Ivan Cat - The Burning Heart of Night

The day wore on. Long Reach closed on CG-423-B. Further instrument checks, between jaunts to dose up on fugue and decontaminate, picked up no signs of human activity. No beacon, no overspill of local transmissions, no ozone holes, no sparkle of light on the night side. Karr was disappointed but not really surprised. The legacy of human expansion to the stars was a legacy of hardship. A large percentage of all seeded colonies failed. There were famine worlds, war worlds, plague worlds, disaster worlds (like Sheldon's World), and a dozen other variations. It looked like CG-423-B was just one more failure among many.

This was not good news for Long Reach. In its present condition, Karr doubted his fugueship would survive another interstellar jaunt. With the help of a colony, it would take years of nursing and recuperation before Long Reach could refuel and brave the voyage back to Evermore. Without help, it might take decades or not happen at all.

Not long after discovering the dead satellite, Pilot Lindal Karr learned the problem with letting a fugueship set its own course.

The first indications of a problem occurred when he was in the brainroom. Karr felt a rumbling through the seat of his crash couch and a warning light blinked on the nav station, alerting him that Long Reach was adjusting trajectory. Perilous data spewed from a viewer. Long Reach hadn't set itself on just any old trajectory for CG-423-B, Long Reach had set itself on an impact trajectory with CG-423-B

and was coming in way too fast. Karr would never dare to set such a course. The fugueship had nerve, he admitted, but he was not about to wait around and see if it made another engine burn to safely enter orbit later.

Karr sprang into action, initially trying to slow Long Reach down by activating the repaired starlure.

He set it to maximum brightness, the idea being to fool the ship into believing that it was too close to a real star and brake harder. Karr also used remotes in the brainroom to move the lure across Long Reach's external eye, but the deviations got bigger and bigger until it was a joke. Long Reach, it seemed, couldn't care less. Karr's dour expression grew more dour as none of the other simple options worked either.

In the blink of an eye, things had gone from not so good to disastrous. Karr was on a collision course with the only habitable planet within twenty light-years and in severe time trouble. He rebuked himself for not having enough foresight. If he had stopped dosing on fugue earlier, he could have reacted more effectively to the ship's errant behavior, but it was routine procedure to stay fugued-up until just before making safe orbit and Karr had followed that routine. So he was moving too slow to stop Long Reach.

Karr needed to drop out of fuguetime before they plowed into CG-423-B and he needed to do it yesterday.

VII

Pilot Academy transcript, planet Solara, 10.21.3526.

Document status: CLASSIFIED.

File: Consequences 342.

(Subject Lindal Karr, aged twelve standard years, squares his shoulders and refuses to cry.

Major Vidun stands facing Lindal, looking stern in the blank white room with rounded corners.

Tall, thin Dr. Uttz stands compliantly behind Vidun.)

Vidun: As punishment for allowing touch-contact with Dr. Uttz, you will study in solitary for the next six months. Lessons will be taken through indirect voice communication only. (Lindal's cheeks redden, but he does not break.)

Lindal: Yes, sir.

Vidun: If you apply yourself, study your qi harder, perhaps the term of punishment can be shortened by a month.

Lindal: Thank you, sir.

Vidun: Dismissed. Go wash your face.

(A hole appears in the wall. Lindal exits though it. Dr. Uttz shakes his head. Vidun is not apologetic.)

Vidun: It is your own fault.

Dr. Uttz: It was a simple touch on the shoulder, no more. He did so well on the tests.

Vidun: You know the rules. Trainees are not permitted tactile human contact. This facilitates a bond forming between Pilot and fugueship.

Dr Uttz: It is harsh.

Vidun (irritated): Why state the obvious? Do you wish to undermine my judgment? Do you wish my position? I will gladly step aside. Dr. Uttz: No, and no. But I worry. He has had no other contact for seven years. Vidun: As you know, that is the regimen. We must instill a predisposition to shun human contact and bond with his ship. If he bonds with his ship he will naturally want to keep it alive ? at all costs. Dr. Uttz: But I worry. Such isolation can lead to abhorrent sociological behavior. Vidun: You are the expert. Should we be worried? Dr. Uttz (sighs): I suppose not. He has a great sense of responsibility. I suspect it is rooted in the belief that his parents sold him because he was unworthy.

Each failure and hardship only strengthens his resolve to prove them wrong. Vidun: Good.

Mark my words, that boy will be the greatest Pilot humanity has ever seen. Dr. Uttz: If we don't break him first.

Far too late Long Reach altered course, making several destructive braking orbits through CG-423-B's atmosphere. Unfortunately, by the time Karr had endured deep-fugue withdrawal and could clamber along the perilously tilted ceilings and walls in slowtime, Long Reach was plunging into the planet's gravity well. Karr succeeded in dumping the reserve fuel, but he didn't have much time left, maybe one orbit, maybe less, and then Long Reach would break up.

Karr scaled gourds of suede-like tissue past his quarters and back into the brainroom. He touched the cortex in passing. It felt feverish.

"Hang in there." Karr strapped into the crash couch, which was halfway up the wall because of Long Reach's weird angle relative to the planet below.

The human instrument panels painted a grim picture. Nav readouts were particularly harsh: there was no chance of stabilizing orbit and little chance of a soft landing. Karr should have run for the escape gig right then, but he refused to entertain such thoughts and again tried to correct Long Reach's trajectory, but none of the standard controls had any effect. Karr tried harsher measures, activating a network of remotes that administered painful electric shocks to the ship's nervous system. He preferred qi needles hand placed in exact pressure points because they caused less trauma, but there was no time. Karr applied current, intending to open deceleration nozzles and control Long Reach's headlong plunge.

"Brake, brake," he urged through gritted teeth. Electrodes crackled, some right in the brainroom, but nothing happened. Karr increased power to maximum and repeated. Whiffs of scorched fat filled the air, but Long Reach stubbornly refused to obey its helm.

"Do what I say," Karr implored. "Please do what I say."

Vital seconds ticked off. Control panels went dead as their corresponding external sensors burned off in the heat of atmospheric friction, but Karr would not admit defeat. Grabbing his Gattler, he unstrapped and slid down to Long Reach's brain. A twist of the selector rotated barrel three into position. Karr aimed the tool at the crenellated dome of gray matter.

Karr bit his lip. "Sorry. This is going to hurt."

It was the last thing Karr could think of. Jerks of his trigger finger shot sonic pulses deep into the fugueship's brain. Unlike human brains, which felt no pain, fugueship's brains were extremely sensitive.