James Gardner - Gravity Wells (Short Stories Collection)

"Ooooo," said Beatrice Mallio, age four.

"Wow," said Benedict Mallio, age five.

"Something nice on the viewscreen?" their mother asked. Like the other adults on board, Juliet Mallio was tired of looking outside after days of travel; but she dutifully prepared herself to admire whatever piece of space debris her children were watching now.

Her eyes widened as she saw the deep black of the Organism's skin towering over both sides of the ship, the wings forming massive walls of starless night. At first she thought the shuttle had entered some sort of landing bay; but as she watched, dim flecks of blue-tinged light flickered into life against the blackness.

"Pretty!" said Beatrice.

"Like electric spiders!" said Benedict.

And they did look like spiders, skittering out of their nests and racing across the surface of both wings. The spiders danced madly, colliding with each other, coalescing…and suddenly one leapt across the gap between the wings, trailing a pale thread of lightning directly in front of the shuttle. Without thinking, Juliet stamped down with her foot, as if she had a brake pedal that could stop the ship from flying through the lightning. The shuttle's pilot must have had reflexes equally quick, for the ship suddenly dipped, just managing to slip under the glowing thread.

All over the cabin, people cried out at the ship's sudden maneuver; but Juliet remained tensely silent, her eyes on the screen, her arms reaching out to wrap around her children's shoulders.

More and more of the lightning-threads sparked from one wing to another, weaving a net, a web across the trough. There was no way the pilot could avoid them all. One thread whipped against the shuttle's hull, and for a moment the viewscreen image twisted into jagged distortion; but a moment later, the picture snapped back into focus with an audible crackle. Another lightning strike, another crackle, a third, a fourth; then a fountain of light gushed crimson and the viewscreen went dead.

"Children," said Juliet Mallio, "are your safety belts very snug? Yes, make sure, let me check. Good. Good. A kiss for each of you. That's nice, very nice. Now it's too bad the pretty show has gone off the screen, but maybe you'd like a story instead. Yes? Maybe a story about a Titan." The shuttle veered sharply upward. "A Titan named Prometheus. A sad story, but a brave one."

The shuttle rocked like a cradle under an impatient hand.

"Ready? Once upon a time…"

[Dragon] Sunward, the Narukis looked back for a final time on their dragon. The wings were now pulled so far forward it seemed as if the Laughing Dragon of Heaven had reshaped itself into a cavernous mouth and its breath was a rainbow of fire.

"A true dragon," said Yushio, awestruck.

"It always has been," his wife answered.

"Change course, change course!" Yushio shouted to their yacht's navigation computer. "Into the dragon's mouth!"

For a moment, Mrs. Naruki considered countermanding the order. But when she saw the exhilaration on her husband's face, the joy of jumping into something new and exciting, she held her silence. The sun, the dragon, never mind.

She took Yushio's hand and squeezed fondly.

[Roc] Two seats behind the Mallio family inside the maxishuttle, the prince unbuckled his safety belt, then staggered up the aisle and dragged open the hatch separating the cockpit from the passenger cabin. The female pilot shouted at him to get back and sit down, but the prince ignored the woman; he refused to die meekly, blind to what was happening and strapped into a comfortable chair.

Through the tinted cockpit port, the prince saw the pilot had angled the shuttle upward, trying to climb out of the trough made by the Organism's wings; but the web of energy woven across the chasm was acting like a physical obstruction, tangling around the ship's nose, dragging it down. Red lights flashed on the control panel; new ones lit every second.

There were no sounds but the cursing of the pilot and a frightened babbling back in the cabin. But beneath his feet, the prince could feel the floor beginning to vibrate.

Trying to balance against the rocking of the ship, he knelt beside the pilot and said in a low voice, "I'm a trained engineer. Tell me what I can do to help."

"Can you cross your fingers and pray?" she asked.

"The first thing an engineer learns," he told her.

[Lion] In the passenger cabin of the shuttle, Elizabeth Obasa hugged her children and whispered to them not to cry. "Listen," she said, "I had a dream. When I was sleeping a little while ago. About your father.

"He was walking across a dark grassland at night, and wherever I looked there was an animal there, watching him: a bull, a bear, a swan, all kinds of animals.

"As I watched, he walked up to a goat and said, 'I'm looking for a lion.'

"The goat said, 'I'm a lion.' So they walked a little distance and they talked about how beautiful their children looked when they were asleep.

"Then he walked up to a fine winged horse and said, 'I'm looking for a lion.'

"The horse said, 'I'm a lion.' So they walked a little distance and they talked about how beautiful their children sounded when they laughed.

"Then he walked up to me and said, 'I'm looking for a lion.'

"I said, 'I'm a lion.' So we walked a short distance to a little grove where you children were climbing trees. And your father said, 'So many lions!' "

A burst of blinding blue roared out from the door to the cockpit and the cabin lights blinked out.

[Juggernaut] The cabin lay silent and dark, lit only by a faint glow coming from the cockpit. Slowly, Shanta Mukerjhee eased her grip on the arms of her seat; she'd been clinging so tightly her knuckles cracked softly as they relaxed. She desperately wanted all the trouble to go away, for this to be yet another dream sent by the Juggernaut. But she knew this was real. And the blast of light from the cockpit suggested a fire, an explosion, something like that.

Her son John would never forgive her for cowering in her seat when the pilot might be endangered.

Hesitantly, she lifted open the release on her safety belt. Her first motion sent her drifting toward the cabin roof, bumping off and heading floorward again. It was almost funny—at one time she would have been completely disoriented by being weightless, but thanks to some soybeans, she was quite accustomed to it by now.

She could easily pull herself forward by grabbing at the edge of the overhead luggage compartments. A few of her fellow travelers were beginning to make panicked noises in the darkness. "It's all right," she said loudly, "it's just that the engines have shut off, so we're all weightless. Stay where you are and I'll check with the pilot."

She hoped she sounded cool and confident. John would despise her forever if she couldn't keep people calm in a crisis.

The light in the cockpit area was starshine coming through the front port: the hard sharp starshine of vacuum. The sun was not in sight, and overhead, the body of the Juggernaut was a vast blackness against the Milky Way. Its wings had once again tucked back against its body; its fireworks were over.

By the starlight, Shanta could see the pilot still belted into her chair, her face and hands black with burns. Shanta put her hand to the pilot's neck; no pulse. Electrocution from the control panel? Shanta couldn't imagine the size of a power surge that would kill a human being faster than fuses could blow.

But still. The pilot was dead.

On the opposite side of the cockpit, the prince's body was drifting, nudging against the side viewing port. He too had been caught in the power surge, but his burns were less severe. Shanta could feel no pulse in his throat either, but she couldn't just hover there staring at two dead bodies without doing something.