Penumbra

9

Bennett and Mackendrick were checking supplies and equipment in the cargo hold when the Cobra gave a sudden jolt. The sensation of riding an elevator indicated that the floor of the repair pit was rising to meet the deck of the spaceport. Bennett grabbed the tail-gate of the open-topped transporter, swaying with the motion.

“If that’s it down here we’ll join Ten,” Mackendrick said.

They took the lift-plate to the upper deck, standing side by side in silence. Mackendrick was wearing a black flight-suit, so tight that it shrink-wrapped his thin frame, emphasising his prominent rib-cage and scooped pelvis. Since learning of the tycoon’s illness, Bennett had never been able to look at Mackendrick without thinking that soon, perhaps within a year, the man would be dead. He wondered how one could go on living with the knowledge that death was imminent. He thought of his father, and how he had coped with the fact of his approaching end. Then he realised that right at this minute, in Mojave Town, the remains of his father were being interred in the grave garden. He recalled his father’s eyes, as he died, accusing him, and he felt a sudden and painful stab of guilt.

The flight-deck was finished in ubiquitous regulation black: jet carpet, couches and curving walls, the better for the pilots to apprehend the dozens of illuminated readouts and screens. Through the delta viewscreen Bennett watched a tug reverse towards the nose of the Cobra, engage grabs and take the weight of the ship. Slowly they trundled forward, past the terminal building, towards the vacant blast-pad and posse of waiting technicians and mechanics.

Mackendrick lay on the engineer’s couch to the rear of the flight-deck, and carefully buckled his thin frame into the safety harness. Ten Lee was already strapped into her couch, the wraparound command console pulled close. Her face, surrounded by a bulging flight helmet with the visor screen down, was a study in emotionless concentration as she cycled through the pre-flight programs.

Bennett took his helmet from the pilot’s couch and pulled it down over his head, feeling the familiar comfort of its snug fit. The irritating chatter of a flight controller played in his right ear; he modulated the noise below the threshold of audibility. They were still one hour from liftoff. He would rather be alone with his thoughts until then.

He climbed into his couch, sinking into its padded depths. Everything about the Cobra, from major mechanical specifics right down to minor design features, was superior to anything else he’d flown over the years. Mackendrick had spared no expense when fitting and equipping the ship.

He pulled the horseshoe console towards him, locking it in place. He flipped down his visor and went through the running program with Ten Lee. This was, he realised, more a routine process to soothe his pre-flight nerves. During his fifteen years in space he had never flown trans-c. In fact, the furthest he had ever travelled was to Mars on a short vacation ten years ago. He had every confidence in his own ability to fly the Cobra, especially when they arrived at Penumbra and he had to take them through the storm-riven atmosphere—and he knew that he could not hope for a better ship or operating system. But the fact remained that they were embarking on a faster-than-light voyage through two thousand light years of unexplored space. He found it hard to grasp the enormity of what was about to happen. The fact of the flight alone was mind-numbing, without considering what they might find when they finally made landfall on Penumbra.

He raised his visor and glanced across at Ten Lee. She was reading off a string of equations with the calm of someone to whom this reality was nothing more than a passing illusion.

They reached the blast-pad and the tug disengaged. Hydraulic gantries took the weight of the ship and eased it to the vertical. Bennett tipped, staring up through the viewscreen at the bright blue sky.

He opened communications with the control tower and for the next half hour went through the process of program checks and data monitoring. Through the side-screen he noticed the bowsers and trucks carrying the mechanics and technicians beetling away across the tarmac. The sight filled him with a feeling of isolation he recalled from ten years ago, when he regularly piloted shuttles from ground to orbit.

One minute before lift-off the main engines engaged. Control counted down. Bennett laid his head back against the rest and gripped the arms of the couch. He glanced back at Mackendrick, strapped into the engineer’s couch. The tycoon sketched a brief smile and gave a thumbs-up gesture.

Seconds later the Cobra surged from the blast-pad, the pressure of ascent pushing Bennett further into his seat. His head rattled with the vibration of the rapid climb, blurring his vision. He thought of the sightseers in the observation gallery, the kids gasping at the spectacular pyrotechnics of blast-off.

In his helmet the tinny voice of the controller signed off. “Good luck Bennett, Theneka. She’s all yours.”

