The shuttle rocked in a wide circle, then halted; the engines’ pitch rose from purr to whine to scream. Its white landing lights tunneled the darkness in front of them. Ti released the brakes and the ship sprang forward, gobbling up the light, with a terrifying noisy rumble that ceased abruptly as they rotated into the air. The acceleration shoved them all back in their seats.
“What the hell does that idiot think he’s doing?” Ti muttered through his teeth as the jetcopter grew rapidly in the tracking monitor. “Try to play chicken with me, will you…?”
It was swiftly apparent that was exactly the jet-copter’s intent. It arced toward them, diving as they rose, evidently with some idea of forcing them down.
Ti’s mouth thinned to a white line, his eyes blazing, and he powered his ship up further. Silver gritted her teeth, but kept her eyes open.
They passed close enough to see the ‘copter out the ports, whipping in a strobe-like flash through their lights. In the blink Silver could see faces through the bubble canopy, frozen white blurs with dark round holes of eyes and mouths, but for one individual, possibly the pilot, who had his hands pressed over his eyes.
Then there was nothing between them and the silver stars.
Fire and ice.
Leo rechecked the tightness of every C-clamp personally, then jetted back a few meters in his worksuit to give his efforts one last visual inspection. They floated in space a safe kilometer’s distance from the D-620-Habitat configuration, which hung huge and complete now above Rodeo’s arc. Anyway, it looked complete on the outside, as long as you didn’t know too much about the hysterical last-minute tie-downs still going on within.
The ice die, when finished, had turned out over three meters wide and nearly two meters thick. Its outer surface was irregular; it might have been a tumbling bit of space debris from some gas giant’s ice ring. Its secret inner side precisely duplicated the smooth curve of the vortex mirror that had molded it.
The evacuated inner chamber was capped by layers. First, the titanium blank; next, a layer of pure gasoline for a spacer—a handy second use Leo had found for it: unlike other possible liquids it would not freeze at the ice’s present temperature—then the thin plastic divider circle, then his precious TNM-gasoline explosive, then a cap of scrap Habitat skin, then the bars and clamps—all in all, quite a birthday cake. Time to light the candle and make his wish come true, before the ice die began to sublimate in the sunlight.
Leo turned to motion his quaddie helpers to get behind the protective barrier of one of the abandoned Habitat modules floating nearby. Another quaddie, he saw, was just jetting over from the D-620-Habitat configuration. Leo waited a moment, to give him or her time to come up and get behind their shelter. Not a messenger, surely, he had his suit comm for that…
“Hai, Leo,” said Tony’s voice thickly through the suit comm. “Sorry I’m lae’ for work—d’you leave any for me?”
“Tony!”
It wasn’t easy, trying to embrace someone through a worksuit, but Leo did his best.
“Hey, hey, you’re just in time for the best part, boy!” said Leo excitedly. “I saw the shuttle dock a bit ago.” Yes, and a horrid turn it had given him for a moment, thinking it was Van Atta’s threatened Security force at last, until he’d correctly identified it as theirs. “Didn’t think Dr. Minchenko’d let you go anywhere but the infirmary. Is Silver all right? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“She’s fine. Dr. Minchenko had a lot t’ do, ‘n Claire ‘n Andy’s asleep—I looked in—didn’t want to wake the baby.”
“You sure you’re feeling all right, son? Your voice sounds funny.”
“Hurt mah mout’. S’all right.”
“Ah.” Briefly, Leo explained the task in progress. “You’ve arrived for the grand finale.”
Leo jockeyed his suit around until he could just see over the abandoned module. “What we’ve got out there, in that box on top—the cherry-bomb on the icing, as it were—is a charge capacitor with a couple thousand volts stored in it. Leads down into a filament placed in the liquid explosive—I used an incandescent light bulb filament with the polyglass envelope knocked off—that thing sticking up is an electric eye swiped from a door control. When we hit it with a burst from this optical laser, it closes the switch—”
“And the ‘lectricity sets the ex’losive off?”
“Not exactly. The high voltage pouring through the filament literally explodes the wire, and it’s the shock wave from the exploding wire that sets off the TNM and gasoline. Which blows the titanium blank out until it hits the ice die and transfers its momentum, whereupon the titanium stops and the ice, ah, carries the momentum away. Quite spectacularly, which is why we’re behind this module…” he turned to check his quaddie crew. “Everybody ready?”
“If you can stick your head up and watch, why can’t we?” complained Pramod.
“I have to have line-of-sight for the laser,” said Leo primly.
Leo aimed the optical laser carefully, and paused a moment for the anxiety rush. So many things could go wrong—he’d checked and re-checked—but there comes a time when one must let all the doubts go and commit to action. He gave himself up to God and pressed the button.
A brilliant, soundless flash, a cloud of boiling vapor, and the ice die exploded, shards flying off in all directions. The effect was utterly enchanting. With an effort Leo tore his gaze away and ducked hastily back behind the module. The afterimage danced across his retinas, teal green and magenta. His pressure-gloved hand, resting against the module’s skin, transmitted sharp vibrations as a few high-speed ice cubes pelted against the other side and ricocheted off into space.
Leo remained hunkered a moment, staring rather blankly at Rodeo. “Now I’m afraid to look.”
Pramod jetted around the module. “It’s all in one piece, anyway. It’s tumbling—hard to see the exact shape.”
Leo inhaled. “Let’s go catch it, kids. And see what we’ve got.”
It was the work of a few minutes to capture the work piece. Leo refused to let himself call it “the vortex mirror” just yet—it might still turn out to be scrap metal. The quaddies ran their various scanners over the curving grey surface.
“I can’t find any cracks, Leo,” said Pramod breathlessly. “It’s a few millimeters over-thick in spots, but nowhere too thin.”
“Thick we can take care of during the final laser-polish. Thin we can’t remedy. I’ll take thick,” said Leo.
Bobbi waved her optical laser, crossing and re-crossing the curved surface, numbers blurring in her digital readout. “It’s in spec! Leo, it’s within spec! We did it!”
Leo’s innards were melting wax. He breathed a long and very tired sigh of happiness. “All right, kids, let’s take it Indoors. Back to the—the—darn it, we can’t keep calling it the ‘D-620-and Habitat-Reconfiguation’.”
“Ah sure can’t,” agreed Tony.
“So what are we going to name it?” An assortment of possibilities flitted through Leo’s mind—the Ark—the Freedom Star—Graf’s Folly…
“Home,” said Tony simply after a moment. “Let’s go home, Leo.”
“Home.” Leo rolled the name in his mouth. It tasted good. It tasted very good. Pramod nodded, and one of Bobbi’s upper hands touched her helmet in salute of the choice.
Leo blinked. Some irritating vapor in his suit’s air was making his eyes water, no doubt, and tightening his chest. “Yeah. Let’s take our vortex mirror home, gang.”