Orson Card - Earth unavare

Victor glanced back at the extractor. It was done. Victor quickly removed the claw and snipped with the shears. The drill snapped free, and Victor pushed it away before glancing again at Father. The creature was off the ship, dangling in space at the end of its hose, not moving, its body mangled from the shears. Father crawled forward and snipped the hose, severing the creature from the ship.

“Are you hurt?” asked Victor.

Father sounded winded. “No. Keep going.”

Victor went to the next drill. Froze it. Snipped it. Pushed it away.

They were approaching El Cavador. Victor could see it far ahead in the distance. Father was at the hatch, looking inside. It was a small hole, too narrow for his shoulders. “There’s another one inside,” he said.

Father reached in with the shears. There was a struggle. Father’s arms jerked right and left. The creature had incredible strength, and for a moment Victor feared that the magnets anchoring Father to the surface of the ship would break their hold and Father would be slung out into space.

But the magnets held, and Father continued to lunged downward, fierce and fast.

Finally the struggling stopped. Father exhaled, coughed, and sounded exhausted. “It’s dead,” he said. He shined a light down into the hole. “I think this is the cockpit. I don’t see any other way to get into this room except through this hatch. No doors. No access points. I think these three were the entire crew.”

Victor crawled toward him. “We have to stop it if we can. Do you see any controls?”

“I see a lot of levers and dials. And a few screens, but they only display images. There’s no data. No writing, no symbols, no instructions, nothing that suggests measurement or coordinates or directions. No language marks or symbols. Nothing. I wouldn’t know how to stop it.”

Victor reached him and looked inside. The creature was snipped in half, floating in the air, limp and oozing liquid. Victor averted his eyes, suddenly hit with a wave of nausea. He shined his light toward the flight console instead, which was a ring around the front window, filled with dozens of levers and switches.

“We need to widen this hole,” said Victor. “I’ll freeze it with the heat extractor. You cut behind me as I move around the circle.” He reached down and pinched the inner ring of the hatch with the claw of the heat extractor then slowly slid the claw along the inner ring. Father followed behind with the shears, cutting and cracking the metal away. They worked quickly, and when they were done, the hole was more than wide enough for the both of them to float inside. Victor pushed the creature aside with the claw of the heat extractor and flew down to the console. The levers varied in size and shape, but there was nothing to indicate their purpose. No markings, words, numbers, nothing. Some of the levers would no doubt be for the drill and grappling arm while others must be for the engines. But which ones? Victor looked around him, searching for clues. The room was large and filled with equipment. There were long tubes of smoky gases and odd-looking plants. The screens showed images of the Milky Way, the solar system, and a slightly blurry image of a planet.

“That’s Earth,” said Father.

Victor thought so, too. “Yet there’s no data,” said Victor. “No labeling, no markings of any kind. Just images. Are you recording all this?”

Father scanned the room. “Trying to.”

Victor focused his attention back on the console, searching for any symbols or markings that might suggest the purpose of any of the levers. It was useless, he realized. There was nothing to guide him.

“Trouble,” said Father, pointing.

Victor followed Father’s finger and looked out the window. The pod was heading toward a large piece of wreckage a kilometer or two ahead.

“We don’t know how to stop it,” said Father. “We need to bail.”

“Give me a second,” said Victor, reaching for one of the levers. He pulled back, and one of the grappling arms extended out in front of them.

“We don’t have time, Vico.”

“We need to save this ship, Father. There might be information here.”

The debris was approaching. The ship would collide in moments. Victor studied the levers. There were three other levers like the one he had tried. Those would all be grappling arms; not what he wanted.

“We need to go now,” said Father.

Victor tried another lever, and the ship accelerated slightly.

“Whoa,” said Father.

Victor pulled back in the other direction, and the ship slowed. But not enough.

“Pull it back more,” said Father.

“That’s as far as it goes.”

They were nearly on top of the debris. It was at least four times the size of the pod, with twisted beams and mangled steel protruding from every direction, all coming clearly into view fast. Father grabbed Victor’s hand. “Move. Now!”

Victor launched up through the hole and crawled out onto the hull. Father came up behind him. The shadow of the debris covered the pod. They were seconds from impact.

“We need to jump,” Father said. “Take off your line.”

Victor fumbled with the D-ring on his safety harness. His fingers slipped. He couldn’t get it lose.

Snip. The shears in Father’s hands cut the line. “Go!”

They launched upward. Victor looked back. The pod crashed into the debris below them. Beams from the debris pierced the cockpit window. Glass shattered and twinkled away into space. The quickship flew forward, spinning awkwardly, still tethered to the pod, and careened into the debris, bending, bouncing off, wrecked. Dust and tiny debris scattered in every direction, clouding the collision.

“El Cavador. El Cavador,” Father was saying. “Do you read? Over.”

The wreckage was getting smaller below them. They were still flying upward with the force and speed of their launch. They weren’t tethered to anything. They had nothing in hand to stop themselves. Father was off to Victor’s right, with the distance growing between them by the second. They had launched at slightly different angles, and now they were drifting farther apart. Unless El Cavador retrieved them immediately, they would fly in these directions at these speeds forever.

“El Cavador,” Father said again. “Can you read?”

There was a crackle over the line, then Concepcion’s voice said, “Segundo. We see you. We’re coming for you now.”

Victor looked back and saw El Cavador emerge from behind a section of debris.

“Get Vico first,” said Father.

“We’re getting you both,” said Concepcion.

Victor turned his head back to Father, who was a great distance away now, getting smaller by the moment.

“Toron didn’t make it,” said Father.

“We know,” said Concepcion.

The ship moved closer, pulling up beside him. A miner with a lifeline leaped out from the ship and wrapped his arms around Victor’s chest, stopping Victor’s flight. It was Bahzim.

“Got you, Vico.”

Victor clung to him as Bahzim thumbed his propulsion pack and turned them both back toward El Cavador. Down the side of the ship, a distance away, another of the miners was grabbing Father as well. Victor watched until he was certain Father was secured, then he turned his head and looked back at the wreckage now far below, where Toron was lost among the dust and debris.

Warnings

Victor gathered with the Council in the fuge two days later after a search for more survivors proved unsuccessful. He had hoped to accompany the search party to look for Janda, but Concepcion had asked him and Father to comb through the wreckage for salvageable parts instead. It was a long shot, but if Victor and Father could find enough parts to build a laserline transmitter, they could restore the ship’s long-range communication. Father had said that finding what they needed would be like finding needles in a haystack that had been ripped to shreds and strewn across a county mile, but he agreed to look nonetheless. When he and Victor came up empty-handed, Concepcion convened the Council meeting.