They climbed and turned. Through the sidescreen Bennett made out the vast sweep of the western seaboard, and then the great ochre plain of the Mojave, punctuated with the verdant circles of a dozen townships and settlements. From this high it appeared so artificial, impossible to conceive that down below normal people were conducting normal, everyday lives.

He turned his head and smiled at Mackendrick. “You okay, Mack?”

It was all the old tycoon could do to lift a hand in silent assent. Bennett hoped Mackendrick would be equal to the stress of the take-off.

Ten Lee’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Twenty seconds until phase-out.”

“Check,” he said, glancing at his screen. The system was running smoothly.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

They were almost at the altitude where it would be safe to effect the transfer. Then the Schulmann-Dearing would cut in, tearing the fabric of localised space with such concentrated energy that, had the phase-out been effected on the ground, the area of the port around the ship would have been destroyed.

Bennett felt a stab of apprehension. Hell, but in seconds he would be travelling faster than the speed of light, this tiny shell-like vehicle cancelling the laws of physics and hurtling three frail human beings to the very edge of the galaxy.

He thought of Julia. He almost wished he was with her now, suffering her barbed recriminations.

“Two… one… transition,” Ten Lee said.

The deafening rumble of the main engines cut out suddenly, to be replaced with an eerie almost-silence. As his hearing adjusted he was aware that the ship was ringing with a low, almost subliminal hum, like the constantly dying note of a struck tuning fork.

He peered through the viewscreen. Where the thin blue of the stratosphere should have been, or the familiar scatter of stars, the scene was unique and strange: the stars had turned to streamers and were hosing towards and around the ship like a bombardment of polychromatic flak. He was aware of a sensation of abstraction; he felt at several removes from the reality around him, like a patient in a post-operative daze.

Ten Lee pulled off her helmet. She stared through the viewscreen in silent wonder, her open-mouthed regard unusually expressive. “Some scholars say that the void is the physical embodiment of the state to which we all aspire, Joshua.”

“Josh,” Mackendrick said from behind them. “If you and the Dalai Lama wouldn’t mind helping me to my unit…”

Bennett unfastened himself and moved over to Mackendrick. The old man looked pale, as if the stress of takeoff and phase-out had been too much. He could hardly stand, and it took Bennett and Ten Lee supporting each arm to assist him from the flight-deck. They moved down the corridor to the suspension chamber. The three suspension units—long silver containers resembling nothing so much as coffins—stood side by side in the centre of the room.

Mackendrick lay down in the form-shaped padding and sighed as sub-dermal capillaries eased themselves into his flesh. The transparent cover hummed shut over his unconscious body. In four months, when phase-out of the void was accomplished, he would be woken up.

Bennett was due to come out of suspension at the midpoint stage of the voyage, to assist Ten Lee in routine systems checks. Ten Lee had requested that she remain unsuspended for the duration of the flight. She wished to meditate. She had even brought along meagre rations to last her until landfall, vegetarian fare consisting of lentil bread and soya cakes, even though the ship was equipped with pre-packed food supplies.

Bennett left the suspension chamber and moved along the corridor to his berth. He lifted the simulated identity hologram from his bag and placed it on the bedside unit. He had never talked to Ella’s ghost anywhere other than the memorial garden; it was strange to think that he could commune with her so far from home. He moved around the small room, setting up the projectors and receivers at strategic positions. Then he sat on the narrow bunk and placed his finger-tips on the touch-sensitive module.

She appeared before him, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room, and his heart lurched. The SIH had assessed the passage of time and changed Ella’s style of dress accordingly. It must have been evening back on Earth, bedtime, for his sister was wearing her crimson pyjamas.

She leapt up and stared around the room. She looked at Bennett and beamed. “Hi, Josh.” A frown. “Where are we?” She ran to the viewscreen, reached up on tip-toe, leaned forward and peered out.

Bennett watched her, some unnameable emotion, poignant almost beyond endurance, swelling in his chest. The sight of her here, out of the usual context of the memorial garden, served to heighten the reality of her image and so emphasise the fact of her non-existence. Bennett was reminded of the many places she had never been, the many experiences she had never lived to enjoy.

She turned to him, a look of wonder transfixed on her pretty features. “Are we in space, Josh? Are we?”

