Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

He gestured and shouted, hoping she could see his expressions inside his suit or hear his voice through the hull. “Up there. At the airlock.” A frantic turning of his hands, as though working a screw. “It’s safe to use, you can operate it. I” — finger pointing at himself — “will go up there” — pointing up again — “and enter as soon as it’s open.”

Did she have any idea what he was getting at? He had no experience with the aliens, no way of knowing how to read their body language. As for facial expressions, you could forget them. The Pipe-Rillas had rigid exoskeletons.

He pointed upward again. “I’m going there now. You operate the airlock.” More turning of his hands. “And I will come in.”

Had there been a movement of the narrow head, a tremble of understanding? Bony watched. At last, when the imagined movement was not repeated, he left the port and rejoined Liddy. She was still waiting by the airlock.

“Did they understand?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”

He probably sounded as discouraged as he felt. His talent, if he had any, was for improvising. A more logical man would have prepared the ground thoroughly in advance, making sure through written signals that the Pipe-Rilla inside knew what he had been doing. As it was, he and Liddy might be forced to wait here until their air was running out, then return to the safety of the Mood Indigo with nothing to show but failure.

From somewhere, near or far, came a strange, creaking rumble. Liddy grabbed his arm. “Bony.”

“I don’t know what it was. Wait a few seconds.”

It took considerably more than that. Maybe two whole minutes passed before the grinding rumble came again. But this time Bony recognized it for what it was: A motor at work, irising open a sealed hatch. It was another few seconds before the gap was visible, but now the wait did not seem long. Soon they heard a hiss of air.

Half a minute more, and the hatch was fully open. The water level in the vertical part of the L-section dropped a meter, then steadied. Bony and Liddy stepped through the hatch, and waited until it closed.

Liddy reached out and gave Bony a nervous hug. The inner hatch still had to go through its cycle, but the hard work was over. They were, at last, about to enter a Pipe-Rilla vessel.

They were going to meet Stellar Group aliens.

The Hero’s Return was no longer a military ship, yet Chan Dalton assumed its affairs would run with at least a semblance of military precision.

He had been watching the clock. The time for leaving Ceres orbit was set for midnight. As soon as that departure took place, Deb Bisson would be unable to leave the ship. She would be forced to travel to the Link entry point, and from there to the Geyser Swirl.

He had checked that Deb was aboard and in prime living quarters, but to avoid meeting her he had moved hundreds of meters away, hiding far forward in an empty region once occupied by a major weapons system. As soon as the ship was heading out he planned to go aft and find her.

But midnight had come and gone, and the Hero’s Return floated in space as silent as a ghost ship. After ten frustrating minutes Chan started aft. Something had gone wrong, and he needed to find out what.

The first person he met was Elke Siry. She was heading forward, though he knew of nothing that lay in that direction. She would have moved past him had he not stood in her way.

He spread his arms wide to block the narrow passageway. “Do you know why departure has been delayed?”

She frowned at him, pale brows shadowing her icy blue eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“We were supposed to leave at midnight. It’s almost twelve-fifteen, and we haven’t moved. Why?”

Instead of answering his question, she ducked under his arm and eased past him in the corridor. “Come with me.”

Chan, baffled, followed. In seventy meters they were at the extreme forward end of the ship. Elke led him on, through a narrow round hatch into a bubble of transparent plastic.

“This is where I was going anyway,” she said. “It’s the bow observation port. There’s no better place to look at the stars, and see what’s ahead of the ship.”

She spoke as though her words provided some kind of explanation. Chan was about to voice his frustration when he followed her pointing finger.

“Ceres,” she said. The biggest of all the asteroids loomed large to the right of the Hero’s Return . It was sliding rapidly backward, as though its orbital motion took it in that direction. But its sunlit hemisphere was also to the rear. That implied Ceres was dropping directly toward the Sun.

Chan turned to Elke, and found her watching him with a superior expression. “No, Ceres isn’t moving sunward,” she said. “We’re moving away from the Sun. We’re heading for the Asteroid Belt’s closest Link entry point, three and a half million kilometers farther out. The drive was turned on precisely at midnight.”

“But I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Because the Hero’s Return was designed as a military ship. The engines can produce acceleration bursts of up to twenty-five gees. That would kill the crew if you didn’t do anything about it, so anywhere that the crew might be was equipped with inertia shedders. We’ll never reach those levels of acceleration, of course, but even two gees would be uncomfortable. General Korin thought we might as well get the benefit of the shedders.”

“I can’t hear the drive. Surely we ought to, even this far forward.”

“Do you know what engine noise signifies?” When Chan merely shrugged, she went on. “Engine noise — noise of any kind — is a warning flag for inefficiency . Noise doesn’t help the drive to work. It doesn’t provide useful information on engine status. It’s not something a designer aims to produce. Quite the opposite. In a mechanical system, noise and excess heat tell you that you are wasting energy. In a military ship it is worse than that. Noise and heat can also announce the ship’s presence to an enemy. Hence, the engines of this ship were made as efficient — and noise-free — as possible. If you do hear anything, it’s a sure sign that something is going wrong.”

Her manner was so loaded with condescension and cool contempt that the temptation to argue was almost irresistible. Was she looking for a fight? Or was this her normal way of dealing with mere mortals?

Just now, Chan did not have the time to find out. He had asked Danny Casement to say nothing until he, Chan, had the chance to talk to Deb Bisson. But silence became harder for Danny as time went on and other team members wondered why they had not yet seen the Bun on board.

“Thank you, Dr. Siry. I promise I’ll come back later and take a better look.” Chan managed a smile and hurried out of the observation chamber. At the hatch he turned to ask, “Do you know when we are scheduled for transition?”

“Of course.” Raised eyebrows, at so elementary a question. “Link entry will take place seven and a half hours from now.”

“Thank you.” After the first show of gratitude, the next one came easier. Chan resisted the urge to say more and began the long trip aft. The trouble with Elke Siry’s superiority complex was that it appeared to be justified. Chan had wondered after their last meeting if she might be some sort of ringer, planted on the team as a supposed scientist because of her relationship to General Korin. He had done a data download, and decided that if Elke were a plant the job had been done thoroughly. The records showed a full life story, from child prodigy in mathematics and music, to original discoveries in theoretical physics by the time she was seventeen. Now, at twenty-five, her list of important contributions spilled over into three digits.