DelPonte found that having a new face on board, particularly a pretty female face, took a great deal of the tedium out of space travel. He and Rocky maintained the usual eight hours on, eight hours off duty shifts in the pilot room. He talked with Vena Ray whenever he happened to find her awake during his off duty shifts. She talked about growing up on Venus, and about the ongoing efforts to bring that planet's climate into a range that humans would find comfortable. She told him stories about various members of her famous family, especially her great-uncle Cyrus, who was its current head. He in turn told her about growing up in Naples, and about attending the Ranger Academy in Houston.
"I've always wondered why the Academy is in Houston, when the spaceport and headquarters are in Quito," Ray remarked.
"Oh, that's because Houston is where the American astronauts used to train back in the old days. When the United Worlds set up the Space Rangers, the Americans offered to let us use the old astronaut training center there." DelPonte grinned. "It's kind of neat, really. It makes the cadets feel like they're part of history. It's like they're on their way to the Moon with Neil Armstrong."
The days slipped by until the gage dispaying spacial curvature sank below a particular level and an indicator light went on showing that it was safe to engage the superluminal drive. DelPonte went back to the navigation room to warn Vena Ray to strap herself in again. After a thirty-second countdown, Rocky Jones slid down the switches that sent the Orbit Jet into the superluminal continuum. As always, DelPonte felt as though his body was being elongated, until he would have sworn that his head was at least thirty feet away from his feet. The feeling persisted for several seconds, then there was a snap as the superluminal controls reset themselves, and DelPonte's body was back to normal. DelPonte activated the pilot room viseograph, and focused on the space directly behind them. He took a reading on the bright star centered in the crosshairs, then ran the results through the computer. The bright star was actually Earth's sun, and its apparent magnitude had fallen significantly. The Orbit Jet was now three trillion miles, half a light-year, from the Solar System.
Standard operating procedure among the Space Rangers was to allow a full twenty-four hours to pass before making use of the superluminal drive again. The delay allowed the drive to recharge itself, and also allowed the crew to retune the drive's systems, which were always randomized after each superluminal jump.
Exactly twenty-four hours after their first jump, Jones slid the switches down again. Again there was a few seconds of disorientation, followed by the snap of the controls resetting themselves, and the Orbit Jet had moved another three trillion miles through interstellar space.
In two weeks' time, the Orbit Jet had skipped across seven light years of interstellar space, bringing the ship within visual range of Space Station RV-5. Unlike the RV-3 station in the Barnard's system, RV-5 had no star to call its own. Instead, it had been established at a point in space exactly midway between the Solar System and Wolf 1061, a star system that was claimed by the Ophiuchius Group.
The Orbit Jet had come out of its last superluminal jump less than a million miles from RV-5. Jones and DelPonte had picked up the station's recognition signal and were accellerating toward it when Vena Ray rushed into the pilot room and announced, "Rocky, I mean, sir, an object is approaching from two o'clock."
Rocky Jones looked back at her and said, "Are you positive, or is this merely woman's intuition?"
Ray glared at him. "I said, and I repeat, there's an object approaching us very rapidly."
"She was right before, Rocky," DelPonte reminded him.
Jones leaned forward and activated the viseograph, focused on the area of space forward and to the right of them. DelPonte was not surprised to find that Ray had been correct. There was another spaceship visible, and it was clearly approaching them, as Ray had put it, very rapidly.
"Quick, Winky," Jones ordered, "get Drake on astrophone."
"What can I do, Rocky?" Ray asked.
"Nothing," he answered curtly, "just stay out of the way."
"XV-2 calling Office of Space Affairs," DelPonte spoke into the astrophone, "come in, Office of Space Affairs." There was no response. DelPonte repeated his call, adding, "acknowledge, Office of Space Affairs, we're under attack, enemy unknown." He continued calling, then told Jones, "It's a cold channel, Rocky."
"All right," said Jones grimly, "we'll make a fight of it. Prepare to return fire."
"Please, Rocky," Ray asked again, "what can I do?"
"Secure to your blast chair, and stay there. That's an order."
Ray turned and left the pilot room. DelPonte kept the viseograph centered on the unknown ship as it continued to approach. There was a bright flash from the unknown ship, and DelPonte saw a missile streak through space towards them. DelPonte felt himself being pressed back in his chair as Jones goosed their acceleration. The missile slid off the screen, then a shudder ran through the Orbit Jet and an alarm went off.
Peering at a readout, DelPonte reported, "We took a hit aft, sir." He silenced the alarm, and refocused the viseograph on the enemy ship, which was now swinging around for another run. DelPonte felt himself being shoved forwards and back as Jones maneuvered the Orbit Jet to avoid their unknown attacker. There was another sudden acceleration pressing DelPonte back in his seat, and when he looked up he could see the other ship's stern in the viewscreen. The Skipper had managed to maneuver them into attack position.
