Orbitsville

“…knew I’d be feeling lonely while you were away,” the image was saying contentedly, “but what really decided me was that she said she was the one who would benefit most from the visit. She didn’t actually put it into words, but I think she is looking forward to seeing a child about the place again. Anyway, Vance, I must go now — the President’s car is calling for us in a few minutes. By the time you hear this I’ll be wallowing in luxury and high living at the Octagon, but don’t worry — I’ll be at home to cook you a meal when you arrive. Love you, darling. Bye.”

The image dissolved into a cloud of fading stars, leaving Garamond cold, shaken, and angry at his wife. “You silly bitch,” he whispered to the fleeting points of light. “Why do you never ever, never ever, listen to anything I tell you?”

The last handful of stars vanished in silence.

* * *

The probe torpedo worked its way up the gravity hill from the dead planet, carrying its samples of dust and rock, and homed in on the Bissendorf. Although there was a sun only three astronomical units away, its light was screened off and the torpedo was moving through a blackness equivalent to that of deep interstellar space. In that darkness the mother ship appeared to some of the probe’s sensors as a faint cluster of lights, but to other sensors concerned with different sections of the electromagnetic spectrum the ship registered as a brilliant beacon whose radiation embodied many voices commanding, guiding, coaxing it homewards. Responding with greater and greater precision as the electronic voices grew louder, the torpedo approached the ship with the familiarity of a parasite fish flittering about a whale. At last it made physical contact and was taken on board.

During the final manoeuvres Garamond had waited on the Bissendorf’s control gallery with growing impatience. As soon as the signal announcing closure of the docking bay was received he gave the order for the main drive to be activated. Initial impetus was given to the ship by the relatively feeble ion thrusters, but that propulsion system was shut down when the ramjet intake field had been fanned out to its maximum area of half a million square kilometres and reaction mass was being scavenged from the surrounding space. As the scooped-up hydrogen and other matter were fed into the fusion reactors the ship wheeled away sunwards, and the acceleration restored close-to-normal gravity throughout the inhabited levels of the central cylinder.

The feeling of the deck pressing firmly on the underside of his feet helped Garamond to regain his composure. He assured himself that if Elizabeth were to move against his family it would be done anywhere but in the crystal cloisters of her new residence. Into the bargain, Elizabeth knew that Garamond would be back from the dark planet in only a few days, imbued with an even greater amount — if that were possible — of the power called fame. The hours and the duty periods went by and, as Orbitsville filled the forward view panels with its unrelieved blackness, Garamond was able to satisfy himself that he had panicked for no good reason.

The Bissendorf had accomplished turnover at mid-point on the return journey, and was two days into the retardation phase, when explosions occurred simultaneously in both field generators, robbing the vessel of its means of coming to a halt before it would smash into the impregnable outer shell of Orbitsville.

twelve

“The starboard explosion was the worst,” Commander Napier reported to the emergency meeting of the Bissendorf’s executive staff. “It actually breached the pressure hull in the vicinity of Frame S.203. The pressure-activated doors functioned properly and sealed off the section between Frames S.190 and 210, but there were five technicians in there at the time, and they were killed.”

O’Hagan raised his grey head. “Blast or decompression?”

“We don’t know — the bodies were exhausted into space.”

“I see.” O’Hagan made a note on his pad, speaking aloud at the same time. “Five missing, presumed dead.”

Napier stared at his old antagonist with open dislike. “If you know how we can turn the ship to recover the bodies this would be a good time to tell us about it.”

“I merely…”

“Gentlemen!” Garamond slapped the table as loudly as was possible in conditions of almost zero gravity. “May I remind you that we are scheduled to be killed in about eight hours? That doesn’t leave much time for bickering.”

O’Hagan gave a ghastly smile. “It gives us eight hours for bickering, Captain — there’s nothing else we can do.”

“That’s for this meeting to decide.”

“So be it.” Chief Science Officer O’Hagan shrugged and spread his dry knobbly hands in resignation.

Garamond felt a reluctant admiration for the older man who seemed determined to remain egotistical and cantankerous right to the end. O’Hagan also had a habit of being right in everything he said, and in that respect too it seemed he was going to preserve his record. Although reaction mass was not plentiful in the region of Pengelly’s Star, the Bissendorf had been aided in its return journey by the pull of the primary and had achieved a mean acceleration of close on one gravity. Modest though the acceleration and distances were, the ship had been travelling at 1,500 kilometres a second at turn-over point and, although it had been slowing down steadily for two days when the explosions occurred, its residual velocity was still above a hundred kilometres in each second. At that speed it was due to impact with Orbitsville in only eight hours, and it appeared to Garamond that there was nothing he or anybody else on board could do about it. The knowledge boomed and pounded beneath all other thoughts, and yet he felt a surprising absence of fear or any related emotion. It was, he decided, a psychological byproduct of having eight hours in hand. The delay created the illusion that something might still be done, that there was a chance to influence the course of events in their favour, and — miraculously — this held good even for an experienced flickerwing man who understood only too well the deadly parameters of his situation.

“I understand that both auxiliary drive systems are still functional,” Administrative Officer Mertz was saying, his round face glowing like pink plastic. “Surely that makes a difference.”

Napier shook his head. “The ion tubes are in action right now — which accounts for the very slight weight you can feel — but they were intended only to give the ship a close-manoeuvring capability, and they won’t affect our speed very much. I guess the only difference they’ll make is that we’ll vaporize against Orbitsville a minute or two later than we would otherwise.”

“Well, how about the secondary nuclears? I thought they were for collision avoidance.”

“They are. Maximum endurance twenty minutes. By applying full thrust at right angles to our present course we could easily avoid an object as large as Jupiter — but we’re dealing with that.” Napier pointed at the forward view panels, which were uniformly black. Orbitsville was spanning the universe.

“I see.” Mertz’s face lost some of its pinkness. “Thank you.”

The operations room filled with a silence which was broken only by faint irregular clangs transmitted through the ship’s structure. Far aft, a repair crew was at work replacing the damaged hull sections. Garamond stared into the darkness ahead and tried to assimilate the idea that it represented a wall across the sky, a wall which was rushing towards him at a hundred kilometres a second, a wall so wide and high that there was no way to avoid hitting it.

Yamoto cleared his throat. “There’s no point in speculating about why the ship was sabotaged, but do we know how the bombs got on board?”

“I personally believe it was done by Pilot Officer Shrapnel,” Napier said. “There isn’t much evidence, but what there is points to him. We gave all the information in our emergency call to Fleet Control.”

“What did they say?”

“They promised he would be investigated.” Napier’s voice had a flinty edge of bitterness. “We are assured that all necessary steps will be taken.”

“That’s good to know. Isn’t that good to know?” Yamoto pressed the back of a hand to his forehead. “I had