Starclimber (19 page)

“I hate that ring on your finger,” I said.

“Me too.” She gave me a mischievous smile. “It is very pretty, though.”

“Don’t get too fond of it.”

“You’re becoming a very accomplished actor,” she told me. “There were a few times when I looked at you and thought,
He really doesn’t care for me at all
.”

“No,” I said, but secretly I was pleased. “Anyway, I’m not that good an actor. Tobias knows.”

She looked alarmed. “How? Was it something I said?”

I shook my head. “Apparently it’s the way I look when you talk about Sanderson. Don’t worry, he won’t tell anyone.”

“It’s Miss Karr I’m most worried about,” said Kate.

“I thought you liked her,” I said.

“I like her very much, but she suspects something. Those bright eyes of hers. Scribble, scribble, scribble. Who knows what she’s writing down? If she mentions anything romantic about us in the newspaper, I’m finished. I’ll be considered a hussy. I might as well go live in the Himalayas with the yetis.”

“Well, there was nothing in today’s dispatch,” I said. “I was on the bridge when she read it to Ground Station. She did say quite a lot about Sir Hugh, though.”

“Did she mention how Haiku peed in his soup?”

“No. But she did say he had the bearing of a peacock.”

Kate giggled. “He won’t like that.”

I grinned. “He won’t know till he gets back to earth.”

“I wanted to strangle him at lunch,” she said. “I actually imagined how his fat neck would feel in my hands.”

“You did a good job hiding it,” I said.

Kate gave a big sigh. “I keep thinking about what Dr. Turgenev said. If there’s really no oxygen, no
anything
, it’s hard to see how there can be life of any sort.”

She seemed very downcast, so I said, “I wouldn’t give up on outer space just yet. Strange things tend to pop up when you’re around.”

“I hope so. I can’t bear it if Sir Hugh’s right.” Her eyes brightened. “Oh, look, another shooting star.”

I caught sight of a tiny bright diamond moving through outer space. We’d seen hundreds of shooting stars this morning. Even though I knew they were just meteoroids burning up in the atmosphere, I couldn’t help thinking of what General Lancaster had said about other spaceships. I wasn’t the only one who’d been watching the shooting stars very closely. I’d seen Shepherd’s eyes lock onto them and wait until they’d flickered their last.

I frowned. “We’re not in the atmosphere anymore,” I said.

Kate looked at me, confused.

“It’s the friction against the atmosphere that makes them glow,” I explained. “That one’s too high to be a shooting star.”

“Are you sure?” Kate said.

I stared hard as the light abruptly angled upward.

“And they don’t change course,” I said, running for the ship’s phone. It was Shepherd who picked up on the bridge.

“It’s Cruse here. Can you see a light moving off the starboard side, about four o’clock?”

I waited for a moment, tracking it myself through the window.

“We see it, Cruse.”

“It just changed course.”

His voice grew muffled as he talked hurriedly with Captain Walken. Then he came back to me. “Cruse, get Dr. Turgenev to see this. And wake Miss Karr too. We want photos.”

“Will do.” I hung up and turned to Kate. “I need to wake Dr. Turgenev and Miss Karr. You should go.”

“It just changed color!” Kate exclaimed, pointing.

Sure enough, the moving star was now blue.

“It’s like the one we saw in Paris,” I breathed.

Kate squeezed my hand. “How far away do you think it is?”

“Could be a hundred miles, could be a million.” Even after three years of crow’s nest duty, judging distances across the sky was no easy feat. There were so few reference points.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the light was gone.

“Where’d it go?” Kate cried.

My eyes tracked across the dark astral ether, trying to anticipate where it would reappear. I kept thinking of it as a star, even though I knew it couldn’t be. Stars did not move.

“There!” I said. The blue light was stationary now, but it seemed to glow with greater intensity. “I’m waking the others.”

I took a few steps, then stopped. I turned back. I realized the star wasn’t motionless at all. It was moving—only this time, straight for us. It started to pulse. And it was clearly swelling in size.

