Titan lay ahead of me, pursuing its track around Saturn.
My ship drove toward it, flaming out fuel in reckless amounts as I
poured on the acceleration. I had to get there fast. We'd already
missed our rendezvous time with Thorsten by two days. He was going to
figure out what happened--must have done so already--and would be hot
behind us. I had to land, get the engines installed, load supplies, and
take off into hyperspace before he hit.
It was a race against time. I built up velocity to a point no sane
skipper would ever dream of, leaving just enough fuel to brake with,
knowing I wouldn't need it to get back.
Part of me sat in the control room, plotting curves, charting fuel
consumption figures on a graph, watching the black line rise hour by
hour to the red crayon slash that meant I had done all I could.
And part of me was down in the cabin with Pat, but if I'd let the two
parts mix....
* * * * *
No ship in the System had ever hit the speed I begged out of my ship's
heaving engines. No human being had ever traveled as fast before,
tracing his track across the white stars in the blue fire of his jets.
If I made it to Titan in time to get into hyperspace, I would have Pat
with me. There'd be stars to look at, and the worlds that circled them.
Star on star, marching past the ship, world after spinning world, fair
against the stars, and a million things to see, a thousand lifetimes to
live.
Out there, where other beings lived, was adventure enough for both of
us, and enough of dreaming. Maybe she'd forget Thorsten, maybe some of
the things she'd said had been lies, maybe the whisperings in darkness
were true.
If I could get to Titan in time.
I might as well have walked. I knew there was no hope before I
finished landing.
Titan was an empty moon. Where the project bubble had been was a circle
of fused concrete around a mess of melted alloys. A corpse in a TSN
spacesuit lay on its back and stared at Saturn.
I looked down at it, cursing, my shoulders slumping under the weight of
my helmet.
And I heard the voice on the command frequency.
"Hey--you--you down by the bubble." The voice was weak, and getting
weaker.
"Yeah!" I shouted into my mike.
"Holcomb?"
"Yeah, for Christ's sake! Where are you?"
"Your right--about a hundred yards. Start walking over here. I'll talk
you in."
I started off at a lope, kicking my way over the rough ground. That
voice was pitifully weak.
I found him, curled around a rock, his head and arm supported on a
rifle that was leaned against the stone.
"Holcomb--"
"Yeah." He couldn't even turn his head to look at me.
"I'm Foster--Lou Foster. Commanding, Marine guard detail."