbiter maintenance watchdogs now, and he could see the whole asymmetrical crazy quilt of his office-warehouse in space. Twinkling miniature stars danced here and there—busy robot space spiders, spinning more metallic fabric over HQ’s skin.
Far away, in a lower orbit, Todd saw a shining sail kilometers in length—a solar collecting wall, part of Goddard Power Sats’ network. Much lower, beyond visual range, there were other sails, drinking up longwave infrared for Patrick Saunder’s competing energy corporation. Everywhere you went in space or on Earth, there was a Saunder waiting to power your vehicle or supply your communications or entertainment needs.
Sunlight bounced off Geosynch HQ. The screens filtered the glare, but Todd winced just the same. Then the shuttle swung on its vertical axis, lining up the vector. Tracking said they were standing off well enough. Nays confirmed. Main propulsion came up, the ion thrusters beginning to kick them into the climb toward one-quarter gravity acceleration. That acceleration was very gradual and muted the stresses. Yet Geosynch HQ dwindled quickly on the screens, proof of the shuttle’s building speed. Todd watched his satellite fall behind with mixed, anachronistic emotions. Leaving port. The small ship, sailing away from the docks. And he was on the ship, excited at the journey awaiting him, but sorry to be leaving Dian and his people on the floating city in space. Fear, even after many such beginnings and safe voyages. Strong awareness of death waiting a short reach away, outside the hull. Most of all, he felt a tremendous, childlike wonder, reveling in the countless sounds and sights enveloping his being.
On the view screens, Earth floated, achingly beautiful. The Moon was a glowing pearl, a second planetfall, but not his destination. An arrow on the nay monitors marked Goddard Colony’s location, too tiny yet to see, with the naked eye.
Geosynch HQ was gone now, lost over the visibility horizon, noted only by sensor blips. The blackness closed in. Their ship seemed motionless, suspended between Earth and Moon.
He and Gib Owens were alone, setting forth across a sea far wider than any planetary waters, soaring up into eternal night, a night in which the Sun never set.
CHAPTER FOUR
ooooooooo
The call had come in from CNAU Caribbean Rescue. Todd couldn’t remember who had taken it, could barely remember their climbing into the boat, bucketing through gale warnings to reach that lonely jumble of rocks off the Florida Keys. Rescue warned them not to fly. All air traffic was grounded. They tried to stop them from setting out by boat, in fact. No chance of that. The Saunders never hesitated. They went together, as a family, not daring to speak except to exhort the captain to hurry.
The tropical disturbance had passed by the time they reached the site. It made the emotional devastation that much worse. Todd teetered on a rocky perch, staring in horror at the wreckage smeared down the cliffs and into the surf below. Rescue officers tried to lead him away, telling him and Pat to take their mother back to the boat and wait.
It was too late. He had seen—so had Jael and Pat and Marietta. The Rescue crew was carrying a litter up from the storm-battered seaside cliffs. The man on the stretcher wasn’t Ward Saunder, though. A black man, terribly hurt. Roy Paige, Ward’s co-pilot and second in command at the lab. Jael stopped the stretched bearers, touched Paige’s bloody forehead, whispered something to him. Something private, personal. The two of them had been together so long, had known Ward an equal length of time. Paige’s tortured reply was a cold blade in Todd’s gut, twisting.
“Couldn’t . . . went down so fast. Knocked us right outa . . . outa the sky. Couldn’t . . . oh, God, Jael! Tried to hol’ onto him. The water! Tide hit me. Couldn’t . . . I blacked out. He’s . . . he wasn’t there any more. He was already dead, even then, even . . . even then . . .”
Nightmare, a recurring one. It had returned, unbidden, unwelcome, again and again throughout these eleven years. Roy Paige, reaching out, pleading for forgiveness when he had no need, when he had struggled past all human comprehension to save his friend’s dead body. Jael, dry-eyed, clasping that hand—the only whole limb Paige had left. His legs and right arm were bloody pulp, his head swollen and gory as well. Pat, holding Mari close, weeping with her, his free arm around his brother as Todd’s tears began to fall.
