STOWAWAY TO THE STARS

Karen’s request had a dramatic effect on Larry. He spluttered on his cereal so much that, for a moment, she thought he might choke.

“What? You cannot possibly come with me. That is crazy, and quite out of the question.”

She had to bite her lip to stop from smiling at the effect her words had on this man. He had always been so self-assured and in control.

“Why not? I know it’s dangerous, but I’d rather die in action than risk a slow death of starvation here, if anything goes wrong with your rescue plan.”

He put down his spoon and stared into her eyes intently. “Look Karen, I have no choice about this. It’s all that is left for me to try, now that the Ziloni have tracked me down. But I cannot risk another person’s life. Not again.” He leaned back and took a deep breath, then spoke more slowly. “You will be safe here. Nothing can go wrong, and in a couple of weeks, whether or not I make it back, you will get home. Come with me and it’s a near certainty that you will be killed, and I will have to be watching out for you instead of concentrating on what I’m trying to do.”

She tossed her hair. “I don’t care. It may have been all right for you hiding out here, with a spaceship outside if you wanted to get away. But you’re expecting me to stay in this cave, with that depressing red light outside, worried sick that if you don’t come back, and if your message probes don’t work, no one will know where I am. Or even if they do, they may not care. Why should they? I’ll be stuck here till I die a slow, horrible death of thirst or starvation. I can’t face that.”

She paused just long enough for a deep breath. “I know I can’t make you take me, but I swear if you abandon me here, I’ll walk straight out into the cold and keep going till I drop, and if you do manage to get back I’ll be gone. I’m not afraid to die if that’s how it works out. I’ve brought this on myself and I’ve come to terms with it, but at least if I go with you, I’ll be trying to do some good, and if I die it will be for something worthwhile, which is better than my poor sister managed, dying a pointless, lonely death of a drug overdose because she got mixed up with the bastard I was trying to track down.”

By the time she had finished she was breathless. For several seconds she glared at him, challenging him to deny her.

Studying his face, she could see him gradually lose his determined look. Now he had a sad expression and looked almost defeated.

“Karen, what about if I promise to help you track down the man responsible for your sister’s death, if only you will stay here safely.”

Just for a moment she was tempted, and she felt her resolve slipping. Then she saw the flaw in his offer.

“Oh great, you’re telling me that this mission is practically certain death, but if you come back you’ll help me. Does that mean you’ll help me if I stay, but you won’t if I insist on going with you?”

Larry started to reply, but broke off. He gave a big sigh.

“Damn it, Karen, what are you talking me into? This is madness.”

She’d done it – he was on the run. She pressed home her advantage. “But you won’t leave me here?”

His eyes had a haunted look as he shook his head.

****

They finished eating in silence. Karen avoided looking at Larry as she ate. Now that he’d given in, she felt apprehensive about what she had got herself into. She didn’t want to give him any opportunity to try and change her mind. But he made no attempt, he seemed to be busy with his private thoughts. What was going through his mind right now? Probably best that she didn’t know.

After they had cleared away breakfast, Larry collected together various things from his stores in the cave. In particular he selected a good stock of about twenty small, colored spheres, about six millimeters in diameter. She couldn’t restrain her curiosity and had to ask what they were.

“They are various grades of explosive. I suppose you could call them mini-grenades. I bought them for excavation work when I first set up the cave. I only used a couple, and now I think I might put the rest to better use.”

They didn’t look big enough to do much, but he must know what he was doing. She suppressed the urge to ask more questions.

When he started to put away the message probes, a thought occurred to her.

“Can I ask you a favor, or maybe it’s a favor from your friend. I can face dying if it happens, but I can’t bear the thought that my parents will never know what has happened to me. I’m the only family they have left, and as far as they are concerned I will have just disappeared. Could you send that message probe to your friend and ask him to tell them I’ve died, if we don’t come back?”

Larry put the probes down thoughtfully. “That is an excellent idea. I’ll send a message probe, to be opened only if Ket does not hear from me within two weeks. I can also report the ambush and what we plan to do. You can record an audio message for your parents as well, as long as you don’t put in any details.”

Karen recorded her message, ending it, “. . . so Mom and Dad, if you get this message you’ll know I’m not coming back. Please try not to grieve for me too much. I love you both.” Please God let them never hear this message. They’d already lost Rachel, to lose another daughter would devastate them. Even so, it would be better that they knew than the agony of endless wondering.

