Penumbra

“Hello down there! Can I help you?”

He looked up. High above, leaning over the gantry that surrounded the Cobra, a small figure in engineer’s overalls waved down at him.

“I’m looking for Charles Mackendrick,” Bennett called.

“He won’t be long—should be back any time now. Care to come up?”

Bennett climbed up the gantry, passing the ship’s silver-muscled hydraulic stanchions, its curved flank excoriated by a million micro-meteorite impacts. The engineer was kneeling beside the swollen cowl of a booster nacelle, peering into its depths and periodically consulting a lighted com-board.

The engineer looked up. “Bennett, isn’t it? The pilot?”

Bennett nodded, surprised by the appearance of the engineer. From below, he had been unable to determine the man’s age, but at close quarters he appeared to be in his eighties, a slight man with balding grey hair and a thin face.

“Mack’s expecting you,” the engineer said. “He’s told me a lot about you. Hotshot pilot, by all accounts.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Bennett began, wondering how Mackendrick knew “a lot” about him.

“What do you know about Dearing boosters, Bennett? Taught you mechanics and systems operations at pilot school, didn’t they?”

Bennett wondered if this was part of the interview—to have a chief engineer grill him on basic mechanics. He entered into the spirit, knelt beside the engineer and peered into the nacelle.

“They’re about the best, in my opinion, in terms of reliability and performance. The latest Mitsubishi might be faster, but I’ve heard rumours of poor stress analysis results. I prefer Dearings.”

“With Delta operating systems.”

Bennett nodded. “Or the original Schulmann programs, especially for long-haul flights.”

“So what do you make of this?” The engineer thrust the com-board at Bennett. “There, and there…” He pointed to read-outs flashing at the bottom right of the screen.

“That’d suggest an operating failure in the Delta relay. It can be remedied by inserting a Manx sub-routine. Of course, you wouldn’t have this problem with a Schulmann program.”

The engineer nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

He stood and escorted Bennett around the cat-walk encircling the ship, stopping from time to time to point out some interesting addition or design feature.

They paused before the projecting nose-cone. Bennett peered inside at the spacious flight-deck, with wraparound consoles and gimbal couches. Hell, there was room enough in there to contain his old Viper tug, and then some.

“I’ve heard about how you saved the Northrop, Bennett. Impressive piece of piloting. Saved… how many crew? Ten? And valuable cargo.”

Bennett shrugged. He hated it when people dragged out the old Northrop episode. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “Getting on for twelve years.”

In truth, he knew how lucky he’d been when the Northrop’s guidance system had packed up and he’d brought the ship down on manual. The weather conditions had been perfect and he’d had no time in which to panic.

“Quit the modesty, Bennett. You were a hero. If it wasn’t for you, the ship would’ve smacked the tarmac good.”

“I think that whoever was on duty then would have done the same as me.”

“We’ll never know—because theyweren’t on duty then. But you were. And you pulled out all the stops.”

It had been a strange time, the days following the near accident. The press coverage, the approbation of the Redwood high-ups… But his father had brought him down to earth. “It’s truly amazing what the involuntary responses are capable of when one’s life is under threat…” It was his only comment on the affair, and Bennett had not forgotten his sense of crushing disappointment. All he’d wanted was a handshake and a simple, “Well done.”

They strolled around the starship, chatting casually about every aspect of space flight and exploration. If this was a preliminary interview, Bennett felt that it was going well.

“Do you have any idea why Mackendrick wanted to interview me?” he asked. “He mentioned something about a project.”

The engineer pursed his lips, considering. “I do know that this ship’s due out in two or three days, bound for an unexplored quadrant of the galaxy.”

Bennett smiled to himself. The kid in him would have loved the story-book adventure aspect of the “project’…

At the far end of the pit, a woman emerged from one of the pre-fab offices and picked her way between discarded ion-drives and honeycomb radiation baffles. She paused beneath the gantry and looked up. “Mr Mackendrick, there’s a call for you.”

The engineer signalled down. “I’ll take it up here.”

He glanced at Bennett, as if to judge how he’d taken the deception, then moved off along the gantry.

Bennett watched him take a communicator from his breast pocket and begin a rapid dialogue, less annoyed than mystified by Mackendrick’s duplicity.

The engineer he’d been talking to bore little resemblance to the man who had contacted him last night. The engineer was slight, thin-faced and balding, whereas the earlier Mackendrick had been broad and stocky, with a full head of grey curls. But, as Bennett studied the man speaking into the communicator, he discerned in the lines of the aged face a likeness to the Mackendrick of last night. It was as if he’d shed fifty pounds overnight, and aged thirty years.

Mackendrick returned the communicator to his pocket and rejoined Bennett. He held out his hand. “Mackendrick,” he said. “Call me Mack, though.” He regarded Bennett intently. “I hope my little game didn’t offend you?”

Bennett shrugged. “I suppose you get a kick from playing the engineer?”

Mackendrick laughed. “I don’t make a habit of it, Bennett. But my reputation precedes me. People aren’t themselves in the company of the billionaire director of the Mackendrick Foundation. They act, put on a show. I wanted to talk to you before you knew who I was.” He peered at Bennett, one eye screwed shut. “I suppose you’re wondering who called you last night?”

“Some kind of computer-enhanced image,” Bennett guessed, “perhaps taken from a shot of you twenty years ago?”

“Right, Bennett. Or almost. Not twenty years ago—five. Why do you think I quit active exploration five years ago? It was my damned life, Bennett. Then wham! and I’m flat on my back in hospital with some damned viral complaint and my surgeons are running around like headless chickens thinking I’m going to kick it there and then. Well, they pulled me round—I pulled me round—but it left me looking like shit. And call me vain or egocentric or whatever the hell, but I didn’t want Dan Redwood or Patel or any other of those bastards rubbing their hands and thinking I’m losing it, so I conference now via the com-link, and I look like a million dollars.”

Bennett listened to Mackendrick and knew he should have felt awed in the presence of the eccentric tycoon, but the fact was that something about the man put Bennett at ease.

“Can I ask you something, Mr Mackendrick?”

“Fire away. And it’s Mack, for Chrissake.”

“What’s going on here? I mean, why me?”

“Why you? Because you’re a good pilot—”

“Redwood suspended me yesterday—”

“Redwood!” Mackendrick almost spat the name. “Listen to me.”

He clapped Bennett’s shoulder and led him on a lap of the gantry. Bennett found the intimacy of the gesture at once intimidating and confiding.

“What I’m telling you here is strictly confidential, between you and me. The simple fact is that you and Ten Lee were fall guys. Redwood have a deal ongoing with Consolidated Colonial for three hundred Viper-class tugs and shuttles, and their operating systems. The deal’s worth billions. But, you see, the Viper’s operating systems are shot. There’s a major glitch in there that their computer whiz-kids can’t work out.”