Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) (42 page)

Sighing, he reached out to turn off the comm. As his hand touched the panel, he heard the interview end, and one last, scratchy news item: "...word from Neptune's moon Triton... discovery of an intact alien artifact, still active with an unknown energy source. Exoarchaeologists disagreed on the significance...whether this could have any connection with the
Neptune Explorer,
stolen from Triton...rumors that... predicted the appearance of the comet have been denied by officials of MINEXFO...also denied reports of a later... predicting a flash of light in Uranian-Neptunian space. Other sources differed...flash identical to the effect when
Neptune Exlorer
vanished... believe..."

There was a loud hiss of static, and when the broadcast became audible again, it was in the middle of a soft drink commercial.

"They're trying to keep people from believing me," Bandicut muttered under his breath. "I can't believe it! They'd rather sit on the truth than admit it. I'll bet they're afraid they'll lose control over the translator. But they found it! Do you think it was Julie?"

/// I...put in a good word for her.

That's all I can...

John, I'm... ///

/What?/ Bandicut whispered.

/// I think...John...I'm dying.

I'm sorry.

Can we go now? ///

Bandicut blinked, stared, and hit the fusion igniter. He waited for gravity to return, pressing his aching body back into the seat, before he tried to speak again. He wanted to ask Charlie if that was just a figure of speech he had used, about dying—if he had just meant that he was very, very tired. But somehow Bandicut knew the answer even before he asked. He had feared that it was coming, but prayed that it was not. Charlie, don't! he thought. You shouldn't have sacrificed yourself to put me back together! But you did, didn't you?

Dear God, he didn't want to die alone.

Chapter 30

Comet

/You still there?/ he asked, as he watched the numbers flicker endlessly on the nav.

/// Still here. ///

/You okay?/

/// No. ///

/Want to tell me about it?/

/// I think...no. ///

Bandicut felt a pain in his left side. /Don't try to fix that,/ he snapped. He felt a sudden burst of unreasoning anger. /You're just going to leave me, then? Get me into this, then check out before the closing act?/

/// It is my intention... ///

the quarx gasped,

/// ...if possible...

to stay till the very end. ///

Bandicut grunted, vaguely reassured. He didn't know how he would manage the final plunge if Charlie were gone. For that matter, suppose they actually survived this crazy dive across space—what then? Wherever he would be, he sure as hell didn't want to be without Charlie. /If you don't make it, Charlie, will you be...reborn again?/

/// Maybe.

How the hell should I know?

I don't suppose even quarx...go on forever. ///

Bandicut opened his mouth, stunned by the quarx's anger. Maybe Charlie really was fearful that he'd miss the end of this drama that he had set into motion.

/// Don't worry...

the translator-stone...knows what to do.

You can do fine without me.

Just hit...the blasted comet. ///

The thought sent shudders down his spine. /I don't want to do it without you,/ he whispered. /You might be a pain in the ass, Charlie—but you're all I've got now./

Charlie didn't answer—then, or for many hours afterward.

*

By the time they were inside Mars's orbit, they were moving so fast that Earth's orbit seemed to be mere minutes away. Bandicut scarcely had time to readjust his thinking. Before, time had crawled; now it was running away from him. The inner planets were much closer together than the outer planets. Earth would be next, then Venus, then they'd whip across the orbit of Mercury to skim the sun, and from there it would be a smooth arc out...smack into the comet. Boom. They would nail it somewhere outside the orbit of Mercury, on the far side of the sun.

He hoped he wouldn't spoil the show for all those people on Earth who were dusting off their cam-goggles. With luck, he might produce an even better show, if a briefer one.

The sun grew large and bright and hot in the viewer. He kept Napoleon and Copernicus busy running checks on the ship's systems, particularly as they drew inward toward the sun. It was unlikely that
Neptune Explorer
had been designed to survive the kinds of conditions he was about to put her through—such as the intense heat of a close solar approach. The translator's threading field was capable of excluding excessive radiation, but if they dropped out of threading during their approach to the sun, he'd be fried long before they reached the comet.

An hour after they crossed Earth's orbit, Bandicut roused Charlie and asked him to darken the threading field; it was starting to get uncomfortably warm inside the spacecraft, and nastily hot on the outer hull. Charlie, muttering to himself, passed on the request, and told Bandicut that next time he could just address the translator directly.

/// Talk to the white stone.

It's the communications element. ///

/Oh./ Bandicut noted, on the instruments, a drop-off in ambient radiation. He fingered the silent stone in his right wrist and muttered, "Can you darken it a little more, please?" There was no answer that he could hear or feel, but he saw a sparkle of red fire in the black stone in his left wrist, and the field darkened a little more.

Venus's orbit flashed behind them, and he began to think seriously about preparing for the end. He found himself worrying about how he was dressed. He imagined the planets gathered around, watching and applauding as he smashed straight into the comet, and he wanted to look right for the event. He hurried amidships to put on clean clothes for the final plunge. He was amazed at his own calm in the face of near-certain death.

The glowering image of an enormous sun swam in the window, filtered by the threading field, as they streaked in past the orbit of Mercury. Bandicut imagined himself a performer on stage in some great cosmic theater, spotlights beaming and dancing upon him as he spun and sang. The planets loved his song and clamored for more. He was into his third song when he heard the quarx shouting hoarsely,

/// John...can you hear me? ///

He reeled back in his seat, trying to sort fugue from reality, as the quarx wheezed at him,

/// You have to get ready! ///

/Eh, what?/ he gabbled. /I'm ready! I'm ready! But for what?/

/// To do the flying... ///

The quarx's voice faded a little.

