Part 1

Starfarers

           We're on the verge. Technology is increasing in complexity and potential at an exponential rate, but more importantly, our understanding of the inner mechanics of the universe is increasing alongside it. Such progress cannot sustain itself - there's a finite supply of things to know and build, and we're rushing toward the horizon, hell-bent on comprehension as we approach a critical mass of knowledge and data. For the first time we may have to consider a new quandary: what will we do when we run out of questions? Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but after a few more decades and centuries I believe we may arrive at such a state. Perhaps we will find that Newton was wrong, that a complete understanding of the universe gives us not the slightest insight into the nature of God or the smallest determination of the present and future. Perhaps we will have to question and probe our own curiosities simply to sate them. I do not know.
           I am ignoring, of course, the minor troubles we have encountered in matching our gains with advances in our collective wisdom. It seems that no matter how intelligent and powerful we make our machines, we remain as stupid and weak as ever. The simple fact is that we will either surmount our own inadequacies as a species and mature into an adult race or remain children and destroy ourselves. No, I'm much more concerned with this convergence of understanding. I think that in the Mitchell particle I may have broken one of the final barriers, but I won't live long enough to find out. Isn't it funny? No one really understands my particle theory; it'll take years to find enough of the right people and explain it to them, and then many more years - more than I'll have left - for them to prove me right or wrong. It's still nice, however, to know that you've been an integral part of the solution to our universe-puzzle.
          
