The Stardance Trilogy (19 page)

My thighs ached like hell, the right one especially, but my spine hadn’t begun to hurt yet—I hadn’t yet worked out that it ought to. There were voices in my headphones, urgent ones, but I was still too fuzzy to make any sense out of what they were saying. Later I could spare time to retune my ears; right now figures were clicking away in my mind and the answers kept getting worse. There’s much more pressure in an air tank than in a thruster. On the other hand, I had ten aimable thrusters with which to cancel the velocity imparted by that one diffused burst. On the third hand, I had started this with badly depleted thrusters…

Even as I concluded that I was dead I was doing what I could to save my life: one by one I lined up my thrusters on the far side of my center of mass and fired them to exhaustion. Left foot, fore and aft. Right foot, likewise. Belly thruster. My back began to moan, then cry, then shriek with agony; not the localized knifing I’d expected but a general ache. I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or bad. Back thruster, clamping my teeth against a whimper. Left hand, fore and aft—

—
Save a little.
I reserved my right hand pair for last minute maneuvers, and looked to see if I’d done any good.

The Monkey Bars were still shrinking, fairly rapidly.

I was almost fully conscious now, feeling that my brains were just catching up with me. The voices in my headphones began to make sense at last. The first one that I identified, of course, was Norrey’s—but she wasn’t saying anything, only crying and swearing.

“Hey, honey,” I said as calmly as I could, and she cut off instantly. So did the others. Then—

“Hang on, darling.
I’m coming!
”

“That’s right, boss,” Harry agreed. “I’ve been tracking you with the radar gun since you left, and the computer’s doing the piloting.”

“She’ll get you,” Raoul cried. “The machine says ‘yes.’ With available fuel, it can get her to you and then back here, Charlie, it says ‘yes.’”

Sure enough, just to the side of the Bars I could see the Family Car, nose-on to me. It was not shrinking as fast as the Bars were—but it did appear to be shrinking. That had been a hell of a clout that can of air fetched me.

“Boss,” Harry said urgently,
“is your suit honest?”

“Yeah, sure, the force of the blast was outwards, didn’t even damage the other can.” My back throbbed just thinking about it, and yes, damn it, the Car’s visible disk was definitely shrinking, not a whole lot but certainly
not
growing, and at that moment of moments I recalled that the warranty on that computer’s software had expired three days ago.

Say something heroic before you moan.

“Well, that’s settled,” I said cheerfully. “Remind me to sue the bas—hey!
How’s Tom?
”

“We got it patched,” Harry said briefly. “He’s out, but telemetry says he’s alive and okay.”

No wonder Linda was silent. She was praying.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” I asked rhetorically.

“I called Skyfac. Panzella’s on his way. We’re proceeding home on thrusters to get Tom indoors now.”

“Go, all three of you. Nothing you can do out here. Raoul, take care of Linda.”

“Yah.”

Silence fell, except of course for the by-now unheard constants of breathing and rustling cloth. Norrey began to cry again, briefly, but controlled it. The disc that was her and the Car was growing now, I had to stare and measure with my thumb but yes, it was growing.

“Attaway, Norrey, you’re gaining on me,” I said, trying to keep it light.

“That I am,” she agreed, and when the
rate
of the Car’s growth had just reached a visibly perceptible crawl, the corona of her drive flame winked out. “What the—?”

Visualize the geometry. I leave the Monkey Bars at a hell of a clip. Maybe a full thirty seconds elapse before Norrey is in the saddle and blasting. Ideally the computer has her blast to a velocity higher than mine, hold it, then turnover and begin decelerating so that she will begin to return toward the Bars
just as our courses intersect.
A bit tricky to work out in your head, but no problem for a ballistic computer half as good as ours.

The kicker was fuel.

Norrey
had
to cut thrust precisely halfway through projected total fuel consumption. She had used up half the content of her fuel tanks; the computer saw that at these rates of travel rendezvous could be accomplished eventually; it cut thrust with a computer’s equivalent of a smile of triumph. I did primitive mental arithmetic, based on guesswork and with enormous margins for errors, and went pale and cold inside my plastic bag.

The second kicker was air.

