Alex Benedict 07 - Coming Home (4 page)

No matter whether we think of lover, gold, or good times, do not cling to that which is gone. That path leads only to tears.

—Kory Tyler,
Musings
, 1412

I rode the shuttle up to Skydeck. Shara and JoAnn had arrived the day before and were waiting in the restaurant at the Starlight Hotel.

“What actually are we going to do?” I asked.

“We sent a test vehicle out yesterday,” said Shara. “It’s unmanned, strictly robo. As soon as it gets into the infected area, it’ll attempt a jump. We have the drive set so that, if it gets tangled, it should come back into linear space within a few hours—”

“
Our
time,” JoAnn said.

“And it’ll stay up, we think,” Shara continued, “for about four hours.”

“And that process will continue?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“How far will it travel between appearances?”

“We can’t be certain yet, Chase. But we’re estimating about one hundred twenty thousand kilometers. The problem develops due to an interface between the drive unit and the warp. When we get to it, it will already have been through the process a couple of times. What we hope to do is adjust the drive feed so that it is not responsive to the change in the continuum.”

I was having trouble following. “What does that mean exactly?”

JoAnn obviously thought it was a dumb question. Her eyebrows rose, and her gaze went momentarily toward the overhead. But she managed an understanding smile. “Change the energy feed,” she said. “The power level of the drive unit has to be within certain parameters for the ship to stay contained by the warp field. If we adjust the feed, we should be able to stop the process.”

“That sounds easy enough.”

“If we can get the right setting, yes. It is—”

“And if you get the wrong one—?”

“Probably nothing will happen. If we get it seriously wrong, we might lose the ship. The problem is that we’re still learning about the settings. The
Capella
did its transdimensional jump in an area of space that had been damaged a quarter of a million years ago by a superdense object. Probably a black hole but not necessarily. A section of it literally wrapped itself around the ship. The drive unit dragged the vehicle and the section of warp forward. Time is effectively frozen on board. Fortunately, it surfaces at regular intervals for a few hours, before the interaction between the star drive and the warp drags it back under.”

*   *   *

The pilot was waiting in the passenger cabin. He said hello, welcomed us on board, and told us his name was Nick Kraus. “Are you related to John?” I asked. John Kraus was the director of the SRF.

“Yeah. He’s my brother.”

Shara grinned. “Nick usually pilots the big passenger cruisers.”

“Like the
Capella
?”

“I’ve been working the
Morning Star
these last few years,” he said. Nick looked good. Brown eyes, amiable smile. A bit taller than you’d normally find in a pilot.

“So you’re here as the in-house expert?”

“Something like that,” he said. “I’m on loan from Orion Transport. And I’m glad to be here. It’s much more interesting work than hauling around a couple of thousand sightseers.”

Nick obviously knew Shara and JoAnn. “Chase,” he said, “have you been up here before? On Skydeck?”

“On occasion.”

Shara smiled. “She’s Alex Benedict’s pilot.”

“The antique dealer?” He showed surprise.

“Yes.”

Nick was clearly impressed. “That must be interesting work. Have you gotten a chance to land on ancient space stations?”

“One or two.”

“Beautiful. I envy you.” He checked the time. “Okay, guys, good luck. You have the course directions?”

“They’ve already been inserted, Nick.”

“Okay. We’ll be leaving as soon as we get clearance. Should only be a few minutes. There’ll be about forty minutes of acceleration once we get started. I’ll let you know before we head out. Meantime, you might get belted down.” He disappeared onto the bridge.

We settled into our harnesses. I was happy about getting to ride as a passenger for a change. I could hear Nick talking with the ops people. Then the engines started. “Okay, everybody,” he said. “On our way.” He had a quiet voice and an easy manner. “Everybody relax and enjoy the flight.” So I did. I eased back and looked out the window at the dock as it began to retreat.

“Good luck to us,” Shara said to JoAnn. “You pull this off, and they’ll be giving you the Presidential Citation.”

We passed out of the station. “Okay, ladies,” said Nick, “hang on.”

