'I know. I was asked almost a week ago if we'd take heavy cargo. I didn't ask how heavy.' I offered a laugh. 'I should have. Ensor was right about one thing. I am new to the politics of being a needle jockey.'
Alek smiled faintly. 'Politics doesn't deliver the ship.'
'No.' I paused. 'Make sure everything's locked in place. This is going to be one rough run.' My third officer nodded.
At the lock, Berya looked from Alek's face to mine, then pursed her lips. 'We're going?'
'We're going.' She nodded. 'Thought so.'
After my preflight, I went into the control center while Alek finished checking the holds again and Berya covered the passenger area.
First came the harness. I plugged it into the silvery stripes that ran along the outside of the uniform suit sleeves and down the front of the thighs. Last, I eased on the helmet. They call it a helmet, although it's more like a skintight plastic cap and weighs maybe half a kilo, if that. Once on-line with the system, I rechecked the foam release nozzles, then the lines and plugs to the sensiharness and helmet. Plastic, that's the needle, composite and plastics pretty much end to end, with the bare minimum of metal - except for the power plant. Metals increase your specific attractions to the vortices. That's what happened to the Costigan and what everyone thought had hit the Obelisk decades earlier. At least, that's what they think happened. It makes sense, since any needle jockey can feel the pull from the fusactor.
'Everything all right, captain Tyndel?' Berya's voice came through the system as somehow scratchy.
'Fine, so far. How many passengers?'
'Eight. High-level techs, I think, except for a controller. He doesn't look happy.'
'He knows what's in the holds.' I glanced toward the other two couches. Berya was secure, and Alek was strapping in.
Even before I had started to uncradle the Mambrino from Orbit Two, I could almost sense the lurking mass of the spines, looming up behind me like a dark hulk ready to swallow the Mambrino whole. That much metal? It made a stupid kind of sense, especially if some had to go to Nabata. Do it once, and get them out there. Then any kind of in-system ship could carry them down to Ballentir - or anyplace else beyond the Trough. E. Cygni was not only high but more than halfway to anywhere and beyond the worst of the vortices along the Trough. The pull of that much metal also made sense ... perhaps ... if I were bait for Engee.
'Orbit Two, Mambrino disengaging this time. Outbound for Epsilon Cygni.'
'Stet, captain Tyndel. Understand outbound for Epsilon Cygni. No inbound traffic this time.'
'Stet.'
Once we were well clear of the station, I began to boost the ionjets to full power, calculating and rechecking the orientation and acceleration I'd need for the climb over the Trough.
'On full ionjets,' I passed along to Berya and Alek. 'We'll start photonjet acceleration early so I can build it up more gradually.' I didn't want any jerkiness with that kind of mass behind and below us.
As I spread the nets and transitioned to photondrive, I could feel the Web, waiting beyond, just beyond that flash of power that would shift the Mambrino up an energy level to where there's no matter, just energy fields. That was stupid, of course, because the ancients had proved millennia earlier that there was no matter, only energy. But in overspace, in harness, you can feel it all.
It doesn't last. Even with full power from the fusactor and the Rinstaal cells, there's not enough energy to keep a needle that excited for very long, just long enough for the insertion, the jump above the Now, and the quick dance through that web of sound and scent. Just enough to make it worthwhile.
'All passengers must be secured at this time.' The clamshells dropped, sealing us against the acceleration.
'Ready for insertion?'
'Stet'
There was just the faintest hiss before all the force lines centered on me, on the lines of power that made me the nerve center of the ship, of a ship that climbed upward and around eddies of solid energy.
The Mambrino screamed through the veil into the sense-scrambled realm of light and darkness, where black was so often white, and where silence was music, and music silence. I danced the unsupported climb over the Trough, over a dark vibrating triplet of singularities, singularities that twanged the symphonies of the ancients on steel strings, rumbling menace from deep in the Trough as the Mambrino and I soared, and gasped, and pirouetted through ice and fire and lilacs and heavy rose perfume to the white comfort of the beacon beyond.
And not a word from Engee. I wasn't sure whether to be worried or relieved.
Then as the fired strands of the Web faded, to the chorus of tiny bells that echoed a march I knew not, I slipped us out and into the white-flashed and twisted Now of real time, with Ballentir Station far above us. Low as we were, we were close enough to E. Cygni, and all in one piece, fusactor spines and all.
'Web exit complete,' I reported, my voice scarcely hoarse at all. 'Photonjets on-line.'
'Are you all right, captain?' Alek's voice scratched through the speaker.
'Fine,' I lied. Lilacs still sprinted through my nostrils, burning a pathway to my brain, and dull echoes of matter-based kettledrums resonated in my ears. Already my back muscles had spasmed, and my eyes burned. The straps felt like chains. 'Those spines are a hell of a load.'
'What happened?'
'Singularities.' I hated singularities, hated them and loved them, because they were clear black crystalline spears aimed at your guts, but spears that permeated the Web with the scent of spring lilac even as they stressed the channels and blocks a ship ran, even as their steel guitars threatened to disassemble you.
Now, in the back of my mind, on the real-time level, the inputs told me about the alarms and the safety web alerts and the gee-foam that had flooded the ship. Not that it mattered, really. I'd either cleared the singularities or I hadn't.
'How many?'
'Three.' I swallowed. My guts were protesting more than usual. But then it hadn't been a normal trip. I'd had to climb all the way, the hard way, thanks to the damned spines.
'Thanks, captain ...'
In the background before Alek closed the link, or maybe it was a residual from the Web, I caught the next words. '... frigging lucky ... Tyndel ... may be new ... but be blood soup, otherwise ...'
Maybe. I'd managed another insertion above the Now and under the Web, over the Trough, and the return would be downhill and smooth without all the heavy metal.
Maybe... unless Engee discovers you 're back in overspace...
82
Those who believe in 'truth' are invariably disappointed.
We got a week planetside on Ballentir - one of the first colonized worlds and the most earthlike, although there were no tall trees, but the downshuttle port was on a plateau overlooking a gray-green sea. I took a lot of walks and runs, and thought about Cerrelle, and wished I'd gone to Vanirel earlier, before it had gotten too late to go at all. I tried not to think about Engee and the disappearance of needle ships.
Berya went sailing, and I never saw Alek.
Then, suddenly, it seemed, we were back at Ballentir Orbit Station, readying the Mambrino for the return. Even before the locks were closed, the cradles released, my thoughts kept drifting back to Engee, wondering when I'd next hear from the being/god/Anomaly, wondering if Erelya's instincts and my feelings were correct, hoping in a way they weren't.