“He wasn’t there any more . . .”
Todd jolted to wakefulness, useless alarms jangling along his nerves. He was in the shuttle. All that had happened a long while ago. Old grief. The wound hadn’t healed, and sometimes the memory came back full strength. He forced himself to cairn down, stretching and yawning.
“Rough day, sir?” Owens asked politely.
Todd bit off a retort. “Something like that.”
“Eyeball status in about an hour, docking in two.”
“Good. Right on schedule, then.” Todd rubbed his eyes. For all the exhilaration he had felt when they launched, this had been a nominal, very boring flight. He and Owens had tended chores, confirmed their ETA with Goddard Traffic Control, and fine-tuned the course. After the initial stress period, they had ditched their helmets and opened some suit seals, getting comfortable. They had taken turns overseeing the comps and screens. They had read, updated the logs, and talked. Todd had steered the conversation onto safe topics. To his relief, Owens didn’t dig for private info. They stuck to flight shoptalk, sports, speculations on which faction would have the most survivors when the controlled-violence arena season was over in Brazil, and gossip about mutual acquaintances along the ComLink, Goddard, and Lunar Base circuits.
There had been the regular interruptions. Nav sensors pinpointed space junk and lower orbiting objects. Ship idents and sats were already in the comps. There wasn’t a remote danger of collision. Nevertheless, the rules set up during spaceflight’s infancy required that Todd acknowledge each contact and reconfirm his own position.
Up at L5, duty watch changed at 1800 hours, and the pleasant soprano voice on the com was replaced by a baritone with an Israeli accent. That gave Todd and the young pilot several minutes’ worth of ribald jokes.
Time had begun to wear, and Todd had dozed off. The nap hadn’t refreshed him, thanks to the nightmare. He stretched again, debating whether or not to take another gray medication. The first dose hadn’t quite overcome acceleration’s demands on his circulatory system. Anyway, when he reached Goddard, he would be due for another gel capsule. He muffled a yawn and compared his watch with the ship’s clocks. ETA 2500, Atlantic Time. Nocturnal watch. He hoped Mari and Kevin were on that rotation currently and wouldn’t have to miss sleep because of his arrival. They had promised they would meet him at docking . . .
Todd leaned forward against his safety webbing, staring. Shock gave way to disbelief. He tumbled the data, using keys, not trusting his voice to be steady. His fingers flew as he demanded a recompute. The monitors had to be wrong, a glitch somewhere. Scans and multiple backups ran checks in split fractions of seconds. Range numbers—and the blip—took over the screens once more. No mistake.
Not possible. Todd gaped, bewildered, wanting the evidence to go away. That configuration couldn’t be there. Nobody had seen anything like that since . . . He shoved panic away, breathing evenly. “Gib?” His mouth had suddenly become very dry. He gulped hard and spoke again, loud enough to be heard this time. “Gib? We’ve got problems.”
“What?” The pilot had a music tape on his private channel, had been tapping his knee in rhythm. Now he darted a glance at Todd’s monitors and gasped. Hastily, he threw the display on his own screens.
The comps fed continually, and each new datum made matters worse. There was no way to argue the blip out of existence. Something was there, and closing with them frighteningly fast.
“ASAT?” Todd wondered, than answered himself. “No. That’s more than an anti-satellite device. Lots heavier. Missile? Hasn’t been one of those in orbit since the Space Neutrality Treaty was signed. We’re through with that crazy stuff, knocking each other’s satellites to bits. We have to be. Damn.”
