My life was coming to a close. The broadcast engines on self-broadcasting ships were attached to computers. The pilot used the computer to calculate a destination, then the engine broadcasted the ship to that exact spot. Without a computer controlling it, there was no telling what the broadcast engine might do. It might simply disintegrate us. It might send us into a star. I was reminded again that coming out to this satellite had never been anything more than a passive form of suicide. We could tell ourselves we were trying to get back into the war, but we were really just killing ourselves either way.
“You know this isn’t going to work,” Freeman said as he gave his work one final inspection. He turned to stare down at me, those emotionless dark eyes of his showing me neither anger nor mercy.
The top of the broadcast cylinders came closer to the roof than we expected. Thanks to the storage compartments, we had hoped for a twelve-inch clearance. Once Freeman added all the wires and cables, the clearance came closer to three inches. I could not have wedged my fist between the cylinders and the kettle ceiling.
Freeman held out his right hand and opened it for me to see what lay on his palm. The back of his hand was dark as chocolate but his palm was nearly as light as mine. In a galactic empire in which racial divisions were thoroughly eliminated, Ray and his people, the Neo-Baptist colonists of Little Man, were living anachronisms. They referred to themselves as “pure-blooded African Americans.” They were, as far as I could tell, the last people in the universe that thought of themselves as “American.”
The white grenade gleamed in Ray Freeman’s shovel-sized hand. It was a low-yield grenade, about the size of a golf ball; but in his giant paw, it looked smaller than a Ping-Pong ball. If Freeman stretched his hand across my face, he could plug one of my ears with his little finger and the other with his thumb.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A grenade,” Freeman said.
“I know what it is,” I said. Having been raised in an orphanage for military clones, I threw my first grenade at the age of eight.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“If the engine doesn’t work,” Freeman said.
I nodded and took the grenade, doubting that I would need it. The most likely outcome of powering up the broadcast engine would be that it would not work. I would not need the grenade because the broadcast engine would explode or send a lethal current through the transport. Freeman and I would simply fry. If it did work, it would probably send us into unknown space never to materialize again.
I rolled the grenade in my hand. “Well,” I said, “good luck.” I turned and headed to the cockpit. I would be safe there. Correction–I would not be safe, but I would be safer. If things went wrong, there might be enough left of me to pull the pin.
The cockpit had a video screen on which I could watch Ray connect a few last cables. Giving his handiwork one final inspection, he dropped to his hands and knees and checked the insulation blankets along the base of the broadcast engine. He crawled beside each cylinder one by one, then he went to the control panel he had rigged beside the broadcast engine.
Freeman was big, but he looked like a child beside those fifteen-foot brass cylinders. Without so much as a moment’s hesitation, he pressed the power button, routing the electricity from the shield generator into the broadcast engine.
The disaster started quietly. I could hear as well as see everything on the screen. The shield generator ran smoothly. A few of the cables rattled. The cylinders caught the electrical charge from the generator and amplified it. Diodes at the top of the broadcast engine glowed black, then blue, then green, then yellow, then red as the charge intensified. This did not happen quickly; more than an hour had already passed.
During all this time, Ray Freeman made no effort to communicate with me. He walked around the engine inspecting contacts and dials and diodes. He spent some time staring straight into the center of the engine, apparently looking at nothing in particular.
Neither Freeman nor I was all that knowledgeable about broadcast technology. I did not know if the next thing that happened was good or bad. I do not think that Ray expected it.
An inch-wide arc of bluish white electricity formed along the tops of the cylinders. It was as thick and solid as a rope and it danced between the tips of the cylinders. The roof of the kettle was bare metal, and some of that arc connected with it. At that exact moment, my monitor winked off, and the electrical system inside the transport shut itself down.
The entire transport went dark for less than half a second, then red emergency lights came on. The cockpit lights winked back to life, but the monitor showing the kettle stayed dark. I jumped out of my chair and started for the kettle.
I had once seen what happens when things go wrong with a broadcast engine on a self-broadcasting ship. In order to power a broadcast, you need 1 million, million volts of electricity. When things go wrong with billions of volts, they truly go wrong.
Looking out over the kettle from the cockpit door, I only needed a moment to determine that the transport was still in one piece. I climbed down the ladder to the kettle. “Freeman, what happened?” I yelled. He did not answer. “What happened?” I called.
A benevolent though considerably smaller arc danced along the points of the broadcast engine’s cylinders. At first I thought there was still current running into the engine, then I saw the charred and melted stump where the shield generator had been. The last fumes of the charge had caused the explosion.
Freeman lay on the ground beside the shield generator. His face was burned. Shards of metal and plastic poked out of his skin. Rivulets of blood ran down the sweaty leather of his skin. His massive chest continued to heave with the even rhythm of his breathing. He looked bad, but he had survived. Glad to see that my friend was still alive, I pulled out that grenade and wrapped my finger around the pin.
Ray Freeman was big and strong; a few pieces of shrapnel would not kill him. The grenade I held in my right hand could do it, though. He would want that. But before I pulled the pin, I decided to make Ray comfortable.
CHAPTER THREE
Placing the grenade in a safe spot, I lifted Ray onto a bench and examined his wounds. It did not occur to me to dumb down the gravity, so I got the full brunt of his three hundred and fifty pounds as I reached around his chest and heaved him onto the bench. The tang of his burned flesh filled my nose. His clothes were moist with blood, and there was no strength in his body. His arms hung limp, and his shoulders drooped. Ray Freeman, the biggest and most dangerous man I ever met, lay totally vulnerable beside me.
I rested him on his back and placed his hands on his stomach. I cleaned his wounds. “We gave it our best,” I said, looking down at him, then I picked up the grenade. It fit neatly in my palm. It was small and white and completely lethal. Rolling the pin with my thumb, I thought about what would happen when I set the grenade off. We would die in an instant. The explosion would blow us apart. It would do more than that. It would grind us to a pulp.
I looked around the kettle, with its eerie shadows and thick metal walls. Naked girders ran the height of its walls. The grenade would not destroy the transport. Kettle walls were designed to withstand missiles. The architects who designed this bird had envisioned bombs exploding outside the fuselage, but I thought that the walls of the kettle would survive the grenade. Even with the floor cut away, there was enough insulation around the fuel supply and engine to protect them from the explosion. The cockpit had blast shields.
I looped my finger into the pin, took a deep breath, and started to pull, but I could not do it. Trying to focus my mind on pulling the pin was like grabbing a wet bar of soap. The thoughts just slipped through my grasp.
“Pull the pin,” I muttered to myself. “Pull the pin.” But every time I tightened my finger around the pin, I suddenly had an irresistible need to check on Freeman or run to the cockpit. It was like my brain purged the thought, and whatever thought filled the void became urgent. I would start to pull, feel a twitch, and momentarily forget what I was doing.
