Tachyon Web (2 page)

“It would be great,” Strem added, “if you could bring a girl, too.”

Eric looked out the window. The Patrol cruiser had landed and the crew was being shuttled off the wide concrete field. “You know I don’t have a steady girlfriend. How can I talk someone into spending a week with me in a cramped spaceship that stands a good chance of being blown out of the sky?”

“Appeal to the adventurous side in her!”

“In
who?
”

“Get any girl at school. There’s lots of them. How about Carol and Barb?”

“They haven’t called me in a couple of weeks.”

“Call them.”

“I have. More times than I can remember.”

Strem was not insensitive. He quickly changed his approach. “You’re right. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. If I had my way, just us three guys would go.”

“What’s stopping you from having your way?”

“Hey, don’t try to analyze me when I’m acting the nice guy.” He peered out the window, not at the ship and the conveyors laden with cargo and the scurrying uniformed workers, but at the swollen red sun, barely scraping the burning horizon. And his entire manner changed. One minute he was smiling, then suddenly he seemed worried. More than the vagueness of a couple of his answers, this brief falter made Eric suspect he was not telling the whole truth about the illegal trip. “It’s not very bright,” Strem said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“Compared to a blue star, for example. Or a nova.” He glanced at Eric out the corner of his eye. “Do you know much about novas, Eric?”

Strem seldom addressed him by his name. “I know they give off a tremendous amount of energy.” He paused. “Why do you ask?”

Strem took his time answering, as though he were debating whether to answer at all. “I hear there is a nova in the Andromeda Sector.”

“How close?” Every year there were several novas in the galaxy, but since the development of interstellar travel there had not been one in the Earth’s vicinity. It would make an interesting study for the astronomers.

“Close enough.”

“Where did you hear this?”

“Does it matter? My sources are reliable. Take my word for it.”

“Why did you bring it up just now?”

“Don’t you find the information interesting?”

“Certainly. But…”

“That’s why I told you. I knew you would be interested.” Strem looked again at the setting sun, the sharp edge of the ocean cutting it in half, a quarter, an eighth, before swallowing it all together. “Perfect,” he whispered, nodding to himself as artificial light warmed up overhead.

“Have you suddenly become sentimental about sunsets or what?” Eric asked.

Strem shook himself, as he would from a nap, and stepped away from the window, grabbing the top of Eric’s arm and half pulling him down the corridor toward the elevators. The passionate couple had left and for a moment they were alone. Strem’s mood, or whatever it had been, had passed. “Do you still want to rent a mini-sub and see if we can ram some sharks?”

That was why they had originally decided to meet in Baja. “Sure. But you didn’t answer my question.”

Strem laughed. “The only thing I feel sentimental about right now is the five-percent commission I’m trying to squeeze out of my uncle for delivering the cargo.”

Eric figured he could question him further at another time. “You’ll be lucky if you get one percent.”

“I’ll take it,” Strem agreed, hurrying him along at his usual frantic pace. “Hey, I just thought of someone you can ask on this trip. Dentenia Soulete – she’d be perfect. She’s not that bright, but she knows how to answer the phone and say yes. Here’s what you’ll do…”

Strem proceeded to bless him with a dozen lines that were guaranteed to stimulate Dentenia’s lust for danger, space travel, and witty young men. Eric only half listened. He hardly knew Dentenia – though she had a superb body and he wouldn’t have minded knowing her intimately – and couldn’t imagine calling her. He was thinking of novas, exploding stars that saturated space with incalculable torrents of energy. The Andromeda Sector was not in the direction of Tau Ceti and Strem’s commission. It was a shame in a way that they wouldn’t have time to swing over for a quick peek. Of course that was for the best. God only knew what emissions from a nearby nova could do to their equipment.

CHAPTER TWO

The dawn was sudden and dazzling as they ploughed out of the Earth’s shadow into the glare of the sun five hundred miles above the cloudless Sahara. Eric immediately snapped down his visor, but not before he began to see stars that weren’t there.

