The Unbounded, page 30
But it was Whisper who answered. “Summer sleeps.”
“Sleeping?” Lanezi tried to confirm.
“Long sleep,” Whisper explained.
“Hibernation?”
But Whisper just looked at him, puzzled. “Whisper soon.” It must be, he thought, holding Summer to his ear. Her heart still beat, but so slowly.
Lanezi spent three minutes of power on the med scanner to prove to the twins that the pups were hibernating. All the specs matched the podpup medical database.
“Pups okay,” Whisper repeated, miffed that he had checked. The twins and Lanezi took turns hugging Whisper until she slipped into hibernation later that day.
But it wasn’t enough. After a week of reduced usage, life support numbers could not be extended to the necessary remaining weeks. And life without the lively pups was all the more grim.
15-Glory
Cheetah, location unknown
Zahar floated into the Command Bay to find Evan, Nkiroo, and Melawn in a state of excitement, for the first time since the jump. “Something good?” she asked.
“Yes, Captain,” Nkiroo answered. “We’ve been able to verify our speed—.89 JV.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Evan explained, smiling. “Our mini-jump didn’t knock off a lot of speed, as jumps usually do. We’ll be able to regain JV with no a-rings or gravity assist.”
A flood of relief went through Zahar. “Thank God.” They nodded.
“In twelve days we’ll have enough fuel,” Nkiroo added.
“But we’re lost,” Zahar said, puzzled. “How will we know where to jump?”
“I’m hoping to pick the strongest path,” Evan said. “It may not get us to Canyon, but anywhere with a-rings is better than here.”
“Will Thayne be well enough to jump?” Melawn asked quietly. A flicker of anger and determination crossed Evan’s usually compassionate face.
“Yes,” Zahar said, but was glad to see that worrying about Thayne wasn’t going to hold Evan back.
17-Glory
Enkindler, heading for Friendship a-rings
The two fields were the biggest drains on their energy. Lanezi checked the number of hits on the particle field. Too many. Turning that off would be a quick end.
But radiation levels were average. Maybe he could turn the field down. And they had radiation tents listed in the supplies. Zahar thinks of everything. The twins and podpups were known to be radiation resistant. He ran through medical records to get estimates, which thanks to Tenshi’s work, were the most reliable available.
During his late-night calculations, he realized, and was ashamed to be saddened by it, that he only had to survive to the jump. After that, Euro could bring in the ship. He could even program Enkindler to do it. Whisper would die with him, but the twins and three pups would be saved. They could survive in the suits for a few days as a last resort.
Finally, the numbers balanced. He turned the radiation field down. Cold, hungry, tired, and visualizing his cells being mutated by radiation, Lanezi contemplated how to spend his final weeks in joy instead of sorrow.
29 GHOST IN THE MACHINE
6-Beauty
Drumheller, incoming to Tundra System
“Tundra beacon located. ETA 8 days, 3 hours, 12 minutes.”
Beezan struggled out of his cocoon and called Katie, trying to keep his voice calm. “Something’s wrong. Jarvie has a green light, but he’s thrashing around. He’s gasping, but conscious.”
Jarvie grabbed his helmet and pulled it off in a panic. “Don’t throw it!” Sequoia warned. Beezan pulled over to Jarvie and snatched the helmet from him.
The just-completed jump from Tetra to Tundra had not been difficult. In fact, Beezan feared to hex himself by even thinking it was easy. But it was. Prayers, JV, look, see the path, jump. Routine. And they were only eight days out. He would have been thrilled if not for Jarvie’s wild reaction. Beezan stowed the helmet and put his hand on Jarvie’s forehead, mostly to get him to be still enough to look at his eyes. “What’s wrong?” He asked casually.
“I heard him!”
“Heard who?”
“Quay!”
Quay, one of the Ramians, Beezan remembered, and relaxed a bit. Sequoia nodded and said, “Jump dream.”
“No! I heard him. Three times! It was so strange. But so real. He was calling for help.”
“You’re learning to jump. It’s just a dream,” Beezan said, squeezing Jarvie’s shoulder.
