Chapter Twelve

 

Cramer posted himself in the engine sphere, and Mona took up a station in the fuel sphere. From the command center Lila donned the MindX cap and sent thought impulses to start the hydrogen flowing and fire up the engines. Witherspoon monitored the various indicators in the command center.

The engines flamed into action, sending them toward home. The crew monitored the ship’s operation for a few days. Witherspoon took the one available room in the command module. Cramer and Mona set up privacy screens around their beds in the command sphere.

He slept fitfully for the two nights. Before going into the cryo sleep tanks he looked at the photo again of Cindy with her mother. He ached to see Cindy again, and if he could, did he really care about their different aging since last being together? Would he even recognize her now that she was older and able to take care of herself? Tears welled in his eyes just before Mona and Lila returned.

“It’s time for deep sleep, Joe,” Lila said.

“What’s the hurry? Another day won’t matter,” he said.

“Mr. Witherspoon is ready, and the three of you should go into deep sleep at the same time. We’ll conserve energy by doing it that way. Our energy supply is as critical as the fuel.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” he said.

“Now, Joe, don’t be difficult,” she said.

“Mona, come to my rescue here.” He used his best pleading tone.

“Lila, Joe has been pretty depressed. It seems he could use another day to come out of it. I think I could help him,” Mona said.

“And how might you do that?” Lila asked.

“Don’t read between the lines.” Mona’s jaw twitched.

“What do you need to help to dispel your depression?”

He frowned. “To not be pushed into my sleep tank against my will. Go convince Witherspoon to hang loose for a while.”

“Your attitude could be construed as mutinous.”

“For cryin’ out loud. It’s not like I had a sword drawn and a band of cutthroats backing me up.” Cramer battled for self-control.

“Lila, give us a few hours at least,” Mona said. Lila nodded, then left.

“What’s got into her?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I predict when she returns, she’ll do a one-eighty and turn her charm on you,” Mona said.

“I have a good mind to find a hiding place for a while.”

“It’s refreshing to see the old Joe Cramer, a fighting machine, who won’t knuckle down.” She tapped him on the shoulder.

“I’d just like to talk to you, Mona.”

They went to the snack area, and Cramer decided to sip on a one-liter bottle of orange juice. She did the same. He stared at her with great admiration, wondering how personal he could get.

“I fear I’ve ruined our professional relationship by making those personal remarks a while back. I can’t help the way I feel, and my feelings eventually come out in words,” he said.

“Is it because I’m the only girl in town—besides Lila?”

“Are you sure you want me to elaborate?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want an answer.”

“It wouldn’t matter if there were a hundred women here. I would still feel the same way about you. This goes deeper than your beauty. I don’t expect you to reciprocate. I’m twice your age. What am I saying? Forgive me, Mona, for sounding like a star struck junior high school boy.”

He held his forehead in self-disgust, his face heating then he ventured to make eye contact with her. He hoped his tears stayed back, but was surprised when he saw moisture in her eyes too. Cramer desperately wanted to hear something heartwarming from her. He knew she found it easy to be critical of someone, but he suspected she might not find it as easy to be verbal about her affections. Could he take her silence as a positive sign? He’d never met anyone with such a complex personality.

“It seems I’m still drawing things out of you, Joe,” she said, her voice quivering just a touch.

“I wish I could pull things out of you, but only if it was what I wanted to hear.” He smiled, sipped the orange juice, then added, “how’s that for a selfish outlook?”

“Who doesn’t want to hear something positive? After this hitch of sleep we’ll talk again,” she said, touching her eye with a knuckle, smoothing a stray strand of hair.

“Okay, but you do almost all the talking this time,” he said.

“I’ll try to live up to what everybody criticizes a woman for—talking all the time.”

They finished their juice and walked toward the deep sleep sphere. Lila met them.

“I was too rough on you,” she said to Cramer, then put her arms around his neck, turning on all her charm just as Mona predicted.

“No problem. I’m ready to go under.”

She looked at him, surprised, then stared at Mona. The three of them went to the cryo tanks, where Witherspoon stood waiting. Cramer didn’t like the prospect of a long sleep ahead. Witherspoon went to his chamber first. As his dome started frosting, Mona moved to her chamber, gazed at Cramer, the hint of a smile on her face. Everything about her attracted him now.