           -Dr. Rachel Mitchell, diary excerpt from 10/05/2182
          
           The news cameras were rolling. Rachel smiled for them and nodded. The rest of the five-person crew trailed behind her as she led the way to the podium. Below them, stretched out over a dozen rows and as many columns of chairs, was a small sea of journalists with tablets and styluses, their faces tinged white-yellow with the backwash of light from their notepads' screens. Rachel paused at the stairs leading up to their podium conference table and waved the first two of the crew in front of her - she fully intended to be the one in the center. Robertson and McNeil nodded at her as they moved past. She was up, then, and settling in her seat, with crewmate Cynthia Gallows sitting down beside her. On cue, the press secretary at a podium off to the side cleared his throat, silencing the general chatter of the reporters.
           "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce to you the next crew of the Discovery II, the members of STS-542. At far left is flight engineer Morgan Robertson. To his left, Thomas McNeil, computer systems specialist; to his left, mission commander Dr. Rachel Mitchell; to her left, Cynthia Gallows, assistant mission specialist; and at far right, Bernard Peters, pilot. I'm sure you all have plenty of questions, so I'll open the floor to them now." He stepped back and the reporters applauded quietly. The applause died to awkward silence and Rachel pulled a favorite fountain pen from her dress shirt's breast pocket. She chewed on it idly, nervous. They must have sensed that she hadn't prepared any speeches beforehand; after a moment the floor went live.
           "Question for Mr. Peters," A reporter called from the back, and Bernard nodded. "There've been rumors all over the base that this mission is exceeding conventional mission limitations. Care to comment?"
           "Well, there are always rumors, and while I don't know which ones you're referring to I can tell you that we'll be breaking new ground in a lot of ways. We've elected to take off an entire engine - chassis and all - to free up tonnage for additional science equipment, so for the first time we'll be running a mission without a secondary backup. Dr. Mitchell will be the youngest civilian mission captain to date. This is going to be the first run with NASA's newly approved line of vacuum-sealed vegetarian meal alternatives-"
           "I'm referring to allegations of serious breaches of limitations, sir. Such as the prohibition against the use of high-grade explosives in shuttle operation." The room went to worried murmuring and Rachel flinched.
           "High-grade explosives, sir?" Bernard snorted. "We're carrying nothing of the sort."
           "Then what are you carrying?" Peters rolled his eyes and looked to Robertson, the unofficial quartermaster. Robertson stared down at the press and sighed, then slipped into his best monotone.
           "We have been cleared to ship up six fusion coils as power sources for some of the experiments we have scheduled, which, granted, would normally far exceed the normal safety limits for onboard volatiles. However, special arrangements have been made to ensure that the coils are contained onboard to provide the utmost measure of safety. There's no need to worry." Rachel grinned inwardly at the image that provoked. There wasn't a need to worry until the Discovery II ended up another Challenger. Then, when the ship hit the ground and the coils discharged in the ensuing explosion, everyone in a several-hundred-mile radius would have a couple of seconds to run before the heat turned them to ash. Another reporter raised her hand, this one a middle-aged woman in dull red, her expression unbelieving, and Bernard nodded at her.
           "A fusion coil? I'm sorry, but I'm not familiar with that term, nor, I think, is the public. Exactly what is a fusion coil?"
           "It's classified, exactly," McNeil said with a scowl. Cyg blinked, looked up at the crowd steadily.
           "It's a new technology. Fusion coils are high-grade batteries that use fusion reactions as catalysts for energy release. Each stores a significant amount of energy - one might power a moderately sized first-world nation such as France or Germany for the better part of a year." That got a rise out of the newsmen. McNeil stared at her intently, obviously trying to cut her off, but Cyg seemed intent on answering the question. "We currently have twelve of them charged and twenty more charging. These coils are for use in high-energy physics experimentation; part of their allure in such endeavors is that they're completely safe to handle because you need a tremendous reaction to start them up. Currently six are going with us, four are being stored at an undisclosed location, and two are being kept at the space center in Houston as our backups." One more hand went up in the back, and Robertson grudgingly acknowledged it.
           "This is a new development. Where'd these fusion coils come from, why didn't we know about them earlier, and don't they have more useful, immediate applications?"
           "Perhaps I choose to apply my inventions as I see fit," Rachel interrupted darkly. Useful applications, indeed! Perhaps he meant useful as in bombs? Robertson seemed rather excited at her outburst, sort of like he was choking.
           "You'll have to excuse Dr. Mitchell. We usually keep such talent locked away from the press, but we'll be needing the expertise of the world's foremost energy and propulsion expert on this mission."
           "The way we hear it, sir, the doctor is mission commander. Dr. Mitchell, my research shows you as an employee of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, not NASA; you're a professor of physics with no military or leadership background. It's hard to believe that you'd be included in a shuttle mission, much less put in charge of one. Could you explain?" Rachel smiled sweetly at him.
           "I'd be happy to. I've been on loan, you might say, for several years - the university has had both myself and many of my graduate students working alongside NASA engineers to develop a myriad of experiments and tools for the space program. That cooperation was presented willingly and without recompense from the space administration. We were only too happy to assist NASA when we were able to. Recently my own independent research has uncovered new material which I believe requires further study from the significantly more isolated area of far orbit; now NASA, aware of the university's contributions to its program, is only too happy to assist me. The space administration and the University of Michigan have had and continue to have a long-standing relationship of mutual scientific exchange." Or, in less diplomatic terms: she designed half of the shuttle and half of the equipment for what amounted to nothing, and damned if NASA was going to do anything to jeopardize their good relations with her.
           "But nonetheless, you're the mission commander? This is highly irregular."
           "No, not at all," Rachel replied. "Not really. Judgement calls on shuttle operations will still lie in the hands of Mr. Peters. The title of mission commander simply gives me authority concerning the experiments to be conducted during the mission, experiments which I am eminently more qualified to handle anyway."
           "What kind of experiment requires these 'fusion coils'?" asked an elderly, severely dressed woman with dry hands and old-fashioned pen and paper.
           "The experiments we'll be conducting will serve to elucidate the nature of a subatomic particle I I've recently discovered, the Mitchell particle. This is the first particle ever discovered that is foreign to this energy state. If I'm right, it holds significant potential in transportation applications."
           "The Mitchell particle? Doctor, we've never heard of that - this does seem to be coming all at once. If we really have these incredible new power sources, why are we wasting them on a space mission to learn about a subatomic particle? I'm sure we all appreciate the value of the pursuit of knowledge, but aren't there more immediate, more socially conscious applications for such incredible amounts of energy?"
           "Perhaps," Rachel admitted. "There are also probably more socially conscious uses for the defense budget, our commercial airlines, and a majority of the food in our supermarkets. I hold the rights to the fusion coil just other men and women control those assets, and my reasons are the same as theirs. I would like to say, however, that I strongly object to the characterization of this mission as a waste of time. This could be the most momentous discovery in physics of the decade, if not the century." A hand shot up from the side and a lanky young man perked his head up urgently
           "And how does that outweigh the risk of shuttling up an amount of energy which - and correct me if I'm wrong - would dwarf that of any nuclear weapon? Isn't there a need for authorization here? And wouldn't we have a serious risk to the general population if the shuttle went down carrying these 'fusion coils'?" Bernard leaned far forward in his chair and gave the reporters a hard look.
           "Let me make this absolutely clear. Yes, there is an authorization procedure, and yes, we have completed it. And no, there is no risk to anyone. These power sources are inert until activated by fusion reactions. That's why we're running less an engine - a fusion reactor is a huge, monstrous affair. Because we won't activate the coils until we're in far orbit and won't return until we've exhausted them, at no point are we going to endanger anyone on the ground." Well, that wasn't entirely true, but it was true enough; enough that Rachel didn't bother to correct him.
           "But sir," the man protested, "we've lost shuttles before, both going up and coming down. Certainly there's some risk."
           "Allow me," she said quickly, cutting Bernard off. "There is no appreciable risk. As Peters said, the coils will be inert until we activate them. Furthermore, we'll be carrying them on the safest vehicle mankind has ever designed. I'll ask you to remember that the three losses NASA has sustained to its shuttle program since its conception were all losses of the original two designs. Those were deeply flawed vehicles given insufficient maintenance, and still we lost no more than twenty two lives in over a century of flights. These new shuttles are totally different affairs; these shuttles do not crash. They have automatic reentry guidance systems in triplicate backup. They bleed heat so well that they don't gain more than ten degrees during reentry. They have isolated interiors surrounded with shock absorption material that can take incredible impacts; even if a shuttle went down, its contents would be left unharmed. There will be no significant risk to anyone here at home." Another man raised his hand, but the press secretary intervened.
           "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to take at least a momentary break. Policy issues aside, there's a lot to clear up about the mission that would be better dealt with by our ground specialists, and we'll want our flight crew in good shape for tomorrow's launch. If you'll excuse them, ladies and gentlemen..."
                     

