Starstormers 2: Sunburst, page 6
At the real-vision window, Tsu drew aside the curtain. Instantly her face was scorched with blazing light. ‘The sun,’ she whispered. ‘Just look at it! So huge, so enormous . . .’ Nobody joined her to look.
Makenzie said, ‘How long have we got?’
Ispex made no answer. Sweat trickled down his nose and dripped on to his lap.
Vawn wiped her brow with the back of her hand and stared at her own sweat, disbelievingly. ‘It’s getting hotter so quickly,’ she murmured.
Tsu had taken most of her clothes off. Her body glistened wetly. Slowly, the others began to strip.
It became difficult to breathe. Lungs pumped thickly and unwillingly. Throats ached with each laboured breath. Eyes blinked as sweat blinded them. Vawn giggled weakly and said, ‘My scalp itches!’ Ispex said, ‘Don’t talk . . . Save your energy.’
‘What for?’ Vawn shouted in a cracked voice – and suddenly she was gone, stumbling out on long, thin legs shining with sweat. Makenzi, his dark brown face covered with a second skin of beaded sweat, half rose to follow her but Tsu said, ‘No. If she wants to be alone . . .’
Makenzi said, ‘We’re all on our own now.’ But he changed his mind and very deliberately took Tsu’s hand and shook it. Then he shook Ispex’s hand. The three of them joined hands and stood shyly smiling at each other. Makenzi, gasping with the effort of speaking, said, ‘We ought to be together now. All together. I’ll go and get Vawn.’
‘And Shambles,’ Tsu said. ‘He’s one of us. One of the Starstormers.’
‘Toast to the Starstormers,’ Ispex croaked. ‘Clink cans.’ He picked up an empty can and held it aloft as if it were a Champagne glass. ‘Get Vawn. Drink toast.’
But they did not have to get Vawn. She came running, her hair wild, her mouth gaping, with Shambles at her heels.
‘Something’s happened!’ she gasped. ‘I don’t understand – it could be something good . . .’ She fell on all fours, her ribs showing as her chest heaved, sweat dripping from her chin and nose. ‘Ask Shambles,’ she gasped.
Charge
Shambles clicked and gibbered. Illuminated numbers tracked across his flanks. Ispex blinked and glared at them, wiping his eyes. ‘Go on . . .’ he said. ‘Yes. No. Tell me again . . .’
‘What’s he saying?’ Makenzi demanded.
‘Is it something good?’ Vawn pleaded.
Tsu kicked Shambles’s side. ‘Talk,’ she said. ‘Shout it out!’
‘Complex solar radiation,’ Shambles gabbled, ‘with many components . . .’
‘Is any of it useful to us?’ Tsu shouted.
Ispex said, ‘Let me listen. Ah . . . I think I get it . . . This solar radiation: it’s all kinds of stuff. Most of it’s deadly but it can’t get through to us. Not yet. Starstormer shields us. We’re just getting the heat—’
‘So we’re going to be burned to death, not poisoned,’ Makenzi said. ‘That’s nice.’ He glistened blackly. He had found towels and had thrown them to the others. He used his own constantly but the sweat poured out.
‘Shut up,’ Ispex said. ‘Listen! This bit’s interesting. Very interesting. Shambles says the radiation’s mostly energy. Pure energy . . .’ He bit his lower lip and stared. ‘Surely that could mean . . .’
Without another word, he began to make his way to the centre of the ship. The others followed him wearily, leaving wet footprints. Now they stood in the core of the ship, where the power and drive units were housed.
‘Look at that!’ Ispex gasped. ‘Just look! It can’t be true!’ He pointed to the fuel readouts.
Vawn said, ‘But it’s impossible! Only a short time ago, we’d got nothing! Nothing left at all! We’d burned all our power! And now—’
‘Impossible or not,’ Makenzi said, almost in a whisper, ‘we haven’t got flat batteries any more. We’ve got power. Maximum power!’
Ispex began to laugh. He laughed till he choked and spluttered. ‘Don’t you see?’ he gasped, ‘the sun’s energy was going to kill us – and the same energy has saved us! It’s been cooking the whole ship, and us with it – but it’s also topped up our power supply! That’s quite a joke, when you come to think of it!’
