Worlds in Chaos (2 page)

The proportions of light and dark making up the days changed according to whether the Sun was visible as well as Neveya, and in what situation—which varied with the seasons. The “blue hours” came when the Sun shone from the far side of Neveya, transforming its normally orange glow into a black shadow cast across the Golden Ocean. At certain times in the course of the year, as the Ocean crossed past the world during the blue hours, the Sun would vanish behind Neveya completely, turning day abruptly into darkest night. These were the times when the other worlds that moved about Neveya revealed themselves in their full glories of form and color. They were known as the days of “Dark Crossings.” Multitudes would come from afar to Iryon to attend the rites and ceremonies that took place on these occasions.

The pyramid was built such that, from the Eye Stone at the center of the semicircle of astronomers and priests where the Speaker of Neveya stood, the orb was seen as if supported on its apex like a cloud grazing a mountain. Since Neveya never changed her position in the sky, the disk remained balanced in that manner always, varying only from yellow jewel through shrinking face to waning crescent as the Sun rode its distant course about both her and the world, and the celestial Ocean rose and dipped through its daily cycle. As the moment of the Dark Crossing approached, she glowered at the world with full face, black and featureless, fading into the glare as the Sun touched her shoulder.

The crowds assembled on the slopes were hushed as the Speaker intoned the Verses of Passage. Around the temple and across the city below, torches had been lit in readiness for the Darkness. At the top of the pyramid, Neveya reappeared suddenly out of the glare as a black arc sliding across the Sun, her shadow lying now like a black ray cut out of the Ocean, moment by moment advancing closer. When it fell across the world, connecting it to Neveya like a bridge spanning the Ocean, then, it was taught, the souls whose time had come to return would depart on their journey.

A murmuring of awe and wonder, more a wind than a sound, stirred through the crowd as the sky darkened. The astronomers readied their instruments and recording tablets, while the Speaker turned, opening his robed arms wide to greet the spectacle. For an instant Neveya’s outline flared into a thin curve of light as if the extinguishing Sun were trying to claw its way back around the edge. . . .

And then all the light went from the sky, and the stars appeared. Above and to one side of Neveya, the pink globe of Jenas became visible, while beyond it Sephelgo’s white-veined features shone as crescents of crystal. Lower was Aniar, graying and mottled, swimming to the side of Neveya, transfixed by the spear of the celestial sea seen edgewise, with the white speck of Delem farther out still along the same line. As the astronomers peered and recited their measures, scribes marked the stone that would later be cut for incorporation into the records.

The picture showed a disk pierced by a shallowly sloping line, standing on an arrowhead. Smaller circles showed the other visible worlds and their dispositions, with major stars represented by their symbols. A table incised beneath the design gave precise directions and elevations.

PART ONE

JUPITER:

CREATOR OF WORLDS

1

Almost twenty years before, as a nineteen-year-old engineering student at college, Landen Keene had astounded drivers on the interstate near the campus by overtaking them with ease in a 1959 Nash Rambler body fixed to a reinforced chassis on racing suspension, mounting an L88 Corvette engine. He had also more than impressed the two state troopers who handed him a ticket, but they were unable to cite his handiwork on a single safety violation. One of them had even indicated interest if Keene ever found himself of a mind to sell. “Keep at it, kid,” he had told Keene. “One day you’ll make a damned good engineer—supposin’ you live long enough, of course, that is.”

These days, it seemed, things worked the other way around. Outdated engineering camouflaged in futuristic-looking shells was hyped as a wonder of the age, the best that taxpayers’ money could buy. Keene sat in the cramped crew compartment of the NIFTV—pronounced “Nifteev,” standing for Nuclear Indigenously Fueled Test Vehicle—wedged comfortably into the seat at the Engineer’s station by the mild quarter-
g
of sustained thrust cutting the craft across freefall orbits, and stared at the image on the main screen. It showed the elongated body, flaring into a delta tail-wing with tip-fins, of the spaceplane riding twenty-five miles ahead off the port lower bow, closing slowly as the NIFTV overhauled it. Officially, it was designated an “Advanced Propulsion Unit.” Its white lines were illuminated in direct light from the Sun showing above the silhouette of Earth, revealing the insignia of both the U.S. Air Force Space Command and United Nations Global Defense Force. (Exactly what the entire globe was to be defended from had never been spelled out.) The NIFTV, by contrast, with its framework of struts and ties holding together an assemblage of test engine and auxiliary motors, external tanks, and crew module, was ungainly and ugly. The APU looked sleek on the covers of glossy promotional government brochures and was pleasing to bureaucrats. The NIFTV was a creature of engineers—a space workhorse, born of pragmatism and utility.

