Roger Allen - The Shattered Sphere

Ah. Here it was. I BALLS ONLEE. Someone had changed the spelling again. She pulled open the hatch and went in. Wally was lost to the outside world, buried in some sort of elaborate simulation of the incoming object. It seemed to be running on every screen in the room, from a different viewing angle on each one. Eyeball was on the comm to someone, cursing them out with alarming skill and virulence as she compulsively neatened her immaculate work station. There were Solitude and the Shattered Sphere out the viewport, glaring down on them.

Sianna sighed happily and sat down at her own station. Scary to think that a scene like this could be the most comfortable and familiar thing in her life—but then, you always had to work with what you had.

Sondra Berghoff was scared, and trying not to show it. Plans and theories were all very well, but reality was a bit trickier. Hanging in space, the nose of the Autarch pointed straight at the Plutopoint black hole, she could no longer see the slightest logic to sending a ship through the wormhole. Yes, they had some important information. Couldn’t they have just scribbled a note, stuck it in a bottle, and tossed it through the hole?

She sat strapped into her chair on the main deck, right behind the ship’s pilot. She didn’t even know the man’s name, or the names of any of the Autarch’s five crew members. All of them were nameless, faceless, utterly taciturn, and sworn to unquestioning obedience to the Autocrat.

She had not seen any of them show any facial expression except something midway between a poker face and rigor mortis. Robots showed more in the way of reaction.

Suppose they couldn’t immediately dock with the Terra Nova or NaPurHab for some reason, and she was stuck with these guys for a month or two? Suppose the Charonians or the Adversary had destroyed the big ship and the hab, and she was marooned with these guys for life ?

Well, at least the crew members weren’t the only ones on board. She turned and looked to her right, to the Autocrat. There were at least some signs of life and thought in his face. A strange man, to say the least, but at least he was capable of conversation.

She looked over to Marcia MacDougal, and Larry. A miracle they were here. No doubt if anyone survived long enough to write history books of the period, the books would record how those two had come along because they were experts in gravitation and Charonian language. That was even accurate, as far as it went.

But it wasn’t true, of course. They were here because they had to be. Look at the expressions on their faces. Both staring straight ahead, tense, alert, expectant. Marcia was going in search of her husband. And Larry. Larry was going in search of what he always sought, and would never find. Absolution.

Sondra turned back to the main viewscreen and watched what the others were watching—the image of the Ring of Charon. They were face-on to the Ring, its running lights a hoop of blue diamonds in the dark, the Ring itself a perfect circle in the sky. No change yet, but it would come soon.

Too soon. Why in the hell had she felt so honor-bound to go along on this ride? Why wasn’t she back on board the research station where she belonged, feeding numbers to the computers?

The Ring’s running lights dimmed, went out, and re-lit in blood red. Stand-by. Almost ready. The team would be loading the last of the command strings to the Ring. A faint patch of dimness appeared at the centerpoint of the Ring, just barely visible at first and then almost fading out. Were they having trouble getting the lock? But then the luminous spot grew brighter, larger, stronger, rippling with power. Yes, yes, it was working.

The center of the nimbus grew darker, harder, more focused—and then flared over into a strange un-blue-white and settled down, rock-hard and solid.

The Autarch’s engines fired, and the ship moved forward, straight for the hole in the sky and whatever lay beyond.

Down a wormhole , Sondra told herself. Down a human-made worm-hole. Good God . She could not even begin to sort out the emotions that washed over her. Fear, excitement, pride, astonishment, panic, and half a dozen others all mixed up together. They were going in. They were going in.

Just before they reached the wormhole, the Autocrat turned to Sondra and smiled. “I expect,” he said, “that it will be an interesting trip.”

The Windbag stared out the viewport in his office, not at the Shattered Sphere or at Solitude, but at the Ring that ran the wormhole they had come through. The wormhole was where the action was, no doubt. The Windbag was worried, and getting more so. What the hell to do? Colette and Sturgis’s objectional “object” was on a collision course with the wormhole. Leetle invisible thing was killing every SCORE in its path. Could it really kill Sphere? Sounded loony, even if their charts and graphs looked real, even if Eyeball said they were on the money.

But what to do about it even if the “object” wuz real deal? How was a hab full of headbangers scraped off the walls of every town on Earth gonna stop an invisible object that converted SCOREs to guacamole?

The Windbag was at that melancholy point in his reflections when there was a flare of un-blue-white light from the wormhole. The Windbag frowned. Another SCORE? Thought the last of them had come up. Too damn far away to get a visual at this range. Maybe the radar johnnies could tell him something. He had his hand out to punch up the codes and ask them, when the screen blanked and presented a live radar image. The caption line reported that the imagery was coming from the TN .

His intercom warbled, and the Windbag slapped at the accept switch, knowing who it had to be before he heard a word. The woman had been checking in about a million times a minute.

“Bossman, you got eyelock on screen?” Eyeball asked.

“Eyeball,” he said. “What a nice big old shock to hear your voice. Yeah, I got it up and I see it. ’Nother SCORE?”

“Nope,” Eyeball said. “ ’Nother ship .” There was something in her tone of voice, something strained under the wiseguy tone.

“Say again? What the hell other ship could Earth send to join the party? Some cargo craft they goosed through?”

“None of above, big guy. Ship from Solar Area. From Pluto . Ring o‘ Charon, if ya wanna believe their ID codes.”

Windbag stared at nothing at all for a good five seconds, trying to deal with that information, but somehow it just couldn’t get inside his head.

“Say again?”

“I say it’s a god-damned ship from Pluto with the god-damned old Autocrat himself along for the ride.”

“Autocrat? Ceres Autocrat? The Big Cold Fish himself?” None too surprisingly, the Naked Purple movement had never gotten along well with the Autocrat of Ceres.

“Stand by, Wind. Yeah, you bet. Got him on the viddy now, wriggling on the slab with his gills flapping.”

“He sick ? Hurt? ” Windbag asked, suddenly alarmed. No one wanted to be the guy in charge when the Autocrat keeled over. His followers might take a dim view.

“Huh? Naw, he’s okay. But he’s sure a Fish outta water. Who’s gonna do what he says here ?”

“Ah. Oh. Got it.” Sometimes Purpspeak was a bit too colorful.

But a ship from Pluto, from Solar Area? How could that be? What did it mean?

Well, one thing fershure. Had to talk to these people.