I rushed to the phone. “It’s coming right at us!”

“We see it, Mr. Cruse,” came the captain’s voice. “I’m sounding the alarm.”

The light was the size of a golf ball now. The ship’s alarm began its slow wail. I heard cabin doors opening on A-Deck.

“What’s happening?” said Tobias, rushing down the stairs.

Dr. Turgenev was close behind.

I pointed. “I think it’s headed our way.”

Miss Karr hurried down the stairs and went straight for her camera.

“What is it?” Tobias said.

It was the size of a billiard ball now, its flashing light so intense it seared my eyes. The entire lounge was bathed in an eerie blue glow.

“Do not look directly at light!” warned Dr. Turgenev as he hurriedly pulled down the polarized blinds we used to screen out direct sunlight.

I didn’t know what the captain’s plan of action would be. Slow down? Or accelerate? It would be like trying to dodge a cannonball. I knew the
Starclimber
was rising at full speed, and yet the light was still coming right for us. I felt so powerless, I wanted to shout.

“Good God!” said Sir Hugh as he came down the stairs.

Chef Vlad just stood, shaking his head.

Even with the blinds, the light made you squint. Everyone was blue. In between flashes, I thought I caught an outline of something wedge shaped. It was the size of a basketball now.

“Hold tight!” I shouted, even though I knew it was pointless. The impact would be colossal. We’d be obliterated instantly.

Sir Hugh threw himself into a seat and buckled up, as did some of the others. But Miss Karr didn’t budge from her camera, taking picture after picture, and I marveled at her bravery.

Just as it seemed the light was about to engulf us entirely, it veered and was gone, leaving behind a faint tremor in the
Starclimber
and the sense of something large and immensely fast. I rushed across B-Deck to the opposite windows. There, slanting heavenward, was the blue light, already quite tiny again, and still pulsing before it disappeared from sight.

Chef Vlad served coffee, and we all sat hunched forward in our chairs, cradling our mugs, talking and talking about what we’d just seen. Captain Walken had brought the
Starclimber
to a standstill, and he and Shepherd were with us in the lounge.

“Dr. Turgenev, what do you make of this?” the captain asked.

“Seeing was very difficult,” Dr. Turgenev said dejectedly, polishing his spectacles on his rather threadbare dressing gown. “Maybe meteoroid.”

“But it changed direction,” I said.

The Russian scientist shrugged. “This I did not see. Is possible it is in deteriorating elliptical orbit.” With his finger he drew a shrinking spiral in the air. “It circles around earth, but to us it looks like it moves up and then down, yes?”

I nodded. It seemed a reasonable enough explanation. After it passed our ship, I’d watched it as it climbed high and then angled back toward earth.

“That doesn’t explain the light,” Shepherd said.

“Or the blue color,” I said.

“This is harder to explain,” said Dr. Turgenev. “Maybe some kind of phosphorescent ore.”

“Rock doesn’t flash,” said Shepherd.

“I have no explanation for this,” said the scientist simply.

“The flash was quite regular,” Kate said, “I don’t know if anyone noticed.”

I hadn’t, and I was very impressed that she had.

“Three seconds bright,” she said. “Two seconds dark. I counted.”

“Sounds almost like a ship’s running lights,” said Shepherd, looking at Captain Walken.

“What are you suggesting, Mr. Shepherd?” said Sir Hugh with a nervous chuckle.

Shepherd ignored him. “Miss Karr, did you get any pictures?”

“Lots,” she said. “But I’ve no idea how they’ll turn out. That light might’ve overexposed my film. Even if it hasn’t, likely all we’ll see is a very bright light.”

“But no one else has a spaceship,” said Sir Hugh impatiently. Then he looked at the captain. “Do they?”

“Not on earth, Sir Hugh,” said Captain Walken. “But there’s been some speculation that they may come from another planet.”

“Like Mars,” said Tobias.

Sir Hugh rolled his eyes. “Oh, not the old Martian canal hoax again!”

“I agree with Sir Hugh,” said Dr. Turgenev. “Is much more likely this is space rock. Maybe type we have not seen before.”

