Zach Hughes: The Legend of Miaree

She had lost speed. To regain it, it was necessary to orbit with the belt, mass equalized with pull. And a new course had to be plotted. Busy with it, she started when, with a piping complaint, the sensors told of another flyer, approaching from outward. She noted its distance, continued with her calculations. Finished, she addressed herself to the intruder.

Amazingly, it was approaching on a direct line, heading toward the asteroid belt at storm speed. No, faster. Unbelievingly, she watched as her instruments confirmed the speed and bulk. No flyer, that. Not driving directly into the wind. And a driver coming head on at the belt? Were they mad?

"Danger, danger," she sent, on all frequencies, emergency and communicative. "To unknown driver in Area Y-23-5-A, you are on collision course with belt. Veer off."

She listened. From Outworld she heard communicators. A mining driver in the belt identified itself. There was no communication from the driver, which, at strange speeds, came toward her.

She turned communicators to maximum peak, repeated her warning. And now the viewer picked up the approaching driver and measured it. Mass, size. Incredible. Her heart leaped. God!

In all of the system there was no driver of that size. In all of the system no driver of that configuration.

She flashed the system-wide danger signal in all forms, visual, auditory. Light flared from the nose of the driver, and it was braking, but too late. It swept into the belt at a speed which she had not matched at the height of the storm’s fury, going outward. With its speed and mass, it weaved only slightly, picking its way. It passed within thirty thousand miles of her, and at first she hoped that due to its incredible maneuverability, it would pass through untouched. The brief bursts of light, comparable to the light of flares on the sun, seemed to be immensely powerful. The driver was using the force of the sun and that made it absolutely certain that it was not of the Artonuee system. And there was a feeling of awe about her, watching,

praying. Behind, the blackness of space was fired by the massed, exploding stars and there, in local blackness, the fires of a miniature sun as the alien blasted a terrible curve past still another hard, faceted chunk of rock; she could not believe that anything could withstand the stresses of that curve. And then it was making it, followed by her instruments, a blip now on the full screen of the viewer, but almost past, free, almost, in the emptiness of interplanetary space toward New World, a shower of tiny particles, a wall of inertial force as tangents merged and the alien struck, small asteroids bouncing away, larger ones doing terrible damage, and with a crunching finality, the almost head-on contact, at that awesome speed, with the parent rock of the cluster. The alien spun, wheeled ponderously, regained straight-line flight, but it was visibly limping, losing air into all-devouring space as Miaree accelerated, tacking toward it. Her speed matching the speed of the alien now, then overtaking.

Something had spewed into space. Her sensors warned, and she avoided the trail of entrails. Maximum magnification showed the objects to be inanimate, some mechanical, parts ripped and torn from the skin of the alien driver.

With a start, she saw the front of the driver light, braking again. Now it was in the pull of the sun and its original speed was a terrible handicap. The lights of the braking were seemingly weaker. Again and again they flashed, as if in desperation. Still the sunward momentum was in command.

And there was nothing she could do. Even an Artonuee driver could not outdistance a flyer on a sunward track. And as the alien driver accelerated, she saw it pull away.

God, it was unfair. All the years of speculation, of hope, of effort. All the wealth poured into sending unreturned signals into space. And there it was, a driver, a driver from out, and it was diving for the sun on a straight line and would plunge into the furnace in—she calculated—three days.

It was unfair to her and to all Artonuee and it was unfair to the beings on board the doomed flyer. For there, in that battered hulk, was the secret to resist God. To come to the Artonuee system, the driver had had to cross interstellar space. And, unless it was an incredibly old robot machine, it had had to fly at a speed which proved, with finality, that God’s laws were not absolute.

These were her thoughts as she chased futilely after the runaway miracle from the stars. And as it passed the orbit of New World, no longer blinking in that desperate effort to break its fall into the sun, she felt a surge of despair.

Lost. Irretrievably lost. Salvation for the race within her sight and now gone. A blip on the viewer, a tiny particle lost in the vastness of space. Accelerating with the sun’s pull. Leaving her behind as she forgot her flight plan and went past New World in the desperate hope that, at the last minute, a miracle would happen.

She lost the driver in the fires of the sun as it passed the orbit of First Planet, and far from home, overdue, she once again rode the winds outward, but no longer ebullient. Saddened. Shamed at her inability to help.

They were broadcasting her call when she opened the communicators. She edged into Haven, a half-day overdue. The committee awaited at the dock. A stern male boarded Rim Star and confiscated the in-flight recorder.

She was numbed, helpless. It was only when the controller picked up the empty bottle, the jenk liquor bottle, that she was able to submerge her sadness in common sense. The flight recorder would contain her frantic messages to the alien, the messages which had been, apparently, unheard. And such things were not for mere males. There was meaning here. Males, hearing her description of the alien, would say, "It is only the jenk."

"I plead immunity on the grounds of discovery." she said, as the stern-faced male looked at her.

"That is a serious statement. Don’t make it worse, my daughter, by clutching at motes in the wind."

"Nevertheless, I plead." she said. "And I request direct transport to Nirrar to report my discovery." There was the diamond asteroid, of course, but it was not that now diminished discovery which concerned her. She wanted to talk with Mother Aglee. The asteroid would cover her movements.

"And this?" The controller was holding the empty bottle. "Does pleading discovery excuse this flagrant breach of regulations?"

"I will face that." she said. "I will accept my penalty."

"It is usual to withdraw flying rights."

"For how long?" Her heart was hurting. Not to fly ?

"A year. More."

Oh, no, she thought. Oh, no.

"We will put a seal on the flyer." the controller said, "until the hearing."

The small executive driver which lowered her to the Nirrar port was luxurious and comfortable, but the pleasure was lost on her. In her mind, she could hear the disintegrating whine of metals, the crackle of liquid fire, could imagine the terminal pain of burning. She could see, with her large eyes lidded, the strangely fashioned driver as it plunged sunward. She closed off all sensation, became encased in her body, suffered with the beings aboard the driver, dead by now.

She lifted her privacy screen only when the crush of deceleration weighted her body. She was alone in the passenger section, was standing when the flight crew sent clearance and the outer door hissed, then lowered. Laden with carry luggage, still dressed in spacecloth, she walked from the pad, registered incoming, saw the fare charged to her personal credit. In the warm sun of New World, she stood, hair mussed, smelling chargy from ten days of flying, waved to a public roller.

She knew the city well. They gave the driver directions, waved aside his objections. "It’s shorter to take the river road, lady," he said.