Todd had a wild urge to laugh hysterically. The situation couldn’t be real. But it was. He had been spacing since his teens. He knew the risks. A few times it had been scary, but he had come through. This particular risk had never come up before, however. Freak equipment failure, maintenance mistakes—explainable problems, part of the package. That blip wasn’t explainable in those terms. Not at all. Whatever it was wouldn’t identify itself, wouldn’t acknowledge anything their nav comps were throwing at it. All the careful programming designed to eliminate collisions in space was useless. The green mark was coming on steadily, uncaring that it was bringing sudden death to the two men riding in the shuttle.
Owens was on the com. The pilot didn’t seem so young any more. Todd recognized the crisp tone and manner—military. Owens was acting like a combat-trained pilot from a planetside war zone, or like one of the Lunar Base fighters. He boosted the uplink gain to maximum. “GC Traffic, this is SE Shuttle One-Five. Copy Feed. Urgent. Data going to you now.” Owens compressed the signal, giving coordinates and tracking states to Goddard as fast as possible, straining the systems. “Hostile on intercept. Classified A Priority One. ETA impact twenty minutes. Sensors read DE armed. Immediate countereffort needed.”
“What the hell is going on?” Todd yelled. “Where did you get that classification?”
“Better suit up full, sir,” Owens said absently, treating Todd as supercargo. “Things may get a bit rough.”
“Captain, I want to know what you’re doing, and I want to know now.”
Todd’s adrenaline-charged demand made Owens give him a second look. “Yes, sir,” he said with considerably more deference. “I’ll explain as soon as I can. Help’s on the way. Right now we’ve got to raise orbit and dodge, if possible.”
They locked stares. Todd wondered where this help was supposed to come from. Goddard? They were much too far out for the Colony’s regular craft to reach them in time.
“Okay,” Todd said finally. “Go. But we will talk about this, Captain. Rely on it.”
Todd grabbed his helmet and jammed it on, snapping the seals shut. Owens was already reprogramming. Orbital maneuvering systems whined up to full power as the corrections sped in. Todd secured his throat and sleeve openings. Inside his protective gear, he began to sweat, then shivered as a chilly wetness snaked along his spine. Owens was trying to complete his resuiting with one hand while he cued the comps manually with the other. Todd reached over to help him and earned a twisted smile in thanks.
“Brace.”
The burn smashed Todd into the couch. Pacing himself, he let air out of his lungs as gradually as he could, counting his pulse, attempting to be detached. A long burn. But he wasn’t going to give Owens lectures about fuel expense.
When the correction was completed, alarm lights flashed, protesting the drain on the reserves. Together, Todd and the pilot peered at the readouts. New figures came up on their position and the bogey’s.
“My God,” Todd growled, aghast. “It’s altering vector, too. Following us.”
“Have to try another orbit change.”
“There isn’t time.” Even as he argued, Todd was working with Owens, frantically pushing another burn into the OMS. There weren’t many options, not if they hoped to evade. “If we could just jam its guidance frequencies . . .”
“I already tried that,” Owens said.
“You’re saying we’ve got military counterjam gear on this ship? Who gave you the authority to install it? That makes us fair target! The Neutrality Treaty . . .”
“Screw the Treaty. Wouldn’t make any difference,” Owens said with tired contempt. “That hostile’s on full FET and DSCS override plus, bombing right through everything we can throw. Come on, come on . . .”
He was no longer talking to Todd. To whom was he talking? Owens was much too familiar with military hardware for Todd’s taste. He searched his mind for declassified write-ups of satellite killers and counterdeterrents. Leftovers from the Twenties, all of those, when the space wars had nearly wiped out Earth’s communications systems and resource-monitoring satellites as well as every spy orbiter. Old stuff, part of history. Todd had been in his teens. Owens had been in diapers. Ward had coached Todd and taught him as they built ComLink to replace the ruins of that madness in space . . .
Except a new war in space was rushing at him, and he was about to be one of its victims.
Why?
He hated his ignorance and Owens’s secrecy. A modern, directed energy weapon or something even worse was homing in on them.
