The Starry Rift Read online

  “How can places be out of commo range? I keep hearing that.”

  “It’s the Rift. Relativistic effects out here where the density changes. Oh, you can pick up the frequency, but the noise, the garble factor, is hopeless. Some people claim even electronic gear acts up as you really get into the Rift itself.”

  “How much do they charge to stay at the hut?”

  “Nothing, if you bring your own chow and bag. Air and water’s perfect.”

  “I might want to make an excursion farther on to look at something I’ve spotted in the scope.”

  “Green. We’ll adjust the chart fee when you get back. But if you run around, watch out for this vortex situation here.” Charts pokes his stylus into the holo, north of Ace’s Landing. “Nobody’s sure yet whether it’s a bunch of little ones or a great big whopper of a gee-pit. And remember the holos don’t fit together too well—” He edges a second chart into the first display; several stars are badly doubled.

  “Right. And I’ll keep my eyes open and run a listening watch for that lost ship, BK’s.”

  “You do that...” He tallies up an amount that has her credit balance scraping bottom. “I sure hope they turn up soon. It’s not like them to go jazzing off somewhere... Green, here you are.”

  She tenders her voucher chip. “It’s go.” She grins. “Barely.”

  Still suited, lugging her pouch of chart cassettes, Coati takes a last look through the great view-wall of the main corridor. She has a decision to make. Two decisions, really, but this one isn’t fun—she has to send something to her parents, and without giving herself away to anybody who checks commo. Her parents must be signaling all over home sector by now. She winces mentally, then has an idea: Her sister on a planet near Cayman’s has married enough credits to accept any number of collect ’skips, and it would be logical—Yes.

  Commo is two doors down.

  “You don’t need to worry,” she tells a lady named Pauna. “My brother-in-law is the planet banker. You can check him in that great big ephemeris there. Javelo, Hunter Javelo.”

  Cautiously, Pauna does so. What she finds on Port-of-Princes reassures her enough to accept this odd girl’s message. Intermittently sucking her stylus, Coati writes:

  Dearest Sis,

  Surprise! I’m out at FedBase 900. It’s wonderful. Will look around a bit and head home, stopping by you. Tell folks all okay, ship goes like dream, and million thanks.

  Love, Coati.

  There! That ought to do it without alerting anybody. By the time her father messages FedBase 900, if he does, she’ll be long gone.

  And now, she tells herself, heading out to the port, now for the big one. Where exactly should she go?

  Well, she can always take Charts’ advice and have a good time on Ace’s Landing, scanning the skies and planning her next trip. She’s become just a little impressed by the hugeness of space and the chill of the unknown. Suppose she gets caught in an uncharted gravity vortex? She’s only been in one, and it was small, and a good pilot was flying. (That was one of the flights she didn’t tell her folks about.) And there’s always next time.

  On the other hand, she’s here now, all set. And her folks could raise trouble next time she sets out. Isn’t it better to do all she can while she can do it?

  Well, like what, for instance?

  Her ears had pricked up at Charts’ remark about those GO-type suns. And one of them was where the poor lost team was headed for, she has the coordinates on her wrist. What if she found them! Or—what if she found a fine terraform planet, and got to name it!

  The balance of decision, which had never really leveled, tilts decisively toward a vision of yellow suns—as Coati all but runs into the ramp edge leading out.

  A last flicker of caution reminds her that, whatever her goal, her first outward leg must be the beacon route to Ace’s. At the first beacon turn she’ll have time to think it over and really make up her mind.

  She finds that CC-One has been skidded out of Fuels and onto the edge of the standard-thrust takeoff area. She hikes out and climbs in, unaware that she’s broadcasting a happy hum. This is it! She’s really, really, at last, on her way!

  Strapping in, preparing to lift, she takes out a ration snack and bites it open. She was too broke to eat at Base. Setting course and getting into drive will give her time to digest it; she has a superstitious dislike of going into cold-sleep with a full tummy. Absolutely nothing is supposed to go on during cold-sleep, and she’s been used to it since she was a baby, but the thought of that foreign lump of food in there always bothers her. What puts it in stasis before it’s part of her? What if it decided to throw itself up?