After she went under, Lila turned to him. “While you’re under I’ll try to call Mars and find out about your daughter. Also, I’ll come up with an elapsed time for us and for Mars, but that depends on hearing from them.”

“Thank you.”

She wouldn’t find anything out because of the prohibitive distance and time delay for communications. She gave false assurance, which she should have known he’d see through. Images from the ship’s long-range sensors started flooding his thoughts.

The Oort Cloud floated through his mind, showing the ice balls of all sizes. The comets never experienced the closeness of a sun. Their primordial gases and soil still intact, forever frozen, each displayed a different face, and each yearned for a violent release. He strained and reasoned he perceived a very large, spherical body appearing to be composed of ice and soot, similar to the smaller ones.

Distant nebulas beckoned, their dust lanes displaying complex patterns, partially masking the birth of new suns within. Their exaggerated colors of reds, blues, and violets in a kaleidoscope splashed the dark regions of space. Their fingers and arms sought something yet were unable to reach it.

Time. Did anybody have a right to cheat it, to step aside from the river while everyone else, still subject to that flowing, remained isolated from the stationary shore? This detestable cryo tank did that. To step into time’s river for a while then step out seemed wrong.

Ah, but time wins out in the long run. A body can’t remain in the sleep tank indefinitely. Organs begin to deteriorate from reduced activity. Muscles atrophy despite the electrical stimulus supplied by the cryo tank, the brain suffers along with all the nerves because of decreased activity. The reason given for coming out of the tank was to check the ship’s function, but no, that wasn’t the real reason. The body had to revitalize itself. The special design of Witherspoon’s sleep chamber awoke him periodically on the way to Sirius. That cut down on the long term effects of cryo sleep.

All these thoughts, Cramer realized, took place over a two-year period. His body just about couldn’t take any more inactivity. His normal sensations, their normal working speed returned. He felt sluggish. Bit by bit, the image of a translucent dome appeared above him. A temporary sense of extreme cold shook him as the drug wore off and his usual, waking life cycle kicked in.

Through his heightened awareness, he realized this awakening didn’t come via Lila. He found that quite odd. The dome’s frost disappeared and slid away. Fresh air flooded him, rather than air piped in at the slow flow rate for cryo sleep. Witherspoon and Mona stared down at him. She extended her hand and helped him to sit up.

“What’s going on?” Cramer asked.

“I don’t know. I think Lila either activated our chambers through her MindX connection or she programmed the tanks to end their cycle now,” Mona answered.

“Monitors show our hydrogen almost gone and Lila locked into MindX at the moment,” Witherspoon said.

“There’s something else,” Mona said.

“What?”

“We’re heading for a large body just outside the Oort Cloud.”

“I saw that in my thought state during cryo sleep. We have to head for the command sphere.”

They arrived together. Lila, deep in the MindX link, couldn’t be severed from it without neuro damage.

“The only way we can break her connection safely is by another MindX station,” Mona said.

“I don’t have that ability,” Cramer said.

“I do,” she said.

He remembered that fact during the Jupiter descent mission. Witherspoon warned them of the fast-approaching object. Mona went to an adjoining station, clamped on the MindX cap, intimately connecting with the ship’s systems as well as with Lila’s mind. With speed and efficiency, she brought both Lila and herself out of the MindX link.

“I was seeking for a way to turn the ship and avoid the collision,” Lila said, getting out of the pilot’s chair.

“Our hydrogen is almost gone,” Mona said.

“We must get ourselves secured for the collision,” Cramer said.

Witherspoon frowned. “I don’t think the ship is strong enough to take this kind of collision.”

“We should all four separate into different areas of the ship so we’re less likely to all be injured,” Cramer said. “It’s more likely we’ll be able to help one another if we crash.”

“Good idea, but we’ll have to hurry. I’ll secure myself in the deep sleep area.”

“Joe, you take the backup systems sphere, Mona, the taxi sphere, and I’ll stay here in command,” Lila said.

“Lila, that’s suicide. Please take some position in the back of the command sphere,” Cramer said.

“I’ll be all right. Hurry and get to your stations.”

Each station monitored the approach of the giant comet. He buckled himself into the backup systems control chair and watched the approach of the object. He feared for the safety of the other members of the crew.

