He was, I think, about to explain what it must have been like when the lights went off. When everything went off. Whatever the problem was, I never saw it coming. It ripped through the electronics, killed the AI, took out the thrusters and the spike, shut down life support, blew communications, and knocked out almost every onboard system we had. Delta slowed and staggered. We were still going up, but we were losing momentum and if nothing changed we’d soon be on our way back down.
“What the hell was that?” George gripped the arms of his chair and looked wildly around at me.
We were twenty-some clicks above the surface.
“Kellie—” he howled, his expression suggesting that I was responsible.
“We’ll be fine,” I told him smoothly while I tried to get my systems back on line.
“The cargo,” he reminded me. Yes. Don’t lose the cargo. Whatever else happens.
We had four hundred and some odd books stashed in Delta’s storage, frozen in packs after centuries of being exposed to the void. Property of whoever had owned and lived on this moon. That was a long time ago, maybe when Charlemagne was running things. We’d brought them out of the house and placed them carefully in specially prepared containers. When we got them up to orbit, a scenario that was beginning to look problematical, George was going to thaw them out, scan them, and produce copies. The copies would eventually, it was hoped, be translated. He was going to scan them because George doubted we’d ever be able to get the pages apart without damaging the individual volumes. But he’d arranged to have one of the techs remove a navigational scanner from the hull of the Bromfield and adapt it for ultra-short-range work. He was especially proud of that bit of jury-rigging. I doubted it would work. Navigational scanners just don’t lend themselves to that kind of close-in effort. But what did I know?
The books constituted, the authorities were saying, the most valuable payload that had ever been moved in from offworld. For the first time we were going to get an insight into how other minds think. Who knew what the books might contain? The Academy director herself had overseen the operation, had taken a moment to remind me what I was carrying. All you have to do, Kellie, is get them to the Bromfield. So Kellie had become Columbus discovering the new world. Don’t be Carlyle landing on Mars. Don’t fly into a mountain.
Ha ha ha.
“Kellie, do something!” demanded George.
When the spike fails, the best thing, according to the manual, is to give it some time. Status lamps started to blink on. Backups were trying to activate. The fans squealed and a cool draft whispered out of the air ducts. The thrusters came to life and gave us a kick. I rotated them down so they could supply a bit more push.
That helped. But we still didn’t have enough to reach orbit. George’s eyes got big and round.
Fortunately, we hadn’t lost hull integrity. But the spike showed zero lift. The thrusters would never be enough to keep us from getting smeared across the landscape. And anyhow I’d exhaust the fuel if I had to keep burning it at its current rate. We needed the spike. I tried to reactivate it. The needles quivered, settled back to nil. I tried again. “We might have a problem,” I said.
Let me dispel any preconceptions at this point by mentioning that I’d known George Blasingame almost five years. He was no coward. I’ve seen him face down bureaucratic bullies, and I watched him go into a temple on Quraqua during a major earthquake to salvage a couple of pots. So when he started looking terrified I knew what the problem was.
“The books,” he said.
“I’m doing everything I can, George.”
“I don’t believe this. I’ve been riding these damned things for twenty years. And today of all days—.” He said it as if having any of the earlier landers go down with him in it would have been a small matter.
I told him to turn on his e-suit and grab his air tanks. I activated my own and shut down everything except the thrusters and the controls. Then I tried the spike again. The needles jumped, took hold, and climbed a bit. Some of our weight drained away. I got it up to about thirty percent. Not good. Not nearly enough. But it would buy time.
It looked as if we would get around the moon a couple of times before we hit a mountain.
I kept trying to raise the Bromfield while George urged me on. “Tell them we need help,” he said, as though I hadn’t noticed we had a problem. After a couple of minutes, we got a burst of static. And then Jimmy Amir’s voice. Jimmy was one of the technicians on the Bromfield. “—You okay?” he said. “Kellie, please answer up.”
“I hear you, Jimmy. We’ve got an emergency here.” I tried to sound as if I were reporting a plumbing problem. “Spike’s at thirty percent.”
The signal faded, and then came back: “—Orbit?”
“Negative,” I said.
George knew exactly what that meant and he did a desperate look toward the cargo door at the rear of the cabin. “Can we go back down?” he suggested. “Back to the Retreat?” That was the name we’d given the house on the mountain. The refuge constructed by a previously unknown race.
“We can’t. We wouldn’t make it.”
“Kellie, this thing has spike technology. We can just float down.”
I had to hand it to him. Most people would have been yelping about maybe getting killed, but he wasn’t even thinking about himself. “We don’t have enough lift,” I said.
“Then we have to salvage the cargo. That has to be our first priority.” And then, in case I wasn’t getting the point: “It doesn’t matter what happens to us.”
Speak for yourself, Champ. Anyhow, none of it mattered. All the priorities were going down together. He saw it in my eyes. “I’m sorry, George.”
Jimmy was reading my status reps. “Not good, Kellie.”
“Looks like.”
“Okay. Tod’s on his way. Figure about fifty minutes. Can you stay up that long?”
“Yes.” Firm. Voice steady. Hand on the stick. All for the good of the passenger. In fact it would be touch and go. “Jimmy?”
“Yes, Kellie?”
“What was it?”
“An EMP.” An electro-magnetic pulse.
“But we’re shielded.”
“Double dose. Both Twins let go at once. We’ve got problems here, too. Not like yours,” he continued helpfully. “But it’s a hassle.” The Twins were a pair of gas giants running around one another in a tight orbit. They pumped out EMP’s on a fairly regular basis. But what were the odds against simultaneous blasts?
George was shaking his head. “What’s going to happen when he gets here? Can he repair us?”
“Not underway. You and I are going to transfer over to Alpha.” Tod’s lander.
He looked as if I’d hit him with a stick. For a moment he said nothing. Then: “What about the cargo?”
I met his eyes and shook my head. The patient’s not going to make it, George.
“We can’t just abandon it,” he said.
I don’t get irritated easily, but I wondered what he expected me to do. “George,” I said, “I hate to put it to you this way, but the cargo’s the reason we’re going down.” The simple truth was we were hauling too much mass. Without the books, we might still have made it into orbit. If I’d been able to do it, I’d have jettisoned every last one of them.
And okay, I know what you’re thinking. But my first obligation is to the ship. And my passenger’s life. Not to mention my own.
In case anybody out there was in Tibet at the time, the moon’s name was Vertical. They called it that because it moves around the Twins in a perpendicular orbit.