Starfire Page 32

  Lev didn’t know what to say. The idea seemed so strange.

  “Why would they do that? Why would Dr. Statnik order such a thing? We might destroy the very technology that we’ve come to investigate.”

  “They’re willing to take the chance. The ice on Europa is over a kilometer thick, and the Americans will follow us as soon as they can. How do you drill through so much ice on a hostile world and get down there quickly? This is their way to speed up the process. Half the digging will be done before we even reach Jupiter.”

  Lev nodded thoughtfully. It sounded like a Russian solution. Very direct and forceful. It was also an ecologist’s nightmare. The Russian President must have been proud.

  “Okay, okay,” he said after he’d absorbed her ideas. “Let’s say I believe you. Let’s say it’s even true. Why would you seek to warn the aliens?”

  “Because I think they’re peaceful, Lev. If they weren’t, they would have come and destroyed us long ago. But they didn’t. They left us alone. Now here we are, flying out to their cold world. They might have no idea we’re coming. Someday, we’ll send more ships. Someday, Earth will try to conquer them. It’s in our nature.”

  Lev stared at her, disbelieving of her naiveté. “But, Kira,” he said. “You don’t know they’re friendly.”

  “There’s no danger. I don’t think they’re like us. I don’t think they’re violent and cruel like humans. Maybe they didn’t evolve from a predatory species. They would have made an aggressive move by now if they were going to.”

  “You’ve endangered us all on the basis of an unsubstantiated belief!”

  “No, I’ve sent a message to warn an innocent people! They’ll be able to tell where the signal is coming from with the most basic science. They’ve been forewarned. It’s the least I could do.”

  Lev shook his head. He didn’t know quite what to think.

  Chapter 52

  Beyond Mars Orbit, Aboard Starfire

  Sleeping period

  The voyage claimed its first victim during the night as the American ship approached the asteroid belt. The killer wasn’t a grain of sand punching like a bullet through the hull and blasting into the sleeping woman’s skull, however. Instead, it was the extreme acceleration.

  They were still hurtling toward their destination. The flight crew was already decelerating, having reversed at the half-way point between Earth and Jupiter to reduce their deadly speed. This change manifested itself aboard the ship as simply more heavy G forces, pressing them all against the deck. Their bodies were moving toward Jupiter at a startling rate, and they had to be slowed down to match the moon they were going to rendezvous with in a matter of days.

  Dr. Sally Carranza died in her sleep during the tenth rest period of the journey.

  After discovering the death, Dr. Goody insisted on a disruption of the schedule.

  “We have to investigate the death,” he insisted. “If we all die, the mission is a failure. That would be worse than landing late.”

  Reluctantly, Sandeep and Colonel Dyson went along with him.

  “Do it,” Sandeep said. “But please, Edwin, work fast.”

  Edwin made a rattling sound of disgust in his throat. The flight crew eased the ship’s deceleration down to one-point-two-five Gs, and Edwin did his best to work under difficult conditions.

  “The autopsy was rapid and bloody,” he said less than half an hour later. “I’ve never worked on such a fresh corpse before. She hadn’t even cooled. It was like being in medical school all over again.”

  “Please, what are the results?” Sandeep asked.

  “She suffered a blood clot and a stroke that killed her in her sleep, that’s my best guess. She wasn’t the oldest crewmember, but she was past fifty and overweight.”

  Sandeep nodded, taking it in. “So, what killed her was a weakness in her circulatory system. The rest of us are not in danger.”

  He turned to go, but Edwin caught his arm. Sandeep felt the man’s strong hand, and looked down to see that his sleeve had been stained by shiny blood.

  “We all have that weakness,” Edwin said. “She went first, but we can’t take this forever. I recommend, as your medical officer, that you stand down on the acceleration. No more pushing up to above two Gs. Give us one G at night, with periodic rests.”

