Zach Hughes - Deep Freeze

"Ever go shopping with Mother?" Sheba asked.

Josh nodded. "She always turned right when she entered a shop, even the grocery store."

"She would have been checking the charts and the viewscreen," Sheba said, "just as she did when we were going somewhere in the aircar."

Josh frowned. He'd heard the same words before somewhere, sometime. He turned to the navigator. "Mr. Girard, please take the watch."

"Aye, sir," Girard said.

"You two with me," Josh said gruffly.

"Is that an order?" Sheba teased.

"Yes," he said.

"All right, growly bear," Sheba said.

The expression took him back to his youth, to a time when the Webster house was filled with life and activity. Five of them, David, Ruth, Sarah, himself, Sheba in that order; and his mother and father, always there in time of crisis, always ready with a word of advice or a bandage for a skinned knee, whichever need fit the moment.

"Don't be a growly bear, Josh," his mother would say if he were cranky.

But, damn it, the Erin Kenner was not the old Webster home in T-Town. She was a ship of the fleet. She was Service, X&A, and he was her captain and, by God, if he wanted to be a growly bear he was, after all, in command. In space he had dictatorial powers over every man and woman in the crew, and over his civilian passenger, whose presence aboard he was unable to explain, even to himself.

He led the two women into the captain's lounge, motioned them into leather chairs. "It's time we had a talk," he said gruffly.

"Lovely weather, isn't it?" Sheba said, winking at Angela.

"I'm serious, Queenie," he said.

"All right," Sheba said, putting her hands in her lap demurely.

"From the beginning, then," Josh said. "You said, Sheba, that you had to be aboard this ship. Why did you say that?"

Sheba shrugged eloquently. "I was just worried about Mom and Dad and Ruth and David."

"But you gave me the impression that getting aboard was a compulsion."

"Josh, are you asking if Sheba was experiencing what you, yourself, have called a psychic moment?" Angela asked.

Josh flushed. The study of psychic aberrations was as old as mankind.

There were things that could not be explained easily, but in all of the thousands of years of human history, going all the way back to Old Earth before the Destruction, it had never been proven that there were such things as telepathy or a spirit world or any of the other things propounded by self-styled psychics.

"I think we have to talk about such a possibility," he said. "Both you and Sheba have dreamed of the missing members of the Webster family.

That, in itself, is not remarkable. What made me curious is the similarity of the dreams."

"And you, Josh?" Sheba asked.

"All right," he said. "I'll confess that I've had some odd feelings. For example, just now when you suggested our entry point into the area we're going to explore by remembering how Mother entered a store or a mall or a park I heard Ruth's voice saying the same words."

"I was thinking of Ruth when I spoke," Sheba said.

"I can't explain it," Angela said, "but there's a certainty in my mind that Sheba is right in suggesting which star grouping to aim for. It's as if I, too, heard Ruth speaking. I saw her."

"In my dreams they are calling for help," Sheba said. She looked at Josh questioningly. "The same with you?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't dream about them. And it isn't logical to be concerned about them. Old Folks has provisions for another eighteen months. David is an experienced spacer. I kept telling myself that and for a long time I wasn't worried at all, not until a few months after David and Ruth went out, then, suddenly, the situation began to nag at me and Ispent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get out here myself."

He spread his hands. "Now we're here, and I've got my civilian sister with me. Going against regulations is not in the character of the man I thought I was. When I took the oath of loyalty to the United Planets government and pledged to honor the traditions of the Service, I meant what I said. I can almost believe that someone or something outside of me influenced me to bypass at least a score of planets where I could have put my stowaway in U.P. custody. I don't swallow that explanation, but I don't have any other."

"You did it because you love me," Sheba said, but added immediately,

"sorry. Bad habit, being flippant all the time. No one in our family has ever shown any psychic talent. It's a bit frightening to think that all of us are somehow being contacted by other members of the family over incredible distances, but I am being called, Josh. I am being called. I don't know where we're going, but I think I'll know when we get there."

"Josh," Angela asked, "are you saying that this—well, let's use Sheba's description of it and say this call—do you think it was strong enough to overcome your sense of duty and prevent you from putting Sheba off on a U.P. world?"

"Several times I was on the verge of giving the order to change course,"

Josh said. "Each time something seemed to say, no, don't do that."

"We're going to find them, Josh," Sheba said, "and for some reason it's necessary that I be there when we do."

"You're scaring me, you two," Angela said. "From now on we're going to be very, very careful, and suspicious as hell."

Because of her superior optic equipment the Erin Kenner was able to examine the family of planets circling the G class star from a great distance. Josh blinked the ship directly into orbit around the second planet and the ship's detection instruments were activated. Kirsty Girard, the navigator and science officer, began to report to her attentive audience, which consisted of most of the ship's crew.

"In places the ice is several hundred feet thick. It's thinnest on themountains. Those huge, flat areas are probably oceans. The planet is big enough to produce the gravity to hold an atmosphere, but most of the gases, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, have been frozen into the ice along with the water vapor."

The navigator went on to give readings on the planet's period of rotation, her electromagnetic field, her density.

"Her core is hot," she said. "She's got heavy metals, and one helluva lot of rich metallic ore close to the surface. I'd guess, without having probed, that she'll be a miner's paradise."

"Dad would have recognized the possibility of mining here," Sheba said.

"He'd have filed a claim of discovery."

"Which makes me wonder if we made the right turn," Josh said.

"Because if he had found this planet, he'd have certainly filed a claim."

Josh had set the Erin Kenner's orbit to cover all of the ice planet's surface, moving from pole to pole. Below them the surface was monotonously uniform. The ice shimmered and reflected light on the day side and sparkled back the image of the stars on the night side. Aside from the indications of large metallic deposits the planet offered nothing of interest. When the surface survey had been underway for four hours, Josh left the bridge and joined Angela and Sheba in the captain's lounge for the

"midday" meal. Josh had taken his first bite when the lounge was filled with the eerie, hair-raising clangor of the ship's emergency alarm. He was out the door in one leap.

As he ran the few steps to the bridge, he felt the ship lurch. Kirsty Girard was at the controls, punching evasive maneuvers into the computer.

"We are under attack, Captain," the navigator said.

"Weapons control," said a crisp, businesslike voice. "Missiles have been fired. Six incoming. Vectors—"

"Shields up," Josh ordered.

A tingling sensation at the back of his neck told him that the computer had responded to the order.

"Weapons," Josh barked, "have you determined the origin of the missiles?"