Larry set up one of the probes, loaded it with their messages, and took it outside. A slight pressure on a pad on the side sent it rocketing upward for all the world like a firework, but silently except for a single boom as it went through the sound barrier, less than a second into the flight. Within a couple more seconds it was out of sight.

It didn’t take long to clear up the cave and switch off the lights and heaters. Larry picked up the things he had collected together, including the mini-grenades, and they made their way back to the ship.

Despite the grim purpose of their mission, Karen couldn’t help a flutter of excitement as they climbed back aboard Larry’s spaceship. This time she took her place in the right-hand front seat, with a magnificent view through the wide canopy. Compared with films she’d watched with pilots starting up airplanes, it seemed effortless for Larry. He just activated a few switches – well, little pressure pads actually, there didn’t seem to be any switches as such. After a brief examination of a couple of read-outs, he pitched the nose up to point straight at that dark green sky. The ground fell away with amazing speed.

The complete lack of engine sound was the hardest thing to get used to. There was nothing to hear but the high-pitched whistle from the airflow over the ship’s surface. She stared out of the canopy in fascination as the sky darkened and the ground below transformed itself into a dwindling planet.

“Will it be a long trip?” she asked.

“About the same as before. The hyperspace jump is always instantaneous, no matter how far we are going. What takes the time is to get out of the atmosphere and to accelerate from there all the way out to the hyperspace boundary. Usually about fifteen to twenty minutes. It’s the same in reverse at the other end as we fly down to the destination.”

“That’s incredible. I sometimes take that long to drive to work on a busy day, and we’ll have travelled from one star to another. So when we get to this boundary we do the jump. After that, will we see Zilon ahead like we saw Hideaway?”

“Yes, that’s all there is to it.”

“How do you intend to get down to the surface of the planet without being blown up or captured? You said something crazy about sneaking in behind a spaceliner.”

A flicker of a smile crossed Larry’s face. “That’s right. I want to wait for an inbound spaceliner and tag so close behind it that the Ziloni viewscreens won’t show us as a separate trace. I warned you it was risky. It will be the equivalent of driving on a motor racing circuit and following another racing car braking into the bends, about half a meter behind it.”

Karen digested this information and thought for a while. “How will you get up close to the liner without them seeing you?”

Larry chuckled. “Ah, you have spotted the flaw in my plan. We cannot possibly approach the liner without being detected. We will have to make them believe that we have been destroyed.”

Karen raised her eyebrows. What had he got to smirk about? “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

“It will be fine. I shall pretend to be a small private spaceship in distress and out of control, and head flat out toward the spaceliner. I suspect they will launch a guard missile to defend themselves, and it will counter attack when we get close.”

She looked at him in alarm. “They’re going to counter attack, and you call that fine.”

“Don’t worry. We will launch our own interceptor missile to take it out. When the two missiles explode, we will switch off our ident. With luck they will think that we have been destroyed. I shall need to tuck in close enough, during the confusion, so that the ground station won’t be able to see us as a separate trace.”

Karen frowned. “What exactly is an ident?”

“It’s a coded radio identity signal that ships broadcast continuously, which shows up on the viewscreens.”

Karen looked back at Hideaway, still a large red disc almost out of view behind them. It would be a while yet before they could make that weird jump, from what she remembered of its size when they first saw it. She thought again about Larry’s crazy scheme with his missiles.

“So how do all these missiles work? And why missiles? I’d have thought you’d use lasers or something much more advanced. We use missiles at home.”

“We do have laser weapons, for things like hand guns. And the heavy ships of the Union Space Defense Force have a whole range of beam weapons, neutron fluxes and so on. But in space we mainly use missiles, because of the distances involved, though they are far more complex than the ones you have on Earth. It is very hard to hit a moving target, thousands of kilometers away, without being able to home in on it the way only a computer-controlled missile can do.”

He punched a pad on the instrument panel and the amazing 3-D viewscreen changed to a different display. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, he continued.

“There are two main types of missile. Ordinary ships are not supposed to carry attack missiles, but as it happens I have a few on board. We meet some unusual situations in our IEP work and you never know when they might be needed!” He gave her a rueful smile before continuing.

“Any ship can carry defense missiles, and most do. Very occasionally they are needed for protection. We normally launch them in guard mode. They tag behind the parent ship until they detect an incoming missile, when they switch to intercept mode. Also, they communicate with each other, so only one at a time will attack any incoming target.”

