Chapter 13
Mervyn knew trouble when he saw it, ‘What’s the matter, Loren?’
‘We didn’t pick up enough speed. The gravity wells slowed us down. I didn’t allow for that. It’s going to be touch and go when they catch us up. ‘
Tarun, sobered up instantly, ‘What can we do about it?’
‘Nothing. We’re committed to our course and they’re committed to their course, we’ll just have to see who gets there first.’
‘Look,’ Aurora cried. ‘They are splitting up.’ Sure enough, as the six fighters turned into a wide arc three peeled off on a different heading. ‘Where are they going?’
‘Oh no,’ Loren groaned, ‘they’ve sussed where we’re headed and they’re going to come at us from both sides,’.
‘Is that bad?’ Mervyn asked.
‘Very bad. If you’ve got a god you’d better start praying.’
Mervyn woke with a start and crawled out the cubby-hole that served as a bed to find Loren sitting in a web of tangled cross-crossing the cockpit. She held her head in her hands.
‘Where are we?’
Loren stared at the floor, ‘We’ve just crossed the heliosphere into the gravitational pull of the neutron star,’ she mumbled.
Mervyn floated across to his seat and, just for the sake, did a back flip on the way. He could hardly believe he had slept, but he did feel refreshed. Vast billowing clouds of orange superheated gas filled the viewscreen; in the centre burned a white-hot neutron star blasting the surrounding gas clouds into ragged streamers -- the remnants of a long forgotten star. Globulous dust clouds, starkly black against the glowing gas, floated across the surface. The scene looked strangely beautify and as always Mervyn was moved by the grandeur of the Galaxy. How could such destructive forces possess such beauty? There was no sign of the heliosphere ,which marked the boundary of the star’s gravitational and magnetic influence, but the instruments had detected it.
He glanced back to where Loren still sat dejectedly on the floor, ‘What’s up?’
Loren lifted her head from her hands -- she looked miserable, ‘I doesn’t work.’
‘You mean linking the sled’s controls to our biolinks?’
Loren nodded, ‘I’ve tried everything -- they just won’t talk to each other.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘If I knew that, Mervyn, I’d fix it, wouldn’t I?’ She glared at him as if it was all his fault.
Mervyn shrugged his shoulders, ‘It was only a theory -- maybe it’s not possible. We’ll just have to cope without it.’ He was not used to seeing Loren looking despondent.
‘There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I just wish I knew where I went wrong.’ She kicked the nearest bulkhead. ‘I hate bioelectrics!’
Mervyn tried to think of something sympathetic to say, but was saved by Aurora’s voice echoing in his ear.
‘Mervyn still asleep?’
‘No, I’m awake. Did you sleep, Aurora?’
‘Like a baby. Let’s hope our friends in the fighters are feeling cramped and weary. I bet they thought their sport would be over by now.’
Mervyn reached for the viewscreen, ‘Where are the fighters?’
‘Good morning,’ Tarun chirped, ‘the fighters behind us -- the beta group I’ve called them -- are just about to hit the nebula’s shock wave, we passed through it a while ago. They’re gaining relentlessly now so let’s hope it slows them down a bit and we can lose them in the dust clouds. The others -- the alpha group -- are pulling ahead of us. If they try to turn in and cut us off they will fall behind. The real danger, though, is when they slingshot round the neutron star and come straight at us. And, Loren, I think I’ve solved the biolink problem.’
‘Yeh, sure.’ Loren still sat on the floor among the cables.
‘No, really, listen -- the up-feed from the biolink is responsible for decoding the thoughts from our brains, right?’
Loren half listened, ‘So?’
‘So we don’t need to worry about coding anything from the sled, we just bunch all the controls together and plug them into the up-feed -- it’ll think it’s another brain and do the unscrambling for us.’
Mervyn sighed, ‘That sounds way too simple, Tarun.’
‘Simple is beautiful, Merv.’
‘No. If Loren says it can’t be done then we give up and concentrate on surviving.’
‘Actually, Merv...’ Loren jumped up and started yanking out wires, ‘maybe I am making it too complicated,’ more wires were ripped out, ‘if I take this and this and this, and put it all in here...’ The sled gave a sudden lurch.
Mervyn lifted his hands from the control panel, ‘Hey, what did I do?’
‘Tarun, you’re a genius,’ Loren screamed. She jumped around and danced a little jig, ‘You’ve done it -- we’re biolinked.’
‘I am? You are?’
‘Ok, Tarun, here’s what you do... ‘
At first he found the biolink made the sled react too quickly -- moving before the thought even formed in his mind. Aurora suggested allowing the sled to prime itself, but wait for an execute order. Mervyn tried it out with small housekeeping commands and found the method worked well. He tried the major systems and soon the sled felt like an extension of his own body.
‘Look, no hands,’ he said with his arms behind his head, and performed a victory roll, ‘This is incredible!’
‘Yahoo!’ Aurora crowed. ‘I could perform miracles.!’
‘Good, because that’s exactly what you will have to do,’ Loren muttered. ‘Here comes the next gas cloud.’
There was little to see at close quarters, but as they dived deeper into the gas and its loose density folded behind them the space around took on an eerie red glow. The temperatures of the gas rose around them and the glow changed to orange, and then yellow, and finally a creamy white. The outside hull temperature also rose, partly from the friction of gas particles on the hull and partly by absorbing heat from the surrounding gas. The friction produced another more serious effect: it slowed their headlong charge, only slightly, but enough to make a difference in this dash for life. Ribbons of electrostatic charge marbled the hulls of the sleds with lighting, as if flying in through some strange thunderstorm. The electricity, crackling over the hull, reminding Mervyn there was little between them and the vacuum of space.
‘At least this heat and static will conceal us from the beta group’s sensors,’ Tarun said. ‘That last course correction should have confused them, and the next one will throw them right off.’
But Tarun was wrong.