Zach Hughes - Tiger in the Stars

directly involved in a piggybacking; it was a bit more tricky to perform the operation on the moon rather than in open space. So she was glad to have Webb standing by when she lifted the shuttle and lowered it carefully inside the now open tank to land beside the Blink vehicle. Having a backup man gave her confidence. The landing went smoothly, and the coupling of the ships was, then, a simple operation. Lashed together, the ungainly mass awaited lift-off. In the ten previous tests, blink vehicles had left directly from the moon's surface. Nothing much happens when a blink generator is activated, at least nothing damaging. That had been proven time and time

again in the early testing. The only effects are slight prickling feelings in all humans within a few hundred kilometers and an electromagnetic disturbance, detectable for hundreds of thousands of kilometers. A generator cranked up to full capacity on the moon would signal a chance observer on earth, any observer who happened, at that moment, to be using the proper detection instruments. Therefore, the plan was to lift the vehicle with the shuttle's power, drive it into deep space, far enough away from both the moon and Earth so that the start of the blink would not signal itself to one of the large number of researchers doing work in gravity, fields and magnetics. In the dark of a moon night, the two piggybacked ships lifted off, a crew of three aboard the shuttle. Heath had programed a course vertical to the

plane of the Earth's orbit, up and away in the general direction of Polaris. The initial stage of the trip was uneventful. The distance chosen for the tests was roughly half the distance to Mars. That was far enough to prevent any chance detection of the blink start, but not far enough away to

prevent detection of the blink itself, should anyone inside the solar system or within a few light-years be using instruments that could detect the subtle signal a blinking ship sent ahead of itself. Those instruments were of a highly specialized nature and would not likely be in use. The shuttle ship had been built to carry as many as 20 passengers plus several hundred tons of cargo. Three people felt lost aboard her. Large unused areas seemed to add to the loneliness engendered by their enforced wheel watches. They took four-hour shifts. Heath spent some of his non-watch time making final checks of the equipment. There was little

socializing. The demands of keeping tabs on all the potential disasters that a ship under power is prone to left one drained at the end of a watch and made the bunks in the rather spacious quarters very inviting. Short, or relatively short, space trips seemed to Hara to be more boring than the long run out to the Centauri systems. At first, the power was the same, but to allow proper deceleration time, power was cut early, and the ship coasted at interplanetary speeds much lower than the speeds attained after months, years of acceleration on the star runs. With the power down, they had time for partial relaxation during the brief period before turnaround and deceleration. Deceleration is always an uncertain time, because the power, which has been cut back, is turned up to full in a very short space of time, and enough stored-up energy is unleashed to vaporize a ship and make a small, temporary star where no star was before. But deceleration went smoothly. With the vehicles dead in space, Hara joined Walker Heath in lsg and crawled outside into the cold and loneliness to separate the two ships. She had been outside many times before, and she never tired of it.

There was danger, yes. A severed lifeline meant a slow drift away; it took a very sharp pilot to locate a single human form in the vastness of space in the time limit imposed by the amount of air stored in an lsg. But there was also beauty. The sun viewed through shielded visor. The gleam of the raw light on the metals of the two ships. The feeling of being alone in a universe that was, at best, indifferent. Hara accomplished her tasks quickly and watched as Heath finished his. Then, back inside the coziness of the shuttle's control room, everyone visibly relaxed. At the console, Hara fed steam to small steering jets. The shuttle moved

slowly, gravely, away from the blink vehicle. Once in position, Heath called

a rest period, during which all three of them slept. Later, fully refreshed, they gathered in the control room. The blink vehicle was enlarged on the visuals, riding dead in space 200 kilometers away toward Polaris. All systems were go. As if talking to himself, Heath outlined the first test. «We're going very, very short. Shorter than ever before. I'm going to send her a mere 2,000 kilometers, and she'll still be detectable on visual if she comes out.» They could feel it, the slight prickling sensation, the tension. Incredible power was being built up in the generator of the ship riding 200 kilometers away. That power swept over them, through the metal hull, telling them of the blink ship's readiness even as they watched the dials and gauges, which confirmed what they could feel for themselves. There were no dramatics, no countdown. When the power was ready, Heath pushed the button. Where there had been a ship there was nothing, and where there had been nothing, 2,000 kilometers away, the blink vehicle sat, dead in space. All motion had occurred outside time and space as detected by human senses. «Good,» Heath said quietly. She had gone out of normal space and she had come back to it. For the second time in the history of man, a ship had been blinked and had not gone off into that unexplained nothing, which had eaten the previous ten blink vehicles. There was a mass of data to be processed. Heath worked for ten hours without sleep. Then he was ready to try again. Once again there was the feeling of tension, the prickling sensation. Once again Heath quietly pushed a button, and the blink vehicle returned

to its original spot in less than an instant. It was there, whole, looking as though it had never blinked out of time and space to travel 2,000 kilometers out and 2,000 kilometers back. And once again the data was correct and contained no surprises. Heath, without sleep for 20 hours, called a break. The next jump would be 20,000 kilometers. CHAPTER SEVEN When the alarm went off, it took Plank a microsecond to place the system that was calling to him so urgently. Then he was in it and feeling the surge of power which told of a jump. He kicked relays with his mind, but it was already too late, for the signal had been of such duration that not even electronic reflexes could react before it had come and gone. He had never heard that particular alarm before, not in the months he'd been blinking in and out of the star systems of the arm. Yet he knew

