Tachyon Web (3 page)

“This is
Excalibur
,” Sammy said into the mike. “Number FRE-4316-DH, requesting permission for F-level orbit slot.

A sweet feminine computer answered promptly. “Permission granted. Welcome to Mars,
Excalibur
. Please proceed to F-192, coordinates ten point two and six point seven. This is a passenger loading zone only. If you wish to remain longer in orbit than four hours you must request a new slot in a lower zone. Please respond that you have copied and understood.”

“Gotcha, baby,” Strem said over Sammy’s shoulder.

“Response insufficient,” the computer said. “We await copy and clarification.”

“I wish I had a voice like that,” Jeanie said with a sigh. While Strem had been swallowing his hamburger, Jeanine had gone to the cargo bay and fitted herself with a pair of Uncle Dan’s fiber optic pants, commonly called
opants
. When hanging in a closet, opants resembled bland gray leather pants or jackets. But once on a person, they glowed a spectrum of colors, depicting one’s mood, which they determined by stealthily placed sensors in the wrists and armpits that were able to monitor the wearer’s heartbeat, skin resistance, temperature, and arterial dilation. As Jeanie sighed, her arms shone a faint red, indicating desire. Eric feared if he pulled on a pair and hung around Jeanie, he’d look like a strawberry.

“I met the woman they got to record those tapes,” Strem said. “She was a dog.”

“
Excalibur
proceeding to F-192, coordinates ten point two and six point seven,” Sammy said into the mike. “We shall occupy the position approximately one hour.” He added, “Don’t mind what my partner said about you.”

“Copy and clarification completed. Reference to dog discarded.”

Strem scratched his head. “I do remember her having a sense of humor.” He paused. “So is Cleo in the F-zone?”

“Yes,” Sammy said, typing in the coordinates. The cubical holograph now contained an exquisite two-feet-in-diameter simulation of Mars, surrounded by ten concentric nebulous shells, which Eric assumed were the zone levels. Sammy manipulated the controls and the real Mars outside the windows grew three times in size as a smaller version of Space Station One appeared off their port side, ringed with a myriad of glittering spacecraft. Glancing into a sensor plate, Sammy added, “Cleo’s ferry is waiting. She must already be aboard it.” He sent her a beacon to lock onto, and a voice that could have belonged to a six-year old if it hadn’t somehow managed to sound so tough came over the control deck’s main speakers.

“Is that you, honey?”

“Which honey are you referring to, sugar?” Strem interrupted Sammy.

Cleo’s laugh was high and loud. She had a powerful singing voice, which she exercised regularly in a band The Meek Pulverizers – a revival of very old music style of music Sammy had once referred to as punk music.

Eric never felt completely at ease around Cleo. She was wild. Her hair was seldom the same colour two days in a row, and she was fond of chains and strange designs on her tight-fitting clothes. Without makeup and paraphernalia though, she was a doll: short and dainty with fine red hair and an innocent dimpled smile. She should have been in a church choir, not on stage shouting about racial prejudice and nuclear holocaust, especially since there was no longer any prejudice or nuclear bombs. Eric had once asked Sammy what he liked about her and Sammy had said he was still working on the computer program that would tell him. Like Strem, her attraction was her energy, but unlike him, she worked too hard trying to get it across. A life-threatening interstellar journey was probably just what she needed to settle her down.

“Hello, Strem,” Cleo responded sweetly. “How many years are we going to get on Mercury for this?”

“Let’s discuss that when we’re all together,” Sammy said, obviously concerned about who might be listening. “You’ll be here soon.”

Soon was twenty minutes later. Eric was grateful she hadn’t brought her serpent, though her quarter-ton suitcase of costumes and makeup might have unlooked-for-surprises inside it. Her dress was unusually conservative, a pink plastic pantsuit dotted with tiny purple spiders, and her hair was its natural red colour. He was mildly curious how a pair of opants would respond to her legs.

“Give me a kiss,” Cleo commanded Sammy, draping her arms around him and plopping in his lap as he sat before his controls. He managed to obey while keeping an eye glued to his screens. Cleo nuzzled her nose against his ear. “I missed you, honey,” she said.

“You saw me two days ago.”

“Didn’t you miss me?”