/// ...get ready to link with

the translator! ///

/What?/ he asked, thoughts spinning back down into reality. He felt a burning sensation in his wrists, and he looked down and saw both stones pulsing with light. /I thought you guys were flying./

/// I can't anymore.

John...you have to take over now. ///

He felt a knife blade of fear, as the quarx gasped an explanation. He didn't want to hear it—
really
didn't want to hear it—especially once he understood what the quarx was saying. All the nav data had been going to the translator-stones through Charlie; but it was getting too hard—Charlie was weakening fast and didn't trust himself to get it right anymore. /Are you telling me that the translator can find its way through spatial threading, but it can't track a comet around the sun?/

/// It can follow it...

but not if it can't see it.

And we have some...

equipment problems. ///

/Equipment problems—?/

/// We, uh...burned out the main...nav sensors.

I guess I shouldn't have pointed them...

at the sun... ///

/You wha—?/ He gulped back his own question and looked at the nav display. Charlie was right. The sensors had failed, and the navlock was lost. /Why did you do that?/ he gasped.

/// We didn't know.

Sorry...

it was...a mistake. ///

He felt his hopes sliding. /How do you expect me to fly without any nav?/

The quarx struggled to answer.

/// The basic trajectory's...fine.

It's the final approach...we need you...

to steer us, at the end. ///

Bandicut blinked, trying to absorb Charlie's words.

/// Think of it as...docking...

high-speed docking. ///

He couldn't answer. Was Charlie telling him that he was supposed to
eyeball
the ship in to impact—that it was all going to depend on his being personally linked to the stones?

He thought of his linkup with the translator in the cavern and shuddered. Don't worry, came a whisper from Charlie. It would be just like a game of EineySteiney, only here the stakes were a little higher.

A little, he thought. Indeed. But if there was no other way... /What do you want me to do?/ he whispered.

The quarx's answer came in broken words.

/// As soon as we're...outbound...

past the sun

...use the telescope to find the comet.

I'll link you...

you make corrections through the translator

...biggest game of...EineySteiney...

you ever played. ///

Bandicut swallowed hard and turned to the computer charts to determine where to point his telescope to find the comet. They would be at perihelion—closest approach to the sun—within the hour.

*

The threading field was so dark now that the windows were effectively shuttered. But Bandicut could see the sun in his mind's eye as vividly as if he were staring at it through the clear quartz-plex window. The sun roiled and fumed, like some terrible volcanic cloud churning over his head in the blazing glow of sunset. It was like some astonishing drug-induced hallucination, and in fact it
was
a hallucination—he was in full-blown silence-fugue now. But he was also locked in a bewildering feedback embrace with the translator-stone; he sensed its vast power glimmering and flickering, just out of his reach; and it seemed that the clearer the solar image grew in his mind, the more powerfully hallucinatory it became, reverberating back and forth between his mind and the stone's. The quarx did not interrupt the fugue; maybe he was content to let it run, or maybe he was no longer capable of intervening.

In Bandicut's mind, a great solar prominence crested, erupting downward out of the sun to lash into the dark emptiness of space. Somewhere beyond that prominence was the comet that it had become his destiny to destroy, or destroy himself in the attempt. Earth wasn't visible from here, but he knew that she was watching, with all the other planets, as he flew to her defense. He rode the wave of the translator's energy, and the marching flames of the sun saluted his passage.

They were arrowing straight past the sun's rotating horizon.

He noted almost casually that they were now at perihelion, and he thought he heard the applause of the planets.

Then they were past perihelion, arcing back out of the sun's gravity well. It would be just a fleeting breath of time before they shot out past the other side of Mercury's orbit. Time flowed like a fine wine, intoxicating him as he bobbed his head, watching the movements of the planets like the fabulous, dancing movement of balls on an enormous EineySteiney table.

As the sun shifted out of his view to the stern, he grinned savagely and unshuttered the forward windows and unlimbered the telescope. He pointed the thing where the computer, using the last known orbital data, said the comet would be; and in his mind, the coruscating near-consciousness of the translator-stones whirled and followed his focus like a swarm of fiery bees.

*

It was a blazing ball of ice and stone, viewed from the sunward side—with a great luminous tail that stretched outward from the surrounding gaseous coma, the tail blown not by the comet's movement but by the streaming particles of the solar wind. The comet was a breathtaking sight, glowing through the filters and lenses of the telescope. It looked like an angel, or a cosmic sign, anything but a planet killer.

Overtaken by sudden self-doubt, Bandicut ran a new computer analysis of the comet's orbit, urgently trying to see if it really was going to hit the Earth. His measurements were uncertain, and he could see the comet emitting jets of solar-heated gas, which were bound to affect its trajectory, even if very slightly. But he suddenly had to know: Was he doing this for nothing? Did he really
have
to throw away his life? Or...was it possible he could veer away from collision, and ride herd on the comet all the way to Earth? Instead of dying, perhaps he could return home...

/// John— ///

croaked the quarx.

He calculated furiously, the fugue pushing back the bee-swarm of the translator-stones in his head, and he found that his results fell short of proving what he needed to know. The comet was going to make a terrifyingly close encounter with Earth...but would it be a collision? Was the translator right? Would the jets change the comet's course enough to slam it into his home planet? Was it conclusive enough to die for?

He wondered if authorities on Earth had realized the risk yet, wondered if they had called for evacuations or preparations, wondered if they had gotten his messages, wondered if they believed him even if they had. He couldn't listen to any broadcasts while they were threading space; anyway, he doubted that they even had an antenna left on the ship. He wondered if he would know, afterward, if he had succeeded in destroying the comet. He lobbed his wondering thoughts, like glowing coals, at Charlie, but the quarx answered with stony silence; he was hunkered down, saving his strength.