  “It can’t be done.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve talked to the navigator. We’re moving too fast to change our plans now. Choices about our maximal velocity have already been made. We must slow down, or we’ll slam into Jupiter or shoot past it. Once you’re going a hundred miles an hour in a car, Edwin, worrying about how dangerous braking might be is a waste of time. We’re committed.”

  Edwin frowned. “In that case, I predict we’ll lose another one soon.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all exhausted, stressed. I’m surprised by the blood clot. I would have thought simply choking or having a heart attack would have come first.”

  Sandeep eyed him in concern. He hated this part of his new job. How had he gotten himself into this position? He wasn’t qualified, and he lacked Clark’s fire.

  “I’ll contact Clark,” he said. “You’ll have my answer in two hours.”

  Edwin’s hand gripped him more firmly. “No,” he said. “You make the call. You’re the mission commander out here, remember? Clark is a hundred million miles away. That’s why you’re in charge. It’s your call.”

  Sandeep considered that. Edwin and he both knew what Clark would have said. He’d have sweetly ordered them to charge on at full speed even if it meant more deaths.

  “I’ll see what can be done,” he said at last.

  Sandeep’s next meeting was with Dyson, and it wasn’t pleasant. She wasn’t the easiest going member of the crew under the best of circumstances. In fact, Sandeep calculated she was probably the biggest bitch in space at this moment.

  “You’re out of your mind,” she said. “I’m barely in control of this thing. It’s like flying a shopping cart with a rocket booster strapped on it, pushing my ass toward a brick wall. Numbers are numbers, Sandeep. We have to apply thrust to slow down.”

  “We’ll lose people. That’s what my medical officer is telling me.”

  “Yeah? That bumpkin? He probably hasn’t set a bone since he was an intern.”

  “He served in Iran. Three tours.”

  Dyson’s face shifted. “Okay. So he’s been around. All right. How the hell do you want me to do this?”

  “There’s only one way. I talked to your navigator, and he ran the numbers. We’ll overshoot Jupiter, then turn around and come back.”

  “That will take days!”

  “Three days—maybe four. But you could shave that.”

  “How?”

  “You could take a more direct path. Angle back down into the plane of the ecliptic.”

  She stared at him. “You mean directly through the Asteroid Belt? That’s not safe, either!”

  “I’ve talked to Linscott about it. She says the outer hull of this ship is thick enough to stop small sand grains and the like. Dust is no problem.”

  “What if we hit something bigger? Like a rock the size of a bullet, or a baseball?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “At this speed, Einstein, we’re dead,” Dyson said, crossing her arms. “I’m not going to do it. It’s not worth it, Sandeep. You’re talking about risking the entire ship to save a few days. That’s crazy.”

  Sandeep was thoughtful. He was out of his depth, and he knew it. He was a weak captain. He should never have gotten this job. If this had been a purely scientific exploratory trip where safety came first, he’d do a fine job—but it wasn’t. They were in a race, hell-bent to beat the Russians. That required a kind of decision-making, a cold measuring of lives versus gain, that he wasn’t prepared to do.

  He heaved a sigh. “All right. We shoot past. We arrive late. Try to shave off some hours if you can.”

  Dyson n
odded. “Will do, skipper,” she said.

  Had there been a mocking tone in her voice? Yes, he believed so.

  Chapter 53

  Jupiter Orbit, Aboard Troika

  Starlight

  Lev was exhilarated. He hadn’t expected to feel the emotion of the others, but he wasn’t made of stone.

  Outside their ship, a massive planet loomed. It filled their vision, like a solid wall of orangey-brown with cream-colored stripes. It didn’t look quite the way he’d expected it to look. It was much less colorful than his imagination, but it was amazing nonetheless.

  “Where’s Europa?” he asked, staring.

  Kira tapped the frosted glass down low. They had to shift and look from the top of the glass to see it. A white sphere hung nearby. It was directly ahead of their oddly shaped craft. It had reddish stripes running across it.

