STOWAWAY TO THE STARS

As Ket’s news about Larry sank in, Karen felt a sudden wave of panic. Something had gone wrong? This couldn’t be happening. She stared at Ket in horror as Gen replied.

“I don’t understand. Larry was only meant to do the initial scouting.”

“I know, but something has happened. Larry’s ship has just dropped out of hyperspace. It was travelling at a crazy speed, nearly twenty milli-lights, the emergency beacon was activated, and he didn’t respond to communications. The ship wasn’t generating any thrust and it made no attempt to maneuver.” Ket paused and ran his fingers through his hair, looking distracted.

“Fortunately it was headed away from Central, and it won’t be difficult to recover because it’s not accelerating. Even so it will take a few hours to rescue. Rescue patrol has sent two ships up to get a tractor on it.”

Karen sank onto the nearest sofa, fighting the wave of nausea that overwhelmed her. She had a bad feeling about this mission from the start. She didn’t even want to think about the possibility that Larry might be dead, but what other answer could there be? At the very least he must be seriously injured.

Gen gave a little cry. “That’s terrible. Has the mission failed then?”

“There’s no news yet from the rest of the fleet, but they aren’t due back for some time yet. Larry should have been back ages ago, but I didn’t want to worry you until I had definite news. The one hope in all this is that he must have been conscious long enough to switch on the beacon and make the jump. I’ve asked them to keep me informed as soon as anything more is known.”

Karen buried her head in her arms. It was unbearable, being completely helpless to do anything. She had been deluding herself that her feelings for Larry were simply an infatuation for a charismatic spaceman. Now she realized she was head over heels in love with him – just when it might be too late.

It was crazy – she’d only known him a few days. But she hadn’t just seen him on a date, they’d been together the whole time, through a sequence of adversities. Throughout it all he’d been unfailingly kind and considerate to her. Crazy or not, she couldn’t deny what she felt. It didn’t matter that he was never likely to reciprocate her feelings, she still needed him to be alive and well.

Ket and Gen seemed to be finding it as hard as she was. The three of them sat about in a state of miserable anxiety for the next couple of hours, waiting for news. Gen resorted to the time-honored action in times of crisis and made hot drinks. Karen took a sip but it was too hot. She twirled the mug slowly round in her hands. When she took another mouthful it was practically cold. She put it on the table. Ket tried to read but he never seemed to turn the pages. Karen curled up in a chair again. Every now and again she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of the new outfit that she had been so pleased with a little while before.

The vidphone finally buzzed. They leapt to their feet and crowded round as Ket magnified the picture so that they could all see. It was the fleet commander on a direct link from his ship.

“Ket, we’ve just jumped back from Trajia system and I wanted to tell you what we know about Larry. First I should say that the mission has been a complete success, thanks in no small measure to him. We ringed the satellite planet and a barrage of defense missiles were launched which gave extra confirmation that we were on the right target. We fended off all the missiles without a problem, set up the planet-buster ring and the planet was destroyed.

“But before that, about two thirds of the way in to the target, we became aware of a disturbance directly behind us. Next thing we knew, Larry’s ship came shooting past the fleet going like a bat out of hell. We’d been slowing down for quite a while and we’re pretty sure that Larry was still accelerating, so the relative velocity was huge. He had two or three guard missiles tagging behind, and shortly afterward a shower of attack missiles went past in pursuit, but before they caught him he did a hyperspace jump.

“We sent two ships back to investigate and they found two Ziloni ships that had been stalking us. They were attacked and destroyed, but our ships saw signs of other debris around. We think Larry must have launched an attack as he went past and taken out at least one other ship.”

“Why did Larry get involved?” asked Ket. “I didn’t think he was taking any part in the actual attack.”

“You’re correct, he wasn’t. We expected Larry to return to Central as soon as we left him, but fortunately for us he didn’t. We suspect that some Ziloni ships on patrol saw us and were stalking us from behind in our blind spot. Larry must have seen our pursuers and made a high speed attack from the same blind spot. I’m sorry I don’t know any more, but we’re all praying that he will be all right.”

“Thank you for that information, Commander,” said Ket. “We’re grateful to you for taking the time to let us know before you even landed.” The connection went dead.

Ket exploded. “Shit, can that guy never keep out of trouble? I don’t know whether to be grateful he saved the mission or mad that he went and risked his life again.”

Gen went over and put her arm round him. “You know you wouldn’t want it any other way, darling. If he saw the mission was in danger he had no choice, he had to act. It’s so awful, not knowing if he’s all right. Are you sure there’s nothing we can do?”

“Not till they bring Larry back. We have to carry on waiting.”

Soon the vidphone buzzed again. This time it was news from the rescue team.

“Ket, we have Larry’s ship locked between our rescue ships now, but it will take a while to slow down again. He has way overshot Central but we can make a short hyperspace hop back. We should be down in a couple of hours or so. The ship seems to be intact but we can’t see Larry through the canopy. There’s massive burn damage and half of the canopy has turned opaque, probably from the heat blast.