“We’re aboard a Cobra lightship, Ella. You always said you wanted to go into space.”

“Hey!” she exclaimed, turning to the viewscreen and staring out at the flickering tracer of starlight streaming around the contours of the ship. “This is fantastic, Josh! Thanks a million times!”

She jumped on to the padded seat before the view-screen, turned so that she could stare out at the void and glance from time to time at Bennett. She hugged her legs and gave a conspiratorial grin. “Is this my birthday present, Josh?”

“Your birthday?”

He smiled, caught. Her birthday was on the twenty-seventh, tomorrow, and in the past he had always avoided communion with Ella on her birthday, the anniversary bringing to mind thoughts and memories too painful to relive. The SIH was programmed so that it would present a never-ageing Ella, an Ella forever ten years old and full of health. Shortly after her tenth birthday, more than twenty years ago, she had died.

Bennett remembered the birthday party at the hospital, the forced cheer of the occasion, the almost desperate desire of his mother and father to celebrate the day as if nothing was amiss. But Ella had been woozy with powerful sedatives, increasingly fraught from having to endure the protracted, almost desperate festivities of parents too scared to admit to themselves that this birthday would likely be her very last. Bennett had bought her a present, spent much of his savings on a small computer diary, perhaps with the subconscious hope that she would be able to complete the year’s entries. But she had been too tired to open it. A few days after her death, Bennett had walked out into the desert and buried it in the sand.

“This is the best birthday present I’ve ever had, Josh! Are we going to Mars?” Her eyes widened at another thought. “Are we going to Jupiter, Josh? All the way out to Jupiter!”

Bennett smiled. “Even further, Ella. We’re travelling faster than light towards the Rim of the galaxy.”

“Far out!” she breathed, fingering a strand of hair from her eyes and gazing out at the light show.

Bennett watched her, understanding now why he had summoned her.

“Ella.”

She turned, still smiling.

“The last time I spoke to you…” he began.

She frowned with the effort of recollection. “Oh, four days ago—you’d just got back from Redwood Station, hadn’t you? And you said Daddy wanted… euthanalia?”

“Euthanasia,” Bennett said. “I visited him that day at the hospital. I was with him when he died. I…” He knew why the admission was so hard to make. “I didn’t go to his funeral, Ella. It was today, the day we left Earth. Do you understand, Ella?”

She nodded, very serious. “Of course I do. It’s okay, Josh. Daddy would have understood.”

“Do you think it matters, if you miss a person’s funeral?”

She pulled her thinking-cap face. At last she smiled. “I don’t think so,” she said, and with what might have been little-girl logic or computer sophistry went on: “I mean, the person doesn’t know you weren’t there, do they?”

He stared at her. He recalled what had happened, all those years ago, when he had returned from the desert after burying her stupid, useless diary. His mother had given him a suit to change into and told him that they were to attend Ella’s funeral, which seemed to Bennett in his youthful ignorance an event that could only compound his sense of loss. How could he have known that the funerary ritual was a necessary part of the grieving process, a cathartic experience that had to be endured?

Now he reached out to the touch-pad. Ella, in the process of swinging down from the seat, froze in mid-leap, one leg pointing to the floor, her mouth open to speak to him.

He stared at her suspended image and, involuntarily, found himself telling her: “The day of your funeral, Ella… It was so hot. I still couldn’t believe you were dead. I mean, I knew, intellectually. I knew I’d never see you again, but something inside me just couldn’t accept the fact. I suppose it was too terrible an idea to grasp.” He paused. “It was so hot and the thought of you in that coffin… They were going to cremate you, and I couldn’t take it. I’m sorry, Ella. I’m sorry I didn’t go to your funeral.” He paused again, wondering why he had waited until now to admit the guilt he had kept buried for years.

They had driven to the grave garden in Mojave, and followed the procession as Ella’s coffin was carried on an electric bier to the crematorium. At the sight of the building, pumping out the smoke of the previous cremation, something had snapped within him and he had vomited down his suit. He had complained of stomach pains and doubled over for effect, anything to be spared the trial of experiencing the funeral, the scattering of his sister’s ashes in the pit where a tree would be planted in her name. It had worked: a family friend had rushed him to her nearby house, where he had washed himself and changed into clothes too big for him, and said that he needed to lie down. From the settee in the lounge of the stranger’s house he had watched the smoke rise above the tree-tops.

