John Racham (3 page)

Query attempted a salute, clumsily because of
his slung kit bag, and her mouth tightened in scorn.

"How much ship
time have
you done, Query?"

"None, sir . . . ma'am.
Except in transit from one
base to another."

"I
see!" She clasped her hands at her back and expanded her breasts even
fuller as she stared up at him.
"Very well.
Leam
.
When speaking to, or being spoken to by an officer, you stand to attention
whenever possible. You do not salute. Not inboard. You do not wear a cap except
in special circumstances, formal circumstances. You stow your cap, or tuck it
under the left arm, peak forward, until such time as you are able to stow it
Don't
forget it That's all!"

"Yes, ma'am."
Query overrode the twitch in his arm, wheeled and went away, down
ladders, past the air lock and on down, to a boxlike cabin-flat where he tossed
his bag in the cupboard-sized space numbered Four, and on down again to the
cell-sized engine deck. Anger burned dully in him.
Snotty
female.
He would have liked the chance to turn her over his knee and
paddle her hard. A chip off the old block, sure enough. But that dull resentment
went away as he surveyed the
jewellike
precision of
the machines around him. Strictly, he was seeing only the top ends, the access
covers which were spread in a tight circle around the central
trunking
. The monsters themselves went away down there in a
world all their own and did wonderful things.
Smooth,
precise, functional things.
Not like people, who had no regular pattern,
who
were full of irrelevancies like whims and emotions
and opinions.

He
moved admiringly around the narrow catwalk, studying the layout, figuring out
each piece of the instruments, which were the parts he really knew well.
Lubrication pressures and temperatures; power storage and discharge rates; air
plant, humidity, temperature, rate of flow; fuel flow; main drive; heat
exchange, first and second stage. He ran his fingers over the quick lock bolts,
the flanges, and felt roughened edges, the fresh tackiness of sealing compound.
Something had been done, that was all he could be sure of without tools. It
wasn't his job anyway. He moved on, making sure that nothing had been left
half-done, no

18
wrenches or scrap lying about, and his eye
fell on a curious box, something new in his experience.

It
was tucked away between two breaker boxes, and had a
glassite
cover, and a brass plate so well worn and polished that it was only because he
caught a side light on it that he realized there was print on it. He frowned at
it,
put his head on one side until the lettering was
clear.

CANOPY
EJECT
TEST AND RESET.

Query
scowled at it, digging into his memory. Eject? It rang a faint bell. He peered
again, seeing more print in lower case.

"Break
switch before testing canopy eject system.
Authorized
personnel only."

It
took him another minute before he could connect up his memories. And it took
him a long way back. This must be a really old ship. Explosive, safety eject
systems had long ago been made obsolete. For one thing, it was close to
impossible for a modern
micropile
to blow, and if
ever one did, it would be so fast that no possible safety device would be any
use. Whoever had
reengined
this craft for war service
had either missed that or had left it in place rather than go to the trouble of
ripping out the circuitry. It couldn't possibly work.

A
bell dinged gently, jerking him out of his reverie to see the fuel pump gauges
shiver and lift and the drive flux density start to climb from zero. He went up
out of there fast, dropping the hatch behind him, and all the way back up to
the control room. Lieutenant Evans was in the seat of authority, her slim hands
on the levers, her eyes on her panel. Admiral Evans was over to one side at the
radio board, slumped in his seat, lifting his head from the microphone as Query
entered.

"Sit!"
he snapped. "We're about to lift.
D'you
want
to rupture yourself? Sit!"

Query
dropped into the third seat, opposite the engine complex board, as the weight
came on, squashing him down into the foam, making him grant.

"Engine room checked out, sir." he
said, panting.
"Looks all in good order to me,
sir."

"Shut up!
GOC to Step
Two.
We have lift-off plus ten. Beacon acquisition affirmative.
GOC over and out!"

