A Planet for Rent (24 page)

Jowe turns pale but doesn’t move a muscle.

Adam sweats; could he have made some mistake?

He’s sure he hasn’t: it’s very unlikely that the controller would check up on them with Wellington, New Zealand, on the other side of the planet, and who would be crazy enough to enter an orbital corridor if everything wasn’t one hundred percent in order?...

“Tornado LZ-35, Gander here. Guide beam activated. The corridor is free. We detect the falling remnants of the balloon. You’ll have to be more careful! Have your ship checked over at the point of embarkation, and give my regards to Regulus.”

The road is clear.

Incredulous but relieved, Friga releases the triggers with a sigh and focuses once more on the controls of the
Hope
.

For now, the danger is past.

Or so it seems...

Just as they reach escape velocity, all the homemade welds on the
Hope
begin to vibrate.

It seems like the vehicle will be torn to pieces at any moment.

Friga turns to look at the shipbuilder questioningly.

“It’ll hold up, I swear it will!” Adam shouts, as terrified as the pilot but trying to fill her with confidence.

Jowe is unfazed.

Finally the display shows 11.2 kilometers per second, and Friga turns off the plasma reactors to let them rest and cool off.

Their supply of hydrogen is eighty-five percent spent.

But they’re already in hyperbolic escape orbit.

Every second takes them farther and farther from Earth.

A minute passes.

On the radar screen, the great echo marking the point of embarkation for Regulus, where hyperships wait for their passengers to arrive on shuttles to take them to that distant star, is being left behind.

But another echo, much smaller and faster, is growing closer.

It isn’t coming from the atmosphere of Earth.

It’s coming from another orbit.

A patrol ship.

Friga swears and turns on the hydrogen collector field to reactivate the reactors.

Jowe calmly calculates the relative trajectories and velocities of both space vehicles.

Adam complains about his bad luck: did they have to get detected so quickly?

Friga reminds him that only the weak believe in luck.

The invisible magnetic maw of the collector field which stretches out before the
Hope
traps the hydrogen atoms floating in space at a rate of one or two per cubic meter.

The remaining fifteen percent of hydrogen in the tanks would be enough to reignite and heat the reactors, but not much more.

The collector field becomes more effective as their speed grows: twenty seconds later, it has already stabilized the rate of supply to the engines.

The ship is capturing and consuming hydrogen at the same rate.

Jowe breaks his silence to state hoarsely that the patrol ship is gaining on them.

Adam, hysterical, tells him the Planetary Security guys have antigravity-based inertial engines, which don’t need an external source of fuel and don’t have to be warmed up... but even so, they won’t get caught, because they’re way ahead.

Jowe disagrees.

According to his calculations, the patrol ship is following a flawless interception orbit: it will reach firing range before the
Hope
has entered far enough inside the Escape Tunnel to activate the hyperengine and get it to work.

And that will be more or less within an hour.

Adam blows up and says that as far as he’s concerned, Jowe can go to hell right now: all he has to do is open the airlock, enter it, and jump into space, if he’s so scared.

Friga quiets them with her booming voice, reminding them that it’s just a patrol ship and that the
Hope
is armed and armored...

She fiddles with the triggers again.

The patrol ship must have positively ID’d them as a fugitive ship by now: it is keeping complete radio silence while continuing to approach.

Just in case, Adam throws up a curtain of interference to keep their pursuer from asking other Planetary Security ships for help.

Manipulating the controls with the dexterity of a pianist, Friga corrects the
Hope’s
course with plasma jets at full blast.

At ever-increasing velocity, the ship leaves the plane of the ecliptic; in a couple of hours it will be far enough away for hyperspace travel.

If the patrol ship doesn’t destroy it first.

It hasn’t even asked them to surrender.

Not that they’d surrender without a struggle.

A dogfight is inevitable.

The hour passes. Friga, impatient, burns with a desire to open fire.

Despite the
Hope’s
significant initial advantage, the faster-moving Planetary Security ship has significantly closed the gap between them.

Jowe reminds Friga that the masers onboard the
Hope
have a range of one or two kilometers farther than the particle projectile cannons that patrol ships carry.

But on the other hand, they’ll need nearly half a minute to recharge after each shot, compared with just ten seconds for the enemy’s weapon.

Adam nods and looks expressionlessly at their pilot-leader.

Friga smiles: at least she’ll have the advantages of surprise and taking the first shot, and she intends to make the most of them.

Besides, she has a few tricks and secrets up her sleeve...

Xenoids may have built the patrol ships, but that doesn’t mean their design is perfect...

She doesn’t aim at the Planetary Security ship’s ultra-armored cabin or at its super-protected inertial engine, but at the gun-ports from which its terrible weapons emerge.

When the distance-to-target indicator reaches the set point, she squeezes the triggers on her masers with determination.

Then immediately flicks off the engines.

They stop accelerating, and in the sudden weightlessness they all float, restrained only by their seat straps, and they are unable to observe the effect of their shots on the other ship.

“Turn the engines on! Why did you do that?” Adam shrieks hysterically.

On the radar screen, the enemy looks completely unharmed.

“Turning off the reactors is logical; it saves power for our shields, and changing our rate of acceleration should make it harder for them to calculate our position,” Jowe replies. “Fasten your seatbelt, Adam...”

Eight seconds after carrying out its attack, the
Hope
becomes the target of the charged-particle beam fired by the patrol ship.

On radar, the shot looks like a stream of bright dots linking the two ships for nearly a whole second.

In spite of the force field network that serves as their shield, the impact is right on target—and disastrous for the
Hope
.

The homemade ship’s plastishield plates rip from stem to stern, several structural reinforcements shatter to bits, the hydrogen tanks (fortunately almost empty now) explode and send huge flames into the void.