He looked up, suddenly aware of a presence. Ten Lee was standing in the open doorway, staring at him. He wondered how long she had been there, how much she had seen.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was passing…”

“It’s okay.”

With her diminutive stature and scarlet flight-suit, she was a strange mirror image of Ella in her bright red pyjamas.

Ten Lee was staring at the image of Ella, frozen mid-leap. “Who is this?”

Bennett stared at Ten Lee, challenging. “She was my sister, Ella.”

Ten Lee nodded, the composure of her features suggesting neither censure nor comprehension. “Was?”

“She died a long time ago, when she was ten.”

He reached out to the touch-pad. Ella completed her leap and landed on the floor before him. She saw Ten Lee and smiled. “Hi there. Who are you?”

Ten Lee regarded Ella, considering her response. She looked past the image at Bennett. “Joshua, please turn it off.”

“Ella,” he said. “I’ll see you later, okay?” He reached out and touched the pad and the image of his sister winked out of existence.

“What?” he said to Ten Lee, his aggression anticipating her criticism.

She gestured at the SIH unit. “Why, Joshua?”

“It helps,” he told her. “We were close when we were kids. Ella was a good friend. When she died…” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “I know she isn’t really Ella, but she’s the next best thing. Over the years we’ve developed a relationship that I value.”

“Even now?”

Bennett nodded. “Even now. She reminds me of the times we had together.”

“Joshua, we all live in the shadow of the fact of death. It is the purpose of one’s life to come to some acceptance of its inevitability, so that the idea of it does not destroy us. We must come to some accommodation of the fact of our own mortality.” She paused, her tipped eyes regarding him. “Joshua, you can’t accept the idea of your own death if you fail to accept the death of loved ones, if you cling to this… this fantasy.”

“It’s all I have,” he whispered, staring at her.

“It is all you have because you have never given it up.”

Seconds elapsed, and when next Bennett looked up he saw that Ten Lee had slipped from the room, leaving him to contemplate the meaning of her words, as a disciple tries to unravel the conundrum of a koan. In the past he would have wished for sleep to claim him, the refuge from contemplation of his failings and weakness. Aboard the Cobra there was a means of oblivion far more effective than mere sleep.

He quickly left the room and moved to the chamber containing the suspension units. At his touch the lid slipped open and he lay down inside. His flesh crept to the touch of the sub-dermals. He might have felt apprehension had he given himself time to contemplate the fact of this, his first time in suspension, but all he sought was peace from his thoughts, and in seconds he was unconscious.

Later he thought that he had dreamed, but in suspension dreams were impossible. The workings of the mind were effectively stopped, metabolic processes halted. What he did recall were the memories and images that flooded his mind once the unit returned him to semiconsciousness; the dreams that filled the hours as he slowly became aware of himself, some two months later.

In this waking period he experienced a series of fractured images: his father, bizarrely dressed in the grey VR suit, walking through the grave garden behind Ella’s coffin; then Ella herself, in pyjamas, running into the desert and frantically scrabbling through the hot sand in search of her buried diary. The pain of this final image tore a scream from his throat. He sat up quickly, shrugging the massage pads from his arms. He swung his legs free of their soothing ministrations and sat on the edge of the unit, holding his head in his hands and breathing deeply.

Two months had elapsed, he knew, but it seemed no more than minutes since he had left his room and given himself to the suspension unit. He felt an ache in his bones and he was overcome with a terrible weariness.

He stood, reaching for the wall to support himself. His vision swam and his head pounded with a severe, persistent throbbing, like migraine. He staggered from the room and crossed the corridor to the shower units.

Hot needles of water restored sensation to his body. He stretched, easing the pain from his muscles. He became aware that he was hungry and thirsty. After standing below the drier, he dressed in a fresh flight-suit and fetched a self-heating tray of food from storage He ate in his room, wanting the reassuring company of Ella, but telling himself that he would appreciate her more if he waited until he had run through the checks with Ten Lee.

After eating, feeling better for the shower and the meal, he made his way to the flight-deck. Ten Lee was seated in the lotus position before the viewscreen, staring out at the streaming stars.