“Thank you, Dr. Turgenev,” said Sir Hugh.

Shepherd’s cool eyes were far from convinced. “Unless you can show me a rock that flashes blue light, that thing was a ship. And it took a nice long look at us. General Lancaster needs to hear about this.”

“You have my permission to radio him the details,” said Captain Walken, and I could tell from his tone of voice he was reminding Shepherd of his place. “Whatever we saw,” he continued, “my chief concern is whether we’ll have another close encounter with it.”

Dr. Turgenev shook his head. “If it is meteorite, no. By time it makes another orbit, it will be below us.”

“But what about the cable?” I said, repressing a shiver.

“Good point, Mr. Cruse,” said the captain. “Could it withstand a collision?”

Dr. Turgenev inhaled sadly and shrugged. “I think no. But let us remember that cable is very thin. Probability of being struck is teeny.”

“I hope so,” said Tobias.

I saw Kate take a breath. “No one’s raised the possibility that it was alive.”

Sir Hugh snorted. “Ah, Miss de Vries, once again leaping to conclusions.” Wrapped up in his plush royal blue robe, he seemed even puffier than usual. Miss Karr’s description of him as a peacock seemed remarkably appropriate.

“I haven’t made
any
conclusion,” said Kate firmly. “But I think we should consider the possibility.”

“My dear,” said Sir Hugh, “didn’t you hear what Dr. Turgenev said earlier? Nothing could survive outside these walls.”

“Life exists in all sorts of difficult places,” Kate said. “There are organisms that can live in ice, and boiling water, even in acid.”

“You’re talking about extremophiles, perhaps,” said Sir Hugh, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But they tend to be microscopic. And even they need some kind of food supply. What do you expect would nourish something up here?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Kate. “But it’s something to investigate.”

“Feel free,” said Sir Hugh. “Perhaps you can self-publish a pamphlet like Dr. Ganev. He claimed he saw life bouncing about on the moon. Do you know what his little moon people turned out to be? Moisture inside his telescope.”

“Could anyone make out the shape of it?” Kate asked, ignoring the zoologist.

“It was too quick,” said Tobias. “I was nearly blinded.”

Kate turned hopefully to me.

“I might have seen its outline,” I said, “before it got too close, but I’m not sure. Oval shaped.”

“I thought so too!” said Kate. “And smooth. It didn’t seem like rock.”

“It was a
rock
, Miss de Vries,” said Sir Hugh.

Kate’s nostrils narrowed, a sure sign she was annoyed. “Aren’t you the one leaping to conclusions, Sir Hugh? It seems you’ve already decided there’s no chance of life in outer space. I’m willing to keep looking.”

“I’m sure we all will, Miss de Vries,” Captain Walken said kindly. “That’s one of the reasons for our journey. We may see our blue light again. Though I hope, for all our sakes, not at quite such close quarters.”

Captain Walken returned to the bridge with Shepherd, and the rest of us carried our mugs back to the kitchen and headed up to our cabins. Kate went on ahead with Miss Karr, for they were sharing adjoining rooms. I wondered if Miss Karr had noticed that Kate had not been in her bed when the alarm sounded.

As I tried to get to sleep, my head was noisy with thoughts. Part of me hoped that Kate was right, and that outer space was no empty wasteland but home to all sorts of new life. But for the first time I felt the true vulnerability of the
Starclimber
. We were fragile, with only a thin metal shell between us and the astral ether. We were far from home, and could be broken so easily.

T
oday, one of us was going to make the first space walk.

I was down in the air lock with Tobias, checking the space suits and the life-support machinery.

“Who’s it going to be, do you think?” I said.

“Shepherd, probably.”

“Probably.”

But we didn’t know for sure whom the captain would choose. All we knew was that, day by day, gravity had slowly weakened, and according to Dr. Turgenev, it would disappear altogether sometime today. As soon as it did, a single astralnaut would be going outside to make history.

