Orbitsville

three

Garamond crowded on to the stubby shuttlecraft with Aileen and looked forward. The door between the crew and passenger compartments was open, revealing the environment of instrument arrays and controls in which the pilots worked. A shoulder of each man, decorated with the ubiquitous Starflight symbol, was visible on each side of the central aisle, and Garamond could hear the preflight checks being carried out. Neither of the pilots looked back.

“Sit there,” Garamond whispered, pointing at a seat which was screened from the pilots’ view by the main bulkhead. He put his fingers to his lips and winked at Chris, making it into a game. The boy nodded tautly, undeceived. Garamond went back to the entrance door and stood in it, waving to imaginary figures in the slidewalk tunnel, then went forward to the crew compartment.

“Take it away, Captain,” he said with the greatest joviality he could muster.

“Yes, sir.” The dark-chinned senior pilot glanced over his shoulder. “As soon as Mrs Garamond and your son disembark.”

Garamond looked around the flight deck and found a small television screen showing a picture of the passenger compartment, complete with miniature images of Aileen and Chris. He wondered if the pilots had been watching it closely and how much they might have deduced from his actions.

“My wife and son are coming with us,” he said. “Just for the ride.”

“I’m sorry, sir — their names aren’t on my list.”

“This is a special arrangement I’ve just made with the President.”

“I’ll have to check that with the tower.” There was a stubborn set to the pilot’s bluish jaw as he reached for the communications switch.

“I assure you it’s all right.” Garamond slid the pistol out of his jacket and used its barrel to indicate the runway ahead. “Now, I want you to get all the normal clearances in a perfectly normal way and then do a maximum-energy ascent to my ship. I’m very familiar with the whole routine and I can fly this bug myself if necessary, so don’t do any clever stuff which would make me shoot you.”

“I’m not going to get myself shot.” The senior pilot shrugged and his younger companion nodded vigorously. “But how far do you think you’re going to get, Captain?”

“Far enough — now take us out of here.” Garamond remained standing between the two seats. There was a subdued thud from the passenger door as it sealed itself, and then the shuttle surged forward. While monitoring the cross talk between the pilots and the North Field tower, Garamond studied the computer screen which was displaying flight parameters. The Bissendorf was in Polar Band One, the great stream of Starflight spacecraft — mainly population transfer vessels, but with a sprinkling of Exploratory Arm ships — which girdled the Earth at a height of more than a hundred kilometres. Incoming ships were allocated parking slots in any of the thirty-degree sectors marked by twelve space stations, their exact placing being determined by the amount of maintenance or repair they needed. The Bissendorf had been scheduled for a major refitting lasting three months, and was close in to Station 8, which the computer showed to be swinging up over the Aleutian Islands. A maximum-energy rendezvous could be accomplished in about eleven minutes.

“I take it you want to catch the Bissendorf this time round,” the senior pilot said as the shuttle’s drive tubes built up thrust and the white runway markers began to flicker under its nose like tracer fire.

Garamond nodded. “You take it right.”

“It’s going to be rough on your wife and boy.” There was an unspoken question in the comment.

“Not as rough as…” Garamond decided to do the pilots a favour by telling them nothing — they too would be caught up in Elizabeth’s enquiries.

“There’s a metallizer aerosol in the locker beside you,” the copilot volunteered, speaking for the first time.

“Thanks.” Garamond found the aerosol container and passed it back to Aileen. “Spray your clothes with this. Do Chris as well.”

“What’s it for?” Aileen was trying to sound unconcerned, but her voice was small and cold.

“It won’t do your clothes any harm, but it makes them react against the restraint field inside the ship when you move. It turns them into a kind of safety net and also stops you floating about when you’re in free fall.” Garamond had forgotten how little Aileen knew about spaceflight or air travel. She had never even been in an ordinary jetliner, he recalled. The great age of air tourism was long past — if a person was lucky enough to live in an acceptable part of the Earth he tended to stay put.

“You can use it first,” Aileen said.

“I don’t need it — all space fliers’ uniforms are metallized when they’re made.” Garamond smiled encouragingly. The pilot didn’t know how right he was, he thought. This is going to be rough on my wife and boy. He returned his attention to the pilots as the shuttle lifted its nose and cleared the ground. As soon as the undercarriage had been retracted and the craft was aerodynamically clean the drive tubes boosted it skywards on a pink flare of recombining ions. Garamond, standing behind the pilots, was pushed against the bulkhead and held there by the sustained acceleration. Behind him, Chris began to sob.

“Don’t worry, son,” Garamond called. “This won’t last long. We’ll soon be…”

“North Field to shuttlecraft Sahara Tango 4299,” a voice crackled from the radio. “This is Fleet Commodore Keegan calling. Come in, please.”

