The Universe - or Nothing Part 6

"Copies of your orders are in a secured file in the Ministry of Intelligence. A copy is temporarily posted in your core compartment. When you read it, note that all requests for release or rea.s.signment are denied."

Xindral folded back into his normal, slightly bowed posture. His audience, frozen, stared at him blankly.

"That's it for now." Xindral ordered, the flatness gone. "Return to your compartment and report back here in an hour. Brad, please stand by."

Chapter FIVE

His jaws clamped tight, eyes glaring, Brad sensed his companions rise to their feet around him.

k.u.miko first, stood and wordlessly glided to the closed pa.s.sage portal. Her back to the others, she waited for the panel to clear. Zolan, on his feet, mouth agape, stared at Xindral.

Adari, still seated, gawked in bewildered disbelief from Xindral to Brad to Hodak. Hodak glowered, gestured rudely and cursed furiously and loudly.

Myra stood, silent behind an icy mask. Xindral, perched on his stool, arms in his lap, impa.s.sively observed their reactions.

The scene held for several seconds. Xindral broke the silence.

"Your formal orientation and training begins when you return. First I must speak with your Commander.

Please excuse us."

He turned and touched a disk on the bulkhead. The entryway cleared and Jenkins appeared.

"Escort our friends back to their compartment, Jenks. Commander Curtin will remain with me.

Return the group in an hour."

"Yes, sir."

Myra, Adari, Hodak and Zolan milled about for a moment, then joined k.u.miko at the portal. Pa.s.sing through, they spoke and gestured animatedly to each other. The portal clouded over.

Xindral hefted his stool forward, placed it alongside Brad, and folded his long frame onto it facing the view tank.

"Just so you know, Brad," he said gently, bridging the silence between them, "those of us who work in Strategic Penetrations carry no formal rank. If we did, yours would be the equivalent of a Lieutenant Commander in the United Inner Planetary System s.p.a.ce Force. Mine would be a notch or so above."

He shifted his frame about and bent a long leg to bring his foot up to the lower rung. His tone shifted into neutral. Cool.

"My friends call me Ram. OK?"

Brad nodded, eyeing him. Ram drew back a bit and contemplated the control in his grasp. After a moment he stroked the keys. A rainbow of colors swirled and drifted off, replaced by an ash-gray sphere. Planet Pluto spread across half the tank with its flat stretches of methane frost broken by low, jagged chasms, hillocks and craters. Charon and the Slingshot Logistics Depot hung off near the edge of the tank's flattened top.

Brad glanced at the scene, and back to Ram.

"Brad," Ram spoke slowly, quietly, "a trite expression, repeated all too often during our history, is 'humankind now faces its greatest crisis'. The statement has been declared so often across the ages that it's lost meaning, obviously because it changes in context and perception from one event, century or millennium to the next. I suppose those who said it, believed it.

Nevertheless, even if the term 'crisis' never really applied in the past, it does in these times for humankind's destiny.

"The deficits in our nonrenewable a.s.sets, and the many other natural substances we depend on, if not resolved within the next few centuries, could force us back into caves, and I don't use that word 'figuratively'. Ceramics, composites, and other subst.i.tutes are fine as far as they go, but they do only a tiny part of the job.

"We'll soon be running short of subst.i.tutes for our subst.i.tutes. Building bigger and better colonies in s.p.a.ce over the past thousand years or so has consumed far more of our resources than expected.

Earth is almost barren and many s.p.a.ce colonies in both regions can no longer meet existing needs fromtheir regions, let alone those of the future.

"In short, our dispersed civilizations must have access to sources for minerals and other industrial substances, not only now but in perpetuity, in order to survive and evolve. Our species isn't built to accept inactivity or slipping backward. If we don't move on to something new and challenging, then we'll drift into extinction. You've heard this all dozens of times; I won't dwell on it further."

Ram stood, paced, and turned his head to keep Brad in sight as he paced and reversed direction. Brad's eyes fixed on the view tank and stayed there.

There was nothing new in Ram's words, so far.

"Slingshot schedules are in their most critical phase. We have a launch window for the Extractor.

It's not much of a window. If we miss it, Slingshot fails. It's that simple. The launch cannot be aborted; there'll be no second chance. People across the system, by the millions, are committed to the schedule. You, and your crew now serve in that legion."

"What's going on here?" Brad cut in. "Are you telling me we've been pressed into this job with no choice of our own?"

His anger showing, Brad thumbed over his shoulder toward the entryway, then at his chest.

"Tell me, Ram," Brad demanded, "how did it happen that we six, three men and three women, are here at this time for this purpose?"

"We'll get to that in time." Ram said, "I've reviewed your trial record, but I'd like to hear it from you -- straight. What happened?"

Brad stared at Ram for several seconds, obviously making up his mind. Finally, he shrugged, and contemplated his hands.

"Well, then you know I was Captain of a s.p.a.ce freighter," he began. "My job was to transport high-ma.s.s mining equipment, ores and refined stuff between Mercury, Venus and Luna.

"When this mess happened, we were Luna-bound with a full load of worn out track-layers, rock-crushers, drill robots, filters and other tools in the forward and aft storage bays, and ingots well-secured in stress-certified compartments.

The ship was at capacity, but within legal limits.

Ma.s.s and balance had been certified by s.p.a.ce Traffic Control before they cleared us from Venus...o...b..t. The ship was in order.

"We were only about twenty-million kay from the Luna s.p.a.ce Traffic Control Zone, but still in max drive. Plenty of time to kick-in vector and deceleration programs."

Brad paused, shifted position, rubbed his jaws, sighed deeply, glanced sideways at Xindral and, his voice tighter, continued.

"That's when that strung-out jock in a s.p.a.ce-buggy took us on for a game of 'chicken'.

"The buggy was a single-seater, tiny, barely ten meters bow to stern, but the way she whipped around us, it was plain to my duty officer that she was charged by a micro deep s.p.a.ce drive.

My duty officer hit the alarm; I got to the bridge within ten seconds after the buggy's first pa.s.s.

"I checked our status and proximity-to-ma.s.s in vicinity; then my ship's scope a.n.a.lyses of the buggy's thrust and gyrations. She was obviously overpowered for ma.s.s, especially in the confined lanes plowed by slow freighters like mine.

"My three-hundred-meter freighter with all storage bays packed bulkhead to bulkhead with high ma.s.s, is barely maneuverable under the best of circ.u.mstances.

Evasive action against some hot shot in a souped up s.p.a.ce-buggy was out of the question.

"It got worse. Not only did the jock ignore my warnings; he lined up alongside my bridge and danced on his thrusters. He flipped from relative vertical to horizontal, then corkscrewed us lengthwise fore to aft and back. To add insult, he whirled his buggy on its tail like a d.a.m.n dervish, right alongside where I stood on my bridge and then cut across my bow. That hotshot was one good pilot, I'll grant him that.

"After a minute or so of that, the buggy circled my ship, close. The pilot probably liked what he saw, because he surface-snaked us again bow to stern.

That must have been boring; he peeled away, tore ahead a quarter-million kay, skewed around, and came straight at my bow, curdling s.p.a.ce. When collision was just about unavoidable, he did an up and over. In doing that, he cut us much too close, snapped off a dozen masts, sensors and nav guides.

"The jock must have gone berserk; he took us on for full 'chicken'. He shot ahead about a million kay, flip-flopped, and came at us head-to-head, taunting us with his collision signals. Our computer showed him as boosting all the way."

Another long pause. Brad looked directly at Xindral.