‘No time to laugh,’ Vawn said. ‘Look at the spinwheels! Look how they’re moving!’
They looked. The spinwheels, the small indicators that showed the power levels, were turning: turning too fast. ‘We’re got power all right,’ Vawn said. ‘Too much power!’
‘We can try blasting off,’ Makenzi said. ‘What am I saying? We’ve got to blast off! Before we burst!’
‘Everyone into the padded cell,’ Ispex said. ‘Hurry. I’ll programme Shambles, he can run the blastoff. Everyone get strapped up. Tight!’
They ran clumsily to the padded cell, sliding on their own sweat, and strapped themselves in. Until the very last moment, Ispex muttered and prodded at Shambles, trying to understand the readout. ‘Quite unnecessary,’ said the robot. ‘Quite un-un-unun . . . Secure your person. Hurry, please.’
In the core of the little ship, pre-drives grumbled and whined. Vawn wiped her brow. Makenzi said, ‘Don’t do that! Get your arms under the straps! And wriggle down, the restrainer’s got to be right over your forehead!’
Even as she grumbled and obeyed, Starstormer went mad. There was an explosion. Then the universe seemed to punch the ship with a huge fist. Starstormer lurched, bellowed, exploded and belched flame mixed with hurtling fragments of meteorite. Straps bit into flesh.
Makenzi yelled, ‘She’s not freeing! Why aren’t we free?’
Ispex shouted back, ‘It’s the gravity, we can’t pull clear of the big ship’s gravity . . . More, Shambles! Give her still more power!’
More power – and Starstormer erupted with searing flame. Everything shook.
Vawn screamed ‘She’ll be torn apart!’
Ispex shouted, ‘Gravity! Got to beat the pull! More, Shambles!’
But it was not gravity that held Starstormer to the big ship: it was the metal claws of the lock-and-dock system. No one had remembered to disengage it. Starstormer was clamped to the great hull.
Still more power – and Starstormer spat flame so hot that even the metallic clamps glowed and softened. The side of the great ship began to heave and gape as the whole of her lock-and-dock assembly, a rigid frame of strong metal, tried to tear itself free from the weaker skin. Rivets sheared and flew like tracer bullets in the darkness. Splits in the metal hull zigzagged and made lightning tracks that glowed with heat and gasped puffs of smoke.
Starstormer, a solid chunk of meteorite, won the tug o’ war. Above the bellowing of the power blasts there sounded a screaming, rending yell: bodily, the lock-and-dock assembly was torn from the great ship.
Starstormer rocketed away, a hurtling ball of fire. The little ship was free.
Her occupants screamed and writhed as the vast acceleration seized them. Straps and restraining pads bit into flesh. Shambles, his anchoring claws torn from his metal body, slammed from wall to wall. But his work went on.
The ship quietened. She showed only a haze of energy. Only occasionally did incandescent fragments escape from her snailshell form: a form completely altered now by the addition of the jagged remains of the lock-and-dock assembly.
The great ship, with a gaping hole torn in its side, continued on its journey to the sun. Eventually, it would make its mark. There would be a huge explosion as the sun consumed the ship, gulping it down, melting it into nothingness, swallowing the poison it contained. Yet on Earth, the great explosion would appear only as a tiny alteration in the sun’s flaring outline: and the alteration would be over in an instant.
As for Starstormer, she was once again a floating grain of sand in a limitless dark ocean.
Motionless now, Starstormer’s crew murmured or groaned in their own darkness. The sweat on their bodies began to evaporate. Later, as the ship cooled, their skins became patterned with small, salty islands and rivers.
Only Shambles was conscious. He chittered to himself and inspected the humans, awkwardly extending his metal whiskers to measure heartbeats, check temperatures and look for injuries.
Satisfied, he began to repair himself. He dug into his own body for spares.
Makenzi stirred. ‘Shambles . . . ?’
‘I am here. The blast-off is successfully concluded. You are Makenzi and you are now regaining consciousness.’
‘Your voice has changed, Shambles! It’s worse than ever!’
