Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 26

“ ‘Hardware reservoir’ is too charitable,” Doctor Eileen said. She, Jim Swift and I were by the display, watching an endless array of ruined space structures that came and went on the screen. Her first enthusiasm had faded, and now she sounded nervous and gloomy. “Graveyard would be a better term. And by the look of it the heap of junk we’re traveling on knows just where it belongs. It came to the right place.”

The Cuchulain was hobbling toward the black unknown of the Eye, slow as a Lake Sheelin thaw. We were not hurrying for two reasons: caution, and because we had no choice. The engines of the Cuchulain sounded as though they were on their last legs. For the past half hour a steady vibration had shaken the whole ship, enough to keep your teeth on edge. At any other time, Danny Shaker would have ordered the drive turned off for maintenance. Today he ignored it. All his attention seemed fixed on the circle of darkness.

Except that he must have been aware of what was going on behind him, because he said, “You claim the glass is half-empty, doctor, but I prefer to think it’s half-full. The Cuchulain isn’t in great shape, but it did exactly what it had to do: It brought us here.”

“To a junkyard. Are you suggesting that you can make a working vessel out of that sort of thing?” Eileen Xavier pointed to where a dismembered drive unit hung close to a mangled cargo stem.

“If I had to. It wasn’t so different from that a few years ago, putting a ship together from bits and pieces so we could limp home. With injuries, too, and crew deaths, to make everything that much harder.” Shaker laughed, as though injuries and deaths were the most natural thing in the world. “But we’re facing nothing like that this time. We’re well off. That’s Godspeed Base ahead of us.”

“Or something,” Doctor Eileen said. “I hope you know what you’re doing, flying straight for that thing.”

“No more than you do, Doctor. But spacers are paid to take risks. Tell me if you want to stop, or if you want to play it supersafe. If you like you can leave the Cuchulain, hang around in a cargo beetle, and watch while we go in.”

He had one eye on Eileen Xavier as he spoke. I was sure that he really knew what he was doing, and that he was just testing her feelings. But suppose she reacted wrong? If she didn’t want to continue, after coming so far and so long… Worst of all, suppose that she made me stay behind and out of danger, the way she had when we reached Paddy’s Fortune.

I decided that it didn’t matter what she wanted. I was crew now, and I would go with the ship.

“Physicians aren’t trained to take risks,” Doctor Eileen said. “Especially with people’s lives. I want an expert opinion on this. Dr. Swift?”

Jim Swift hadn’t spoken since he came to the bridge, apart from an appreciative “Mmm,” when he saw the Eye. But he had been studying the black pupil as we neared it, and making calculations.

Now he said, “I doubt if my thoughts are any different from Captain Shaker’s. The Luimneach Anomaly?”

Danny Shaker nodded. “That’s how I’m thinking.”

“The what?” asked Doctor Eileen.

“Luimneach is one of the frozen planets, ninth one out beyond Tyrone.” Jim Swift looked at Shaker. “Not much that’s valuable there, as I recall.”

“Volatiles. But nothing you can’t find a lot closer to Maveen. Nothing worth hauling.”

“The Luimneach Anomaly is something—I’m not sure what to call it—in orbit around the planet. It’s a black region, just like that one.” Swift pointed to the screen. “Same size, too, according to my estimates.”

“And—inside the Anomaly?” Doctor Eileen glanced from one man to the other.

Danny Shaker shrugged. “Not a thing. I’ve never been inside myself, but I know people who have. There’s nothing there.”

“Which is why it’s so frustrating,” Jim Swift added. “Some people even claim the Anomaly is a natural feature, a quirk in space-time. I never bought that explanation myself, and now we have proof that it’s not true. If we don’t take anything else back with us, this makes the whole trip worthwhile.”

“I had in mind a rather more tangible result,” Doctor Eileen said drily. “I take it, Dr. Swift, that you don’t think it would be too risky to enter?”

He shrugged. “Hey, life’s a risk.”

From her expression it was not quite the reassurance she was looking for. Doctor Eileen sighed and said, “I must be getting old. All right, Captain Shaker. I see that I am in a minority of one. Proceed. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

She was agreeing! We were going in! I could breathe easy again, as the Cuchulain rattled and creaked its way forward. The Eye grew, until it filled the whole display screen with a dense, unrelieved blackness. And then, while I was still waiting for something to happen, Danny Shaker said casually, “The ship is being slowed. We must be passing through the membrane. If this is anything like the Luimneach Anomaly, we’ll be out again in just a few seconds.”

We entered another one of those periods when time stretches forever. It may have been seconds, but it seemed hours before the screen showed a first ghost of an image, a dim outline like a bottom-heavy figure eight with a tiny extra lobe stuck onto its upper end. As Shaker murmured, “Nearly out,” the image brightened and solidified. The middle part flickered and changed randomly before my eyes.