“It wasn’t like a dream. It was as clear as if he were calling on my p’link.”
“Well,” Sequoia asked, “was he speaking Ramian?”
“Yes. No.” Jarvie frowned. “I don’t know. I understood.”
“No worries, then,” Sequoia soothed. “You were probably thinking about him. People who jump together form bonds.”
“He needed help,” Jarvie appealed to Beezan. “They were desperate. Please. We have to help them. Please believe me.”
Something in Jarvie’s eyes, some conviction of things seen only by pilots made Beezan doubt that it was all a dream.
“I’ll send a message back through. Maybe someone can jump out to Friendship and see if they’ve come back.”
“Thank you,” Jarvie whispered.
8-Beauty Eve
Cheetah, lost
Melawn clipped on the chair at the conference table, glancing down at his wrist out of habit. He clenched his jaw, exasperated with himself. That was the 87th time today he had looked for Thayne’s icons. He’d had no idea how often he checked on Thayne until Zahar destroyed the wrist p’link for good. He tugged his sleeve down sharply. The others didn’t seem to notice, except Tenshi, who frowned at him, and Kiwi, who started to come over, but Zahar held on to him.
Zahar finished the pre-jump briefing, going over their path and timeline. No question, this was the most important jump of their lives. If they couldn’t escape this weird empty space, they would die. “Evan,” she said quietly, “please start the prayers.” Evan would be considered their pilot. He is our pilot, Melawn reminded himself. No thoughts of desperation pilot, last-chance-only pilot, he’s-crazy-and-he’ll-kill-us-all pilot. The pilot had to have the confidence of the crew.
I trusted Thayne—and look what happened. And now I have to trust Evan.
Evan’s whisper of a voice, tremulous, didn’t inspire confidence. And it wasn’t one of the usual pilot’s prayers. He chanted a long prayer, from memory, never faltering, but heart-breakingly beseeching.
Finally, they filtered out, leaving Caspia and Evan to say their last prayers together. Melawn held his hand over his wrist willing himself to transfer some of that betrayed trust he’d had for Thayne to renewed trust for Evan. Wherever they went in tomorrow’s jump, they would go together.
8-Beauty
Tenshi, passenger monitor, came in the Command Bay to give Melawn his jump drug. He was sitting to the left of Evan, with Nkiroo on Evan’s right. He had his brackets on and was about to put his helmet on when Tenshi floated in.
“Not Melawn,” Evan said quietly.
“What?” Tenshi asked. Melawn held his breath. He was as surprised as Tenshi, but you weren’t supposed to question a pilot. Melawn was usually considered a distraction in the jump.
“Melawn, this side. Nkiroo, that side,” Evan pointed each way. “That’s how it should be,” he said mysteriously.
“Yes, Evan,” she nodded and turned to go without giving Melawn the jump drug.
Evan smiled serenely at him and said, “Like wings,” and then it was back to business.
Tenshi reported passengers ready, apparently not having the heart to announce their reduced P&P. Nkiroo put up the acceleration map, showing the small burns they would be making to mimic the PAT bumps. Helmets went on and they were in final countdown.
Melawn calmed himself, rerunning a few lines of Evan’s chanting from the night before, finding it stronger in spirit than it had been in volume.
The Cheetah hurtled toward JV, making powerful burns, first every minute and then every 15 seconds. “Two to go,” Nkiroo said.
Melawn closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. Nkiroo and me, two wings of Evan’s bird. Accept data only. Blank. A big, painful, burn.
“Five seconds,” Nkiroo reported. A tremendous burn pushed them into their chairs. He knew Evan would be searching for the path. Melawn didn’t have implants, so he didn’t see anything, but he opened his heart, his mind, and his spirit, giving himself up to be of any assistance at all. He waited for Evan to use the thruster to put them into the path—except he didn’t.
Instead of a nudge, they were violently whipped into a leftward spin. Melawn felt the grab of the path then. His head rocked even with the reinforced helmet. They were spinning in the path! Tighter and tighter, he spun terrifying circles around himself, being crushed into his own spine. His breath froze inside him and, thankfully, he spiraled into darkness.