‘My speaker cones are deformed and I sustained some damage. You have only superficial lesions. No bones are broken. You may arise.’
‘Thank you, Shambles.’
‘Thank you.’
Vawn awoke. She was in pain. She had ground her teeth savagely during the blast-off. Now a molar was broken and the pain was awful.
‘The cusp is beyond repair,’ Shambles said, withdrawing his metal snake from her mouth. The little light at the end of it went out. Vawn clutched her jaw and wept.
Tsu woke. She had driven her fingernails into the palms of her hands and dislocated a toe. She gritted her teeth and jerked the toe bones back into line. Makenzi bandaged her hands. Their clumsiness and her aches and pains made her feel useless and stupid so she concentrated on Vawn’s pain. ‘We’ll have to do something,’ she decided. ‘Shambles, over here. Vawn, open wide. Come on, wide. Wider than that!’
Shambles slid a metal snake with a lighted head into Vawn’s mouth. There was a sound like a mosquito’s buzz and Vawn shouted, ‘Oh!’ Then she felt her jaw and said, ‘Ohhh . . . !’ and smiled.
Makenzi said, ‘We’ll do a temporary filling. That goo stuff you have, Shambles, and some sort of ceramic muck. We’ll make a sort of paste and ram it in.’ He seemed pleased with the idea. To Shambles, he said, ‘Where are we heading?’
Ispex, the last to awaken, said, ‘My ribs hurt. I must have broken them all. Well, some of them. I feel awful. What’s the good of going to Epsilon Cool? It’s more or less captured by Tyrannopolis, remember? And our parents are still on Tyrannopolis. What’s the point of—’
Makenzi said, ‘Check ship, clean up: then council of war. Till then, silence.’
Silently, the Starstormers obeyed.
Council Of War
Tsu said, ‘The first thing to do is to try to get through to your parents. Or is that the last thing to do? Because our radio messages could be dangerous to them. They might be intercepted by Tyrannopolis.’
‘Plants,’ said Vawn. ‘It should be safe with plants.’
‘Plants?’ Tsu said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Implants. You know, the gear you swallow or have put into you by a surgeon.’
Tsu nodded. She had forgotten about plants. The phrase was not new to her. She knew what Vawn was talking about – that it was quite usual for space travellers to be given implanted devices to help them with their work; tiny gadgets that helped with navigation, communication, radiation detection, almost anything.
Vawn said, ‘My parents have plants that let them communicate. Sort of little radios. They’re not just bleepers, they’re proper plain-speech radios.’
Ispex said, ‘Yes, but if I were my parents, I wouldn’t know whether to use my plant or not. If the Tyrannopolis lot discovered me sending—’
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Tsu said. She turned to Shambles and said, ‘Start a search, Shambles. Do a scan. Look for any radio messages of any sort that might come from—’
‘I understand,’ Shambles said. His voice was a grating squawk. The council of war went on.
Tsu said, ‘There’s one thing to remember always: Tyrannopolis is dust. However powerful the brain is, the body is just dust. We could smash in. Your parents could smash out.’
‘But Tsu,’ Ispex said, gently, ‘nobody ever did. Not even your parents. And they were young and strong when they were captured—’
Vawn said, ‘But don’t you see why? They never knew what we know! They didn’t know those black walls weren’t solid, so they never attempted—’
Shambles interrupted. ‘Signal,’ he said. ‘Very weak, but . . . Listen. I will relay it.’
They listened.
They heard what could have been a man’s voice. It wavered and fluctuated, rose and fell. Then, suddenly, the voice was strong and clear. It was singing. The Starstormers knew the song. It was a pop hit:
Bits and pieces
Bits and pieces
You don’t need me
You just feed me
Bits and pieces . . .
Makenzi said, ‘That could be my father. It is my father! Listen, it’s him!’
Ispex said, ‘Shut up. Think.’ He began to pull at his hair. At last he said, ‘Why? Why is he singing that song?’
‘There needn’t be a reason,’ Vawn said. ‘Just to pass the time.’
But now the voice had started another song:
Come on in
Don’t blow it
Come on in
You know it
I’ve got this great big welcome scene
Just spoiling
I’ve got this bag of kicks and tricks
A-boiling . . .