---v---

           "Well, that was a disaster," Bernard had said afterward. She'd just nodded to him. It was true; the conference could have gone better. The press secretary had pulled them out and sworn that they weren't going back in. That didn't happen too often, she gathered. On the other hand, missions such as hers didn't happen too often.
           The next time she'd been allotted to see her shipmates was the breakfast before launch. The astronauts were remarkably unexcited: talk was low and dour just when she, the dispassionate observer, had finally gotten her pulse up. They were all supposedly repeat voyagers, the sort Rachel expect would become the lifelong crews of a space-faring culture. They had little interest in her experimentation, but the chance to go up was all they needed.
           "Let's go over the schedule again," she asked. Cyg set her coffee down.
           "You know it as well as we do."
           "Humor me." She shrugged.
           "After we get free of Earth's well we'll fly straight out for twenty four hours. That's all we'll be able to manage on our shuttle's fuel, so it'll have to do."
           "As long as we're not near any gravity wells. I don't want any forces we can do without."
           "That's real fine, doctor, but we've already planned a course that shaves away as much as possible. When we get there we'll deploy solar sails and switch our systems off main power. You'll have the main power grid all to yourself for eight hours; then we'll have to pack up and return home, dropping off McNeil and Robertson at Prosperity station on the way back." Of course there was some justifying errand. Rachel smiled to herself. NASA, for all its bluster about being scientific, was still political as hell.
           They were all brooding over their scrambled eggs. Maybe it was pre-launch jitters that kept them down. She didn't have any; she was impatient to get out and testing.
           "You're all scared?" she asked, looking between them. Robertson stabbed at his eggs, held it up and twisted it around on his fork, studying it closely before putting it into his mouth and chewing slowly. "Or maybe you're just quiet." No response.
           "I've got a bad feeling," Robertson told them all, then stared at her specifically. "NASA never wanted this. This is to keep you happy. It's dangerous, too. A day out - you know how far that is? Too far for the inter-station shuttles to save us. Too far for anything to save us if something goes wrong."
           "God, don't tell me that those press idiots actually fazed you. We've never lost one of our new shuttles - haven't lost any shuttles in fifty years. Besides, there's nothing out there for us crash into, and we've already done the experiment in simulation a dozen times. If anything, it ought to be boring." Perhaps that was the wrong answer; Robertson got up and tossed his fork onto the plate, with the others following suit.
           "It's never boring," he muttered on the way out. Rachel shook her head as the door clicked behind her, leaving a pile of scrambled eggs as her sole remaining consort. She stared at it and scowled as it jiggled on her platter.
           "Don't listen to them. I'm going to finish you off and then together we're going to go see the stars."
                     

---v---

           Her suit chafed; it was rough nylon and it was rubbing on her bare shoulders. You'd think that after more than a century they might be able to design a comfortable space suit. The shuttle didn't even use a vertical lift-off anymore; it had hardly a steeper rate of climb than the average airplane. There was no reason to have the cumbersome airtight uniforms. She hoped that they'd let her take it off when they got to her research allotment.
           "Strap in," McNeil warned her. He tried to look back, but his own restraints had a tight grip on him.
           "I was there before you were," she countered. "We're all in. I don't want to waste time; forget the triple-checks. Let's go."
           "We need those checks, Doctor. I won't be long," Cyg offered. Rachel breathed heavily into her helmet, putting a hand on her computer panel and tapping it repeatedly.
           "Settle down," Robertson ordered her. She looked across the cockpit, seeing him strung out on the launch chair like a patient on surgical bed, tied up like a puppet. He made her laugh.
           "I'm the captain, mister. I'll worry my crew if I want to."
           "I won't lift without those checks," Bernard said, alarmed. "You can wait that long."
           "I'm telling you that I know the stresses these things can take. I designed-"
           "And I'm telling you that it doesn't matter what you designed," Robertson interrupted, "You're nuts if you think you're going to have us push safeties to save a few seconds. We're nowhere near the point where-"
           "Never mind, Robertson." It was Cyg, up front next to Bernard. "She's just trying to rattle you; the professor just has an odd sense of humor. The checks just cleared and we're good to go." So they all had their places and she'd stirred them up. Lamentable, but in the end she needed their shuttle, not their friendship.
           "We've got the go-ahead from control," Bernard muttered quietly. His voice went into the com and came out whispering into each of their ears. Robertson shut up; Rachel followed suit in the hopes she might get off the ground. "Primary engines are up and running. Umbilicals are away; the hull is sealed. Our independent power grid is stable"
           From Robertson: "Everybody strapped in?" Bernard droned on with a steady countdown.
           "Thirty seconds to ignition."
           "Twenty seconds."
           "Fifteen."
           "Ten."
           "Hold on tight," McNeil reminded them.
           "Five… Four… Three… Two… One."
           And suddenly the pressure on her chest was twenty times what it should have been.
                     

---v---

"Launch is good, sir," a control tech reported from the confines of his cluttered desk. Up on the main wall of mission control the Discovery II's statistics were in the clear. The director nodded. "Gallows says that they've shut off the launch engines and are under their own power. They're adjusting course."
           "Excellent. Tell her it was a job well done." Then maybe they might pull it off. Dr. Mitchell was becoming a rather expensive commodity.
           "And sir? Gallows says that the launch knocked out McNeil and Dr. Mitchell."
           "What?" the director asked. "How?"
           "I'll ask," the tech said hurriedly. A few tense seconds passed, then: "She doesn't know. Says it's most likely pressure shock. She also says they're fine. They both are." The Director let out a breath.
           "Good. Ask Gallows to keep the doctor under as long as possible. I don't want her causing trouble."
                     

