Keith squared his shoulders. “Yes, sir, Captain, sir,” he said, saluting crisply.
-29-
Captain Maddox watched from outside the scout as he stood on the comet. Ensign Maker maneuvered the Geronimo into the vast cavern he and Meta had carved out of the dirty ice-ball.
It had been two days since the meeting in the wardroom. Since then, the crew had fixed the professor’s engines to the outer comet and positioned the fuel for consumption. Only once the scout was embedded within and the entrance frozen over would they pilot the comet to the unstable Laumer-Point.
Despite their best efforts, the destroyer must have detected something suspicious. Before reaching the inner star system, the Saint Petersburg had braked hard. After the vessel came to a halt, it started accelerating for the outer, unstable Laumer-Point.
Valerie wondered why the destroyer hadn’t gone toward the inner system at full acceleration to circle the star and whip back out here.
“They’re doing it faster this way,” Maddox had told her.
“Yes, but the fuel consumption is enormous the way they did it.”
“The obvious conclusion is that speed is more important to them than fuel. Perhaps the star cruiser, when it shows up, gives the destroyer more fusion isotopes as needed.”
As he stood on the comet, Maddox recalled the conversation. If—
The comet shuddered beneath his vacc-boots. The captain staggered in slow motion. The gravity here was negligible. A moment later, Maddox’s earphones hissed.
“I’m down,” Keith said. “We’re going to begin icing the landing gear to the comet.
Maddox jumped, floating toward the torch. It was time to begin sealing the cavern and the Geronimo inside it.
Everything was hooked to the control room panels. Maddox took his spot and watched Keith and Valerie take theirs.
“Once we start,” Valerie said. “They’ll know exactly where we are.”
Maddox understood. This was the final lap to the alien star system. The comet had to beat the destroyer to the Laumer-Point. Nothing else mattered.
“Ready?” Maddox asked Keith.
The ace nodded.
“Engage thrusters,” Maddox said. “Engage every one of them. We’re blasting full throttle until we’ve made it, or we’re dead.”
Keith tapped his board.
Watching his screen, Maddox saw the engines glow orange. Each of them was frozen into the ice at the “back” of the comet. The orange color intensified. Then blue fusion exhaust burst out. The tails quickly grew. Soon, they stretched far behind the comet. The thrusters pushed the mass of ice, snow, rock and Geronimo core.
Soon, the stellar object broke out of its ancient orbit around the T dwarf. Very slowly, it began to head toward the unstable Laumer-Point. It didn’t have far to travel, a few hundred thousand kilometers. That was nothing compared to the destroyer’s three billion, four hundred thousand.
“We need more velocity,” Valerie said. “At this rate, the destroyer will catch us.”
Maddox couldn’t contain himself. He stood and shook his arms, willing the nervous tingling to stop. They were doing the impossible. After endless weeks upon weeks— “Keep pouring it out,” he told Keith.
“Don’t worry about me, sir. I’m gunning the engines. The comet’s mass is too much, though. It may be ice, but there’s so bloody much of it that we’re not going to accelerate fast enough. Ah, I have an idea. We edge the Geronimo closer to the exit so its thrusters stick out of the back. We add our thrust to the other engines.”
“Not a bad idea for gaining greater velocity,” Maddox said. “But if we do that, we’ll never survive the other side. The only way we’re going to exit the wormhole and live to finish our task is if the comet takes the brunt of the heat for us.”
“You really believe it’s going to be that way, sir?” Keith asked.
“Oh, yes.”
The acceleration continued for another day. The professor’s engines held, and Keith managed to eke a bit more thrust from them. It gave them slightly more velocity, possibly changing the endgame a day from now.
Compared to how far they had to travel to reach this place, the last lap was gallingly short. The comet’s mass was both their bane and their approaching salvation.
Maddox paced inside his quarters. His stomach fluttered with anticipation. He had three distinct fears. First, he dreaded the possibility of the Saint Petersburg catching them before they reached the unstable Laumer-Point. If the destroyer reached them too soon, the twin laser batteries could possibly dig through the ice-shield to bite into the Geronimo. Second, while buried under millions of tons of ice and snow, could the scout’s Laumer Drive open the wormhole entrance? Supposing it could, would the voyage down the unstable tramline annihilate them with random flux instability? Third, could they survive the red star on the other side?
That was the reason for the ice-shield. According to the professor, the unstable tramline was the only way into or out-of the haunted star system. The extinct race must have possessed incredible deflector shields or maybe they used millions of tons of rock as protection. The alien system had a red giant for a star. Once, it must have been a regular G glass star like Sol. Now, it was an M class star.
The star had used up the hydrogen fuel in the core, so the thermonuclear reactions had ceased there. That had begun a long process. From a 1-solar mass star, it had become a red giant with 1000 solar luminosities with a surface temperature about 3000 K and 100 solar radii. The Sun at this stage would engulf Mercury in its photosphere, or outer layer.
The red giant in the alien star system had grown over the only known Laumer-Point. That meant, once a starship exited the tramline, it would be in the star’s photosphere. If the Geronimo exited normally, the star would crisp it in seconds.
The plan called for the comet taking the star’s blasts. At their speed—if the calculations were correct—they would only be in the photosphere for a brief amount of time. Still, even for many hundreds of thousands of kilometers beyond the star, they would need the comet to absorb the hellish heat and radiation.
Maddox paced in one direction, turned sharply and paced in the other. If even one of the three fears came true, the mission would fail. They would be dead, and humanity would never gain its balancing starship.
He snorted to himself. Even if they beat all three worries, they still had to deal with the killer sentinel. They had to find a way aboard—and then they had to figure out how to make the ancient starship work for them.
Maddox shook his head. If they passed all those tests, could they take the alien vessel out of the star system into the wide universe?
The Geronimo had almost reached the goal, yet the imponderables seemed to expand before him.
Although he hated to admit it, Maddox realized he’d just have to wait for the answer.
I’m unsuited for starship command. The need to do, to act, is too strong in me. The waiting game and dispassionately playing each move—I want to get this over with one way or another.
Time crawled as the comet-vessel headed for the unstable Laumer-Point. The engines thrust, and hourly Maddox expected one of them to give out.
Behind them, the Saint Petersburg came at maximum drive, building greater velocity with each second. It launched two missiles, which accelerated even faster.