Timecaster

FORTY-EIGHT

When I was a kid, staring up at the sky and wishing I could be an astrominer and work on the moon, I always imagined my first spacewalk would instill me with wonder and awe. And I might have felt some wonder and awe as I hurtled away from the space station if I hadn’t been screaming so loud it fogged up my visor.

I managed to get the screaming under control after only forty-seven seconds. That allowed the suit’s internal rebreather to clear my visor and let me see the earth, in all of its enormous blue-green glory, as I hurtled toward it untethered through unforgiving space.

That caused another round of screaming, which I got under control much quicker than the first bout. After my visor cleared, I took some stock of my surroundings and noticed the idiot who tackled me still had his arms around my waist. I tried to pull them off, but they’d frozen solid, two blocks of flesh-colored ice. Incredibly, I’d kept hold of the Nife. I made a cut in each of his elbows-not so deep I went completely through and breached my suit-and then was able to break off his arms and send him off into the void.

I turned and watched him float away. He joined six other cops, each frozen in tragic yet semicomical positions, one guy actually holding his mouth in surprise, another in midrun like he could still get away.

The space station was a hundred yards behind me, and I continued to fly farther away from it. I swallowed, my heart in my throat. The feeling of helplessness that zero-G induced was child’s play to actually being out in space, unattached to anything. It was like being dropped in the middle of the ocean with no hope of rescue.

I looked ahead, and saw the TEV only a few feet away, drifting lazily through the vacuum, its prismatic surface flashing various colors. The clock on the back read 9:42, and was still counting down. I had no idea how Sata focused the wormhole. Was it aimed at Chicago based on line of sight and trajectory, or did he program in specific coordinates? I knew only that the TEV was still pointed at the earth, and that couldn’t be good. If it didn’t implode Chicago, there were plenty of other habitable places it could devastate.

I had to get hold of that device.

Compartmentalizing my fear to deal with it later, I stared at the buttons on my wristband. Sata had mentioned the suit had a propulsion device. There were five buttons total, each large enough to press with my gloved finger, each with printing beneath. I switched the Nife to my bad hand and raised the wrist closer to my face so I could read. It glowed in the dark-helpful, because even with my interior helmet lamp and the light reflecting off the earth, it was dark as night out there. The five numbered words were: 1. THRUST 2. DROGUE 3. ROGALLO 4.IONIZER 5. CRUCIFORM

Of the three, the only word I understood was thrust. And since it was numbered “1,” I decided to press it.

Immediately, I heard a hissing sound in my helmet, and my legs shot up and sent me spinning ass over head. As I twirled, I saw a white gas jetting out of the heels of my boots. I brought my knees into my chest and began to spin even faster. While the absence of gravity prevented my inner ear from jostling and causing dizziness, the effect was still very disorienting and more than a little scary. Before I hit a hundred rpm I splayed out my legs, switching from rotation to a single direction. It took a minute to figure out how to move my feet in order to fly straight. I also learned Sata had built speed controls into the soles. Lifting my toes slowed down the jets, and pointing them downward sped them up.

Once I was more or less stabilized, I had a bad moment when I realized I’d lost sight of the TEV. Fighting panic, I flew back toward the space station and the frozen copsicles, then followed their straight trajectory, forging ahead of them. I caught a glint of color, and saw the display.

7:55… 7:54… 7:53…

Hurrying, I flexed out my toes, accelerating, rapidly catching up to the TEV. I bumped it with my bad arm, causing it to turn toward me. Not the development I’d hoped for. I reached for the TEV again, knocking it to the side and speeding past it. I kept my eyes locked on it, coming around again in an arc, and this time matched its speed before attempting a two-armed grab, the Nife still in my fist.

Once I held the device securely, I postulated which way to throw it. If I faced the lens the opposite way and sent it off into space, it couldn’t transport any matter on earth. But if it had even the slightest spin when I threw it, chances were the wormhole could still hit our planet, or maybe the space station.

I slowed down, steadying my hands, ready to cast it off into the great beyond.