He was going to die, and he wouldn’t even know the reason why. That seemed the worst thing about it—not knowing why. They had done everything they could, yet the damned thing was overtaking them, closing fast. In fifteen minutes, he and Gib Owens would be minuscule pieces of flesh and bone, if that much of them survived. They would be strewn along the shuttle’s orbital path, drifting to Goddard and beyond.
“It’s not after us,” Owens said, glaring at the screens. The bogey was coming up on visual. “We just got in the way. They’ll get here in time, though,” the young pilot added cryptically.
“Who?”
Todd hadn’t expected an answer, and he didn’t get one. The scans methodically plotted collision courses. Minutes to kill-distance. The thing didn’t need to impact to wipe them out. If it got near enough, it would kill them when it disintegrated.
Todd felt a strange, remote sadness. He wished he had Beth Isaacs’ faith in the new mysticism. There was so much he wanted to say and do and learn, a lifetime’s worth and more. The alien messenger. How was it going to be received? What would the alien species be like? Would Dian and the team be able to break down the language and speak directly to the unknown beings out there? The discovery of the ages . . .
His
discovery. And he would never live to see its outcome.
I’m glad you didn’t come along on this trip, Dian. Finish the job for us, will you . . .?
He cued the tracking monitors, perversely seeking the latest data, wanting to be informed up to the last second. To Todd’s stunned amazement, new blips appeared and a swarm of new numbers.
Ships! Coming in on a different vector! Six of them!
“Right on track!” Owens pounded enthusiastically on the console. The little blips brightened and grew, visuals shaping and defining the fast incoming craft. “Get it! Go!
Go!
”
Todd tried to cope. Help. On the way. Gib’s happy yelps confirmed that. But the newcomers bore no idents, didn’t match any configuration in the comps. Sensors read heavy armament, a lot of top-level military hardware, probably classified. The ships hurtled in on a bypassing vector, avoiding the shuttle and heading on intercept with the hostile.
Then coherent light laced dazzling ribbons across the exterior scans. Todd’s momentary surge of fear faded as he realized the salvo wasn’t targeted for him and Gib, not when they could see the burst edge-on.
What was it? Something very sophisticated, he was sure. The shuttle’s view screens overloaded and shut down to save the systems. Images solarized as a returning blast of light surged from impact point. Giving up, all the screens went dark.
Todd counted down from the numbers frozen on the kill-range estimate. Could the ship’s radiation-counter gear handle the wave? The civilian shuttle hadn’t been built with hostilities in mind, but he had no way of knowing how much forbidden military shielding Owens might have installed.
Useless to worry. The wave would hit them just about . . . now.
He clutched the restraints, his head bouncing inside the cushioned helmet. The shuttle yawed violently to the right, pitched up, and every alarm went off. Battered by noise and movement, his middle ears rebelled against the tumbling horizon.
Emergency systems took over, fighting for attitude control. Very gradually, Todd fell back into the couch. His stomach heaved and his ears rang as if echoing the warning claxons. But the sickening motion was steadying out, bit by bit. He willed his internal systems to quiet down, too, glad he had a tough stomach. Todd swallowed hard, trying to relieve the throbbing pressure in his ears.
The screens were recuperating, also. Rearward visuals revealed a shimmering cloud of metallic substances continuing on the bogey’s vector. Sensors warned that the stuff was nasty, but it was widely scattered. The shields ought to be able to take it.
Either the unknowns’ weapons had detonated the hostile, or it had been triggered to self-destruct. In any case, it had touched off while it was still out of killing range, thankfully.
Gingerly, Todd swiveled his head, testing his equilibrium. The shuttle was still a trifle unsteady, but not enough to bring back his nausea. “Gib?” He looked anxiously at Owens when the pilot didn’t respond. Todd wriggled out of his seat harness and hooked a tether to his belt and the overhead anchor as a precaution. He crawled close to Owens’s couch. “Gib? You hurt?”