The control room remained silent, until Jim Swift said in a husky voice, “Well, this anomaly’s not empty.”

“Far from it.” Danny Shaker turned to Doctor Eileen. “I can’t guarantee that this is Godspeed Base until we take a closer look. But I’ll bet my share of this whole venture on it. The big sphere on the bottom end of that structure is just the sort of hangar where you do deep space service on large ships.”

“What about the Drive?” I asked.

Shaker nodded. “Where there’s a ship, inside a hangar, inside an anomaly, inside a hardware net, then inside that ship you can hope to find…”

He didn’t finish his sentence. But I finished it for him, inside my head.

…a Godspeed Drive.

The exploring party was itching to be on its way even before the Cuchulain reached the structure. Only a skeleton crew would remain on our ship, because everyone wanted to go. As Jim Swift said, with a perverse logic that seemed shared by everyone, “I’m quite sure it is. But if it isn’t, I want to know at once.”

So did I, only I had worries of my own. I didn’t like that talk of a skeleton crew that would stay on the Cuchulain.

While Jim Swift seemed to be starting an argument with Danny Shaker and Doctor Eileen about the best way to explore the space structure floating ahead of us, I sneaked away to the top level of the living quarters. I was learning. Out of sight, out of mind. I didn’t want to be around when the skeleton crew was picked.

On the upper level I went to find Mel, but apparently she was learning, too. She stayed hidden until I called softly, “Mel? It’s me. It’s safe.”

Then she popped out and was at me like a hurricane. “What are you doing here? Tell me what’s happening. First Eileen Xavier—she vanishes, and she doesn’t come back. Then it’s Jim Swift. Gone. Then it’s Duncan West. Where did they go? What are they doing?”

“If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you.” I paused, savoring the moment until I thought she was ready to burst, then I said, “We’ve found it, Mel!”

“The Reservoir?”

“The Reservoir, the Net, the Needle, the Eye, everything. Godspeed Base, and the Godspeed Drive.”

“You’ve been to them?”

“Well, no. But I will have, in an hour or so. We’ll be docking any minute. Then a party will go over there.”

“But you won’t be part of it. You said Doctor Eileen wouldn’t let you go to Paddy’s Fortune because she thought it might be dangerous.”

“This will be different. She only did that because I was standing right in front of her.”

I was feeling smug at my own cunning, and it must have showed. Because Mel looked furious, and suddenly I didn’t feel so full of bounce. She had been standing right by me, but now she plopped down in a chair. “You’ve been sitting up on the bridge all fat and happy. And you’re going off to find the Godspeed Drive. And I’m trapped here with nothing to do but play Jim Swift’s stupid games with the navaid. It’s not fair, and I’ve had it. I’ve been doing my best to act responsibly, but you’re hiding me away forever. When we started out I had no idea it would take so much time.”

“No one did. The engines are in awful shape, we’ve had to travel really slow.”

It wasn’t much of an answer, and I knew it. Mel was on the boil, and if I stayed around I was going to be the one that got the heat. “I’ll go and ask Doctor Eileen,” I said hurriedly. “She might be able to tell us something.”

“Never mind something.” Mel glowered at me. “Find out how long it will be before we get to Erin.”

“Right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” (After we return from Godspeed Base).

I escaped before Mel could have another go at me. When I arrived at the bridge there was just one person present. Donald Rudden was settled in the most comfortable chair, staring at the displays. A monstrous multilayer sandwich waited on a tray in front of him.

“Where is everybody?” I said.

“Eh?” He turned to frown at me. “Why, they’ve gone, that’s where they are. All but me.” He pointed a stubby finger at the screen. The middle part of the space structure on the display made me squint and blink. Flickering surges of light ran around it, and I couldn’t bring it into focus.

“What’s that? I can’t see anything.”

“Because you’re staring at the wrong bit. Don’t try to see the middle lump, you’ll go cross-eyed. Look there.” He jabbed his finger onto the screen, and I saw a humpbacked cargo beetle, heading for the big ovoid that formed the solid bottom of the figure-eight space structure. “There they go.”

“What about me?!”

“You’re here.”

“But I was supposed to go with them!”

He seemed puzzled, and stared at his sandwich for inspiration. “Well, you weren’t here, were you?” he said at last. “How could they take you, if you weren’t here to be taken?”

It was no good arguing with him, the great pudding. I fled back to Mel. At least she would feel better, knowing that the two of us were in the same boat.

Apparently she did feel better. In fact, when I told her what had happened to me she started to laugh like a lunatic, rolling round and round the cabin.

Sometimes you have to think that the rule, No women in space, is an excellent idea.