“Well,” she said, “we’ve got some worn valves and a feeder line, and the clocks have gotten out of sync. We’ve checked the maintenance reports, and they never got to them in port.”
His first reaction was that heads would roll. And it must have shown when he told her that he hoped they’d be able to get to Lookout without any more problems.
“You can’t really blame the engineers, Dave. Everything was being rushed to get us out of there. Actually, it should have been okay for a couple more runs. But you can never really be sure. I’m talking about the valves and the feeder line now. The clocks we’ve already taken care of. And I’m replacing the line. The valves, though, are something else. Heavy work, in-port stuff. We can’t do much about them, except take it easy on them the rest of the way.”
“How do you take it easy on a jump engine?” he asked.
“You say nice things to it.”
“Alex, let me ask you again—”
“There’s no risk to the ship, David. These things are engineered so that at the first hint of a serious problem it jumps back into sublight and shuts itself down. Just as it did this morning.” Her voice changed, became subdued. “Whether we get to Lookout or not, that’s another story.”
LIBRARY ENTRY
“How far is the sky, Boomer?”
“It’s close enough to touch, Shalla.”
“Really? Marigold said it’s very far.”
“Only if you open your eyes.”
— The Goompah Show
Summer Special, All-Kids Network
June 21
chapter 23
On board the Heffernan.
Friday, June 27.
“ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY PICKING up inside the omega,” said Sky. It was getting close to the hedgehog.
“Estimated time fifty minutes,” said Bill. The rate of closure was just over 30 kph.
The Heffernan had backed away to 80 million klicks, the minimum range set by Hutchins. They were watching by way of a half dozen probes running with the omega, and they were maintaining jump status so they could leave in a hurry if the need arose. That used a substantial quantity of fuel and would require all kinds of refitting when they got back to Serenity. But that was the point: They were making sure they would get back.
“I don’t know how big this is going to be,” Sky told Em, “but they’ve got my attention.”
The overhead monitor carried a picture of the omega as seen from the monitors, a wall of churning mist streaked with bursts of incandescence. The cloud was usually dark and untroubled, but now it almost seemed as if the thing was reacting to the chase. Sky was glad to be well away from it.
Other displays provided views of the hedgehog and the forward section of the omega. He watched the range between them growing shorter. Watched the flow of black mist across the face of the cloud, the electricity rippling through its depths.
Emma refused to commit herself about what would happen. “Large bang,” she said. Beyond that, the data were insufficient. It was all guesswork. That was why they were out here doing this, to find out.
The cloud seemed almost to have a defined surface. Like a body of water rather than mist. Sky had looked at some of the visuals from researchers who had snuggled up against omegas and even on a couple of occasions penetrated them. The clouds looked thick enough to walk on.
A flash of lightning, reflected through the monitors, lit up the bridge. The pictures broke up and came back. “Big one,” he said.
The hedgehog had seemed enormous when the thruster packages had closed in on it two months before. Six and a half kilometers wide. Skyscraper-sized spines. Seen against the enormous span of the omega, it might have been only a floating spore.
More heavy lightning.
“Bill,” said Sky, “let’s buckle in.”
The AI acknowledged, and the harnesses descended around them.
“You know,” said Emma, “about twenty years ago they towed an old freighter up to one of these things and pushed it inside. One of the Babcock models. Looked like a big box.”
“What happened?”
“It got within about twenty klicks before a bolt of lightning took it out. All but blew it apart.”
“At twenty klicks.”
“Yep.”
“Won’t be long for our guy.” He tried to relax. Theirs was an unsettling assignment. God knew they were far enough away to have plenty of warning, and they could jump out of danger. But Hutch had explained there was a risk, they just didn’t know, she would understand if they’d just as soon pass on the assignment. In case the worst did happen, they were maintaining a moment-to-moment on-line feed to Serenity.
The range shortened to twenty kilometers, the range of the freighter, and then to fifteen. The cloud flickered, and Sky could have sworn he heard a rumble, but that was, of course, impossible, so he didn’t say anything but just watched the gap continue to close.
At twelve klicks Bill reported that electrical activity inside the cloud had increased by a factor of two over its normal state.
At ten, a lightning bolt leaped out of the roiling mist and touched the hedgehog. Embraced it.