---v---

Her eyes were the first to wake; they fluttered. She moaned and realized that the weight was all gone. For a moment she was choking, but then her higher-order functions took over and she remembered that she was in space, not underwater. A light tan face drifted into view with what had once been orderly locks of hair spread in null-grav disarray.
           "You're up just in time. We've managed to deploy the solar array ahead of schedule. Discovery II isn't running off her own power grid anymore - you can start whenever you want." That woke her. Rachel pulled at her helmet, snatched at the releases, yanked it off. "You shouldn't do that," Cyg warned her. She pulled her own mess of long, dirty honey-blonde hair away from her sweat-stained face.
           "Going to help me, right?" Cyg nodded. "Start up the fusion reaction. Let's get this underway."
           There was a fusion reactor onboard. It probably scared the hell out of them; she imagined as much. To her it was just another tool.
           Mitchell particles required significant power to manifest. They came from a higher energy state and it took a lot of power to drag them down; it was almost as though they needed an energy-rich environment made for them before they'd show up. Or, rather, that was her theory; there wasn't any proof yet. She didn't mind. The concepts they were about to explore probably wouldn't be fully reconciled with conventional physics for a century or so, but you didn't need to understand how a gun worked to use it.
           "Dr. Mitchell, the reactor's ready. We can't use it in long bursts, though - there's not enough heat shielding inside the cargo bay. Discovery was meant to be a shuttle, not a sun."
           "We don't need an extended burst to activate the fusion coils - a second or two will do it. They're hooked up to the power grid, correct?" She got something like an affirmative from Cyg, who was calibrating the reactor from her console intently. "Then all we need is a moment to set them off. Just ignite the cargo bay. Hope none of you left anything very important back there." The joke fell flat.
           The others looked bored, if such a thing was possible in space; she was wide-awake. This had to work properly. No one actually believed in her particles, and she'd never been able to properly record them.
           Even from the beginning they'd just been gremlins. She'd been observing sub-atomics in a hydrogen atom with the university's quark-determinant microscope when a power surge in the building had fried her computer and shocked her unconscious. The calibration on the scope had been off by an entire micrometer when she'd come to, and that was how she'd known. Being leaned on by underclassmen had never offset the microscope's primary lens; it had survived an earthquake back in Los Angeles and an in-building explosion at Oregon. God couldn't put that thing out of alignment, but something had shifted it. She designed the fusion coil so she could safely repeat the experiment - same result. Rachel tried to play with the parameters, tried to get more data, and began to notice a tangle of correlations between the amount of misalignment and the net force acting on the microscope. Everything seemed to inhibit the amount of realignment her particles could produce - light, gravity, air, radiation. It was a paradox; you needed immense amounts of energy and none at the same time. It frustrated her, so she was here, in space, where the background forces were as close to zero as she could find, to show nature what it got when it tried to perplex her.
           "The coils are feeding into the power grid," Cyg reported. Rachel nodded and brought up the science module's camera on her computer screen. It was blurry and digitally rehashed: she was using a weak, passively recording camera so that she wouldn't be bombarding the test materials with light and radiation. It was a luxury compared to her other sensors.
           "Cyg, Robertson, McNeil, Bernard: come see this. We're going to watch history being made." They shoved away from their stations to drift above and below her, coming around to her like a wall of flesh at her back. She pointed at the screen, where one could make out the vague impression of four metal rods that came in from the module's sides and converged at a small hole in their center, through which she'd suspended a smaller rod coated with radioactive reactant. A particle accelerator was aimed at one end of the rod, ready to fire at it with individual plutonium atoms. "You're all academics. You'll understand the elegance of this.
           "My particles move matter when they disappear. We're going to prove this. How, you ask?" She waited for emphasis. After a minute Robertson blew air out of his mouth in a long, protracted sigh.
           "How?"
           "Very simply. We'll fire a single atom of plutonium down that rod and gauge how far it travels in ten nanoseconds by examining the reactant on the rod. Then we'll fire another, but this time we'll shock it halfway to hell with power from the fusion coils in a uniform pattern that shouldn't affect the atom's journey. You will find, however, that that tiny bit of plutonium is going to go further. Once we've established that, we'll start altering the module's temperature, gravity, radiation levels, one by one until we've discovered how each affects the amounts of translocation we manage."
           "Won't there be a bleed-in of gravity and radiation from the surroundings?" Cyg asked, the only one even partly interested. They just didn't understand what she was dangling in front of their noses.
           "Gravity I can't help, but there are several different types of shielding on that module. You'll see. Let's do the control first - watch this graph." She pulled up a graph of the reactant's change and charged the particle accelerator. "Alright… now." She clicked the fire button and the graph jumped up to a high level of reaction, forming a plateau that said a radioactive particle had just dropped by. Cyg looked up.
           "It's a line. It went twenty millimeters." Rachel nodded. Now here was the tricky part.
           "Now we'll have the computer fire as the atom passes through." Tap, tap, tap. She held her breath as the ship's computer worked over her programming, then flashed the all-clear sign at her. "Let's see this, shall we?" She pressed the button. The lights dimmed, then brightened. Two spikes popped up on the graph, the second running out into another plateau. A wonderful two.
           "What was that?" McNeil asked, confused. Rachel turned around smugly.
           "Besides a power drain? Two spikes spread out across thirty millimeters. You know what that means? The reactants responded at the point of energizing and at the destination, but not in between. For a moment that atom wasn't with us."
           "Huh?" he said. Rachel looked back at him with a condescending smirk. He looked as strong as an ox, but NASA obviously didn't have him up for his mental gymnastics. Cynical Robertson was faster.
           "She says that her jolt made the atom teleport, made it 'phase out with our dimension', or some mystical bullshit like that. Sounds like science fiction if you ask me. I think all that power just made the particle arc away from the rod." Which was a possibility, but she'd been prepared for that. Rachel worked at the graph's display. It suddenly went three-dimensional as she plotted the data against time. Now the graph looked like two mountain ranges a few inches apart. The point-of-origin mountains stretched out to a single point in time, and it was from that point that the second, destination range started.
           "Oh, god, she's right," Cyg uttered. "That's crazy."
           "Look," Rachel said triumphantly, putting her thumb smack dab on the point where the two ranges both existed, "In the first four milliseconds it's traveling towards the energizing point, and in the last five it's moving away from the destination point, but look! At 4.761 nanoseconds it's in both places at once. That's no line, no arc; there were two of that atom for a thousandth of a nanoseconds maybe even two. It jumped, Robertson. Te-le-por-ta-tion, or something like it." He scowled.
           "And what the hell happened to the first one?" She shrugged.
           "Gone, whisked away, who cares right now? That can come later: teleportation, Robertson. Teleportation, translocation, whatever you want to call it, I've proven it! We've proven it! Do you know how many laws of physics we just saw sail out the window?"
           "Then we screwed something up," Robertson said with finality. She stared at him with disbelief. That was his response? Hopeless cynic.
           "Well, we'll do it again. More power. What are the fusion coils at?" Cyg checked.