“Harry,” I rapped, “run that projection through again for me, but include the following air supply data—”

“Oh Jesus God,” he said, stunned, and then repeated back the figures I gave him. “Hold on.”

“Charlie,” Norrey began worriedly. “Oh my God, Charlie!”

“Wait, baby. Wait. Maybe it’s okay.”

Harry’s voice was final. “No good, boss. You’ll be out of air when she gets there. She’ll be damn low when she gets back.”

“Then turn around and start back now, hon,” I said as gently as I could.

“Hell no,” she cried.

“Why risk your neck, darling?
I’m already buried
—buried in space. Come on now—”

“No.”

I tried brutality. “You want my corpse that bad?”

“Yes.”

“Why, to have it hanging around the Closet?”

“No. To ride with.”

“Huh?”

“Harry, plot me a course that’ll get me to him before his air runs out. Forget the round trip: Give me a minimum-time rendezvous.”

“No!” I thundered.

“Norrey,” Harry said earnestly, “there’s
nothing else to come get you with
. There’s not a ship in the sky. You blast any more and you’ll never even get started back here, and you’ll never even stop leaving. You’ve got more air than him, but both your air combined wouldn’t last one of you ’til help could arrive, even if we could keep tracking you that long.” It was the longest speech I’d ever heard Harry make.

“I’m damned if I want to be a widow,” she blazed, and cut in acceleration on manual override.

She was dead as me, now.

“Goddammit,” Harry and I roared together, and then, “Help her, Harry!” I screamed and “I am!” he screamed back and an endless time later he said sadly, “Okay, Norrey, let go. The new course is locked in.” She was still dead, had been from the moment she overrode the computer. But at least now we’d go together.

“All right, then,” she said, still angry but mollified. “Twenty-five years I wanted to be your wife, Armstead. I will be
damned
if I’ll be your widow.”

“Harry,” I said, knowing it was hopeless but refusing to accept, “refigure, assuming that we leave the Car when it runs out of juice and use all of Norrey’s suit thrusters together. Hers aren’t as low as mine were.”

It must have been damned awkward for Harry, using two fingers to keep himself headed for home at max thrust, holding the big computer terminal and pushing keys with the rest. It must have been even more awkward for Raoul and Linda, towing the unconscious Tom between them, watching their patch job leak.

“Forget it, boss,” Harry said almost at once. “There’s two of you.”

“Well then,” I said desperately, “can we trade off breathing air for thrust?”

He must have been just as desperate; he actually worked the problem. “Sure. You could start returning, get back here in less than a day. But it’d take
all
your air to do it. You’re dead, boss.”

I nodded, a silly habit I’d thought I’d outgrown. “That’s what I thought. Thanks, Harry. Good luck with Tom.”

Norrey said not a word. Presently the computer shut down her drive again, having done its level best to get her to me quickly with the fuel available. The glow around the Car (now plainly growing) winked out, and still she was silent. We were all silent. There was either nothing to say or too much, no in-between. Presently Harry reported docking at home. He gave Norrey her turnover data, gave her back manual control, and then he and the others went off the air.

Two people breathing makes hardly any noise at all.

She was a long long time coming, long enough for the pain in my back to diminish to the merely incredible. When she was near enough to see, it took all my discipline to keep from using the last of my jump-juice to try and match up with her. Not that I had anything to save it for. But matching in free space is like high-speed highway merging—one of you had better maintain a constant velocity, two variables are too many. Norrey did a textbook job, coming to a dead stop relative to me at the extreme edge of lifeline range.

The precision was wasted. But you don’t stop trying to live just because a computer says you can’t.

At the same split second that she stopped decelerating she fired the lifeline. The weight at the end tapped me gently on the chest:
very
impressive shooting, even with the magnet to help. I embraced it fiercely, and it took me several seconds of concentrated effort to let go and clip it to my belt. I hadn’t realized how lonely and scared I was.

As soon as she was sure I was secure, she cut the drag and let the Car reel me in.

“Who says you can never get a cab when you need one?” I said, but my teeth were chattering and it spoiled the effect.

She grinned anyhow, and helped me into the rear saddle. “Where to, Mac?”

