Godspeed (35 page)

"I had in mind a rather more tangible result," Doctor Eileen said drily. "I take it, Dr. Swift, that you don't think it would be too risky to enter?"

He shrugged. "Hey, life's a risk."

From her expression it was not quite the reassurance she was looking for. Doctor Eileen sighed and said, "I must be getting old. All right, Captain Shaker. I see that I am in a minority of one. Proceed. Let's see what we've got."

She was agreeing! We were going in! I could breathe easy again, as the
Cuchulain
rattled and creaked its way forward. The Eye grew, until it filled the whole display screen with a dense, unrelieved blackness. And then, while I was still waiting for something to happen, Danny Shaker said casually, "The ship is being slowed. We must be passing through the membrane. If this is anything like the Luimneach Anomaly, we'll be out again in just a few seconds."

We entered another one of those periods when time stretches forever. It may have been seconds, but it seemed hours before the screen showed a first ghost of an image, a dim outline like a bottom-heavy figure eight with a tiny extra lobe stuck onto its upper end. As Shaker murmured, "Nearly out," the image brightened and solidified. The middle part flickered and changed randomly before my eyes.

The control room remained silent, until Jim Swift said in a husky voice, "Well,
this
anomaly's not empty."

"Far from it." Danny Shaker turned to Doctor Eileen. "I can't guarantee that this is Godspeed Base until we take a closer look. But I'll bet my share of this whole venture on it. The big sphere on the bottom end of that structure is just the sort of hangar where you do deep space service on large ships."

"What about the Drive?" I asked.

Shaker nodded. "Where there's a ship, inside a hangar, inside an anomaly, inside a hardware net, then inside that ship you can hope to find . . ."

He didn't finish his sentence. But I finished it for him, inside my head.

. . . a Godspeed Drive.

* * *

The exploring party was itching to be on its way even before the
Cuchulain
reached the structure. Only a skeleton crew would remain on our ship, because everyone wanted to go. As Jim Swift said, with a perverse logic that seemed shared by everyone, "I'm quite sure it
is.
But if it isn't, I want to know
at once.
"

So did I, only I had worries of my own. I didn't like that talk of a skeleton crew that would stay on the
Cuchulain.

While Jim Swift seemed to be starting an argument with Danny Shaker and Doctor Eileen about the best way to explore the space structure floating ahead of us, I sneaked away to the top level of the living quarters. I was learning.
Out of sight, out of mind.
I didn't want to be around when the skeleton crew was picked.

On the upper level I went to find Mel, but apparently she was learning, too. She stayed hidden until I called softly, "Mel? It's me. It's safe."

Then she popped out and was at me like a hurricane. "What are you doing here? Tell me what's happening. First Eileen Xavier—she vanishes, and she doesn't come back. Then it's Jim Swift. Gone. Then it's Duncan West. Where did they go? What are they doing?"

"If you'll shut up for a minute, I'll tell you." I paused, savoring the moment until I thought she was ready to burst, then I said, "We've found it, Mel!"

"The Reservoir?"

"The Reservoir, the Net, the Needle, the Eye,
everything.
Godspeed Base, and the Godspeed Drive."

"You've been to them?"

"Well, no. But I will have, in an hour or so. We'll be docking any minute. Then a party will go over there."

"But you won't be part of it. You said Doctor Eileen wouldn't let you go to
Paddy's Fortune
because she thought it might be dangerous."

"This will be different. She only did that because I was standing right in front of her."

I was feeling smug at my own cunning, and it must have showed. Because Mel looked furious, and suddenly I didn't feel so full of bounce. She had been standing right by me, but now she plopped down in a chair. "You've been sitting up on the bridge all fat and happy. And you're going off to find the Godspeed Drive. And I'm trapped here with nothing to do but play Jim Swift's stupid games with the navaid. It's not
fair,
and I've had it. I've been doing my best to act responsibly, but you're hiding me away forever. When we started out I had no idea it would take so much time."

"No one did. The engines are in awful shape, we've had to travel really slow."