  So she munches as she sets the holochart data in her computer, leaving FedBase 900 far below. She’s delightedly aware that the realest part of her life is about to begin. Amid the radiance of unfamiliar stars, the dark Rift in her front view-ports, she completes the course to Beacon 900-One, AL, and listens to the big c-skip converters, the heart of her ship, start the cooling-down process. The c-skip drive unit must be supercooled to near absolute zero to work the half-understood miracle by which reciprocal gravity fields will be perturbed, and CC-One and herself translated to the target at relativistic speed.

  As the first clicks and clanks of cooling resound through the shell, she hangs up her suit, opens her small-size sleep-chest, gets in, and injects herself. Her feelings as she pulls the lid down are those of a child of antique Earth as it falls asleep to awake on Christmas morning. Thank the All for cold-sleep, she thinks drowsily. It gave us the stars. Imagine those first brave explorers who had to live and age, to stay awake through all the days, the months, the years...

  She wakens in what at first glance appears to be about the same starfield, but when she’s closed the chest, rubbing her behind where the antisleep injections hit, she sees that the Rift looks different.

  It’s larger, and—why, it’s all around the ship! Tendrils of dark almost close behind her. She’s in one of the fringy star-clumps that stick out into the Rift. And the starfield looks dull, apart from a few blazing suns—of course, there aren’t any nearby stars! Or rather, there are a few very near, and then an emptiness where all the middle-distance suns should be. Only the far, faint star-tapestry lies beyond.

  The ship is full of noise; as she comes fully awake, she understands that the beacon signal and her mass-proximity indicator are both tweeting and blasting away. She tunes them down, locates the beacon, and puts the ship into a slow orbit around it. This beacon, like FedBase, is set on a big asteroid, which gives her just enough gees to stabilize.

  Very well. If she’s going to Ace’s Landing, she’ll just set in the coordinates for Beacon 900-Two, AL, and go back to sleep. But if she’s going to look at those yellow suns, she must get out her charts and work up a safe two- or three-leg course to one of them.

  She can’t simply set in their coordinates and fly straight there, even if there were no bodies actually in the way, because the ’skip drive is built to turn off and wake her if she threatens to get too deep in a strong gravity field or encounters an asteroid swarm or some other space hazard. So she has to work out corridors that pass really far away from any strong bodies or known problems.

  Decide... But face it, hadn’t she already decided when she stabilized here? She doesn’t need that much time to punch in Beacon Two... Yes. She has to go somewhere really wild. A hut on Ace’s Landing is just not what she came out here for. Those unknown yellow suns are... and maybe she could do something useful, like finding the missing men; there’s an off chance. The neat thing to do might be to go by small steps. Ace’s Landing first—but the really neat course is to take advantage of all she’s learned and not to risk being forbidden to come back, green, go!

  She’s been busy all this while, threading cassettes and getting them lined up for those GO suns. As Charts had warned her, edges don’t fit well. She’s working at forcing two holos into a cheap frame made for one, when her mass-proximity tweeter goes off.<
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  She glances up, ready to duck or deflect a sky-rock. Amazed, she sees something unmistakably artificial ahead. A ship? It grows larger—but not large enough, not at the rate it’s coming. It’ll pass her clean. Whatever can it be? Visions of the mythical tiny ship full of tiny aliens jump to her mind.

  It’s so small—why, she could pick it up! Without really thinking, she spins CC-One’s attitude and comes parallel, alongside the object. She’s good at tricky little accelerations. The thing seems to put on speed as she idles up. Touched by chase fever, she mutters, “Oh, no you don’t!” and extrudes the rather inadequate manipulator-arm.

  As she does so, she realizes what it is. But she’s too excited to think; she plucks it neatly out of space and, after a bit of trying, twists it into her cargo-lock, shuts the port behind it, and refills with air.

  She’s caught herself a message pipe! Bound from the gods know where to FedBase. It was changing course at Beacon One, like herself, hence moving slowly. Has she committed an official wrong? Is there some penalty for interfering with official commo?