By the time Zahar got to the Command Bay, Nkiroo’s light had just gone green and he was wrenching off his helmet.
“What—” she asked, but he was white-knuckled and anxious.
“Evan!” he called.
“He’s yellow.”
“Get him out. We need to talk to him.”
Zahar preferred to wait for the green light, but obviously, something had happened. All four of the conscious jumpers had gone yellow. She wasn’t feeling so good herself. Her quick glance outside revealed nothing, but a screen ominously flashed “auto-stabilize.”
She unsealed Evan’s cocoon and Nkiroo gently dealt with the arm brackets, which woke Evan up. He groaned and opened his eyes. He was completely rational just long enough to say, “Loops. The paths were loops. Paths to nowhere.” And then he was wandering.
“Did we jump?” Zahar asked.
“We did something,” Nkiroo answered.
She got Melawn’s helmet off. “Sick,” he groaned—and she managed to get a bag on him in time.
“Cheetah, Elapsed time during jump?” Nkiroo asked.
“Twelve minutes.”
Twenty minutes later, Zahar drank her restoration drink in the Med Bay with the others. Caspia also gave them a motion sickness booster. Kiwi was fine, of course, nuzzling around Evan’s pockets.
“Our position is here, compared to where we started the jump,” Nkiroo pointed out on the big screen. “We didn’t exactly jump, so we didn’t get far. The good news is that we still have .78JV—and, we’re going almost the opposite direction. We’re headed back the way we came.”
“We’re going backwards?” Tenshi asked.
“No. Loops, Evan said. I believe we looped around.” Nkiroo turned to Evan. “Were they closed loops?”
“Hundreds of them . . .” he murmured.
“What made us spin?” Zahar asked.
“I did,” Evan said calmly, and then drifted off.
Caspia let out a slow breath. “I’ve heard the pilots talk about it—spin the ship just as you enter the path and you’ll pop out automatically. No need to wait to pass a large mass, or dump the speed.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Tenshi asked.
“The pilots weren’t always rational.”
And then Evan was back in focus. “I just wanted to see where it was going without committing,” he explained.
“Did you?” Zahar asked.
“Yes. It was going nowhere.”
Zahar frowned. “We got here. We can get back. Melawn!”
He jumped. She chided herself to be patient with them. It had been a rough jump. “Melawn,” she said more gently, “correlate all the cameras and nav data we have from just before we jumped and just after. Forget the paths. We need to pinpoint the exact direction that we entered this . . . space.”
He nodded, already thinking how to do it.
“It won’t help,” came Thayne’s rasping voice from the alcove. There was a beat of silence.
“Why?” Tenshi asked calmly.
“Mini universe, non-inflating dimensions. Fool pilot jumped us to a pocket.”
They gasped, half from the insult and half from the idea of jumping to a place of no return. Sweat broke out on her forehead, but Evan didn’t even seem to hear. Thayne was intolerable. It was a mistake to even be in the room with him. “Don’t listen to him, Evan. You, Melawn, and Nkiroo are going to find our way home.” She motioned them all out of the Med Bay. They were already sick to their stomachs. No need to make them heartsick as well.
8-Beauty
Drumheller, incoming to Tundra
Two days after arriving in Tundra, Jarvie sat in an Arc 1 classroom looking over his new class schedule for the next couple of months. He’d be with Terina and have multiple teachers. He was embarrassed to be so thrilled. No trying to fit in with the kids on Hamada, all staring and knowing his history. No more lonely hours in his cabin trying to stay ahead of Beezan.
A Day: Ship repair with Thunder.
Consultation skills with Iricana
Exercise/Rec/Music
B Day: Hydroponics with Kelson
Podpup care with Katie
Exercise/Rec/Music
C Day: Shuttle Duty with Sequoia
Physics with Beezan
Exercise/Rec/Music
“Shuttle Duty!” Terina was jumping up and down, pumping a fist.
“Oh, historians don’t like to pilot shuttles,” he teased her.
She jabbed a finger at him. “You are inaccurate. Many historians were great adventurers.” He laughed, but she turned serious. “Jarvie, what are you going to be when you grow up?”
