Diggory's World (Wayworld Book 1) Page 2

  I thrashed about, spinning. My gloved hand banged against the station, and I grasped wildly until I found a handhold. I pulled myself to the station and clung to it like a frightened child to his mother, closing my eyes and trying to slow my breathing. After several trembling moments my fear quieted a little. I opened my eyes and slowly turned my head until I was looking across the side of the station, giving me a small artificial horizon.

  When we went camping I would lie awake on the ground and stare up at the sky. The first time I visited the Moon I lay down in the dust and looked up at the same sky, but unclouded and free of earth’s lights and marveled at the brilliance of it all. “It’s just like that,” I whispered to myself. “You’re just staring at the night sky. Just looking at the stars.” The sensation was still frightening, but not terrifying. I didn’t let myself look “down”, nor all around—I just gazed past my make-shift horizon.

  Slowly I let go of my handholds. “It’s just zero-g. You’ve done this before.” Trembling, I let myself drift about ten feet away from the station and thumbed the controls on the jetpack. A quick burst brought me back to the docking station, much faster than I’d expected—fast enough that I pinged off and drifted away again. Another thump—this one tiny, brought me more gently back to the station. With a little difficulty I maneuvered around the station until I could see the flare of the burning ship. It was getting much fainter—I had to hurry or it might fade away before I could get close enough to see it. I aimed myself at that tiny star as best I could, took a deep breath, and jetted myself out into the vast bottomless lake of outer space.

  I kept my eyes straight ahead and tried to imagine I was looking up at space from the Moon. The surface of the Moon was just “below” me and I was not sailing across miles of nothing. The hissing of the compressed gas jet made it impossible to believe, but the charade helped a little. The obvious presence of Titan below both helped and hindered me. I monitored the fuel tank and time on the EVA suit’s HUD. I had been sailing across space only a few minutes, but it seemed longer.

  Anxiety and tension brought exhaustion. I thought of Lena. I sang a song my father had taught me on a camping trip. Then another. And another. I thought of Lena. Then I sang pop songs from college. Then high school. Then children’s songs. Old commercials. New commercials.

  I watched the tiny blip that had once been a flare. It was nearly an hour, by the HUD, when I came close enough to the ship that it could be recognized as such. A long, lonely hour. And still a long way away. I was having to make frequent course corrections, but it was only then that I even felt like I was moving. It was impossible to judge distance with any accuracy. I told myself I was crazy. I told myself I was an idiot. I thought of Lena.

  At a bit over an hour I was getting close enough to the stranded vessel that I could make out details. I was tense and exhausted; I had managed to not go insane so far, but I think I would never want to be in zero-g again. My head hurt. I quickened my pace.

  A quarter-hour of full-thrust later and I could see the ship very clearly. A minute later and I realized it was closer than I’d thought (I had no way to judge scale with it floating in nothing) and I was approaching fast. Too fast. I cut thrust and fumbled around the controls trying to apply reverse thrust but missing with my left hand, and sending myself spinning like a clumsy ballerina. Stars and Titan spun past my field of view. I was too disoriented to correct, and my attempt just made my motions more erratic and complicated. The ship flashed across my vision, then Titan, then smack! My right ankle hit something hard and now I was spinning headlong.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on just correcting the headlong spin. Because I was turning in many directions at once this was very hard to do. Eventually, however, I slowed the spin enough that I focused on a side spin instead. Now I opened my eyes and saw nothing but empty space. I was still spinning slowly. I gently tweaked the thumbsticks and slowly turned about until I could see the white distorted egg surrounded by three blocky baguettes. I had bounced off quite a way. Gently I thrust back toward it, my ankle throbbing and my head still dizzy.

  I flew past the pontoons to get a better look at the augies, no longer aflame. One was shattered and scorched. I inspected the adjacent empty berth. The latches were shorn away, probably torn off by whatever had damaged its neighbor. Scorches and pockmarks marred much of the surrounding fuselage. The inner side of the nearest pontoon had a massive hole in its surface, the surrounding area badly charred.

