A Planet for Rent (23 page)

The plan for getting it into the Escape Tunnel is likewise a wonder of deception, cunning... and optimism.

The
Hope
will lift off camouflaged inside a tremendous weather balloon, in order to trick ground-based radars.

The four square kilometers of reflective synplast required for this mimicry came from the loot taken in a robbery that Frida pulled off years ago at a grodo-owned import warehouse.

What luck she never found a buyer for all that material...

On reaching the ionosphere, the
Hope
will drop the balloon disguise and head into orbit along a regular commercial route.

Its exterior looks surprisingly like the hull of a Cetian-built shuttle of the Tornado class, one of the most common spacecraft in every terrestrial astroport.

Working with practically waste material, Adam and Jowe have painstakingly created a very passable imitation of the perfect outer finish typical of xenoid technology.

The looks of the
Hope
is half technological miracle, half sculpture: a work of bricolage and a work of art.

Thanks to her contacts and with the help of just a few credits, Friga was able to acquire the communications gear from an actual Tornado-class shuttle that was being decommissioned.

Adam fixed it up, good as new.

Now it can link to several astroports.

Thinking ahead, Adam has put in dozens of hours listening in on the conversations of traffic controllers and shuttle pilots.

When the time comes, he’s certain he’ll be able to imitate their simple technical jargon...

With that, and with the communications codes (which did indeed cost Friga quite a lot, in spite of all her ties), they expect to elude the second level of surveillance.

Any patrol ships that see or hear them would have to be magicians to so much as suspect that the
Hope
isn’t just an everyday shuttle headed for orbit to dock with a hypership.

But if they do, still, all is not lost.

Under its apparently defenseless imitation Tornado-class skin, the
Hope
conceals a system of pulsating force fields.

It’s not the nearly invulnerable armor plating of a xenoid-built patrol ship, but it should be able to take a good deal of punishment.

And, for responding to the particle-beam weapons of Planetary Security ships, it has a few high-powered masers that should cause a bit of a ruffle.

That’s how they hope to reach the Escape Tunnel without too much structural damage or loss of fuel.

Once there, hyperspace... And then, everything else.

Friga, Adam, and Jowe would have preferred to have more hyperengines, but the weaponry and the energy generators for the force shields left only enough room for two.

One to get them far away from the solar system... The other in case they get too far from everything.

But, on the other hand, they have a suspended animation system, which Adam has brilliantly modified.

The “super-handyman” guarantees that it will keep all three of them in perfect anabiosis for at least five hundred years.

At least in theory, if neither hyperengine brings them luck, five centuries should be more than enough time for the
Hope
to drift to some port.

Some port with xenoids.

Xenoids of good will, if at all possible.

Friga has no scientific-technical training, or any other sort of education.

Nevertheless, she’s confident that her physical strength, her stamina, her lack of scruples, and her leadership qualities will make her valuable to any xenoid boss involved in not entirely legal activities.

She knows she could be the best capo in the universe.

If not, she’s still willing to make the voyage and stick it out anyway.

Adam places high hopes on his incredible skill as a technotinkerer...

Though he doesn’t say so to anyone, he’s sort of skeptical about his utility in xenoid consumer society, where nothing gets fixed but everything is used until it breaks and then is simply thrown away.

But he aims to learn how to build things; since he already knows how to repair them...

In any case, the real trump card for both of them is Jowe.

And his mysterious friend, Moy.

Jowe doesn’t talk about Moy very much. Like, not at all.

He’s only said that Moy is an artist, an old friend of his, who’s had luck with the xenoids.

But everything indicates that they were close friends.

Maybe more than friends, Friga and Adam sometimes think, with the wickedness of the street.

Because it’s pretty rare for someone, no matter how well-off economically, to wire money orders worth nearly a million credits to a mere friend.

The remittances that Moy sends have financed the construction of the
Hope
, the purchase of provisions, the suspended animation system, the fuel, and the weaponry.

And none of it came cheap.

Even so, there’s a few credits left over...

Friga has declared that what’s left is an “emergency fund” for unexpected contingencies.

Credits are credits, from Betelgeuse to Aldebaran, and if no nice xenoids turn up, disposed to keeping them concealed for three years and three days...

It’s good to have some reserves.

The key thing is that, along with money, Moy constantly sends messages along the lines of “Come right away” and “I need you here” and “I’m so lonely” and “Just get here, whatever it costs.”

Jowe doesn’t tell them whether Moy knows that, like anyone ever sentenced to Body Spares, he’ll never be given permission to leave Earth legally.

But Friga and Adam are sure that Moy realizes his money is helping Jowe get back to him the only way he can.

By leaving Earth’s atmosphere and the solar system illegally.

Friga and Adam are also sure that this Moy will intercede on Jowe’s behalf once he’s far from Earth.

And on their behalf, too, while he’s at it.

Which is why they’ve taken on the greater part of the hard work.

Because, Jowe might be the one who came up with the idea of the Voyage, but he hasn’t done much to make it a concrete reality.

You might say, all he’s done has been to add a couple of stylish touches to the
Hope
.

And lately, nothing at all.

Because, while Friga and Adam are sweating away, rechecking things that have already been checked a thousand times and gathering provisions and tools for every eventuality, Jowe just wanders about idly, staring at the sky.

And his dead eyes only light up with a sparkle when they mention how close it is to the day of departure.

Lift-off has been cleverly scheduled for Sunday night.

There’s always plenty of weekend traffic, and the exhausted air traffic controllers can hardly wait for the relative calm of Monday.