Query saved his breath. He
needed it. It was effort just

19
to inflate his chest as the crushing weight grew. Either
this ship had a lot more get up and go
than anything he had
ridden so far, or the pilot was showing off. He suspected the latter. He could
see her board over her shoulder. It was a novel experience for him to see
instruments actually in action. On the test bench he knew them all, what they
did and how, but now the tale they told was real, not just a drill. Rate of
climb was trembling into the red.
Horizon, horizontal and
vertical, steady and solid.
Beacon acquisition was a three-point reading
that should keep the ship standing straight up inside a triangular grid. That
beacon took power, lots of it. Nothing
so
frail as an
ordinary radio signal had a hope of smashing its way through this soupy
atmosphere. Nor was it easy for the ship. He saw the thrust in
megadynes
, shivering well over into the maximum range, and
had a mental picture of the bullet-shaped ship boring its way up, squandering
power, yet leaning hard on that same thick atmosphere to conduct away the
furious heat involved. The atmosphere aided the heat exchangers, making it
easier than normal for them. And his attention came alive suddenly and urgently
on those dials.

The needles were galloping up and over far
too fast. As he stared in disbelief they hit maximum and shivered against the
stops. It was insane! A flicked glance at the screens confirmed what he knew
anyway, that they were still in atmosphere. And the drive was hot. Too hot,
dangerously too hot! Here came the second stages, cutting in automatically.
But uselessly.
They were expansion exhaust, designed for the
near vacuum of space, and worse than useless here. He squandered breath and
effort to shout, "We are overheating! Cut the drive!
The
drive!"

"Don't be a
fooll
"
Lieutenant Evans snapped. "I can't cut drive! We are ten miles up!"

"Then ease off!" he shouted,
fighting his way out of his seat and to her side, to cling to her seat arm and
aim a lead heavy arm at the gauges. The second stage heaters were fairly
leaping over the quadrant. "She'll blow any time at those
temperatures!"

"What
the hell!" the old man roared, and Query labored around to shout at him,
and saw, over his head, on the bulkhead up there, the duplicate of that
glassed-in box he

20
had seen down there in the engine space. Eject switch. He immediately forgot
all else, groaned away from her chair, labored over to Evans like a drunken
man, and hurled himself up and on top of the roaring admiral, deaf to
everything but the urge to get at that box. He reached it, beat at it with
crazy fists, and the
glassite
cover came away and
fell to reveal a red handgrip. There was no time to wonder what or how. He
grabbed it, tugged at it, tried to twist it one way or the other, heaved madly
. . . and it came away in his hand.

Oh my god!
he
thought.
I've broken it!

Then
the whole control room bucked violently as if battered by a huge hammer. It
went instantly and absolutely dark, and from a long way off came the whiplash
and echoing boom of an explosion.
Then sudden and complete
silence.
Darkness.
Weightlessness.
And then the first faint wailing of tortured atmosphere.

Ill

W
e've
blown
free
!
he
thought,
pushing his arms out at random in the dark, his right hand still holding the
handle. We're free, and falling! Ten miles up!

A
bellow somewhere near told him that Admiral Evans was still functioning after a
fashion.

"What
the hell's happening? What's wrong with the lights? Christine! Why the blazes
are we in free . . . P"

The
angry bellowing cut off short as there came an enormous, eye-hurting, sear white
flare that filled the control room with harsh and stark light. Query saw the
black lines of the canopy frame like some giant spider's web. One figure in
silhouette floated between him and it, thrashing and flailing, and he knew it
was Lieutenant Evans. The edges and dials of the panels were razor sharp in
that light. Everything seemed to happen in funereal slowness, as if time itself
had gone wrong. The fearful glare seemed to blink, to go momentarily away, and
then come back intensified, unbearably bright, and swiftly changing to a hellish,
blazing red.