*   *   *

The
Capella
was expected to surface about twelve light-years from Rimway, in the general direction of the Veiled Lady. “I’m a little uncomfortable,” Nick said, “about getting anywhere near this entanglement. There’s no chance we’ll get stuck, I hope?”

JoAnn shook her head. “No. The only drive units affected by these things are the Armstrongs. They were being replaced long before we knew about the issue with the space/time warps. We have a Korba drive. Which everybody has these days. But you know that, Nick. So no, there’s no need to worry.”

“As soon as the
Carver
appears,” Shara said, “it’ll start transmitting. We should be able to get to it within a day or so.”

“That’s our experimental yacht?” I asked.

“Yes. The AI’s running things.”

“I hope this works,” I said.

“It’ll work.” Shara gave me a thumbs-up. “Don’t worry.”

“If we bring this off, is it over? I mean, will we be able to get everyone off the
Capella
when it shows up? Or will there still be some reservations?”

“What we really need,” said JoAnn, “is to run a test on one of the
Capella
’s sister ships. That would eliminate all doubt. We’re trying to talk Orion into loaning us the
Grainger
. They’ve been reluctant because they’re afraid we might lose it.”

“There’s no chance of that happening, is there?”

“Actually, there would be,” said JoAnn. “We’re in unknown territory.”

“It’s unfortunate,” said Shara, “that TransWorld didn’t survive. They wouldn’t have had any choice but to cooperate.” TransWorld, which had owned the
Capella
, had been bankrupted by the incident, a combination of lawsuits and a general business collapse. Nobody had trusted them afterward.

Nick’s voice came over the allcomm.
“Okay, ladies, we’ll be making our jump in ten minutes.”

*   *   *

After we got into hyperspace, Shara and JoAnn got talking physics, so I looked for my chance and went onto the bridge. Nick was reading a book and eating a muffin. “How you doing?” I said. “Mind if I join you?”

“Please do.” He picked up the box and offered it to me. “They’re good.”

I took one. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So is your life as adventurous as it sounds?”

“I wasn’t aware it sounded adventurous. Mostly what I do is sit at a desk.”

He looked at me for a long moment. “Chase, I’m worried about her.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“JoAnn.”

“This thing’s getting to her?”

“Yes. She feels personally responsible for the lives of the people on the
Capella
.”

“How well do you know her, Nick?”

“We’ve been friends for a few years. We met on the
Grainger
, when she was one of my passengers.” He was checking his instruments. “She’s the reason I got this assignment.”

“How do you mean?”

“The SRF needed someone who was familiar with the operational side of the cruise ships. John was reluctant to ask for me. It didn’t look good, I guess. I was his brother, and there’d be some question about his objectivity. But I’d been working with JoAnn on aspects of this for three years. She put in my name, and here I am.”

“She seems fine to me, Nick. But I can understand she’d be feeling some pressure. I’m not sure I can do much to lighten the load, but—”

“I know, Chase. Just be aware.”

*   *   *

We surfaced on target and, within an hour, picked up an automated transmission from the
Carver
. Nick opened the allcomm: “It’s up and running,” he said. “Stay belted in. As soon as I can lock down its position, we’ll be turning toward it.”

It took a while, of course. When he’d gotten a second read on the transmission, he looked at me and shook his head. “We’re too far out.” Then he was talking to JoAnn again. “We’ll need about five hours to get to it.”

“That won’t work, Nick,”
she said.
“It will probably have moved on before we’d get there. Head for the next target area. The delta site.”

“Will do.” He looked down at the control panel and went to the AI. “Richard? How far do they expect the next appearance to be?”

“About forty thousand kilometers, Nick. If it’s on schedule, it will be there at 1400 hours.”

That gave us six hours. He went back to the allcomm: “JoAnn, Shara, we’ll be doing some maneuvering, then going through another acceleration. Once we get started, you’ll be stuck in the harness for about three-quarters of an hour.”

“Nick,”
said Richard,
“we have another transmission. This one is from Barkley.”