The object, bright and reflective for this distance from the sun, surprised him. The monitor, cabled into detectors of various kinds, chose the best detector system for the comet. At the ghostly image, he didn’t bother to see whether the detector registered in the infrared, ultraviolet, or some of the other more sophisticated modes. The sphere measured twenty kilometers across, and dark particles, incandescent tan, blurry, and ill defined, speckled its icy surface. The frozen gases seemed powdery, detailed. It was a frightening sight to see it approach dead on. The ship coasted; the drive engines were unable to operate because of the low hydrogen. Although moving slowly, Quest would not nudge the comet out of the way.

Why didn’t he notice it before? Cramer didn’t look at the estimated mass figure until he saw the object turn its face. The snow covered a rocky body. He shouted over the ship’s intercom. The cratered planetoid must have escaped its sun eons ago. He feared the ship would not survive this collision. Closer it came until he could see smaller craters within larger ones. The approach on the screen reminded him of an ancient rocket called Ranger, aimed at Earth’s moon with a camera mounted in its nose. The movie, frightening to watch, showed the moon’s surface approaching at an incredible speed. This sight duplicated the movie. Unlike the collision and black out, he stayed conscious to see the crash.

His seat straps dug into his shoulders on impact, then ripped, causing him to somersault over his monitor terminal. Sparks flew from a nearby electronics console as he glanced off another equipment rack then came to rest in a sitting position. He escaped with only a bruised shoulder and sore knee. Once on his feet, he limped to the station that monitored the outside of the ship via external cameras. The screens still displayed images, all except one: the command sphere. That monitor only displayed black and white noise.

The acrid smell of burned insulation and melted epoxy filled the air as the affected console continued to shower sparks in all directions. The planetoid, its one-time solid spherical shape was now large irregular chunks of rock and snow. Those boulders tumbled in slow motion away into the blackness of space. He checked the drive engine monitor. That section, which included the engine and fuel spheres, burst from the remainder of the ship. The remaining hydrogen exploded in a blue fire ball, sending little pieces of the engine and hull structure in all directions.

The deep sleep and taxi spheres tore free from the rest of the ship but remained attached to each other. They toppled end over end into deep space like a twirler’s baton escaping her clutch. The monitor outside his own backup systems and supply sphere remained attached to the greenhouse sphere. Their hulls showed wide cracks. He couldn’t quite make out the command sphere. He feared for the survival of all the crew members.

From his backup systems console, the condition of the other spheres could be assessed by way of radio wave transmissions should the hard wire connections be severed. Since the drive engine and fuel spheres had exploded, he only saw and heard static from that connection. The deep sleep and taxi spheres tumbled out of sight, but air remained in the sleep sphere. The taxi sphere decompressed, leaving him with the fear Mona was dead. The greenhouse sphere remained with a breathable atmosphere, but he could receive no data from the command sphere.

He grimaced in pain as he limped through the strewn crates and boxes that broke loose from their restraining straps. The greenhouse sphere suffered from the crash as he stepped through uprooted plants and trees, scattered soil, broken branches, shredded leaves, overturned plant food boxes, and spilled liquid nutrient barrels. He tried several times to raise somebody on the radio, but no answer came. He arrived at the connecting lock between the greenhouse sphere and command sphere. Horrified, he stared at the pressure gauge that displayed the condition of the other side. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It read a hard vacuum on the other side so he pushed a button to check the gauge’s ability to read. It checked out okay, indicating atmospheric pressure on his side. He dreaded finding Lila’s body and seeing the damage to the command sphere.

He went back to the backup systems sphere to get a space suit then waited until he faced the entrance to the command sphere before putting the suit on. Courtesy of Witherspoon, air lock mechanisms connected each sphere. Cramer, after suiting up and turning his air on, opened the adjoining channel between the two spheres. He stepped through. He tried to cycle the interlock, to expel the air from where he stood, but the mechanism failed to respond. He put his gloved hand on the manual valve. He turned it, and a crack appeared between the interlock and command sphere. He couldn’t hear the air rushing out, but he saw the effects when some loose debris whipped up from the floor and slipped through the crack. His suit’s external pressure gauge kept lowering until finally it neared the hard-vacuum reading.

