Heaven's Reach

Rety

I GUESS THERE’S MORE TO USING ONE OF THESE transfer point things than I thought.”

Rety meant her words as a peace offering. A rare admission of fault. But Dwer wasn’t going to let her off that easy.

“I can’t believe you thought a couple of savages could just go zooming about the heavens like star gods. This was your plan? To grab a wrecked ship, still dripping seaweed from the dross piles of the Great Midden, and ride along while it falls into a hole in space?”

For once, Rety quashed her normal, fiery response. True, she had never invited Dwer to join her aboard her hijacked vessel in the first place. Nor was he offering any bright ideas about what to do with a million-year-old hulk that could barely hold air, let alone fly.

Still, she kind of understood why he was upset. With death staring him in the face, the Slopie could be expected to get a bit testy.

“When Besh and Rann talked about it, they made it sound simple. You just aim your ship to dive inside—”

Dwer snorted. “Yeah, well you just said a mouthful there, Rety. Aim into a transfer point? Did you ever think how many generations it took our ancestors to learn how to pull that off? A trick we’ve got to figure out in just a midura or two?”

This time, Rety didn’t have to reply. Little yee snaked his long neck from her belt pouch, reaching out to nip Dwer’s arm.

“Hey!” he shouted, drawing back.

“see?” the little urs chided in a lisping voice, “no good come from snip-snapping each other, use midura to study! or just complain till you die.”

Dwer rubbed a three-sided weal, glaring at the miniature male. But yee’s teeth had left the skin unbroken. Any Jijoan human knew enough about urrish bites to recognize when one was just a warning.

“All right then,” he muttered to Rety. “You’re the apprentice star god. Talk that smug computer of yours into saving us.”

Rety sighed. In the wilderness back home, Dwer had always been the one with clever solutions to every problem, never at a loss. She liked him better that way, not cowed by the mere fact that he was trapped in a metal coffin, hurtling toward crushing death and ruin. I hope this don’t mean I’m gonna have to nursemaid him all the way across space to some civilized world. When we’re all set up — with nice apart’mints and slave machines doin’ anything we want — he sure is gonna owe me!

Rety squatted before the little black box Gillian Baskin had given her aboard the Streaker — a teaching unit programmed for very young human children. It functioned well at its intended purpose — explaining the basics of modern society to a wild girl from the hicks of Jijo. To her surprise, she had even started picking up the basics of reading and writing. But when it came to instructing them how to pilot a starship … well, that was another matter.

“Tutor,” she said.

A tiny cubic hologram appeared just above the box, showing a pudgy male face — with a pencil mustache and a cheery smile.

“Well, hello again! Have we been keeping our spirits up? Tried any of those games I taught you? Remember, it’s important to stay busy-busy and think positive until help arrives!”

Rety lashed with her left foot, but it passed through the face without touching anything solid.

“Look, you. I told ya there’s nobody gonna come help us, even if you did get out a distress call, which I doubt, since the dolphins only fixed the parts they needed to, to make this tub fly.”

The hologram pursed simulated lips, disapproving of Rety’s attitude.

“Well, that’s no excuse for pessimism! Remember, whenever we’re in a rough spot, it is much better to seek ways of turning adversity into opportunity! So why don’t we—”

“Why don’t we go back to talking about how we’ll control this here piece of dross,” Rety interrupted. “I already asked you for lessons how to steer it through the t-point just ahead. Let’s get on with it!”

The tutor frowned.

“As I tried to explain before, Rety, this vessel is in no condition to attempt an interspatial transfer at this time. Navigation systems are minimal and incapable of probing the nexus ahead for information about thread status. The drive is balky and seems only capable of operating at full thrust, or not at all. It may simply give up the next time we turn it on. The supervisory computer has degraded to mentation level six. That is below what’s normally needed to calculate hyperspatial tube trajectories. For all of these reasons, attempting to cross the transfer point is simply out of the question.”

“But there’s no place else to go! The Jophur battleship was dragging us there when it flung us loose. You already said we don’t have the engine juice to break away before falling in. So we got nothin’ to lose by trying!”

The tutor shook its simulated head.

“Standard wisdom dictates that any maneuver we tried now would only make it harder for friends/relatives/parents to find you—”

This time, Rety flared.

“How many times do I gotta tell you, no one’s coming for us! Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody would care, if they knew. And nobody could reach us if they cared!”

The teaching unit looked perplexed. Its ersatz gaze turned toward Dwer, who looked more adult with his week-old stubble. Of course, that irritated Rety even more.

“Is this true, sir? There is no help within reach?”

Dwer nodded. Though he too had spent time aboard Streaker, he never found it easy speaking to a ghost.

“Well then,” the tutor replied. “I suppose there is just one thing to do.”

