Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

Ord asked, “Now what?”

Munchkin whispered, like a mother watching her son at a high-school gym foul line, “They clamp Jude into the couch, so the Firewitch senses an organic presence. Jude performs an operating sequence. If the Firewitch senses a pilot with reflexes that won’t crash it, its systems activate. The Spooks record everything. Then Jude climbs out, the ship shuts down, and we get to go home.”

Munchkin’s scenario was boring enough.

I put a hand over my mouth to cover a yawn. Nobody said it, but the other possibility was a bigger snore. If Jude was too slow, absolutely nothing would happen. Jude would just be one more princess the pea couldn’t feel.

And Howard would think up Plan B.

Meanwhile, Howard pointed at a bubble bank.

The toadstool’s top whined and vibrated. Silver clamp wings enfolded Jude.

Two hundred people held their breath.

Thirty seconds passed. People started to exhale.

Nothing happened.

Thirty seconds more without result, and technicians started muttering.

“Son of a bitch!” I whispered. The Army put up with Howard Hibble because his hunches about the Slugs were always right.

But this time Howard had been—

The chamber went black.

TWELVE

THEN THE VENTILATORS THUNKED, and stopped.

Munchkin lurched forward in the dark. “Jude?”

I grabbed her arm. “Don’t just go—”

The lights flickered back on. The ventilators whumped to life.

Then the walls glowed purple, then red.

Techs in the bubbles craned their necks.

Beneath my boots, the floor trembled.

Munchkin gripped my arm.

The toadstool had twisted and thrust itself toward the Firewitch’s bow. The platform that held Jude had thrust Howard’s cherry picker aside, and Howard had turned and faced the chamber wall that was the Firewitch’s bow.

The whole forward hemisphere of chamber wall disappeared.

Beyond us, five hundred yards dead ahead, the Airpool dome hung like a lollipop on a stick. Beyond the dome lay black space. And beyond that, stars.

“Holy moly!” Howard’s amplified whisper boomed in the chamber. “Were the ’corders back up? Did we get that?”

I realized that I was clinging like death to a stanchion. I waited for tornadic decompression to suck us all into space through the hole that now gaped in the Firewitch’s bow.

But nothing tugged at me except Munchkin’s fingers.

Jude had brought the Firewitch’s alien machinery to vibrating life. The forward wall was intact. It had just turned transparent to visible light.

All around us, along the opaque sections of the ship’s skin, blue light veins spread and pulsed. Animated light spangled the control chamber, floor to roof, as though the place was an ancient disco club.

Someone cheered.

Then applause spattered the chamber, first a drizzle, then a deluge.

His face spangled reflected blue, arms upraised, Howard jumped up and down in the cherry picker, so hard it shook.

I said, “Wow.”

Ord whispered, “Wow.”

Munchkin said, “My son did this!”

Ten minutes later, things settled down.

Howard faced a different bubble row, and his voice boomed again. “Commence shutdown.”

In the opposite bubble row, techs whose jobs were done for now stretched, shook hands, and back-slapped.

I would have liked to high-five Howard, but he would be playing band leader all day. So would Jude. I would see my godson dirtside soon enough. And I could holo Howard anytime.

I eyed my ’Puter. “Guess that’s a wrap, Sergeant Major. Let’s wake those Cargo’Bots.” I took Munchkin’s arm and turned her toward the exit, while the ship’s blue veins pulsed. “Come see us off, Munchkin.”

Munchkin, Ord, and I stood ten yards behind the nearest tech row.

I heard the row Supervisor say, “Reboot and retry.” Pause. “Well, do it again.”

I glanced around, toward the control stalk. Silhouetted against newly visible space, dappled in the wall veins’ pulsing blue light, the cherry picker’s arm had moved alongside the stalk. Howard’s basket at the arm’s end quivered, empty.

From below, all I could see of what was going on atop the toadstool was a waggling shock of mussed, gray Hibble hair.

“Jason?” Munchkin turned back toward me, then sucked in a breath.

Crap. She saw it too.

I made it to the stairs at the toadstool’s base in five strides.

Munchkin ran a step behind me, sputtering Arabic. I caught the word “Howard.” From her tone, I think the rest would have embarrassed an angry camel herder.

I clambered onto the platform alongside the pilot couch. Opposite me, Howard bent over Jude’s reclined body.

Munchkin elbowed past me. When she saw Howard and Jude, she dove on her son. “Jude!”

Howard said, “It’s all right. He isn’t—”

Munchkin ran her hands over my godson. “Oh God! Oh God!”

“Mom! Take a breath, huh?”

Munchkin straightened, her hands shaking. “You’re all right?”

“Fine.”

As a machine gunner, Munchkin was the coolest soldier I knew. As a mother — well, I’d never accuse her of underreacting.

“Mom, I’m just stuck.”

The Spook-engineered couch clamps fit Jude’s form like cosmic modeling clay. He shrugged as much as he could. “It’s no big deal. Like being buried in the sand at the beach.”

So far. I frowned at Howard. “He can’t lie there forever. How long before you can unbury him?”

“We’re working on it.”

I pointed at the pulsating and still-transparent walls. “But until you spring Jude, the motor keeps idling?”

Three Zoomies in orange-and-yellow firefighter Eternads dragged a toolbox onto the platform. Two were Airman Seconds, and the third was a Tech Sergeant.

One of the Seconds — I am not making this up — took out a bar of soap and started rubbing it along the junction between Jude’s shoulder and the couch clamp. He looked down at Jude and said, “See if that loosens you up.”

My godson had become an orbiting cat stuck in a tree, firemen and all. I rolled my eyes at Howard. “I bet this never happened to NASA.”

He made a face and waved his hand. “Improvisation is the soul of—”

A rumble echoed through the chamber. The toadstool shook so hard that Munchkin stumbled against the guy rubbing soap on Jude.

The rumble’s pitch rose, and became the squeal of bending metal.

A Supervisor on the Chamber floor screamed up through cupped hands. “We have displacement!”

I bugged my eyes at Howard. “Displacement? This thing’s moving?”

Howard shook his head at me, his brows knit. “It can’t move. It’s tethered to the station.”

Howard thought the Firewitch couldn’t move, but it was sure trying. A row of admin bubbles slid across the chamber floor, caught an edge, and cartwheeled like a crashed snowboard. Somebody screamed.

Cables snapped, sparks fountained. Consoles toppled. In moments, smoke blanketed the chamber floor, and the smell of charred insulation filled the bottled air.

Behind Howard, through haze, and through the transparent wall, the hotel ring inched into view as the Firewitch’s nose swung.

I pointed over Howard’s shoulder. “Can’t move?”

Howard turned. “Holy moly!” He frowned, then scuttled around the platform until he stood beside me. “Jason, this may be bad.”

Munchkin grabbed Howard’s lapels and shook him until his glasses popped off his nose. “May be? May be?”

I pushed her away from him. “Worst case, Howard. Quick.”

Footsteps thundered on the deckplates as techs ran screaming toward the Exit Tube. Someone tripped. Squirming bodies piled one upon another.

Howard pushed his glasses back onto his nose, then stared down at the melee. “Worst case? The Firewitch will pull at this mass until New Moon’s orbit destabilizes. Finally, the umbilical tether’ll fatigue and separate. The Firewitch will break free. But New Moon has no maneuvering capability to restabilize itself. Its orbit will decay. Finally, it will enter the atmosphere, and burn up.”