“God I’ll miss this,” I said as I began switching on monitors.
(I’ve been thinking about this recently – I’ve had a lot of time to think – and what I’ve come to realize is that I have always been most at home in transient, and dangerous places. Even when I was a kid, danger was always somehow reassuring to me. Safety and security always made me feel uneasy and afraid.)
Dixon flicked the radio on to a county music station and we settled into our positions and started running through the pre-activation procedures. Soon we’d start the ship’s gravitonic engine and then we’d head out into deeper space while the engine built up power for the leap. Finally – blam! – we’d let it loose. In a single gigantic surge of energy it would drive us out in a direction that was perpendicular to all three dimensions of Euclidian space. A few seconds later, we’d bob up again like a cork. We’d be back in Euclidean space but we’d be a thousand light-years away from home.
“The spaceman who wrecked my life,” said the radio, “New revelations from Yvette Schneider! Exclusively in tomorrow’s Daily Lance.”
“Poor Tommy,” Mehmet said. “You can’t get away from it, can you?”
Dixon gave a snort, but refrained from saying anything. He’d already told me that as far as he was concerned I’d only got what I deserved. And of course he was right. I didn’t expect sympathy. But I couldn’t help responding to the self-righteous baying of the radio ad.
“There’s always another side to the story,” I muttered. “I behaved badly, yes. But there were things she did too.”
This was too much for Dixon.
“Tommy, you just can’t…”
But he was interrupted by a voice from Mission Control.
“Tommy, Dixon, Mehmet, this is going to come as a shock…”
It was Kate Grantham, the director of the Galaxy Project, in person.
“The mission is cancelled boys. The whole project has been terminated. Sorry, but the President has decided to pull the plug, and as the US funds 95% of the project, that means the end of the project itself. We all knew this was likely to happen soon but I’m afraid it’s happening now. The shuttle is coming back for you. Please shut all systems down again with immediate effect. The Defiant will be mothballed pending further decisions.”
“But excuse me the project has barely started!” Mehmet protested. “Of course we haven’t found life yet. Doesn’t the President know how big space is? The galaxy would have to have been bursting at the seams with life for us to have found it already.”
“The President has been thoroughly briefed,” the director said shortly. “He has a number of competing priorities to consider.” And she couldn’t help adding: “The bad publicity around Tommy hasn’t helped.”
“Oh that is logical!” I burst out. “One of the explorers gets caught cheating on his wife, so cancel the exploration of the entire galaxy.”
Dixon switched off the radio.
“I must say,” he said, “I’ve never been able to understand how people can do things they know are wrong and then still get indignant when it causes problems for them and other people. But that’s for another time. Right now, crewmates, I’ve got a simple proposition to make. We have power and provisions enough for one trip. Why not do it anyway?”
“Dixon!” Mehmet gave an incredulous laugh. “This isn’t like you!”
“I’m quite serious,” he said. “How can they stop us?”
“How about by sending an interceptor after us?” I said.
There were interceptors in Earth orbit, a dozen of them at least at any one time, looking out for illegally launched communications satellites and for the killer satellites which big business and organized crime sent up to disrupt the communications of rivals.
“It’ll take them an hour to figure out what we’re doing,” said Dixon, “and an hour after that to decide what to do about it. By then we’ll only be about six hours from the leap point. And it could take six hours at least for one of them to catch up with us. It’s not as if they are going to try and laser us.”
“Yes but…” Mehmet stopped himself and laughed. “Well, okay. This is a very stupid idea. But, yes, I’m up for it if Tommy is.”
I thought about the alternative. Going back to live among daily revelations of my own duplicity. Walking down a street in which every passerby knew what, precisely, I liked to do in bed. And maybe never again coming up to this place – or maybe non-place would be a better word – which was where, more than anywhere else, I actually felt at home.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m in. Even though it’ll mean a court martial when we get back. Who cares?”
“Oh we’ll be okay,” Mehmet said. “The public will love us won’t they? The public will think we’re heroes.”
“It’s the goddam taxpaying public who’ve pulled the plug on us,” I pointed out.
“Yes, I know,” said Mehmet. “But that makes no difference. When they see us defying the bureaucrats they’ll yell at the bureaucrats to leave us alone and get off our backs. They won’t remember that the bureaucrats were acting at their own request. They never do!”
So we were agreed. Contrary to our orders we started charging up the engine.
Angela:
People laughed at me when I put myself forward for secondment to the UN’s ‘space-cop’ service. The British police forces had only been given a quota of four secondees altogether and I was only twenty-five, black and a woman. Plus I was only an ordinary uniformed cop and had no training as a pilot beyond what I’d done with the air cadets at school. But then my mum and dad had always taught me to believe in myself.
Yeah and look at me now, I thought, as our hundred million dollar interceptor passed five thousand miles above India. Who says a black girl from Peckham can’t get on in the world?
This was my third patrol. My captain Mike Tennison and I were looking for Mafia satellites, which we would either tow to destruction points or, if they were very small, simply nudge down into the atmosphere to burn up like meteorites.
Mike was an air force secondee, a former RAF fighter pilot. He was decent, sporty, stiff upper lipped. He was a brave man too. He’d served and won medals in several recent wars. But something was happening to him that neither he nor anyone else could have predicted. He was becoming a cosmophobe. Space was starting to scare him.
“It’s a silly thing,” he’d confided on our previous mission, “I’ve flown in all kinds of dangerous situations and never thought twice about it. I didn’t think twice about this at first either. But now I can’t seem to forget that out here I’m not really flying at all, I’m just constantly falling. Please don’t tell anyone, Angela. I’ll get over it I’m sure.”
But it was getting pretty obvious to me that he wasn’t going to get over it. His face streamed with sweat. He kept wiping his hands so as to be able to grip properly on the controls. And his eyes, his weary frightened eyes, were just unbearable to look at. I was going to have to confront him about it at the end of this mission, I knew. I couldn’t sweep this under the carpet any more. He was putting us both in danger.