The computer interrupted. “Twenty-four ships have just appeared beyond the flak halo. They’re accelerating toward us and will be within laser range in—”
“Get us out! They’re already in Valli range!” Baker’s last word choked in his mouth as everything twisted around him.
Make it stop. I can’t go on with the shrinking and the shoving through into that place of light and the door that never opens for me though I want it to and pray it to. They want me for Kinney. Kill Kinney and I won’t have to die and die and die.
“Hang on,” the computer said. “Deceleration!”
Baker’s legs wrapped tightly around the corpse’s chair, pulling forward to grasp it with his arms. The engine array thundered into power. Metal crushed against metal; the fighter slammed against the rear bulkhead to crash partially through the plating. The force of the fall threw Baker loose. His fingers dragged at the tubes and wires connected to the dead pilot, tearing them free. The body slammed atop him in the corner of the fighter; gray fluid spattered across his goggles. They had not fallen far, but the acceleration made it feel worse.
“Status!” he cried into the mouthpiece, pushing the stiff corpse away and trying to get his bearings.
“We transferred to five kilometers above the surface of Mercury. We are rising tangentially and decelerating under gravitational attraction.”
“The other ships?” Baker stole a glance at the corpse. Its mouth hung crooked, something black and thick draining from its throat and nose.
One of its eyes had burst against the console and oozed gray. Did Lee feel that?
“They had not matched velocities to ours and would be in peril if they transferred down before adjustment. In the meantime, I have plotted a course for the cryonic preservation unit at the south pole and will land us there.”
“Land us? Are you crazy? This is a spaceship! ” He struggled to his feet and grabbed for the hole in the ship’s viewing port.
“Warning—delta v.” The vernier rockets blazed, knocking Baker to the side. They cut off and he resumed his climb out to discover that the top of the fighter had wedged against the bent bulkhead, leaving only a narrow space between the two.
“I’m stuck here! Keep conning the ship. I’ll try to get to Con One or Two.”
“I had no intention of giving up. We are heading south in a forced low altitude orbit.”
“We can’t land something this big!” He snaked his arms out of the hole in the hatchway.
“The skirting on the engine array is high enough to protect the engines, the gravity is low enough, the planet has no atmosphere, we are in a hurry—I can synthesize no simpler solution.”
“Than landing it on your ass? You’ll shear the skirting and we’ll fall over!”
“In the time it took you to say that, I rechecked all the data seventy-eight times. We can do it.”
Baker ground his teeth against the mouthpiece until it squeaked like scratched slate. “All right. It’s your fuselage. I’m going to Con Two.”
His body ached from bruises and the weight of acceleration. Sliding out of the fighter, he turned around just long enough to say, “Lee—If you can still hear me—we’ll be transferring to another star after this. I don’t think you’ll want to wait around for a dozen years or more to reestablish contact with your psychfighter—we’d be long gone before your reinforcements arrived.”
The corpse twitched once, and a black slime foamed around the edges of its speaker grill.
Baker looked away, then across the bulkhead. It had bent aftward into the next compartment. He squeezed forward on his belly, wriggling back and forth to avoid a jagged piece of metal from a broken sensor array.
He’s in control, that damned machine. Doesn’t need me. He heard air escaping slowly somewhere. He placed one foot against the array and pushed forward.
“Why’re you doing all this? Why didn’t you just transfer to deep space? It would have been safer.”
The computer said nothing for a moment, during which Baker pulled through the narrowest part of the gantlet—between the fighter’s laser cannon and a portion of the bulkhead that had bent outward. When the machine spoke again, it was with a tentative tone Baker had never heard before.
“The woman Delia Trine seems to be important to both you and Virgil
for some reason; vital to your continued operation of Circus. I am willing to take acceptable risks to recover her if she is still alive.”
Baker squirmed free from under the fighter and moved on his hands and knees toward an exit hatch. He stood and opened the seals. Between heavy breaths, he said, “The moment we land, Lee in there’ll call his friends out on us. Or they’ll spot us from orbit. Matching velocities isn’t necessary to hit us with Valli pellets. They’re even more deadly when moving.”
“I am depressurizing the bay to cause cell rupture in the corpse. My sensors have greater range than those of the fighters. So do my lasers. We shall be safe until the deep thrust fighter that is coming around the sun arrives.”
“What?”
“We shall be finished by then, I estimate.”
He ran the rest of the way to the Con Two lift.
The surface of Mercury whipped past them, a blur of blackness shimmering here and there under the glowing ionized gases left in the wake of Circus’s engines. Baker stared, eyes unblinking. The spacecraft maintained a bow-down attitude because of the forced orbit—were the engines to shut off, the ship would climb to a higher orbit rather than fall to the planet. The effect of constantly falling toward the world transfixed Baker. He watched the horizon, fighting the persistent feeling of disorientation. The back of his conning chair was down, the viewing port of Con Two up, and the horizon of the planet well above his head. He watched a hazy glow appear around the edge of the planet.
“Approaching south polar area. Stand by for skew flip turn and deceleration for landing.” Baker tightened his grip on the seat. The computer broke into its rapid speaking mode, commenting on all major systems function. Suddenly, the vernier rockets fired up with full force.
The horizon dropped away and Baker’s stomach with it. His neck ached against the braces that held his head immobile. An instant later, the lower limb of Mercury dropped down across the port and hung there, the mountains and craters speeding over its limb out of sight.
In the brief duration of the skew flip, Circus rose to triple its former altitude. Baker noticed the extended field of vision this gave him.
Ass backward into the unknown. He switched on a rear vidcam and added sun filters until the scrim showed more than a white glare.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” he said, moving the cam controls to take in the slightly curving edge of the planet.
“Five kps, twenty km,” the computer said, followed by, “Four kps at eighteen. Under escape v. Rotate for landing.” The vernier rockets firmly turned the spacecraft aftward to the surface.
The viewing port darkened. Baker watched a zone of brilliant light flow from the bow across the ellipsoidal prow and head aftward. All of the ship lay bathed in light from the horizon facing the ship’s topside. Judging by the position of the shadows cast by the conning tower, he could estimate just where the sun should be burning more than six times brighter than on Earth, with no atmosphere to shield him.
The weight of deceleration lightened. He no longer saw the planet through the viewing port. Darkness suddenly spread across the spaceship, followed shortly by a sharp decrease in the whining of the engines.
“Engine shutdown,” the computer said calmly. The ship settled against the mercurial plain, then listed slowly to port until a vernier rocket fired to steady the mass.
“Status,” Baker said, undoing his harness.
“We are twenty kilometers away from the south pole, on the dark side of the terminator. The redoubt’s solar energy power station consists of a low ring of solar panels disguised into the outer rim of a crater. Heat exchange elements extend from the center of the ring to a radius of twenty five kilometers. Eighteen of the thirty-six heat sinks are always on the night side and radiating infra-red. The cryonic preservation unit is most likely buried at the center of the crater.”