“Don’t answer that,” Garamond ordered. The dock behind his eyes had come to an abrupt and sickening halt.

“But that was Keegan himself. Are you mixed up in something big, Captain?”

“Big enough.” Garamond hesitated as the radio repeated its message. “Tune that out and get me Commander Napier on my bridge.” He gave the pilot a microwave frequency which would by-pass the Bissendorf’s main communications room.

“But…”

“Immediately.” He raised the pistol against multiple gravities. “This is a hair trigger and there’s a lot of G-force piling up on my finger.”

“I’m making the call now.” The pilot spun a small vernier on the armrest of his chair and in a few seconds had established contact.

“Commander Napier here.” Garamond felt a surge of relief as he recognized the cautious tones Napier always employed when he did not know who was on the other end of a channel.

“This is an urgent one, Cliff.” Garamond spoke steadily. “Have you had any communications about me from Starflight House?”

“Ah… no. Was I supposed to?”

“That doesn’t matter now. Here’s a special instruction which I’m asking you to obey immediately and without question. Do you understand?”

“Okay, Vance,” Napier sounded puzzled, but not suspicious or alarmed.

“I’m on the shuttle and will rendezvous with you in a few minutes, but right now I want you to throw the ultimate master switch on the external communications system. Right now, Cliff! ”

There was a slight pause, during which Napier must have been considering the facts that what he had been asked to do was illegal and that under Starflight Regulations he was not obliged to obey such an order — then the channel went dead.

Garamond closed his eyes for a second. He knew that Napier had also thought about their years together on the Bissendorf, all the light-years they had covered, all the alien suns, all the hostile useless planets, all the disappointments which had studded their quest for lebensraum, all the bottles of whisky they had killed while in orbit around lost, lonely points of light both to console themselves and to make the next leg of a mission seem bearable. If he and Aileen and Chris had any chance of life it lay in the fact that a spaceship was an island universe, a tiny enclave in which Elizabeth’s power was less than absolute. While in Earth orbit the ship’s officers would have been forced to obey any direct order from Starflight Admincom, but he had successfully blocked the communications channels… A warning chime from the shuttle’s computer interrupted Garamond’s thoughts.

“We have some pretty severe course and speed corrections coming up,” the younger pilot said. “Do you want to advise your wife?”

Garamond nodded gratefully. The sky in the forward view panels had already turned from deep blue to black as the shuttle’s tubes hurled it clear of the atmosphere. In a maximum-energy ballistic-style sortie it was understood that there was no time for niceties — the computer which was controlling the flight profile would subject passengers to as much stress, within programmed limits, as they could stand. Garamond edged backwards until he could see Aileen and Chris. “Get ready for some rollercoaster stuff,” he told them. “Don’t try to fight the ship or you’ll be sick. Just go with it and the restraint field will hold you in place.” They both nodded silently, in unison, eyes fixed on his face, and he felt a crushing sense of responsibility and guilt. He had barely finished speaking when a series of lateral corrections twisted space out of its normal shape, pulling him to the left and then upwards away from the floor. The fierce pressure of the bulkhead against his back prevented him from being thrown around but he guessed that his wife and son must have been lifted out of their seats. An involuntary gasp from Aileen confirmed her distress.

“It won’t be long now,” he told her. Stars were shining in the blackness ahead of the shuttle, and superimposed on the random points of light was a strip of larger, brighter motes, most of which had visible irregularities of shape. Polar Band One glittered like a diamond bracelet, at the midpoint of which Sector Station 8 flared with a yellowish brilliance. The two distinct levels of luminosity, separating man-made objects from the background of distant suns, created a three-dimensional effect, an awareness of depth and cosmic scale which Garamond rarely experienced when far into a mission. He remained with the pilots, braced between their seats and the bulkhead, while the shuttle drew closer to the stream of orbiting spaceships and further corrections were applied to match speed and direction. By this time Starflight Admincom would have tried to contact the Bissendorf and would probably be taking other measures to prevent his escape.

“There’s your ship,” the senior pilot commented, and the note of satisfaction in his voice put Garamond on his guard. “It looks like you’re a little late. Captain — there’s another shuttle already drifting into its navel.”

Garamond, unused to orienting himself with the cluttered traffic of the Polar Band, had to search the sky for several seconds before he located the Bissendorf and was able to pick out the silvered bullet of a shuttle closing in on the big ship’s transfer dock. He felt a cool prickling on his forehead. It was impossible for the other shuttle to have made better time on the haul up from Earth, but Admincom must have been able to divert one which was already in orbit and instruct it to block the Bissendorf’s single transfer dock.

“What do you want to do, Captain?” The blue-chinned senior pilot had begun to enjoy himself. “Would you like to hand over that gun now?”

