The Best Alternate History Stories Of The Twentieth Century Part 34

That caught me literally off-balance. My shoes came unstuck from the carpet, and I had to grab hold of a ceiling handrail.

"Say what?" I asked.

Not looking up at me, Jeri Lee absently played with the squeezebulb in her left hand, her right foot holding open the pages of her personal logbook. "You said that he's never thought of anyone else in his life," she replied. "Whatever else you might say about him, you're wrong there, because he saved my life."

I shifted hands so I could sip my coffee. "Anything you want to talk about?"

She shrugged. "Nothing that probably hasn't occurred to you already. I mean, you've probably wondered why a google is serving as first officer aboard this ship, haven't you?" When my mouth gaped open, she smiled a little. "Don't look so surprised. We're not telepathic, rumors to the contrary... it's just that I've heard the same thing over the last several years we've been together."

Jeri gazed pensively through the forward windows. Although we were out of the Kirkwood gap, no asteroids could be seen. The belt is much less dense than many people think, so all we saw was limitless starscape, with Mars a distant ruddy orb off to the port side.

"You know how Superiors mate, don't you?" she asked at last, still not looking at me.

I felt my face grow warm. Actually, I didn't know, although I had frequently fantasized about Jeri helping me find out. Then I realized that she was speaking literally. "Prearranged marriages, right?"

She nodded. "All very carefully planned, in order to avoid inbreeding while expanding the gene pool as far as possible. It allows for some selection, of course... no one tells us exactly whom we should marry, just as long as it's outside of our own clans and it's not to Primaries."

She paused to finish her coffee, then she crumpled the squeezebulb and batted it aside with her right foot. It floated in midair, finding its own miniature orbit within the compartment. "Well, sometimes it doesn't work out that way. When I was twenty, I fell in love with a boy at Descartes Station... a Primary, as luck would have it. At least I thought I was in love...."

She grimaced, brushing her long braid away from her delicate shoulders. "In hindsight, I guess we were just good in bed. In the long run it didn't matter, because as soon as he discovered that he had knocked me up, he got the union to ship him off to Mars. They were only too glad to do so, in order to avoid..."

"A messy situation. I see." I took a deep breath. "Leaving you stuck with his child."

She shook her head. "No. No child. I tried to keep it, but the miscarriage... anyway, the less said about that, the better."

"I'm sorry." What else could I have said? She should have known better, since there had never been a successful crossbreeding between Superiors and Primaries? She had been young and stupid; both are forgivable sins, especially when they usually occur in tandem.

Jeri heaved a sigh. "It didn't matter. By then, my family had disowned me, mainly because I had violated the partnership that had already been made for me with another clan. Both clans were scandalized, and as a result neither one wanted me." She looked askance at me. "Bigotry works both ways, you know. You call us googles, we call you apes, and I had slept with an ape. An insult against the extropic ideal."

She closed the logbook, tossed it from her left foot to her right hand, and tucked it into a web beneath the console. "So I was grounded at Descartes. A small pension, just enough to pay the rent, but nothing really to live for. I suppose they expected me to become a prost.i.tute... which I did, for a short time... or commit ritual suicide and save everyone the sweat."

"That's cold." But not unheard of. There were a few grounded Superiors to be found in the inner system, poor sad cases working at menial tasks in Lagranges or on the Moon. I remembered an alcoholic google who hung out at Sloppy Joe's; he had eagle wings tattooed across his back, and he cadged drinks off tourists in return for performing cartwheels across the bar. An eagle with clipped tailfeathers. Every so often, one would hear of a Superior who checked out by walking into an airlock and pushing the void b.u.t.ton. No one knew why, but now I had an answer. It was the Superior way.

"That's extropy for you." She laughed bitterly, then was quiet for a moment. "I was considering taking the long walk," she said at last, "but Bo found me first, when I... well, propositioned him. He bought me a couple of drinks and listened to my story, and when I was done crying he told me he needed a new first officer. No one else would work for him, so he offered me the job, for as long as I cared to keep it."

