Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

Gerald frowned, and then he got it. “Like a planet.”

“They never regarded the Anthony as a spy probe, or a radio relay. They don’t need things like that.” She stubbed out the cigarette into an ashtray. “They saw it as a rock that was going to fall on Earth, and diverted the closest interceptor to make the kill. That’s what the COREs are—meteor interceptors, orbiting the worlds of the Multisystem to protect them from spaceside debris.”

Gerald’s face went pale. “If we change our present course, make our braking burn to intercept the Target One planet, they’re going to see the Terra Nova as a rock about to fall on Target One. The COREs around Target One will pound us into a pulp.”

Dianne Steiger nodded and tried to remain calm as she felt a cold hand wrap itself around her heart. “I think you’re right, but we’ve got to test the theory. Let’s hope it’s way off base. Because if it’s right, we can never come near any of these worlds.”

The Flying Dutchman , Dianne thought again. The name appeared in her mind, and nothing she could do seemed capable of forcing it out. Dianne remembered the name of the old legend, but almost nothing else. What was it that had happened to him? Had he been doomed never to land, or just never to return home?

She blinked hard and tried to concentrate. “Deploy decoys and fire their engines remotely as per plan and schedule,” she ordered. Was her voice steady? Never to land, a life that echoed a ghost story. A life that would become a ghost story. Hadn’t there been a historical character who inspired the Dutchman legend? What tales would her endless journey inspire? The prospect chilled her very bones.

She watched as the first of the decoys leapt away. The things were utterly simple. It had taken the machine shop only an hour or two to build them. Big square-corner radar reflectors attached to small rocket engines. The reflectors would provide a brilliant echo to any radar beam directed at them. The radar-sensing COREs should be able to see them easily enough.

There were eight of the decoys, and it was the work of a few minutes to deploy them all. Their rocket engines fired, and the decoys shifted course toward the Target One world. Two were aimed directly at the planet, the others pointed to miss T-One at distances varying from a few hundred kilometers to nearly half a million.

The decoys fell away from the Terra Nova . Their engines flared on, performing high-gee burns that shifted their orbits violently, with far more stress than a human crew would ever survive. But the faster the decoys got in there, the sooner Dianne would have some data—and the sooner she could reach a decision about what to do.

Spacecraft move fast, but the scale of space is huge. The decoys, moving at tremendous speeds, seemed to crawl across the display screens at the most leisurely of rates. Dianne Steiger settled into her captain’s chair, ready for a long wait.

She didn’t get it. Mere minutes after the decoys had completed their burns, six COREs, accelerating at a terrifying rate, suddenly lifted out of orbit toward the decoys. The navigation computers hurriedly projected their courses, assuming constant boost, and showed intercepts with all but the two most distant decoys. Dianne stared at the screen, and read the message there. The Terra Nova could not come within three hundred thousand kilometers of a planet without being destroyed.

She smiled coldly, humorlessly. Her original orders had been to explore the Dyson Sphere, and she had rejected that because it was too dangerous. She had insisted on a safer flight first. And now she wasn’t even able to get near the closest planet.

“Ma’am,” the navigator said quietly. “We’re coming up on our decision point. As per your orders, I have trajectory solutions laid in for a continued free orbit of the Sunstar, a distant orbit of T-One, or a return path to Earth. Propulsion needs your orders.”

Dianne glanced involuntarily behind her, thinking of the Earth they had left behind. Every world of this Multisystem had to have been stolen the same way Earth was, and then enveloped with a shield of COREs. Sooner or later—probably sooner—Earth would receive the same protection. Perhaps outgoing spacecraft would be unmolested, though Dianne would be unwilling to bet much on that chance. But no returning spacecraft could land. Sweet Jesus, it was worse than that, she realized. The COREs would attack anything that even came near Earth. Like satellites and habitats. All of them would have to be evacuated now , before the people on board were stranded, or killed outright by impacting COREs. Any replacement for the Saint Anthony would be smashed to scrap almost as soon as it arrived.

And after the COREs arrived at Earth, the Terra Nova could not return home. Ever. Perhaps no other ship could lift from Earth without being destroyed. Ever. Space-flight would end. Even communication between Earth and a spacecraft would be tough, with the COREs’ radars jamming virtually every usable comm frequency. But what was the point in worrying about contact with Earth if no ship could ever leave Earth again?

Except if the only ship away from Earth stayed away. The Terra Nova had been built to travel between star systems, to outlast journeys that might last hundreds of years. So long as she never approached a planet, the big ship could continue in operation long after the last crewman aboard had died of natural causes.

Or else, if Dianne turned the ship back now, her crew could see their families again before they died.

No, she thought. Suppose, some day, a way was found to beat the COREs and the rest of the Charonians, and the plan needed a ship in space for it to work? Or suppose there was some vital discovery waiting, one that could be made only from a spacecraft, far away from Earth? What other, unimagined doors would slam shut if the Nova retreated? And what fate would humanity deserve, what future would it be worthy of, if danger was met so meekly?

Dianne straightened her back, stared at the display screen, and spoke quietly. “Advise propulsion to stand down. Continued free orbit, no use of main engines required. Here we stay. We can do no other.”

The clouds of dust and debris piled up in ugly choking rings about the planet Venus. The storms of Venus roiled and bridled in new and terrifying ways, tortured by the Charonian machine-monsters on the surface. A dark spot appeared in the glaring clouds, large enough to be visible from orbit. For the first time in human history, a portion of the Venusian surface was visible from space.

It was a mountain, impossibly huge, climbing up out of the clouds, swelling upward and outward moment by moment, until its upper slopes were outside the planet’s atmosphere. It was an elongated cone, almost a caricature of a volcano—a classic, perfect cartoon volcano.

Suddenly, it belched smoke and flame, and a column of fire blasted out into space, glowing hot molten rock flying clear of the planet.

Core material. The Charonians had bored down through the crust of the planet, used their gravity systems to pull the molten magma out of the planet and heave it into space. The Charonians were taking not just the crustal rock, but they were sucking out the core matter as well. It wasn’t a volcano. It was a vampire.

Marcia MacDougal and Sondra Berghoff sat in the Martian darkness, feeling the cold creep in. The power had died again. Marcia was getting restless. She desperately wanted to get outside, but that was impossible. There had been too many holes punched in the dome, and the engineers had bled the pressure off to conserve air. The entire population of Port Viking had been forced to retreat to the airtight buildings.