The pilot mumbled and stirred slightly. That was reassuring, but Todd warned the man to take it slow, nevertheless. With the systems coming up to capacity, he could plug in the med monitors to assess Owens’s condition. As he waited for the display, he peered closely at the other man, noting a trickle of blood running down the side of Gib’s face. Despite the inner padding, Owens must have cracked his scalp open during that wild tumble from the shock wave.
The med monitors reported Owens’s vitals were good, but the possibility of head injury and muscle strain existed. Gib fumbled with his helmet, and Todd repeated his earlier warning, pressing the man back in his couch. He opened the helmet faceplate for a closer look at the wound, fearing the pilot would pull his helmet off, anyway, if he didn’t give him some open air. He was making the younger man as comfortable as he could when the com cut in.
“Shuttle One-Five, do you read?”
On the exterior views, Todd saw the newcomers breaking formation. Some headed for the impact point, tracking the hostile’s debris. Others were setting up parallel orbits to the shuttle’s. Todd waited a long minute, then called deliberately, “I read you. Identity?”
There was a noticeable pause. Then a woman’s voice replied, “GC Defense Unit Three. Do you need assistance, One-Five?”
Owens grunted and tried to sit up. “. . . ‘m okay . . .”
“You are not okay.” Owens sighed and submitted with remarkably little fuss. Todd let the mysterious friendlies stew for a while as he checked the readouts. When he went back on com, he made his voice as impersonal as the woman’s. “Unit Three, we can make Goddard without assistance. Ship’s integrity is go. My co-pilot is injured. I want to dock without delay. Request medical personnel meet us. Also notify Mariette Saunder what happened, or put me through . . .”
“We are under personal com restriction, Shuttle One-Five. We will relay your message.”
Todd wasn’t surprised. He said with a bit of heat, “Recomputing course-adjust and fuel reserves. Stand by for update.”
“Affirm. We will escort, One-Five.”
They didn’t ask if he wanted an escort. They told him. Todd picked up some of their background chatter as they traded info first with each other and then with Goddard Control. The audio shorthand resembled Owens’s earlier military in-group slang.
Todd finished reprogramming, then strapped Gib and himself in securely for the course correction. They had altered orbit considerably and he didn’t want to waste time, so the burn was very expensive. He grimaced as the fuel readings dropped sharply. Well, Saunder Enterprises could afford it. At least his branch of the family corporation could. If Mari refused to foot her share of the bill, he would—
Todd halted his runaway irritation. Why had he been ready to retaliate before he had been hit? Whatever disagreements they had had, he knew Mari wasn’t petty. If she could scrape up the funds, she would pay him back without hesitation. There would be plenty else for them to squabble about when he saw her, but not that.
When he saw her . . . ETA update to Goddard now read 2430. Sooner than he and Gib had planned. Better sooner than never.
Todd realized he was shuddering. Delayed reaction. He noted his tremors as if it were someone else’s body. He had been remarkably calm during the last minutes as the hostile homed in on them. He hadn’t known he could be that collected in such a situation. Now that the immediate danger was over, jitters racked him. Odd. The physical sensations were quite similar to those he had felt when he had a definite confirm on the alien messenger’s existence, when it first returned the signal they had sent it. The stimulus had been quite different—giddy elation rather than icy terror. Yet his body treated both emotional shocks identically.
Owens barely spoke throughout the trip, even though he seemed to be conscious. When Todd talked to him, the pilot, if he responded at all, mumbled unintelligibly. The med readouts continued low nominal, not serious enough, it seemed to Todd, to produce this result. Was it a genuine injury aftereffect? Or had Owens found a handy excuse to avoid answering Todd’s questions? Todd eyed the young pilot suspiciously. Perhaps he was being unfair, just as he had been anticipating Mari to bitch about fuel expenses. Such uncharitable doubts were new to him. So was being menaced by a satellite and shuttle killer.
