Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 10

I felt poised on the brink of space, but before I get there, I have to talk about the Muldoon Spaceport and the ferry launch system.

I had visited the port half a dozen times, and thought that I knew it well before ever I met Danny Shaker. Ten minutes with him taught me otherwise. I had seen things from the outside, so to speak, like a person who sees just the walls and windows and roof of a house, but doesn’t realize there are people and furniture inside. Now I was going to be allowed in through the front door.

We went straight to the ferry site. It was a monster flat circle of concrete, with a ferry ship already sitting on the metal grid at its center. When the weather was bad the whole thing could be covered by a great sliding dome, and it would sit that way through most of the winter. But at the moment the sky was bright and clear, and everything lay open.

The place was almost deserted after Winterfall, but Shaker said that was no problem. “The only reason you need people here is to load cargo. Once that’s done, the launch system is automatic. When we’re ready we’ll be carried to Upside rendezvous.”

“What’s that?”

“Upside. The rest of Muldoon Spaceport. It’s up in stationary orbit. There’s as much there as here—maybe more.”

“But where’s the crew?” I could see Tom Toole, pottering about with his back to us over on the other side of the circle, and that was all.

“Enjoying the last bit of their Winterfall holiday, most of them. They’ll stay on Erin to the last minute, then join us on the Cuchulain. Come on.”

He whistled through his teeth, an odd sound like a fluting birdcall. Tom Toole turned and nodded in greeting, but he did not move to join us as Shaker led the way across the concrete circle. I paused, suddenly nervous. Surely Daniel Shaker wasn’t proposing to use the launch vehicle now, before Doctor Eileen or Duncan West were here?

I was reassured by the thought that it was morning, and all launches took place after sunset. I followed him. He had gone all the way across to the central metal grid. Now he was standing on it, staring downward. As I came up to him, stepping carefully, he pointed down.

“See that?”

I followed the line of his arm, and saw circles of dull red beneath the grid.

“If you’re ever here when they start to flash on and off, run for it. It means the launch grid is going to operate in the next minute. If you were standing here when that happened, you’d die but no one would have to bury you. You’d go like a puff of smoke.”

And we were going to space in a ship sitting on top of that lethal grid.

“Why doesn’t it vaporize the ferry ship?” I didn’t want information. I wanted reassurance.

“Because of this,” Shaker said. He stepped forward, to the great pie-shaped cushion plate sitting beneath the ship. “It can stand pressures and temperatures better than anything ever built on Erin.”

“This wasn’t built on Erin? Where was it built?” For the past few minutes I had been asking question after question, but Danny Shaker didn’t seem to mind. He was so friendly and easygoing, it was hard to see him as a spacer captain. Captains ought to be gruff and tough and rigid, not smiling and softspoken.

“No one knows quite where—or when.” He slapped his open palm hard on the cushion plate, and it rang with a high-pitched sound like a gigantic crystal glass. “But it’s all ancient,” he went on. “From before the Isolation.”

His voice was quite matter-of-fact. There was clearly no doubt in his mind that the Isolation was real. There had once been travel to the stars, and a known universe far beyond the Forty Worlds, and that was that.

“But it works perfectly well,” he continued. “Safer than anything we build today. In fact, there’s no way we could build anything like this now. We don’t have the tools, or the materials, or the knowledge. Erin is really lucky to have it. Without the ferry system I doubt we’d ever have been able to get off planet to scavenge the Forty Worlds. And without the light elements we get from them, Erin would be in real trouble.

“Ever see the inside of a ferry ship? Come on.” He did not wait for an answer, but went right to the ramp that carried cargo and passengers up into the ship.

Seen from a distance on the great circle of the launch site, as I had always seen them, the ferry ships had appeared big, but not really enormous. Each one was a silvery half-sphere, without windows or any other features, sitting above its cushion plate. At the very top of each ship was an antenna like a black hoop. It was easy to imagine the ship as a great serving dish, to be lifted away from the cushion plate using the hoop above.

I knew that was wrong, because the ship and cushion plate had to remain strongly bound together unless they were deliberately released in orbit. But what I did not realize, until I stepped inside a ferry ship, was just how huge it was. I followed Danny Shaker at least ten paces to a central control room, through a narrow corridor higher than his head. The internal partitions were transparent, and we were surrounded on all sides by great bales of stacked cargo.