It wasn't much of an answer, and I knew it. Mel was on the boil, and if I stayed around I was going to be the one that got the heat. "I'll go and ask Doctor Eileen," I said hurriedly. "She might be able to tell us something."

"Never mind
something.
" Mel glowered at me. "Find out how long it will be before we get to Erin."

"Right. I'll be back as soon as I can." (
After
we return from Godspeed Base).

I escaped before Mel could have another go at me. When I arrived at the bridge there was just one person present. Donald Rudden was settled in the most comfortable chair, staring at the displays. A monstrous multilayer sandwich waited on a tray in front of him.

"Where is everybody?" I said.

"Eh?" He turned to frown at me. "Why, they've gone, that's where they are. All but me." He pointed a stubby finger at the screen. The middle part of the space structure on the display made me squint and blink. Flickering surges of light ran around it, and I couldn't bring it into focus.

"What's that? I can't see anything."

"Because you're staring at the wrong bit. Don't try to see the middle lump, you'll go cross-eyed. Look there." He jabbed his finger onto the screen, and I saw a humpbacked cargo beetle, heading for the big ovoid that formed the solid bottom of the figure-eight space structure. "There they go."

"What about
me?!
"

"You're here."

"But I was supposed to go with them!"

He seemed puzzled, and stared at his sandwich for inspiration. "Well, you weren't here, were you?" he said at last. "How could they take you, if you weren't here to be taken?"

It was no good arguing with him, the great pudding. I fled back to Mel. At least she would feel better, knowing that the two of us were in the same boat.

Apparently she did feel better. In fact, when I told her what had happened to me she started to laugh like a lunatic, rolling round and round the cabin.

Sometimes you have to think that the rule,
No women in space,
is an excellent idea.

CHAPTER 27

It's a strange thing, but one person can enjoy an experience, while another sees the same event only as a source of irritation.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

One of Donald Rudden's defects had become a virtue: Sit him in a comfortable chair with adequate supplies of food and drink, and an earthquake wouldn't budge him. I decided that since he was nicely settled, Mel and I could safely go to the observation bubble on the topmost level of the living quarters. We sneaked up there together and I turned the highest magnification scopes onto the cargo beetle.

Or rather, we turned them onto where the cargo beetle had been. We were just in time to see it nuzzling in to a rendezvous with a port on the side of the structure's big lobe.

Mel, sitting beside me, gasped. So did I. When the
Cuchulain
was far from the space base there had been no way of judging its size. Now we were closer, and the cargo beetle provided a direct standard of scale.

The base was
monstrous.
I estimated that the fat ellipsoid that the beetle was entering had to be at least as big as
Paddy's Fortune.
It was a world of its own. Even the "tiny" third lobe on the top end of the figure-eight would be big enough to house the
Cuchulain.
As for the middle section, it still defeated my eyes. There was a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't quality that might make you think that our ship's screen wasn't working—except that everything else on the display appeared normal. I decided that the middle part of the base must be transparent, and lit from
within,
like a hollow ball of glass with a continuous lightning storm going on inside.

The beetle vanished quickly into the side of the base. Mel continued to study the display with every sign of interest, enjoying her first look in weeks at open space. But I, as an experienced and blasé space traveler, watched with huge frustration—because I should have been
there,
inside Godspeed Base, not hanging around on the
Cuchulain
while nothing happened.

In the middle of that thought, something very definite did happen. I heard a noise like the clatter of boots on the stairway that led up to the observation bubble.

Mel heard it, too. She turned to me. "You said that the man who was left behind—"

"I know. He
never
moves if he doesn't have to."

Except that the sound was definitely louder. Someone was ascending the staircase. I stared around, and saw what I should have noticed the moment we came in. The observation bubble had only one exit. It also had no place to hide.

"Mel," I whispered. "The gun that I gave Doctor Eileen. Did she pass it on to you?"

"Yes."

"Good. Let me have it." I had fired it once. If I had to I could do it again.

She stared at me in dismay. "I don't have it, Jay. As soon as I had that gun in my hand I knew I could never bear to shoot anyone. I gave it to Duncan West . . ."