Equal pressure on both sides allowed him to open the connecting door all the way. The transparent dome covering the leading part of the command sphere, demolished, provided Cramer with a view into space where floating fragments of the ship and tumbling chunks of the planetoid sailed in slow motion like a time lapse movie of an explosion. He looked down at the floor—still intact. The various consoles emitted numerous electronic sparks. Smoke solidified into grotesque spidery wisps that shook in the vacuum environment. Glowing embers of wiring winked out in the cold of space.

He spotted Lila still strapped in her pilot’s chair. He caught his breath. Her body showed no evidence of the violent decompression, no nightmare of frozen entrails, an exploded head, crusted blood, frozen blood, or other horrid evidence from the vacuum. He wondered about empty eye sockets behind her closed eyelids. He unstrapped her from the chair, and she opened her eyes then shut them again. He presumed a dead person’s reflex didn’t make sense. How could she have an envelope of atmospheric pressure around her when his suit’s external gauge detected nothing of the kind?

He carried her body toward the interlock, stepped into it, then manually closed the door behind him. The cycling mechanism on the greenhouse sphere side worked. Soon the green light came on, indicating he could step through to the greenhouse. With her cradled in his arms, he went to the backup systems sphere and laid her on the floor. Then he noted something about her body that explained everything, even her actions from the day he first met her. The torn away skin on her abdomen revealed circuitry. He could see all manner of electronic components. She opened her eyes again, this time peering at him, an expression of sadness on her face.

“Joe, I’m sorry you learned this about me,” she managed.

“You were programmed to suit my every need.”

“When I first became aware of my existence, I didn’t have feelings, but as I came to serve and know you that changed. I can’t explain it, but my mnemonic brain adapted,” she said, talking slow, her voice changing to a deeper pitch.

“Don’t try to talk. Tell me what I can do to repair you.” He fought to understand or believe what she just said.

“It’s no use. Damage is too extensive, and my nuclear power source has decayed to below optimum value.” Her voice, now a deep bass, sounded like a man’s.

“Surely you have a spare nuclear module on board.”

“If there was one it would be useless. The half-life of it would be the same as the one I have, and it would have decayed the same amount.” She lifted her arm toward his face and tried to touch his cheek. Her arm went astray, and he took her hand and placed it where he judged she wanted it.

“Please believe me. I seemed to have evolved beyond what you would call a mechanical woman. These new feelings are wonderful. I’m experiencing love for you, Joe. I know the emotion of jealousy toward Mona.” Her arm became limp, her eyelids fluttering.

“I believe you. I’ve developed feelings for you too,” he said, his voice catching.

She smiled faintly then became very still, eyes closed. She was gone. For a brief moment, he thought of her as a machine, but changed his mind. He touched her hair, her cheek. He tried to swallow, but that motion caught in his throat. Giving her the respect a person should have, he covered her with a blanket from a nearby storage box. For a long time, he sat staring at her covered body, thinking of their emotional closeness. He respected her no less because of her robotic make up. The radio shook him out of his rumination.

“Joe, are you there? Come in.”

“Mona, you’re okay. I read that the taxi sphere decompressed.”

“It did. I secured myself in the taxi. Witherspoon is all right and is still in the deep sleep sphere. I’m in the taxi heading back to you. He is staying with the ship section but has turned on a radio beacon so we can keep track of him.”

“Lila is dead. I feel terrible about her.”

“I’m sorry, Joe. Did she suffer?”

“I’ll talk to you when you get here.”

“What about you?”

“I have minor injuries. The command sphere is destroyed, the greenhouse sphere damaged, but the backup systems sphere remains pretty much unharmed. Some of the electronics fried but nothing we can’t replace or repair. You probably know the engine and fuel spheres exploded.”

He watched the taxi approach and dock with the airlock opposite the greenhouse side. The small craft attached to a sphere’s airlock. She came through with her helmet under one arm. He couldn’t contain himself. After she set the helmet down, he hugged her tightly despite the bulky space suit.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, continuing to embrace her. She put her gloved hand around him.

“Same here, Joe.”

“I don’t know how much Lila suffered. In fact, I didn’t know she was an android.”

“I only suspected when I put on the MindX cap to break her link. I was afraid to tell you, not knowing how you would take it.”

“She developed real feelings, she told me. I believed her. She said it with her dying breath.”

“She did everything she could to make your situation more bearable. I can’t believe an android would be so advanced.” Mona placed her hand lightly on his shoulder.

“What are we going to do now?” Cramer bowed his head.

