Starfarers (45 page)

“Well, let’s get that changed.” Kilbirnie saw no reason to put it on the parleur. This was her department She bent herself
to the task of establishing direct laser communication with the command computer yonder.

The station was outward bound for the apastron of its shortened and Cometary path. The maximum acceleration of which it was capable, properly applied, ought to work it into a safely broad ellipse. “And then we try again for the right one,” Kilbirnie said with a lopsided grin.

Envoy
kept quiet, not to bother her and her partner.
That must be hard on the skipper
, she thought.
My poor jo.

Computation. Result. Directive.
Apply this vector three hours, eighteen minutes; thereafter run free, standing by for further orders.

Power surged in the station, sensed and followed by instruments elsewhere; eyes still saw only stars and the distant disk-fire.

Shock. “Wha’ the bluidy hell—”

“(The acceleration is insufficient,)” Colin said from ens meters and readouts.

“(That is clear. Let us find out why.)”

Computerized telemetric systems operated swiftly. Within minutes Kilbirnie could say, “(We have damage to the station’s superconductor grid. Deformation. Evidently tidal forces warped it when it passed so near the black hole. The field drive is functioning at barely 27 percent of rated maximum. Can we do anything useful with that?)”

Colin calculated. “(It cannot raise the apastron enough. At best, we can delay the irretrievably close approach and the subsequent engulfment by two orbits. That gives us a total of approximately ninety-six hours. Can the repair systems restore full function within this time?)”

Kilbirnie shook her head. “(I am not familiar with the station and its machines in detail, but with what I do know, I can be sure it will take considerably longer.)”

“(Have we then lost the station?)”

The bleakness in Kilbirnie fled from her sudden laughter. “Nay!” she cried. “We’ve a rescue to do. D’ye think we can claim salvage rights?” She explained: “(Our boat
should be up to supplying the additional boost. Compute the parameters.)”

Almost, Colin shrank from her. “(Is this advisable?)”

“(Work up the numbers and find out,) damn it!”

The figures were soon on hand. Kilbirnie studied them, smiled, and turned to the outercom. “
Herald
to
Envoy
. I’ve news at last. I daresay you’re almighty tired of listening in and wondering what the devil we’re at.”

A minute went by while her words flew outward, a receiver undid Doppler effect, and Nansen’s came to her. She sat weightless, admiring the heavens. Rounding the black hole in some fifteen hours, the boat pointed her bow at other stars than earlier. But here all constellations were strange.

“Our own observations suggest what the problem is,” Nansen said, carefully impersonal. “Give us your details, please.”

Kilbirnie transmitted the figures while she told their meaning in English. “We can handle it,” she finished. “If we rendezvous, grapple, and apply full thrust in coordination with what’s left of the field drive, we’ll free the station. In fact, we’ll put it directly on trajectory for the orbit we intended. And we’ll have ample delta
v
left for ourselves. But we have to do it on this pass, setting out in just a few minutes. Next time around, the decay will already have progressed too far, plus whatever further harm tidal stress may have done.”

Pause. Ventilation hummed. Colin sat quiet. She had an impression that the mintlike scent from en betokened meditation.

“That is … very unsafe,” Nansen said. “The disk is going into an active phase. It’s spitting more and more flares, and they are getting bigger. Quite possibly a plasmoid concentration did bring on the trouble. Diving closer in, you, too, could be caught. Abort. Return to us. Nobody will blame you or imagine you were frightened. You have no right to be reckless.”

“I’ve considered it,” Kilbirnie answered. “The odds are long in our favor. If a flare reaches us, it’ll hardly include another fat mass. That would be ridiculous. Anyhow, the worst a mass can do, if it doesn’t actually hit us, is throw us off course, and we can recover from that. The flare itself is ions and electrons, which’ll be famine-thin by the time they get to where we are. Our screens and shielding will fend off the radiation.”

She smiled at him, unseen amidst the stars. “Dinna fash yersel’, skipper. Of course we’ll skyhoot for home and mother if anything truly nasty comes at us.” Her tone firmed. “But in my best judgment, here on the spot, we can safely do it, and our duty is to make the effort.”

Waiting.

“Duty—I must accept your judgment, Pilot Kilbirnie,” Nansen said, word by heavy word. “Take every due precaution. Proceed.”

