"So no more ice dips?" asked one of the miners.
"It won't rid the ship of all movement entirely," said Victor. "There would still be some slight shifting since it will take a moment for the sensor to detect the steam, but the movement will be far more gentle, like slight waves instead of sudden, jarring jolts."
Marco flew down into the hole and drilled the steam sensor into the inner rock wall as Victor suggested. When he returned, he ushered everyone back to a safe distance and had them lower their blast shields over their visors.
"It's still a prototype," Victor reminded them. "I can't guarantee the beam won't go off center. It's bound to need some serious adjustments."
"Shut up and drill," said Marco.
Victor blinked the commands into his heads-up display, and the laser blasted down into the rock. Within seconds the laser hit ice, and the ship began to dip. The retros adjusted and the drill countered. It wasn't perfect; the beam still wavered a bit.
"Needs tweaking," said Victor. He called up the commands on his display. His eyes moved quickly, and he gave the appropriate blink commands, making the needed adjustments. Twenty seconds later the laser hit another pocket of ice. Steam issued from the hole, but the retros responded quickly and smoothly this time. The drill responded perfectly as well, without the slightest waver from side to side.
Everyone cheered. Mono was punching the sky, whistling.
Marco was smiling. "She handles light. Sweet."
"So I'm on the right track," said Victor. "Now I can get to work on the real version."
"Does Concepcion know about this?" asked Marco
"We didn't want to tell anyone until we knew it worked. Now that it shows some promise, I'll get my dad involved. He may have some improvements in mind."
"I'll take two," said Marco, smiling. "One for the new drill as well." He gave Victor an affectionate knuckle tap on the helmet.
When Victor and Mono finally returned to the ship, Mono was on an emotional high. "You'd be rich on Earth, Vico. Stinking rich. All these ideas of yours. They'd pay you millions of credits."
"I'm seventeen, Mono. I'd be lucky to get an assembly-line job. No one would take me seriously. Out here we can do whatever we want. On Earth it's different. Besides, you and I did this together. The stabilizer was both of us."
"I helped with mindless welding and soldering in the workshop. The ideas were yours."
"Your hands are way steadier than mine. You do the micro work far better than I do. Even Father can't solder like you."
Mono beamed.
When they floated out of the decompression chamber and back into the cargo bay, Isabella was waiting for him. She was Chilean, zogged by the family when Victor was just a kid and married to Mother's second cousin. More importantly, she was very close with Janda.
"I need to speak with Vico in private, Mono," said Isabella. "Would you give us a moment?"
Mono shrugged. "I got circuits to rebuild in the workshop. See you around, Vico."
Isabella waited until Mono was gone, then turned to Victor. "I know you're upset. And I don't blame you."
Victor kept his face a blank. Isabella wasn't quite old enough to be on the Council, so she might not be speaking of Janda.
Isabella rolled her eyes. "Don't play dumb, Vico. I'm not an idiot. I know what just happened here. They sent Jandita away. And you hid out with the machinery instead of telling her good-bye."
"Yes, I was a coward," said Victor.
"No, you weren't," said Isabella. "You were trying to make sure nobody on Vesuvio ever accused Jandita of being in love with a cousin. And don't look surprised. Just because I figured it out doesn't mean anyone else did. Jandita was a model of composure at the airlock. I don't think anyone suspected a thing. She actually made the Italians believe she was excited about going."
"How did you figure it out?"
"Jandita is my niece, Vico. I am her favorite aunt. I know her thoughts better than her own mother perhaps. Plus, I'm observant. I see and hear all." She gave Victor a wink, and he furrowed his brow. "Relax," she said. "I never saw anything improper between you two. What I mean is that I know the signs. Jandita is not the first girl to have fallen in love with her cousin, you know."
Victor read the rueful expression on her face. "You're confessing?"
"I was eighteen. He was my second cousin as well. I doubt he even knew that I loved him. The year I realized it, I came to this ship and married your uncle Selmo."
