“What happened?”
“Hit something,” she says.
“How’s your system?” I check the emergency bands. She’s already sent a “come-hither” to the outer stations. I send one too.
“Smells bad in here,” she says, and she chuckles. “I think I burnt some stuff out. Nothing vital. Heck of a shot. Must have been a good sized chunk.”
“Great race while it lasted,” I say.
“Yeah,” she sounds preoccupied. I roll through my next burn. Our courses are fairly close now, but I’m inside the ring trailing her, and she’s outside the ring, rising fast, way faster than me.
“Have you run the intercepts?” she says.
I hadn’t, so I plug in the numbers. They don’t look good, and I do them again.
I whistle.
“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think anyone can come get me in time.”
“Your bubble still sound?” I say. My fingers are dancing over the computer keys, inputting data, asking for alternative scenarios. What happens if she uses her maneuvering fuel to slow down? What happens if she tries to push herself back into the ring? None of them look good.
“Yeah.” She sounds sad. I’m not sure if it’s because her chances are dim or because she’s out of the race.
I switch out of our private channel. Titan station is chattering away to miners on Pan to see if they can raise a ship in time, but they aren’t geared for quick takeoffs, and the moon is in the worst place right now for them to mount a rescue. They can get to her, but it would be hours too late. If she’d been going a reasonable speed, no problem, but she’s got way too much velocity. Without a steady supply of fissionable mass, her buglighter will shut down and she’ll freeze solid. Buglighters aren’t built for empty space. They’re ring-runners.
The other racers are talking too. Somebody says he’ll chase her, which is plain stupid because he’d never catch her, and even if he did, what good would it do? He couldn’t bring her on board. He couldn’t bring mass out to her.
“I’m going to try braking,” she says. “It’ll slow me up, and maybe someone on the outer rings can catch me.”
“No, don’t,” I say. “Not yet. Save the fuel.”
My imaging radar shows me the ring ahead, mostly fuzz since it’s pebbles and sand with a few bright spots that represent bigger rocks. I’m looking for the right sized rock on the edge of the ring. Idea’s forming. Nothing looks good, though, so I kick through the next burn and start scanning as soon as I’m clear.
“What do you have in mind?” she says.
“Shh. I’m concentrating.” I’m thinking about angles, mass, velocity and risk, so I’m not paying much attention to conversation.
Rock can’t be too big. It’d kill my ship, and I couldn’t give it the speed it’d need to catch her. Can’t be too small either. The impact would turn it to dust, and it wouldn’t give her enough energy if any of it did reach her buglighter. And the whole idea is a little wacky anyway. The odds of making the shot are incredible. Quite a bit worse than running two bumpers to sink the eight ball in the corner pocket.
On the monitor, a likely candidate pops up. It’s on Elinor’s edge of the ring. Not too deep. Chances are I can line up on it, not be deflected on the way in, and it won’t be deflected on the way out. Hitting right, though, that’s the problem. If I miss by even a fraction of an inch, the rock could spew away at a useless angle; Elinor will be in the same fix, and my buglighter will be too busted up for a second shot.
Once the problem’s in the computer, it controls my maneuvering jets. I’m running the radar on tight scan now, checking the rock, trying to get more info on it, and the numbers are coming back good.
“What are you doing?” Elinor asks. I know she can see my buglighter on her monitors. She can do the same trick I did earlier and have her monitors display what I’m seeing.
I don’t say anything. Not much I can do at this point anyway, but I’m running a second set of calculations, just as an exercise really, since I’m committed to the collision at this point. Thought it would be interesting to do the math though, to see how much energy my bubble will have to take. The figures come back. They’re somewhat above what the specs say the ship will handle. Specs are conservative, I hope.
“Veer off,” she says. “Virgil, this won’t work.”
I check my straps and buckles. Inertia damper is going to get a workout here. “Set your bubble up and get your maneuvering jets ready,” I say. “Don’t know how close I can get this to you. You might have to chase it.” I rotate the buglighter so I’ll take the force from behind.
Ship’s counting down for me: 10 seconds to impact… 9… 8… I turn up the music, a little George Thorogood tune, “Bad to the Bone.”
5… 4… 3
Sunlight’s glistening off the inner edge of the ring flashing past.
Gets a man thinking.
When I wake up, it’s silent and dark. My neck hurts. Left elbow is locked up. I touch it gingerly. Shirt’s torn there, and it’s damp. Don’t know what might have hit it. But I’ve got breathing air, and it’s not cold. Pebbles are zapping at the bubble boundary, so more’s good than bad here. I’ll have to thank the designers of the buglighter for the slop built into their tolerance specs.
Computer doesn’t answer to voice controls, but when I flip the auxiliaries on, the monitors glow again and start spewing out a list of damages. Radar won’t come up, though, and neither will the radio. Some whiffs of fried circuitry float in the air, so I shut down the main routines and go to the backups.
After a few minutes, the radio crackles and I hear Elinor. “Virgil,” she says. “Can you hear me, Virgil.” She sounds like she’s crying. Radar’s still blank. Can’t tell if I helped her or not.
“I’m here,” I say.
Nothing over the radio for a bit. I’m scrambling to get the radar online. Can’t tell how fast I’m going or if anything nasty is in front of me.
“You’re a hell of a pool player,” she says, finally, and I don’t hear any crying in her voice now. “I didn’t have to use but about half my fuel to intercept the rock.”
“Luck,” I say.
She snorts. “It was coming pretty darn fast too. But I got enough of it to make a good burn. I’ll be back in the ring in plenty of time.”
“You’re the master in the ring,” I say. Radar starts working, and I do a quick scan. Lost lots of velocity. No ship-killers on the screen though. A mini-burn keeps me in the mass field. Don’t need a spinout of my own to cause problems.
“Looks like we’re both out of the race.”
“Could be worse, Elinor.” I laugh. My elbow aches, and I unbuckle myself so I can get to the first-aid station.
“I owe you big time,” she says.
“You’d have done it for me.” The first-aid diagnostic gives me a once over, suggests a pain medication and alerts the Inner A Station that I’m injured.
“Might have tried,” she says. “Couldn’t have done it.”
“Well, I was motivated.”
I ease myself back into the chair, swallow the pain meds and set a nice, slow, easy course back to the station, letting the computer do all the work.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she says. There’s a long pause here. “Maybe we should get together and talk about it some. You know, you could drop over for dinner or something.”
I smile. It’s been a long time coming. Nights have stretched, and I’ve played a lot of harmonica in the meantime. Around my ship, little blue glitters of rock and ice catch the reflected light off Saturn. I should be home in a few hours. It’ll take her considerably longer.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, and switch my radio off.
Nothing’s more quiet than the silence in a buglighter when your heart is in a turmoil and you’re not sure if the one you want wants you. I’ve charted that course before.