Ben Bova - Voyagers

“If it’s come all this way from another solar system it must have been in space for hundreds of thousands of years, at least,” he called, loudly enough for Federenko to hear him on the other side of the open hatch. “But its surface looks smooth and clean. No meteoric erosion. No pitting.”

“What is color?”

Squinting through the telescope, Stoner said, “Hard to say. The light around it makes everything look kind of golden.”

“Are cameras recording?”

Stoner glanced at the equipment monitor panel. The camera lights were on. So were the video transmitter lights. “Yes,” he called.

Stoner watched for what seemed like an hour as they glided closer to the spacecraft’s surface and Federenko spoke to ground control. The spacecraft’s surface was absolutely featureless, and as smooth as the skin of a supersonic aircraft. Not a rivet, not a seam, not even a line of decoration.

Then he realized that they were not getting any closer. Leaving the telescope hanging weightlessly, he ducked halfway through the connecting hatch.

“You can get us a lot closer, Nikolai. It won’t bite us.”

“No closer,” Federenko said firmly.

“Come on, we…”

“Orders from ground control. They are working on new course for us, get us back to Earth.”

“Terrific. But in the meantime we’re here !”

“Not to use maneuvering fuel,” Federenko said. “Take photographs, describe spacecraft for radio and tapes.”

“But we can rendezvous with the thing!” Stoner insisted. “For Chrissake, it’s only a stone’s throw away!”

“Too long a throw. You are Olympic champion, maybe?”

“Come on, Nikolai!”

“Must not use maneuvering fuel,” the cosmonaut replied stubbornly. “Orders. Our lives depend on this.”

Stoner pulled back into the ovoid orbital module and peered out the observation port at the alien craft. It was close enough now to make out clearly with the naked eye. It hovered against the stars, tantalizingly near, its golden energy screen glowing, pulsating slowly, like the deep eternal breath of God.

They seemed to be at rest now compared to the alien vehicle. They rode alongside, about a hundred meters off its flank, riding silently against the stars, close enough to touch, too far away to touch. Stoner knew that their placid, seemingly motionless encounter was an illusion. Both craft were hurtling away from Earth, flying farther from safety each second. The alien was heading out of the solar system, back into the the unthinkable gulf between the stars, and unless they broke away and took up a new trajectory, Stoner knew that he and Federenko would also leave Earth’s grip forever.

He stared hard at the alien spacecraft, knowing that a million miles away, men and women were working frantically to find a way to bring them back home safely.

“Fuck it,” Stoner muttered. He reached for his pressure suit, hanging limp and lifeless on the opposite wall of the orbital module.

“What you do, Shtoner?” Federenko called from the command module.

“I’m going out,” Stoner said, yanking on the pressure suit leggings. It was no simple matter in zero gravity. “I’ll use the backpack maneuvering jets to get to it.”

“Not enough fuel in backpack. Alien is too far away.”

“Nudge us a little closer, then. Close enough for me to reach it.”

“No.”

“You’ve got to, Nikolai!”

Federenko appeared at the hatch, his dark face set in a solemn frown. “I want to save our lives, not kill us foolishly.”

The exertion of wriggling halfway into the pressure suit made Stoner bob weightlessly across the orbital module. He put a hand against the ceiling to steady himself; his feet dangled inches from the floor.

“Sit down, Shtoner,” Federenko said. “Calm yourself.”

“Listen. I could take both backpacks—yours and mine. One to ride me out there, the other to get me back.”

“Foolishness.”

“But it’d work!” he said. “There’s enough fuel in the two of them to make it okay, isn’t there?”

Federenko turned away from him.

“ Isn’t there? ” Stoner grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Yes,” said the cosmonaut. “But I forbid it.”

Stoner went back to struggling into the pressure suit.

“Shtoner, I am in command.”

“And I’m a third-degree black belt,” he said, reaching down for his boots. “Are you going to help me or do we fight?”

“You will kill yourself.”

“Nikolai, if we get back to Earth I’ll have to live with myself. Do you think I could, knowing that we got this close and didn’t go the rest of the way? That sonofabitch has traveled light-years to reach us! The least I can do is cover the last hundred meters to meet him.”

Federenko said nothing. He solemnly watched as Stoner pulled on his boots and began zipping up the suit.

“Well, are you going to help me or are you going to just stand there and sulk?” Stoner taunted.

Scowling, Federenko pulled his own backpack from its rack and started adjusting its shoulder straps.

“You are killing me also,” he said. But he helped Stoner into the backpack.

The television screens at the front of the control center showed the alien spacecraft glowing against the star-flecked heavens. For long minutes now the Soyuz radio had been silent.

Jo sat at her computer console, every nerve tingling, stretched taut with tension, a headphone clamped over her glistening black hair.

“Go ahead, Houston,” she said into the lip microphone. “I can hear you clearly.”

Markov stood tensely behind her, and beside him Zworkin hovered like a protective mother hen. Uniformed security police armed with machine pistols stood a few yards off. Other men, bulky, hunch-shouldered, scowling men in dark suits prowled all through the huge command center, eying everyone suspiciously.

Jo watched her computer screen fill with data: numbers and symbols flashing across the tiny screen faster than any human eye could follow. She glanced up at the smaller wall screens flanking the main picture of the alien spacecraft. A new booster was being fueled hurriedly out on one of Tyuratam’s eighty working launch pads. A new tanker to be launched into a high-acceleration rescue trajectory. The Americans, with their faster and smarter computers, were working out the flight plan that would get the tanker to the Soyuz in time to save Federenko and Stoner. Jo had become the liaison link between Texas and Tyuratam.

The command center was astir with quiet, organized frenzy. Computers and humans were working their hardest. Markov gazed around the vast room and saw the security police, their steely eyes constantly moving, their hands never far from the guns they carried.

As if shooting up the place would help, he said to himself.

Zworkin had spent an hour on the phone with Bulacheff in Moscow. Great upheavals were taking place. Maria had been called off for questioning by her superiors. She’ll either be made a Hero of the Soviet Union for foiling the saboteurs or we’ll both end our days in prison, Markov knew. It all depends on who wins what in the Kremlin.

“Very good, Houston,” Jo said into her microphone. “The data’s coming through. Thank you.”

She yanked the headset off and let it clunk on the console’s desktop, then leaned back in her chair.

“They’ve got the big NASA computers working out the high-energy trajectory,” Jo said.

“Will that be enough?” Markov wondered. “Can they get the new tanker into position for them?”

Jo looked up at him, her dark eyes shadowed with fatigue and fear. “If they can’t, no one can.”

“What if ground command send up new orders, a new flight path that will get us back?” Federenko grumbled as he checked out Stoner’s suit. “You will be out there…”