Starfire

22

It was a nightmare from Maddy’s childhood. You woke slowly, in near-total darkness, knowing that you were not alone in the room. The thing — the shadowy form of the he-she-it — stood still and silent at the end of the bed. You lay frozen, too scared to move, too scared to scream.

At last you went back to sleep. In the morning you looked and looked, but you found no trace of the phantom.

It was happening now, and you were not a child. You were Maddy Wheatstone, a grown woman with no time for adolescent fantasies. You were no longer in the family home in Edmonton. You were — where?

Maddy struggled to full consciousness. Her eyes were wide open. This was not a dream. The shadow was still there. It loomed by her bedside, leaning over her, shaped like a man.

And she was — oh God, she was on Sky City, where the murderer of a dozen girls wandered free.

Maddy gasped, drew up her legs, and threw herself over the other side of the bed. She grabbed a boot, the only solid object she could find, and stabbed at the wall panel.

The light flashed on. It showed John Hyslop, mouth open and eyes squinted half shut against the glare, standing by the side of the bed.

“John!” Maddy’s curiosity was as strong as her relief.

“What are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?”

“I’m sorry. I did knock before I came in, but you slept through it. I’ve been standing here wondering if I ought to wake you.”

“For what?” She saw the clock. “It’s three in the morning.”

He was not just looking at her, he was staring. Maddy realized that she was wearing a shorter-than-usual nightgown. Well, that was all right. Let him know what he was missing.

“You did say . . .” he began. “I mean, you did tell me you’d like to see it.”

“See what?” Maddy frowned, trying to shift gears.

“Whatever there is to see. When we get under way.”

“You mean we’re on the move?”

“Very soon. Everything is ready. The boosters fire at four.”

“Then of course I want to see it. I’m sorry, John, I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Thanks for waking me.” She saw his weary eyes. “Have you had any sleep at all?”

“No. I’ll sleep when I’m sure everything is all right.”

“Don’t do another Neirling boost. They’re bad for you.” Maddy heard the mothering tone in her voice, but it was too late to do anything about that. She went across to the small closet and pulled out pants and a sleeveless top. “I have to dress. You can stay if you like, but if it makes you feel uncomfortable, you should step outside.”

Back on Earth she wouldn’t have thought to mention it, but different privacy standards applied on Sky City.

“I’ll stay.” John’s mumble could barely be heard.

“Fine.” Maddy slipped off her nightgown and pulled on her clothes. She noticed that he kept his back turned the whole time. So much for her girlish charms. As she pulled on her boots she asked, “Where should I go for the best view?”

“Actually, for the first day or so there’ll be nothing to see. Sky City will accelerate so slowly, only the observing instruments will tell you that we’re leaving orbit.”

“You mean I won’t even know we’ve started boosting?”

“Oh, you’ll know all right. I hope we don’t know too well.” John smiled at Maddy’s perplexed look, his first smile since the light went on. “The acceleration will be very small, but to push the whole of Sky City we’ll be applying thrust to just a dozen areas, and each one’s only a couple of meters across.”

“Can that be a problem?”

“We’re hoping not. Our calculations say we’ll be all right. But imagine that you had an enormous dish, and you supported it on a dozen tiny pins around the edge and nowhere else. You’d worry that if the dish were heavy enough, the pins would push right through it. We can’t let the local boosters push so hard that they stress the Sky City structure locally beyond what it can stand.”

“What happens if the stresses are too great?”

“Well, we’ll be watching closely. We won’t let it go so far that the plates buckle or the joints fail. But if we have to reduce the thrust, we’ll have other problems. The acceleration would have to be smaller, and then all our other schedules for the new particle defense system would have to change.”

“I see.” Maddy did see — several things. She liked John’s hand on her arm, guiding her along. And he was comfortable again, away from the world of naked ladies and back to his stresses and strains and Poisson’s ratios and buckling coefficients. “Oh, I forgot. What about the new rolfes? Are they on their way from Earth?”

“Not yet. We’re expecting the first ones any day now.”

He did not mention that the arrival of the rolfes would remove Maddy’s reason for remaining on Sky City. She had called Gordy Rolfe two days ago, prepared to offer logic of her own as to why she ought to remain. Gordy had beaten her to it with his first remark: “Hyslop isn’t on the Aten asteroid project anymore.”

“I know.”

“But you stay there. I want you glued to him tighter than ever. Report to me on his every move.”

Gordy had glared at her out of the screen. The scene around him looked like a junkyard, bits and pieces of equipment everywhere. He looked like a junkyard, too, food on his unshaven face and the front of the black jumpsuit, feverish bloodshot eyes and trembling hands.