  “What are those red lines? Cracks in the ice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are they the color of fresh rust? They look like the veins on a drunk’s eyeball.”

  Kira glanced at him. “Then you should feel right at home.”

  “I haven’t had a drink in two days!”

  “Only because the machine stopped producing it.”

  She was right, so he kept quiet. He’d dried out, and his body had taken that hard. He suspected that the vodka-still had been disabled by the crew, but he couldn’t prove it. Every minute was a pounding headache for him. He wanted to get out of this ship and do something—anything.

  “What will it be like down there?” he asked.

  “You haven’t listened to any of the briefings, have you?”

  “I’ve forgotten the details.”

  She made a disgusted sound, then sighed. “It will be cold. About one-hundred sixty degrees C below zero. The gravity will be low, lower than that on our moon. We’ll have to shuffle along so as not to take accidental leaps.”

  “Ha! That’s good news at least. I’m tired of the weight of this suit and heavy G forces. I’ve been feeling heavy for weeks as we decelerate.”

  “There are hazards, as you’ve been briefed.”

  “Pretend I need a refresher course.”

  Another sidelong glance. “It will be like the icecap on Earth, but more treacherous. Bigger crevasses. Sudden venting is possible.”

  “Venting?”

  “The warm water below comes out now and then, ejected as blasts of water vapor which turns quickly into ice crystals. These geysers can shoot up with such force they reach orbit over the moon itself.”

  “Hmm. Sounds dangerous.”

  “It will be. We might land only to be crushed by the shifting ice an hour later. Remember the spheres we fired at Europa? They’ve dug a crater at our landing spot. A rough surface is guaranteed at this spot. Fresh ice and snow. Hopefully, there won’t be any deadly chasms.”

  He looked at her while she stared out the window. “You sound as if you want us all to die on this snowball.”

  “That might be for the best,” she admitted, “in the end.”

  “You’re beyond suicidal. You yearn for our extinction.”

  Their relationship had cooled over the last week of the journey. They were no longer having sex, which Lev missed. He wasn’t sure if her new attitude was natural or planned. Had she slept with him earlier only to gain his confidence?

  He shrugged. These things were one and the same to him.

  “Where will we land?”

  She glanced at him, then looked back into space. “We won’t. Not right away. We’ll swing around several times, studying the surface first. You should hope that our crew chooses wisely.”

  “What is that red stuff?” he asked.

  “An impurity. Saltwater seas under the ice push up and cover the surface with spray, as I said. We suspect sulfurous compounds stain the ice.”

  “A sea full of sulfur? I hope you’re wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “It will stink.”

  She laughed. It was the first time he’d heard her laugh since they’d run out of booze.

  “You won’t ever smell it,” she said. “If you took off your helmet for a second you would die.”

  He wagged a finger at her. “I know what I’m talking about. Have you worked in an industrial city? In the factories? No, of course you haven’t. Sulfur in your drinking water is unpleasant. It tastes and smells like farts all the time. Trust me, I know.”

  “Why would we drink it?”

  “How long will we be here? Longer than you think, I bet. I know these crewmen. They’re Russians. In no time at all, they’ll have us drinking the water and breathing the air they process from that water. They’re counting on it, I’m certain.”

  She shook her head and went back to gazing out the window.

  A few hours later, they were in orbit over Europa. The radiation alarms were blinking all the time now due to Jupiter’s looming presence. The huge gas giant was like a blowtorch of particles.

  Lev was impressed by the rate at which Europa scooted around its master. Every three and a half days it made a full revolution, and as the hours passed, he could see that Jupiter was spinning too.

  They made the determination to land without Lev’s input. That was as he expected. What was unexpected was the roughness of the descent.

  The ship rocked and vibrated as it fell, tail-first, toward the moon’s bizarre surface. Lev entertained a thousand scenarios, all of which involved a quick death for everyone aboard.