Larry’s voice was beginning to sound rather brittle. She’d better leave him alone for now. On the surface he seemed relaxed, but little signs suggested otherwise. A tenseness round his eyes, a tightness in his grip on the joystick, betrayed the strain he must be feeling. She sat back and watched him working – though in truth there didn’t seem to be much he needed to do at present.

In the quietness she had time to think about the enormity of what she’d got herself into. She had developed a flair for making these rash decisions. Would it have been so bad to stay safe on Hideaway for a few days? How would she react when something went wrong and she stared death in the face? Did anyone know beforehand whether they would turn into a pathetic coward? Well, avoiding that was what she had to concentrate on. Scared or not, there was no way her pride would let her change her mind.

****

Larry had been happy to answer Karen’s questions at first, but he was glad of the break in conversation. Somehow he’d been rushed into this mad scheme to take her with him. He could understand how she would hate to be left alone on Hideaway. Was the only alternative to get her killed along with him?

He might still get away with a brief landing on an Associate planet, the way he had done on Carinara. Except that with Karen accompanying him, it wouldn’t be brief. He’d have to explain why she had no ID, and that would have them investigating him closely. No, that wouldn’t work.

Should he have left her behind despite her protests? He couldn’t believe she would really commit suicide rather than stay there. Probably he would have had to physically restrain her from coming with him, though. After everything else she’d been through, he wasn’t sure whether he could have done that to her. Those damned eyes had broken his resolve, when she gazed at him, her eyes pleading with him. What eyes they were too – large, full of expression and an incredible shade of violet. When she looked at him like that it was very hard to refuse anything.

He had done his best to make her appreciate what she was getting into, and she had made that message for her parents. Maybe she did understand. All he could do now was try his best to keep them both alive.

He tried to put his concern out of his mind. They were getting close to the hyperspace boundary, and he wanted to think about the next stage of their mission.

Judging his course and flying the ship would take all his concentration, once he located a suitable spaceliner to track. He could use Karen’s help to handle the missiles. Would she be able to work the unfamiliar controls on the missile unit, and could he rely on her under pressure?

“Karen, I shall have my work cut out to match speed with this spaceliner when we find it. Do you think you would be able to launch the missiles and switch off the ident when I tell you, if I show you how?”

She thought for a moment. “Show me how it works and I’ll tell you if I think I can do it.”

Larry pointed to the missile unit. “That pad drops a single defense missile for each press. Don’t touch the one next to it, that is for a multiple launch. Over there is a blue button with an indicator light above it.” He pointed down low to her right. “You press the button until the light goes out to kill the ident.”

“That all looks pretty straightforward,” said Karen. “I’m sure I can manage that. What happens if they don’t launch a missile?”

“Ah yes, that had occurred to me as a possibility. In that case I will make a radio call that the engine is about to explode, then you must launch one of our attack missiles and self-destruct it straight away. Hopefully they will assume it’s us blowing up.”

He pointed out the cover protecting the attack missile selector and the self-destruct mechanism. Was this getting too complicated for her? “Are you sure you can manage either eventuality?”

She snorted. “Larry, it’s just a few pressure pads. Stop worrying.”

“I do worry. It’s vital that we get this right.”

She put her hand on his and squeezed. “I know, but I’m not stupid, just because I don’t understand everything. I’ll be okay.”

“Good. All that is left to do is to fake the ident signal to a believable private ship code.”

“Can you do that? It sounds like a poor system if you can fake the signals.”

“You can’t on normal ships, but our IEP ships are fitted with special idents that you can switch off. It would give the game away when we visit a planet like Earth if we had an ident signal broadcasting for anyone to pick up. And of course, once there is a weakness in the system, if you know what to do you can hack into it and change it. At least, that is what one of the guys on my last training session assured me.”

He noticed that Karen was frowning. “Are you worried about whether this will work?”

“Oh no, it sounds fine. I can see that if you get in close without an ident you won’t be detected by air traffic control, or whoever they are. Won’t the spaceliner itself see us, though?”

“Not visually, because I shall tuck in underneath them where all ships have a blind area. They won’t detect us on their viewscreens either, unless they decide to zoom their display right in. That is not likely because they will think we have been destroyed, and they won’t be looking for a ship without an ident. We don’t advertise the fact that we can switch ours off.”