           "Negligible drain. These things you made are still holding a lot of energy."
           "Well, let's go rapid-fire with our testing, shall we?" The data was saved automatically; she cleared her screens. "We'll start off by changing energy levels, perhaps to see if these particles work better together. Double what we just used - another million terajoules, please."
           "Is that safe?" McNeil asked.
           "That's something like two hundred megatons of energy," Robertson muttered. "The shuttle can't take-"
           "Yes, it can."
           "God help us." Cyg gave her two thumbs up and Rachel put her finger on the fire button.
           "I'll tell you something, Robertson. There are two ways we progress in science: listlessly methodically and through revolutionary leaps of genius and faith. I'm a fan of the latter, so bear with me. Here's our new energy level." Click. Two more spikes came up, this time farther apart. That was fifty millimeters. "Huh. We got less than twice the jump for twice the power."
           "That suggests a limit," Robertson said with a tone that sounded suspiciously like relief.
           "Unfortunately, but I'm not going to extrapolate the potential of adding power from two data points. Let's double and go at it again."
           Click.
           "Four hundred millimeters. Well now, that is interesting. Keep going."
           Click. This time the ship shuddered. Robertson grabbed onto the ceiling handrails and pushed himself downward to grab at the back of her seat.
           "What was that?" She checked the graph.
           "That was an atom moving six hundred millimeters instantaneously."
           "That was also our tertiary stabilizing jets sparking and exploding," Bernard said. He was suddenly back in his seat, monitoring systems and keeping the shuttle intact.
           "Not enough data. Those increases don't match up. First it's less than it should be, then more, now less… again, please?"
           "Wait, Cyg," Robertson interrupted. "Dr. Mitchell, that's not a good idea."
           "Why not?" He stared at her incredulously.
           "You just broke the ship. You want to keep upping the power until we tear ourselves apart?"
           "Oh, don't be melodramatic. It was a tertiary system - we have two more. Anyway, the stabilizing jets have always been temperamental. They'll break if you so much as sneeze too hard on them. The rest of the ship is tougher."
           "It's too dangerous. Why not go home and wait for another -"
           "Because there won't be another. NASA's debt to me will have been paid in full. Keep going, Cyg."
           "Can we at least stop to repair the system you burned out?" She paused at that.
           "No, just cut it off from the power grid and vent any fuel that might be left in the damaged jets. That'll isolate the problem."
           "Damned risky," Robertson said darkly, but he went to work at his control panel. He looked up almost as soon as he got there. "Are you sure?" he asked. "I mean, we have one of the repair 'bots in the hold. We wouldn't even have to make an EVA."
           "If you put it in the hold it's probably slag. Look, mister, do you really have a pressing need for a backup system we're not using, one no one has ever used?" Robertson scowled, took a moment to collect his thoughts, then spoke slowly and deliberately.
           "We just forced eight million terajoules of power through the only thing out here that can get us back alive, and we damaged it. How many more times will you have to double it before the grid gives out and we all fry? Can't you at least take your data at lower levels?"
           God, but she hated diplomacy. "Yes, yes I suppose so. However, I maintain that those tertiaries are just weak. I'll tell you what, Robertson; why don't we go back down to seventy five and then work our way up from there?" He shifted in his seat, but didn't reply. "Good. Cyg? Seventy five million."
           "Yessir."
           Click. Fifteen millimeters. "And double?" Click; thirty two.
           "Again." Two hundred sixty.
           "Again." Five hundred twenty.
           "Again." The ship rumbled, then subsided. Forty hundred millimeters. Rachel smiled. "There, see? That was one-point-two billion terajoules, one and a half again what blew out the tertiaries. And we're still here. I know you think you have an instinct for this ship, Robertson, but I designed it, and I've got an ear for it too. It's sturdy, and it can take more than that." Robertson scowled.
           "And what was that sound?"
           "The electrics. The grid's capacity is a little less than twice that, but we didn't shield it for levels that high. It's not dangerous, just noisy. Don't worry - I won't push it any farther." Rachel turned, looked at Cyg. "Take us back down for another set. Start at, say, thirty million."
           "Yessir." Click. The shuttle started to rumble lightly. Robertson went taut.
           "…Doctor?"
           "I don't know what it is - let's see where our atom went…" The graph was a flat line, and she was so intent on staring at the screen that she didn't notice the rumble's continuation. "That's odd. There's no data. You know, I think that the atom may have jumped past the end of the reactant rod. Then again, that'd mean it went further at thirty than it did at twelve hundred -"
           "Dr. Mitchell," Cyg interrupted, "the grid controls just went unresponsive." Rachel curled into her seat and pushed off, heading for the front of the cockpit.
           "What's happening?" McNeil asked. "Doctor, what'd you just do?" She stopped herself with a hand on the control panel next to Bernard.
           "Mr. Peters, what's that noise?" He was racing, fingers flying across the boards.
           "There's a feedback loop somewhere. The coils are pouring more and more energy into the science module." The shuttle bucked and she went slamming into the top, scraping rough warmth on her forehead. "It's in the grid itself." His calm edge went and outright terror broke through in his eyes. "God, the grid is way past capacity - more energy than the gauge knows how to read. We're dumping that power into your particle generator!"
           "And it's still there?" He threw his hands up in disgust.
           "You check the internal sensors - I don't know your setup. If it hasn't blown already, it's going to." Something decompressed behind them.
           "Leak!" McNeil yelled.
           "Got it," Cyg called back, and Rachel ignored the crisis to bring up the science module's camera. Everything was bright and blurry and she couldn't make sense of it until a thought crossed her mind.
           "God."
           "What is it?" Robertson demanded. Rachel would've laughed nervously if she'd thought she could've.
           "My science module. It's shielded too well." The shuttle spasmed violently. Something blew. "The particles; they're generating and they're collecting. They're not going anywhere."
           "What does that mean?"
           "Even sub-atomic particles can accumulate. Matter takes up space, no matter if it's plutonium isotopes or strawberry jelly or my Mitchell particles. Those coils are throwing everything they have into that module, summoning god knows how many of those things, and it can only hold so many. If that thing blows when-" She ducked as a water pipe that ran exposed - engineering oversight - burst, snapping towards her and spraying gobs of water in face. Damned fire control system. "God, shut that! Listen, if that thing blows when we're still attached to it, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we ended up going on an unscheduled trip. We could end up a few meters away or we could end up inside the sun, so get that thing unattached!" Robertson was frantic, all semblance of control lost. Bernard was better held together.
           "Cyg, McNeil, get the spacesuits. We're going for a walk. We'll need the cutters and torches." Rachel looked at him incredulously.
           "Are you crazy? We've got seconds, not minutes. Do you have any explosives onboard?"
           "Are you serious? This is a shuttle, not a tank. Just tell us what to do." Metal shrieked.
           "Blow out the science module!" A percussive hit knocked their hearing out as the lights died. The rear consoles were both in flames, and without warning the entire ship began to howl. Rachel's ears rung; everything was muted, quiet.
           "We can't," Bernard yelled, though his voice was less than a whisper in the din, "Something else - you've got to give us something else!"
           "I… I… oh, hell, what if we - god!" Bernard was yelling into her ear. They were all screaming - the shuttle was dissolving around them.
                     

