A Second Chance at Eden (51 page)

Superenergized ions hammered into the wreck, smashing the internal structure apart, heating the atmosphere to an intolerable pressure. Xenoc machinery detonated in tremendous energy bursts all through the structure, the units expending themselves in spherical clouds of solid light which clashed and merged into a single wavefront of destruction. The giant rock particle lurched wildly from the explosion. Drenched in a cascade of hard radiation and subatomic particles, the unicorn tower at the centre of the dish snapped off at its base to tumble away into the darkness.

Then the process seemed to reverse. The spume of light blossoming from the cliff curved in on itself, growing in brightness as it was compressed back to its point of origin.

Lady Mac
’s crew were straining under the five-gee acceleration of the starship’s flight. The inertial-guidance systems started to flash priority warnings into Marcus’s neural nanonics.

‘We’re going back,’ he datavised. Five gees made talking too difficult. ‘Jesus, five gees and it’s still pulling us in.’ The external sensor suite showed him the contracting fireball, its luminosity surging towards violet. Large sections of the cliff were flaking free and plummeting into the conflagration. Black lightning cracks were splitting open right across the rock.

He ordered the flight computer to power up the nodes and retract the last sensor clusters.

‘Marcus, we can’t jump,’ Katherine datavised, her face pummelled into frantic creases by the acceleration. ‘It’s a gravitonic emission. Don’t.’

‘Have some faith in the old girl.’ He initiated the jump.

An event horizon eclipsed the
Lady Macbeth
’s fuselage.

Behind her, the wormhole at the heart of the newborn micro-star gradually collapsed, pulling in its gravitational field as it went. Soon there was nothing left but an expanding cloud of dark snowdust embers.

*

They were three jumps away from Tranquillity when Katherine ventured into Marcus’s cabin.
Lady Mac
was accelerating at a tenth of a gee towards her next jump coordinate, holding him lightly in one of the large black-foam sculpture chairs. It was the first time she’d ever really noticed his age.

‘I came to say sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have doubted.’

He waved limply. ‘
Lady Mac
was built for combat, her nodes are powerful enough to jump us out of some gravitonic field distortions. Not that I had a lot of choice. Still, we only reduced three nodes to slag, plus the one dear old Jorge damaged.’

‘She’s a hell of ship, and you’re the perfect captain for her. I’ll keep flying with you, Marcus.’

‘Thanks. But I’m not sure what I’m going to do after we dock. Replacing three nodes will cost a fortune. I’ll be in debt to the banks again.’

She pointed at the row of transparent bubbles which all held identical antique electronic circuit boards. ‘You can always sell some more Apollo command module guidance computers.’

‘I think that scam’s just about run its course. Don’t worry, when we get back to Tranquillity I know a captain who’ll buy them from me. At least that way I’ll be able to settle the flight pay I owe all of you.’

‘For Heaven’s sake, Marcus, the whole astronautics industry is in debt to the banks. I swear I never could understand the economics behind starflight.’

He closed his eyes, a wry smile quirking his lips. ‘We very nearly solved human economics for good, didn’t we?’

‘Yeah. Very nearly.’

‘The wormhole would have let me change the past. Their technology was going to change the future. We could have rebuilt our entire history.’

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea. What about the grandfather paradox for a start? How come you didn’t warn us about Jorge as soon as you emerged from the wormhole?’

‘Scared, I guess. I don’t know nearly enough about quantum temporal displacement theory to start risking paradoxes. I’m not even sure I’m the Marcus Calvert that brought this particular
Lady Macbeth
to the xenoc wreck. Suppose you really can’t travel between times, only parallel realities? That would mean I didn’t escape into the past, I just shifted sideways.’

‘You look and sound pretty familiar to me.’

‘So do you. But is my crew still stuck back at their version of the wreck waiting for me to deal with Jorge?’

‘Stop it,’ she said softly. ‘You’re Marcus Calvert, and you’re back where you belong, flying
Lady Mac
.’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘The xenocs wouldn’t have built the wormhole unless they were sure it would help them get home, their true home. They were smart people.’

‘And no mistake.’

‘I wonder where they did come from?’

‘We’ll never know, now.’ Marcus lifted his head, some of the old humour emerging through his melancholia. ‘But I hope they got back safe.’