She waited. Nothing more came over the ship's radio, and she transmitted nothing. The crawlers came on.
After a few seconds, the computer's thought entered Susan's mind: SUFFICIENT POWER BUILD-UP HAS BEEN ACHIEVED. AWAITING LIFT OFF COMMAND.
Still the crawlers advanced. Already the crawlers were probably too near. Already their drivers had been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation.
The power in Photon's engine continued to build, and suddenly she knew she either must lift from Luna's surface, or shut the engine down.
It was then that the computer's cold thought again knifed into her mind: WARNING. WARNING. SAFETY LIMITS ON ENGINE POWER GENERATION WILL BE EXCEEDED IN THREE MINUTES.
She knew what that meant. If she did not either lift or shut down the engine within three minutes, Photon's engine would detonate with devastating force-perhaps enough force to destroy Luna City, some sixty kilometers distant.
And instantly numerals began counting down in her thoughts: 2:59…2:58…2:57…
"What will be the consequences if I fail to lift within that time, and yet do not shut the engine down?" she thought at the computer.
DETONATION, the computer replied, WITH THE SUBSEQUENT DESTRUCTION OF EVERYTHING WITHIN A TWO HUNDRED KILOMETER RADIUS.
And still the crawlers came on.
2:55…
"I will lift in less than three minutes," Susan thought into the ship's transmitter, although she knew she would not.
She received no response. 2:53…2:52…2:51…
There must be a way out of this, she thought. She had to think of something. But the headache was again with her, throbbing behind her eyes, and she could not think coherently.
There was no way around it. She had to shut the engine down. And yet, she had visited herself on this very ship in deep space. If that had truly happened-and she did remember it happening-what could that mean?
2:47…2:46…2:45…
She watched through the ship's sensors as the three crawlers continued to advance toward her, realizing she could do nothing to stop them. If she didn't shut down the engine, Karl would become that charred apparition she had seen in the briefing room in Luna City. And not just Karl. Also Clayton, and whoever occupied the third crawler.
With a thought, she reached out to shut down the ship's engine.
Nothing happened.
Had she touched the wrong control point with her thought? she wondered.
She checked again. No, it had been the correct control point. Photon's engine should have shut down.
1:36…1:35…1:34…
Then, suddenly, she felt something. It was something strange, something alien.
At first she thought the alien presence inhabited the ship's computer. Then she realized it was not in the computer. The strange alien presence inhabited her own mind!
And instantly she realized it was this alien presence that had stopped her from shutting Photon's engine down.
What was it? How had it entered her mind? And how long had it been there?
Susan did not know.
Then, amazingly, she did know. The alien presence itself supplied the answers.
The presence came from an alien artifact. It came from the very pendant which, ten years ago, Susan had melted down and left for doctors to place in her head.
And it was this same presence that had told her before to visit her own past and melt down a pendant, so that it could be in her thoughts now.
But why had it stopped her from shutting down Photon's engine?
0:57…0:56…0:55…0:54…
She didn't have time to worry about that now. She had to get the engine shut down.
Again she reached out with a command thought. And again her thought was blocked.
How could she beat it? How could she get past this alien presence in her own mind?
She did not know. All she knew was that if she did not shut the ship's engine down soon, not only would those in the crawlers die, but so would everyone in Luna City.
She tried again, but still the engine would not shut down.
0:27…0:26…0:25…
But there was a way to save those in Luna City. There was still a chance the thousands in the domed city might survive.
0:13…0:12…0:11…
If only the alien presence in her mind would let her do it.
0:08…0:07…
"I will lift in only a few seconds," she transmitted, although she knew it was already too late.
She felt the pain growing behind her eyes, stronger now than it had ever been before. Soon, it would overpower her, and rational thought would no longer be possible.
0:05…0:04…
"I am lifting now!" she screamed her thought into the transmitter.
0:03…
"I love you, Karl," she thought softly into the radio circuit as she snaked her tendril of thought toward the control point that she knew would lift the ship.
0:02…
She made contact with it, and felt the roar of released energy as the ship lifted from the lunar surface.
"And I love you," she thought she heard over the radio. But she could not be sure she had heard it.
Devastating pain washed through her mind, eliminating all other thought.
Chapter Thirty-four
Susan hung weightless, strapped into the acceleration webbing on Photon's small bridge.
The pain in her head was far less than it had been as she'd lifted from Luna's surface; nearly eighteen hours of involuntary sleep had seen to that. The pain hadn't totally abated, but she knew it soon would.
Finally she was in deep space, out beyond Luna's orbit. She had won.
But, in a sense, it was a hollow victory. Never again would she see Earth or Luna. Even the asteroid colonies would be forever barred to her. She could never again set foot on a human world.
Not, that is, unless she wished to spend the remainder of her life in prison. It was bad enough that she had killed-at least, that is what those back on Luna thought-but she had stolen the Survey Service's prize ship as well. That they could never forgive.
And in doing so, she had again put Karl's life in jeopardy.
Was he all right? she wondered. Had he survived Photon's liftoff?
She had no way of knowing. The hard radiation produced by the ship's engine made all contact except through hyperspace radio impossible, and those frequencies were clear. She had not been able to receive transmissions from either Earth or Luna since lifting nearly twenty hours ago. Those who had been in the way of the ship's blast might have survived, or they might not have, and she would never know. Soon, she would make her jump, and be far beyond the Federation Fleet's reach.
She hoped they were all right, but she doubted it. She had not meant to hurt anyone. Not Clayton. And especially not Karl.
She took a deep breath, and plugged into a sensor scanning out ahead of the ship. There, the stars were slightly shifted to the blue. She was traveling toward the unknown stars at incredible speed.
Toward a meeting with an alien intelligence-the first such ever encountered.
Suddenly, inexplicably, she thought about the short man who had attacked her in her quarters less than a week ago-the dark man, the belter. His attack had started it all, his attack that had been the first indication of everything that was to happen to her. And yet, it was his attack that remained unexplained. She could account for all her attackers but him. Even Hyatt had denied he had sent that assassin.
She was sure the answer to that attack awaited her on a planet at the heart of the Crab Nebula.
Susan heard a noise behind her, the sound of someone breathing! Someone else was on Photon's bridge, someone who hadn't been here only an instant before. And she knew who it was.
After a few seconds, she turned around to meet herself.