---v---

           Rachel coughed blood. Warm, wet flesh was pressed against her cheek - that was Bernard collapsed against her. She pushed him away, rolling him to the side. Pain: there was pain, like she'd been ripped to pieces and patched together with her own blood and spit. She lay there and moaned, but reached up to the boards and pulled herself up, sending her floating across the cockpit.
           "Gallows, Robertson," she coughed. "McNeil? Bernard?" The one remaining woman onboard cried out softly and Rachel pushed off the reinforced Plexiglas of the main window to sail towards the back. Cyg was folded unnaturally into the lower left corner. "Gallows," she coughed.
           "I hurt, ma'am." Cyg lifted her head up and watched Rachel's flight; the NASA woman had a split down the front of her skull. "McNeil's not moving." Rachel saw him sprawled across the floor.
           "I'm up, I'm up," Robertson protested, delayed in his reactions. He pushed off the ceiling, looking only slightly mangled. Bernard was rousing too; she could hear him heaving and shuddering behind her. "Look," Robertson exclaimed, his haggard face lighting up with a glimmer of relief. "Earth. It's Earth. Your experiment took us home." Rachel spun around as fast as she could manage in zero-g, but Bernard was in his seat before she got there. "Call mission control. Radio the stations. Get station's shuttles over here." Bernard dripped blood from his nose into the air as he worked, letting it mix with the sweat and the dribbling sprinkler water. Robertson glided to her other side, staring out the window wordlessly. There was silence for too long.
           "Something's wrong," Bernard announced worriedly. "Something is definitely wrong. There's no response and the radio system is fine. I can't pick any signal up on any band - there's dead noise on every frequency, even the commercial channels." She went cold inside - that was wrong. People had been polluting space with radio signals for centuries. Robertson gripped the ceiling rails for support, breathing hard, and pointed downward with his free hand.
           "Can either of you name that continent?" Rachel stared. She knew that the geography looked different when the shapes of the maps were wrapped onto a ball, but what was below was more than distorted.
           "North America, isn't it?" Bernard shook his head.
           "Only if Florida and the East Coast sunk while we were gone. "
           "There's no place on Earth with a triangle of mountain ranges like that," Robertson said gravely. "Look at that desert. It's the size of the entire Midwest, and it's black. Earth doesn't have that much black anywhere. Where the hell are we, Mitchell?" She dropped her head into her hands, floating freely.
           "Oh, God..." She spun slowly, drifting gently towards the planet-side wall. That was the gravity well making its presence known. "It's green. There is green, isn't there? Those are plants, aren't they? Plants are oxygen, oxygen is breathable, so we can maybe land. We… Oh, god." She went cold inside. "Uh, we land, we refuel, we relaunch, and then we… repeat the reaction. You have bearings, Bernard? Can our sensors tell us where we are or what it's like down there?" Bernard bent over, holding his head and shaking. Whether it was insane laughter or tears she couldn't divine, but the saturating red of the emergency lights mixed with the interplay of shadows made it demonic.
           "You just don't get it. This isn't a movie. You're in a shuttle, not a starship; our only weapons are the small arms in the survival packs, and our only 'sensors' are the cameras. We've got no 'shields', no 'laser guns', and no construction equipment. If we survived landing and the planet didn't kill us we'd still be stuck until we could build an industrial base back up enough to make fuel, a port, and another science module. Hell, if we worked hard the five of us might be ready to launch for home in, say, six or seven hundred years. The only thing you're right about is that we're going down."
           "Well… well, we'd better strap in for landing, then. Try and keep out of that desert, and the ocean too. If you can land us in those plains to the-" Bernard shook his head fiercely.
           "You're presuming I have any control over the navigation system. I'm not sure how long we were out, but systems are down everywhere." She hadn't noticed that… "I've got one panel working. Diagnostics say that I can use the radio, external cameras, and maybe even swivel the main overhead camera mount if we're lucky. Everything that's even remotely important was too complex to have survived. But you're right; we need to get everyone strapped in."
           "You think the coils are still charged?" Cyg croaked.
           "Doubt it. If we made enough particle to move an entire shuttle… doubt it." Around them the shuttle shook once, then began to grind. Robertson looked around warily. "Don't worry," Rachel said. "That's the automatic landing system. It's independent - independent computer, independent power. It'll take us down in one piece."
           "This going to be a rough ride," Bernard coughed. "Dammit. Never should've come on this tour."
           "Nobody signed up to play Toto, not even me." She was gone; no ideas left, no anything left. "We'd better strap in. Where's my suit helmet?"
          