‘He doesn’t finish the song,’ Ispex said. ‘You notice that?’
Tsu said, ‘Yes. He’s got a reason. Shambles, are you recording everything? Good.’
The voice started again, humming only the tune. But the words were so familiar . . .
Time we had a party!
And you’re the party I’d like!
Buzz me a message
Send me a wire
Fly me a pigeon
I’m on fire . . .
Tsu said, ‘“Send me a message”! Don’t you see—’
Ispex said, ‘I see. We all see. Listen.’
The voice had lost interest in the last song. It started humming another:
Every hour, on the hour,
You’re never there (You’re so reliable).
Every hour, on the hour,
You’re somewhere else (It’s undeniable).
Every hour, on the hour . . .
‘Stopped again,’ said Tsu. ‘And this time he won’t restart. You just see.’
They waited. Tsu was right. The voice was gone.
Makenzi said, ‘I only half get it. It was my father, I know that, but—’
Ispex glared at him. Tsu sniffed. ‘But it’s so obvious!’ she said. ‘Shambles, play it back.’
Shambles said, ‘The first song was about Bits and Pieces.’
Ispex said, ‘So that’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re all in the working place, putting all the little bits and pieces together. Go on. Next song, Shambles.’
Vawn said, ‘No, we don’t need Shambles. I’ve got it now! The next song was Come on in – which means they want us to do just that. And that song’s got the lines about a Great big welcome scene and a Bag of kicks and tricks—’
‘Which means they’ve got something prepared for us when we do “come on in”,’ Makenzi said.
‘A party,’ Vawn said. ‘Some sort of party. That could mean anything. But the third song said Send me a message, and the fourth and last song was Every hour on the hour!’
‘It could all be chance,’ Tsu said. ‘I mean, he needn’t have meant to give us messages, he could just have been singing.’
Makenzi said, ‘My father doesn’t like pop. He likes jazz and heavy classics.’
Ispex said, ‘Well, we’ll soon know. In fact, we’ll know in about fifty-five minutes. Every hour on the hour, he said.’
‘I can’t wait that long,’ Makenzi said. But Tsu said, ‘You’ll just have to. We’ll all have to. Now on with the council of war. Somebody say something.’
‘He’s taking an awful risk,’ Vawn said, after a long pause in which everyone thought their own thoughts. ‘Surely Tyrannopolis will think something’s up if he broadcasts every hour on the hour?’
‘I’ve thought that out,’ Ispex said. ‘He’s most likely sending continuously. I mean, his plant is worked by his own body – powered by it, I mean – so he just leaves it on, and hums away to himself. But then, when it’s our turn to hear, he switches frequency! He beams in on us, our frequency! And the others could be burbling away too on various frequencies. So Tyrannopolis would never be able to sort it all out.’ He bit his lower lip and said, ‘No, let’s take it that the radio messages are what we think they are – we’ll soon know if we’re wrong – and decide what we want to tell him when we reply. What do we say?’
‘We’ve got to drag them out, physically,’ Makenzi said. ‘Go in there and get them out. But how do we do it?’
The Starstormers began to argue. The arguments grew fiercer and louder. Shambles ended them. ‘Time for further signals from Tyrannopolis,’ he said.
The Starstormers held their tongues and their breath and listened.
‘There!’ said Vawn, in a sort of gasp. And there it was, the unmistakable voice:
Come on in
Don’t blow it
Come on in . . .
‘Reply!’ shouted Ispex. ‘Go on, Mak! Now!’ And Makenzi, his face set in a mixture of concentration and embarrassment, began singing the song they had agreed upon:
I hear you calling me . . .
It was a slow, sentimental old tune. I hear you calllll-ing meeee. He nodded to Vawn. Immediately she repeated the tune an octave higher:
I hear you calling me . . .
‘Stop!’ Shambles squawked. ‘Listen!’
The voice from space replied. The tune it sang was I hear you calling me.
Vawn ran into Tsu’s arms. Makenzi stood on his head. Ispex began to beat his knee with his fist, harder and harder. A Cheshire-cat grin split his face.