Technically Selmo wasn't Victor's uncle. He was his second cousin once removed, but all men on the ship were uncles, more or less.
"Does Selmo know?" asked Victor.
Isabella laughed. "Of course he knows. We laugh about it now. I was young and starry-eyed. I barely knew what I wanted in a husband then."
"So Alejandra is starry-eyed and naive."
"Not at all. I suspect she will think of you for the rest of her life. She's far more mature at sixteen than I was at eighteen. My point is you're not a villain, Vico. I know you. You'll beat yourself up over this, and you shouldn't. She's your second cousin. Any place on Earth, you could have married, and no one would have batted an eye."
"Maybe that's because there are more sick and twisted dirtbags on Earth."
Isabella laughed. "They're human, Vico. Just like us. We can't help it if we hold ourselves to a higher standard." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Promise me you won't torture yourself over this."
What did she expect of him? That he could shrug this off and chalk it up as one of those life experiences that everyone has? Isabella meant well. That was clear. She loved him like she loved Janda. But words of comfort couldn't bring the comfort she wanted to give. He wasn't going to wake up tomorrow and think: What a valuable life lesson that was. He wasn't going to move on. Not here, at least. He realized that now. Everywhere he turned he would see Alejandra. Everything would spark a memory of her. She would haunt him here. How could he take a bride onto this ship? Even if the family zogged someone for him in the next year or so, how could he parade a wife through halls that reminded him of someone else? Of course zogging had worked for Isabella. Of course she could move on. She had left that previous life behind her. She had closed that door. Nothing in her new life would remind her of her old one. Victor wouldn't have that luxury. Not if he stayed here.
I need to get out, he realized. Go to Luna perhaps. Or Earth or Mars. He didn't know how to make it happen, but he knew in that instant that it must.
He looked at Isabella and gave her the smile she expected. "I will do my best."
She looked content. "Good. I'll be watching you. If I sense any self-loathing, I will beat you senseless."
"I'm sure you could. But honestly, I'll be fine."
"No you won't. But I'm glad you'll try."
They parted then. Victor went to the lockers and changed out of his spacesuit. He would have to tell his parents that he was leaving. Mother would argue with him, but Father would see the sense in it. As much as Father would hate to admit it, he would agree with Victor. He couldn't leave immediately, of course. He didn't have the means. It would be months before they found another family willing to give Victor a ride in that direction. But he could prepare himself now. He could start today. Luna, Earth, and Mars all had gravities, and Victor's legs weren't strong enough to take on the Gs. He needed strength training. He needed the fuge.
The centrifuge was at the heart of the ship. It only stopped spinning twice an hour, to let people in or out, so Victor had to wait a few minutes after he arrived for the hatch to open. Inside there were a dozen people scattered throughout the room, most of them standing on the wall or floor, waiting for the fuge to get back up to speed so they could continue with their exercise. A few of them like Victor had just entered, and these made their way to the wall where all the magnetic greaves were hung. Victor followed them, already feeling the centripetal force pull him to the floor.
He found a pair of greaves that looked to be his size and strapped them around his shin
s. Soon he was standing upright, the magnets holding his feet firmly to the floor. Greaves weren't like real gravity. More like one-sixth of a G, or what someone might experience on the surface of Luna. The trick with greaves was you had to work hard to keep your legs under you, constantly pulling your feet forward as you stepped, dragging against the pull of the greaves.
But greaves weren't enough to condition his legs, especially if he was thinking of Earth or Mars. He needed time on the treadmills as well. He walked toward the center of the room to the hatch that led down to the fuge within a fuge: the track, the room where the treads were kept. He could feel himself getting heavier as the fuge picked up speed. When it got going full tilt, the pull of the magnets combined with the spin would be about half a G.
To his right was the nursery, a long row of glass-paneled rooms where the children under two years old lived. In one room, a toddler was taking a few unsteady steps from the arms of one adult and into the waiting arms of another. Without the simulated gravity of the fuge, toddlers would never develop the muscles necessary for walking, or learn how.