---v---

           The rain had abated, the way all things did. Her mah'sur jostled under her as it trudged up the muddy path, alternately jabbing each of its bony shoulder blades into her thighs as it walked, and she bore it the way she bore everything, with enduring patience and focus on the destination. Her only problem was that lately she had no destination. For the last fifteen days she'd just followed where the wind blew - literally where the wind blew. Iluin had tied down her shirt and cloak behind her, preferring to feel the breeze running through her coat as she ambled across the countryside. Not having a place to be wasn't new to her, but not having a place to run to was. Saving Vauhya had been a hobbling decision - now everyone loyal to Yoichi province would be actively against her, and she'd offended the church besides. In her arrogance she worried little for her own safety, but it would mean having to kill more people to survive. Perhaps those lives would number more against Vauhya's one, perhaps it would have been better to let him die, but she had made the decision. Now it was a matter of keeping herself alive.
           She'd entertained for several days the notion of going back for him, of taking him in as an apprentice of sorts. There was something in him, something that let him use the lleiri she'd given him to kill himself with. He was special. People liked to think that only women could use lleiri because men were too hot-headed, but Iluin knew all too well that there were many women who couldn't learn to wield the blade, and that even within those who did there were degrees of proficiency. It had to do with blood, yes, but not its temperature. Excellent swordswomen bred excellent swordswomen, and in Vauhya's case an excellent swordsman. She honestly considered going back for him.
           There was life to think about, though. He was distressing to her, which was dangerous to them both. They were targets of their enemies' wrath, and together would prove too much of an opportunity to be allowed to live in peace. He'd not be able to keep pace with her; he'd fall under the constant stress. It was better to give him a real lleiri, a long killing thing of his own that he might practice with and become proficient with if he was truly wise. As for her - well. Well.
           "Think we ought to keep going north, friend?" She purred to her beast with a friendly candor, as it was her sole remaining companion; the ungainly thing snorted and craned its neck from the path to snap away a mouthful of grasses. Its unthinking action reflected ambivalence if not agreement, so she let it keep on the path. She found the mountain road marginally interesting, as it did not lead to anywhere she could see or remember, yet she was living in a time when one did not have the luxury of building and maintaining paths to nowhere. It would provide a few days of distraction.
           She looked about her, drinking in the sight of northernmost Yoichi. It was farther this way than she had ever gone. All sorts of mountains clashed together, bearing in on the slight mountain ridges atop which she traveled. Her mountains, the northern middles, were large, sloping affairs, covered with a blanket of forest and vibrant green life. They were small, however, compared to the majesty of the ranges on either side of her. She was riding past a corner of the desert's wall, where two of the wall's three mountain ranges met. Wide valleys of broken stone stretched out at her mountain range's base as though two of the gods' claws had raked down deeply into the chest of Haras, into the chest of the world.
           To the left were the grand, ancient mountains that were 'the Heroes', the southern range. They were worn smooth from untold ages of wind and rain, immeasurably tall, towering over the provinces that made of the heart of Hrasi civilization, conferring their eternal, immutable protection from the howling dust storms of the Rhe'jah. It was over those mountains that Vauhya's ancestor, legendary Hesmenthe Yoichi, had once surged with his desert rabble to wash away the even more ancient clan Nama. To the right were the younger mountains of the 'demon claws'. They were young on the time scale of mountains, still sharp and jagged and bearing the black markings of the bedrock from which they were born. Their protection was accordingly fickle; far on the horizon, where the Heroes died out, the valleys lost their broken, youthful appearance. That was escaped Rhe'jah sand filling the cracks, and she'd heard that the east coast townships past the demon claws were sometimes visited by clouds of black when the wind picked up. Iluin had no plans to enter the Rhe'jah, the traditional desert of the exiles, but she would no doubt eat her share of incessantly blowing sand on her trip northward.
           Thunder clapped off in the distance. Iluin searched the skyline, looking for sufficiently dark clouds. "Hear that?" she asked her mount. "We have thunder without thunderclouds. This place must have quite an echo. A storm is building up the path." She leaned forward to scratch it behind the ears. "Hope you like rain."
           The thunder clapped again, this time much louder, and this time kept going. Iluin looked up sharply and saw a falling star up in the sky. She growled unconsciously and reared her Mah'sur to a halt. She'd never seen a falling star during the day, and never had one fall towards her. The thunder rose in intensity as the star became more visible - a huge white kiirin with a fiery halo and yellow flame tail. Her mount balked, voicing its apprehension with a Mah'sur's dry warning-moan. She agreed. "Back, back! Haaa, let's go, back!" They abandoned the road, galloping down the mountainside with no regard for speed or safety. The amazing creature's thunder rose to a deafening furor as it passed over them and her Mah'sur jumped forward in terror, tossing her off.
           Iluin hit the ground, rolling out of a broken neck with trained reflex, and then was skidding and rolling, trying hard to keep the sky up and the earth down and the rocks out of her head. With a thump that resonated through her entire body she felt a tree trunk stop her, and then an instant later flinched at the loudest roar she'd ever heard. With rigidity conferred by a suddenly aching left shoulder she pushed past the tree to look at the wild thing that'd smashed into the ground below.
           It was not a beast. That was her first realization. It was afire, and twisted metal glinted brightly in spite of the clouded sun. It was obviously a thing of Hrasi hands. White gloss fell off its body, flaking away like shedding skin. Then three more explosions spewed from the thing, sending up fireballs that lit up all the surrounding trees for a hundred paces. Something in it whined very highly, along with lightning arcs that crisscrossed the contraption's innards. Four short, rapid firebursts later the thing bellowed with inconceivable force, sending out an expanding bubble of shimmering air that laid flat all the burning trees and kicked up a wall of debris and didn't stop as it neared her. She yelped, getting up to run, but the wall of force picked her up and threw her high in the air, buffeting her skyward as rocks and sticks stung her face and body. She landed twenty paces back up the mountain, suddenly spread out on her back with a snap that stole breath, then suddenly drenched in a cloud of dust and dirt. Iluin came up spitting soil, wiped her eyes and looked back down.
           The metal thing had been torn open from tip to tail, exposing its silvery ribcage and the raging inferno it contained within. All around it the trees were flat on the ground, facing outwards in a circular pattern like the petals of a flower. No, they weren't trees anymore; they were tree-shaped ashes with glowing red embers locked inside. Iluin stared at the blaze, watching the invention melt away in the heat, watching even the metal soften. Gods help them if that was a weapon.
           Her Mah'sur undulated loud, plangent animal-pleas; she saw it trapped beneath a destroyed tree some ways below her, bleeding on the grey-brown of ashen earth. She started down toward it - there was order in which things out to be dealt with. But she'd investigate the destructive device that was burning itself out next. In a way such things were even fortunate - when she'd exhausted all previous paths of life, the universe took it upon itself to present her with another.
                     