The drive had blown. He knew that much. What
would have been either impossible or instantly fatal in space had been so
damped by this thick atmosphere as to give them that scanty time margin for
escape.
But there had to be a shock wave, and soon.
He
scrambled frantically in midair, trying to orient toward the light, the glare,
the
glassite
canopy. The air around him shivered, and
there came a gigantic booming roar that grew louder and louder until he felt
his head had to burst. The canopy came to meet him fast, and he struck it on
knees and flat hands, jarringly, as the scarlet flare winked out. Gasping from
the pain in his knees and arms, he tried to lever himself up from the
shatterproof
glassite
. And it wasn't there anymore.
He was free floating again. He cringed, wondering what he would hit next. Free
floating inside the control room like a pea in a dark pod. He felt sick,
extended nervous arms and legs, ached in anticipation, and heard again the starting
wail of rushing air.
Falling.

He
caught something soft and resilient, clung to it; and it in turn seized him and
clung crazily, painfully. Before he could form words there came a distant,
faint whip crack of sound, and then another, louder and closer . . . and the
lights came on, dull-flaring sodium emergency lights, just in time to show him
the steel deck coming to meet him. And the hazard of panel blocks.
And Lieutenant Evans clutching him in terror, ghostlike in the
yellow glare.
And then the bone-jarring smash against the floor, that
seemed to shake loose the very teeth in his head and fire his whole body with
pain. He lay absolutely still for a long, dazed moment, feeling heavy and hurt,
willing to die now and put an end to it.

Then something soft stirred under his hands.
He groped, lifted his head to peer in the glare. She wasn't arrogant now. She
was flat on her back and still, her eyes oddly glinting, until he craned over
and saw they were covered by curiously shaped plastic. Stupidly he sorted out
his tumbled memories until he had unearthed the old word—spectacles—a
contrivance of optical plastic worn to correct vision defects. Old-fashioned,
long abandoned, lately revived as a "fashion" symbol. He felt
hysteria pushing at his throat. A weakness! This overblown, superior female had
a weakness, a defect
She
couldn't see straight!

A measure of sanity came back, cutting away
his lightheadedness. Was she dead? He touched her, ripped at the black stuff
to free her bosom, laid his palm on her full breast and couldn't be sure
whether he felt the slam of her heart or his own. She heaved a great breath and
groaned, and he drew back, trying to crouch on legs that screamed in protest.
Trying to think.
Looking about in the foul
yellow glare that dazzled but hardly illuminated.
A black bulk over
there between the seats had to be the old man.
Weight.
He had weight, and the control room was the correct way up. That had to mean
something, if only he could shake the bells out of his head and figure out
what. He stirred, wincing again at the ache in his knees, and saw Lieutenant
Evans stir and sit up. She seemed to goggle at him through the transparent
windows in front of her eyes, her ample breasts spilling out of her open
uniform and heaving as she breathed.

Eject,
he thought.
Explosive clearance.
Safety
device . . . and weight.
Falling, but with weight? And it came to him.
Parachutes! Of course! He felt immediately better until he tried to spring up,
and groaned as his knees protested and the sweat sprang out on his brow. He
grabbed
a
seat arm and clung to it, painfully easing
himself around and into it.
Falling.
But for how long?
How far? He levered his head around to see
her trying to get up, forced himself from his seat and over to lean, to offer
his hand. "Take it easy," he mumbled.
"Anything
broken?"
"I
don't—think so!" she
gasped in a breath, clung to his arm, got unsteadily to her feet. "What
happened? What's wrong with the lights?"

"Emergency
sodiums
," he said. "You'd better sit down.
I
think we're falling.
On parachutes."
She
leaned on his arm, found her seat and slumped into it, staring dazedly up at
him. Before she could grasp what he had said there came
a
snort and cough, and he swung away, staggered to where the old man was
fighting his way up between the other two seats. His cap had gone somewhere and
his hair was
a
bristle halo, his face stained and streaked
with blood that looked black in the light.

"Here!" Query gave him an arm.
"Better get into
a
seat. We're falling.
ParachutesI
" "Eh?
Oh!
All right.
I
can
make it. Christ, my head!