Soon the light on the hyperspace console turned blue and Larry adjusted the hyperspace unit carefully.

“I want to come out of hyperspace a little way out from the hyperspace boundary. I might not find a suitable spaceliner first time, in which case I can jump back and try again. They shouldn’t notice me because their viewscreens aren’t likely to be set to show much beyond the boundary.”

He grunted in satisfaction. “Right, we’re set. This is the last chance for you to come to your senses and back out. After we find a ship we’re committed.”

“There’s no way I’m going back.”

“Here we go then.” He looked seriously at her for a moment. “Let’s hope we have good luck, we shall need it. I hope that we come through this together.”

He pressed the pad, and they made the first jump. It took three tries before he found the spaceliner he wanted.

“About time,” he said. “Can you switch the ident on?”

Karen pressed the ident button while he set the radio to channel one, the standard initial contact channel for all planets. The channels were not single frequencies, but different patterns of frequency hopping. He thumbed the radio transmit pad and spoke in Universal in a panic-stricken voice.

“Zilon Control. Help us please. This is private ship five two nine. We’ve been hit by a meteorite. Our controls aren’t working properly.”

“Private five two nine, you have no authorization to be in our sector. We are unable to assist with a damaged ship. Please return to your point of origin.”

“We can’t jump again. Our hyperspace unit is damaged. Please advise.”

“Private five two nine, stand by. I’ll see whether we can provide any assistance once you have slowed down. Meantime, remain outside our control zone. Out.”

“Makes you glad we are not really in trouble, doesn’t it,” murmured Larry.

“Yes, that wasn’t very friendly at all. But I’m still getting used to the fact that Universal sounds like gibberish, yet somehow I can understand it. It feels weird.”

Larry nodded and gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “Now comes the difficult bit. Be ready with the missiles.”

He pushed his control stick forward and they accelerated toward the liner while he worked out an intercept course.

Shortly, the radio came to life again. “Zilon Control to Liner one foxtrot seven, there is a crippled private ship that seems to be on a closing course to you. We will keep you advised. Break. Private five two nine, you are on a closing course with a spaceliner. You MUST change course.”

“Private five two nine, our controls are not responding.” He paused. “Now our air pressure is dropping. We’re in urgent need of assistance.”

“Liner one foxtrot seven, the private is not complying. We suggest you temporarily reduce deceleration to allow the private to pass behind you.”

“Reducing deceleration to sixty percent. One foxtrot seven.”

Larry nudged the stick back to maintain an interception course. That was a piece of luck. It gave him more spare reverse thrust for the final lining up, if they didn’t catch on to what he was doing.

“One foxtrot seven, it looks as if that maneuver may not be sufficient to avoid a close approach. We advise you to deploy a precautionary guard missile.”

“Roger, Zilon Control. We are launching two guards.”

Damnation. He didn’t need that, things were complicated enough already.

He glanced over at Karen. “We have an extra problem now. Those missiles will communicate. Probably only one will attack at a time. We must only launch one interceptor for each attacker, or we risk hitting the liner, and only at the last moment, or they will see what we are doing. I will tell you how many to fire, and when. Can you handle that?”

She nodded. Please the saints she’ll be able to cope under pressure.

They were closing fast and he made one last call.

“Private five, er five two, er nine. We’re losing air fast. We can’t br-e-a . . .”

He braked hard and lined up directly behind as they closed fast on the liner. Ah, he had a visual on it now. Which way up was it? He needed to end up under the belly so they didn’t see him.

He caught a glimpse of a red trace on his viewscreen and called, “FIRE ONE!”

Please don’t freeze, Karen.

She didn’t. As the missile trace vanished he called, “IDENT OFF!” She must have seen the distant flash because she was already punching it off.

Almost immediately Larry said, “FIRE ONE. Second incoming.”

This time the flash was much closer. Then they were right underneath the liner, and he slammed on maximum reverse thrust as they shot past. He eased off to try and match decelerations as they dropped behind again. Too much, and they overtook the liner once more, very close this time. A bit more back pressure and he was behind again, better matched this time, frantically trimming to ease off the stick pressure. The liner drifted away sideways and he nudged a little side thrust. That left him matched as well as he could and holding about a hundred meters behind, slightly underneath in case the liner suddenly braked harder and he shot past again.