“But what do I tell Bruno Colombo? I need a reason for staying on Sky City.” She knew that Gordy was in the underground habitat, because she could see the circular wall and the dark green plants beyond it.

“Hell, d’you want me to do your job for you? Tell him anything you like. Sweet-talk Hyslop. Smile at him, show him your tits, open your legs, whatever.”

“I’m not sure that sort of thing works with Hyslop.” It hasn’t so far, and I have been sort of trying. But Gordy can’t be trusted with that sort of detail.

“Fine. It wouldn’t work with me, either. Maybe he’s the one who should be working for Argos instead of you.” Gordy lifted the spindly metal shaft that he was holding in one greasy hand. “All right, here’s what you do. You tell them you have to stay up there until all the new rolfes have arrived, just in case they don’t work right and you have to fix them. That will give you at least ten days.”

“If the rolfes don’t work when they arrive, there’s not much chance I’ll be able to fix them. I’m no great expert when it comes to electronics.”

“Tell me news. It won’t matter. They’ll work exactly as they’re supposed to, and you won’t have to fix a damn thing.”

“How do you know they’ll work?”

He snarled at her. Somehow he had managed to get graphite on his front teeth. They were streaked with black. “The rolfes will work perfectly, because I’m making the fucking things. Personally. Now are you happy? Get back to work. Follow Hyslop, watch what he does. Especially if he starts digging into inventory records and delivery schedules, anything that relates to Argos Group activities. If that happens, you call me at once. Anytime.”

“Anytime?”

“You heard me. You work twenty-four hours a day, the way I do.”

And look the way you do? But he was gone before Maddy could be tempted.

In any case, there was no way to track John Hyslop day and night. Nights could have been easy, but sexually he was the most timid man she had ever met. He found her attractive, she felt sure he did, based on the few occasions when they had both let down their guards. But he never made a move. She had gone as far as she could without grabbing him and dragging him into the bedroom. Was that what he needed? It was about all that was left.

He still had his hand on her arm, leading her. They were going “up” toward the central axis of Sky City, and the centrifugal force against which they climbed was steadily dropping.

“Where are you taking me? To the engineering information center?”

“No, There’s an observation chamber outside the main body of the city, near the power-generating plant. You’ll have the best view from there.”

Maddy had learned the basic geometry and jargon of Sky City. The structure was in orbit around the Earth and at the same time spun around its central axis. That axis always pointed to a fixed direction in space, out toward the cone end of the space shield and Alpha Centauri. The simulation chamber where she and John Hyslop had discovered Lucille DeNorville’s mutilated body lay on the “front” side of the city, the side facing toward the shield. The power-generation plant sat on the “back” side, with the bulk of the city between them and the shield to provide better protection from the particle storm. “We won’t be able to see the shield, will we?”

“Part of it will be in your field of view, beyond the edges of the Sky City disk. But I doubt you’ll actually be able to see it. It’s too tenuous.” They had reached the axis, and John was floating her along the broad air-filled tunnel extending beyond the bulk of Sky City in the direction of the power-generation plant. “Don’t worry; the shield isn’t where the action is. You’ll see everything worth seeing from right here.”

They had come to a fork in the passageway, a place where on one branch a flat hatch was set into the side of the tunnel. John released Maddy’s arm as the hatch began to slide open.

“Won’t we need suits?” Maddy had been warned, over and over. Be careful. Just because you can open a door anywhere on Earth and find air on the other side doesn’t mean you can do the same thing on Sky City.

“They’re available for emergencies. But today this whole segment is at pressure.”

The hatch slid open. Beyond was the observation chamber, and Maddy could see that a few unsuited people were already there.

“Make yourself comfortable.” John glanced at his watch. “Still a few minutes to go. Enjoy the show. The others can answer any questions.”

“What about you? Aren’t you staying?”

“I’d love to. But I’m on duty back inside.” He hesitated, then gave Maddy’s arm a gentle pat and stepped back through the hatch. “As a matter of fact, I’m the one who has to make the final decision on whether to move. Without me in the control chamber there’ll be no show.”

The hatch closed. He was gone. Follow Hyslop all the time? Right, Gordy. Why don’t you tell me how I’m supposed to do that?

Maddy turned. The observation chamber formed a sphere about twelve feet across. It was equipped with gimballed seats that could swing in any direction, and most of the wall consisted of large transparent ports. The chamber was so close to free fall that assignment of direction was a matter of convention. “Above” Maddy lay the ugly tangle of the power-generation facility. “Below” her the main body of Sky City obscured the stars and shield.