They were in a ferry halfway between Space Station One and
Excalibur
, floating away from the massive pinwheel that oversaw all travel within the solar system to the freighter that housed Strem and his girlfriend. The ferry was homed onto a directional beacon aboard
Excalibur
and would arrive at the freighter’s bay doors without human assistance. Nevertheless, Sammy Balan was keeping a close eye on their approach, which was reassuring to Eric.

Sammy was as cautious as he was intelligent. Because he was so quiet, kids at school often mistook him as cold, and it was true that his mind seemed to more closely parallel the working of a machine than a person.

Sammy’s attention to detail, however, did not apply to his personal appearance. When he dressed in the morning, it was as though he put on the first thing his hand touched and didn’t always check to see if it was a viable piece of clothing. Pale and underweight, his short stature was not helped by a chronic slouch. His one physical virtue was his long wavy brown hair, which managed to maintain a lustrous sheen despite infrequent washings. Yet he had mentioned cutting it all off. Sammy didn’t care what he looked like.

“What do you think the chances are that we will get away with this?” Eric asked. They were sitting before rows of colored buttons and a single dark blue screen traced with shifting speed and distance graphs. A wide window curling back from the tip of the hull provided them with the breathtaking view of the Middle East. Because the ferry was used only for short trips, it was powered by simple chemical rockets and had no artificial gravity. If he were to unfasten his seat belt, he would float away. But he had recently eaten and wasn’t in the mood for acrobatics.

“There are many variables,” Sammy said. “It’s hard to know.”

“A ball park estimate would be fine.”

“I’d give us a two out of three chances of being allowed to make a hyper jump.”

“I was hoping you would have said a ninety percent chance.”

“I may in fact be overly pessimistic. It all depends what Central Control asks our holograph of Strem’s uncle. It was impossible for me to program it to respond to every variation.”

“Will Strem be helping you pilot
Excalibur
?” he asked, trying to keep the tension out of his voice. He hadn’t slept much last night and when he had, he’d had nightmares of calling his parents and telling them he wouldn’t be home for dinner for about five years.

“Let’s hope not,” Sammy said flatly.

The growing
Excalibur
began to blot out the African continent. There was a brief nudge as the ferry braked. Perhaps when the freighter had been constructed it had been worthy of being named after the mythical sword, but six decades later, moored in orbit beside numerous modern craft, it looked like a clunker. A bulky gray cylinder, its living quarters and control deck were squeezed into a spherical compartment that was stuck like a Ping-Pong ball at one end. It would undoubtedly be retired soon. And yet, compared to the interplanetary ships of a couple of centuries ago, it was incredibly fast. The rear section was devoted to the cargo bay and the graviton drive, and the latter could propel them out of the solar system at about a third the speed of light, to a point sufficiently distant from the sun and planets to where they wouldn’t snap in two initiating a hyper jump.

The hyper drive itself took up as much space as an ordinary desk. Out of their group, only Sammy had more than an inkling of the mechanics of the Unified Field that made it work. Once he had tried to explain the intricacies to Strem and Eric, and they had both ended up with headaches.

“Is Cleo aboard?” Eric asked.

Sammy half smiled, rubbing his eyes, which were red and tired. He must have been working overtime this last week to outwit Central Control’s final check. That would not come until they were outside the orbit of Neptune, where a smaller version of The Tachyon Web had been erected to momentarily halt all traffic. A hundred years ago, when pilot licenses had first been issued, one had to pass through a strict customs aboard Space Station One just to leave Earth’s orbit. Now only those making hyper jumps were closely watched and even that scrutiny was done from a distance – Central Control had complete confidence in their methodology. Eric could feel the sweat gathering between his skin and his green flight suit. It was going to be a long day.

“She’s on Mars, visiting an aunt,” Sammy answered. “We’ll pick her up before we head out.”

“Is she bringing her snake?”

“Probably.”

“I can hardly wait. Is Strem’s uncle aboard?” Eric was not sure he wanted to meet the man again. After talking to Uncle Dan he always felt as though he should check to make sure he still had his wallet.

“He filled out the necessary paperwork, hopped over to
Excalibur
to make it look proper, and immediately snuck back to the station. He’s probably back on Earth by now.”