He tried to detect any change in the void surrounding the ship; he wondered if perhaps the elongated lights of the stars were less tightly packed here, the multi-colours fainter. It was hard to tell. The almost inaudible bass note still filled the ship, noticeable more in his solar plexus as a constant low vibration.

Ten Lee saw his reflection in the viewscreen and without turning said, “Joshua.”

It seemed just two minutes since they had spoken in his room; he wondered if she would mention his reliance on the holographic Ella. Then he reminded himself that for Ten Lee two months had elapsed. She would have had much more to occupy her mind during that time.

“I checked on Mack from time to time, Joshua.”

“How is he?”

She smiled. “Sleeping peacefully.”

She unfolded her knotted legs, stood and climbed into the co-pilot’s couch. “We’re over halfway to the Rim, Joshua.”

“How’s it been?”

“Peaceful. I have learnt much. I think the practice of meditating in the void can be recommended. I seemed to attain a greater appreciation of sunyata.”

“I’m pleased for you,” Bennett muttered. “Shall we get this over with?”

For the next hour they cycled through the series of checks, calling off figures and read-outs to each other. Everything was going according to plan: they were on course, ahead of schedule, and the Schulmann-Dearing propulsion unit was performing at optimum. They were due to phase into the G5/13 star system in a little under six weeks.

The checks over, Bennett pushed the wraparound console away and stretched. “Sure you’re okay here on your own, Ten?”

She blinked at him. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Don’t you get lonely?”

She shook her head. “I never get lonely, Joshua. Loneliness is just another one of your strange Western concepts.”

“You don’t need anyone?”

“I am trying to go beyond need.”

Bennett thought of the times in the past when loneliness had suffocated him with a feeling of inescapability like claustrophobia. He recalled the years after Ella’s death, when there had been no one out there who understood or sympathised. He wondered how he had survived without going mad.

He stared at Ten Lee. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “See you in six weeks.”

She made no response. Her gaze was fixed on the void.

He moved down the corridor to his room. He sat on his bunk, staring at the touch-pad. He would talk to Ella for a while, then catch some regular sleep for a few hours before returning to the suspension unit.

He reached out and pressed the touch-pad.

Ella appeared in the middle of the floor, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She was wearing a pale green gown, which Bennett was slow to recognise. A hospital gown, he realised with bewilderment.

“Joshua,” she said in a small voice.

“Ella?”

“I don’t feel well.”

He stared at her. She was no longer the impossibly pretty, elfin-faced creature the hologram usually projected. Her face was pale and elongated, her eyes large, staring.

“Joshua…” she said, a note of appeal in her voice.

“Ella, get up. Stop playing games.”

His mind was racing. The module had never done this before. Always Ella had been radiantly healthy, full of energy and optimism. Then he noticed her hair. It was thin, straggling. Her pale scalp showed through the threadbare tresses.

Bennett slipped off the bunk and sat on the floor beside her. More than anything he wanted to reach out, take her hand and comfort her. Emotion blocked his throat, hot and raw.

“I know what’s happening, Joshua. We can’t live for ever, can we?”

“Ella…”

“I’ve enjoyed our times together. We’ve had some good fun, haven’t we? All those talks. Your stories of space. And coming here, for my birthday. That was really good.”

“Ella. You’ll be fine, really. You’ll get better.”

She gave a weak smile. “Not this time, Joshua,” she said, staring at him. “You see we all must accept death, our own, those of the people we love.”

Only then did he begin to understand. He stared at her, tried to protest.

“You’ll soon be on your own, Josh. You must accept what is happening to me. Let go and lead your own life.”

She smiled and reached out, and Bennett lifted his own hand and reached for her, and their finger-tips met and meshed, and Bennett felt nothing.

As he watched, Ella’s narrow rib-cage ceased its steady rise and fall, and her mouth opened with a final sigh, and her head slipped to one side.

Bennett wanted to cry out, in anger and grief.

He stared. Something was appearing around the still, silent image of Ella. He made out the steady upward growth of plush pink padding, of polished rosewood. The hologram of the coffin soon enclosed the body of his sister, pale now in death.

As he watched, the coffin and the body burst into bright flame, which grew and flared and then died, and soon exhausted itself, guttering out to leave nothing.

