The Dark Between The Stars

FORTY-TWO
XANDER BRINDLE

Xander’s anticipation built as the Verne headed toward the dense shock front at the nebula’s edge. He had been to Fireheart Station when he was just a child on one of his parents’ runs, but he didn’t remember much about it.

Early on, his father started keeping a scrapbook of every star system, planet, Roamer colony, or industrial installation they visited, so the boy would have a list of where he had been in his life. Xander didn’t count a place, however, if he didn’t remember it. This time, he would remember.

“Approach trajectory locked in,” Terry said from the copilot seat. “Should be a standard flight, nothing scary.”

“I double-checked the navigation calculations and found no errors,” said their compy OK. “Errors are statistically unlikely, but they do occur.”

“Just keep us safe, OK,” said Xander.

Only twice in their years of voyaging together had the diligent compy discovered errors. OK’s attention to detail was one of the reasons why Xander’s parents had given him the compy to serve as navigator.

The Verne began to jostle and bump as they entered the heavier dust concentrations at the edge of the Fireheart nebula. From this approach, the thick front masked the spectacular view, but deep inside the vast cosmic sea, five intense newborn stars blasted enough radiation to ionize the swirling gases and light up the nebula. The stellar winds also pushed the dust outward, carving out an ever-expanding bubble.

Now the Verne tunneled through the shock front. Static filled the cockpit screens, but OK calmly chose the route of least density. Xander followed the compy’s guidance without flinching. After two minutes of tense turbulence, they were through the compressed dust and into the colorful maelstrom of the nebula itself.

Terry said, “Hands off the controls and let OK fly for the next few minutes.”

Xander sniffed. “I’m perfectly capable.”

“OK isn’t going to stare out the window like a tourist, and you are.”

“Good point.” The compy took over the flying duties, so Xander and Terry could just drink in the scenery, side by side.

“I see why Kotto Okiah wanted to set up shop here. It’s beautiful,” Terry said.

Xander thought of the eccentric Roamer scientist. “I doubt Kotto factored the scenery into his decision at all. A place like this… plenty of potential.”

By the time he turned fourteen, Xander knew every ship system, and when he turned eighteen two years ago, Rlinda Kett had presented him with a ship of his own, the Verne. Though it still technically belonged to Kett Shipping, Xander was the lease owner. His parents gave him the scrapbook of all the planets and settlements he had visited in his life, as well as a book—a real book, made from thin Ildiran crystal sheets—that listed the documented planets and settlements. All of them. Now he had a goal, and he and OK had set out to check planets off the list.

In a spaceport bar at Ulio, he had met Terry Handon, a mechanic and service engineer. Though Terry didn’t belong to any Roamer clan, Xander thought he had Roamer sensibilities. From years of working in the Ulio repair yards, Terry had acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of spaceships, and he knew the Ildiran stardrive backward and forward. He had watched ships come and go in the Ulio complex, but he never went anywhere; the weightless shipyards were perfectly suited to a man who couldn’t use his legs.

When Xander met him, Terry had been collecting images of places he wanted to see. Although he would wistfully look at highlights, natural wonders, astronomical phenomena, he was content to live vicariously. Terry enjoyed hanging out in the spacer bar to listen to travelers telling stories about far-off places. He made a habit of checking the origins of various ships that came to Ulio, though he rarely got up the nerve to talk with the visitors. He was only two years older than Xander.

Xander had just come from the Plumas water mines, which were run by his clan Tamblyn cousins. He showed Terry images of the Plumas ice sheets, the pumping stations under the crust, the wellheads that poked above the surface.

The next time he came through Ulio, he sought Terry out to show him images of other places he had visited in the meantime. The third time, he showed Terry his scrapbook, as well as the extensive list of planets still waiting to be checked off. Terry had seen none of them, which surprised Xander. “You live at the heart of a spaceport and haven’t gone anywhere?”

“Never had the opportunity,” Terry said.

“Never took the opportunity.”