One of the imagers went out. “I think it hit the package, too,” said Emma.
The hedgehog was by then so close that none of their angles showed separation. It was almost into the cloud.
A second bolt flickered around the hedgehog, licked at it, seemed to draw it forward. The mists churned. And the hedgehog slipped inside.
The pictures coming from the probes showed nothing but cloud. He checked the time. Sixteen forty-eight hours. Adjust for signal lag and make it 1644.
They waited.
Ragged bolts ripped through the cloud. It brightened. And then it began to fade.
“Well, Em,” said Sky, “that was something of a bust. Do we go around the other side to see if the hedgehog comes out?”
Emma was still watching the screens. “Not so fast,” she said.
For several minutes the omega grew alternately brighter and darker. Lightning flowed along its surface like liquid fire. Then it began to shine.
And it went incandescent.
One by one, the feeds from the accompanying probes died.
Emma’s eyes looked very blue.
“Bill,” said Sky, “be ready to go.”
“Say the word, Sky.” The engines changed tone.
It was becoming a sun.
“What’s happening to it, Em?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
“Bill, has it exploded?”
“I don’t think so. The sensors are gone, but the remotes haven’t detected a shock wave.”
“That’s good.”
“Readings are off the scale,” said Em.
He shut down the monitors.
“Sky, do you wish to leave the area?”
“This is goofy,” said Em. “How can we not be getting a shock wave?”
“I have no idea.”
“It shouldn’t be happening. I can’t be sure because everything we have is blown out. But the way it was going, I’d guess it’s putting out the light-equivalent of a small nova. Without the explosion. Without the blast.”
“Is that possible?”
“We’ll see what the measurements look like. Meantime, yes, I’d say we’re watching it happen.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“Think flashbulb,” she said. “And tell Bill we should go.”
LIBRARY ENTRY
. And then there are those who say there is no evidence of the existence of God.
Think about the universe. To understand how it works, one must grasp the significance of light. It is the speed limit, the boundary, the measure of physical reality. We use it as a metaphor for knowledge, for intelligence, for reason. We speak of the forces of light. It is so bound up in our souls that we think of it as the very essence of existence. And yet there is no definable necessity for a physical force that can be observed by sense organs. By eyes. If there is proof anywhere of an involved God, it is the existence of light.
— Conan Magruder
Time and Tide
chapter 24
Woodbridge, Virginia.
Sunday, June 29.
HUTCH SAT ON a rocker on the front deck watching Maureen and Tor tossing a beach ball back and forth. Maureen’s tactic, when she had the ball, was to charge her father, giggling wildly, while he ran for cover. But she inevitably lost control of the ball, popping it in the air or squirting it sideways or kicking it into the rosebushes.
It was an early-summer day, filled with the sounds of a ball game a couple of blocks over, and the barking of Max, their neighbors’ golden retriever, who wanted to get out to play with Maureen, but they weren’t home and nobody was there to unlatch the screen door. So Max whined and barked and snuffled.
The warning from Alex, from the al-Jahani, had come in only moments ago. If you have an alternate plan, you might want to implement.
Yes, indeed. Send in the second team.
Alex was citing a fifty-fifty chance that she could make it to Lookout. But Hutch knew she didn’t really believe that. Captains were expected to be both accurate and optimistic. It was a tradition that probably went back to Odysseus. But it didn’t take much insight to see how she really felt.
The problem was that, other than the Hawksbill, there was no alternate plan. If the al-Jahani broke down, she’d have nothing left but the kite.
Maureen was charging her daddy again, trying to raise the ball over her head. Max was barking. Somebody must have just belted a long one at the ballpark because the crowd was roaring. Maureen tripped over her own feet and went rear end over beach ball. She came up screaming, rubbing her eyes. Tor hurried to her side and scooped her up and returned her to the deck, where Hutch soothed her and checked her for scratches and handed her a glass of lemonade.
“You all right?” Tor asked.
It took a moment before she realized he was talking to her and not to Maureen. “Sure. Why do you ask?”
He sat down beside her and looked at her in a way that said she was wearing all her emotions.
She shrugged. “Maybe it’ll get there. Sometimes I tend to assume the worst.”