There were some free-miner families who didn't have fuges or magnetic greaves and who preferred instead to always fly in zero gravity. But bats, as they were called, were completely useless planet-side. Their children couldn't walk or even stand, their legs thin and atrophied.
Concepcion wouldn't hear of it. Everyone was required to spend at least two hours a day down here to keep leg muscles from atrophying and bones from becoming brittle. Some people stayed vertical wherever they were on the ship, electing to wear greaves while they worked. It was a matter of leverage and efficiency. Most of the labor on the ship required sure footing. It was far easier to push and pull and lift if your feet were locked down.
Victor reached the hatch and lowered himself into the track. There were fewer people down here than in the main fuge, and all of them were younger than Victor, walking, running, listening to earphones, wearing movie goggles, reading. Yet all of them were vertical. Victor strapped himself into a treadmill and raised the setting to three-quarters of a G. He walked slowly at first, then gradually worked his way up to a light run. After twenty minutes his calves were twitching and his thighs burned. As he lowered the G level and started to cool down, he wondered how much more he would have to train each day to prepare himself to leave.
His handheld began flashing.
Victor stopped the treadmill. The message was from Edimar, Janda's fourteen-year-old sister. She was an apprentice spotter and watched for movement in space: comets, asteroids, anything that might pose a collision threat to the ship. The message read: COME TO THE CROW'S NEST. URGENT!!
Victor didn't hesitate. He left the fuge as soon as it stopped spinning, then moved through the ship quickly, his legs still burning, his shirt damp with sweat.
The crow's nest was a glass dome atop the upper deck, well above the main body of the ship. Victor flew up the long, narrow tube that led to the room and then pulled himself up through the hole in the floor. The room was dark, and the billions of stars beyond the glass dome shined so clearly and distinctly that Victor felt as if he were outside the ship.
Edimar was floating weightless across the room, wearing her data goggles. The computers were extremely sensitive to light, so spotters wore skintight goggles with interior displays instead of using bright computer monitors.
"Epa, Mar. What's the emergency?" asked Victor.
Edimar removed her goggles. "You've always taken me seriously, Vico. Even when nobody else did. You've always treated me like I'm smart."
"You are smart, Edimar. What's this about?"
"And Jandita said that if I ever needed help with something I could come to you. She said you'd treat me fair, help me out."
"Of course, Mar. What is it?"
"I want to show you something. And I want you to be honest with me and tell me what you think it is."
"Okay."
She found another pair of goggles and handed them to him. "The Eye saw something that doesn't make any sense. And I don't want a bunch of people laughing at me if it's nothing."
The Eye was the computer system that kept up a constant scan of the sky in every direction, watching for any incoming objects that might collide with the ship. In terms of safety, it was one of the most important pieces of equipment on board. Even small rocks, if they were moving fast enough, could cripple the ship and prove fatal.
"Have you shown your father?" asked Victor
She looked aghast. "Of course not."
"Why not? He's the spotter. He'll be more of a help interpreting what the Eye sees than I would."
"My father doesn't think I can do this job, Vico. He has zero confidence in me. He wanted sons, and he got three girls. The only reason I'm his apprentice and not some boy is because Concepcion made him take me on. I can't go to him with something that's a mistake. I'd never hear the end of it. He might go to Concepcion with it as proof that I'm not fit for this job."
Victor knew Janda's and Edimar's father well, and it sounded like a pretty accurate description. Victor knew he shouldn't ask, but he did anyway. "Why work with your father then, Mar? If it's so difficult, maybe you'd like doing something else, being around other people."
She looked angry. "Because I like what I do, Vico. I like working the Eye. And because he's my father. Why don't you go work in the laundry or the kitchen, if it's so easy to switch?"
He held up his hands in a show of surrender. "Sorry. Forget I asked. What did the Eye see?"
She looked irritated and said nothing for a moment, as if considering whether she wanted to involve him after all. Then her face softened, and she relaxed. "Goggles," she said, sliding on her own.