  Well, she’s put her spoon in the soup, she might as well drink it. It’ll take a while for the pipe to warm to touchability. So she goes on working her charts, intending merely to take a peak at the message and then send the little thing on its way. Surely such a small pause won’t harm anything—pipes are used because the sender’s out of range, not because they’re fast.

  She hasn’t a doubt she can start it going again. She’s seen it’s covered with instructions. Like all Federation space-gear, it’s fixed to be usable by amateurs in an emergency.

  Impatiently, she completes a chart and goes to fish the thing out of the port while it’s still so cold she has to put on gloves. When she undoes its little hatch, a cloud of golden motes drifts out, distracting her so that she brushes her bare wrist against the metal when she reaches for the cassette inside. Ouch!

  She glances at her arm, hoping she hasn’t given herself a nasty cold-bum. Nothing to be seen but an odd dusty scratch. No redness. But she can feel the nerves twitch deep in her forearm. Funny! She brushes at it and takes out the cassette with more care. It’s standard record, she soon has it threaded in her voder.

  The voice that speaks is so thick and blurry that she backs up and restarts, to hear better.

  “Supply and Recon Team number nine fourteen BK reporting,” she makes out. Excitedly she recognizes the designation. Why, that’s the missing ship! This is important. She should relay it to Base at once. But surely it won’t hurt to listen to the rest?

  The voice is saying that a new depot has been established at thirty-twenty north, forty-two-twenty-eight west, RD twenty-seven. That’s one of the yellow suns’ planets; and the coordinates Coati has on her wrist. “Ninety-five percent terraform.” The voice has cleared a little.

  It goes on to say that they will work back to FedBase, stopping to check a highly terraform planet they’ve spotted at eighteen-ten north, twenty-eight-thirty west, RD twenty-seven, in the same group of suns. “But—uh...” The voice stops, then resumes.

  “Some things happened at thirty-twenty. There’re people there. I guess we have to report a, uh, First Contact. They—”

  A second voice interrupts abruptly.

  “We did just like the manual! The manual for First Contacts.”

  “Yeah,” resumes the first voice. “It worked fine. They were really friendly. They even had a few words from Galactic, and the signals. But they—”

  “The wreck. The wreck! Tell them,” says the other voice.

  “Oh. Well, yeah. There’s a wreck there, an old RB. Real old. You can’t see the rescue flag, it has big stuff growing on it. We think it’s Ponz. So maybe it’s his First Contact.” The voice sounds unmistakably downcast. “Boss can decide... Anyway, they have some kind of treatment they give you, like a pill to make you smart. It takes two days, you sleep a lot. Then they let you out and you can understand everything. I mean—everything! It was—we never had anything like that before. Everybody talking and understanding everybody! See how we can talk now? But it’s funny... Anyway, they helped us find a place with a level site and we fixed up a fuel dump really nice. We—”

  “What they looked like!” the other voice butts in. “Never mind us. Tell about them, what they looked like and how they did.”

  “Oh, sure. Well. Big white bodies with fur all over. And six legs, they mostly walk on the back four, the top two are like arms. They have like long bodies, long white cats, big; when they rear up to look, they’re over our heads. And they have...” Here the voice stammers, as if finding it hard to speak. “They have like two, uh, private parts. Two sets, I mean. Some of them. And their faces”—the voice runs on, relieved—“their faces are fierce. Some teeth! When they came and looked in first, we were pretty nervous. And big eyes, sort of like mixed-up people and animals. Cats. But they acted friendly, they gave back the signals, so we came out. That was when they grabbed us and pushed their heads onto ours. Then they let us go, and acted like something was wrong. 1 heard one say, ‘Ponz,’ and like ‘Lashley’ or ‘Leslie.’ ”

  “Leslie was with Ponz, I told you,” says the second.

  “Yeah. So then they grabbed us again and held on, that was when they gave the treatment. I think something went into me, I can still hear like a voice. Ko says him, too... Oh, and there were young ones and some others running around on an island, they said they’re not like them until they get the treatment. ‘Drons’ they called the young ones. And afterwards they’re ‘Ee-ah-drons.’ The ones we talked to. It’s sort of confusing. Like the Ee-ah are people, too. But you don’t see them.” His voice—it must be Boney—runs down. “Is that all?” Coati hears him ask aside.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” the other voice—Ko—replies. “We better get started, we got one more stop... and I don’t feel so good anymore. I wish we was home.”

