Naz saluted, trying not to let his disappointment show at being given the donkey work.
Vishwanath and Rana descended in the elevator, moved through the crowd still gathered outside the entrance and climbed into the squad car.
Rana’s shift was due to end shortly after she arrived back at headquarters. She spent a further hour making her report, downloaded it to Vishwanath, and asked if she could leave. She was tired after the long shift and the mental effort of collating her report. Seconds later the reply flashed on her com-screen: “Off you go, Lieutenant. Well done.”
She took the elevator down to the ground floor and paused on the steps. She recalled her earlier resolution to visit Vandita and the other kids when her shift ended. But the sun was rising, burning up the grey mist of dawn, and the kids would be up and at work by now. She would call on them tomorrow.
She left the police headquarters and began the short walk home through the rapidly increasing heat of another Calcutta day.
9
Bennett and Mackendrick were checking supplies and equipment in the cargo hold when the Cobra gave a sudden jolt. The sensation of riding an elevator indicated that the floor of the repair pit was rising to meet the deck of the spaceport. Bennett grabbed the tail-gate of the open-topped transporter, swaying with the motion.
“If that’s it down here we’ll join Ten,” Mackendrick said.
They took the lift-plate to the upper deck, standing side by side in silence. Mackendrick was wearing a black flight-suit, so tight that it shrink-wrapped his thin frame, emphasising his prominent rib-cage and scooped pelvis. Since learning of the tycoon’s illness, Bennett had never been able to look at Mackendrick without thinking that soon, perhaps within a year, the man would be dead. He wondered how one could go on living with the knowledge that death was imminent. He thought of his father, and how he had coped with the fact of his approaching end. Then he realised that right at this minute, in Mojave Town, the remains of his father were being interred in the grave garden. He recalled his father’s eyes, as he died, accusing him, and he felt a sudden and painful stab of guilt.
The flight-deck was finished in ubiquitous regulation black: jet carpet, couches and curving walls, the better for the pilots to apprehend the dozens of illuminated readouts and screens. Through the delta viewscreen Bennett watched a tug reverse towards the nose of the Cobra, engage grabs and take the weight of the ship. Slowly they trundled forward, past the terminal building, towards the vacant blast-pad and posse of waiting technicians and mechanics.
Mackendrick lay on the engineer’s couch to the rear of the flight-deck, and carefully buckled his thin frame into the safety harness. Ten Lee was already strapped into her couch, the wraparound command console pulled close. Her face, surrounded by a bulging flight helmet with the visor screen down, was a study in emotionless concentration as she cycled through the pre-flight programs.
Bennett took his helmet from the pilot’s couch and pulled it down over his head, feeling the familiar comfort of its snug fit. The irritating chatter of a flight controller played in his right ear; he modulated the noise below the threshold of audibility. They were still one hour from liftoff. He would rather be alone with his thoughts until then.
He climbed into his couch, sinking into its padded depths. Everything about the Cobra, from major mechanical specifics right down to minor design features, was superior to anything else he’d flown over the years. Mackendrick had spared no expense when fitting and equipping the ship.
He pulled the horseshoe console towards him, locking it in place. He flipped down his visor and went through the running program with Ten Lee. This was, he realised, more a routine process to soothe his pre-flight nerves. During his fifteen years in space he had never flown trans-c. In fact, the furthest he had ever travelled was to Mars on a short vacation ten years ago. He had every confidence in his own ability to fly the Cobra, especially when they arrived at Penumbra and he had to take them through the storm-riven atmosphere—and he knew that he could not hope for a better ship or operating system. But the fact remained that they were embarking on a faster-than-light voyage through two thousand light years of unexplored space. He found it hard to grasp the enormity of what was about to happen. The fact of the flight alone was mind-numbing, without considering what they might find when they finally made landfall on Penumbra.
He raised his visor and glanced across at Ten Lee. She was reading off a string of equations with the calm of someone to whom this reality was nothing more than a passing illusion.
They reached the blast-pad and the tug disengaged. Hydraulic gantries took the weight of the ship and eased it to the vertical. Bennett tipped, staring up through the viewscreen at the bright blue sky.
He opened communications with the control tower and for the next half hour went through the process of program checks and data monitoring. Through the side-screen he noticed the bowsers and trucks carrying the mechanics and technicians beetling away across the tarmac. The sight filled him with a feeling of isolation he recalled from ten years ago, when he regularly piloted shuttles from ground to orbit.
One minute before lift-off the main engines engaged. Control counted down. Bennett laid his head back against the rest and gripped the arms of the couch. He glanced back at Mackendrick, strapped into the engineer’s couch. The tycoon sketched a brief smile and gave a thumbs-up gesture.
Seconds later the Cobra surged from the blast-pad, the pressure of ascent pushing Bennett further into his seat. His head rattled with the vibration of the rapid climb, blurring his vision. He thought of the sightseers in the observation gallery, the kids gasping at the spectacular pyrotechnics of blast-off.
In his helmet the tinny voice of the controller signed off. “Good luck Bennett, Theneka. She’s all yours.”
They climbed and turned. Through the sidescreen Bennett made out the vast sweep of the western seaboard, and then the great ochre plain of the Mojave, punctuated with the verdant circles of a dozen townships and settlements. From this high it appeared so artificial, impossible to conceive that down below normal people were conducting normal, everyday lives.
He turned his head and smiled at Mackendrick. “You okay, Mack?”
It was all the old tycoon could do to lift a hand in silent assent. Bennett hoped Mackendrick would be equal to the stress of the take-off.
Ten Lee’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Twenty seconds until phase-out.”
“Check,” he said, glancing at his screen. The system was running smoothly.
“Ten… nine… eight…”
They were almost at the altitude where it would be safe to effect the transfer. Then the Schulmann-Dearing would cut in, tearing the fabric of localised space with such concentrated energy that, had the phase-out been effected on the ground, the area of the port around the ship would have been destroyed.
Bennett felt a stab of apprehension. Hell, but in seconds he would be travelling faster than the speed of light, this tiny shell-like vehicle cancelling the laws of physics and hurtling three frail human beings to the very edge of the galaxy.
He thought of Julia. He almost wished he was with her now, suffering her barbed recriminations.
“Two… one… transition,” Ten Lee said.
The deafening rumble of the main engines cut out suddenly, to be replaced with an eerie almost-silence. As his hearing adjusted he was aware that the ship was ringing with a low, almost subliminal hum, like the constantly dying note of a struck tuning fork.
He peered through the viewscreen. Where the thin blue of the stratosphere should have been, or the familiar scatter of stars, the scene was unique and strange: the stars had turned to streamers and were hosing towards and around the ship like a bombardment of polychromatic flak. He was aware of a sensation of abstraction; he felt at several removes from the reality around him, like a patient in a post-operative daze.