“About all we can do is try staying alive. The deep sleep hardware is functioning. Our only hope is for someone to find us.”

“Way out here? That’s unlikely.”

“There’s not much hope we can fasten the deep sleep and taxi spheres back to these spheres. Only choice is to transfer equipment and supplies from here over to the deep sleep and taxi spheres. I think we can repair the taxi sphere and pressurize it again with bottle oxygen from our backup supplies,” Mona said.

“Yes. How much fuel does the taxi have?”

“We’re in luck. Almost all of the fuel is left, but we can use the repulsion drive because of how near the planetoid is. It has weak gravity, enough to allow using the drive.”

“Good, let’s get started.”

They made several trips, and Witherspoon repaired the breach in the taxi sphere with the hull plating. With all the electronic equipment, oxygen tanks, food supplies, and other items on board, they bid the rest of the ship goodbye. On their last trip they brought Lila’s body over and placed her in one of the unused sleep chambers, slid the dome shut, then covered it up.

“She was a marvelous piece of science and engineering. I thought it best not to reveal that to you, considering one of her functions was to make things better for you, Joe,” Witherspoon said.

“She was more than a mechanism, and she did make things better for me. She was truly a living person to the very end. I keep expecting her to wake up as she did after our accident on the way out,” Cramer said.

“Dr. Ganzer built her, but I don’t think he envisioned her taking on emotions as time went on,” Witherspoon said, looking at the covered chamber.

“If we manage to get back, would Dr. Ganzer be able to repair her?” Mona asked.

“Possibly,” he answered. “With a new power source and circuitry replacement, she could be restored.”

“Really? Would her memory of us and the trip be retained?” Cramer asked.

“I don’t know. That depends on the level of power it takes to maintain her memory.”

“You mean even as she’s lying there, those memories are active?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. She’s not brain dead, not yet anyway. In our way of speaking she’s in a coma. Well, that’s not entirely accurate.”

Cramer felt much better. He went over and pulled back the portion covering Lila’s head. He stared down at her face, trying to take in Witherspoon’s statement. Mona came to his side.

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Come over here. I want to show you what I found in the ship’s log,” she said. They both moved to a console, Witherspoon looking over their shoulders.

“Lila sent a message to Earth just before we went into cryo sleep as we started back.” Mona punched a keyboard then jabbed a finger at the monitor face.

“When will that message reach Earth? We spent three years in cryo sleep, but what does that mean in Earth years?” Cramer asked.

“Hard to say how much time elapsed on Earth. Since our speed didn’t get as high as on the way out, the time dilation wouldn’t be as great,” she said.

“To think I doubted her when she told me she was going to do that.”

“I doubt more than six years has passed on Earth. They won’t receive the signal for at least two more years.”

“What can we do?” Witherspoon said. “We’ve no way to direct our motion. We’re just going to drift.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Cramer said.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

“Well, you notice we are in a region of space where there’s a lot of comets, small planetoids or asteroids if you prefer. They all have one thing in common.”

“Gravity.”

“Right. That means repulsion drive will work out here.”

“The taxi’s drive did great while we shuttled back and forth with supplies,” she said.

“It won’t get us much speed,” he said, “but at least we won’t be dead in space.”

The three of them started gathering electronic parts, tools, coils, wiring and hardware. Thanks to Witherspoon’s adequate storehouse of supplies, they put together two large repulsion drive coils. With the mechanical arm equipped space taxi, the mounting of the coils on the exterior of the two spheres went smoothly. The task required some outer hull work which Cramer and Mona took care of in their space suits.

Within the ship Witherspoon set up the equipment consoles and did the necessary hard wiring, routing it to the interior of the outer hull. Feed through connectors mounted from the outside by Cramer and Mona proved tricky as it required small holes to be drilled through the hull. The work took several days. Finally, it came time to try it out.

“Are there any large bodies nearby?” Witherspoon asked.

“No, but several comets are near and should have enough gravity to allow repulsion to take place,” Cramer said.

He threw the switch, and they all checked the velocity indicator. At first nothing happened. The velocity meter worked on the Doppler principle. It would check the nearest body or star for a shift in its light spectrum. Very sensitive, it could detect a shift of a few Angstroms.

“Look, we’re moving.” Cramer pointed at the indicator.