"And you've kept it."

"And I've kept it," she finished. "For the record, Mr. Furland, he has always treated me with the greatest of respect, despite what anyone else might have told you. I've never slept with him, nor has he ever demanded that I do so..."

"I didn't... !"

"No, of course you haven't, but you've probably wondered, haven't you?" When I turned red, she laughed again. "Everyone who has worked the Comet has, and sometimes they like to tell stories about the google and the fat slob, f.u.c.king in his cabin between shifts."

She smiled, slowly shaking her head. "It isn't so... but, to tell the truth, if he ever asked, I'd do so without a second thought. I owe him that little."

I didn't say anything for a couple of minutes. It isn't often when a shipmate unburdens his or her soul, and Jeri had given me much to consider. Not the least of which was the slow realization that, now more than before, I was becoming quite fond of her.

Before he had gone below, McKinnon had told me to activate the external missile pod, so I pushed myself over to his station and used that minor task to cover for my embarra.s.sment.

Strapping on EMP to an Ares-cla.s.s freighter was another example of McKinnon's overheated imagination. When I had once asked why, he'd told me that he'd purchased it as war surplus from the Pax Astra Royal Navy back in '71, after the hijacking of the TBSA Olympia. No one had ever discovered who had taken the Olympia -indeed, the hijack wasn't discovered until five months later, when the uncrewed solar-sail vessel arrived at Ceres Station with its cargo holds empty-but it was widely believed to be the work of indie prospectors desperate for food and various supplies.

I had to cover my smile when McKinnon told me that he was worried about "pirates" trying to waylay the Comet. Having four 10k nukes tucked behind the Comet 's cargo section was like arming a gig with heatseekers. Not that McKinnon wouldn't have loved it if someone did try to steal his ship-Captain Future meets the Asteroid Pirates and all that-but I was worried that he might open fire on some off-course prospector ship that was unlucky enough to cross his path.

Another thought occurred to me. "When he picked you... um, when you signed on as First Officer... were you aware that he doesn't have a firm grip on reality?"

Jeri didn't answer immediately. I was about to repeat myself when I felt a gentle nudge against my arm. Looking down, I saw her left foot slide past me, its thumb-sized toes toggling the MISSILE STANDBY switch I had neglected to throw.

"Sure," she said. "In fact, he used to call me Joan... as in Joan Ran-dall, Curt Newton's girlfriend... until I got him to cut it out."

"Really?"

"Um-hmm." She rested her right leg against the back of my chair. "Consider yourself lucky he doesn't call you Otho or Grag. He used to do that to other crewmen until I told him that no one got the joke." She grinned. "You ought to try reading some of those stories sometime. He's loaded them into The Brain's library annex. Not great literature, to be sure... in fact, they're rather silly... but for early twentieth century science fiction, they're..."

"Science what?"

"Science fiction. What they used to call fantasy back... well, never mind." She pulled her leg back and folded it beneath her bottom as she gazed again out the window. "Look, I know Bo can be weird most of the time, but you have to realize that he's a romantic stuck in an age where most people don't even know what the word means anymore. He wants derring-do, swashbuckling, great adventure... he wants to be a hero."

"Uh-huh. Bo McKinnon, s.p.a.ce hero." I tried to transpose him on the magazine covers he had framed in the galley: wielding a ray gun in each hand, defending Jeri from ravaging monsters. It didn't work, except to make me stifle a chuckle.

"That isn't too much to ask for, is it?" There was sadness in her eyes when she glanced my way. Before I could get the grin off my face, she returned her gaze to the windows. "Perhaps so. This isn't an age of heroes. We move rock back and forth across the system, put money in the bank, and congratulate ourselves for our ingenuity. A hundred years ago, what we're doing now was the stuff of dreams, and the people who did it were larger than life. That's what he finds so attractive in those stories. But now..."

She let out her breath. "Who can blame Bo for wanting something he can't have? He's stuck on a second-hand freighter with an ex-wh.o.r.e for a first officer and a second officer who openly despises him, and he's the b.u.t.t of every joke from Earth to Iapetus. No wonder he drops everything to answer a Mayday. This may be the only chance he gets."

