Ellen sat on the starboard side where the giant blue face of Earth hung outside her window. It loomed, eclipsing the stars. She felt the first bumps of atmosphere, which meant at least another four hours till touchdown. She was bored.
Eleanor, her mother, claimed to know the cure for boredom. It was called work. Because work, according to Eleanor, was play. Indeed, at this moment it looked as though Ellen’s mother was playing house. She had a dozen dolls arranged in tiers in her podule. She barked questions and orders at them. She floated dollhouse furniture, tiny tables and chrome hoops, in the air before her.
These weren’t really dolls, but miniature holos and proxies of her colleagues, employees, and mentar. And it wasn’t dollhouse furniture, but scale models of their solar harvesters and Oships. A breakfast holoconference—or maybe a dozen overlapping meetings. It was work after all. Ellen sighed. She supposed she, too, had work to do. “Wee Hunk,” she said to her own mentar, “call Clarity and see if she wants to work. Wait, what’s her local time?”
Ellen and her business partner, Clarity, owned a small but influential production company for the daily novellas called Burning Daylight Productions. Recently, they had bought up a prematurely obsolete hollyholo character, Renaldo (the Dangerous), and were trying to retool it.
“Well?” Ellen said. “Is she available?”
Ellen’s mentar, Wee Hunk, appeared to be sitting idly before her as a miniature man in a tiny, floating armchair. The mentar wore a tiger-stripe robe and leopard-spot slippers and pretended to be reading a paper book. He marked his place with a finger and looked at her. He said, “Clarity’s valet says she’s currently unavailable,” and went back to his book.
“Wee Hunk, this is important.”
“I have no doubt.”
“No, really. I won’t have time later. I’ll tell you what. Cast a proxy of me and send it to her.” Ellen prepared herself to be cast. She closed her eyes, took a couple of relaxing breaths, and concentrated on the topic of discussion—Renaldo (the Dangerous) and how she and Clarity could fix it. Ellen opened her eyes expecting to see a proxy ready for her inspection, but no such proxy appeared. For that matter, Wee Hunk had disappeared too. Just then, their yacht hit an atmospheric bump, and the earthscape dipped below her window. Vernier thrusters fired to restore the ship’s attitude. Ellen wasn’t alarmed. Reentry was often rocky, but the yacht was controlled by dedicated tandem pilot submentars—avionics subems—so there was little chance of anything serious going wrong.
The seat podules began to rotate to their upright position—that probably meant they were in store for more heavy weather. Then the cabin lights failed, and her mother’s doll-like holos flickered out all at once. Ellen was pressed against her right armrest, and when she looked out her window, Earth was rolling in and out of sight. The yacht was spinning. The verniers fired in staccato bursts to counteract, and again the craft righted itself. The main engines ignited then, pushing Ellen against her seatback. The engines made an odd pocky noise as they burned. Still, Ellen wasn’t frightened. Over the years, she’d experienced a lot of rough rides, but these yachts always knew what to do. She looked over at Eleanor. Her mother was trying to tell her something, but the cabin noise was too loud. “What is she saying?” she asked her truant mentar, annoyed that she even had to ask. “Wee Hunk! Answer me!”
At last Ellen felt an icy stab of fear, not because of the turbulence, but because of her mentar’s silence. She realized she was off-line. It was a feeling she never liked and never got used to. She turned again to her mother. Eleanor sat calmly in her podule, pressing her left hand flat against her windowpane. At first Ellen had no idea what she was doing, but then it occurred to her that Eleanor might be communicating with Cabinet through her palm array. Eleanor’s wily Cabinet would find some way to bounce a makeshift signal to her. Ellen decided to try to reach Wee Hunk that way, but before she could, the cabin lights returned and the ride smoothed out. The shipsvoice announced, “In the interest of safety, please rest your head against your seatback.”
Ellen laughed with relief. “Well, ship, what was that all about?” They were flying over an ocean now, the Pacific she guessed. Things seemed to have straightened themselves out—as they always did.
That’s not the ship; that’s Cabinet speaking through it, said Wee Hunk, his own voice now loud and clear in her head. Do as it says. You’re still in danger.
Ellen felt something warm and sticky at her feet. Sheets of blue arrestant foam were quickly layering the podule from the floor up. Layering her into the podule. The shipsvoice again instructed her to put her head back. The ceiling panel above her swung away, and a safety helmet began to descend along the seatback rail. Ellen obediently pressed her head against the seatback. She didn’t like this at all. The arrestant foam, with its fizzy intimacy, was bad enough, but the helmet terrified her. “Is this really necessary now?”
Something struck her window and startled her. She looked out to see flaming bits of ship streak past. The verniers were firing continuously now, but Earth sank out of sight, and she could discern the reddish glow of their fuselage against the black backdrop of space. The air in the cabin grew thin and sere, and there was a roaring din from the forward compartment. The whole ship shuddered. We’re breaking up, she thought with wonder.
Now she couldn’t wait to pod up. “What’s with the foam?” she said, for the arrestant had layered to her knees and stopped. She glanced up and saw that the helmet had only dropped halfway. She could see up into it, see all the diodes flashing inside, but it came no closer. Her mother was in worse shape; her overhead panel hadn’t even opened, and her podule contained no foam whatsoever. As Ellen watched, her mother unlocked her harness and stood up, bracing herself against the turbulence and clawing at the panel over her head. “Hurry,” Ellen urged her. “Sit down.” But her mother began to climb over the seatback to the podule in front. The helmet there had successfully dropped. She watched her mother resolutely wriggle and squeeze through the podule struts, fighting the ship’s jerky acceleration.
“Wee Hunk, tell Eleanor to hurry and pod up!”
I have relayed that to Cabinet, Wee Hunk said. Cabinet is doing everything it can for her. I’m trying to help you.
There was a sudden, sharp jolt that sent the yacht slamming end over end through the air. Even within the snug harbor of her seat harness, Ellen was shaken almost to unconsciousness. She caught glimpses of her mother wedged in the narrow space between seat support and ceiling. “Jettison the ship!” Ellen screamed above the roar. “Why don’t you just jettison the fecking ship?”
We’re attempting to but are unable. It will have to burn off us.
“She can’t hold on that long!”
In Ellen’s own podule, the midlevel jets resumed extruding layers of arrestant. The congealing foam reached her waist and dampened the worst of the ship’s shuddering.
Listen to me, Wee Hunk said in the calmest of voices. Your helmet is stuck. You must reach up and dislodge it. You must pull it down.
Ellen pressed her head against the seatback to steady herself, but the shaking was just as bad. When she tried to raise her hands, she discovered that they were caught in the foam. “I can’t! I’m stuck!”
Free one arm at a time.
Ellen wrenched her right arm out of the foam, and used it to help leverage out her left one. But the ship shook so much that when she raised her arms, they flailed over her head, and she couldn’t catch hold of the helmet.