Charles Sheffield: Resurgence

The final five minutes seemed to stretch for ever. Sinara stood in the Have-It-All ’s one remaining useable airlock, next to Teri Dahl and Torran Veck. They were suited, waiting, ready to go—and, inevitably, there was one more briefing.

“Ideally, you would dive in perpendicular to the plane of debris.” Hans Rebka was the speaker. “That would minimize your time there, and also your risk of collision with lumps of rock and solidifying magma. Unfortunately, Ben Blesh is heading out on a radial path, directly away from where Marglot used to be. That would make your trajectory at right angles to his, and if you were lucky—or unlucky—enough to run into each other, the impact would kill all of you. So Louis Nenda will fly—”

“Not me,” Nenda interrupted. “J’merlia will pilot this one. He can slice things finer.”

He went on, ignoring Hans Rebka’s irritated look. “J’merlia will take the Have-It-All in on a path that’s close to radial, same as Blesh’s. So you’ll be enterin’ the debris belt at almost a grazin’ angle, an’ not much faster than Blesh is goin’. You’ll approach him at only a few hundred meters a second. Your suits can handle that speed change easy enough. So you’ll slow down, take him in tow, an’ get the hell out of there. While all that goes on, the Have-It-All zips out an’ away an’ off toward M-2. ’Course, there’s a disadvantage to doin’ it this way. If you—”

“Got to make this quick.” Hans Rebka cut him off. It occurred to Sinara that the two men were competing in the briefing. “Thirty seconds more and the two of us have to be out of this airlock so you can cycle it. Remember, the shallow entry angle will expose you to much more debris on the way in. On the way out, just pick the best path—”

“—an’ don’t worry about bein’ met. J’merlia will make sure that the Have-It-All is there waitin’ to pick you up.”

“That’s it, you two.” Lacking an intercom, Julian Graves had to stand at the inner door of the airlock and shout. “Out of there, so we can cycle the lock. And the three of you—good luck.”

Rebka and Nenda left reluctantly, nowhere near as fast as Graves would have liked. He was waving them on as the inner door closed.

As the outer door began to open with a hiss of escaping air, Teri Dahl said to Sinara, “Did you notice the way that Captain Rebka was staring at us? I didn’t like it at all.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve seen men with that look before. He had an expression on his face as though he wanted to screw us.”

“That’s it exactly ! But what a time and what a place for it! In an airlock, in our suits, twenty seconds before we’re ready to leave the ship. I’d heard that men from the Phemus Circle are sex-mad, but this is crazy.”

“Hey, you two should worry.” Torran Veck was laughing. “He was looking at me in exactly the same way. There was a touch of it in Louis Nenda, too, if you watched him closely. You are reading it wrong. It was lust, all right—only they didn’t want to jump your bones, they want to be us. They want to go after Ben Blesh, too, so bad you could see it hurting. I think it’s the reason for Hans Rebka’s existence. If there’s trouble, he wants to be in the middle of it. But we’re the lucky ones. We get to go.” He reached out to take Sinara’s arm in his left hand and Teri’s in his right. “Come on. Ten seconds to their ignition. Let’s make sure we’re out of here before that.”

They did not wish to change their precisely calculated velocity vector, so the push to take them outside the Have-It-All ’s airlock was a gentle one. Sinara, Torran, and Teri drifted slowly away from the hull, keeping pace with it. The tiniest thrust from their suit jets could take them back into the air lock.

And then that was no longer true. The Have-It-All was gliding ahead, increasing speed as though it intended to plunge into the broad disk of debris. Within half a minute, Sinara could see another change. The ship was turning, thrusting itself away from the dangerous whirlpool and beginning the long drive out to and around the far-off bulk of the gas-giant M-2. She watched the pale-blue exhaust of relativistic particles until the wake of the Have-It-All ’s drive faded to nothing against the background of stars.

She, Teri, and Torran hovered in space with only each other for company. Except that they were not hovering. They were heading for the danger zone of Marglot’s remains, a kilometer closer every few seconds.

Inside a ship you could feel a sense of security, no matter how threatening the situation. You were surrounded by older people, experienced people who had seen a thousand dangers and found a way to live through them. That sense of security, false as it may have been, vanished when you had no protection but your suit and were exposed to the enormous openness that made up even the smallest planetary system.

As they approached the whirlpool of matter that had once been Marglot, Sinara’s feeling of discomfort increased. She steered her suit close to Torran and Teri, and noticed they were edging toward her.

“Still a long way to go.” Teri’s voice came over the suit radio. “Two and a half thousand kilometers to the nearest piece with a long-range radar reflectance. Seventeen thousand to Ben, according to his beacon.”

That was half a day’s journey, given the slow speed at which they were closing in on him. Their suits could pick up his distress beacon, but not his vital indicators. The Have-It-All , despite its distance, could monitor those, and Sinara had access to that information if she wanted it. She did not ask. Nor, she noticed, did Teri or Torran.

Half a day’s journey, but not a second of it in which they could afford to relax. Sinara had proof of that when her suit’s collision avoidance radar gave a loud beep and a great boulder rushed silently past. It appeared and disappeared so fast that her eyes scarcely had time to register its presence.

“I guess I was an optimist.” If Teri felt nervous, she hid it well. “The belt of debris is wider than I thought, and our long-distance radar registers only big fragments. Some of the really huge lumps in the belt must still be colliding and fragmenting and ejecting parts of themselves. Look out! Here’s another!”

This one was smaller, but Sinara saw it coming. She had time for a sudden spurt to the right, placing herself well out of harm’s way.

“Seems as though Julian Graves was right.” Teri had made the same sideways jump. “If we were as big and massive as the Have-It-All , that lump of rock wouldn’t have missed.”

“It wouldn’t have hit you,” Torran said. “It would have cleared you by at least ten meters. We don’t want to go hopping around if we can avoid it. We could lose our original velocity vector.”

“It wouldn’t matter. We can pick up the signal from Ben’s suit, and home in on that.”

“Not if it cuts off, we can’t.”

That had unpleasant implications which Torran did not need to spell out. Ben’s suit had ample power for the distress beacon. The signal would be lost only if the suit itself was damaged by impact. Ben’s chances of surviving in that case were slight.

Torran said suddenly, “Something’s wrong. My inertial guidance system shows me shifting away to the right.”

Sinara checked her own monitor. “Not just you. All of us. It’s a change of direction, but we’re not heading off course. E.C. Tally predicted this, and he allowed for it in his calculations of our original vector. The most massive chunks of Marglot still have a hefty gravitational pull, and we are responding to one. Unless there are chaotic effects which Tally couldn’t anticipate—”