Luckily, I had a sudden realization and caught myself before chucking the TEV away.

The people of Boise, and the people at the elevator station, had all been sent to a dinosaur planet. But there was a good chance they were all still alive.

This TEV might be the only way to get them back to our universe. Not only could it send matter to parallel planets; its destination was already programmed in.

Of course, I had no way of understanding how it worked.

But I knew someone who did.

I tucked the TEV tightly under my arm, put one of its straps over my shoulder, and hit the gas, rocketing toward earth. Sata had a nice head start, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to linger, if only to see if I could catch up. I don’t know what shocked me more-his newly acquired homicidal nature, or the fact that this all seemed like a big game to him. The unrestrained glee on his face while he was imploding innocent people sickened me in a way I’d never known before.

Being a cop, I’d seen a lot of badness in the world. Since becoming a timecaster, the majority of cruelty was confined to crimes of passion, and even that trickled to nonexistence once people knew they could be held accountable at any time.

Sata was something different. Something beyond insane, temporary or permanent. As with Alter-Talon, there was something so twisted, so wrong, about his demeanor that the only word I could use to describe it was evil.

Had that darkness always been there? If so, how could I have missed it? If not, how could someone so good become so bad so quickly?

Then I had a thought. A revelatory thought. But I filed it away for later when I saw the exhaust plume from Sata’s boot jets. As trails went, this couldn’t be easier to follow; two cloudy streaks the width of my dear, departed Corvette.

I pointed my toes as far as they would go, getting an extra little burst of speed. Giving the TEV a quick glance, I saw I had a little more than five minutes before the wormhole event.

My dual goals were to find Sata and follow him to a hopefully safe landing, and to make sure when the TEV counted down to zero I had it pointed toward space.

The change was gradual, so slow I didn’t notice it right away. At first, it was just a small bump against my helmet. Then my whole suit began to vibrate. Softly at first. Then in a much rougher way.

Sata’s plume became larger, more dispersed. I flexed my toes to slow down, take stock of the situation.

My jets cut off, but I didn’t slow down.

In fact, I sped up.

Though it was still black as ink, I realized what was happening. I was going from the thermosphere to the stratosphere, and gravity was taking over. I hit the thrust button, killing the boot jets.

My speed still increased. I was going fast. Real fast. Several hundred miles per hour fast. And the wind really began to bat me around, causing a strain on my neck and arms. I held the TEV tight to my chest, careful not to stab myself with my Nife. Ignoring the growing sense of terror building up inside of me, I managed to get the second strap onto my opposite shoulder, wearing the device as a chest plate like Sata had done. It was just in the nick of time, too. The turbulence had gotten so bad I couldn’t keep my arms next to my body. I would have dropped the TEV for sure. It was all I could do to hold on to the Nife.

That was when I noticed the temperature start to rise.

At first, I’d attributed it to fear and exertion. The suit was well insulated against freezing space, so it made sense my body heat would accumulate.

But then my cheeks began to ache, like a bad sunburn.

Atmospheric reentry.

Like all kids, I took space travel lessons in school. And like all kids, I mostly goofed off in class. So while I remembered some terms such as drag coefficient, angle of attack, and shock wave standoff, I couldn’t remember definitions for any of them, or how they applied to my situation.

The only thing I knew for certain was that reentering earth’s atmosphere caused friction, and with friction came heat, and very quickly I was going to reach a temperature of several thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Even wearing Sata’s ingeniously designed space suit, I would roast alive without some sort of heat shield.

It rapidly became too hot for me to even think. My mouth went dry. My sweat evaporated, steamed up my visor, and then that baked onto the inside, leaving a thin white film.

Losing consciousness, I barely noticed something below me. A tiny red speck, in the shape of a triangle, bright red contrasting against the expansive blue-green of the earth.

Sata? Where’d he get a triangle? Why didn’t I have one?

And right then, with my brain feeling like it was simmering in a Crock-Pot, I remembered what rogallo meant.