The people in the chamber had all glanced at Maddy when she appeared, but now they were again looking outward. She was surprised to find that she recognized every one of them. Closest to her were two of Sky City’s engineering team. They must be “the others” that John had referred to: Lauren Stansfield, as ladylike and elegantly dressed as ever; beside her, Torrance Harbish, lank-haired and saturnine. They were clearly present for some official purpose, because they sat by an array of screens and monitoring devices. In front of the two engineers sat Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander, their heads close. Finally, in front of them, hunched so that his chin rested on his chest, was Seth Parsigian. When Maddy moved forward to sit next to him he turned and glared.

She had done what he asked her to, wandering endlessly around the dark corridors and hidden byways of Sky City. With no apparent results, but that was not her fault.

“I thought you were going back to Earth,” she said softly.

“Likewise.” He gave her a quick glance. “An’ we’re both still here. I think they stuck all the Earthsiders out here so we can’t get in the way when they goose the whole place. Look, sometime you and me gotta talk some more.”

“What about?”

“Stuff. New information. But we can’t do it here and now.” He jerked his head backward. “Too many ears.”

Maddy doubted that. Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander were making enough noise to cover anything that Seth said.

They were arguing. Anyone sitting in front of them had no choice but to listen. Maybe that was why Seth was so annoyed.

“Stands ter reason,” Astarte was saying. “Yer can calculate and theorize and speculate ’til your eyeballs pop, but you still won’t know ’less you measure. We have to do it.”

“Do you think anyone but us cares?” Wilmer hissed. “Look at it from their point of view. We say, you have to build a system to detect and deflect particle bundles.”

“They do, too. Or they’re dead.”

“Of course they are. So they listen to us, and they buy what we say, and they change all their plans. What do you think they’ll do if now we say, by the way, deflect some of them particle bundles but not all of ’em because we need some? You can try that if you want, but not me. You’ll be lucky if they don’t grab you and whale your fat black butt.”

“Yer think you’re the only one allowed ter do that, don’t yer, you dirty old bugger? You’re a fossil, Wilmer Oldfield. You’re all mouth and beer gut. Yer stopped thinking twenty years ago, and you don’t have the brains and nerve of a paralytic parrot.”

“Better a paralytic parrot than a jumped-up outback madonna who thinks if she just wiggles her tits in Bruno Colombo’s face she can talk him into anything.”

“Not Bruno Colombo, you soft old ponce. I said Nick Lopez.”

“Colombo, Lopez, makes no difference. For starters, look at the bloody energy problem—”

Maddy leaned over to Seth. “What’s all that about?”

“Technical discussion.” Seth stared gloomily out of the port, to where a sunlit Earth loomed thirty times the size of a full Moon. “Far as I can tell, she wants to slow down a few of the bundles and catch them. Then they’d be able to study ’em and find out what sort of structure the bundles have. He’s telling her no one would ever agree. I’m with him. I want to get rid of particle bundles, not sit an’ play with ’em.”

The musical chime of a bell interrupted his final words. It came from an invisible address system. “Two minutes,” said John Hyslop’s voice. “Station One?”

There was a five-second silence, then an unfamiliar man’s reply: “Station One ready.”

“Confirmed. Station Two?”

“Station Two all set.” Lauren Stansfield’s voice came from directly behind Maddy, and a fraction of a second later the words were repeated from the address system.

“Confirmed. Station Three?”

As the count went on, Maddy wondered where the other stations were located. Some of them, from what John had said, must be at the points where the thrustors would fire; engineers there would be alert for buckling plates or failing seals. Lauren Stansfield and Torrance Harbish were doing the same thing, monitoring from their bird’s-eye view on the extended central axis.

“All stations confirmed. Twenty seconds.”

Maddy listened closely to John’s voice. It was calm, but with an odd undercurrent of excitement. She thought, That weirdo, he’s enjoying this. If I were a failing component, I’d get more of his attention than I do now. Engineers!

The soft chime of the bell was back, counting off the final seconds. Everyone in the observation chamber fell silent. All of them were looking in the same direction: out and down, to where the mirror-matter thrustors sat on Sky City’s broad disk.

The countdown was over. Maddy followed their gaze and saw nothing. That was surely the site of one of the thrustors; John had pointed it out to her on the Sky City hologram only two days ago. So why wasn’t it working?

She stared again, and realized it was. Not the gaudy orange flare of rockets that you became used to in launches to Earth orbit, but a thin, near-invisible line of blue plasma stabbing out from the thrustor. Unless you followed it from its source you would never know it was there.

Was that it? Was that frail, gossamer strand of light, with eleven more like it, supposed to hoist the million-ton bulk of Sky City a hundred thousand kilometers to the end of the shield? The idea seemed preposterous.