Garamond shook his head. “The other shuttle’s making a normal docking approach. Get in there before him.”

“It’s too late.”

Garamond placed the muzzle of the pistol against the pilot’s neck. “Ram your nose into that dock, sonny.”

“You’re crazy, but I’ll try.” The pilot fixed his eyes on the expanding shape of the Bissendorf, then spun verniers to bring his sighting crosshairs on to the red-limned target of the dock which was already partially obscured by the other shuttle. As he did so the retro tubes began firing computer-controlled bursts which cut their forward speed. “I told you it was too late.”

“Override the computer,” Garamond snapped. “Kill those retros.”

“Do you want to commit suicide?”

“Do you?” Garamond pressed the pistol into the other man’s spine and watched as he tripped out the autocontrol circuits. The image of the competing shuttle and the docking target expanded in the forward screen with frightening speed. The pilot instinctively moved backwards in his seat. “We’re going to hit the other shuttle, for Christ’s sake!”

“I know,” Garamond said calmly. “And after we do you’ll have about two seconds to get those crosshairs back on target. Now let’s see how good you are.”

The other shuttle ballooned ahead of and slightly above them until they were looking right into its main driver tubes, there was a shuddering clang which Garamond felt in his bones, the shuttle vanished, and the vital docking target slewed away to one side. Events began to happen in slow motion for Garamond. He had time to monitor every move the pilot made as he fired emergency corrective jets which wrenched the ship’s nose back on to something approximating its original bearing, time to brace himself as retros hammered on the craft’s frame, even time to note and be grateful for the discovery that the pilot was good. Then the shuttle speared into the Bissendorf’s transfer dock at five times the maximum permitted speed and wedged itself into the interior arrester rings with a shrieking impact which deformed its hull.

Garamond, the only person on the shuttle not protected by a seat, was driven forward but was saved from injury by the restraint field’s reaction against any violent movement of his clothing. He felt a surge of induced heat pass through the material, and at the same time became aware of a shrill whistling sound from the rear of the ship. A popping in his ears told him that air was escaping from the shuttle into the vacuum of the Bissendorf’s dock. A few seconds later Chris began to sob, quietly and steadily. Garamond went aft, knelt before the boy and tried to soothe him.

“What’s happening, Vance?” The brightly-coloured silk of Aileen’s dress was utterly incongruous.

“Rough docking, that’s all. We’re losing some air but they’ll be pressurizing the dock and…” He hesitated as a warbling note came from the shuttle’s address system. “They’ve done it — that’s the equalization signal to say we can get out now. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“But we’re falling.”

“We aren’t falling, honey. Well, we are — but not downwards…” It came to Garamond that he had no time at that moment to introduce his wife to celestial mechanics. “I want you and Chris to sit right here for a few minutes. Okay?”

He stood up, opened the passenger door and looked out at a group of officers and engineering personnel who had gathered on the docking bay’s main platform. Among them was the burly figure of Cliff Napier. Garamond launched himself upwards from the sill and allowed the slight drag of the ship’s restraint field to curve his weightless flight downwards on to the steel platform where his boots took a firm grip. Napier caught his arm while the other men were saluting.

“Are you all right, Vance? That was the hairiest docking I ever saw.”

“I’m fine. Explain it all later, Cliff. Get through to the engine deck and tell them I want immediate full power.”

“Immediate?”

“Yes — there’s a streamer of nova dust lagging behind the main weather front and we’re going to catch it. I presume you’ve preset the course.”

“But what about the shuttle and its crew?”

“We’ll have to take the shuttle with us, Cliff. The shuttle and everybody on it.” “I see.” Napier raised his wrist communicator to his lips and ordered full power. He was a powerfully built bull-necked man with hands like the scoops of a mechanical digger, but there was a brooding intelligence in his eyes. “Is this our last mission for Starflight?”

“It’s my last, anyway.” Garamond looked around to make sure nobody was within earshot. “I’m in deep, Cliff — and I’ve dragged you in with me.”

“It was my decision — I didn’t have to pull the plug on the communications boys. Are they coming after you?”

“With every ship that Starflight owns.”

“They won’t catch us,” Napier said confidently as the deck began to press up under their feet, signalling that the Bissendorf was accelerating out of orbit. “We’ll ride that wisp of dust up the hill to Uranus, and when we’ve caught the tide… Well, there’s a year’s supplies on board.”

“Thanks.” Garamond shook hands with Napier, yet — while comforted by the blunt human contact — he wondered how long it would be before either of them would refer openly to the bitter underlying reality of their situation. They were all dressed up with a superb ship. But a century of exploration by the vast Starflight armada had proved one thing.

There was nowhere to go.