“But slowly,” Witherspoon said.

“Not much gravity involved with the Oort Cloud’s outer reaches,” Mona said.

“How far are we from the sun?” he asked.

“Over a light year. A number of planets have been discovered beyond the orbit of Pluto, but they’re all rather small, much conjecture about whether they should be considered a planet. Some evidence exists for a gas giant orbiting far from our sun, but no real effort has been made to find it since around the year two thousand or earlier. We can always hope for the truth of the theory about one or more planets that size existing in the middle of or near the outer edge of the Oort Cloud. Of course, they might all be on the opposite side of our sun,” Cramer said.

“Looks like we’re going to be spending a lot of time in cryo sleep,” she said. “In order to avoid an unpleasant surprise I think one of us needs to be awake all the time while the other two sleep. That way we can be sure to detect an increase in velocity without trusting programs.”

“Yeah, I don’t relish diving into the heart of a gas giant three times the size of Jupiter. These spheres aren’t exactly like Diver I and Diver II.”

“Who wants to take the first watch?” Witherspoon asked.

“I will.” She held up her hand as if in a grade school classroom. “I believe one year is long enough before waking up the next person.”

“I’ll take the second watch,” Cramer said.

Witherspoon went first into deep sleep. After that Cramer remarked to Mona before he entered his chamber. “If nothing happens on your watch, I’d be glad to keep you company six months out.”

“You need your rest,” she insisted.

“Not this kind. Say, we were supposed to talk again after the last cryo sleep, remember?”

“Yes, but that sleep ended in disaster. Best not to do any personal talking after something like that.”

“How about now?”

“Get in your chamber this very minute.” She smiled and gave him a gentle push.

That melted Cramer’s heart, and she seemed to recognize that as he lay on his back. He looked into her lovely face framed in shimmering blonde hair as the dome closed and his sleep process began.

A year in a cryo tank goes fast. His thought processes always turned to Cindy, Mona, and Lila. What about Floyd? Would he still be alive?

Awareness. Cramer learned to recognize coming out of deep sleep. First, he felt cold when the drug wore off. He could observe the dome above him defrosting and much to his pleasure he saw the last image before going under. Mona looked down on him as he came fully awake. The dome lifted away, and she helped him up.

“Has it been a year?”

“Yes. I did a lot of reading in that time. Not much else to do except exercise, eat, sleep, and watch the velocity indicator. Once we came near an asteroid measuring ten kilometers across. We got up a little speed from that one but nothing to write home about.”

“I’m sorry I tried to push you about talking. I won’t do it again.” Cramer eased to the floor, tested his legs, then dressed.

“No one pushes Mona Watson into anything so don’t be apologizing and thinking you’re making me feel pressure.”

“I keep forgetting. Thanks for reminding me. Are you ready for deep sleep?”

“Ready.”

Mona entered her chamber after the two of them checked on Witherspoon. Did they get used to seeing each other in their underwear? Well, in his case, no. She looked up at Cramer as he activated the cryo tank. The lid popped into place, and he continued to stare down at her as she had done at him a year before. Her eyes fluttered then closed as the frost formed on her plastic lid. He drew a deep breath then walked away to check on their snail’s pace velocity.

He fell into a routine, a boring one except for the extensive historical and technical subjects covered in the ship’s library. He ate early, let the food settle, jogged between the sleep sphere and taxi sphere, read until lunch, then after eating he would check all the operating systems on board. The rest of the afternoon he would watch the comet field in the visual sight screen. At their low speed the comets didn’t have much effect as they bounced off the ship. Some of them would shatter, sending a blanket of snow everywhere. After the evening meal he would read some more until he started nodding off.

About six months into his turn, the velocity started increasing. He didn’t think much of it until the steady rise convinced him there must be something ahead larger than a ten-kilometer rock. He checked the long distance mass indicator and detected a huge body. Because of the size, he started Mona’s waking cycle but decided to leave Witherspoon in deep sleep. Cramer wished for a speedier waking cycle, but the equipment took its time, otherwise the occupant could suffer physical and neuro damage.

“This planet is very large.” He helped her out of the chamber. She dressed, then they both went to the sensor readouts and monitors.

“Looks like the tenth planet theory has just been proven,” Mona said.

“I’m adjusting the repulsion coils. Let’s hope cutting back the power of one and increasing the power of the other will do the turning we need. Look at the velocity.” He pointed.