He closed his eyes, too drained even to weep. He experienced a surge of anger, directed at the young boy he had been, the coward who had missed his sister’s funeral.

At last he stood, wondering how he might face Ten Lee, what he might say to her. He left his room and made his way down the corridor.

She sat on the floor of the flight-deck in the lotus position, the soiled soles of her feet upturned, thumbs and index fingers forming perfect circles. Her eyes were open, watching him.

He leaned against the wall, slid down and sat on his haunches. He felt unutterably weary, drained of all emotion. He tried to detect in Ten Lee’s pacific visage some trace of censure or compassion.

“What now, Ten?” he asked.

She lifted her shoulders in an expressive shrug, maintained her posture. “You have a choice, Joshua. We always have choices. It is the choices we make that determine how we regard ourselves.”

He shook his head wearily. “I don’t understand what the hell you’re talking about, Ten. What choice do I have?”

“I made a copy of the old Ella program. You can have it, and resume your relationship with the hologram. Or you can leave it in my keeping to dispose of later. The choice is yours. I am saying nothing to persuade you one way or the other, and I will abide by your decision.”

He hung his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Then go, Joshua, and make your decision later,” and she closed her eyes and resumed her meditation.

After perhaps a minute, Bennett pushed himself to his feet and hurried down the corridor to the suspension chamber. His thoughts rang with her words, the need to decide. He knew what he should do, he knew very well, but the spirit was weak and habit was hard to break.

He lay down in his unit and closed his eyes, and oblivion claimed him.

This time, upon awakening, he was beset by images of flames, and beyond the flames Ella’s face staring out at him and calling his name. He reached out for her, towards her illusory fingers, but as fast as he approached her she seemed to retreat, smiling sadly at him.

He awoke in a sweat, her words ringing in his ears. He swung himself upright and sat on the side of the unit, massaging sensation back into his arms. As the minutes elapsed, so the images faded, became nebulous and increasingly more difficult to recall. He was left, as he made his way to the showers, with an elusive sensation of loss somewhere deep within him.

After showering he moved to the flight-deck, expecting to find Ten Lee there and not relishing the encounter. He found only Mackendrick, lying on the engineer’s couch. He looked frail; the months in the suspension unit seemed to have aged him, even though Bennett knew that the tycoon had aged not one second during the flight.

“Where’s Ten?” Bennett asked.

“In her room.”

Mackendrick eased himself into a sitting position and Bennett sat down on the end of the couch.

“How do you feel?”

Bennett shook his head. “I never realised how much suspension takes out of you. I feel like I’ve just had major surgery.”

“What happened to your body was even more radical than surgery, Josh. We were cryogenically suspended, maintained on a sophisticated life-support system for almost four months, and then revived. No wonder we feel like shit.”

Bennett smiled. “You okay?”

“I’ll live.” Mackendrick glanced at him and laughed. “For a little longer, anyway.”

Bennett saw that the old man was holding a pix; he’d been staring at it in silence when Bennett entered. Now Mackendrick passed it to him. The pix showed Mackendrick’s wife, Naheed, sitting on the porch of a big colonial house, smiling at the camera. Bennett passed it back.

“I miss her, Bennett. Even after twelve years. When we knew there was nothing we could do, I financed research into how the suspension units might be utilised to preserve life. Sustain terminally ill people indefinitely, until a cure was found. Of course it can’t be done. Oh, my scientists pushed the boundaries back a bit—the units can be used on trans-c flight for up to a year now, before living tissue starts to corrupt. Twelve years ago it was only six month, but that was a small gain. Nothing could be done to help Naheed, or the millions like her.”

“You never remarried?”

“Too busy, Bennett. Threw myself into my work. Never met the right woman. No one could replace Naheed. I suppose I shouldn’t have compared, but…”

Bennett found himself saying, “We can’t hold on to the past, Mack.”

“Suppose you’re right, but sometimes it’s the only thing to hold on to. Sita, my daughter…”

Bennett glanced at the old man. He was pulling something from the breast pocket of his flight-suit. He passed a second pix to Bennett. This one showed the head and shoulders of a young woman, presumably Sita, very much like her mother.

Bennett recalled that Mackendrick had said he was no longer in contact with his daughter.

