Swan Song, page 16
But it wasn’t really me that they were betting on. It was Eve. I had to back my ideas about what was wrong with Eve and how it could be put right. I was the only one who could take Sam’s place, and—equally—she was the only one who could take mine. To do that, she had to be brought back from whatever limbo she had retired to.
She had gone out with the Sister Swan when it blew. They had blown together. I could think of only one thing that might bring Eve back to life and that was to lock her in a cradle and bring the ship to life around her. If she was going to come back at all she would come back into the ship, enter into ship-consciousness. I had to believe and trust that if we set her up and started a countdown, when the number reached zero she’d be ready and able to do what was needed.
Maybe it was a long shot. Maybe Titus Charlot would have read the whole thing differently and put his own trust in another solution. But as a pilot, I looked at things from the pilot’s angle, and despite the fact that I didn’t have a great deal of respect for Eve’s training or her abilities, I credited her with a pilot’s feeling and a pilot’s potential. I thought she could come through, if things were right for her. I hoped she would came through, for her own sake, and for all our sakes. If this play failed we probably wouldn’t get a chance to try any of the alternatives.
I placed Eve in the cradle myself. I hooked up her contacts with the utmost care, and I placed the hood. I made sure every electrode was clean, and I tried to minimize the discomfort which would inevitably arise because her head wasn’t the same size and shape as mine.
After that, I reprogrammed the computer to carry us through the course by which we’d arrived at our present position. By the time I was through Nick was well advanced, with his resurrection of the nerve-net. I put Sam and Mina down below in order to do a complete systems check of all in-ship power systems. As Nick gave us back the sensory hook-ups one by one I tested them.
Throughout the whole procedure, Eve never moved a muscle. But we were only making the ship twitch—we hadn’t got anywhere near bringing her back to life.
Ultimately, we were set to go—or to try. I stationed Nick to look after Eve and Mina to look after Nick. I kept Sam down below, in case I needed moral support, inspiration, or advice.
Before I went below, Nick looked at me with an air of accusation.
“You better be right,” he said.
“You better hope I am,” I told him, putting the screws on a bit because I didn’t like his tone of voice. “Let’s all add amen to that. Because I’m going down to start the countdown, and if she isn’t awake and active when the countdown closes we may not know a lot about it. If I let the cannons go without a brain up top and a pair of hands to help me juggle the power, we could vanish in a puff of blue smoke. You won’t get the chance to say I told you so, unless we happen to meet up in the hereafter.”
Nick looked at Eve, absolutely motionless in the cradle, limp as a rag doll, and I could tell that he was doing most of his suffering on her behalf.
“Save it,” I advised.
“You really think it will work, don’t you?” he said.
“What am I, a lunatic?” I said scathingly.
“How do I know?” he retorted.
“If it works,” I told him, “then I wasn’t.”
“How could it fail?” he said. I got the distinct impression that he lacked faith. I couldn’t help that. Just as long as he did what he was told he was welcome to do without. I left him to his mental torture, without much sympathy.
I was not really cut out to be an engineer. It was all foreign to my nature and foreign to my touch. I strapped myself in and rediscovered the fact that there’s all the difference in the world between a pilot’s cradle and an engineer’s harness. For one thing, an engine is big. The parts of the drive-unit towered above me and crowded around me, and I felt very small hanging in my little alcove. An engineer can’t sit down—he needs his freedom of movement. He can do his job with one hand tied behind his back, but he still needs the reach. The instruments are strung out—there’s no hood to give direct sensory access to the information. You can’t read every dial simultaneously—you have to play partly by ear, partly by feel, and partly by inspired guesswork.
I wasn’t happy, but I was comfortable. I knew what I was doing, and I knew that I knew. But I was still scared, still apprehensive. I was very glad that no one was going to get the chance to tell me they told me so, if it didn’t work, because I was just in the mood to be sensitive about that kind of thing.
I even had one angle that Sam didn’t have, and that was the knowledge of what it felt like from on top. That would be a help, I was sure. The worm always stands to profit from the bird’s-eye view. I told myself that, and tried to persuade myself I had a ticket home and not a one-way to hell.
Nick and I called off the routines of the last pre-flight check like a pair of automatons. There was nothing to it. I didn’t know how much of a job Nick had done with the sensors, and I didn’t really want to know. It had to be good enough, and that was all there was to it. All the superficial checks were fine.
When we finished, I said, “Any sign of life?”
He said, “No.”
“OK,” I said, “I’m putting her on to warm. Keep your eyes on the panel. Anything flickers that shouldn’t flicker, shout.”
I hesitated just a fraction of a second, flexing my fingers; then I began to close the switches and activate the reaction mass. I felt the huge steel case come alive as the motor began to hum inside. Sam was right behind me, strapped in the reserve position. He didn’t say a word. I watched the needle climbing as the rhythm of the discharge gathered and increased.
“I’m staying sub-threshold,” I said to Nick. “This is just to tickle her up a bit, get the blood flowing. Is anything happening?”
“No.”
“Right. Mina, give her a shot.” She was standing by with a big stun-shot, supposedly big enough to make the proverbial dead sit up and shout “Geronimo.” I gave her time to comply with the instruction.