---v---

It was all fire and heat and red that lapped at her space suit, and she stumbled wildly, calling out on the com for the others, but they weren't responding and even at a mere three feet away in this blaze they were lost forever. Environment packs, survival packs, where the hell were they? She was going fast, fast and the suit couldn't handle these hundreds of degrees for very long and if she dropped now the heat would cook her inside her suit and goddammit where were those packs? She found the floor - that, at least, was still there - and ran toward what should have been the back of the shuttle, flailing arms wildly for a familiar shape.
           There, there! There was metal, metal grates, which meant she was near the cargo bay airlock, which meant that, dammit, she was walking on a wall and feeling the floor, and the survival pack cabinet was either at her feet or hopelessly out of reach above her. Rachel fumbled downwards, felt a handle that was as soft as wet clay, that burned her hand through the suit, and she ripped it open, not seeing anything past the flames but knowing there was a survival pack in there somewhere. Her hands caught something that crinkled, that was as heavy as a well-laden backpack, and she pulled it up, hoping to god that the fireproof bag's protection extended to stormy infernos. The environment packs were a meter forward, then, and she reached but an explosion knocked her sideways and onto her back with fire everywhere. Damn, she was losing it. There was light, though, beautiful grey light piercing the flames above her, and she had the sense to get back up and run with the survival back in tow, ragged as her stamina was, until there was a wall, and she followed it back to the cargo bay door, and kicked until she knew that it'd opened because the fire actually pushed her into the cargo bay, exploding outwards in search of air. The shuttle was on its side - there was dirt shoved up against the cargo bay's open ceiling.
           Rachel ran out into the light, dragging the survival pack behind her. Outside was a nightmare: she was suddenly ankle deep in ash and cinder, a coat of fiery grey snow that stretched for two or three hundred feet in every direction. That was fate laughing at her, so close and still dead. She only picked up the pack and stumbled forward, blowing the bloody shocks of her hair out of her eyes to smear on the inside of her sweat-fogged helmet. The suit was failing - she could feel the heat, burning her skin everywhere the material touched it. She stepped forward, and when the cloth wrapped around her leg it felt like she'd stepped into a wasp nest. Rachel cried, falling forward, then turned on her back with the pack in her arms. The fight in her died, but she kept her legs moving, mostly trying to run away from the pain. In desperation she turned on her belly, looking for the tree line, the mocking greenery that hadn't been destroyed, that was an uncrossable six inches away. She threw a hand out and touched real, unburnt brown soil. It was all she could do - the pain was too much and she finally collapsed, her suit's faceplate pressed hot and close against the red-grey of ash and embers.