A frantic juggling act followed, with the liner jerking nearer and farther like a yo-yo, as Larry tried the almost impossible task of matching the fifty gee deceleration of the ship in front, to a fraction of a gee.

Meanwhile the radio was busy. “Zilon Control to Liner one foxtrot seven, please confirm your status. The private ident and trace are gone, but we still read your ident.”

“Zilon Control, our systems report no damage detected. It was hectic for a moment, though. We were unable to zoom in fast enough to see exactly what happened. We think we saw debris flying around, and more traces than we would have expected. For some reason both missiles deployed. We assume the second one must have been triggered by a piece of large motor debris. Everything has disappeared now. We’re very sorry about the private, we see no trace either.”

“Roger one foxtrot seven. It was unavoidable. It sounded as if they were fatally damaged anyway. You are cleared straight in for priority landing at Zadeg spaceport, not above Mach zero point nine once in atmosphere. Contact Zadeg Approach now on channel eight. You can file a full incident report once landed, and we’ll need to check your screen recordings.”

Larry managed to switch his own radio to channel eight while juggling his joystick, and muttered, “Zadeg, that’s a shame. It’s on a different continent to our target.”

Never mind, for the moment he had to concentrate on matching his deceleration all the way down. One slip and they’d be detected – or worse.

****

Karen watched Larry in fascination. He was working so hard to keep in position. The liner jittered violently in front of them, too close for her comfort. Concentration showed in Larry’s intense stare ahead, sweat was beading on his forehead and his knuckles were taut on the joystick. Yet she could see no perceptible movement of the stick, just subtle pressure changes.

His comment about being on the wrong continent was odd, but she was too preoccupied with the close proximity of the crazily dancing liner to think much about it.

Slowly Larry got better at his task and she saw him relaxing a little. Judging that he could talk now, she asked, “Why did you make that last radio message about losing air?”

“I wanted to give the impression we would die anyway. I didn’t want the liner pilot feeling too bad about shooting us down, as he thought he was doing. He will feel terrible about it as it is.”

Something else had been nagging in her mind. “Is there really a danger of meteorites?”

Despite the tension, Larry gave a small laugh. “It’s very rare. About the same chance as two of your airplanes colliding, and much the least of our worries.”

Before long he was working hard again to stay on the liner’s tail as it maneuvered for the final descent through the atmosphere. They made a whole sequence of yo-yo movements as the liner changed its direction and rate of deceleration.

Each time the liner lurched toward them, Karen winced. She imagined them smashing into the back of the liner, though she could see that Larry carefully kept slightly below it, so they should miss it if he misjudged their speeds. It seemed to fill the windscreen in front, though that was just an illusion. It was close enough for her to see markings and the front and rear winglets, though.

As they descended through the atmosphere she could see, beyond the liner, that the sky outside was turning blue and the stars had disappeared. Larry interrupted her mesmerized gaze. “I have to keep my eyes glued to this ship. Would you look round outside and locate the nearest ocean?”

“Okay, but why?”

“We are going swimming.”

That wasn’t much of an answer, but she could see he was preoccupied again.

Karen looked around. Below were greens and browns of land surface, and what might be a large town, partly obscured by big, fluffy white clouds. She spotted a large ocean in the distance. “The sea is over here on the right.”

“How far away do you think it is?”

She leaned forward to see better. “I’m sorry, it’s very hard to estimate. There are a couple of towns between us and the coast.”

“Never mind. Just so long as I know which way it is. I shall get as low as I dare before we go for it. Keep it in view and warn me if it looks as if it will go out of sight.”

Details began to appear in the landscape – individual fields, lakes, and what might be roads. Soon, as the liner slowed for its final approach to land, Larry broke away, swung right, located the ocean and accelerated hard toward it.

The radio burst into life. “Liner one foxtrot seven, something has parted from your ship. No wait, it has to be another ship. Where the hell did that come from? All military units, code red. We have an unidentified ship in the lower atmosphere, descending and heading out to sea west of Zadeg. I repeat, code red. Intercept and destroy.”

They were too late. Larry was up to Mach 5, spreading a massive sonic boom that must be annoying the people below, as the landscape raced by. The steel-blue water was approaching fast. When it seemed to Karen that they could already see the white-flecked tops of the ocean swell, he flattened out and braked hard, skimming the waves briefly until they had almost stopped. Karen gave a little shriek as they plunged below the surface.