It was ten in the morning, day five of our expedition, and we were fifteen thousand miles from earth. If I pressed my face against the porthole and looked straight down, I could just make out the indigo curve of our planet—a small ball I could hold in one hand. It gave me a pang to see it so far away, and to know that we’d get farther still, for we were still three days from cable’s end.

There’d been no more sightings of the blue light, but it was never far from my thoughts—or Shepherd’s. When not on duty, he’d taken to scanning the heavens, and he’d had Miss Karr teach him how to use the cameras, in case he saw anything. He still thought it was some kind of ship, and every day he radioed a report to General Lancaster at Ground Station.

Kate was disappointed there’d been no more sightings, for she still held out hope there was life in outer space. Miss Karr too grew more restless, saying she was bored with the view, and that she’d photographed space in every way possible. She’d taken to prowling about the ship with one of her smaller cameras, sneaking candid pictures of us. In her daily dispatches home she was starting to comment on the stale air aboard ship, the cramped quarters, and how certain passengers seemed to take up more than their fair share of oxygen. Sir Hugh seemed content enough, though he too complained about the stuffiness, and about Haiku. The little monkey harassed him at every turn—and was a notorious farter to boot. None of us was thrilled, but it drove Sir Hugh quite mad.

As for me, I was growing impatient too—and I could tell Tobias and Shepherd were as well. As nervous as I was about making a space walk, I wanted to get out there, and to know what it felt like. But I doubted I’d be the first to go.

“Looks good to me,” said Tobias, checking the last astralnaut suit.

I replaced a helmet on its peg. Everything was incredibly light now. We had to be careful walking, for we tended to lift off with every step.

I heard footsteps, and Shepherd appeared in the hatchway.

“We just got some news from back home,” he said. “The captain wanted me to pass it on. The Celestial Tower’s been destroyed.”

I felt his words like a blow to my stomach. “Was it the Babelites?” I asked.

“They don’t know yet. The thing just collapsed.”

I’d worked on that tower for two weeks. Nothing had seemed more solid. And the French had been so confident. I thought of all those posters plastered about Paris, the promises that they’d be in outer space within a year. How could all those dreams be reduced to a mountain of twisted wreckage?

“Were many people killed?” I asked

“Not that many,” Shepherd said. “That’s the good news.”

“It could’ve been much worse,” I said. “It was already two miles high when I worked on it.”

Tobias was shaking his head. “Didn’t Dr. Turgenev say it’d never make it?”

I nodded. “Sounds like it couldn’t bear its own weight.”

“Or the Babelites gave it a push,” said Shepherd.

I didn’t know which was more worrying: an accident caused by the Babelites or one caused by the mistakes of so many brilliant scientists and engineers working together.

“We’re lucky the general’s keeping an eye on things for us,” said Shepherd.

I didn’t like the general, but I have to admit it was a comfort to think the Aeroforce was guarding the astral cable back on earth.

Tobias looked uneasy. “You ever wonder if the Babelites were right?”

Shepherd turned to him sharply. “What’re you talking about?”

“Not about God getting angry,” said Tobias awkwardly. “But maybe we’re not supposed to be up here at all.”

“If you felt that way, why’d you come?” Shepherd asked calmly, but I didn’t like the unpleasant edge to his voice.

“I’m just speaking my mind, Shepherd,” said Tobias, his eyebrows compressing angrily.

Shepherd shook his head. “I didn’t expect superstitious talk from my fellow astralnauts.”

“It’s not superstitious,” I said, feeling my own temper rise. “I know what Tobias means. What we’re doing’s dangerous, and no one’s done it before. We don’t know what to expect up here. Anything could happen. And I don’t like hearing about the tower coming down, either.”

“Makes me wonder if anyone really knows what they’re doing,” said Tobias.

“Doubts have no place aboard ship,” Shepherd said. “It’s bad for morale.”

“So’s pretending to be captain,” Tobias shot back.

Shepherd said nothing, but there was a flash of fury in his eyes that was nearly as violent as a blow. My whole body tensed.

“You two are on duty in five minutes,” said Shepherd, and left the air lock.