And once I was inside, I could see that the dome was all beat-up and battered. The walls and the curved ceiling were full of nicks and dents and smudges, where cargo had collided hard against them.

“Not during take-off or landing,” said Danny Shaker. He had followed my eyes and my thoughts. “Those are as smooth as you could ask. The dents happen during careless loading.” He sat down before a whole bank of switches and dials. “All ready? If you are, sit down there.”

“Ready for what?” I sat down, hurriedly.

“For a little trial run.” His grin took a lot of my worry away. “I know that you’re like most Downsiders, you’ve never been up before. So I thought we’d lift now, just a little way. Then when it’s the real thing tomorrow, with Doctor Xavier and your friend Duncan, you’ll be an old hand and know just what to expect.”

He didn’t actually give me a choice. Before I could say anything he had thrown four switches, and I heard a distant wailing.

“Sirens outside the ship,” Shaker explained. “That’s to warn Tom Toole and anyone else to stay clear. Not that he needs it. See, he’s away already.”

He pointed to screens set spaced around the circular control room. They showed the deserted flat plain of concrete outside the ferry ship. Somewhere, although I had never seen a sign of them, cameras must be fixed to the exterior of the ship, pointing outward and down.

“Now we’ll have half a minute of the flashing warning underneath the launch grid,” went on Danny Shaker. “Then we’ll be off.”

My stomach gave a little warning quiver, like the time one summer when I drank too much cold lake water and it went right through me. But before anything horrible could happen I felt a faint discomfort in my ears, and Shaker said calmly, “And we’re off. Take a look.”

It was like a dream. We were not moving, we couldn’t be. But the view on the screens was changing. The flat concrete had been replaced by domes and hangers and sky towers. We were looking down on them, and every second they were farther below us.

The strange thing is, I had none of the dizzy feelings that had so upset me when I was climbing to the top of the water tower. Even when the domes dwindled and dwindled below us until I could see across Lake Sheelin all the way to Toltoona, there was never the sensation of height. It was like sitting in a solid building and watching a moving picture.

“All right?” asked Shaker.

“I’m fine.” I laughed. “This is wonderful. Will space be like this?”

“I’m afraid not. Much more boring—during launch or landfall there’s always something to look at. In space there’s nothing to see, sometimes for months. Well, I guess that will do.”

Shaker flipped another set of switches. After a few more seconds the pictures on the screen stopped shrinking and began to grow. Soon I could again see the towers and domes of Muldoon, moving closer and closer.

“How high did we go?” The last thing I wanted to do was land.

“Half a kilometer. Not high enough?” Shaker smiled at me, reading my disappointment. “Don’t worry. You’ll get the rest of it tomorrow—all the way to space.”

We landed, as smoothly as we had taken off.

That was it, the whole thing. My first ride: not to space, but toward space. It may not sound like much as I’ve described it, and the whole rest of the day was spent hauling supplies with Tom Toole, who I don’t think spoke ten words to me more than he needed to.

But it was a lot to me, and something must have showed. Because late that night, when Doctor Eileen came back from her trip around Lake Sheelin, I was still up, sitting in the apartment at Muldoon that we were sharing between the three of us. She took one look at me and said, “What’s so wonderful, Jay?”

“Daniel Shaker.” Uncle Duncan replied for me. “Took him for a joy ride in a ferry ship. Made him into a Shaker fan.”

“I believe it. I’m close to being one myself.” Doctor Eileen took off her coat and helped herself to a hot drink. I didn’t blame her. The night outside was the coldest of the year.

“Daniel Shaker is a thinker,” she went on, “and that’s a rarity—especially among spacers. I’ll bet he’s a reader, too. How did you find him, Duncan?”

“Find him?” Uncle Duncan looked vague as ever. “I don’t know. Asked around Muldoon. Talked to people. There isn’t really much choice at this time of year. Not many crews want to go out, and not many ships are available to take them.”

It was a typical nondescript Unkadunka reply, but it seemed good enough for Doctor Eileen.

“So we were lucky.” She settled with a sigh into a chair, and sipped her drink. “That’s good. I talked to Molly, and she didn’t mind much that she isn’t going. She has more than enough to do back home. But she did say that she was worried about Jay. I told her not to worry, we were in good hands. It’s nice for once to know that it’s true.”