Maddy turned. Lauren Stansfield and Torrance Harbish were calmly working their equipment. John Hyslop’s voice came again over the address system. “Station Seven, we’re showing an anomaly.”

“Correct.” It was a man’s voice, one that Maddy did not recognize. “We have structural give in the main support beam. There’s no danger of overall failure, but it’s throwing the line of thrust off by a couple of degrees. Do you want us to try to do something about it locally?”

“I don’t think so. Just wait a moment.” There was a pause of a few seconds, then John’s voice again. “General rotation will average most of it out. If we have to, we’ll compensate with a reduced thrust on the opposite side. Hold as you are.”

“We’re holding.”

“Station Two? Do you see anything?”

Torrance Harbish said into his throat microphone, “We verify Station Seven off-line thrust. Everything else is nominal.”

“Noted. You may switch to automatic recording.”

Harbish said, “Changeover in process.” And then, in a less formal tone, “Good show, John. We’re wrapping up here. Expect us in the control room in about five minutes.”

Two more minutes, and he and Lauren Stansfield had set the scopes to automatic mode and left. Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander followed, still bickering. Maddy turned to Seth Parsigian. “You want to talk?”

“Not yet.” His sallow face was thoughtful. “Got some stuff I have to do first. I’ll come to your rooms when I’m ready to chitchat.”

“If you do come, don’t do it late at night — I found out how much I hate that. And let me tell you how to reach my quarters.”

“Don’t need to; I already know. But I got a question for you. Have you been workin’ on the Argos Group deliveries?”

“Not up here. I worked deliveries down on Earth, years ago.”

“That’s all right, then. See you.” Seth slipped out of his seat and was gone.

Maddy was alone in the observation chamber. She could go back to her rooms and wait for Seth, but she lacked the will to do so. This was a better place for thinking, here with the great wheel of Sky City below her and the silent stars above.

There was plenty to think about. Far beyond Sky City, out beyond the shield and more than four light-years away, lay the source of the particle storm. Maddy was in no danger. In principle, particle bundles spit out by the Alpha Centauri supernova could hit Sky City right this very minute, and she would be protected by the bulk of the massive structure.

Each particle bundle averaged four trillion separate nuclei, but each bundle was still minute, its mass less than a billionth of a gram. Even so, each one packed enormous energy. Maddy had heard Astarte’s casual comment a few days earlier. “Yeah, they’re little, but yer don’t want ter underestimate them. They’re really smoking. Traveling close to a tenth of light speed — not really relativistic, but getting up there — and energy goes like the square of velocity. Every one of the little buggers packs as much of a wallop as a half-gram pellet traveling at a third of a kilometer of a second — that’s the speed of a bullet as it comes out of the muzzle of a handgun. A particle bundle can do a lot more damage to human tissue than a bullet, too, because the particles in it are all charged. If the bundle comes apart inside you when it hits, that’s still worse. We still don’t know if that will happen or not.”

Maddy was protected by Sky City, but Earth was not. She looked to her left, where the hazy globe hung in the heavens. She could see the moving day-night boundary of the terminator, but the planet itself seemed exactly the same size as before. She held up her hand and measured the width of Earth between thumb and first finger. The space city was leaving its orbit, but you would never know by looking. Acceleration was imperceptible. It would be days before Earth began to shrink in the sky.

And yet Maddy had the uneasy feeling that she was already infinitely far away. Out here she had been thrown into the company of people whose dreams and ambitions and daily lives were so far removed from her own that they seemed incomprehensible. Odder yet, listening to them had made her own ambitions just as hard to understand. For the first time since she was fifteen years old, Maddy was not consumed by the immediate pressures of the here and now. She had been provided with a fatal indulgence: time to think.

Did she want to be the head of the Argos Group? Would she take Gordy Rolfe’s job, even if he (unlikely thought) went down on his knees and begged her?

A month ago, she had thought she had the best job in the world and Gordy was a genius. He was still a genius in electronics and robotics, but more and more he was also an obvious lunatic. She had spent the past nine years trying to get close to him, doing whatever pleased him, clawing her way up the Argos Group ladder so that she could be a lunatic, too.

Surely there had to be more to life than that.

Drearily Maddy lifted out of her chair and began the solitary trek back to her rooms. The four o’clock blues. They came as easily in space as back on Earth. A few hours of sleep would probably make a difference.

After that, sooner or later, would come the unsought meeting with Seth Parsigian. They had roamed Sky City together, with no result. What else did he want from her — and could she wriggle out of it?

Probably not. Maddy saw before her the rough-cut hair, the bullet head, and the wary brown eyes. It was a close call, but in his own way Seth perched as far up the tree of lunacy as Gordy Rolfe.