He pulled himself into the first one he came to and collapsed on to a seat, his lungs screaming with pain as the doors slid shut. The shuttle-car jerked slightly, then began to slowly move towards the gate’s entrance.
Saul pulled himself upright and staggered to the front of the vehicle, watching the heavy steel doors slide apart at the car’s approach. Beyond lay a wide tunnel ringed with steel and dense clumps of instrumentation.
Almost there.
He touched the curving glass of the car’s window and felt it vibrate – the tremors increasing and decreasing in a way that reminded him of the throbbing that had filled the Florida concourse.
A second set of doors slid open, and the shuttle-car glided inside the body of a starship light-years across the galaxy. His weary muscles protested as Saul came under the influence of the ship’s deceleration-induced gravity.
As his UP connected with the shipboard network, he squeezed through the shuttle’s doors almost before they’d had a chance to open fully. The network then surrounded him with frantically blinking alerts to warn of terminal wormhole failure.
Only seconds left, he realized with desperate alarm. Really, he had no time left at all.
Saul hurtled out of the shuttle bay just as the ship shook with such terrifying violence that he was thrown to the floor of the service corridor beyond. He hooked his fingers through the black-painted metal grid comprising the floor, and held on tight. Meanwhile the ship was struggling to correct the spin resulting from the sudden collapse of the wormhole, its emergency thrusters firing as the one tenuous thread linking it back to Copernicus vanished in a blaze of dissipating exotic particles.
Panting furiously, Saul crouched in that same spot for what felt like a very long time, while the ship continued to shudder all around him. Slowly, one by one, most of the alerts faded away. He let himself close his eyes, just for a moment . . .
He woke up again some indeterminate amount of time later, his fingers still hooked through the gaps in the metal grid. Saul stood up uneasily, wincing at the sharp pain in his muscles.
After that, he wandered through the silent starship until he found the emergency bay, kitted out with freeze-ed food supplies and tanks of water, enough to keep him alive for a long time if need be. He drank until he’d slaked a raging thirst, then wandered through the ship until he found an observation bay, its overhead display revealing a sprinkling of stars.
One star in particular was far brighter than all the rest. He collapsed on to a couch and stared up at it. 94 Aquarii, more than a hundred light-years from Earth – home to the Galileo colony.
Saul stared up at it for a long, long time, knowing that the rest of his life lay somewhere in that single bright point of light.
Over, he thought, in the last moments before consciousness deserted him and he passed out once more.
It was over.
THIRTY-TWO
Galileo Colony, 94 Aquarii System, Four Months Later
‘This way, please.’
Erkrnwald, polite as ever, indicated a series of steps, cut into the cliff face, which descended towards a shoreline of pale-grey sand far below.
Saul glanced back at the transport and saw it reverse away from the cliff edge, before turning and heading back, presumably, in search of the nearest charging port. Further inland, he could see rows of agricultural buildings stretching into the distance, each surrounded by fields of experimental crops specially designed for the Galilean soil and atmosphere.
He turned back to Erkrnwald and nodded, the young political officer’s expression politely bland as he placed one hand on the railing that guarded the steps down. White-capped waves thick with yellowish-blue algae crashed constantly against the shore, beyond which dozens of drilling platforms were visible, stretching out to the horizon. A motorized launch waited for them below, rising and dipping with the tide.
‘Is there a reason we couldn’t just fly out there?’ he asked.
‘Not at this time of year.’ Erkrnwald shook his head. ‘We’re coming up to drift-spore season, so too much risk of getting our engines clogged.’
Saul nodded and they began to descend the steps. The air away from town smelled different, lacking that particular odour all of Galileo’s larger settlements seemed to share. It wasn’t quite the smell of the sea back home on Earth, but close enough. He tasted salt on his lips as the wind carried a thin spray of sea water up towards the cliff top.
A few dozen metres out from the shore, a submarine whale’s single eye pushed up from the water on its rubbery stalk, glancing briefly around in a typically comical fashion before once more sliding beneath the waves.
The launch was a one-piece fab job, low and sleek, its lines distinctly organic. Anor man, older than Erkrnwald, waited on the shore close by.
‘I’m Representative Kayes,’ he said, stepping forward to greet them. He glanced at Erkrnwald the same way Saul had seen most people here do, with a mixture of cautious respect and unease. ‘And you must be Mr Dumont,’ he said, addressing Saul. ‘I’ve been following you on the news ever since they brought you down from orbit last month.’
‘To be honest, if heading out to the platforms means I can get away from all the press attention, that’s enough reason to be here, all on its own. And, please, call me Saul.’
Kayes chuckled in sympathy. ‘Still, it can’t have been easy for you. You were stuck on that starship for Lord knows how many weeks before it reached Galileo.’
Saul smiled wanly. ‘It could have been worse.’
‘When they first contacted you, I was glued to the feeds,’ said Kayes. ‘I know there’s still people don’t believe your story, but I believe it. I listened to every word you said during the interviews. If I could have been there when they brought you down from orbit, I would’ve been.’
‘About the girl,’ said Erkrnwald, an impatient tone to his voice, ‘does she know?’
‘Yes.’ Kayes nodded, turning back to the officer. ‘There was still some uncertainty over her identity until this morning. We’ve asked her to take the afternoon off from her duties.’ He glanced at Saul. ‘She . . . she doesn’t know you’re coming, though she should by the time we get there.’
‘You’re absolutely certain it’s her?’ asked Saul. ‘Definitely her?’
‘You must understand it took quite some time to sort through the Revolutionary Council’s records,’ Kayes explained. ‘So many government records were destroyed in the early days, before the fighting ended.’
‘I’ve been thoroughly informed of the political changes since the first gate failed,’ Saul replied drily.
‘Then I’m sure you understand why it took quite so long to be sure,’ Kayes continued. ‘But we are now quite sure.’
Saul felt momentarily dizzy. He stepped over to the launch that had been pulled up on to the beach and placed a hand on its hull. It felt very slightly slick to the touch. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
Kayes nodded. ‘It’s your daughter, Mr Dumont. There’s no doubt.’
To his consternation, Saul found that by the time he had arrived on Galileo he was already something of a cause célèbre. Once the Revolutionary Council had realized an invasion force was never going to come pouring through the starship, they had allowed Saul greater freedom, although he was accompanied always by Erkrnwald and other men who served the Revolutionary Council.
He quickly discovered that the Council had been working hard all those long years at reverse-engineering the technology within the defunct Galileo Array, so that they might learn how to create their own paired wormholes. Once they had heard Saul’s story, the Galileans began talking excitedly about reconnecting with the other surviving colonies, all now stranded from each other with the destruction of the Lunar Array.