Tobias’s face was a grimace of regret. “Stupid of me. But it’s true enough. The way he talks to us.”

And it wasn’t just the way he treated
us
. We’d both noticed how Shepherd seemed to chafe under Captain Walken’s command. He was always civil, and obedient, but I got the sense he didn’t respect the captain, and it bothered me—made me angry too. Shepherd, despite all his skill, would never make as good a leader as Captain Walken.

I clapped Tobias on the back. “Don’t worry. Let’s head up.”

We climbed the stairs to B-Deck, our feet scarcely touching the steps, we were so light now. In the lounge Miss Karr was sitting before her typewriter, clacking out her latest dispatch. Kate was engrossed in a big book. Sir Hugh was writing away. Haiku was perched on a side table, slyly looking at Sir Hugh. I kept my eye on him. He was obviously plotting. Then, with a little flick of his wrist, he threw something. I watched it sail through the air and over the top of Sir Hugh’s head. The zoologist didn’t notice. Haiku sat very still, pretending to pick his nose, and then made a second throw. This time he hit Sir Hugh square in the head.

The zoologist’s hand flew up and came away smudged brown. His face wrinkled in revulsion.

“Where’s that monkey!” he cried.

“What’s the matter?” said Miss Karr, looking up.

“You said he was toilet trained!”

“He is.”

“He’s throwing his feces at me! I’ll have his head!”

Sir Hugh looked about in fury, spotted the monkey, and heaved himself out of his chair in pursuit. And then an amazing thing happened.

Sir Hugh left his chair and kept going, soaring weightlessly across the room. Haiku, seeing Sir Hugh coming for him, launched himself off the table, and with a squeal of surprise flew to the other side of the room. Miss Karr, who’d been in the midst of standing, floated straight up toward the ceiling.

Haiku grabbed hold of a floor lamp and scampered beneath the shade as Sir High went careening past, thrashing his arms and legs and bellowing like a sea lion. He collided with the window and I winced, even though I knew the glass could withstand it. He ricocheted off and bounced, upside down, against the ceiling.

“Help!” he bellowed.

“We have zero gravity!” Dr. Turgenev announced, coming up the stairs behind me from C-Deck.

“We know!” I called back.

A great clanging of pots came from the kitchen, and some serious cursing in Transylvanian.

“Why does no one warn me of this!” Chef Vlad roared through the doors.

“I told him earlier,” Dr. Turgenev said with a shrug. “But I do not think he was listening.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this,” Tobias said, pushing off across the room. He was so accustomed to working underwater that weightlessness was quite familiar to him. Laughing, he somersaulted in midair, tumbling over and over. I was envious of his agility in the air.

“Help!” Sir Hugh wailed again.

“Use the handholds on the ceiling, Sir Hugh,” I called out, but it seemed beyond him.

Miss Karr had already given herself a firm push off from the ceiling and drifted back down to the table, where, with Kate and Tobias’s help, she got her self reseated and buckled in.

“Is Haiku all right?” she said, looking around.

“He’s swinging from the lamp,” I said, glancing at Haiku who was spinning gleefully round and round the light fixture.

“Cruse, lend a hand, will you?” said Sir Hugh crossly.

I gently launched myself and sailed diagonally up to the ceiling to help Sir Hugh. “Just give yourself a little push now, Sir Hugh,” I said when I reached him.

It took us a couple tries, but eventually we floated down to the floor together, and I slipped my feet into two nearby footholds. I maneuvered the zoologist into an armchair and fastened his seat belt.

“Well, this is quite unusual,” he said. His legs and arms kept drifting up, and he stared at them askance, pulling them back down to their proper positions.

Kate was already getting quite adventurous, soaring across the room, pushing off from bits of furniture when she stalled in flight. Her long auburn hair undulated about her face. I turned to see Dr. Turgenev floating. For the first time since I’d met him, he was truly smiling. He had no more need of his cane, and he seemed a completely different person.

I was handing out the magnetic overshoes when Captain Walken floated deftly down the spiral staircase.