“Taller,” he said.
“You’re tall enough!”
“He’s going to be a pilot,” Thunder answered, coming in with a robot team carrying boxes of extra tools.
“Well, I hope so,” Jarvie said quietly.
“Have no doubt,” Thunder said. “But if you’re going to be flying this ship, we need to learn some serious repair skills. That Arc 9 business was just the beginning.”
Jarvie and Terina went over to the table. “Where are you going?” Thunder asked. “We’re off to the work tower. I don’t sit at tables.”
“Unless you’re eating,” Terina clarified.
“Only when I have to.”
“Or saying prayers,” she added.
“Only when I have to.” And as they started up the rimway, Thunder started singing “We Have Come to Sing Praises.” Jarvie and Terina joined in enthusiastically. They sang all the way to the work tower. Jarvie didn’t know all of the songs, but Terina did. Maybe she was a music historian too.
And no table for lunch either. They sat on the deck of the work tower. “Thunder,” Jarvie asked, trying to make it sound like an engineering question, “how long do you think it would take to make a-rings from scratch?”
Thunder and Terina stopped chewing and looked at him, sympathy crossing Thunder’s expression. “Well, it took about two and a half months, according to the Luminesse report, to put two pre-assembled a-ring segments into place with a new gravity ball.”
“With a pre-trained team of workers,” Jarvie added.
“Yes, so engineers have estimated that working from blueprints only, building everything from scratch, would probably take a year. Provided they have what they need.”
“Oh.” Jarvie frowned. He’d been worried that there was no word from Lanezi.
“If the Cheetah went to Firelight, we don’t expect to hear anything for a long while,” he said. “A backup plan is in the works.”
Jarvie looked up in surprise.
“They’re making more segments at Harbor. If there is no return ship from Firelight in a year, they’ll ship in new segments. Then they’ll start manufacturing segments for each sector to keep in reserve.”
“Oh, good plan,” Terina said.
“So the sectors could be reconnected in a year,” Jarvie said. It was almost too much to hope for.
“And,” Thunder added, “thanks to your mission with the Ramians, they will no longer be jumping into our space to cause the accidents. Things are truly looking good for the outer sectors.”
“Well, I’ll feel better when it happens,” Jarvie admitted.
“In the meantime,” Thunder said, “Let’s get this ship into shape. Who knows what exciting missions might come up.”
“I don’t think Beezan would go for exciting missions. He seems happy things are calm again,” Jarvie said and Terina nodded.
Thunder smiled and stood up. “Your Captain, bless his soul, may think it’s calm, but I think we’re just in the eye of the storm.”
“You sound like Grandpa!” Terina laughed, but it gave Jarvie a twinge of worry.
9-Beauty
Beezan sat in the corner of the Rec Room, eating cake and trying to create a zone of calm. Sequoia sat down somewhat near him as if to expand the calm zone, and Kelson joined on the other side. He wondered if it was even remotely sane to have a big birthday party for two podpups. Actually three, as Star and Sky were officially one year old, but Rocket could not be left out.
There were presents, treats, games, and silly songs that Kelson insisted he didn’t make up.
Beezan tried to let go of the serious issue on his mind, which crew member to add to the Drumheller’s role model list. He supposed it was the point of parties to relax. Besides, at the moment, he couldn’t imagine adding anyone to the list. Except for Sequoia, they all seemed a bit wild.
The current game was rolling a ball across the deck with your nose. Podpups vs. humans. Human teens anyway. The loud cheering unnerved Beezan, but they were all having so much fun. The champion, Sky, was awarded an extra treat. She brought it over and gave it to him. “For Bee.”
“Oh, Sky, you’re so sweet to share.” He patted her on the head.
“Huh! Win more,” she said wickedly, and got back in the game.
Sequoia laughed. “What a funny pup.”
Beezan watched Sky have her way with pups and humans. He wondered what the Drumheller thought about all this. “What exactly does the AI learn from human exemplars, anyway?” he asked, aloud, apparently, as Kelson and Sequoia turned to look at him in mild surprise. He looked down shyly, embarrassed to be caught considering other people’s virtues.