“Thanks, love.” Kilbirnie blew him a kiss. “I do love you,” she whispered.

Turning to Colin: “(Have you understood? I mean to go save the station. But you have your life, too. Are you willing?)”

The Tahirian lay calmed. Ens middle eyes met hers, ens side eyes contemplated heaven and the vessel that they shared. “(Yes. It will be your task, but is for all of us, and I have confidence in you.)”

“Thanks,” she said again, more moved then she had expected.

Then it was to get busy.

Herald
jetted. Weight tugged. Stars wheeled in view for a moment, steadied, and gleamed dead ahead. Among them the disk slowly brightened. Kilbirnie began to see the ripples and flickers of tempests within it.

The station hove in sight, ugly, lame, futureful. Kilbirnie lost selfhood, became one with her boat, with instruments, computers, controls, and the flame that drove them onward. Delicately as a stalking panther, she maneuvered in. Speeds
were above a hundred kilometers per second; it would not take much of an error to smash her. Match vectors, draw closer, extend grapnels. Guided by their sensors, the arms reached for contact. It registered. They took hold and folded. Hull met hull. The impact was gentle, but rang through
Herald
like a great bell.

Make full linkage with the command computer in the station. Take fresh data. Recompute flight plan. Enter. Apply lateral jet, slewing around a trifle till oriented just so. Now,
blast.

The acceleration was low, about a quarter gravity, for the boat was helping move a mass considerably larger than her own. Still, give it time and it would be enough, it would serve:

Kilbirnie sagged back under it, into her chair. She wiped a hand across her brow and tasted sweat, salt on her lips. “Whoosh!” she breathed. “I want a drink. Improvident, bringing nowt along stronger than coffee.”

Her remark flew on the beam to
Envoy
. “You have to stay alert,” Nansen cautioned. “The disk is churning and spouting, worse every minute.”

She touched for a view in that direction and magnified. The gas was indeed in upheaval, waves and gouts of fire, a storm in the maelstrom. She was not sure whether she could make out a point of infinite night, the black hole.

“We’ll keep watch,” Nansen went on redundantly. He had put his ship in a canted orbit for an overview through instruments more powerful than any in the boat. “Be prepared to cut and run upon warning.”

“I told you, skipper, we should be fit to ride out whatever the thing may throw at us,” Kilbirnie replied. “But of course we’re no heroes, we two. Nothing so stupid. I’ve plenty of living left to do … with you,” she finished low.

Colin had been occupied at the keyboards. “(I have reset the appropriate systems to monitor ambient space,)” en announced. “(They will provide us information additional to what we obtain from the ship.)”

“Good.” Kilbirnie’s nod, smile, and brief stroking of the fur conveyed it. She and a few Tahirians, en among them, had come to that much friendship and understanding over the years. She yawned and stretched. “I could do with a nap. And do and do.”

She had no immediate job. Boat and station steered themselves. It was a straightforward operation, applying thrust on a line gyroscopically fixed. In this region, nearing apastron, no unusual velocity change was needed to alter orbit radically. Three hours would bring it about. Thereafter, released, the station ought to curve away and fall into the path around the black hole that its builders wanted. This far from the monster mass, the ordinary laws of celestial mechanics kept faith.

Kilbirnie unbuckled, went aft, secured herself on a bunk, and drifted into dreams. Colin stood watch. Perhaps en dozed a little, or the Tahirian equivalent of it; perhaps en was too nervous to rest. It had been long since any of ens race last challenged the universe.

Kilbirnie dreamed of flying. …

A yell woke her. She unsnapped her belts and tumbled to her feet. It had come from the outercom speaker. “—danger,” Nansen cried. “Respond,
Herald
! Danger!”

She leaped along the deck and vaulted into her seat. A glance at a clock showed that two hours had passed. Colin huddled beside her, mane erected, a harsh smell around en. “
Herald
to
Envoy
,” she said while her hands fastened the safety harness. “What’s the trouble?”

Wait. Colin gestured at the instrument displays. She could not interpret them at a glance.

“A giant flare has erupted,” Nansen said, now iron-cool. “The leading edge will reach you in about fifteen minutes. Abandon the station and boost the hardest you can.”

Clearheaded, more exhilarated than alarmed, she replied with the same levelness, “Not necessarily. We couldn’t outrun it in any case. And there are no clots or other special hoodoos, are there? We’ll take some readings ourselves and report back.”

