James Van Pelt - The Radio Magician and Other Stories

She’s in the ring now. Gathering energy. Blasting. Her trajectory changes, and she’s shooting back out the ring to the relatively clear space beneath.

I’ve got some time. She’ll be checking the path ahead, figuring her next burn.

I make sure the transmitter is off, blow the harmonica some more—make the harp sing:

She said, “I think I can cut four chords off last year.”

I shake my head. “You’ll be sucking Saturn’s atmosphere. Not worth the speed you lose.”

She chuckles. “For you, maybe. Have you checked the competition?”

I hadn’t bothered. She’s the only other ship I care about, but I tapped the display and the others popped onto the grid, way behind.

“Looks like it’s just you and me.”

“And the record,” she adds. “How’s it feel to be the second best flyer in the rings?” She’s laughing. Pure speed does that to her.

“When you’re beat by the best,” I say, “Who cares about the rest?”

“That’s sweet, Virgil.”

I’m into my next burn. Speed’s up, so the bubble fairly crackles, sending dust and tiny rocks in all directions and storing energy. I let it go, and the chair kicks into my back, snapping my head into the support. Inertia dampers are good, but most ships let their thrust out more gradual because they carry mass to convert to energy with them. Buglighters don’t carry anything but some maneuvering fuel.

All the rest is gathered in, then, wham, released in a hurry.

A few chords later, speed’s way up, and my work’s harder. Soon as the interference clears, I check the radar for rocks, plug in the new numbers, and let the computer go to work with trajectories and mid-course corrections. While it crunches numbers, I’ve got nothing to do but think.

Blues are perfect for space, and I’ll bet if B.B. King or Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters were alive today, they’d be buglighters. All that other music, well, it has beginnings and ends, but not the blues. You can take any song and run it for hours with variations, letting it build or slide down low. It’s back porch music, smokey pool hall music, buglighter music. You can tell when you’re in a spacer bar by the music. It’s all guitars and bass and c-harp bent all over those blue’s notes. Every tune’s despairing, but kind of funny too, sort of like cruising in the rings. Part of it’s deadly serious, and then you have to laugh. Blues and buglighting and my love for Elinor are just too ironic to keep a straight face.

See, when you’re singing the blues, you start off all sad and lonely, but after a while, you’re into the music. You forget why you started the song, and you’re just doing the song. And buglighting, you forget why you started or where you’re going, and you’re just flying the chords. There’s music in them. Music in the light and the rhythm. Music in the rainbow of colors when the distant sun catches the rings just right. Music in the shadows and darkness behind Saturn. It’s the blues, man; everyone knows it’s the blues.

We go like this for awhile. I blast three times for every two of Elinor’s. It’s kind of sobering watching her eat up the distance. She’s got so much speed, and it’s building. I’m going about as fast as I feel I can go. My burns now just get me into the new chord; they don’t add much velocity.

But that’s the way it’s always been. Old Elinor is always a jump or two ahead of me.

“Doesn’t look like you’re going to give me a race this year, Virgil.”

“It’s a long way around,” I say.

“I’ll have a drink set up for you when you get in,” she says.

I’m a ways from my next turn, so I switch to her monitors so I can see what she sees. It’s scary. Her angle of attack is high. She can only see a third of the distance into the ring that she penetrates.

“Assuming you make it,” I say.

Her screen is graying out as she enters the ring. A couple of big rocks glow off her path; they’re no danger, but I’ve never seen stuff that big moving by so fast. She’s busy, so I don’t say anything and switch back to my own monitor. She fades out as she gets deeper. I won’t see her till she exits, and I check my own course again. Looks like clear sailing to me.

“Uh, oh,” she says.

I shouldn’t be able to hear her yet. I check the screen. She’s there, going the wrong direction, outside of the ring. A spinout.

“You all right?” I ask. Silly question, really. If she wasn’t, I wouldn’t have heard anything at all. She wouldn’t be on the monitor.

“Shoot,” she says.

I’m running her numbers through the computer. She’s got way too much speed, and she’s moving away from the ring. My calculations show she can’t push herself back to it either.

“What happened?”

“Hit something,” she says.

“How’s your system?” I check the emergency bands. She’s already sent a “come-hither” to the outer stations. I send one too.

“Smells bad in here,” she says, and she chuckles. “I think I burnt some stuff out. Nothing vital. Heck of a shot. Must have been a good sized chunk.”

“Great race while it lasted,” I say.

“Yeah,” she sounds preoccupied. I roll through my next burn. Our courses are fairly close now, but I’m inside the ring trailing her, and she’s outside the ring, rising fast, way faster than me.

“Have you run the intercepts?” she says.

I hadn’t, so I plug in the numbers. They don’t look good, and I do them again.

I whistle.

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think anyone can come get me in time.”

“Your bubble still sound?” I say. My fingers are dancing over the computer keys, inputting data, asking for alternative scenarios. What happens if she uses her maneuvering fuel to slow down? What happens if she tries to push herself back into the ring? None of them look good.

“Yeah.” She sounds sad. I’m not sure if it’s because her chances are dim or because she’s out of the race.

I switch out of our private channel. Titan station is chattering away to miners on Pan to see if they can raise a ship in time, but they aren’t geared for quick takeoffs, and the moon is in the worst place right now for them to mount a rescue. They can get to her, but it would be hours too late. If she’d been going a reasonable speed, no problem, but she’s got way too much velocity. Without a steady supply of fissionable mass, her buglighter will shut down and she’ll freeze solid. Buglighters aren’t built for empty space. They’re ring-runners.

The other racers are talking too. Somebody says he’ll chase her, which is plain stupid because he’d never catch her, and even if he did, what good would it do? He couldn’t bring her on board. He couldn’t bring mass out to her.

“I’m going to try braking,” she says. “It’ll slow me up, and maybe someone on the outer rings can catch me.”

“No, don’t,” I say. “Not yet. Save the fuel.”

My imaging radar shows me the ring ahead, mostly fuzz since it’s pebbles and sand with a few bright spots that represent bigger rocks. I’m looking for the right sized rock on the edge of the ring. Idea’s forming. Nothing looks good, though, so I kick through the next burn and start scanning as soon as I’m clear.

“What do you have in mind?” she says.

“Shh. I’m concentrating.” I’m thinking about angles, mass, velocity and risk, so I’m not paying much attention to conversation.

Rock can’t be too big. It’d kill my ship, and I couldn’t give it the speed it’d need to catch her. Can’t be too small either. The impact would turn it to dust, and it wouldn’t give her enough energy if any of it did reach her buglighter. And the whole idea is a little wacky anyway. The odds of making the shot are incredible. Quite a bit worse than running two bumpers to sink the eight ball in the corner pocket.