A faint “OK” came floating back down the circuit. I checked all my dials with religious over-caution. I was still holding steady, sub-threshold, purring along all nice and easy. I counted to fifty in my mind, giving Eve some time, while I set up the elevation sequence; then I began to push up the potential in the chamber—not too quickly and not too far. I let it back down again without developing any thrust.
“Everything holding?” I asked.
“Sound as a bell inside,” said Nick, “but she’s not moving.”
“Take her hands,” I said, “and put them on the levers. Clasp them and hold them there. See if they’ll stay.”
Moments later. “I think they’ll drop off if I let them go.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Get Mina to take over. Hold them there and keep the grip tight. Nick, keep watching the panel. I’m going to give her another gentle swell.”
I let more time pass, giving the drug every chance. I knew it wouldn’t work on its own—what was wrong with Eve wasn’t a matter of metabolism but I hoped the swell in the chamber might just push her out and let us know we were on to a good thing.
It didn’t.
I won’t say I wasn’t downhearted, but I’d always known that it would almost certainly go to the acid test.
“She’s not responding,” said Nick. I could hear Mina’s voice in the background, saying something anxiously, but I couldn’t catch the words.
“All right,” I said. “Eggs in the basket. I’m activating the flux field.” The web appeared on the screen in front of me in schematic analogue. There seemed to be more of it than I’d been expecting. It was like some kind of weird flower drawn in colored light.
I eased back on the main control and let some of the power run into the deration field.
“I’m beginning countdown at two-fifty,” I said calmly. “Keep her hands on the levers. Activate the program in the computer when I come to a hundred. I’ve set it to make the fast turning maneuver on automatic at dead slow. It’s only spinning the ship, but it involves some movement of the levers. Leave the manual override closed. When she feels the levers moving she may come back. If she waits for the cannons to burn she may be late to get into the act but there’ll still be a chance. Don’t anybody panic—not at any stage. Hold your breath, but don’t let go. If you get to exhale we’ll probably live to tell the tale. Ready?”
“Any time,” said Nick.
“Two hundred fifty,” I said. “Two hundred forty-nine....”
I knew that the numbers would be bouncing around in Eve’s head, fed in through the hood. Even the numbers might work the trick. They were steady, and familiar, and she might just find her mind and body falling into step with them.
As the count descended I kept everything steady. It was all easy so far. I had the balance right in my palm. No trouble. I watched the web like a hawk, moving my fingers easily from key to key on the fluction board, getting the feel of the surfaces. I let the thrust build slowly toward the threshold, swelling it insistently, throwing some real power into the nerve-net.
When I reached a hundred it began. It was nothing but a redistribution—only auxiliary power was invoked. This was a maneuver that an ordinary ship couldn’t carry out—it wouldn’t have the bird’s joints or musculature. A conventional ship has to go forward to turn. We didn’t. We didn’t need to use the cannons.
The control levers were moving now, in Eve’s hands. If only Eve’s hands would begin to fall in with the movement, to grip of her own accord....
“...Eighty-five...,” I called. “...Eighty-four....” Something strangled came over the call-circuit. Something not meant for me. No words, just an expression of some inner tension that had to come out.
“Watch that whine,” said Sam, using his ears for me. “Taper off the swell.”
I held the growth of the field for a moment, drawing power into the auxiliaries. The correction was only slight. There was plenty of time. No sweat yet.
“Seventy…sixty-nine….”
“It’s not working,” said Nick, with a deathly calmness in his voice. He wasn’t talking to me, only letting it out. He was tied up as tight as could be. I ignored him.
“...Fifty-six...fifty-five....”
Let go her hands, I wanted to say. Let them go and let them stay on the levers. Trust to her. I couldn’t interrupt the count, and it was the last thing I ought to say if I could, but the words echoed in my skull anyway. I was getting ahead of myself. The tension was reaching me. I wanted Eve to wake up before zero. Desperately.
“Mina,” said Nick, “you can ease your hands away. I think they’ll stay now.”
I only wished that I could see.
“…Twenty-nine...twenty-eight....”
“I can’t,” I heard Mina say. “I just can’t.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Nick. “I think it’s all right.”
“…Eighteen...seventeen….”
I imagined Mina, no tears on her face but eyes afire, her hands white and tight as they clutched Eve’s fingers to the controls, unable to let go. Petrified.
“It’s all right,” whispered Nick—and this time I think he was talking to all of us. “It’s all right.”
“...Five...,” I said. “Four...three...two...one....”
I let go all the impulse from the discharge points as I tongued an inaudible “Zero....”
...And it was picked up.
Eve was with me. The power flooded the deration system, setting the cycle and building the syndromatic reaction. The cannons let go and the MR caught up all the thrust from the cannons like a greedy predator. Sucking all the power into her heart and her guts, the bird flew.
The course we had...it was in the computer. The fight plan we also had. It was only a matter of holding tight, of preserving that most precious balance.
The voice came back down the circuit.
“Steady, Rothgar,” she said.
I didn’t say a word. It wasn’t the time to be shattering anyone’s illusions.