  “Me too. Funny, we felt so great. Well, DRS nine fourteen BK signing off... I guess this is the longest report we ever sent, huh? Oh, we have some corrections to send. Stand by.”

  After a long drone of coordinate corrections, the record ends.

  Coati sits pensive, trying to sort out the account. It’s clear that a new race has been contacted, and they seem friendly. Yet something about it affects her negatively—she has no desire to rush off and meet the big white six-legs and be given the “smart treatment.” Boney and Ko were supposed to be a little—innocent. Maybe they were fooled in some way, taken advantage of? But she can’t think why, or what. It’s beyond her...

  The other thing that’s clear is that this should go to Base, fastest. Wasn’t there a ship going to follow Boney and Ko’s route? Which would take them to the cat-planet, that’s at—she consults her wrist—yes, thirty-twenty north, et cetera. Oh, dear, must she go back? Turn back, abort her trip, to deliver this? Why had she been so smart, pulling in other people’s business?

  But wait—maybe she’s still in commo range. In fact—why, if it’s urgent, she could speed it by calling Base and reading the message, thus bypassing the last leg. Then surely they wouldn’t crack her for interfering!

  She powers up the transponder and starts calling FedBase 900. Finally a voice responds, barely discernible through the noise. She fiddles with the suppressors, gets it a bit clearer.

  “FedBase Nine hundred, this is CC-One at AL Beacon One. Do you read me? I have intercepted a message pipe from Supply Ship DRS nine fourteen BK, the missing ship. Boney and Ko.” She repeats. “Do you read that?”

  “Affirmative, CC-One. Message from nine fourteen B-and-K intercepted. What is the message?”

  “It’s too long to read. But listen—important. They are on their way to a planet at—wait a minim—” She rolls the record back and gets the coordinates. “And before that they stayed at that planet thirty-twenty north, you have the specs. There are people there! It’s a First Contact, I think. But listen, they say something’s funny. I don’t think you should go there until you get the whole message.
I’m sending it right on.”

  “CC-One, I lost part of that. Is planet at thirty-twenty north a First Contact?”

  Garble is breaking up Commo’s voice. Coati shouts as clearly as she can, “Yes! Affirmative! But don’t, repeat do—not—go—there—until you get B-and-K’s original message. I—will—send—pipe—at once. Did you get that?”

  “Repeating... Do not proceed to planet thirty-twenty north forty-two-twenty-eight west until BK message received. Pipe coming soonest. Green, CC-One?”

  “Go. If I can’t make the pipe work I’ll bring it. CC-One signing off.” She finishes in a swirl of loud static and turns her attention to getting the pipe back on its way.

  But before she takes the cassette out of the voder, she rechecks the designation of the planet BK are headed for. Eighteen-ten north, twenty-eight-thirty west, RD twenty-seven. That’s closer than the First Contact planet; that’s right, they said they’d stop there on their way home. She copies the first coordinates off her work-pad and replaces those on her wrist with the new ones. If she wants to help look for Boney and Ko, she could go straight there—but of course she hasn’t really made up her mind. As she rolls back her sleeve, she notices that her arm still feels odd, but she can’t see any trace of a cold-bum. She rubs the arm a couple of times and it goes away.

  “Getting goosey from excitement,” she mutters. She has a childish habit of talking aloud to herself when she’s alone. She figures it’s because she was alone so much as a child, happily playing with her space toys and ’grams.

  Putting the message pipe back on course proves to be absurdly simple. She blows it clean of the yellow powdery stuff, reinserts the cassette, and ejects it beside the viewports. Fascinated, she watches the little ship spin slowly, orienting to its homing frequency broadcast from Base 900. Then, as if satisfied, it begins to glide away, faster and faster. Sure enough, as well as she can judge, it’s headed down the last leg from Beacon One to Far Base. Neat! She’s never heard of pipes before; there must be all kinds of marvelous Frontier gadgets that’ll be new to her.