Rety sighed relief. At last the jeekee thing was going to start getting practical.

“I must withdraw and get back to work talking to the ship’s computer, no matter what state it is in. I am not designed or programmed for this kind of work, but it is of utmost importance to try harder.”

“Right!” Rety murmured.

“Indeed. Somehow we must find a way to boost power to communications systems, and get out a stronger message for help!”

Rety bolted to her feet.

“What? Didn’t you hear me, you pile o’ glaver dreck? I just said—”

“Don’t worry while I am out of touch. Try to be brave. I’ll be back just as soon as I can!”

With that, the little cube vanished, leaving Rety shaking, frustrated, and angry.

It didn’t help that old Dwer broke up, laughing. He guffawed, hissing and snorting a bit like an urs. Since nothing funny had happened, she figured he must be doing it out of spite. Or else this might be another example of that thing called irony people sometimes talked about when they wanted an excuse for acting stupid.

I’ll slap some irony across your jeekee head, Dwer, if you don’t shut up.

But he was bigger and stronger … and he had saved her life at least three times in the past few months. So Rety just clenched her fists instead, waiting till he finally stopped chuckling and wiped tears from his eyes.

The tutor remained silent for a long time, leaving both human castaways with no way to deal with the ship on their own.

There were makeshift controls, left in place by Streaker’s dolphin crew when they had resurrected this ancient Buyur hulk from a pile of discarded spacecraft on Jijo’s sea bottom. Mysterious boxes had been spliced by cable to the hulk’s control circuits, programmed to send it erupting skyward along with a swarm of other revived decoys, confusing Jophur instruments and masking Streaker’s breakout attempt. But since the dolphins had never expected stowaways, there were only minimal buttons and dials. Without the tutor, there’d be no chance of making the ship budge from its current unguided plummet.

Lacking anything better to do, Rety and Dwer went forward and stared ahead through the bow windows, pitted from immersion in the Great Midden for half a million years. Together, they tried to spot the mysterious “spinning hole in space” that Jijo’s fallen races still recalled in sagas about ancestral days — the mighty doorway each sneakship passed through when it brought a new wave of refugee-settlers to a forbidden world in a fallow galaxy.

At first, Rety saw nothing special in the glittering starscape. Then Dwer pointed.

“Over there. See? The Frog is all bent out of shape.”

Rety had grown up amid a primitive tribe, hiding in a grubby wilderness without even the rough comforts of Dwer’s homeland, the Slope. Living in crude huts, with just campfires to ward off chill and darkness, she had constellations overhead nearly every night of her life. But while her cousins made up elaborate hunters’ tales about those twinkling patterns, her only interest lay in their practical use as signposts, pointing the westward path she might someday use to escape her wretched clan.

Dwer, on the other hand, was chief scout of the Commons of Jijo, trained to know every quirk of the sky — from which the Six Races always expected doom and judgment to arrive. He would notice if something was out of place.

“I don’t see …” She peered toward the cluster of glimmering pinpoints he indicated. “Oh! Some of the stars … they’re clumped in a circle and—”

“And there’s nothing inside,” he finished for her. “Nothing at all.”

They stared silently for a while. Rety couldn’t help comparing the disklike blackness to a predator’s open maw, looming rapidly to swallow the ship and all its contents.

“The stars seem t’be smearing out around it,” she added.

Dwer nodded, making hoonish umbling sounds.

“Hr-rm. My sister called this thing a sort of twist in the universe, where space gets all wound up in knots.”

Rety sniffed.

“Space is empty, dummy. I learned that back when I lived with the Daniks, in their underground station. There’s nothin’ out here to get twisted.”

“Fine. Then you explain what we’re about to fall into.”

Little yee chose to speak up then.

“no problem to explain, big man-boy.

“what is life?

“is going from one hole to another, then another!

“is better this way. go in! yee will sniff good burrow for us.

“good, comfy burrow is happiness.”

Dwer glanced sourly at the urrish male, but Rety smiled and stroked yee’s tiny head.

“You tell him, husban’. We’ll slide on through this thing, slick as a mud skink, an’ come out in the main spiral arcade of Galaxy Number One, where the lights are bright an’ ships are thicker than ticks on a ligger’s back. Where the stars are close enough to gossip with each other, an’ everyone’s so rich they need computers to count their computers!

“Folks like that’ll need folks like us, Dwer,” she assured. “They’ll be soft, while we’re tough an’ savvy, ready for adventure! We’ll take on jobs the star gods are too prissy for — an’ get paid more’n your whole Commons of Jijo is worth.

“Soon we’ll be livin’ high, you watch. You’ll bless the day you met me.”

Dwer stared back at her. Then, clearly against his will, a smile broke out. This time the laugh was friendlier.

