David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

There had been a lot of craziness to contend with, and he was glad to be out here now. Where I belong. I’m still a spacer, goddammit!

Some pop-eyed idiot had stopped him in a corridor, accused him of deliberately sabotaging the Care Package. Madness. People didn’t want to accept the cold clear reality— that their homeworld had sworn to erase them.

Well, okay. Just like I didn’t want to face the reality that nothing is ever really going to separate Saul and Virginia. It’s just a matter of scale…

The belt of launchers loomed above the horizon as he loped along, feet finding purchase on the crusty, speckled ice. They were like slender, elegant cannon, each canted at a slightly different angle from its neighbor. Weeks ago they had slowed and stopped Halley’s spin, to make alignment of their thrusts simple. Now the stars hung steadily above, and each launcher aimed exactly at the same point in the sky: Right Ascension 87°, Declination +35°.

—Yo, Cap’n.—Jeffers waved from atop Launcher 16.

“I’m not captain,” Carl said automatically.

—Might’s well be.—

“I’m just operations officer. That’s all the clans will tolerate.”

—Bunch of horses’ asses.—

“I don’t suppose I’ll be getting a promotion from Earthside now, either.”

Jeffers chuckled dryly.—Not much of one, I’d say. You through soothin’ ever’body?—

“Yeah.” Carl leaped up to the launcher cowling.

—Funny, how some of ’em can’t believe what happened.—

“It was their Great White Hope.”

—Pretty rough, when Mother Earth offers you a tit and then— boom.—

Carl smiled despite himself. From here he could see many launchers, a dashed line sketching out Halley’s equator, as if drawn by a careful high-school student for a science project. Their muzzles veered gradually to the north as his eye swept to the horizon. Each lay buried in an oil-hydraulic pad that absorbed the recoil and transmitted it to the all-too-fragile ice. Robos and mechs stood beside each narrow tube, ready to unsnag any trouble with the conveyor-belt feeders.

—They agree down below?—

Distracted by the orderly march of launchers to the horizon, Carl could not understand for a moment what Jeffers meant. “Oh, about Earthcomm?”

—Yeah, ever’body agree to shut up?—

“Not exactly.”

—Who?—

“Sergeov. Quiverian.”

—Sergeov I’d expect few people to listen to, sure. He’s good ’ol boy, straight-arrow Percell. Maybe li’l heavy-handed. But Quiverian? He’s murderin’ bastard! Who’d pay attention to—

“Some Arcists still think it must’ve been a mistake. They can’t picture Mom slaughtering her children, even if they are carrying diseases.”

—Craaaazy.—

“Right.”

Beneath the silent ebony sky these issues seemed petty, diminished. Carl could deal with them inside, encased in ice…but here, human problems and opinions seemed dirty, small, shameful. “So…I had JonVon take a few mechs and…knock out the microwave antennas.”

To his surprise, Jeffers laughed. —Damn right!—

“You…think so?”

—Course I do! We let Earth know we’re still alive, they’ll send another Care Package. Only this time they won’t tell us.—

“This will but us maybe a couple of crucial years. Maybe.” Carl nodded. “They didn’t fail utterly, of course. We lost a couple of people on the surface, and with our attention on the Care Package, we lagged a little on the nudge. We’re starting late.”

Jeffers nodded. —Damn near aphelion. Gonna be a big job, givin’ that much push to this much ice.—

“You’ve realigned the launchers already?”

—Just like you said. Gonna deliver big delta-V if we get started soon enough.—

At least the Care Package fiasco was behind them. While others mourned, Carl was relieved, in a way. It meant they had to break from Earth, ignoring their homeworld, even hiding from it for as long as possible…

Who could tell? In forty years new people might be in charge, back home. Or Phobos colony might have its independence by the time the cometary refugees came streaking in on their blazing aeroshells. Who am I kidding? Carl thought.

The tension in him wouldn’t go away. He needed something. Or someone , he thought, and shut away as quickly as he recognised it.

The launchers. They were ready, calibrated.

“You check the pin settings?”

Jeffers tapped on his board, nodded.

“Pressure manifolds? The magnet alignments?”

—All okay.—

“What are we waiting for, then?”

Jeffers looked up and slowly grinned. —Damned right!—He switched channels and spoke rapid-fire to the engineers.

Around Halley the belt stirred to life. Electromagnetic surges mounted, reached saturation, lay in wait for their release. And inside the ice, Carl knew, men and women were involved with their own lonely questions, doubts, despairs. They needed something to rouse them.

“Let ’er fly,” Carl said.

He felt it through his boots. A trembling, a gathering rush, a sudden trembling release. From the muzzle of Launcher 16 came…nothing he could see. But he could feel each slug of coated iron flee down the electromagnetic gun, fevered pulses shaking the slender tube. Machine gun aimed at the stars. Against the black oblivion above they made no mark, merely arced into its nothingness.

It was a feather’s brush against a boulder, but over time the effects would mount up.

He turned to look down the row. Each launcher flung its shots steadily skyward, the electromagnetic fringe fields sounding as a faint but persistent rata-rata-rata-rata over the comm line.

He should call JonVon, he knew, put the picture on all TV monitors, alert the crew. But for the moment he paused and savored it for himself.

They were heading back, now. Homeward. Halley’s slow sluggish orbit would blunt, turn, warp. For better or worse, they would glide down the gravity mountain, toward a destiny they could not see. It was an end to their long, inert obedience to gravity’s rule. Halley had become a ship.

—At last we’re doin’ somethin’! —Jeffers called.

Carl shouted in sudden joy, all doubts banished. “Sun, here we come!”

He stared at the crack in the wall. The black opening snaked far back into the ice. “When did this happen?” Saul asked.

Two of his assistants—brown-haired, with identical patterns of freckles on their faces—looked up from a lab bench nearby where they had been working. They answered together, in the same tones.

“There was a Halley quake, Pops,” they said in unison. “Two hours ago. A big one. It split the wall.”

“It certainly did,” he said, examining the damage. This would have to be attended to. Even this deep below the surface, it was foolish to let any chamber remain unsealable for long.

Some said it was the flinger launchers, stressing the comet core as they pushed it month by month, year by year, that were causing the quakes. Others blamed the war, now apparently lost for good by Quiverian and his Arcists.

Last month, Carl’s spacers, Sergeov’s Ubers, and Keoki Anuenue’s neutrals had joined together in a lightning raid on the Arcists’ south-pole redoubts, and permanently crippled the remnants of the first set of flingers, and the hidden microwave antennas with which they had been talking to Earth. One result was that now the Arcists could no longer use those old launchers to interfere with the Nudge toward Mars. Unfortunately, during that brief but bloody skirmish, three explosions had rocked that end of Halley Core, worrying some that the integrity of the comet itself might be threatened.