23

What
the hell did we hit, eh?" Evans collapsed into the seat, shook his head
carefully, growled and looked around.
"Emergencies?
What? Just a minute! The bloody ship blew. Didn't it? I saw it.
Seen that before.
Direct hit!"

"No,
sir."
Query felt tired. "That wasn't it!"

"What?
Damnit
man! I've seen ships hit before . . ."
the angry growl faded as the old man's memory asserted itself. Query sighed.

"Not
here, sir. We're hardly away from Step Two yet. There wouldn't be a missile
here. The drive overheated and blew. The heat exchangers . . . ?"

In
his own mind Query knew, positively, that it had not been that simple. He knew
now what had made Michaels stop him—try to stop him—the ship had been deliberately
and efficiently sabotaged. But there was nothing to gain now by telling the old
man that somebody had seized a chance to pay off old scores. There was nothing
to be gained by anything, anyhow, any time, not now. They were all dead. Query
knew that, too, with positive assurance, and the knowledge made him curiously
indifferent.

"I don't understand." Evans
mumbled, shaking his head. "The drive couldn't blow just like that. We'd
all be dead!"

"There
was something wrong with the heat exchangers. But we were in atmosphere. That
slowed it down a little."

"He's
right, sir!" Lieutenant Evans rotated her seat to report. She looked stark
pale in the ghastly light but was obviously regaining something of her control.
"The heat exchangers did go wild. I saw that. I would say we are
extremely lucky to be alive. I don't quite understand how."

"That was me." Query eyed them
curiously. "I pulled the emergency eject switch. I had to scramble over
you to do it, sir. Remember?"

Evans put a shaky hand to his head. "I
recall something like that. Wondered what the hell you were doing. Thought
you'd gone off your head. Eject switch? I didn't even know we had one.
You, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir.
I never heard of anything like that. Emergency
eject
?"

"It's an obsolete fitting, sir." Query stifled the urge to
laugh. A lecture on ship design, now? "They ceased fitting
them
years ago. This must be a very old ship."

"
Damnit
, you're right there, Query!" Evans sat up a
little straighter in his seat.
"Used to be a private
yacht.
Belonged to
Oberth
Steinlander
.
Donated it to the war
drive.
Good thing you spotted that.
Saved our lives.
We wouldn't be here now!" He snorted,
then
scratched his head again. "But where the hell are we, anyway?"

"That
I don't know," Query admitted. "We're falling, and we have weight, so
it seems reasonable to assume we're on parachutes. But that's the lot."

"What about you,
Lieutenant? Any estimates?"

Query
turned to watch her, mildly amazed at the militarism that held their minds,
even now. Discipline! Efficiency! He wanted to laugh again.

"It's
not easy, sir," she frowned.
"Very little to go on.
We were just ten miles up, the last readings I saw. It's anybody's guess how
far we were thrown by
the eject
, and by the blast.
Or how fast we're falling, for that matter.
I've no
references, sir."

"Hmm!"
The old man was reverting to pattern visibly with every passing second.
"Not out of the woods yet, eh?
Bumpy landing ahead?
But that's a minor matter. We're all alive and whole.
Nothing
broken!"
He paused to lower his brows and scowl at her.
"Button up, Lieutenant!"
He jabbed a finger and
she stared down at her generous exposure in sudden consternation, swiveled her
seat around and made repairs. Evans stared at Query. "It won't take long
for a search party to locate us. Just a matter of sit tight and hang on, eh?
Smart thinking on your part, Sergeant, to spot that
eject
system. And use it. I will see that it is duly mentioned in the right places;
you can count on that."

"Yes, sir."
Query said, but there was no heart in it. In his mind the big picture
had opened out in detail, filling in and underlining his first assumption that
they were dead already, all three. There were details that Evans didn't know,
couldn't know, nor would he understand if told, not all of them. Take the base,
for instance. So far as Step Two was concerned, the staff ship had gone away,
straight up on the beacon. That was all they could know. Radar ears could pick
up a little through that soup but not much.
Enough to know
when a ship was corning in.
Pos-