Ricardo’s voice came over the circuit from the Ccom station—Communications and Computing. “We’ve got a beam from them now. I’m windowing onto the main screen, copying you, Warren.”

“
Gotcha.
” Warren Fassner, research project leader at Amspace Corporation’s Propulsion Division and coordinator of the current mission, acknowledged from the control room at Space Dock, at that moment orbiting twelve thousand miles away above the far side of Earth. “
It looks like you guys are on stage. Make it a good one. We’re getting the hookups.
” To avoid giving somebody officious somewhere an opportunity to interfere, Keene had persuaded the public relations people at Amspace to hold until the last moment before slipping word of the mission to the networks. Since it was something new and sounded exciting, the networks were interested.

A helmeted head and shoulders showing a gray flight suit with Space Command insignia appeared in a one-eighth window at the top right of the screen. “
This is Commander Voaks from USAFSC APU to approaching craft U-ASC-16R. You are entering a restricted zone posted as reserved for official Space Command operations. Identify yourself and announce your intentions.
”

Joe answered from the Pilot station, squeezed centrally behind the other two, which were angled inward to face the bulkhead carrying the screens. “Captain Elms from U-ASC-16R acknowledging APU. We are a private research vehicle owned and operated by the Amspace Corporation.”

“
We are about to commence a high-acceleration test. For your own safety, my orders are to warn you off-limits.
”

“We’re paralleling you outside the posted limit. Just taking a ringside seat. Don’t mind us. Let’s get on with the show.”

Ricardo cut in again: “We’ve got another incoming—military priority band prefix.”

“
This is General Burgess, Space Command Ground Control Center, and I demand to speak to
—”

Joe shook his head in the background behind Keene’s console. “We’re gonna be too busy here for this. I’m throwing this one to you, Warren.”

“
Sure, switch him through. We’ll handle it,
” Fassner said from the Space Dock. It had been expected. Ricardo clicked entries in a table on one of his auxiliary screens, and the irate general was consigned off to a string of comsat links around the planet.

“
APU to Amspace 16R. You have been warned in accordance with regulatory requirements. Be advised that your continued proximity to this operation will not be taken as indicative of a desirably cooperative attitude. Negative consequences may result. This is APU, out.
” The window vanished.

“Negative consequences, guys,” Keene repeated. “That’s it—it’s all over for us. They’ll find some bug in our parking lot that needs to be protected now. Close down the head office.”

“Where do they get those guys?” Ricardo asked as he scanned his displays and made adjustments. “I mean, do they have to be programmed to talk like that? . . .” His voice trailed off, and he leaned forward. “Okay, this is it. We’re registering their exhaust plume on thermal: preboost profile.” As Ricardo spoke, the APU’s image sprouted a tail of white heat, growing rapidly to extend several times the length of the vessel.

“Full burn,” Joe’s voice confirmed. “We’re looking at about, aw . . . two gee initial. Downrange radar is tracking.” The Air Force spaceplane was accelerating away, commencing its test. While Joe continued reading off time checks and numbers, Keene rechecked his own panel to make sure all the NIFTV’s systems were ready, then turned his eyes again to the image shrinking and foreshortening on the main screen.
Advanced propulsion
, he thought to himself scornfully. Pure hydrogen and whatever they called the latest oxidizer, it was still chemicals. NASA, circa 1960s, repackaged in an Air Force suit, its adequacy a giveaway of what it was intended for: a high-altitude police cruiser to patrol the envisaged one-world state. NIFTV had the potential to bring the Solar System into Earth’s backyard, but the powers that Earth’s destiny depended on weren’t interested. If the day ever arrived when their one-world order looked like becoming a reality, that, Keene vowed, would be when he’d leave it all and go out to join the Kronians. But with enterprises like Amspace still able to find backers, there was hope yet.

Fassner, having evidently passed the general on to someone else, reappeared on the beam from Space Dock. “
Okay, that’s looking good now. Let’s go after ’em.
”

“On standby at Fire-Ready,” Keene confirmed.

“Go, engine. Take it up to eighty,” Joe ordered.

Keene initiated the start-up and felt himself being squashed back in his seat as he increased reactant flow to bring the NIFTV quickly up to eighty percent power. Lead gloves encased his hands. He felt his cheeks and lips weighed back over his facial bones, baring his teeth. Smaller screens on the bulkhead in front of him showed deformed parodies of the faces of Ricardo and Joe.