I heard Nick’s voice, too. “Take us out,” he was saying, in a voice which suggested prayer rather than command. “Take us home.”
“Yes, captain,” she said. Or something like that. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I only had eyes for the web, and my fingers were dancing on the keys, balancing and feeding, correcting every random break and leak, keeping the whole of the vast field smooth, wrapping the ship up into a neat little parcel, taking her up toward the barrier we would never quite reach.
We played it back exactly as we’d come in. There was no tachyonic hurdle to leap, no phase-flicker to play off. It was easier, so much easier, as though it were all downhill instead of up. A climb and a surge, a leap through the scissure in space, out into the known, beautiful, empty universe.
We stretched our wings and we soared.
Our hearts swelled, our blood hummed in our veins. We reached out and it was all in our hands, all held, all steady.
And we were through.
Hurtling through vacuous space, decelerating smoothly, releasing the load, and relaxing in our course. Eve overrode the program, realizing that it was all over before she even realized what it was.
I held it, feeling like a juggler performing a difficult trick for the one and only time.
“Did you hear it, Sam?” I said.
“I heard it,” he assured me.
“Eve,” I said. “Are you listening? You hear me? This is Grainger, Eve. You made it.”
When she spoke my name it sounded like the hiss of an angry cat. It was only shock—maybe a touch of horror. She was still slowing the ship, letting her go into a drift. Her moment was over. She was falling back, now, giving way. It didn’t matter.
“Take it easy,” I said. “It’s all over. Damn the rest. They can come and get us. Take us home on stretchers. I don’t care. We did our bit. It’s all over.”
All we had to do was wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
We were all too tired to have much of a party while we were waiting to be found, but we tried. A good deal of time went by before they got a ship to us, but we didn’t discover the reason until they actually reached us. We didn’t do any more talking than was necessary through the call-circuit.
Abram Adams came out himself, with a number of his staff, on a small ship called the Gipsy Rose which hadn’t been on Darlow when we lifted.
It was not until Adams came aboard the Swan that we found out how long we had been away. More than a hundred days had passed—in the real world—since the Swan had entered the lens. They’d given us up for good and all.
It wasn’t only time that had passed on, either. Titus Charlot was dead. He had died believing that he had made a grave and terrible mistake. He gave up the crew of the Sister Swan for dead, and he assumed that I had suffered a like fate. I think Adams might have blamed me for causing the old man’s death, or at least hastening it, had it not been for the fact that Charlot had been ready and willing to overlook the fact that I’d left him behind. Much later, when I got to thinking about it, I concluded that a trip into the Nightingale was probably the last thing Titus Charlot had wanted to do. He was so determined to come because he considered himself to be under an obligation. I’d let him off the hook by stealing the mission. There were no charges waiting to face me when I got back. In fact, quite the reverse. Charlot had taken steps to have it recorded that I—each and every one of us—had died a hero.
I think my obituary was the nicest thing I ever read.
They’d put Titus Charlot’s body in a deep-freeze and sent it home to be buried under the sweet cosmetic surface of his home world. The realization that I was free of him forever came upon me rather slowly. When I first heard the news, I wasn’t exactly heartbroken, and my first thought was that it would be nice to be able to scrawl graffiti on his tombstone. But the attitude didn’t last. After a while, I was almost sorry to think that I’d left him behind to die with the bitterness of his failure, because—in a way—he hadn’t failed. I think he ought to have been allowed to know that. One life lost, and a pair of eyes, but maybe those weren’t wholly down to him.
The ship was still New Alexandrian, but I gathered from Zimmer that there was no one quite ready to step into Charlot’s shoes yet. I had time in hand, and the chance of a voice in my own future.
Sam stayed with the ship. I didn’t want to let him go to wherever old spacemen go when they don’t die. Mina stayed too, and with Johnny that would have made a full crew in numerical terms, but numerical terms weren’t the only ones to be considered. I didn’t really know whether Nick and Eve would want to sign on with me, and I didn’t know any way of asking them that wouldn’t sound absurd. But they solved the problem for me. They asked me. They had no intention of letting go.
We were becalmed on Darlow for quite some time. The ship was only just about spaceworthy and the crew most certainly was not. It was some days after we limped home that news filtered back through channels to New Alex, and it was several days more before the reaction was felt. Johnny shipped himself back to us at the earliest possible opportunity. I wasn’t looking forward to facing him, because I knew that whether Charlot had forgiven me or not, he never would. The fact that as things turned out we’d found a moment when we needed him badly, and he hadn’t been there to fill the need, only added fuel to the fires of his resentment.
“I just don’t understand,” he said to me, once he had me cornered. “I know you didn’t want Charlot. I see that. But why me? You knew damn well I wanted to go—needed to go. Why?”
“You wanted your share of the glory?” I said.
“Not that,” he told me. “It’s more than that.”
I knew it. I accepted it. It meant more to him than the fact that we were labeled heroes. He’d wanted something else—something more personal. How could I explain to him why I hadn’t let him have it?
“I stole it from you,” I told him. “The glory, everything. I stole it because I thought you’d be better off without it.”
“Since when did you decide what’s good for me?” he demanded.