The morning before D-Day, H-Hour, each of the three crewmembers of the
Hope
wants to be alone.

Adam stays onboard the
Hope
.

His child, his creature... the best piece of work he’s ever done.

He proudly runs his hand over its patched plastisteel armor and its heterodox control panel.

He daydreams of a future when he will design and manufacture prototypes of high-velocity ships for some xenoid corporation...

Every now and then he looks outside the hangar that hides the
Hope
from prying eyes and catches a glimpse of Jowe, walking along the horizon.

The hangar is just a large shed on a small island in Hudson Bay.

In the middle of a bunch of buildings, which thirty years ago formed a town, which grew up around a chemical plant.

Later the xenoids shut the plant down because of the pollution, and the town died.

There’s not a soul for miles around.

Not a human soul, that is.

There are swarms of gulls and rats building nests and romping in the empty buildings and tall chimneys of the dead plant, which will probably soon be demolished.

The sea roars and breaks against the beach, which is as unspoiled as if man had never existed on the face of the Earth.

Jowe is wandering down the line of surf, skipping stones across the water and shouting words that Adam can’t make out, between the wind and the distance.

Could be anger. Or frustration. Or hope.

Or all of it together.

As evening falls, Jowe comes back, silent, unsmiling.

Almost voiceless.

Adam shrugs: little as he normally talks, there’s not much difference...

When it’s two hours before lift-off and Friga hasn’t shown up yet, the men start to worry.

One hour to lift-off, Adam, chain-smoking one cigarette after another, mutters that if they have to leave without her...

Jowe looks at him without a word; they both know they’ll wait.

Half an hour before time’s up, Friga returns.

She is limping, her clothing in tatters.

Bruised bump over one eye, her lip split, a black eye, and red, swollen knuckles.

In the soot covering her face there are traces of tears.

But she smiles almost beatifically.

They don’t ask whether she’s coming back from a fight or from making love.

They know that for Friga, there’s not much difference.

But they both suspect that her daughter must have something to do with that happy smile.

And no doubt with the tears as well.

It must be hard to leave your family behind, no matter how little you care about them...

Of course, neither of them says any of this.

Sometimes Friga can be very... sensitive.

Nervous, they take the
Hope
from the hangar and start filling the enormous pear of the balloon disguise.

Fifteen minutes later, when everything is ready, Adam and Friga board.

Jowe, not caring whether they see him, kneels down, kisses the sandy Earth of the island, and collects a little in a small bag, which he stuffs into his pocket.

Then he starts the time fuse that will release the balloon from its moorings, and he too boards.

Now they can lift off.

After a tense half-minute, the fuse works perfectly.

The anchor ties come undone and the balloon rises at a dizzying speed.

Inside, the three fugitives shout for joy, leaping and hugging.

Friga gives thanks to God.

To any god, nobody cares which.

They’re on their way.

The altimeter reads 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 35 kilometers, and Adam, listening so closely to his headphones that sometimes he gets confused by the sound of his heart beating, hears no alarms going off in the ether.

Everything’s going fine.

Though on two occasions they freeze when the
bleep, bleep
of the radar receiver indicates that they are being tracked by a terrestrial radar.

At an altitude of forty-five kilometers, Friga fires the
Hope
’s plasma reactors.

The exhaust, burning at hundreds of degrees, sets the skin of the balloon ablaze and rips through it.

Well-placed explosive charges detonate and finish opening the balloon like the peel of a squashed banana.

Weather balloons normally use hydrogen for lift, since it is cheap and effective.

The ballon disguising the
Hope
used helium.

It is slightly less effective—and much more expensive.

But if they had used hydrogen, the explosion when the engines switched on could have destroyed the
Hope
before they reached orbit.

Adam had thought of that.

As expected, when the balloon rips open, they go into a spiraling fall.

They lose altitude and free themselves from the rest of the balloon’s skin.

Finally, the
Hope’s
sturdy delta wings find support in the thin upper atmosphere, and the spiral turns into a dive.

At an increasing speed, but completely under control.

Acceleration forces grow: two
g
, three
g
.

Friga counts to ten, lowers the ailerons, and gives full power to the reactors.

More cheers when the
Hope
describes an elegant curve upward.

Just exclamations; g-forces prevent the woman and the two men from getting out of their overstuffed hydraulic armchairs.

Feeling his jowls down around his waist, Adam thinks how much easier it would have been if they had artificial gravity and an antigrav propulsion unit, like a real Tornado class...

Only the xenoids make them, and their importation to Earth is too tightly controlled...

So it was always mere speculation.

Over the headphones of all three comes a question from a controller at some astroport:

“Unidentified Tornado-class shuttle, Gander Astroport here. Attention: you have entered the Regulus corridor... Your trajectory is odd... Are you having trouble? Please identify yourself.”

Adam gulps: the moment of truth is here.

Gander lies within the realm of possibility, though Toronto had seemed more likely, given the latitude.

Trying to keep his voice from being overly distorted by the five
g
of inertial lift into orbit, Adam gives the answer they had previously agreed upon:

“Gander, Tornado LZ-35 from Wellington here. Have jet stream and problems with ailerons. Collision with weather balloon, destruction likely. Requesting guide beam to the point of embarkation for Regulus and free corridor.”

For an instant there is no response.

Just the crackle of static filling the cabin.

The fugitives look at each other, going pale.

Is everything lost?

So soon?

Friga fiddles with the triggers of the ship’s weaponry and nervously watches the radar screen, as if expecting to see a suborbital patrol ship appear at any moment.

At least she’ll make them pay a high price for her life.