I was about to retort that my only chance to get a job on a decent ship was slipping through my fingers when her console double-beeped. A moment later, The Brain's voice came through the ceiling speaker.

"Pardon me, but we're scheduled for course correction maneuvers. Do you wish for me to execute?"

Jeri swiveled her chair around. "That's okay, Brain. We'll handle it by manual control. Give me the coordinates."

The AI responded by displaying a three-dimensional grid on her flatscreens. "Want me to do anything?" I asked, although it was obvious that she had matters well in hand.

"I've got everything covered," she said, her long fingers typing in the coordinates. "Get some sleep, if you want." She cast a quick grin over her shoulder. "Don't worry. I won't tell Bo you dozed off in his chair."

End of conversation. Besides, she had a good idea. I cranked back the chair, buckled the seat belt and tucked my hands in my pockets so they wouldn't drift around in freefall. It might be a while before I got another chance; once we reached 2046-Barr, Captain Future would be back on deck, bellowing orders and otherwise making my life painful.

She had told me a lot about Bo McKinnon, but nothing I had heard gave me much affection for the man. So far as I was concerned, he was still the biggest dork I had ever met... and if there was anyone aboard the TBSA Comet who deserved my sympathy, it was Jeri Lee-Bose, who was meant for better things than this.

As I shut my eyes, it occurred to me that the captain's chair fitted me a lot better than it did McKinnon. One day, perhaps I'd have enough money in the bank to buy him out. It would be interesting to see if he took orders as well as he gave them.

It was a warm and comforting thought, and I snuggled against it like a pillow as I fell asleep.

"Look, Arraj-it is a meteor!" cried the younger Martian excitedly. "And there's a ship guiding it!"

The two stared for a moment at the incredible spectacle. The expanding black spot was clearly a giant meteor, rushing now at tremendous speed toward Mars. And close beside the booming meteor rushed a dark s.p.a.ceship, playing rays upon the great ma.s.s. The ship was propelling the meteor toward Mars.

-HAMILTON, Captain Future's Challenge (1940)

Several hours later, the Comet rendezvoused with 2046-Barr.

The asteroid looked much the same as the holo tank had depicted it-an enormous rock the color of charcoal-but the Fool's Gold itself was the largest s.p.a.cecraft I had ever seen short of a Lagrange colony. It dwarfed the Comet like a yacht parked alongside an ocean liner, a humongous machine attached to one end of the asteroid's ma.s.s.

A humongous machine, and apparently lifeless. We approached the ma.s.s-driver with great caution, being careful to avoid its stern lest we get nailed by the stream of debris being constantly ejected by its railgun. That was the only apparent sign of activity; although light gleamed from the portals of the rotating command sphere, we could detect no motion within the windows, and the radio remained as silent as it had been for the last eighteen hours.

"Look yonder." I pointed through the window at the hangar bay, a wide berth within the barrel-shaped main hull just forward of the railgun. Its doors were open, and as the Comet slowly cruised past we could see the gig and service pods parked in their cradles. "Everything's there. Even the lifeboats are still in place."

Jeri angled the camera on the outrigger telemetry boom until it peered into the bay. Her wide eyes narrowed as she studied a close-up view on a flatscreen. "That's weird," she murmured. "Why would they depressurize the bay and open the doors if they didn't...?"

"Knock it off, you two!"

McKinnon was strapped in his chair, on the other side of Jeri Lee's duty station from mine. "It doesn't matter why they did it. Just keep your eyes peeled for pirates... they could be lurking somewhere nearby."

I chose to remain silent as I piloted the Comet past the ma.s.s-driver's ma.s.sive anchor-arms and over the top of the asteroid. Ever since McKinnon had returned to the bridge an hour ago-following the shower and leisurely breakfast I myself had been denied-he had been riding his favorite hobby horse: asteroid pirates had seized control of the Fool's Gold and taken its crew hostage.