“To a degree, I suppose.” You couldn’t fault Sammy his honesty.

Cleo stood, slightly offended, and turned to Strem. “Give me a real hug, would you, big boy?” Strem was quick to oblige. Jeanie and Cleo even exchanged a brief embrace. The risk they were taking might have been responsible for the tenderness. Normally Jeanie and Cleo moved in separate social circles and were not very close. Cleo even squeezed Eric hello and he squeezed her back.

Sammy requested and received permission to leave orbit. Mars went the way of Earth, seemingly falling into a bottomless hole. What was different this time was their direction in relationship to the plane of the solar system. They were not heading out toward Jupiter and Saturn, but were arcing ‘upward’ (figuratively speaking, there is no up and down in space) where the planets never traveled.

As the empty miles grew into numbers the human mind could not properly grasp, the sun shrank and faded, their chatter began to die down. The vastness of the space around them began to cast its spell. The five of them stared silently out the windows, each in his or her way trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, the possibility that they might soon be ‘out there’.

Eric teetered on a narrow strip of joy and uncertainty. Yet, beneath the conflicting emotions, he had a quiet feeling that he was about to reach a point in his life he had waited a long time to meet. He was unable to fully explain the intuition, or shake it, and it grew stronger the longer he looked at the stars.

Even travelling at a third of the speed of light,
Excalibur
needed roughly twelve hours to reach Central Control’s Customs Line. When Strem suggested taking a nap, Eric thought it would be impossible to sleep not knowing whether they were going to make history or end up with criminal records. But when the others greeted the suggestion with approval – except for Sammy, who could not be pried from the controls – he decided to give it a try and headed for his quarters, a sparse cubicle that had not been designed for the claustrophobic.

Turning off the light and lying down, the tightness in his neck and the pressure beneath his eyes began to flow out of Eric as if he had just drunk from a narcotic draught. The silent sense that he was about to cross a line drawn by destiny persisted and began to weave rich images as he started to doze. He saw swelling stars that were far older than the sun, consuming in a few violent hours the reserves of a fuel supply that had lasted many eons. And arid planets where people walked that were not really people at all, but beings evolved out of seas that had centuries ago dried on winds that no longer blew. Of course he often dreamed of the unknown, and surely whatever lay beyond The Tachyon Web would remain unknown, and never think of him.

And so Eric fell asleep.

CHAPTER THREE

Excalibur
was stopped dead in space. The sun was an overly bright star, nothing more, and The Milky Way was a wide river of a billion softly blended stars. They were literally hundreds of millions of miles away from another human being. Yet, they were being watched. Central Control had noted their passage out of the solar system and wanted to have a talk with Uncle Sam.

“It’ll work, right?” Strem asked Sammy, who had not left his seat, not even to go to the bathroom, since boarding. Sammy rolled his tired head around and looked up at Strem with his usual emotionless expression.

“I seem to remember you telling me it couldn’t fail.”

“You’re the scientist, damnit,” Strem complained. “Tell me it will work so that I can relax.”

Sammy turned back to his console. His fingers danced over a keyboard and a two-foot miniature of Strem’s uncle, dressed in a trader’s traditional red suit and perfect in every observable detail, suddenly appeared in the holographic cubical. The image was for their reference only. Uncle Dan’s full form was being piped out on a tachyon band directly to Central Control. The authorities would perceive him as standing on an otherwise empty deck. “I wouldn’t relax,” Sammy said.

“When will the Customs officer begin?” Eric asked. His nap had lasted three hours and he was now wide awake. He’d been working on an ulcer all week and now, at the moment of truth, he felt inexplicably confident. But he would be glad when it was all over.

“Soon,” Sammy said, “very soon.”

“This suspense is great,” Cleo said, sitting beside Sammy. Eric couldn’t help noticing that her high-heeled feet tapped restlessly on the floor.

“How can you say that?” Jeanie asked. Her opants were a dirty purple, streaked with every imaginable colour. In other words, she was ready for a nervous breakdown. Strem hugged her, and she rested her head on his shoulder, sighing. “Why couldn’t we go to the moon like normal kids?”

“Leave it to me to show a girl an exciting time,” Strem said gamely.

“Don’t worry, Jeanie,” Cleo said. “My aunt is a fantastic lawyer. She can make it look in court as though it were all Strem’s fault.”