Victor put on the goggles and stared at the blank screen. "Am I supposed to see something?"
"Not yet. First let me explain. I've set the Eye to notify me of any motion outside the ecliptic, even if it doesn't yet look like a collision. Motion there is more rare, but I've got a thing for cold comets. Before the sun heats them up and gives them a tail, I think they're pretty cool. I figure if I'm the first one to spot a new one, I can get it named after me. It's silly, I know."
"Not at all," said Victor. "Getting a comet named after you sounds pretty chevere."
He could hear the smile in her voice. "I think so, too." Then she was back to business. "So the Eye was looking outside the ecliptic, taking in some really clean data."
Clean data meant there had been relatively little space dust or other particles floating in the Eye's field of view. It meant the Eye could see way far out.
"Then the Eye detected motion and alerted me," said Edimar. "I called up a visual and got this."
An image of space appeared in Victor's goggles. It looked no different from any other view of space. "Am I supposed to see anything unusual?" he asked.
"The motion was here." Edimar drew on her tablet with her stylus, and a tiny circle appeared on the image of space. Then Edimar zoomed in until the tiny circle filled the display. Victor strained his eyes. "I still don't see anything."
"Neither did I. Which means whatever the Eye saw is in deep space. If it were close, we would be getting better visual resolution. And if it's way out there and the Eye detected its motion, then it must be moving insanely fast. The problem is, the Eye doesn't give me enough data to determine the object's trajectory. All I know is that there's fast motion. But the velocity decreases over time. It means the object is either changing velocity or direction, one or the other. Either it's slowing, or it's turning toward or away from us, making it appear to be slowing relative to us. Only neither one is very likely. I've run analyses based on a dozen different distances and possible directions of movement and the only thing that explains the data the Eye is giving me is deceleration."
"It's slowing down?" said Victor. "Natural objects in space don't slow down on their own, Mar."
"No, they don't. And when I say it's moving fast, Vico, I mean fast. Fifty percent of lightspeed fast. And that's its spee
d now, after continuing to decelerate. Interstellar objects don't go that fast, they don't bend without a gravity well, and they don't decelerate. So tell me, am I going to get teased for this?"
"I don't think so," said Victor.
"I should forget about it?"
"Edimar, I think we're looking at a spacecraft."
"Nothing goes that fast."
"Nothing made by humans."
At his words, Edimar visibly relaxed and a silly grin came to her face. "So I'm not crazy to think we've got us an alien starship? A near-lightspeed ship coming into our system and slowing down?"
"Either it's a lightspeed ship or somebody repealed a whole bunch of laws of physics. And either it's alien or some corporation or government is experimenting with a technology so advanced it will make them masters of the universe."
"So I should call a grown-up."
"You should call the Council. Or I will. This isn't just important, it's so important that they've got to make decisions about it right away."
"What's the hurry?"
"Because it might very well be headed for Earth."
CHAPTER 2
Lem
The Makarhu wasn't built to be a science vessel, and it certainly wasn't built for war. It was a mining ship, property of Juke Limited, the largest space-mining corporation in the solar system. But Lem Jukes--mercifully short for Lemminkainen Joukahainen, heir to the Juke Limited fortune and captain of the ship--was prepared to use the Makarhu for any purpose if it meant turning a failing mission into what the Board of Directors would consider a success.
It was an hour after sleep-shift had ended, and Lem was floating weightless in the observation room, waiting for an asteroid to explode. The asteroid was a small thing, a "pebble" no bigger than Lem himself, lazily moving through space half a kilometer from the ship. If not for the ship's laser lights dotting the asteroid's surface and illuminating it, it would have been completely invisible against the backdrop of space, even with the help of the special scope glasses Lem was wearing.
Lem lowered the glasses and looked out the window to his right. The cargo bay doors were open, and the gravity laser was in position, pointing out into space at the pebble in the sky. Lem couldn't see the engineers from his position, but he knew they were down in the lab adjacent to the cargo bay, prepping the laser for the test.