Mackendrick was shaking his head. “When I said that the past is the only thing to hold on to, I meant that sometimes things happen, things that are hard to understand or believe. They leave you wishing that it might have happened somehow differently. You hold on to the past you knew before it happened.”

Bennett waited, not wanting to force the old man to talk of things so obviously a source of pain and regret. Filled with a sense of foreboding, he returned the pix of the young woman.

Mackendrick smiled. “This isn’t an actual image of a real person, Bennett. It’s computer-generated, taken from pix of Sita when she was nine. It’s how she probably would look now.”

Bennett found his voice. “You mean, your daughter died?”

He wondered why Mackendrick had kept computer-aged images of Sita. Perhaps, he thought, for the same reason that I rely on the hologram of Ella.

Mackendrick was shaking his head. “It was thirteen years ago, a year before Naheed passed on. I was working at my offices in Calcutta. Putting in a lot of time. Looking back I realise I neglected Sita. I hardly saw her during that period. She was looked after by a nanny. She was just ten at the time.”

Mackendrick paused there, staring through the view-screen at the flickering void.

“I was at the office when the break-in happened. Sita was in her room, her nanny asleep in another part of the house.” He paused again. “They took some things from the safe in my study—nothing that valuable, as it happened. The shortest way from my study to the grounds of the house was through Sita’s room. They broke in through her bedroom window on the first floor. We don’t know what happened exactly…

“When I got back early that morning I found the safe opened and Sita missing. I… I couldn’t live through that discovery again, Josh. Finding evidence of robbery, thinking only of my daughter. Rushing to her room… There was evidence of a struggle. Things thrown around the room. But there was no trace of… no sign that she’d been injured. We think they took her because she saw them, might’ve been able to identify the intruders. Rather than kill her they took her and…

“At first we assumed she was dead, killed and dumped somewhere. It was a nightmare period, Bennett. I couldn’t help but think of the worst, that they’d sold Sita to surgeons for medical experiments, or for spare parts surgery, or to other evil bastards. Then, a month or so later, sightings of a young girl fitting Sita’s description started coming in. I was filled with hope, convinced that she was still alive, living on the street, unable to find her way home. I thought perhaps she’d lost her memory.” He shook his head. “That was thirteen years ago. The terrible thing is not knowing. I keep having these pix updated, in the hope that some day…”

He returned the pix to his breast pocket.

“We live in hope, Bennett, and I don’t know whether that’s an admirable thing or not. Perhaps I should have reconciled myself to the worst-case scenario long ago, and tried to forget.”

A silence came between the two men. Bennett wanted to say something, to find words of consolation. Instead, inadequately, he just nodded.

Footsteps sounded along the corridor. Ten Lee entered the flight-deck.

“We’re due to phase from the void in one hour,” she said. “Will you run through the systems with me, Joshua?”

Bennett nodded, relieved that she didn’t mention the SIH. He needed time to think about what she had said.

He left Mackendrick on the engineer’s couch, strapped himself into the pilot’s couch and for the next hour concentrated on the familiar routine of checks and analyses. He felt a tension tight within him. Soon, in a matter of minutes, he would be experiencing for the first time the light of another sun.

Ten Lee nodded. “That’s it, Joshua. Phase-out in two minutes and counting…”

Bennett looked up from the control console and through the viewscreen, ready for the first sight of the star system.

“One minute…”

The void seemed to coagulate around the ship, the stars no longer streaming in towards them. The scene stilled, became a static slab of grey marble.

“Three… two… one…”

They phased out.

The void was replaced by a regular spacescape: a scatter of distant stars, the sun in the mid-ground and the orbiting planets diminishing in perspective. They were coming in on a ten-degree angle to the plane of the ecliptic, the sound of the ion-drive like an explosion after the relative quiet of trans-c flight.

He transferred the Cobra to the program system Mackendrick had written for the approach to Penumbra, and the ship accelerated through space.

“Estimated arrival time, four minutes and twenty seconds,” Ten Lee said.

Bennett concentrated on the read-outs scrolling down his visor screen, only occasionally looking through them to admire the view. The gas giant, which shielded Penumbra from the direct light of the sun, swelled alarmingly, a vast rolling orb of pastel green and ochre gas bands. Bennett made out the coin-like disc of Penumbra against the upper hemisphere of the giant, minuscule by comparison. The Cobra swooped ever closer and Penumbra grew, took on definition as a separate planet.

