Charles Sheffield - Starfire

“Won’t we need suits?” Maddy had been warned, over and over. Be careful. Just because you can open a door anywhere on Earth and find air on the other side doesn’t mean you can do the same thing on Sky City.

“They’re available for emergencies. But today this whole segment is at pressure.”

The hatch slid open. Beyond was the observation chamber, and Maddy could see that a few unsuited people were already there.

“Make yourself comfortable.” John glanced at his watch. “Still a few minutes to go. Enjoy the show. The others can answer any questions.”

“What about you? Aren’t you staying?”

“I’d love to. But I’m on duty back inside.” He hesitated, then gave Maddy’s arm a gentle pat and stepped back through the hatch. “As a matter of fact, I’m the one who has to make the final decision on whether to move. Without me in the control chamber there’ll be no show.”

The hatch closed. He was gone. Follow Hyslop all the time? Right, Gordy. Why don’t you tell me how I’m supposed to do that?

Maddy turned. The observation chamber formed a sphere about twelve feet across. It was equipped with gimballed seats that could swing in any direction, and most of the wall consisted of large transparent ports. The chamber was so close to free fall that assignment of direction was a matter of convention. “Above” Maddy lay the ugly tangle of the power-generation facility. “Below” her the main body of Sky City obscured the stars and shield.

The people in the chamber had all glanced at Maddy when she appeared, but now they were again looking outward. She was surprised to find that she recognized every one of them. Closest to her were two of Sky City’s engineering team. They must be “the others” that John had referred to: Lauren Stansfield, as ladylike and elegantly dressed as ever; beside her, Torrance Harbish, lank-haired and saturnine. They were clearly present for some official purpose, because they sat by an array of screens and monitoring devices. In front of the two engineers sat Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander, their heads close. Finally, in front of them, hunched so that his chin rested on his chest, was Seth Parsigian. When Maddy moved forward to sit next to him he turned and glared.

She had done what he asked her to, wandering endlessly around the dark corridors and hidden byways of Sky City. With no apparent results, but that was not her fault.

“I thought you were going back to Earth,” she said softly.

“Likewise.” He gave her a quick glance. “An’ we’re both still here. I think they stuck all the Earthsiders out here so we can’t get in the way when they goose the whole place. Look, sometime you and me gotta talk some more.”

“What about?”

“Stuff. New information. But we can’t do it here and now.” He jerked his head backward. “Too many ears.”

Maddy doubted that. Wilmer Oldfield and Astarte Vjansander were making enough noise to cover anything that Seth said.

They were arguing. Anyone sitting in front of them had no choice but to listen. Maybe that was why Seth was so annoyed.

“Stands ter reason,” Astarte was saying. “Yer can calculate and theorize and speculate ’til your eyeballs pop, but you still won’t know ’less you measure. We have to do it.”

“Do you think anyone but us cares?” Wilmer hissed. “Look at it from their point of view. We say, you have to build a system to detect and deflect particle bundles.”

“They do, too. Or they’re dead.”

“Of course they are. So they listen to us, and they buy what we say, and they change all their plans. What do you think they’ll do if now we say, by the way, deflect some of them particle bundles but not all of ’em because we need some? You can try that if you want, but not me. You’ll be lucky if they don’t grab you and whale your fat black butt.”

“Yer think you’re the only one allowed ter do that, don’t yer, you dirty old bugger? You’re a fossil, Wilmer Oldfield. You’re all mouth and beer gut. Yer stopped thinking twenty years ago, and you don’t have the brains and nerve of a paralytic parrot.”

“Better a paralytic parrot than a jumped-up outback madonna who thinks if she just wiggles her tits in Bruno Colombo’s face she can talk him into anything.”

“Not Bruno Colombo, you soft old ponce. I said Nick Lopez .”

“Colombo, Lopez, makes no difference. For starters, look at the bloody energy problem—”

Maddy leaned over to Seth. “What’s all that about?”

“Technical discussion.” Seth stared gloomily out of the port, to where a sunlit Earth loomed thirty times the size of a full Moon. “Far as I can tell, she wants to slow down a few of the bundles and catch them. Then they’d be able to study ’em and find out what sort of structure the bundles have. He’s telling her no one would ever agree. I’m with him. I want to get rid of particle bundles, not sit an’ play with ’em.”

The musical chime of a bell interrupted his final words. It came from an invisible address system. “Two minutes,” said John Hyslop’s voice. “Station One?”

There was a five-second silence, then an unfamiliar man’s reply: “Station One ready.”

“Confirmed. Station Two?”

“Station Two all set.” Lauren Stansfield’s voice came from directly behind Maddy, and a fraction of a second later the words were repeated from the address system.

“Confirmed. Station Three?”

As the count went on, Maddy wondered where the other stations were located. Some of them, from what John had said, must be at the points where the thrustors would fire; engineers there would be alert for buckling plates or failing seals. Lauren Stansfield and Torrance Harbish were doing the same thing, monitoring from their bird’s-eye view on the extended central axis.

“All stations confirmed. Twenty seconds.”

Maddy listened closely to John’s voice. It was calm, but with an odd undercurrent of excitement. She thought, That weirdo, he’s enjoying this. If I were a failing component, I’d get more of his attention than I do now. Engineers!

The soft chime of the bell was back, counting off the final seconds. Everyone in the observation chamber fell silent. All of them were looking in the same direction: out and down, to where the mirror-matter thrustors sat on Sky City’s broad disk.

The countdown was over. Maddy followed their gaze and saw nothing. That was surely the site of one of the thrustors; John had pointed it out to her on the Sky City hologram only two days ago. So why wasn’t it working?

She stared again, and realized it was. Not the gaudy orange flare of rockets that you became used to in launches to Earth orbit, but a thin, near-invisible line of blue plasma stabbing out from the thrustor. Unless you followed it from its source you would never know it was there.

Was that it? Was that frail, gossamer strand of light, with eleven more like it, supposed to hoist the million-ton bulk of Sky City a hundred thousand kilometers to the end of the shield? The idea seemed preposterous.

Maddy turned. Lauren Stansfield and Torrance Harbish were calmly working their equipment. John Hyslop’s voice came again over the address system. “Station Seven, we’re showing an anomaly.”

“Correct.” It was a man’s voice, one that Maddy did not recognize. “We have structural give in the main support beam. There’s no danger of overall failure, but it’s throwing the line of thrust off by a couple of degrees. Do you want us to try to do something about it locally?”

“I don’t think so. Just wait a moment.” There was a pause of a few seconds, then John’s voice again. “General rotation will average most of it out. If we have to, we’ll compensate with a reduced thrust on the opposite side. Hold as you are.”