. . . and left us totally helpless.
The footsteps were right at the top of the staircase. The only thing left was surprise.

I launched myself feet-first toward the doorway. If I were lucky and timed it right, I would hit the intruder at chest level.

"No, Jay!" The shout came from Mel behind me.

I just had time to bend my legs and draw them up toward my body. I still hit the newcomer, right in his midsection, but I had softened the impact. I saw a mop of flaming red hair above Jim Swift's startled face as he staggered, made a wild grab at the doorway, and barely avoided being thrown back down the staircase.

He must have reached out from pure reflex, because my driving feet had knocked all the wind out of him. For the next half minute he grovelled on the floor, struggling for breath, while Mel and I hovered uselessly around him.

At last Jim raised his head and croaked, "What the hell?"

It was all he could say before he ran out of air again. Mel lifted him up, while I gabbled explanations and excuses.

After a while he nodded. "All right, all right. You didn't mean it. But you sure as hell did it." He straightened up, winced, and felt his midriff.

"But why aren't
you
on the cargo beetle?" I said. I couldn't believe he had missed the boat, too.

"Because they're dummies, that's why!" Anger did him more good than apologies. The color came rushing back to his face. "Total idiots. I tried to warn that stupid crew, and all they did was say that I didn't know about space. Me!"

"But you told me that you don't," said Mel. "You insisted that the trip on the
Cuchulain
was your first time in space."

Jim Swift had probably told her exactly that, but he didn't want to know it. His face became redder. "I don't know about
space.
But I know a hell of a lot about
space-time,
more than the rest of them put together will ever know."

Mel put her hand on his arm. "Calm down, Jim."

It was the perfect way to make him do the opposite. "What's knowing about space-time got to do with you not going with them now?" I asked hurriedly.

He glared at me instead of Mel. "I'll tell you what. I was brought on this trip because I'm Erin's expert on the theory of the Godspeed Drive, right? I've studied every fact and rumor and half-baked idea to do with the Drive for the past ten years, right? I know what a Godspeed Drive ship ought to look like. But people who don't know
anything
about the Drive—like halfwit spacers—have the idea that a ship with a faster-than-light drive must be just like the
Cuchulain,
only bigger. They associate speed with
size.
And that's totally wrong. A ship with a Godspeed Drive won't need those big, clumsy engines. Because it's superfast it won't need living quarters this size." He swung an arm around, to indicate all the space on the
Cuchulain.
"And if it's a backup ship, for use only in emergencies when the usual Godspeed ships have a problem, it doesn't need a great big space for cargo. It can be
small
—maybe no bigger than a cargo beetle."

It sounded logical to me. Surely it would have impressed Doctor Eileen and Danny Shaker the same way.

"Why didn't you tell them?"

"I would have—if I'd had half a chance." His voice was rising in pitch and volume. "I got there early. I started explaining to Tom Toole, and then that dummy O'Rourke came at me with a stupid question, and jackass Rory O'Donovan joined in. Before I knew it, there was no end of yelling and screaming."

I caught Mel's glance.
I bet there was,
it said,
and I bet I know who was doing most of it.

"Well, I wasn't going to stand for that. Who would?" Jim Swift stared at us, and we nodded sympathetically.

"You got into a fight?" asked Mel.

"No." He gave a self-righteous sniff. "I left. The hell with them. If they fly over there and get themselves killed, it won't be my fault. But I decided to fly a cargo beetle
myself,
once they were out of the way, and show them I was right in a way they could never dispute."

"But if you follow them—" Mel protested.

"I wouldn't follow them. I'd go to the logical place where you'd look for an emergency ship with a Godspeed Drive." Jim Swift pointed at the display screen, to the tiny third lobe on the space base. "
That's
where you'd store a small ship—not in that great stupid balloon at the other end, or in the flickering middle bit."

"But why didn't you go?" I asked.

He glared at me, frustration all over his face. "I'll tell you why. Because I'm not one of your bone-brained spacers, that's why. I can't fly one of those stupid, beat-up, crap-heap, space-junk cargo beetles. Half the instruments on them don't even work!"