  I drifted under the egg to the other side. Two more augies, seemingly undamaged. I jetted toward the cockpit access hatch and tested the handle without success. The keypad was standard issue with a small LED screen. I typed in the code used throughout most of Titan Base.

  DENIED.

  I tried another code for the semi-secure locations I visited in inspections.

  DENIED. TYPE '0010' FOR EMERGENCY ACCESS.

  I did.

  ENTER EMERGENCY CODE.

  I tried both codes again, without success.

  Even a low level bureaucrat, if he listened enough, looked enough, and wasn’t averse to occasionally peeking through his supervisor’s folders, picked up a thing or two, like, oh, say, a code given to an URSA inspector with a much higher clearance than mine. The code would be recorded whenever used in a URSA maintained unit (assuming it worked) and HQ alerted to its use, but that might not matter if the ship had no comm, like IP01. I would probably be arrested if it was found out, but I didn’t care. I had to save Lena. I entered the code with thick orange fingers.

  CLASSIFIED INSPECTION CODE RECOGNIZED.

  The red light turned green and I felt, rather than heard, a hard clack inside the door. The handle turned, the door opened, and I drifted through. I shut the outer hatch and knocked on the inner hatch while the airlock pressurized, hoping Lena would hear me and know help was on the way.

  What help? What in heaven’s name was I going to do? Die with Lena in cold of space? Maybe… Maybe she was unconscious or trapped. Otherwise, she’d surely have jettisoned in an augie. I could wake or free her and get her to the augie. Or maybe together we would figure something out. And later, when it was over, what would we be? I shook my head violently. Stop day-dreaming! Focus! Countless impatient seconds hissed by without response to my knocking. A tiny window in the hatch showed only a small alcove ahead of me, with blue-grey walls.

  At last the inner hatch opened and I floated in. The alcove opened to the immediate right into a cockpit with four chairs in cramped quarters. My ears were assaulted with a cacophony of beeps and buzzers; my eyes by flashing lights and blinking LED. A few automated voices droned on:

  “Fire in Auxiliary Pod Two extinguished,” chimed one. “Damage to Auxiliary Pod One,” hummed another. “Emergency activation successful,” came yet another. Messages overlapped each other: “Secondary Engagement Unit operating within…”

  “Heim Displacement commencing in five…”

  “… at higher levels than dictated tolerance.”

  “…vital signs no longer de…”

  The seats were all empty. One bank of screens on the port bulkhead flashed or sputtered erratically, presumably damaged by whatever accident had occurred. There was a ladder with a sign indicating it lead to the Auxiliaries. Perhaps Lena was there already. Oh, please, not that one.

  I pushed myself through the hatchway to the augie bay. More sirens and beeps and flashing lights. With a trembling hand I operated the hatch to Auxiliary Pod Two. Since it opened I knew there was no loss of atmosphere inside.

  Inside was a badly scorched corpse. The face was a charred mess, but the figure was male. I sighed and whimpered. It wasn’t Lena. I closed the hatch, suddenly ashamed that I felt so little sorrow for a fellow human who had died, just because it wasn’t her. If he had come from Titan, it was someone I knew, or at least had met. Premji? Clark? Duranichev? I checked the other augies. Unoccupied. Where was Lena?

  The voices in the cockpit continued.

  “…iliary Pod Two
extin…”

  “Emergency activation successful.”

  “…within normal parameters. Redundancy system function…”

  “…commencing in three…”

  “…emission at higher levels than dictated tolerance.”

  I scrambled about the ship, looking for some hatch or compartment—some other place Lena might be. I beat on bulkheads in quest of a hidden panel. I pulled open cabinets.

  “… in Auxiliary Pod Two extinguished.”

  “Dosh. Come in.”

  “…normal parameters. Redundancy system functioning…”

  “Damage to Auxiliary Pod One.”

  Wait! What was that? I stopped my search and listened.

  “…placement activation in three…”

  “Dosh! Come in!”

  I knew that voice! It wasn’t a recorded warning—it was Lena! I leapt across the cabin, practically crashing into the console and frantically looked for the comm. A small screen held Lena’s face, tense and worried, and text that read INCOMING TRANSMISSION. OPEN COMM? I tapped to open the comm and positioned myself in front of the camera.

