Yuen-Mong's Revenge (17 page)

 
     
It sounded rehearsed, although his voice had a slight tremor.

     
"I know, Atun. I have known for a long time." She knew that he was
hoping for more, but she could not give him that. She was very fond of
him, but was that love? So, she came a step closer and said: "Atun, hold
me."

     
He folded his arms around her and she pressed her cheek against his.
She liked the smell of his skin, the roughness of his beard. She could
sense his elevated heart beat and it felt good. After a while, she disengaged herself and kissed his cheek. Smiling she said: "Captain, crew
ready."

 
     
After strapping themselves firmly into their seats, they got ready for
takeoff. They hovered above ground, directing the craft south-west for a
45-degree approach angle to the ring. When the seconds arm of the watch
hit 55, Atun engaged the main engine and set it to full power. Four
seconds later, she felt pressed into her seat, as the craft began to move
and then rose at a steep angle. As they gained elevation and speed, they
turned the shuttle upside down to ease the effect of acceleration on their
bodies and to enable them to see Aros through the shuttle windows.

     
Under full power, the craft was stable, and after the first small
corrections for roll Yuen-mong had nothing to do. She relaxed and
enjoyed seeing the surface features of the land slowly revealed. This was
her world. Would she ever return to it again? To her right she spotted the
mountain range where they had spent a night four days ago on their gold
search expedition and she realized in what a small area she had lived her
life.

     
The roar of the engine made it impossible to speak without earphones.
Atun’s face expressed strained concentration. She could sense his
tenseness and tried to catch his eyes. When she succeeded, she smiled at
him and had the feeling that he too relaxed a bit.

     
After exactly six minutes and twenty seconds — she guessed they had
gained about 200 km elevation — Atun cut off the engine and they continued their outward-bound journey in silence. At the same time she
experienced the sensation of being weightless, that her arms floated at
her side. She forced them down and held on to the armrests.

     
"I think my calculations were correct. We have surpassed exit
velocity," he remarked, glancing at her. "So far, so good."

 
     
She only nodded, not sure she could trust her voice, suddenly aware
that she had lost her contact with Aros. Gone were the murmurs of daily
life that had always been part of her as long as she could remember. It
was as if something had been ripped out of her. The only presence she
felt was Atun’s and for a moment she resented it. She closed her eyes and
forcibly calmed her mind, gaining back her balance and adjusting to the
absence of a background.

     
 Gradually, Aros’ surface curvature became more pronounced, revealing one side of a globe. The ring rose like a majestic halo above it in all
its magnificence. As the shuttle sped up toward the ring, the band
gradually grew into a wall that seemed to reach from the surface of the
planet way into the sky, obscuring the southern hemisphere.
Will we
locate my parents’ ship?
she wondered and found it hard to tear her gaze
away from the enormity of the ring.

     
Her rock was on a northern continent that spanned beyond the eastern
horizon. Most of its interior was in colors of grays and sand, like the area
east of the mountains. A storm was sweeping across it, raising a cloud of
dust kilometers into the air, the type of storm that played havoc if it
reached the coast. There was a thin strip of green along much of the
coastal regions. She guessed that in most places it was no more than 40
to 50 kilometers wide. To the north the beginning of a white icecap grew
slowly in size. What surprised her was that there were almost no clouds
anywhere along the coast. Did the entire continent have the same pattern
of regular late night rains?

     
Atun’s command "horizontal" interrupted her reverie. She activated
the pitch thruster for a short burst, watching the craft slowly tilt its nose
up … or was it down since they flew with their head facing Aros?

     
"Arrest."

 
     
An even shorter burst of the opposite thruster stabilized the craft. She
had to repeat it twice before Atun was satisfied with the angle. The watch
showed that they had been holding the present trajectory for 96 minutes.
Next he ordered her to rotate the craft more to the west, to narrow the
angle of approaching the ring. Shortly after that maneuver, he reactivated
the main engine for a few seconds and the craft changed its course in the
new trajectory.

     
Over the next hour they performed a number of further lateral and
pitch adjustments until their orbit was above and parallel to the ring. It
was a strange sensation to see the ring shrink to a thin band of a few
hundred feet wide, slicing Aros into two half spheres — no more the
dominant feature in the sky.

     
"I guess that we’re about one thousand kilometers above the outer
edge of the ring now, but we still have escape velocity."

 
     
This was Atun’s second complete sentence since takeoff. He
responded to her smile. It was reassuring to sense that his mind had
gained a level of active calm.

     
He inserted the system backup cube into its device. "And now comes
the moment of truth," he said while switching on the shuttle’s AI unit.
The tree screens on the flight console suddenly became alive. She felt his
excitement rise, and he briefly glanced at her grinning happily. After a
few seconds, the middle one displayed messages in rapid succession and
then vanished. She held her breath.
Had something gone wrong?
She
breathed a sigh of relief when the message ‘systems restored’ appeared
in big yellow letters. Suddenly, the other two screens also filled with
information. The left one displayed the operating status of the rotation
control and propulsion system, all of them listed as ‘disconnected’. The
right one listed the current position, velocity and other flight status
information, as well as readings for various external sensors. Their
current distance from Aros was 36,283 kilometers and they were still on
a shallow escape trajectory at a velocity of over 11,000 km per standard
hour. The one in the middle showed a list of menus. He touched a button
at the bottom of the screen and a virtual keyboard appeared. Her name
floated across as he typed on it. She laughed and sent him a kiss.