Approximately a hundred yards from docking,
Excalibur
eclipsed the sun. Eric peered outside, away from the Earth, eagerly awaiting the stargazing he could do once they got out into space. He felt the jolt of the ferry’s rockets fine-tuning their rendezvous. After dropping the people off, the ferry would retrace its steps alone back to Station One.

As the gray walls began to envelop them, he felt the artificial gravity generated by a component of the graviton drive press him into his seat. A couple of scrapes and bumps followed under his feet as they came to a complete stop in slip-fitting tracks. The door slid shut at their back and atmosphere poured into the air lock with an intense but brief roar. A flashing red light on the control board turned a solid green. There was a loud hiss as the ferry’s seals peeked open. Eric felt a sudden rush of fear and almost asked to be taken back. What kept him was nothing heroic. He simply thought of how lonely and bored he would be over spring break, and quickly climbed out.

They found Strem and Jeanie on the control deck. Their hellos were brief. With the tension in the room, they could have been going into battle.

A three-dimensional holographic cube dominated the center of the bridge, projecting schematics of their course in relationship to the planets, the latter’s gravitational fields wavering in the haunting red background glow as though they were living ghosts. Taking a seat at the navigational computer, Sammy performed a quick systems check. As he did so, the transparent holographic cube sparked with unwinding white threads representing possible courses for
Excalibur
on its way out of the solar system. Eric noted how each line curved around a bright red dot – Mars and Cleo.

“We have clearance,” Strem said, coming up behind Sammy, glancing out the windows, which were uncovered turned toward the cloud-shrouded Asian continent. “Let’s get out of here.”

“One minute,” Sammy said. “The ferry is still clearing. Did your uncle get the seal on the Preeze Cap repaired? The board shows minor pressure discrepancies.” The Preeze Cap was a sophisticated circulation pump that helped keep the gravitation drive from overheating. It used old-fashioned ethylene glycol.

“Yes,” Strem said. “Did you need help plotting our course?”

“Absolutely not, thank you.”

“Are you as scared as me?” Jeanie asked Eric, leaning beside him against the unlit panel that held the setting for the hyper drive. She was dressed in a black leotard, and her bushy brunette hair was tied with a yellow ribbon in a ponytail that reached to her waist. Sweat glistened on her bare arms from dancing to burn off her nervousness before they had arrived.

Jeanie was one of the school’s cheerleaders and, after graduating, planned to study ballet, which she would certainly excel at – she looked graceful simply walking across campus. An uncomplicated person to the extent of being slightly dull, she compensated for any personality deficiencies with a fresh beauty that occasionally made Eric wonder if he wouldn’t chase after her if, say, Strem were to meet a sudden and unexpected accident.

Eric thought of Dentenia; she had similar seductive legs, and Strem had been right that she knew how to answer the phone. But he had been wrong about her automatic yes. She had given him a brisk no just before hanging up. He was still wondering why he had caller her – at least when Carol and Barb didn’t want to see him, they were polite enough to say they had to wash their hair or something.

“I’ve done worse things,” Eric answered with a straight face.

“When?” Jeanie asked.

“In another life.” He nodded towards Strem. “How did he talk us into this?”

“The same as always – he kept on at us until we said yes.” She squeezed his hand. “Isn’t it exciting?”

“Ask me after we get back home.”

“We can go,” Sammy pronounced. He glanced up at Strem, who nodded decisively. Sammy’s right hand moved and as it did, so did the ship, India slipping from the windows and being replaced with starry space as
Excalibur
turned its back and main drive on the world below. The lights dimmed and the white streak with the holograph turned orange. A low deep hum filled the room, swiftly shifting into a high-pitched whine before suddenly cutting off into a ringing silence. Strem laughed and Jeanie gasped and Eric smiled as the Earth began to shrink like a colorful ball thrown into a deep dark well. In minutes they would be at full speed and in less than half an hour they would be entering Martian orbit. What a great way to start a vacation.

The time passed swiftly. Strem punched up a hamburger from the automatic galley and just about had to forgo chewing to finish it before the red star swelled into a sandstorm-torn world. Mars was in a foul mood and Eric was glad their destination lay elsewhere. The northern polar cap was practically obscured by airborne dust. Had they landed they would have had to stay inside the domed cities and been unable to go exploring, which would have been worse than laying on the beach at home.