“Honestly, Rety. I’d rather just go home and keep some promises I made. But I guess that’s unlikely now, so—” He glanced ahead at the dark circle. It had grown noticeably as they watched. “So maybe you’re right. We’ll make the best of things. Somehow.”

She could tell he was putting up a front. Dwer figured they would be torn apart soon, by forces that could demolish all of Jijo in moments.

He oughta have more faith, she thought. Somethin’ll come along. It always does.

With nothing better to do, they counted the passing duras, commenting to each other about the strange way stars stretched and blurred around the rim of the monstrous thing ahead. It doubled in size, filling a quarter of the window by the time Rety’s “tutor” popped back into existence above the black box. The tiny face had triumph in its eyes.

“Success!” it exulted.

Rety blinked.

“You mean you found a way to control this tub?”

“Better than that! I managed to coax more power and bandwidth from the communications system!”

“Yes?” Dwer moved forward. “And?”

“And I got a response, at last!”

The two humans looked at each other, sharing confusion. Then Rety cursed.

“You didn’t pull the bloody-damn Jophur back to us, did you?”

That might help the Streaker crew. But she had no interest in resuming her former role as bait. Rety would rather risk the transfer point than surrender to those stacks of stinky rings.

“The battleship is beyond effective range as it dives toward the red giant star, where other mighty vessels are dimly perceived engaging in energetic activity that I cannot make out very well.

“The rescuers I refer to are entirely different parties.”

The tutor paused.

“Go on,” Dwer prompted warily.

“The active scanners were balky and difficult at first. But I finally got them on-line. At which point I spotted several ships nearby, fleeing toward the transfer point just as we are! After some further effort, I managed to flag the attention of the closest … whereupon it changed course slightly to head this way!”

Rety and Dwer nearly stumbled over each other rushing to the aft viewing ports. They stared for some time, but even with coaxing from the tutor, Rety saw nothing at first except the great red sun. Even at this long range, it looked larger than her thumbnail held at arm’s reach. And angry storms extended farther still, with tornadolike tendrils.

Dwer pointed.

“There! Three points up from Izmunuti and two points left. You can’t miss it.”

Rety tried looking where he pointed, but despite his promise, she found it hard to make out anything different. Stars glittered brightly.…

Some of them shifted slightly, moving in unison, like a flock of birds. First they jogged a little left, then a little right, but always together, as if a section of the sky itself were sliding around, unable to keep still.

Finally, she realized — the moving stars all lay in an area shaped like a slightly canted square.

“Those aren’t real stars …,” she began, hushed.

“They’re reflections,” Dwer finished. “Like off a mirror. But how?”

The tutor seemed happiest explaining something basic.

“The image you see is caused by a tremendous reflector-and-energy-collector. In Galactic Seven the term is ntove tunictun. Or in Earthling tradition — a solar sail.

“The method is used chiefly by sapients who perceive time as less a factor than do oxygen breathers. But right now they are using a supplementary gravitic engine to hasten progress, fleeing unexpected chaos in this stellar system. At these pseudovelocities, the vessel should be able to pick us up and still reposition itself for optimal transfer point encounter toward its intended destination.”

Dwer held up both hands.

“Whoa! Are you saying the creatures piloting that thing don’t breathe oxygen? You mean they aren’t even part of the, um—”

“The Civilization of Five Galaxies? No sir, they are not. These are machines, with their own spacefaring culture, quite unlike myself, or the robot soldier devices of the Jophur. Their ways are strange. Nevertheless they seem quite willing to take us with them through the transfer point. That is a much better situation than we faced a while ago.”

Rety watched the “sail” uneasily. Soon she made out a glittering nest of complex shapes that lay at the very center of the smooth, mirrorlike surface. As the t-point burgeoned on one side and the machine-vessel on the other, she couldn’t stave off a wild sensation — like being cornered between a steep cliff and a predator.

“This thing …,” she began asking, with a dry mouth. “This thing comin’ to save us. Do you know what it was doin’ here, before Izmunuti blew up?”

“It is seldom easy understanding other life orders,” the tutor explained. “But in this case the answer is simple. It is a class of device called a Harvester/Salvager. Such machines collect raw materials to be used in various engineering or construction projects. It must have been using the sail to gather metal atoms from the star’s rich wind when the storm struck. But given an opportunity, a harvester will collect the material it needs from any other source of accumulated or condensed …”

The artificial voice trailed off as the tutor’s face froze. The pause lasted several duras.

“Any other source,” Dwer repeated the phrase in a low mutter. “Like a derelict ship, drifting through space; maybe?”

Rety felt numb.

The tutor did not say “oops.”

Not exactly.

It wasn’t necessary.

Two young humans watched claws, grapplers, and scythelike blades unfurl as strong fields seized their vessel, drawing it toward a dark opening at the center of a broad expanse of filmy light.