Earth

Others knew it too. Teresa’s sharp eyes picked out sparkling glints which were aircraft — jets and the more common, whalelike zeppelins. Forewarned by weather reports on the Net, they were turning to escape a storm brewing west of Lisbon.

Mark Randall called from the middeck tu

“You do that,” she answered quietly. Mark could handle the passengers. She agreed with the cargo handler, out in the bay. For a rare instant no duties clamored. Teresa let herself share the epiphanic moment, feeling her breath, her heartbeat, and the turning of the world.

My God, it’s beautiful…

So it was that she was watching directly, not through Pleiades’ myriad instrumentalities, when the color of the sea changed — subtly, swiftly. Pulsations throbbed those very storm clouds as she blinked in amazement.

Then the Earth seemed suddenly to bow out at her. It was a queer sensation. Teresa felt no acceleration. Yet somehow she knew they were moving, rapidly and non-inertially, in defiance of natural law.

It did occur to her this might be some form of spacesickness — or maybe she was having a stroke. But neither consideration slowed the reflex that sent her hand stabbing down upon the emergency alarm. With the same fluid motion, Teresa seized her space helmet. In that time-stretched second, as she spun around to take command of her ship again, Teresa caught one indelible glimpse of the crewman in the cargo bay, who had turned, mouth open in a startled, silent cry of warning.

Back in training, other candidates used to complain about the emergency drills, which seemed designed to wear down, even break the hothouse types who had made it that far. Whenever trainees felt they had procedures down pat, or that they knew the drill for any contingency, some smartaleck in a white coat inevitably thought up ways to make the next practice run even nastier. The chief of simulations hired engineers with sadistic imaginations.

But Teresa never cursed the tiger teams, not even when they threw their worst at her. She used to see the drills as a never-ending exercise in skill. Perhaps that was why she didn’t quail or flinch now, as a storm of noise assailed her.

The master alarm barely preceded the first peal from the shuttle’s backup gyroscope. As she was shutting that down, the characteristic buzzer of the number one hydraulics line started chattering. Station Control wasn’t far behind.

“Gotcha Pleiades, we’re onto it… It looks like… no…”

Voices shouted in the background. Meanwhile, Pleiades’ accelerometers began singing their unique, groaning melody.

Teresa protested — We can’t be accelerating! But her i

Amber lights blazed. She acted quickly to close a critical OMS pressurization line. Then, as if she didn’t already have enough troubles, Teresa’s peripheral vision started blurring! She could still see down a tu

Colors rippled across the cabin, turning the cockpit’s pla

“Terry!” A shout from behind her. “I’m coming. Hold on…”

“Pleiades, Control. We’re… having trouble—”

A shrill squeal interrupted over the open link from Erehwon; it made her wince in dread recognition.

“Mark, check the boom!” Teresa cried over her shoulder as she peered through a narrowing isthmus at the computer panel by her right knee. The thing was so obsolete it couldn’t even take voice commands reliably. So more by rote than sight she flipped a toggle over to manual override.

“Pleiades, we’re going blind—”

“Same here!” she snapped. “I’ve got acceleration too, just like you. Tell me something I don’t know!”

The voice fought through gathering static. “We’re also getting anomalous increase in tether tension…”

Teresa felt a chill. “Mark! I said check the boom!”

“I’m trying!” He shouted from the ceiling port. “It… looks fine, Terry. The boom’s okay—”

“… extremely high anomalous electric currents in the tether…”

Two amber blurs switched over to red. “Put your helmet on and get ready to jettison the transitway,” Teresa told her copilot as more alarms whistled melodies she had never before heard outside a simulator. Teresa felt rather than saw Mark slip into his seat as she pushed aside a switch guard and punched the red button beneath. Instantly they heard a distant crump as explosive charges tore away the plastic tu

“Transitway jettisoned,” Mark confirmed. “Terry, what the hell’s going—”

“Get ready to blow the boom itself,” she told him. By touch, Teresa punched buttons on the digital autopilot, engaging the shuttle’s smaller reaction-control motors. “DAP on manual. RCS engaged. When we break off, we’ll hang for a minute before dropping. But I think—”

Teresa paused suddenly as one of the red smudges turned amber. ” — I think—”

Another switched from crimson to yellow-gold. And another. Then an amber light went green.

As quickly as it had arrived, the frightening rainbow began melting away! She blinked twice, three times. Starting in the middle, the visual blurriness evaporated. Acuity returned as warning lights and musical alarms subsided one by one.

“Pleiades…” Station Control sounded breathless.

Buzzers were shutting down over there, as well. “Pleiades, we seem to be retiming—”

“Same here,” she interrupted. “But what about the tether tension!”

“Pleiades, tether tension… is slackening.” Control’s tone was relieved. “Must have been transient, whatever the hell it was. There may be some backlash though…”

Mark and Teresa looked at each other. She felt stretched, pummeled, abused. Was it really over? As more amber lights winked out, they inventoried damage. Miraculously, Pleiades seemed unharmed.

Except, of course, for the million-dollar transit tube she’d just jettisoned. The passengers weren’t going to appreciate being ferried like so many beachballs, in personal survival enclosures. But their resentment couldn’t match that of the bean-counters in Washington, if no justification were at hand.

“Jeez. What if we’d gone ahead and blown the boom?” Mark muttered. “Better put that squib on safety, Terry.” He nodded toward the primed trigger, flashing dangerously between their seats.

“Hold on a sec.” Teresa’s eyes roved the cockpit, seeking… anything. Any clue to the mysterious episode. She tapped her throat mike. “Control, Pleiades. Confirm your estimate that backlash will be minimal. We don’t want to face—”

That was when her gaze lighted on the inertial guidance display, showing where in space their ring laser gyroscope thought they were. She read it like a newspaper headline. The numbers were bizarre and rapidly changing in ways Teresa didn’t like at all!

Eye flicks took in the corresponding readouts of the star tracker and satellite navigation systems. They were in total conflict, and none of them agreed with what the seat of her pants was telling her.

“Control! I’m disengaging, under emergency protocols.”

“Wait Pleiades’. There’s no need. You may increase our backlash!”

“I’ll take that chance. Meanwhile, better check your own inertial units. Have you got a gravitometer?”

“Affirmative. But what… ?”

“Check it! Pleiades out.”

Then, to Mark, “You blow the boom, I’ll handle the DAP. Jettison on count of three. One!”