Jack McDevitt: POLARIS

“So okay. We bring the ship here. In tight.”

I opened a channel to Belle and got a surge of static. Switched off and tried again. “She’s jamming us,” I said.

“Can she do that?”

“She’s doing it.”

We could see her, a group of five lights now, just off the rim of the gas giant.

Waiting.

“If she tries to ram us, isn’t she risking serious damage herself?”

“Not if she does it right. It wouldn’t take a whole lot to punch a hole in the lander.” I glanced around the cabin. It looked suddenly fragile.

I turned the engine off.

Alex had removed his helmet. Now he reached for it and seemed to be considering putting it back on. “I have an idea,” he said. “The windows are polarized, so she won’t be able to see into the cabin. She won’t know what’s in here. We’ve got a whole station at our disposal. How about we make a bomb, put it on board the lander, and let her ram that? ”

“That’s a good idea. Great idea.”

“Do you know how to make a bomb, Chase?”

“No. I haven’t a clue. You?”

“Not really.”

He went back on the circuit, hoping to talk with her. I guess he thought he might be able to cut a deal of some sort. But all channels were blocked. “We’ll just have to make a run for it,” he said. “She wasn’t able to get you a few minutes ago so maybe we’ll be all right.”

“I was close to the ground. Not an easy target. Trying to get up to Belle is a different game altogether. It’s strictly desperation.” The temptation to say the hell with it and make a sudden move was strong. But it would get us killed. Belle, like the Chesapeake, was only a set of lights. In her case, there were six. She was directly overhead.

“Does Belle actually have instructions to take off if Maddy were to try to board?”

“Oh, yes. I wasn’t leaving that to chance.”

“Good.” For a long minute he was quiet. His eyes drifted to the air tanks.

Between the air supply in the lander and the spare tanks, we were good for a few more hours. “Damn it,” he said. “Let’s try it. Maybe we’ll catch her in the washroom.”

“No. We won’t make it that way.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I do. I like your bomb idea.”

“But we don’t know how to make one. For that matter, there might not even be materials on the platform.”

“There’s another possibility.”

“What?”

“First thing we have to do is get the spare air tanks out. We’re going to need them.”

“And then-?”

“We arrange things so that Maddy runs into a brick.”

We put our helmets back on, got out of the lander, and climbed down into the station airlock.

We shut off our radios so we couldn’t be overheard. Alex touched his helmet against mine so he could speak to me. “She can see us,” he said.

“Doesn’t make any difference. She’ll know we have to try for the ship. Sooner or later.”

The laser that Alex had brought was a household unit, a little hand-held device for a guy working at home, rather than the industrial strength I would have liked to have. But it was functional, and if it was a trifle short on power, it should nevertheless be adequate.

The airlock hatches and bulkheads looked like steel. Probably made from iron mined on the asteroid itself. They would have been ideal for our purpose, but the metal was resistant to the laser. We could have cut through the hinges and freed the two hatches, but they were too big to get into the lander.

We’d have to load up with ordinary rock.

Alex signaled: You cut, and I’ll haul.

I shook my head no. We needed to keep an eye on Maddy, so she didn’t slip down and seize the lander while we were preoccupied. I indicated I’d do the first round of work, and he should go back and keep watch.

The work was easy. Just cut a large slab of rock, then haul it out to the airlock.

Even that part of things, in zero gee, was simple enough. After a half hour or so, we switched.

I moved the lander directly over the airlock to block Maddy’s view of what we were doing. I measured the dimensions of the lander’s hatch. It was smaller than I’d remembered, about three-quarters my height. Width was shoulder to wrist.

I ripped off one of the seat covers and moved the backs of the seats down. That would make it easier to load the cabin. The windows protected against outside glare, so Maddy wouldn’t be able to see who, or what, was in the cabin.

I picked up one of the pieces of rock that I’d stowed just the other side of the airlock, put the seat cover over it as an extra precaution, floated it out to the lander, and loaded it into the cabin. Alex was bringing up more chunks, but I could see the doubtful expression on his face. He was wondering whether it would really work, because all the rock didn’t weigh anything. That was true. The weight was gone, but it retained its mass. It would resist getting shoved in a new direction.

I started getting warning beeps from my suit’s life-support system. Time to switch to fresh air tanks. We had another two sets for each of us, four more hours apiece. And it occurred to me that we would have to be done and back inside Belle by then, since we were not going to have the lander at the end of the operation. At least not if everything went according to plan.

We loaded the rock. The warning lamp on the laser began to blink, but we kept working until it gave out. The last piece was too big to fit into a cabin already filled, so we put it in the cargo hold. Acceleration was going to be pretty slow, but Maddy wouldn’t have a lot of time to think about it.

When we were ready to launch, Alex made a show of opening the hatch and getting in. But we kept the lander airlock turned away from Maddy’s telescopes, so she had no way of knowing what was actually happening. To her it must have seemed we were just going to roll the dice.

Alex slipped back out of the spacecraft, kept down as best he could, and went back into the tunnel. Then it was my turn. I stood at the lander’s hatch, my head sticking up so Maddy could see me. I ducked as I normally do and climbed aboard.

Then it got complicated. I closed the hatch, pressurized the cabin, and, when I could take off my helmet to speak, I instructed Gabe to start the engine after I got out and rendezvoused with Belle.

“Best approach comes if I leave in six minutes,” he said.

“Okay. Do it.” It occurred to me that I should take out some insurance, so I gave Gabe a final instruction. Then I put my helmet back on and started depressurization. I also turned off the lander’s lights in what was supposed to look like part of an effort to sneak past Maddy’s watchful eye.

My conscience, which I usually try to keep under control, reminded me I was abandoning Gabe. I know AIs are not sentient, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that.

I whispered a goodbye that he couldn’t hear.

When I was able to open up, I slipped out, closed the door, and joined Alex in the tunnel.

A minute or two later, the lander lifted away.

Alex touched his helmet to mine. “Good luck,” he said, keeping his voice low as if even there, inside the rock, with the radio links turned off, Maddy might hear us.

The jamming stopped. She’d spotted the lander and figured she had us now. I half expected her to say something, some final expression of regret, or maybe a taunt.

But there was nothing.

Our pressure suits were white, so they didn’t provide much camouflage.

Nevertheless, we had to know what was happening, so I edged out close to the airlock hatch and took a look. The lander was ascending slowly, trying to accelerate with its load of slabs. I hoped that Maddy was too emotionally played out to notice that it was struggling. But it was moving away from the surface, ascending to an uncertain rendezvous with the Belle-Marie.