"Ready, Winky?"
"Ready, sir."
"Steady . . . steady . . . closing target . . . steady . . . " chanted Jones as he brought the other ship within weapons range. The ship drifted into the crosshairs of the targeting system.
"On it, Winky! Fire one!" Jones ordered.
DelPonte launched one of the Orbit Jet's missiles, and watched as it closed the gap with the enemy ship and exploded. As the light of the explosion dimmed, he could see that the other ship's engine had been wrecked, leaving it drifting helplessly through space.
"That takes care of them, whoever it was," said Jones.
Suddenly, there was a flare of light from the unknown ship, sliding down the visible spectrum from blue to green to yellow to orange to red, and then fading from view. When the light was gone, so was the other ship. DelPonte recognized the sight of a ship activating its superluminal drive and jumping away. "Jumpin' Jupiter!" he exclaimed. "I can't believe they were willing to risk a jump with their engines messed up like that!"
"Whoever was flying that ship didn't intend to let himself be captured," Jones remarked quietly. "They'll either escape back to their base, or suffer a system failure and be lost forever." After a momentary pause, he continued, "Level off to free-fall while I check for damage."
"Aye aye, sir," said DelPonte as he killed the Orbit Jet's acceleration. Jones rose from his seat and went aft.
* * *
As Jones made his way through the navigation room, he paused to ask Vena Ray if she was all right. Ray, still strapped into her blast chair, said, "Yes, but what happened, Rocky? What is it?" Before he could formulate a response, Jones was distracted by a current of air rushing past him. After three years of flying the Orbit Jet, he knew the ship as well as he knew his own name, and the air current going past him shouldn't have been there. The hatch between the navigation room and the engine room had been jarred open by the explosion, and air was blowing through it. He hurried into the engine room, where he heard the one sound every spaceman hopes he never hears: the whistle of air escaping through a hull breach.
In every room of every spacecraft flown by human beings is an emergency kit for dealing with air leaks. The kit includes a set of small compressed air cylinders that feed into balloons. Jones pressed a switch on the engine room's emergency air leak kit and a balloon about six inches in diameter quickly inflated and detached itself. It whirled through the engine room, eventually coming to rest against one of the outer walls. Jones followed it, then shook his head in anger. The balloon flattened itself against a long, thin line in the wall, then popped. Their unknown attacker's missile hadn't just left a pinhole leak in the Orbit Jet's hull; a narrow piece of shrapnel had sliced open a section of the hull, at least two feet in length. The patches in the emergency kit weren't going to be enough to seal this breach. It would take a repair team from RV-5 to deal with this, and they were still two hours away from the station. All they could do was seal off the engine room, and with the hatch jammed open he would have to use the emergency seal. Jones hurried from the engine room to the pilot room.
After sealing off the engine room, he resumed his seat in the pilot's chair and belted himself in.
"C section?" said DelPonte as he observed Jones. "I guess we were lucky at that."
"Yeah, I had to seal it off before we were sapped of oxygen," said Jones. "With any luck, though, we should be able to limp in to the space station." He suddenly thought of his newest crew member, and with a grin he said, "Say, call Vena forward. Let's see how she likes being a Space Ranger now." Being attacked by an unknown enemy and damaged might turn out to have a silver lining after all, if it convinced Vena Ray that a Space Ranger ship was no place for a girl.
DelPonte unbuckled himself from the co-pilot's chair and went aft, saying, "Hey, Vena, Rocky says you . . . ", then trailed off. Jones turned around, and through the open hatchway he could see DelPonte standing in the middle of the navigation room. He was alone.
* * *
Vena Ray watched with growing anger as Rocky Jones rushed past her on his way to the pilot room, again without saying a word to her. She knew perfectly well that her warning had probably saved all their lives, and yet he still treated her like some kind of intruder. Well, if the high and mighty Captain Rocky Jones of the Space Rangers wouldn't deign to inform a member of his crew what had happened to the ship, she would find out for herself. Unstrapping herself from the blast chair, she entered the engine room. There was a high-pitched whistling sound coming from the lefthand wall. As she came near, she could feel the air rushing past her through a dark line in the wall.
An air leak!
She turned and ran towards the hatch to the navigation room, but a metal cover slid down over it shutting her in. Pressing the hatch release did no good. She began pounding on the cover and calling out "Rocky! Winky!" She felt a wave of dizziness pass through her. Anoxia, she thought. She felt her skin growing puffy, and a sharp pain stabbed at her eyes and ears. She shut her eyes tight and held her hands over her ears. Soon, she thought, there won't be enough oxygen to keep me conscious . . .