All of a sudden I couldn’t think of anything funny to say. If the Car’s fuselage hadn’t been reinforced, I’d have crushed it between my knees. “Wherever you’re going,” I said simply, and she spun around in her saddle and gave it the gun.

It takes a really sensitive hand to pilot a tractor like the Family Car accurately, especially with a load on. It’s quite difficult to keep the target bubble centered, and the controls are mushy—you have to sort of outguess her or you’ll end up oscillating and throw your gyro. A dancer is, of course, better at seat-of-the-pants mass balancing than any but the most experienced of Space Command pilots, and Norrey was the best of the six of us. At that she outdid herself.

She even outdid the computer. Which is not too astonishing—there’s always more gas than it says on the gauge—and of course it wasn’t nearly enough to matter. We were still dead. But after a time the distant red and green spheroid that was the Bars stopped shrinking; instruments confirmed it. After a longer time I was able to convince myself that it was actually growing some. It was, naturally, at that moment that the vibration between my thighs ceased.

All the time we’d been accelerating I’d been boiling over with the need to talk, and had kept my mouth shut for fear of distracting Norrey’s attention. Now we had done all we could do. Now we had nothing left to do in our lives but talk, and I was wordless again. It was Norrey who broke the silence, her tone just precisely right.

“Uh, you’re not going to believe this…but we’re out of gas.”

“The hell you say. Let me out of this car; I’m not that kind of boy.”
Thank you, hon.

“Aw, take it easy. It’s downhill from here. I’ll just put her in neutral and we’ll coast home.”

“Hey listen,” I said, “when you navigate by the seat of your pants like that, is that what they call a bum steer?”

“Oh Charlie, I don’t want to die.”

“Well, then don’t.”

“I wasn’t
finished
yet.”

“Norrey!” I grabbed her shoulder from behind. Fortunately I used my left hand, triggering only empty thrusters.

There was a silence.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, still facing away from me. “I made my choice. These last minutes with you are worth what I paid for them. That just slipped out.” She snorted at herself. “Wasting air.”

“I can’t think of anything I’d rather spend air on than talking with you. That you can do in p-suits, I mean. I don’t want to die either—but if I’ve got to go, I’m glad I’ve got your company. Isn’t that selfish?”

“Nope. I’m glad you’re here too, Charlie.”

“Hell, I
called
this meeting. If I wasn’t here, nobody would be.” I broke off then, and scowled. “That’s the part that bothers me the most, I think. I used to try and guess, sometimes, what it would be that would finally kill me. Sure enough, I was right: my own damn stupidity. Spacing out. Taking my finger off the number. Oh dammit, Norrey—”

“Charlie, it was an accident.”

“I spaced out. I wasn’t paying attention. I was thinking about the god damned deadline, and I blew it.” (I was very close to something, then; something bigger than my death.)

“Charlie, that’s cheating. At least half of that guilt you’re hogging belongs to the crook that inspected that air tank at the factory. Not to mention the flaming idiot who forgot to gas the Car this morning.”

It’s a rotating duty. “Who was that idiot?” I asked, before I could think better of it.

“Same idiot who took off without grabbing extra air. Me.”

That produced an uncomfortable silence. Which started me trying to think of something meaningful or useful to say. Or do. Let’s see, I had less than an eighth of a can of air. Norrey maybe a can and a quarter: she hadn’t used up as much in exercise. (Space Command armor, like the NASA Standard suits before them, hold about six hours’ air. A Stardancer’s p-suit is good for only half as much—but they’re prettier. And we
always
have plenty of air bottles—strapped to every camera we use.) I reached forward and unshipped her full tank, passed it silently over her shoulder. She took it, as silently, and got the first-aid kit out of the glove compartment. She took a Y-joint from it, made sure both male ends were sealed, and snapped it onto the air bottle. She got extension hoses from the kit and mated them to the ends of the Y. She clipped the whole assembly to the flank of the Car until we needed it, an air soda with two straws. Then she reversed herself in the saddle, awkwardly, until she was facing me.

“I love you, Charlie.”

“I love you, Norrey.”

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that hugging in p-suits is a waste of time. Hugging is
never
a waste of time. It hurt my back a lot, but I paid no attention.