     
Next he gave the voice command to call up different displays. As
expected his voice recordings had been erased and there was no response.
However, the AI unit responded to the keyboard command for the fuel
and battery status. He seemed greatly relieved when he saw that the
battery showed 92 percent loaded and fuel tanks were still 63 percent
full. The status of various internal sensors showed all operating except
for those they had converted to manual.

     
"None of the hardwired functions were affected," he remarked.

     
He tried to retrieve the log of previous flight records. A message ‘log
file missing’ appeared.

     
"All gone," he said, shrugging, "but not important. And now we have
to get into a circular orbit above the ring." He queried the AI unit for how
much the velocity had to be reduced to enter such an orbit. "This would
be simple if we could maneuver this craft via AI. But …" He left the
sentence hanging.

     
Yuen-mong knew what she had to do. Without a word, she turned the
craft around such that they were flying backward. After several short
bursts of the propulsion unit, he managed to reduce the velocity close to
the one computed by the AI unit. Using the forward and backward
thrusters for minute adjustments he settled the craft into an orbit 37,003
kilometers above Aros — about one thousand kilometers above the edge
of the ring. She turned the craft around again.

     
"And now, let’s enter the access code to Vishnu and then we are
ready." He called up the function for entering the code and made her to
repeat it twice. "All we now need is the ship."

 
     
He smiled at her. She tried to respond, but did not trust her voice and
said nothing, turning her gaze again down to Aros. The northern
continent that had been her home had disappeared over the horizon and
new land masses came up from the west. Except for a few large islands,
the southern hemisphere was only ocean. She also kept a watch on the
ring below them in the faint hope of maybe spotting the ship. Would they
actually be able to see anything passing by at over 20,000 km per hour?
It suddenly seemed hopeless. Somehow that aspect had escaped her. Had
Atun thought about it?

     
"How will we be able to see the ship traveling at this speed?"

 
     
"By radar … which must work or the status display would not have
shown our altitude." He briefly glanced at her. "Yes, at our speed it
would be difficult to see even a large object fly past us. I’ll direct it
forward over the ring in a shallow angle as soon as I’m through checking
this. Do you trust yourself to get us a drink, please? A bark tea would be
nice," he added with a smile.

     
She unstrapped herself and immediately began to float. Holding on to
the armrest of her seat, she placed her feet on the floor and the suction
cups of her boots held her in place, although she found it difficult to stay
upright. Supporting herself on the wall, she gingerly walked over to the
catering unit, where she had stored two craw water containers with bark
tea. She took one to Atun.

     
"Thanks." He put the spout into his mouth and sucked, taking small
swallows.

     
When he was through, she drank some too and stored the container
away again, before returning to her seat. They did not talk much. She felt
tense in a way she had never experienced. Periodically, she sensed something was missing, only to remember that she had lost life’s emanation
on Aros. But it was more, the narrow confines of the shuttle felt like a
cage. It was as if she had lost her freedom of movement and that made
her uneasy.

     
The middle screen now showed the virtual three-dimensional image
of the ring segment ahead of them, as captured by their radar. Its
monotonous image was mesmerizing to watch. The band segment
captured by the radar, like the upper part of the rim of a huge wheel,
barely move where it seemed to surface at its far distance. As parts of the
band got closer, they widened and accelerated gradually, rushing toward
them, filling the entire bottom width of the screen, passing underneath
and out of sight. It was as if the mass of the wheel stretched in width and
length faster and faster as it appeared to get closer.

     
They agreed to take turns for five-minute periods because it became
too hard on the eyes.

     
About three hours into their orbit, a tiny dot appeared in the far
distance of the display, seemingly separating itself from the ring and
hovering above it, slightly off center. She called out: "Something coming
up."
Is it Vishnu?
she questioned, feeling the pounding of her heart,
hoping that it is. Fascinated, she watched the dot move a fraction farther
away from the ring and then dip back into its band as it got closer, but
distinctly hovering above it.

     
Atun entered the command for automatic tracking and the dot
remained in the center of the picture. Like the width of the ring, it too
grew in size. Suddenly, it rushed passed them on the bottom left side of
the screen, and just before it disappeared from sight, Atun froze the
image. The time at the upper right corner of the screen showed 13:52:27.

     
"It just passed underneath us," he said. "Let’s see what it looks like."

 
     
He enlarged the image. It revealed the symmetric shape of an oblong
object with a small wing on each side and several protrusions at the back.

     
"Is it our ship?" she asked, barely able to hold down her excitement.

     
"Yes, it’s a space craft and about the right shape and size for a PA4,"
he glanced at her and smiled when he saw her flushed face. "Look, these
are the engines and here are rotation thrusters." He pointed to the
protrusions. "It’s about 10 kilometers above the ring and its orbit is a bit
off-center."

 
     
"Does that cause problems?"