There was another wave of dizziness, and she felt herself falling to the floor.
* * *
Rocky Jones looked on from the pilot room as DelPonte rushed to the far end of the navigation room and pounded on the hatch cover. He turned and called, "Rocky, it's Vena! She's sealed in!"
Jones quickly unbuckled himself from his chair and hurried into the navigation room. "I hope we're not too late," he muttered as he pounded on the hatch cover. It didn't budge. "It's jammed," he said. "I'll have to cut it open." Turning to DelPonte, he ordered, "Prepare for shock therapy, set up the regeneration unit. And Winky, get out the oxygen helmets. Once I cut through, the ship will be dry of air. Hurry!"
As DelPonte returned to the pilot room, Jones opened a storage compartment and pulled out a cutting torch. Switching it on, he began cutting his way through the hatch cover. The whistle of escaping air filled his ears as the cut in the hatch cover grew. How much time did Ray have left before oxygen deprivation caused irreversible brain damage? Ten minutes? Less? It hadn't been more than thirty seconds after sealing the engine room that he had decided to call her up to the pilot room and taunt her about the danger she was in. His impulse might yet save her life, but he was ashamed now to have given in to it.
None of this should have been happening! None of it would have happened if he hadn't been unforgiveably sloppy. If this had been a normal mission, he would have had DelPonte manning the proximity detector as a matter of course, and he wouldn't have wasted valuable seconds questioning whether he had actually seen anything if he reported an approaching ship. And he should have at least stopped in the navigation room long enough to tell Ray, "There's a hull breach in the engine room, I'm going to have to seal it off." He couldn't blame her for going to have a look for herself; he would have done the same thing himself in the circumstances.
For someone who was supposed to be in a position of leadership, he had been making some very bad decisions lately, and a member of his crew might yet pay with her life for his mistakes.
He could feel his exposed skin react to the falling air pressure, and he blinked rapidly as his eyes began to hurt. There! Jones switched off the cutting torch and set it down, then kicked in the section of hatch cover he had cut out. The clang it made as it fell to the deck was faint; the air was almost gone. Vena Ray was lying on the floor in the middle of the engine room. He ran in, lifted her up, and carried her back into the navigation room. DelPonte stood beside a blast chair in an oxygen helmet, and he held another in each hand. He handed one to Jones, then slipped the other over Ray's head and twisted open the oxygen hose. Jones did the same with his own helmet, and felt it seal itself against his shoulders as a cold blast of pure, sweet oxygen surrounded his face.
Switching on the helmet radio, he said, "Take charge of her, Winky. I think she'll be all right. She helped save our lives, we've got to save hers. I'll get us to the space station as soon as possible." He went forward to the pilot room and belted himself into his blast chair. The signal locator was still tuned to the station's frequency, and he brought the station up on the viseograph. Turning the Orbit Jet, he boosted towards the station. His battle with the unknown ship had brought him within half a million miles of the station, and he could see it on the screen, a slowly rotating metal wheel.
RV-5 had been built a century earlier, before artificial gravity had been perfected. It had been designed to rotate to provide the sensation of gravity. At its hub was a counterrotating spacedock. Jones jacked the radio to his helmet, and called the station. "XV-2 calling Space Station RV-5. Come in, RV-5."
"RV-5 to XV-2," came the familiar voice of Jeremy Clark, the station's commander. "Glad to hear from you. Rocky, this is Space Ranger Clark."
"Clark, am I glad to see you," Jones answered. "I've got a crippled ship."
"If you were to land in more than one piece, I'd certainly be surprised," said Clark. "Hold on, I'll see if the magnetic couple can pick you up."
In the screen, Jones could see one of the station's docking ports shift position as it zeroed in on the Orbit Jet's own recognition signal. It swung around on its arm until it was aimed directly at the ship. "We've got you, Rocky," Clark radiod. "Relax and we'll pull you in."
"Thanks, Clark." Jones killed the ship's accelleration once more. The Orbit Jet was now under the magnetic control of Space Station RV-5. Clark's people would be able to bring the ship in and dock it with the station.
"What happened to you out there?" Clark asked. "Forget to dodge a meteor?"
"We were attacked by an unknown ship," Jones answered grimly. "It jumped away after we damaged its engine, so we have no way of knowing who it was or what it was after."
* * *
As Vena Ray returned to consciousness, she could feel the shadow of pain clinging to her eyes and ears. Her memory gathered itself together, and she felt a wave of panic pass through her. Trapped in the engine room with the air whistling out of the ship! With a jolt, she opened her eyes.