The worst of all is that the force field inexplicably ceases to function.

Adam, terrified, bangs away desperately at the system control keyboard, trying to reactivate it.

Without success...

“One more like that and the voyage is over,” says Jowe, strangely calm.

Friga says nothing, just watches as her weapons recharge: if she has to die, she’ll go down fighting.

Apparently, her stratagem didn’t work...

The adversary will take its second and final shot before the
Hope
can respond.

And with no force shield, it will destroy them for sure.

Time’s almost up: seven seconds, eight, nine, now...

The woman and the men close their eyes...

Three seconds later, they’re still alive.

Apparently, the enemy couldn’t fire...

On the radar screen, the patrol ship is taking evasive action.

It seems to be surrounded by myriads of blinking bright dots.

Friga gives a savage war cry and opens fire again.

“I knew it!” she roars, laughing. “If I could just damage the insulation on their particle projection cannon, their first shot would be their last! Take that, Planetary Security!”

The two men realize that their pursuer did fire.

The bright dots are its “cannon balls”: charged particles.

They couldn’t be projected as intended because Friga’s shot had shortcircuited their weapon.

And, attracted by the static electricity of the patrol ship’s own hull, they are gathering around it, while its force shield prevents them from adhering.

The second shot by the
Hope’s
masers has no visible effect.

All the same, the enemy retreats, prudently.

There are no other patrol ships on radar.

With no more pursuers to evade, no need for haste, Friga does not turn the reactors back on.

They follow their inertial trajectory to the Escape Tunnel.

The three would-be hyperspace travelers, with infinity and eternity before them, release themselves from their seats and play like little kids in the weightlessness.

They’ll repair the damage caused by the patrol ship’s attack later.

For now, they have to release some tension.

To forget, at least for a few moments, that compared with what comes next, everything they’ve done so far is just that: child’s play.

Their personal skill and the precautions they’ve taken may have made all the difference so far, but everything will depend on sheer luck when they enter the Russian roulette of hyperspace.

And, even more so, when they exit it...

They’re back in their overstuffed armchairs, panting.

On the radar, far away, two dots, getting closer.

Friga and Adam are exhausted from their extravehicular activity, in spacesuits as homemade as the rest of the ship.

Muscles that they were never aware of before ache horribly now after two hours spent repairing the damage from the dogfight.

They’re just paying the price for their lack of practice, and they know it.

But how could they have practiced moving in space without antigrav simulators or costly tanks?

In any case, they’re hoping they won’t have to do it again.

Very soon, the
Hope
, more patched-up than ever, will be activating one of its two “disposable” hyperengines.

The three of them, now free—almost—smile despite their worries: the two distant dots on the radar are almost certainly two more patrol ships on their way here.

But they’ll be very far from the solar system before any of the Planetary Security ships can get close enough.

“For freedom,” Frida says solemnly, and she switches on the hyperengine.

Though they’ve heard so much about the sensation of going into hyperspace transit, the three are overwhelmed by it.

“It’s like they’re turning me inside out,” thinks Friga, not very good with images. “As if I had my insides outside and my outsides inside.”

“As if all the molecules in my body were iron filings arranged around a magnet... and suddenly they switched the polarity of the magnetic field,” Adam speculates.

Jowe’s mind is blank.

For him, it’s just an agonizing new experience.

But nothing as bad as his memories.

The spatio-temporal contraction lasts a thousand years or just one long second.

Then the homemade hyperengine conks out and they return to three-dimensional space.

They have no idea where.

In any case, not very far.

To keep from putting them at risk (and also limited by the cramped space onboard the
Hope
), Adam didn’t make either of the twin hyperengines very powerful.

Wherever they are, it can’t be more than fifty light-years from Earth.

Very nervous, they check the readings on the computer connected to the instruments.

After noting the brightest stars and comparing them with the parallax and distance readings saved in its memory, the computer positively identifies the ship’s position.

Shouts of joy.

Which die away quickly, as the holographic map looms up before their eyes.

Near the constellation of the Whale... but eight light-years from the nearest star, which, to be precise, is Tau Ceti.

“So close to paradise, without hitting it!” Adam whines, banging furiously on a bulkhead.

“There’s still anabiosis,” says their leader, trying to stay level-headed. “It’s just eight light-years. At the highest acceleration rate we can squeeze from the engines, if no asteroids get in the way we’ll get to Tau Ceti within...”—she makes a very rough calculation—“a century and a half. Sorry about Moy, Jowe, but there’s no other way out. We ought to save the other hyperengine as a last resort. Besides, it’s dangerous; we might end up even farther away...”

Adam starts to let out a scream of dismay, and Friga silences him by covering his mouth with her enormous hand.

Jowe takes one quick glance at the holographic map.

“A century and a half...” he sighs. “Poor Moy... Maybe things will have improved some by the time we arrive. There’s nothing else to discuss; let’s head to the freezers. It’ll be anabiosis, then.”

A first-rate hypership carries suspended animation freezers only as a last resort.

Same way the ships sailing the oceans in olden times used to carry lifeboats or life-rafts.

Their freezers are high-tech: comfortable, safe, individual.

So that, if something unfortunately goes wrong and a traveler dies, the others won’t suffer the same fate.

The
Hope
has three freezers that are actually one divided into three compartments.

Instead of three independent biological monitoring systems, it only has three interconnected subroutines.

There wasn’t enough money or space or time for more.

On the other hand, since the ship would only be used for one voyage, Adam was able to adapt each compartment to the physical parameters of its potential occupant.

One is long and wide, for Friga.

Another, long and narrow, for himself.