This despite the fact that we had not spotted any other s.p.a.cecraft during our long journey and that none could now be seen in the vicinity of the asteroid. It could also be logically argued that the four-person crew of a prospector ship would have a hard time overcoming the twelve-person crew of a ma.s.s-driver, but logic meant little to Captain Future. His left hand rested on the console near the EMP controls, itching to launch a nuke at the pirate ship he was certain to find lurking in the asteroid's shadow.

Yet, when we completed a fly-by of 2046-Barr, none were to be found. In fact, nothing moved at all, save for the asteroid itself....

A thought occurred to me. "Hey, Brain," I said aloud, "have you got a fix on the ma.s.s-driver's position and bearing?"

"Affirmative, Mr. Furland. It is X-ray one-seven-six, Yankee two..."

"Mr. Furland!" McKinnon snapped. "I didn't give orders for you to..."

I ignored him. "Skip the numbers, Brain. Just tell me if it's still on course for cislunar rendezvous."

A momentary pause, then: "Negative, Mr. Furland. The Fool's Gold has altered its trajectory. According to my calculations, there is a seventy-two-point-one probability that it is now on collision course with the planet Mars."

Jeri went pale as she sucked in her breath, and even McKinnon managed to shut up. "Show it to me on the tank," I said as I turned my chair around to face the nav table.

The tank lit, displaying a holographic diagram of the Fool's Gold's present position in relationship with the Martian sidereal-hour. Mars still lay half an A.U. away, but as The Brain traced a shallow-curving orange line through the belt, we saw that it neatly intercepted the red planet as it advanced on its...o...b..t around the Sun.

The Brain translated the math it had displayed in a box next to the three-dimensional grid. "a.s.suming that its present delta-vee remains unchecked, in two hundred and thirty-six hours, twelve minutes, and twenty-four seconds, 2046-Barr will collide with Mars."

I did some arithmetic in my head. "That's about ten days from now."

"Nine-point-eight-three Earth standard days, to be exact."The Brain expanded the image of Mars until it filled the tank; a bull's-eye appeared at a point just above the equator. "Estimated point of impact will be approximately twelve degrees North by sixty-three degrees West, near the edge of the Lunae Planum."

"Just north of Valles Marineris," Jeri said. "Oh G.o.d, Rohr, that's near..."

"I know." I didn't need a refresher course in planetary geography. The impact point was in the low plains above Mariner Valley, only a few hundred klicks northeast of Arsia Station, not to mention closer to the smaller settlements scattered around the vast canyon system. For all I knew, there could now be a small mining town on the Lunae Planum itself; Mars was being colonized so quickly these days, it was hard to keep track of where a bunch of its one and a half million inhabitants decided to pitch claims and call themselves New Chattanooga or whatever.

"Sabotage!" McKinnon yelled. He unbuckled his harness and pushed himself closer to the nav table, where he stared at the holo. "Someone has sabotaged the ma.s.s-driver so that it'll collide with Mars! Do you realize...?"

"Shut up, Captain." I didn't need his histrionics to tell me what would occur if... when... 2046-Barr came down in the middle of the Lunae Planum.

The Martian ecosystem wasn't as fragile as Earth's. Indeed, it was much more volatile, as the attempt in the '50s to terraform the planet and make the climate more stable had ultimately proved. However, the Mars colonists who still remained after the boondoggle had come to depend upon its seasonal patterns in order to grow crops, maintain solar farms, continue mining operations and other activities which insured their basic survival.

It was a very tenuous sort of existence that relied upon conservative prediction of climatic changes. The impact of a three-kilometer asteroid in the equatorial region would throw all that straight into the compost toilet. Localized quakes and duststorms would only be the beginning; two or three hundred people might be killed outright, but the worst would be yet to come. The amount of dust that would be raised into the atmosphere by the collision would blot out the sky for months on end, causing global temperatures to drop from Olympus Mons to the h.e.l.las Plantia. As a result, everything from agriculture to power supplies would be affected, to put it mildly, with starvation in the cold and dark awaiting most of the survivors.