Later, after Xander asked Rlinda Kett’s permission to engage a copilot other than OK, Terry was shocked when Xander made him the offer. “Now you can’t say you never had the opportunity. Are you going to take it?”

Together in the Verne, Xander and Terry made a point of traveling many routes. They were the first to put in for isolated or exotic deliveries because Xander wanted to check another place off his big list. Terry did not possess the same completist mentality. Every spot they visited was new to him, and he was glad to go along.

Now, as the Verne penetrated deeper into the nebula, the starlight and reflected radiation were so bright he couldn’t see the full extent of the Roamer facilities. When they approached the illuminating stars of Fireheart Station, they could make out shielded Roamer harvesters that flew between stations. Cylindrical collectors covered with reflective sheeting were isotope farms. Giant molecule-thin sheets of absorbent polymer metals soaked up the powerful star radiation, and processing stations gathered the energized films and folded them into dense packages, which were then sold as ubiquitous power blocks.

Prominent near the heart of the nebula, the arc of Kotto’s Big Ring was far from complete; not even Roamer scientists could understand exactly what Kotto intended to accomplish with it, other than that he said it “might” become a black-hole factory. The genius inventor had made so many useful discoveries over his career that the clans had stopped asking questions and indulged him.

Xander said, “With so much going on here, it’s too bad we’re just doing a mundane supply run.”

“They’ll be happy to see us. They need to eat, and we can get rid of that Primordial Ooze from Del Kellum’s distillery.” He knew the green priests at Fireheart would also be anxious for the seeds and botanical supplies the Verne carried, crate after crate of crop seeds, bulbs, and modified strains of grain designed to grow under the constant, colorful starshine of the Fireheart nebula.

“Would you like me to recite the manifest?” OK asked.

“No, thanks.” Xander continued looking out the windowport. The Verne headed directly for a terrarium station that glinted in the extravagant starlight. “Nice place for a garden.”

OK recited, “The terrarium station was founded by green priests Celli and Solimar. Over the years it has provided supplemental fresh crops for the workers at Fireheart Station.”

After the Verne was welcomed into the terrarium station’s landing dock, OK secured the ship, checked the engines, and assessed the cargo. Xander bounded down the ramp. The gravity was low enough that Terry needed only a slight assist from the antigrav harness strapped to his waist.

The green priest couple met them. Completely hairless with skin the color of fresh leaves, each wore only a traditional Theron loincloth. Celli, Queen Estarra’s sister, was thin and wiry, with small breasts. Solimar’s chest was broad and muscular.

“You’re a long way from Theroc,” Terry said. “This must be different for a green priest.”

“We have our trees,” said Solimar. “We can communicate with the worldforest network whenever we like, and Fireheart Station depends on us.”

Celli added, “We can’t leave.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Xander asked.

The green priests answered in unison, “Can’t.”

Xander and Terry followed them into the main dome of the terrarium, a large structure with a curved crystalline ceiling. The air was moist and lush with plant smells, spicy leaves, warm grasses. Through the crystalline panes, the incandescent pools of gases made an ever-changing panorama.

“Our orchards and gardens grow more than three hundred different varieties of edible plants,” Solimar said.

Xander stopped in awe as he saw the giant worldtrees that rose up and arched outward to fill much of the terrarium. Even the immense dome seemed too small for the great trees.

“Those were… your treelings?” Xander asked.

“We carried them in pots when we came here,” Celli said. “They’ve grown.”

“We agreed to stay at Fireheart Station for a while to provide communication. Under the constant sunlight, the treelings grew more rapidly than we expected. Now they’ve got no place to go.”

The worldtrees had reached the top of the dome, and curved over. The fronds swept down so low they touched the deck and mingled with the rows of crops.

Celli ran her green hand along the golden bark scales. “They can’t leave, and they keep growing.”

Xander followed the trunks and branches, saw the bent boughs, and felt a brooding sense of claustrophobia. “What’s going to happen to them?”

“The trees are trapped here,” Celli said. “That’s why we have to stay.”

Solimar squeezed her hand. “We know it’s only a matter of time.”