“We are guessing that Larry is in the back, which we hope means he has got himself into the stasis unit. It’s lucky they’re standard equipment on IEP ships. We’ll find out when we’re back on the ground, but we’re going to land directly at the military hospital, so you might want to meet us there.”

Ket nodded. “Thank you for letting us know. We’ll do that.”

They made their way straight to the hospital, where they had another long wait. The sight of hospital staff going about their work unconcerned made a stark contrast with Karen’s feelings. Larry must be badly injured. Maybe dying, possibly already dead. No, he’d done the jump, he wasn’t dead. He’d always been so full of life, full of courage, even reckless at times. Why was there no sign of life from him? These thoughts kept buzzing round in her head. She’d go crazy if they didn’t hear something soon.

At last they heard the news that the rescue party had landed. Shortly afterward a frenzy of activity occurred as Larry was stretchered into intensive care.

There was more agonizing delay before a doctor emerged, only for Karen to hear the bad news that she had been dreading.

“I’m afraid Larry’s injuries are severe. It looks as if blink reaction and the rearward position of the explosion saved his eyes and most of his face, but his right arm is almost gone. He has massive burns down his right side and back, and significant radiation sickness as well. There must have been a lot of high energy radiation because the burns aren’t just on the surface, they go down deep and a lot of tissue has been destroyed or damaged.”

The doctor was addressing Ket, but Karen couldn’t contain herself. “He’s not going to die, is he?”

The doctor gave her a sad look. “I’m very sorry, you need to prepare yourselves for the worst. We can fix all the damage, of course, but the problem is that the trauma was so intense his body has gone into shock. Basically it’s shutting down. We’re giving him as much pain-killer and tranquilizer as we can, but it’s not enough. He’s completely unstable, so that when we tried to increase the dose it made his body shut down faster. We’re in a catch 42 position.”

Karen was not sure if she heard the last comment correctly.

“Are we able to go in and see him?” asked Gen.

“Yes, you can go in now if you’d like to pay your last respects. We’ve made him as comfortable as we can without doing any more damage. There’s nothing more we can do now – we can only wait for the inevitable.”

Ket said to Gen and Karen, “You go in first. There’s something I need to see to. I’ll be there in a moment.” Karen scarcely heard what he said, much less cared what he wanted to do. She felt numb. Her worst fears had been realized and all she could do now was to watch Larry die.

The two women were shown into Larry’s intensive care room. Karen looked at Larry and stifled a scream. She had been expecting him to be swathed in bandages, but instead he was covered in a transparent material, that she later discovered was sprayed on. The whole of his charred side, back and ruined arm were visible through the dressing. Gen must have been used to the type of dressing, but she still let out a little sob at the extent of the injuries.

Karen stood in stunned silence as she absorbed the horror of the situation. Larry had several tubes and wires connected, all emanating from a large machine that also showed a series of graphs and numbers, not too different from machines that Karen had seen on Earth.

A minute or two later Ket entered and stood looking for a few moments at the horrific injuries of his friend. Then he took Gen’s arm and whispered in her ear. She looked at him in surprise, but followed him as he led her out of the room.

That was odd, for them to leave at a time like this, but in her grief Karen was beyond caring. She couldn’t bear to look at Larry’s injuries, but she sat down beside the bed on the side where he was not badly burned, and took his undamaged hand in both of hers.

No longer in any doubt about her feelings for this man who had come into her life such a short time before, her instincts took over. Resorting without thinking to her native English, she cried out to him.

“Larry, please don’t die on me. I love you so much. I know I’ve been a bolshie, awkward cow but that was my stupid way of trying to cover up my feelings. I’ve lost the sister I loved and I can’t bear it to think I’m going to lose the only man I’ve ever loved as well. You took me down to Zilon and brought me out alive against all the odds. You can’t die now on what was supposed to be a milk run. Just live for me and I’ll look after you, however long it takes.”

She pulled his hand and squeezed it against her body. Was it imagination, or did she feel a slight response from him? She let go with a sigh of despair, laid her head on her arms on the side of the bed and wept quietly.

After a while a nurse entered the room. Karen jerked up, her face streaked with tears. The nurse seemed surprised to see Karen there alone, but simply said, “Hello, my dear. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m just checking up on our patient. Is he your partner?”

“Oh no,” said Karen much too quickly. “He is a friend who has been very kind to me.”

“I see,” although she didn’t sound as if she did. “I am so sorry for you then. This must be very hard for you, seeing him like this. He must be very tough to survive for so long.”

She checked various things on the monitoring machine, made a few notes and left again.

Karen stared dully at the machine. She saw obvious heartbeat and breathing indications and other graphs, and one particular number prominently displayed. She was still not good with Universal numbers, not least because they were in hexadecimal and had sixteen symbols for the digits. But she was fairly sure that the number was slowly creeping down, measuring Larry’s life ebbing away.