It wasn't quite doomsday. A few isolated settlements might get by with the aid of emergency relief efforts from Earth. But as the major colony world of humankind, Mars would cease to exist.

McKinnon was still transfixed upon the holo tank, jabbing his finger at Mars while raving about saboteurs and s.p.a.ce pirates and G.o.d knows what else, when I turned back to Jeri. She had taken the helm in my absence, and as the Comet came up on the Fool's Gold again, I closely studied the ma.s.s-driver on the flatscreens.

"Okay," I said quietly. "The hangar bay is out... we can't send the skiff in there while it's depressurized and the cradles are full. Maybe if we.. ."

She was way ahead of me. "There's an auxiliary docking collar here," she said, pointing to a port on the spar leading to the command sphere. "It'll be tight, but I think we can squeeze us in there."

I looked at the screen. Tight indeed. Despite the fact that the Comet had a universal docking adapter, the freighter wasn't designed for mating with a craft as large as Fool's Gold. "That's cutting it close," I said. "If we can collapse the telemetry boom, though, we might be able to make it."

She nodded. "We can do that, no problem... except it means losing contact with Ceres."

"But if we don't hard-dock," I replied, "then someone's got to go EVA and try entering a service airlock."

Knowing that this someone would probably be me, I didn't much relish the idea. An untethered s.p.a.cewalk between two vessels under acceleration is an iffy business at best. On the other hand, cutting off our radio link with Ceres under these circ.u.mstances was probably not a good idea. If we f.u.c.ked up in some major way, then no one at Ceres Station would be informed of the situation, and early warning from Ceres to Arsia Station might save a few lives, if evacuation of settlements near Lunae Planum was started soon enough.

I made up my mind. "We'll hard-dock," I said, turning in my seat toward the communications console, "but first we send a squib to Ceres, let them know what's..."

"Hey! What are you two doing?"

Captain Future had finally decided to see what the Futuremen were doing behind his back. He kicked off the nav table and pushed over to us, grabbing the backs of our chairs with one hand each to hover over us. "I haven't issued any orders, and nothing is done on my ship without my.. ."

"Bo, have you been listening to what we've been saying?" Jeri's expression was carefully neutral as she stared up at him. "Have you heard a word either Rohr or I have said?"

"Of course I... !"

"Then you know that this is the only recourse," she said, still speaking calmly. "If we don't hard-dock with the Gold, then we won't have a chance of shutting down the railgun or averting its course."

"But the pirates. They might... !"

I sighed. "Look, get it through your head. There's no..."

"Rohr," she interrupted, casting me a stern look that shut me up. When I dummied up once more, she transfixed McKinnon again with her wide blue eyes. "If there are pirates aboard the Gold," she said patiently, "we'll find them. But right now, this isn't something we can solve by firing missiles. Rohr's right. First, we send a squib to Ceres, let them know what's going on. Then..."

"I know that!"

"Then, we have to dock with..."

"I know that! I know that!" His greasy hair scattered in all directions as he shook his head in frustration. "But I didn't... I didn't give the orders and..."

He stopped, sullenly glaring at me with inchoate rage, and I suddenly realized the true reason for his anger. McKinnon's subordinate second officer, whom he had hara.s.sed and chastised constantly for three weeks, had become uppity by reaching a solution that had evaded him. Worse yet, the second officer had done it with the cooperation of the Captain's first officer, who had tacitly agreed with him on all previous occasions.

Yet this wasn't a trifling matter such as checking the primary fuel pump or cleaning the galley. Countless lives were at stake, time was running out, and while he was spewing obvious nonsense about s.p.a.ce pirates, Mister Furland was trying to take command of his ship.

Had I a taser conveniently tucked in my belt, I would have settled the argument by giving him a few volts and strapping his dead a.s.s in his precious chair, thereby allowing Jeri Lee and me to continue our work unfettered. But since outright mutiny runs against my grain, compromise was my only weapon now.