“Leave it to me to pick a loyal crew,” Strem said.

“Here it comes,” Sammy said.

Central Control’s symbol, two overlapping triangles with a dot in the center, appeared on the screen. Sammy typed in
Excalibur’s
code number, her destination, and expected return date. Eric knew this information was being cross-referenced with the information Uncle Dan had given aboard Space Station One. In a moment the preliminaries were over. The symbol faded, and a wrinkly old customs agent, wearing a featureless white turtleneck uniform, came on the screen. Though his tiny head and obviously thin frame gave him a birdlike fragility, his voice was firm and authoritative. It was fortunate that they could see him and he couldn’t see them.

“Mr. Daniel Hark, a pleasure to see you again so soon. Business must be prosperous.”

“Damn,” Strem breathed. “He knows him.”

“Perhaps,” Sammy said, glancing at the holograph model, which leaned forward as though trying to see the customs office better.

Was this a test here at the very beginning? Eric wondered.

“Forgive me, sir,” Uncle Dan’s recording said. “You have the advantage. Business has been so busy I’ve forgotten your name.”

“My name is Jeret Queenshear. And I’m the one who must apologize, I mistook you for someone else. We’ve never met.” It had definitely been a test. Jeret continued, “Have you been to the Tau Ceti System before?”

“A number of times.” The responses were intentionally brief so as not to invite further questions.

“Ah, yes.” Jeret nodded, glancing downward. “I see you were there only last December.”

“Last January.” Daniel Hark corrected automatically. Eric was impressed with the thoroughness of Sammy’s preparation. As the responses had obviously not been recorded in succession, to move smoothly from one to the next quite a feat.

“Are you aware of the ban Tau Ceti has placed on the importation of drugs otherwise allowed in The Union?”

“On Bromitzen and Quibzen, yes. I have neither aboard.”

“What is the anticipated credit transference relating to your cargo?”

“Fifty-five thousand, approximately.”

“When was
Excalibur
’s last inspection?”

“Last week. It’s there in your records.”

“So it is. How many passengers have you aboard?”

Sammy lost his slouch, suddenly sitting up. “We’ve got a problem,” he said quickly.

“Five,” the holograph answered.

“Their names, please?” Jeret asked.

“What is it?” Strem demanded.

“I am not obligated to supply you with their names.”

“Agreed, but we would prefer it if you would. For our records, you understand.”

“He’ll want to see us,” Sammy said. “We’ll have to go on manual and improvise.”

“Oh, no. Don’t,” Strem groaned. Cleo jumped to her feet and her carefully crafted tough image stayed seated. Jeanie’s opants appeared to overload and went blank. Eric felt his heart rate double and his self-confidence slashed in half. If they had to pause to think what to advise the holograph to say, even for a couple of seconds, Central Control would get suspicious. Eric moved closer to Sammy and his console.

“I don’t understand,” Uncle Dan retorted. “Their identity is confidential under Section A of Senate Amendment Twenty-seven. We are in free space.”

Jeret nodded with a trace of impatience. “We are aware of the law. Still, the request is not unreasonable. We simply want to make sure your passengers are comfortable. May we at least see them?”

“We cannot give another stall,” Sammy said with grave certainty. Laws and amendments aside, Jeret could haul them in if he felt like it. Eric acted without thinking, which often worked better for him.

“Go to manual!” he ordered Sammy. “Say, he’d have to wake us.”

Sammy did not hesitate. He activated his mike and said, “I’d have to wake them.”

“I’d have to wake them,” Uncle Dan said.

“All of them?” Jeret asked.

Eric crowded Sammy aside. “Let me see,” he said directly into the mike.

“Let me see,” Uncle Dan said.

“Very well,” Jeret nodded.

Eric disengaged the mike. “Have him walk away!”

“No problem,” Sammy said, typing vigorously on the computer keyboard. The holograph strolled out of its cubical area and vanished. As far as Jeret was concerned, Daniel Hark had just left the bridge.

“Now what?” Strem said. “Why did you tell Jeret that?”

“I was buying us time,” Eric said.

“For what?” Strem demanded.

“What would you have done?” Eric yelled back.

“Don’t fight!” Jeanie pleaded.