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“Virgil”-Delia tried to direct him away-“any seat will do.”
“Not on a doomed flight,” he said, gazing with unblinking intensity at the man.
Behind him, Trine made dismissing motions for the passenger to see. What he saw and noted was her white piping. Muttering about “cush-pampered test-pilot blowheads,” he rolled off the couch and made his way to the far side of the ship where the pilots’ cabin and central column blocked the view.
Ki
Why did you want this seat, Baker? Are you waking up?
Delia strapped into the seat beside him. She stared at him, hoping not to appear as if she was staring.
Five more people boarded shortly before blastoff. Virgil eyed each one with severe scrutiny, as if he were in judgment of their lives.
Candycane walks in hunched over from the low ceiling, his red-white jumpsuit rumpled and twisted, his eyes goggling at me. He sits like a crumpled bag next to Gooseflesh, who’s all prickle-hair nervous at the prospect of rocket flight. Or maybe at sitting near me. Why are they watching me while trying to avoid watching?
Virgil gri
Crush me, giants, he thought while the world thundered around him. Try to squeeze me into nothing. I shall break free.
Suddenly, he did.
The engines cut off and he gazed out of the viewing port at star-riddled blackness.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the pilot a
Trine smiled at the pilot’s superstitious phrase, a saying that went back more than a century to a time when launching a spaceship without Fetter permission was an actual crime. She glanced over at Ki
Virgil drank in the broad vista through the tiny polycarbonate window for long moments until a buzzer a
“What the hell is this?”
Virgil floated in the staging area dressed in a skintight pressure suit. The outer radiation/meteor armor of loose-fitting, overlapping lead and Kevlar plates made him look like an ancient knight-from the neck down, at least. His head craned around the interior of a tough plastic sphere coated with gold mined from the Belt asteroid lodes.
Delia, identically attired, pulled along the hand rails to float at his side. Neither could actually see the other’s face behind the reflective golden globes. Inside their helmets, though, tiny fiberoptic vids sent a view of their faces to each other, which were then superimposed on their head-up displays to look as if their faces were visible. The HUDs projected all ma
“The trip to the experimental ship has to be made by taxi,” she explained.
The term “taxi” implied a level of luxury not offered by the minuscule spacecraft at which Ki
Virgil strapped in between the pilot and Delia. He noted that the pilot’s armor was twice the thickness of theirs.
The pilot’s voice rumbled gruffly in their headphones. “Sit back, strap down, shut up, and hang on.”
The docking bay doors slid aside. With a roar that was felt rather than heard, the taxi kicked powerfully forward out of the Texas Spaceways terminal into the blinding glare of a su
Ki
The Earth hung five hundred kilometers over their heads for long minutes, then shifted suddenly to their side as the pilot rolled to align them with the attitude of the test ship.
It was unbelievably small. Virgil knew that it was only ten meters long and five wide, but it seemed like a toy, only slightly larger than a family flyer.
They want me to go to Saturn in that! Ki
“Not much to it, is there?” Virgil’s voice had a raspy, breathy sound over the ’comm.
Delia reached forward to pat him on the shoulder. “It’s not actually a spaceship; it’s a dimension ship. It has vernier rockets and emergency thrusters, but no main engines. It’s really just a needle that finds where two pieces of universe fabric touch and pushes itself through.”
The pilot tapped at the braking rockets, shoving them forward against their harnesses. They stopped, motionless relative to the test ship. Texas Spaceways’ terminal shone unevenly about a hundred kilometers away.
“Where are the camera crews?” Virgil asked. “The dignitaries?”
Trine shrugged and fumbled with the restraint harness. “Nobody knows except us three and the monitor team at Bre
“How can you keep a spaceship secret?” he asked.
The taxi pilot laughed in the newcomer’s ear. “It’s both crowded and empty out here. Lots of people coming and going tend to make individuals anonymous. Lots of open space to lose yourself in. With every piece of orbital junk down to the size of a pea being tracked, no one has the time to query the comings and goings of every ship. Act i
Ki
With the aid of Delia and the taxi pilot, Virgil climbed inside the tight, cramped compartment and strapped into position. Delia clamped down the hatch, sealing it from the outside. Circuits completed by the lockdown, the ship came to life. A small scrim before him glowed. The image of Trine appeared in a corner of the screen. Earthlight washed out her left side while reflected light illuminated her right. The vid’s computer balanced the image quickly.
“Straight, Virgil,” Trine said. “I’ll be heading over to Bre
The taxi kicked into motion and whisked past the test ship, receding orbitward until its engine became a tiny star that drifted amid the other harsh, bright points of light barely visible in the earthglow.
“Bye,” Ki
“Something wrong with your hand?” Delia asked.
Her eyes are turned downward to watch me on her HUD. It looks as if she’s gazing right at my hands.
“Just nervous.” Got it. He palmed the paper and held it tightly. They’ll be watching me all the while I’m here, Death Angel and Master Snoop. Any attempt to change the coordinates and I’d be cut off at once. Except that when I’m out in Saturn’s orbit and it’s over an hour before they know I’ve reappeared-relative to their snailpace Einstein eyes-I’ll be safe. Free of their mind control for an hour while my laser signal slowpokes through space to let them know I’ve arrived. If I take only a minute or two, though, to input new coordinates, I could beam the laser and transfer. An hour or so later, they receive the transmission, followed shortly by me.