  “Lena! Lena! It’s me!”

  “Dosh? Is that you?” Meanwhile I was slipping off my helmet. “Diggs!? Diggory, what the chert are you doing on that ship?” She sounded frantic and looked panicked (and she had picked up Russian cursing from Duranichev). “How did you get there?”

  “I flew! EVA from the IP. Where are you? Why aren’t you here? The ship is damaged; IP Two is floating; somebody’s dead; an augie is gone; everything’s beeping; I don’t —”

  “Diggory!” She interjected. “Hold on, hold on! Wait! What’s going on Diggory? One thing at a time! Who’s dead?”

  “I don’t know,” I said breathlessly. “There’s a burned body in one augie, and the other looks like it was torn off its berth—it’s gone. There’s no one else on board.”

  “Aw…” Lena’s face fell and her voice quivered. “Dosh and Clark? Oh no, oh no, no.” Samuel Clark I knew, and liked. Reinhard Dosh I’d met, and didn’t so much. She shook herself and when she spoke again her voice was sharper. “Diggory, what’s going on? Why are you on that ship? How did you get there?”

  I gave her a quick run-down of the events leading up to my adventure. “I thought you were on board,” I finished.

  “Oh, Diggs,” she sighed in exasperation. I could barely hear her over the ramblings of the cockpit warnings. “Oh, you crazy, son of a—No, no. I’m sorry. No, I—I wasn’t—geesh. That was a smokescreen. I had to get you—we had a schedule—I had to—oh, Diggory, what have you done?” Her voice rose sharply. “You can’t be on that ship, Diggs! You can’t. You have no idea—oh, this is all so bad.” She kept shaking her head.

  “Diggs, you have to get off that ship. Now. You—you have to get in an augie and come to the surface. We’ll come get you, but you can’t stay there. Not a minute. Not a moment. You have to get out right—wait! Shh! What’s that?”

  “What’s what?” I said.

  “Shh! What are those recordings saying? Shh! Let me listen!” I stayed quiet as the recordings continued their ramblings.

  “… Engagement Unit operating within normal parameters.”

  “Fire in Auxiliary Unit Two extinguished.”

  “…initiation proceeding. Heim Displacement commencing in one minute thirt—”

  The noise was drowned out by a shriek from Lena.

  “Diggory! What did you do?”

  “Nothing! I didn’t touch any controls—” She cut me off, shouting frantically.

  “The displacement drive is active!” she yelled. “Diggs, you have to get out now! NOW! Go! Get to the augie! Go! Go! Go!”

  I floated there dumbfounded several moments before the urgency of her voice cut through the haze of my confusion. As quickly as I could, I pushed my way back down to the augie bay and unsealed the hatch on number three, clambering through clumsily. Once inside, the hatch sealed and I was in a small capsule with a form-fitting chair that left me half-sitting, half-standing, with little more room that that.

  I heard a low hum from the ship and felt it begin to move. A porthole front of me offered only a small view. I could see Titan moving beneath me. I fastened the safety harness, fumbling through the process, then pressed a large yellow button labeled “Ready”. Air bags began filling up around me squeezing me into alleged safety. A comm hissed into action and I heard Lena again.

  “Diggs? Can you hear me? Hurry! You only have a few—”

  “I’m in!” I shouted. “What’s wrong—”

  “Eject now, Diggory! Eject!”

  “I’ve pushed the button, Lena! Nothing’s —” I was cut off by an electronic voice.

  “Auxiliary unit unable to function in displacement.”

  “No!” cried Lena.

  “Lena!” I shouted, “what’s going on?!”

  I never heard her answer. The world turned inside out. I felt as if I was moving in every direction at once. Vertigo struck me like it had never done before. I was so dizzy I couldn’t make any sense of the barrage of light and color that assaulted my eyes through the porthole. A roar like a massive waterfall sounded throughout the capsule. And then all was silent and dark. I think I passed out.

