Sergei Lukyanenko - The Genome

“So there was nothing unusual?” probed Alex. Paul looked at him in surprise.

“What could be so unusual about driving a ship from one planet to another?”

“Well, the fact that you all were dismissed, and a whole new crew had to be found. Why?”

Paul shrugged his shoulders.

“Were you bringing anything to Quicksilver Pit? Cargo? Passengers?”

“No.”

“Were there accidents during the flight? Non-compliance with orders?”

“Not at all!”

“Who recommended this trip to you? Who hired you on?”

“A fellow graduate from the academy. He had gotten a job on a military cruiser… well, you know… he has family connections…. As for hiring, it was done through the net, as usual. I sent an inquiry to the Freight Company, then got the contract…”

“The Freight Company?”

“Yes. It’s a small company, specializing in incidental deliveries and driving ships from planet to planet. The company is affiliated with the lunar shipyard, the one where this ship was built.”

Alex was silent. Everything Paul told him was plausible. The surplus of speshes on Earth wasn’t at all surprising, and neither was the custom of driving empty ships from place to place.

One problem remained. Driving crews were never formed for only one trip. To hire three people only to dismiss them—what for? Why not keep the three of them aboard and hire the rest of the crew on Quicksilver Pit? Or even hire the entire crew on Earth in the first place?

There was a possible answer, but it was way out of the ordinary.

“Forgive my questions, Paul, but I am a bit uneasy about this whole thing.”

He watched the youngster’s face closely, but Paul just smiled a shy smile.

“I’m not all that experienced in these matters, Captain.”

That made sense. Stupid of him to seek advice from a greenhorn. His communicator beeped. The sound was soft, so it wasn’t a secret call.

“Yes?”

“Captain”—the voice of the ship’s service program was soft, soothing—“the co-pilot Xang Morrison has arrived on board, sir.”

“Thank you.” Alex switched off the connection. “Paul, go to the cargo bay. Welcome the co-pilot aboard, give him a tour of the ship, and show him to his quarters.”

Paul nodded, getting up from his chair. Alex hesitated for a moment, and added:

“Oh, and please don’t scratch your name on the john anymore. Or on your bed. Despite the tradition. All right?”

He was curious to see the engineer’s reaction to his words.

Paul smiled and left.

Alex sat for a time, staring at the closed door. You should never enter a place without knowing how to exit. Or whether there is an exit. Or what awaits you outside.

But he’d already entered. Breaking the company contract was impossible without forever ruining his chances of other employment.

“Increase plating transparency,” he said, getting up from behind the table. The outer wall of his cabin vanished, opening a vista of the spaceport.

A boundless concrete field, with various vessels scattered here and there, big and small, old worn-out orbital clunkers and new interstellar liners. Though not too many of them…

And above it all, a gray sky. A sagging layer of dirty gray clouds and smog, several miles thick. How could anyone stand living here?

It suddenly occurred to him how richly the planet deserved its name of Quicksilver Pit. Not only because of the huge mercury deposits of the south continent: the famous Mirror Lakes, as beautiful as they were deadly. Those lakes had become the foundation for the entire planetary economy and killed off tens of thousands of workers. But the planet’s sky was also a quicksilver pit. It was beautiful, in its own way, and just as merciless. The lid of a gravity well with a teeming mass of millions of people, both speshes and naturals, forced together at the bottom.

“I’m so ready to get out of here,” Alex whispered to himself.

Gray clouds swirled into washed-out spirals. A fiery needle cut through the sky—somewhere far away, a tiny orbital ship had been launched. Alex followed it with his eyes, until the tiny flame was engulfed by the clouds.

Then he turned around and went to the bathroom unit. Took down his pants, sat on the toilet. Turned his head and cast a gloomy look on the pristine, white plastic wall. The laser in his Swiss Army knife was very weak, even at the maximum setting. Alex had to apply himself.

“Took on the rank of Captain,” he scrawled on the wall, and then added his signature, clear and easy to read.

Alex conducted their first drill late that night. Kim and Janet, of course, were not fully involved. The crew took to their battle stations according to the ship’s schedule, but Alex had no intention of putting the ship’s weapons systems on line. Some jumpy spaceport security officer might take it the wrong way.

Morrison took his pilot’s chair first—Alex didn’t mind. Let the co-pilot get used to the ship. He’d had it pretty rough lately…. Alex stood at his pilot’s chair in front of the control panel and watched its tiny flashing lights. The engineer was at his station. The navigator went to his. So did the co-pilot. And only when all battle stations had reported ready did the captain lay down in his chair.

The automatic straps fixed him in place with a soft click. This was an almost pointless precaution—after all, if gravity compensation failed, all living tissue would be torn apart. Still, even the craziest instructions had been issued for a reason; behind them was somebody’s life and somebody’s death.

“Contact…”

A warm wave washed away the cozy, tiny world of the pilot’s module.

Space opened up all around him in every direction. The planet, the cosmos, the ships. The glowing rainbow—the soul of his vessel. And other people’s consciousness like fiery vortexes circling around him.

Never before had Alex experienced this, seen the world this way—being in its center, at the very rainbow. The old Heron didn’t count—it had been a one-person ship.

His crew was waiting.

Alex reached for a small white vortex. He felt sure that was Kim, and he was right. The vortex curved toward him and its heat splashed onto Alex, a mixture of adoration, lust, flirtation… and a pure, completely unbridled readiness to destroy. Alex touched the vortex, as if slapping his hand onto hers, and recoiled away from her. Back towards the rainbow, towards the ship.

A dark-red clot of fire. Janet. She did not rush toward the captain. Just saluted him with a brighter flash. A cold, dying star… ready to explode at any moment and turn into the devouring blaze of a supernova.

A nebulous cloud of blue light. Like high-temperature plasma, bound by a magnetic trap. Alex watched Puck with intense curiosity, trying to see how he differed from the others. The navigator could not use a bioterminal because the neurons of his brain had not been altered. He entered the ship’s net with a primitive cable, like some spider from the spaceport accounting office. But it did not look as though that created any problems. The cloud glowed, greeting the captain.

A quivering white zigzag. A captured bolt of lightning. When Alex first entered the virtual space, the zigzag lengthened, straightening itself. The engineer. For some reason, Alex had been sure that Paul would look precisely this way. Nothing fancy, no quirks—the way a novice astronaut, just out of school, should look.

And finally, the other master-pilot. An emerald-colored spiral and a handful of precious gems, connected by an invisible thread and circling around the ship’s consciousness. Xang did not react to the captain’s presence at all. That was a bad sign.

Alex moved toward the rainbow light.