The habitat came up on visuals. Scanners picked out the wheel against the blackness long before Todd could eyeball it. He watched as the speck grew and took on distinct form. The screens showed the original construction-shack sections of the banded torus and various outliers and other work stations orbiting close by. Todd had made this approach often, but he never tired of the view. Even now, his ragged nerves couldn’t spoil his enjoyment of that massive beauty.
Goddard Colony was beautiful. Pat and the anti-Spacers couldn’t see it that way. Ward Saunder would have. Todd longed to share the view with his father. The station had been a dream almost off the drawing boards, but not quite, when Ward had been killed. They would have ridden up here together, searching for bits of poetic description from old books they had read, a friendly rivalry in praising the great space wheel with words.
Goddard’s space spiders were busy, weaving fresh hide for the station. Little commuter craft plied the vacuum between Goddard and the nearby orbiting factories and mass driver terminal stations. A tow vessel should be arriving soon from the major lunar mining collection point, bring a fresh cargo of precious compacted Moon soil for breakdown and manufacture.
At first, everything seemed normal. Then anomalies crept into the familiar scene. Todd cued zoom scan to port, studying the orbiting spacecraft factory. Usually the open-sided drydock held an assortment of mini-shuttles and a cargo hauler. Now the regular output was parked outside the structure, as if to make room for more important work. Todd saw several sleek, military-type craft resembling the Unit Three fighters. And there was another ship, larger and built to handle—eventually—a planetary gravity stress. Todd had seen the design proposed three years before, when he had been a guest during the Colony’s monthly Planning Group meeting. The discussion had been heated, fired by the pioneering spirit so prevalent on the habitat. In the end, as much as the Group wanted to go ahead, they had tabled the blueprint, admitting they couldn’t swing the funds from P.O.E.’s supplementary credits or from their own profit picture. The Mars Base Colony ship would have to go on indefinite standby, for at least ten years.
Yet there it was, half built.
Goddard Traffic Control took over the shuttle’s guidance. From this point on, Todd and Gib would be pasengers. Retros and vernier thrusters aligned the ship delicately onto Tracking’s pre-plotted course. Todd adjusted his orientation again as the shuttle decelerated and began to match the habitat’s rotation. They were dropping from one-quarter to null gravity, speed and motion shifting confusingly.
Resolution was sharp and stark. Objects stood out brilliantly or were hidden in deepest shadow. Docking brought arriving ships in on a track that avoided the Colony’s solar collectors’ glare. As a result, he could gaze at the station without squinting. His curiosity aroused by the shipbuilding in the spacecraft factory, Todd studied the torus, not sure what he was looking for.
Suddenly, he wanted to slow the shuttle. He was in too close and moving closer. Too close to see what had happened to Section Four of the immense wheel. Something was very wrong. What
had
happened? A gap was torn out of the station, penetrating the outer radiation shield. The interior was ripped open and shattered. It was a massive wound in the space station’s integrity.
Alert now, he saw another wound. Not as big as the one that had destroyed Section Four, but bad. Section Two was also hurt, and it was residential. Day or night, the disaster was bound to have caught many people in their homes. Had they had time to get to adjacent areas and secure life-support? Todd fervently hoped so, badly shaken by what he had seen.
Unexpectedly he saw the catastrophe through alien eyes. What would they—the species which had built the alien messenger vehicle—think of this? They must have had space stations, might still have some. Had their stations ever suffered this kind of damage? Why? And how?
Todd knew the how, here. He didn’t want to look at it squarely, but the likelihood was unavoidable. Missile strike.
“Shuttle One-Five, prepare for docking in five minutes.”
He woke out of his speculations, making final safety checks. They drifted in toward Goddard’s hub. By now the Colony was too huge for the scanners to take in, no matter how much they reduced the view. He could pick up remotes from Goddard’s own orbiting watchdog cameras. That was the only way he could get the full picture from this close in.