“JoAnn,” said Nick, “we’ve got Barkley.” He signaled me that he was talking about the
Carver
AI.

“Put him on,”
said JoAnn.

Barkley had a deep bass voice:
“
Casavant
, everything has gone precisely according to plan. I am caught in the megatemp warp, have already been up and down twice. I am moving within the projected parameters.”

“Okay, Barkley,”
said JoAnn.
“We can’t get to you before you go under again, so we’ll meet you at the delta site.”

“Very good. I’ll see you then.”

“How long have you remained in linear space after coming back up?”

“Three hours, fifty-seven minutes, and fourteen seconds on the first appearance. The second one was about three minutes less.”

“Okay. How much warning have you been getting before you become aware that you’re being taken back down?”

“Less than a minute, JoAnn. About fifty-seven seconds.”

“Okay. We’ll see you shortly.”

“One more thing, JoAnn: What time is it?”

“It’s 7:57
A.M.
Why?”

“It’s just after midnight here. I wanted to set the clocks to reflect reality.”

*   *   *

We reached the delta site in advance of the
Carver
and began closing toward the area where it was expected to arrive. But we were uncertain, so Nick kept a slow pace. We got out of our seats and returned to the passenger cabin, where JoAnn and Shara were talking about a rumor they’d heard that President Davis was going to apply pressure on Orion in an effort to obtain use of the
Grainger
.

“Let’s hope it happens,” said JoAnn. “We really need access to it to lock this thing down.” She looked up at Nick. “When the
Carver
shows up, we want to get within visual range. Then, when Barkley feels the process starting again to take him down,
that’s
the moment to intervene.”

“How exactly do we do that?” he asked.

“We’ll be getting readings from Barkley about what’s going on in the drive unit. When we have those, I can give him some adjustments. Maybe it’ll break the process. Maybe not. We’ll have to see what happens. Probably, he’ll get hauled down, but he should reappear again within, I hope, a few minutes. And, if we’re lucky, that will be the end of it. If it works out—” She stared at me, and those dark eyes glittered. “If everything goes as planned, we’ll be a step closer to keeping the
Capella
from taking another five-and-a-half-year dive.”

“Pity it’s not safe to go on board ourselves to do this,” I said. “It would be a little quicker than passing information to an AI.”

That brought a glare from Shara, and I realized I was talking too much. “We had a discussion about that,” she said. “JoAnn wanted to do it, but John said no.” Now she was looking at Nick, but the irritation was fading. “It’s too dangerous.”

“It would have given us a better shot,” said JoAnn.

“Let’s let it go, okay?”

“Well, anyhow,” I said, trying to recover, “this’ll probably work fine.”

JoAnn nodded. “I hope so. It took almost four years just to get the math in place. The truth is there are too many elements to be certain. It’s not only design and mass, but there are details associated with the drive unit, how much power it generates and how quickly it comes online. And, of course, the nature of the damage that’s been done to the continuum. We haven’t figured out yet how to lock
that
down. We need more time.” She sighed. “This is a place we’ve never been before, Chase.”

*   *   *

The
Carver
reappeared on schedule.
“He’s about an hour away,”
said Nick, speaking over the allcomm. I was back in the passenger cabin.

“So far so good.” JoAnn looked pleased. “Barkley, is everything okay?”

“Everything seems to be running as planned, JoAnn.”

The
Carver
was a low-cost Barringer yacht. They’d been popular at one time, but the company had stopped making them twenty years earlier. Gabe had owned one when I succeeded my mom as his pilot. It was clunky in comparison to the
Belle-Marie
, but it brought back some happy memories. There aren’t many of the Barringers around anymore.

It took a bit longer than an hour, but eventually we pulled to within a few kilometers of it, off its port side. “Close enough,” JoAnn said. “Let’s stay where we are.” Barkley’s lights were on both inside and out. The ship looked occupied.

“The thing should take effect again in about an hour and a half,” said JoAnn.

We watched the display, which gave us a clearer view than we could get looking out the ports.