its importance. There, at the end of that signal was a ship, a ship using the

power of the stars to pull itself out of time and space. That signal, so very brief, was a ship sending a telltale disturbance ahead of itself. And the source of that signal was something that interested him vitally. Something like him. Plank, of course, did not sleep. And for ten hours he maintained full alertness. In that time he familiarized himself with the little-used system that had signaled the blink of a ship somewhere in the galaxy. When the second signal came he was prepared. He had analyzed that part of himself and had made minor alterations. When the blink signal shot through his cold circuits, which were a part of him, he started a fix and cursed when the signal ended before the process was complete. But he had some information. He had a general direction, and his knowledge, knowledge of which he had been totally unaware prior to the first signal, told him that the distance was limited to a range of less than 1,000 light-years. For the first time since he had begun his star wanderings, he leaped stars, blinking down the Orion Arm in a giant step, taking time, after the blink was complete, to orient himself. He looked for the familiar star groupings and recognized the ball park, but he was as yet unable to find first base. He was still lost. There was nothing to do but wait. CHAPTER EIGHT «Could have been faulty technique,» Walker Heath was saying. «Ten times?» Webb asked. «With every space scientist who was anyone checking and double-checking?» «I know,» Heath said. «I was there.» «All right,» Hara said. «What did we do different?» «Nothing,» Heath said, running his hand through his dark, graying hair. «Except cover shorter distances.» «The first test of your series was a short jump,» Webb said. «One light-year,» Heath said. «And she came back.» «A light-year?» Webb frowned. «That's not short.» «When we lost her on the second blink out we began to cut down. Half a light-year, then a quarter on the remaining tests.» «Actually, then,» Hara said, «we're doing exactly what you did before and we've accomplished the same results. You got one ship back. We've got one ship back.» «From 2,000 kilometers,» Heath said. «So it is not the distance traveled that's critical,» Webb said. «At least not apparently. Your first test was successful before and now the first one of ours is successful.» «Cross your fingers,» Hara said. «I'm not going to, but if you think it might help don't let me stop you,» Heath said. The blink vehicle went out 20,000 kilometers and did not disappear. It was there, detectable on the instruments of the shuttle ship. When the data was processed, Heath pushed the button to bring her home, 200 kilometers away from the shuttle. «Good,» Heath started to say, as the vehicle materialized on the visuals. He didn't get the word out. The vehicle appeared, intact, for a period long enough to register not only on instruments but human eyes, and then it wasn't; before it wasn't, it altered its shape, breaking into planes and colors that reminded Hara of the work of some of the twentieth-century cubist painters. Heath punched full magnification into the visuals, sending beams searching out into the emptiness. There was nothing. «I saw it,» Hara said. «It was there.» «The blink was complete,» Webb said. «Power was off.» «Whatever happened to it happened in normal space,» Hara said. «Yes,» Heath agreed. «But we don't know what happened when it was in the blink. Ships don't break into distorted planes and disappear without reason.» «Some unknown stress factor,» Webb suggested. «We'll sweep the area,» Heath said. «If it merely broke up in normal space we'll find debris.» But he was not to make his sweep. «Communicator,» Hara said, her eye caught by a flashing light. «Someone is trying to call us.» «Might as well answer,» Heath said. «If it's moon base, we'll have to tell them about it sooner or later anyhow.» Hara hit switches and the voice which filled the control room was raspy, masculine. «… shuttle ship. Come in shuttle ship.» «Go ahead,» Hara said, without identifying procedure. «This is Plank's Pride…» «John,» she said quietly. «… moon based. caII 7-w-xx-3467. Please acknowledge and identify yourself.» «John Plank,» she said, «This is Hara. Where are you?» «Just off your port viewer,» Plank said. She looked. There was nothing. Then a gleaming globe was riding there, majestic, unknown. She felt a chill of fear, but Plank's voice was there, soothing. «Hara, I want you to board. Only you. Do you understand?» «I'm afraid we'll have to ask some explanation,» Matt Webb said. «No explanation. Not now. Just Hara. I'll light the port to the lock. I'll do the maneuvering.» Already the globe was moving, appearing larger as it neared the shuttle. «That's no Earth ship,» Heath said. «And it came in on a blink.» «I'm going,» Hara said, moving toward her LSG. CHAPTER NINE She stood, magnetic shoes clinging to the hull of the shuttle ship, and watched the alien globe move in. The alien was roughly twice the mass of the shuttle. She admired the workmanship. The full glare of the sun on the globe revealed no seams. Viewports were blackened from the outside, giving the ship a look of solidness. The symmetry of the globe was broken only by protrusions, which she thought looked suspiciously like weapons pods. Hara was one of those fortunate individuals who, in times of stress, become almost artificially calm. It seemed that all of her bodily processes slowed, heartbeat easing off by six to eight beats a minute, pulse slowing, making for an awareness, which seemed as if she were storing her resources for impending crisis. As the globe moved slowly nearer, she