I turned and tilted my head. What was that sound? I’d heard something, a thump or some shifting of material. I unstrapped and got up, annoyed. Everything should have been secure.
“Socorro, secure any loose cargo.”
“Done.”
There was another sound. What was that? I thought it came from the observatory, which I’d built adjacent to the bridge, right next to the living quarters. Had my new window out into the universe cracked already? Grunting in irritation, I walked up to the wall and touched it. The metal turned to liquid and instantly melted away.
I stepped into the observatory. The view below my feet transfixed me. The floor of the room was blindingly blue-white. The Earth rode down there, moving very slightly. We were over Canada now, as best I could tell through the clouds. I could feel the cold outside, it had already chilled the room. I’d have to make adjustments for temperature. Apparently, the skin of the ship did that automatically, but the glass floor let the exterior temperature seep inside.
“I suppose you think this is very funny,” said a voice above me.
I reacted with startled speed, crouching and jerking my head up. There she was, strapped to my ceiling. A dozen little black arms had grabbed her and pulled her up there ‘securing’ her. I smiled and relaxed.
“Brings back memories,” I said, “only this time you’re not naked.”
Sandra hissed at me. “If you ever want to have sex again,” she said, “you’ll get me off the frigging ceiling, Kyle.”
I got her down in a hurry.
— 26-
“You know what they do with stowaways, Sandra?”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“They work them. Very intensely.”
She half-closed her eyes and gave me a disgusted look. “And if they won’t
“They get tossed overboard. Spaced.”
“You just try it. I’ll rip your arm off. Anyway, I’m not here as a stowaway. I told you I was going with you.”
“I’m not flying off on a military campaign. This is just a scouting trip.”
“I don’t care. I’m going with you anyway.”
I sighed. “You mean you don’t trust me. Okay…. How did you get aboard?”
Sandra shrugged. “You set up a knocking code. I used it to get in.”
“It’s a different code for the ship.”
“Yes, you told me.”
“When?” I asked.
“Remember when I took the injections? Do you remember that night?”
“Not much of it. I remember I was drunk-and amorous.”
“Exactly. You blabbed the code.”
“You took advantage of a drunk,” I said.
“Score one for the female side.”
We didn’t have a second pilot’s chair, but I’d installed a number of jumpseats around the walls with crash harnesses. I pointed one out to Sandra.
“Strap in, I’m going to increase our speed.”
Sandra folded down the seat and arranged the crash harness. “These things are all over the ship, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, there’s a troop-carrying area as well, a big enough bay for a fully-equipped company. Most of the ship’s interior is empty. The bulging hull is just for show to impress the Macros. I decided to make use of the space by setting up several chambers as cargo holds.”
“Why didn’t you put one of these seats in the observatory?” she asked.
“I didn’t figure anyone would be in there during maneuvers.”
“Okay, now for my real question, why are we going out to mess with the aliens?”
“Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know where they are coming from?”
Sandra pursed her lips. “Not if it will get us killed or start the war again. I just want them to stay away.”
“Well, it’s our job to make sure they don’t invade again. To do that, we have to know what they are up to. There are plenty of alien secrets all around us, and I want to figure them out. It’s our job.”
“What do you mean,
“If you want to come with me into space, you have to join Star Force.”
Sandra stared at me for a few seconds. I could see this comment had gotten through to her. Maybe, she’d expected me to stop her and throw her off the ship like a kid that had secretly ridden to the store in the back of daddy’s car. But I wasn’t going to do that. I’d decided to call her bluff and stop playing games with her.
“Will I have to call you sir?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
She glared at me. “Only when we are on a mission. You can forget it otherwise.”
“You’re killing my fantasies-but okay.”
We’d traveled far past Earth as we’d been talking, heading sunward. Unfortunately, Venus was in an inconvenient position in relationship to the Earth this month. The orbital paths of the two planets were far from optimal for the trip. Since the Nano ship was capable of continuous acceleration, it could build up much higher velocities than any rocket we’d ever built on Earth. The key was the power system, which was able to generate steady thrust. With my three-engine ship, we accelerated hard for a day or so, then turned around, aiming the engines sunward, and decelerated, slowing ourselves down, for another day and a half.
In-between I let us coast for a time. We often took one-G breaks along the way, where we lowered the thrust the engines produced to give ourselves a rest. These breaks turned out to be very fruitful with Sandra, who was bored with the trip and frequently engaged me in our single source of entertainment.
Love was very different with a nanotized couple in freefall. Eye-popping achievements were reached. We created a series of new Olympic events and I’d say we swept the gold medals in all of them. It was good exercise too, I pointed out to her.
When Venus finally appeared as a disk on our forward wall, we went into the observatory to check it out with our own eyes. I made sure the cameras were recording the approach too, in case we missed something. The images could be sent to Earth for later analysis. There had been very strange things going on out here, and I wanted the details.
“What do you hope to find out here, Kyle?”
“I suspect there is something that connects our star system to others. A gateway, perhaps.”
She looked at me. “A black hole or what?”
“Nothing so dramatic, I hope. We would have felt the tug of its gravity back home if it were that sort of thing.”
“How do you know for sure?” she asked. “The Nanos have some control over gravitational effects. Remember the stabilizers you forgot to add to this ship?”
I looked at her and nodded. “You have a point. I really have no idea what we are going to find.”
“What if there is a Macro fleet gathering out here?” she asked.
“Then we run home.”
“What if they follow us?”
“We transmit abject apologies-and run faster.”
Sandra stared at me. She chewed her lower lip-something she did often when she was nervous. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve really thought this mission through.”