“Excellent,” he said. “I see you’re all getting your space legs. Mr. Blanchard, suit up, please. You’re to be our first man in outer space.”

Floating side by side in the air lock, Tobias and I breathed pure oxygen through our face masks. We needed to do this for half an hour, to purge our blood of nitrogen. Even within our pressurized space suits, any nitrogen gas left in our bodies could expand and give us what divers called “the bends.” Tobias knew all about it. A mild case could give you itching skin, rashes, pain in your joints. A serious case could paralyze or kill you. We were all suited up, except for our helmets. I wasn’t going outside, but would stay behind in the open air lock, spotting Tobias.

“I can’t believe I’m going first,” he said, shaking his head.

“After you, no one will ever be first again,” I told him.

His voice sounded hoarse. “Well, let’s hope I’m up to it.”

“Of course you’re up to it. That’s why the captain chose you.”

“He just needed someone fresh,” said Tobias. “It would’ve been Shepherd if he hadn’t just come off shift.” He grinned over at me. “Still, I wish I could’ve seen his face when the captain told him.”

“It’s right you’re first,” I said. “No one was better than you in the pool.”

Tobias’s face clouded. “I keep thinking of the Celestial Tower.”

I nodded. It had been hovering over my thoughts too.

“Do you think it was the Babelites?” he asked me.

“All I know,” I said, “is that they can’t touch us. We’re safe. Every bolt on this ship’s been gone over four times. And we’ve got good old General Lancaster down there, making sure everything’s tickety-boo.”

Tobias chuckled and imitated the general’s voice. “Tickety-boo.”

I looked at the wall-mounted clock and removed my mask. “We’re ready.”

I floated over to the two great spools of umbilical tubing mounted on the ceiling. I took the end of one and locked it into the back of Tobias’s suit. The umbilicus had been specially redesigned and strengthened so that it was both oxygen line and safety tether. This line would be the only thing connecting Tobias to the ship. I turned around so Tobias could hook mine up for me.

“Stay away from the stern,” I reminded him. The astral cable carried an immense voltage, enough to electrocute a man. The
Starclimber
itself completed the electric circuit, so the cable above the bow was safe to touch.

I picked up his helmet and lifted it over his head. “Good luck,” I said. “You’re a shark, remember. One very lucky shark.”

He winked, but his face was pale. I lowered the helmet, locking it into place and double-checking the clamps. Then he put on my helmet for me.

Drifting over to the control console, I flicked the switches that would start the flow of oxygen into our suits. My ears popped at the reassuring hiss. I turned on our radios. Unlike the underwater practice suits, these were fitted with small transmitters and receivers that would let us communicate with each other.

“Can you hear me?” I said.

“I hear you,” Tobias replied.

“Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

Before we could open the outer hatch, we needed to make sure the air lock was the same pressure as outer space. I pulled a lever, and even through my helmet could hear the pumps busily sucking the atmosphere out of the air lock. The needle on the pressure gauge gradually fell from fourteen pounds per square inch all the way to the bottom.

“We’re at zero,” I said. “I’m going to open the hatch.”

I maneuvered myself in front of it and locked my feet into the floor cleats. I took hold of the wheel, as I’d practiced underwater many times, and turned. It moved surprisingly easily. Then, with a careful tug, I swung the hatch inside, all three hundred pounds of it, as though it were light as tin.

There, right before me, was outer space, nothing separating us.

Just me and the stars and a billion miles in between.

Without tinted windows to dull them, the stars looked brighter than ever—and more numerous than I’d ever imagined.

Everything seemed so still, though of course we weren’t really still. Even though the captain had stopped the
Starclimber
, we were still moving as we clung to our astral thread. We turned with the planet at thousands of miles an hour. The thought made me feel a bit woozy, but luckily I had to look away so I could fasten the hatch securely against the air lock’s inside wall.

Tobias drifted over, his hands on the rim of the open portal, gazing out into the star-prickled vastness. Then, without another moment’s hesitation, he stepped outside.