Ten Lee said, “Entry into planetary atmosphere in ten seconds… eight…”

From his position on the engineer’s couch, Mackendrick said, “My God, it’s beautiful…”

The planet became a broad, curved bow that spanned the width of the viewscreen, purple land showing through swirls of mauve cloud. The Cobra bucked as they hit the troposphere. Bennett slowed their descent, trimmed the angle of entry. Rags of cloud beat against the viewscreen. The ship rumbled like a toboggan, Bennett and Ten Lee swaying in their couches. In a split second they dropped through the floor of the cloud, from a realm of muffling opacity to a brighter scene of rearing purple mountains and vein-like rivers. They hit another stratum of cloud, this one the periphery of a storm front. Bennett disengaged from the pre-programmed flight-plan and took control of the Cobra, trying to veer around the edge of the storm pattern.

“We’re three degrees off course if we want to come down in the vicinity of the geographical features,” Ten Lee reported with calm efficiency. “Three-and-a-half degrees and increasing…”

“There’s nothing I can do about that,” Bennett said. “I’m not taking us through the storm, Ten. This is bad enough.”

Even as he spoke the Cobra was batted about the sky like a storm-tossed leaf. Bennett accelerated, trying to outrun the storm front. The vibration increased as the storm chased them and caught up, rattling Bennett and Ten Lee in their couches. He had no time to check how Mackendrick was coping. He fought with the controls, feeling the weight of the craft responding sluggishly.

At one point he gave a manic laugh, and earned a quick glance from Ten Lee. “What, Joshua?”

“It’s like… it’s like the craziest roller-coaster ride in all creation!” he yelled.

“This is nothing compared to Bhao Khet,” she responded.

Cloud ripped against the screen as the Cobra dived through the storm. Ten Lee called out a constant string of co-ordinates, her anticipation lightning quick. If anything, the storm seemed to be getting worse. To get this far, he thought with increasing dread, only to crash-land and… He grunted as he wrestled with the controls, the ship responding like a reluctant animal.

At one point, as if sensing that he was losing control, Ten Lee took over. Something seemed to side-swipe at the Cobra, and Bennett yelled in sudden fear as he felt himself losing control.

“It’s okay, Josh!” Ten Lee shouted.

She sequenced a flight-pattern through the high-pressure area and took them through. Then, without a word, she disengaged and handed the ship back.

Bennett smiled to himself. “Thanks, Ten. Where’d you learn to sequence like that?”

She just smiled to herself and stared at the figures scrolling down her visor screen.

The Cobra screamed low over violet snow-capped peaks and planed down towards a spreading purple plain.

“We’re heading ever further from our destination,” Ten Lee said.

“So I’ll bring us down here. Mackendrick?”

“How far from the features?” the tycoon asked.

Ten Lee consulted her screen. “Two hundred and ten kilometres and counting.”

“Then land,” Mackendrick ordered. “We’ll ride the transporter back to them.”

They came down blind, the land obscured by driving rain and cloud. Bennett burned the vertical jets and the Cobra hovered, buffeted by the wind, and then came down slowly. Landfall arrived with a gentle bump and Bennett cut the jets. The Cobra ticked and clicked in the silent aftermath of descent.

“Well done, Bennett, Ten Lee,” Mackendrick said. “How does it feel to know you’ve come further than any crewed expedition before?”

Bennett sat in his couch and considered the fact. It was, he thought, hard to believe.

Ten Lee was going through the post-flight checks, having given the scene outside the ship barely a glance.

As Bennett stared, the storm abated and sunlight—no, not sunlight, Bennett reminded himself; the light from the gas giant—illuminated the land with an aqueous glow.

Mackendrick stepped between the couches and stared through the viewscreen. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “How beautiful.”

They had come down on a plain of short purple grassland between two long mountain ranges. Ahead, the serrated peaks of the northern range stretched off to left and right like massed scimitar blades. Beyond, dominating the landscape with its vast and brooding presence, the banded upper hemisphere of the gas giant—what had Mackendrick called it? Tenebrae?—swelled to fill half the sky.

Bennett reached over and touched Ten Lee’s arm. She looked up, and he was pleased to see an expression of wonder cross her face.