  For a while I was aware of nothing but dizziness—as if my entire being was nothing but one giant inner ear. Then I made out the dying roar and fading hum. The spinning slowed and in time my vision faded in, grey at first, then color. I was terrified of vomiting inside my helmet, but the nausea subsided. As my vision continued to settle I blinked out of the porthole.

  The world beneath me was not Titan. Through white clouds I saw brown land and blue water. I was back at Earth? How long was I out? I craned my head about to porthole to see more, but could only move so much due to the airbags and safety harnesses. But I saw enough. I didn’t recognize the continent below. I had never seen it before.

  That was not Earth. The colors were wrong. Patches of teal neighbored brown, red, and orange. The oceans were the wrong shade of blue.

  I had just traveled to another solar system. Where, I could not even guess. How? The comm hissed into life again.

  “Heim Displacement successful. Please confirm location.” A message meant for the cockpit. Where no one was. Heim Displacement? Lena had said something about the displacement drive being active. I reflected on what I had heard. There had been a countdown. Heim Displacement in one minute thirteen seconds. That’s what had been said.

  Lena’s frenzy made sense as the truth dawned on me. I couldn’t be on this ship, because it was a secret. Displacement drive. Some experimental technology, some new engine. One that could transport me lightyears from Earth in mere moments. Lena’s company was working on a Faster-Than-Light ship.

  I was a stowaway on a top-secret, experimental, faster-than-light ship, who-knew-how-many lightyears from earth, hovering over an unknown world, without a pilot, without a navigator, without an engineer, without a clue on how to work the craft, or how to get home. I just might be the most lost person in the history of the human race.

  The yellow “Ready” button was blinking, but I had no plans of ejecting now, above this strange planet. I had to get to the cockpit and—and what? I couldn’t pilot this thing! I had less than no idea of how to operate a “Heim Displacement Drive”. I’d have to radio for —

  I was lightyears from home. It would take years for a signal to get through, if it was even strong enough to be heard. Had they created some sort of faster-than-light comm? Seemed unlikely, but what else was I going to do?

  I was still constricted by the augie’s safety system, but I tried to look around for an abort switch. There was a small screen, but no terminal. There was the Ready button. There was an exit latch. Nothing else. Blast. How was I supposed to get out of here? I twisted and wiggled, trying to get more movement. Then something exploded.

  The shockwave was bone-jarring. The edges of the porthole lit up with fire from behind me as debris flew past my view—th
e ship was coming apart! A rumbling followed and a smaller explosion sounded. I couldn’t know what was on the planet below, but I was going to meet it one way or another: either in the lifepod or as falling dust.

  Clenching my jaw and my eyes, I punched the Ready button one more time. No response. Then, a popping noise, a click, and fwoosh! My body slammed back against the chair as the augie was jettisoned away from the ship.

  “Auxiliary Unit Three Launched,” said the voice.

  “Thanks for the update,” I murmured between clenched teeth as acceleration returned my weight many times over. The pod went shooting toward the strange new world below me. Thrusters fired only briefly to clear me of the ship and get me headed downward. As the pod turned in its descent I could see the ship. A pontoon and chunk of the fuselage were flying away from it. A miniature star raced in from beyond my field of view and struck the remaining fuselage, bursting into a yellow and blue ball of flame and flying metal. Had something hit the ship?

  Soon the porthole was engulfed in fire and a rushing sound came to my ears: I was entering the atmosphere. The pod shivered as rushing winds buffeted it, bringing nausea and an instinctive fear. It was impossible to ignore the fact that I was falling at thousands of mile per hour. Maybe—I’m not really sure how fast. But fast. G-force pressed me upward in the capsule, then I hear a faint fwoomp as the parachute deployed.

  The pod jerked and my descent slowed. It swung around under the parachute like a drunken pendulum, making my head spin again. I was on the world’s worst roller coaster. After the swinging had stopped, I heard another fwoomp and the pod slowed further. With the positioning of the porthole, I could see only glimpses of the planet below. In a short time that horizon engulfed the porthole and the augie was shaken by an impact that reminded me of a low speed car crash I’d had as a teen.