She turned to her companion. Colin raised ens parleur. “(The spectrum shows an extremely energetic volume of gas, largely plasma. It is attenuating as it advances and spreads. Our screens will deflect the particles, and no more hard photons will penetrate our shielding than may perhaps cause us to take a prophylactic cell treatment at the ship.)”

“(I thought so. We stay.)”

“(As is to be expected, the magnetic field is strong and fluctuant, with transients of high local intensity. I cannot obtain quantitative data. This is a chaotic phenomenon, beyond previous experience.)”

“(We can cope, though. Correct?)”

“(Lacking precise measurements and applicable equations, I cannot offer better than a guess. I think we can remain. I am willing.)”

“(Then we do.)” Again she caressed en.

To Nansen: “We can handle it, and besides, we wouldn’t gain much if we fled. Don’t fear for us.”

Wait.

“If this is your decision,” Nansen dragged forth, “I will not pester you.”

“Save that for when we’re together,” Kilbirnie suggested.

Wait.

“
Vaya con Dios
,” said her skipper.

And it was to wait, while the linked spacecraft fought their way toward freedom.

The flare poured over them.

Nothing showed to eyes, nothing crackled in ears or prickled in skin. Viewscreens depicted stars gleaming changeless. Only meters told of the rage seething around. Kilbirnie peered unwinkingly at them. That shifting, twisting magnetism, borne outward in the electric torrent, did pose a threat to her reaction drive. It could divert the plasma stream, even start ruinous waves of resonance. The boat’s collimating fields compensated. Should they be over-whelmed, they had a fail-safe. Nevertheless—

Abruptly the sky was gone from the screen before her.
White flashes blinked and staggered across blackness. Colin recoiled in ens seat. Kilbirnie’s hands clenched her chair arms. “What’s this?” she heard herself gasp. Unreadable, the pattern fairly screamed urgency. “A warning—frae them, the aliens—?”

The stars reappeared. She saw needles and numbers go wild. Weight fell to a fraction of what it had been. A synthetic voice stated: “Magnetic flux was at the point of overriding the screen fields and disrupting jet control. Thrust has been stopped. No significant damage has occurred.”

The nightmare whirled through her, the jet forced aside, slashing at the lattice of its accelerator, perhaps with a backlash into the hull, a lethal burst of radiation, but air would already have exploded from the wound … at best, her boat crippled, an object passive in orbit, falling back to swing through the deadly disk while the tides ripped at structure and flesh. …

“What has happened?” Nansen called.

“I’d like to know, myself,” Kilbirnie rejoined. “Hold on.”

She conferred with Colin.

“All right,” she said. “It’s clear.” She described the disaster that had been averted. “The flux has declined. We can resume thrust. We will.”

Wait, while breath and blood went in and out.

“You’ll cast loose first, of course,” Nansen said raggedly. “And—forgive me, I can’t teach you your business, but—as nearly as we can tell, the flare is full of magnetic line concentrations. More will probably sweep over you. You’ll have to escape by fits and starts.”

“That, aye,” Kilbirnie conceded. “But no sense in forsaking the station. It’s not yet at a point where it can work into any kind of survival orbit. We’ll stay with it, tugging when we can, till it’s ready.”

Wait.

“Abort, I say. Return to us.”

“No. We’ve too bluidy much invested in this. Colin and
Herald
and I, we can save it.”

Wait. Kilbirnie began running her new computation. It was elementary; she didn’t need help.

“Abort at once,” Nansen said. “That is an order.”

Kilbirnie sighed. “You’re captain where you are. I’m captain here.”

Wait. Numbers and graphics arrived. She keyed a command. Weight came back as it had been, like a hand laid upon her.

“I beg you—”

“Don’t. Just wish us luck.”

Wait. The fire disk waved and wavered.

“
Dios santissimo
—”Stoicism clamped down. “Proceed, Pilot”

“Carry on, my darling.”

The minutes moved through the last hour.

An alarm shrilled. The boat shuddered. Weight plummeted anew.

“A magnetic pulse of very high power seriously interfered with plasma collimation before the shutoff could respond,” stated the computer. No fear was in its voice. Not being alive, it could not die. “The jet deviated and burned through the sternmost coil. Maximum available thrust has been correspondingly reduced, by twelve percent.”