  They might melt the ice and fall through—despite the insistence by the science types this couldn’t happen, that the ice was too thick. Lev had been on icecaps many times, and none of them could have easily supported a blazing spaceship landing upon them.

  If it didn’t break straight through, it might melt at a thin spot. According to Kira, such thin spots caused vapor to release. Maybe the ice would shift, and if it didn’t capsize them outright, it might drop them into a chasm and crush them.

  Barring that, a geyser of steam, freezing the moment it reached the surface, could boil up with extreme pressure and flip them over, or—

  “Landing in sixty seconds,” said a dispassionate voice. “Initiate final harness checks.”

  Lev’s eyes rolled up, and he stared through the only triangular window he could see. Vapors roiled outside. Troika was venting something.

  “T-minus thirty seconds.”

  The ship shook with uneven acceleration and rolled over, aiming its belly toward the alien world outside.

  The shaking increased as the ship thrust hard to slow itself. Lev gripped the armrests of his chair.

  “T-minus fifteen seconds… All systems green.”

  Lev’s teeth were showing now. He knew that, but he couldn’t help it. His heart pounded and sweat crawled in his hair like insects.

  “Ten…”

  “Nine…”

  Something touched his arm. It was Kira, reaching out to him. He twisted against his harness, and they looked at one another, their eyes only barely able to meet due to the curvature of their closed helmets.

  “Six…”

  “Five…”

  He clasped Kira’s hand. She relaxed and lay back. He did the same.

  “Three…”

  “Two…”

  “Ground contact—emergency—”

  The ship heaved and a crashing roar struck them. Lev knew then, truly knew, that he was dead.

  Kira gripped his hand with fingers like iron bands, and she didn’t let go.

  Chapter 54

  Jupiter Far Orbit, Aboard Starfire

  Starlight

  Dr. Tanaka was having a hard time of it in the tiny cybernetics lab. Since the loss of her beloved drone she’d been tasked with building a new one. The new drone, B-7, would be smaller, more efficient and built to operate independently in an environment that was even more hostile than the Arctic Ocean.

  Cold—that was her greatest enemy. The drone might have to bore through ice. That put the B-7 into a different cat
egory than anything she’d built before. Independent navigation was one thing, but drilling too? She didn’t know if she could do it, not in the time she had been allotted.

  She’d been working on this new drone for weeks before liftoff, but it hadn’t even been ready to replace the old unit before they left Earth. These people expected miracles. Soldering and programming were difficult enough tasks, even with several techs to aid her. Doing these jobs under the force of constant acceleration was torment.

  “Yuki?” Edwin asked.

  She didn’t even turn toward the hatchway. “Just a second, Edwin. I’m doing something delicate, here.”

  “I understand completely. I’ll come back later.”

  She caught the disappointment in his voice, and turned around.

  “Edwin? Please come back.”

  He reappeared quickly, his bulk filling the entrance.

  “You look like a kid who’s been turned down for a date,” she said. “Why the long face?”

  “Well, I was thinking…”

  She knew what he was thinking about. They’d had a wonderful night back in Vegas. Since then, it had been an on-again, off-again series of hook-ups that occurred at random intervals every week or two. She frankly didn’t know what kind of a relationship she had with Dr. Goody. She’d been too busy flying to another planet to worry about his feelings or much of anything else.

  “When this is all over,” she told him, “I want to go back to Vegas with you. Do you think we could get the same room at Lucky Seven? With the view of the mountains?”

  Edwin smiled. “Yes, I bet we could.”

  “Okay then,” she said, “it’s a date.”

  He left happily enough. She knew that hadn’t been what he was hoping for, but it was the best she could do at the moment. The actuator on the damned robot’s lower manipulating arm stopped operating every time she closed the case. It was becoming disconnected somehow, and that was driving her nuts.

  Her communicator beeped, and she tapped at it irritably. What now?

  “Yes?” she demanded in a tight voice.