Wil McCarthy - The Collapsium

Bruno looked up again, saw the planet there in the bow window, fully illuminated from edge to edge like a full but strangely altered moon because they were flying toward it almost straight up out of the sun, their grapples locked on the planet’s equator. Indeed, the planet was as wide as a dinner platter, and widening rapidly.

“The base should be’s-s-somewhere in here,” Muddy said, and on the window a green, crosshatched area the shape of a kidney bean appeared, covering less than a fifth of the planet’s sunward face. “Initiating telescopic survey.”

Shiao glared up anxiously through the window. “How long will this take? Should we think about plotting an orbit solution?”

“I am still experiencing widespread malfunction,” Sabadell-Andorra answered. “Gravitational stresses have fractured millions of my wellstone fibers.”

“Oh, God,” Deliah said. “Is hull containment in danger?”

“Not imminently. Unless there are further stresses. But my computing power and reliability are markedly degraded.”

“Oh, well, no problem about that .” Deliah’s voice dripped irony.

Then Muddy spoke up. “Survey complete. There are a number of reflective prominences right here , surrounded by a bank of’s-s-superabsorbers.”

On the window, superimposed over the planet’s surface and the bean-shaped highlight, a red X appeared.

“Yes? Goodness, lock the grapples to it,” Bruno said, his blood rising. Part of him hadn’t really expected to find anything—their chain of suppositions was rather long—and another part had expected, long before now, to be burned out of the sky by some silly weapon or other. But logic existed for a reason, because it carried you inexorably toward truth. When properly applied, of course, but by now that was a matter of long habit.

“Grapples may harm the base,” Deliah said excitedly. “Disrupting local gravity, interfering with his grav-projection mechanisms… It could be just the edge we need.”

“A double edge,” Shiao cautioned. “It’ll alert him to our presence, and in fact pinpoint our exact location.”

“Irrelevant,” Muddy said. “Unless we mean to d-destroy the base using ourselves as a projectile, we must begin deceleration at once.”

Indeed, moments later the gravity switched off, and everyone went flying into the air as the Sabadell-Andorra wheeled around them, orienting its grapples toward the sun. Above, the window dimmed again to prevent the sunlight from searing them all. Then gravity returned, and they all came crashing back down in an assortment of uncomfortable ways.

“Blast,” Bruno said, pointing vaguely. “Everyone into your couches, please. Unfold those, yes. We now have—alas!— enough seats to accommodate everyone.”

“Are we still heading for this ‘base?” Tusite asked.

“We are,” Muddy confirmed. Then, in a rare display of manners for a de Towaji of any sort, he stuck out his hand. “I don’t believe we’ve formally met, by the way. I’m Muddy.”

“Tusite,” she returned quickly, accepting his hand into her own dark fingers with a reflexively dainty, ladylike grip. “No last name.”

“Me either,” Muddy said.

She looked puzzled by that—clearly she thought he was another Bruno, or at least another de Towaji. But what she said, albeit somewhat brusquely, was, “Charmed. I… apologize for screaming, a minute ago. It’s frightening, all this running and fighting and dying. But I do owe you my life.”

“Oh, none of that,” Muddy clucked. “We’ve all had our share of b-bad moments on this trip. Anyway, you owe him ,” He nodded sideways at Bruno.

Tusite looked in Bruno’s direction and inclined her head. She looked as if her fright were only barely contained, but she nonetheless turned back to Muddy. “Mercury is hostile wilderness, true?” she asked. “So hot it’s full of molten metal? If we come down in the wrong spot, it could mean our deaths.”

“Indeed,” Muddy agreed. “But we’re aimed right for the center of the Declarant’s base. As we approach, I’ll be scanning for dangers. I’ll look for hollows beneath the rock, too— natural or otherwise—because that’s where we’ll find him. I’ll do my b-best to set us atop one of them.”

“Steering how?” she pressed anxiously.

“The guidance algorithm adjusts its course by sliding the grapple target to different parts of the sun.”

“I’ll bet we’re disrupting that , as well,” Deliah noted. “It’s illegal to grapple the sun because it can whip up flares and proton storms which affect the entire Queendom. I doubt anyone has ever given our poor photopause the sort of thrashing we’re giving it now.”

“Indeed,” Bruno said, “we have much to answer for.”

Everyone burst out laughing at that. Tight, anxious laughter, it was true, but still it surprised Bruno—he’d been serious. All week, he’d been tearing up the solar system as if he owned the place, grappling to anything handy regardless of consequence, helping mainly his own friends… But even Hugo, strapped as ever to the cabin’s floor, made mewling noises that were quite a good imitation of amusement.

“I’m sure we could all use a rest,” he grumbled, and everyone laughed at that, too.

“You’re planning to melt through solid rock?” Shiao asked. “He could be buried quite deep, couldn’t he?”

“Unlikely,” Deliah said. “For the same reasons already cited. His equipment needs to be on the surface—or to stick up through the surface, at any rate—and he’ll want to be close to it. It’s the same reason your eyes and ears are up next to your brain—so the signals don’t have far to travel.”

“So how deep should we expect to burrow?”

She shrugged. “Less than fifty meters, at a guess. Of course, at the rate this ship tunnels that could still take a pretty long time.”

“Three minutes to touchdown,” the ship noted.

“There’ll be a-a-access ports at the surface,” Muddy said, finally climbing onto his acceleration couch. His hands and voice were shaking, Bruno saw. He was going in to face his personal Satan. Was there ever a better reason to be terrified? “He never uses his ports, but they’re always there. I’ve seen his secret f-facilities elsewhere in the solar system, and I doubt he’d deviate much from pattern. We should be armed, by the way; we can expect a stiff resistance from robot guards. Captain Shiao?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Can you recommend some hand weapons to our fax machine, please?”

“Certainly.” From his folding couch, Shiao rattled off a series of model numbers, technical specifications, magazine sizes and battery capacities, piezoelectric coefficients and physical dimensions. Beside him, the fax hummed and glowed.

“Acknowledged, sir,” Sabadell-Andorra replied a few moments later. “Weapons are ready.”

With shaking hands, Muddy snapped his couch harness in place. “Right. Well, everyone should pick one up on the way out. I don’t suppose we have sufficient mass in the reservoir to make’s-spacesuits?”

“Only two complete ones,” the ship replied apologetically. “We are low on certain key elements, notably oxygen.”

“We could send two of us ahead in full armor,” Cheng Shiao suggested. “I will, naturally, volunteer.”

It took Bruno a moment to realize the suggestion was aimed solely at him. He was the commander of this expedition, in every conceivable sense. Such a decision was clearly his. He considered it. Would dividing their forces leave them vulnerable? Would the ship be safer with people aboard to guard her? Did it matter, two people, or four, or six? He wanted no more deaths on his conscience, but wasn’t at all sure how to accomplish this under the circumstances.