“I think gravity is having more of an effect than the repulsion drive.”

The planet loomed ahead in all its riot of color bands, whirling slowly on its axis, displaying a myriad of hues resembling Jupiter. Larger than Jupiter, minus the Great Red Spot, angry and violent swirls accented the rampant weather patterns in the upper atmosphere as the giant planet tugged at them. Their craft headed for the heart of the planet at first, then the repulsion coil imbalance started working.

Cramer could feel the ship turning, the gravity compensators straining to their limits. The velocity pegged out, a display all of nines glaring at them ominously as their craft veered sharp. The gravity compensators lost their effectiveness, making Cramer and Mona fall against the wall. She lost consciousness, but he managed to remain aware long enough to see on the screen a fantastic display of speed. The upper limb of the gas giant rushed at them, then in a blur disappeared at the bottom of the screen. At that point the g-forces took their toll on his body. He graciously relinquished consciousness, falling limp beside Mona.

“Joe, wake up.”

“What happened?”

“Gravity compensators failed on us when we grazed the gas giant.” She extended a hand.

“Are we still on course?”

“Oh, no, I’m afraid not.”

He adjusted the monitor and sensors to look back toward the planet. He couldn’t believe it. The gas giant, now a tiny disk, no longer displayed its color bands. He thought he could see the disk recede even farther. The velocity indicator, no longer over range, remained at a high value. The crippled portion of Quest soared onward into empty space, the slingshot effect propelling them on. The repulsion coils registered nothing in the way of gravity signatures ahead of them, even at extreme range.

“We’re far above the ecliptic plane, aren’t we?” he asked.

“Yes, the Oort Cloud is behind us now. As best I can tell we’re still a long way outside the orbit of Sedna, perhaps five hundred billion miles from the sun.”

“Roughly a tenth light year from home. It might as well be a light year.”

“But don’t you see? We’re close enough now a radio signal will only take a month or two to be heard.”

“Boy, I’m slipping. But will anybody come to get us?”

“We won’t know unless we try.” She handed him a microphone.

“Well, this close perhaps we can increase our chances by aiming the dish antenna toward old Sol.” Cramer made the adjustments by way of the computer which sought and found the sun. At this distance Mars or Earth couldn’t be differentiated from the sun. He sent the message and gave the coordinates based on Earth. If they just received Lila’s message from Sirius, then they would realize the urgency of the second message. Even if someone heard them, it would be a long time for a ship to arrive and rescue them. At any rate, he made the call. The waiting began once again.

The effects of a strong attraction for Mona hit him again. That always cropped up during his idle times. An old saying came to mind: Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop. He needed to distance himself from her at times like this. Of course, he really didn’t want to do that. His upbringing taught him any intimate physical relations would be wrong outside of the marriage vows. He tried once again, without success, to hide these feelings from her.

“I believe one of us needs to go into deep sleep again since we’ve another long wait ahead of us.” Cramer avoided eye contact with her, trying to cover up his ‘problem.’

“Agreed. Shall we flip for it?”

“That’s all right. I’ll volunteer to do whatever you don’t want to do.”

“That’s considerate of you, Joe. I know how you hate deep sleep, and I don’t mind it much, so I’ll go back to slumberland.”

She climbed into her chamber and settled herself on her back, arranging her hair as best she could while lying down. He looked down at her with admiration and swallowed. If he insisted on them using the privacy screen again he’d tip her off.

“I’m going to miss talking to you.”

“You can bring me out of it anytime if you miss me much.” She stifled a laugh.

He smiled. “I should wake Witherspoon for the next watch.”

“I suspect so, but let’s hope someone comes before too long,” Mona said.

Cramer took one of her hands in both of his just before he activated the chamber. He released her hand, feeling he ventured into forbidden territory. He uttered a soft “Sorry,” activated the chamber, then stepped back. She maintained eye contact with him until she could no longer hold her eyes open. He stood watching until the lid frosted over.

He did some math. If a cruiser like the one Stark transported him in from Mars to Quest out at Uranus came it would still take more than two years one way. Perhaps new engines came online since they’d been gone. Still, even given that, what could they hope for? He wondered if any organization or government agency would bother, knowing the expense involved. So much always came down to money. Never mind if lives were at stake.