She was back in her blast chair in the navigation room. Her skin still felt strangely puffy, but she was breathing normally. Her head, she realized, was encased in a transparent helmet. Winky DelPonte was standing next to her, also wearing a transparent helmet. There was a black case sitting on the shelf next to her, and DelPonte was replacing a set of medical instruments within it.
"Winky? What happened?"
He turned to look at her, and smiled. He touched a control on top of his helmet, and she heard a staticky click near her right ear, followed by his voice. "Hey, Vena, it's good to see you coming around. Rocky cut through into the engine room and brought you back here. I've been checking you over. You started going into shock, but I've treated you, and you're fine now. A hundred percent. You'll have to wear that oxygen helmet until we reach Space Station RV-5, because all the air's leaked out into space. Rocky says they've got a magnetic lock on us, so we shouldn't be out here for more than an hour."
"What happened to the other ship? Did it attack us?"
"Yeah, that hull breach in the engine room came from a missile that hit us, but there wasn't any other damage, and our own engines came through it just fine. We disabled the other ship with one of our missiles, but I guess they didn't want to surrender, because they jumped away afterwards."
"Do you know who it was?"
DelPonte tried to scratch his head, but found his hand impeded by the helmet. He rolled his eyes briefly, then said, "Not for certain, but I'll lay you any odds you want that it was the Ophiuchians who were behind it."
"The Ophiuchians? But how would they know where to find us?"
DelPonte's face became grave. Ray didn't think she had ever seen him frown before. "That's a pretty darn good question, Vena. They shouldn't have known where to find us. There's something screwy going on here."
She was silent for a moment before asking, "Winky, do you think Rocky will be angry at me for getting trapped in the engine room?"
DelPonte shrugged. "He didn't seem angry to me. Did he warn you that he was gonna seal off the engine room?"
"No. He didn't say anything to me at all."
He nodded. "In that case, he's probably angrier at himself than he is at you. He should've warned you, that's standard procedure when sealing off part of the ship. And don't forget, if it hadn't been for you warning us about the other ship, we'd've all been in trouble. Don't worry about it."
Another thought occurred to her. "Winky, if all the air is gone from the ship, why aren't we in full spacesuits?"
"Don't need 'em. People seem to think that when you're in a vacuum, you blow up like a balloon popping, but it ain't so. Human skin makes a pretty good spacesuit by itself. Sure, we'd run into trouble if we had to spend a few days like this, but like I said, we'll be docking with the space station in an hour, so we'll be all right. Hey, you think you can get up and about? I'm sure the Skipper'll be glad to see you're okay."
"Are you sure he won't be angry?"
DelPonte grinned. "Tell you what. If he is, I'll be there to act as referee."
* * *
The Orbit Jet was less than ten thousand miles from the station when Jones was joined in the pilot room by Ray and DelPonte. His navigator appeared to have made a full recovery. "Oh, Vena. Gee, I'm glad to see you up and around."
"Thank you, sir. I'm sorry I caused so much trouble."
"That's all right," he assured her. "Could have happened to anyone."
"Thank you, sir," she said with a smile. "And I'm going to make up for it, to prove that I can be as -- that a girl can be as --"
"Vena," he interrupted her, "I've been thinking it over. There's an express that's stopped at the space station, and, well, it might be best if --"
Ray interrupted him in turn. "If I were to be on it?"
"Yes, Vena. You see, what's happened so far could be called routine for a Space Ranger, so it's really no place for a . . . " He found himself stumbling to a halt. With an effort, he finished, "Well, what I mean is, it's best if you go back to Earth."
"Say it," Ray glared at him. "It's no place for a girl. Now listen to me, Rocky Jones. In the first place, I was the one who spotted the enemy ship. Remember?"
"Now, Vena --" DelPonte began.
"Go ahead," she told him, "be the referee. Don't count me out." She turned back to Jones, and in a fury she continued, "I can say what I think about you in thirty-seven different languages. I'll start with the Martian. You're nothing but a big babalak! On Neptune they'd call you --"
As Ray's voice cut out, Jones looked up at her. DelPonte had evidently decided that his role as referee required him to switch off her helmet radio. He waited while she ran down, then surreptitiously switched her back on. "-- and in conclusion, Rocky Jones, I meant every single word I said!" And having said her piece, she turned and left the pilot room.
"You'll never get her on the express to Earth, Rocky," DelPonte advised him. "And you know? I've got a feeling that she's gonna come in mighty handy when we make that forced landing on Ophiuchius."
Rocky Jones found himself hoping that DelPonte was right.
1 comments:
Man, this is really good stuff. It gives the TV series even more of a non-fiction feel. Keep up the good work.
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