The Devil Comes Back to Retroville

by Gary D. Snyder

Part 14:

It was night when Jimmy and Cindy lifted off, but even so Cindy could tell when they passed beyond the limits of the atmosphere and into space. Even on the clearest nights the stars she could see at home couldn't compare in either number or brilliance to the display that surrounded them. Another difference was that the stars and planets scattered across the inky heavens didn't twinkle, and seemed just within reach. If their mission hadn't been so critical Cindy would have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of spaceflight.

Jimmy's voice over the intercom cut into her thoughts. "How are you doing back there?" he asked.

"Fine," she replied. The intercom had been a necessity, as the materials available to Jimmy in his lab had been limited and the ship's airtight canopy had separated the cockpit into two sections, putting each of them had a separate sealed compartment. "Are you sure you can locate the meteor?"

"No problems," Jimmy's voice crackled back. "In space once all the perturbing influences on an unpowered body are known the trajectory is quite simple to calculate because nothing will change. We should rendezvous in about three minutes. After that the real work begins. But it will be simpler because once out of Earth's gravity well the meteor's speed should be constant. How's the temperature?"

"A little cool, but tolerable."

"It will get colder. I couldn't insulate the ship very well and the heating unit can't put out much. Most of the warmth will come from the engines."

Cindy nodded, more to herself than for Jimmy who could not see her without turning around. With nothing better to do she looked at her watch to pass the time and found that three minutes was a lot longer than she would have expected. Several times she looked out the window for what she believed to be a minute, but when she looked back at her timepiece only a mere twenty or thirty seconds had passed. But as slowly as time seemed to crawl by for her it did pass, and as the three-minute mark approached she heard Jimmy call her.

"We're coming up on it. The gravimetric readings are increasing and you should be able to get a visual on your screen."

Cindy reproached herself for not paying attention to her instruments. "I know," she fibbed. "I'm scanning now." Sure enough the needle on her meter was slowly moving to the right, and she could see, or thought she could see, a small dot of black against the purple background of her viewscreen. As she watched the dot it slowly enlarged and grew into the unmistakably ominous shape she had seen in Jimmy's lab. "I have a visual," she announced crisply. "It's off about ten points to starboard and approaching fast."

"Roger that," Jimmy replied. "I've set the meter to hit midscale when we're at an optimum distance from the meteor. Once we reach that point I'll activate the transphasal generator and we'll take the meteor in. I mean, through. Stand by on the backlight flare and prepare for calibration."

"Copy that." Cindy moved her hands over the controls as Jimmy performed the delicate maneuvers needed to bring the small craft between the meteor and the Earth, making minor course corrections based on Cindy's reports. After a few tense moments the gravimetric reading stabilized at midscale and the real work, as Jimmy had called it, was ready. Cindy found she had been holding her breath and let it out in a gasp.

"Be sure to adjust your oxygen as you need it," came Jimmy's voice as Cindy sucked in a lungful of air. "And be careful not to raise the level of oxygen too high."

"I know, I know," Cndy called back in irritation. Hopeless, she thought. Here we are, saving the world, and he treats it like a ride around the block.

"Just a reminder," was Jimmy calm reply. "Prepare for transphasing." He made a minor adjustment to a knob and touched a button on his console, and the ship and its crew ceased to exist in the space-time that had brought them forth.

Cindy wasn't sure what to expect, and thought for an instant that Jimmy's generator had failed to work. Then she was suddenly aware that they were alone.

No stars.

No moon.

No Earth.

No light.

Utter and eternal isolation…

"Cindy!" Cindy slowly realized that Jimmy was calling. "Snap out of it! We have work to do!"

"Yes," she answered weakly. "I'm…I'm on it." She forced her mind back to the task at hand. Her viewscreen was black, deprived of the steady electromagnetic emissions that were the backdrop of the Universe. The backlight flare would provide the illumination she needed to target the meteor and allow the sensor to calibrate, allowing Jimmy to keep them at the correct distance from the meteor during their flight. She took a deep breath and pressed the firing button and watched the screen intently, preparing to punch the button that would calibrate the gravimetric sensor in this extradimensional void. She waited, expecting each second to see the burst of brilliance that would reveal their nemesis, and began to fret when nothing seemed to happen. Had the flare been a dud?

Without warning a brilliant radiance light up the endless night behind them, making her blink even though she had been facing the opposite way. On the screen, clearly visible, was the tumbling mass of dark matter. Quickly Cindy adjusted the sensor control to center the shape in the target reticule and as the image began to fade pressed the switch to calibrate the sensor. The needle on her meter immediately swung to midscale and stayed there.

"Okay," she called, her voice quavering a bit. "Sensor calibrated."

"Good job," Jimmy answered soberly, and despite herself Cindy felt a small wave a pleasure at the praise. "Okay. I have the ball. Let me know if you see your needle go outside the limits. We should be out in about fifty-eight minutes."

The next half-hour was torture for Cindy. If the three minutes approach to the meteor had seemed like ten minutes it seemed to her that the half-hour in the featureless dark was an eternity. The only assurance that she was not alone was Jimmy's occasional comments and the faint glow of tell-tales from the instrument panels and her watch. After thirty minutes Cindy could not stand it any more.

"How far have we gone, Jimmy?" she asked.

"About three thousand miles, from my calculations," was his unconcerned reply. "Why?"

"It seems like we've been travelling a lot further."

"I suppose. But I'm used to instrument flying so it's probably not as unsettling to me."

Cindy bristled at what seemed to be criticism. "I'm not unsettled. I was just making conversation."

Jimmy was puzzled at her outburst. "I didn't you were unsettled. I said –"

"I heard what you said. And I'm not unsettled. I'm fine."

"Don't be so touchy," Jimmy said, and Cindy sensed a placating tone in his voice. "It you want to talk it's fine with me."

"I never said I wanted to talk. I just thought you might want to pass the time a little more pleasantly and that some conversation might be nice."

Cindy heard Jimmy let out a breath of disgust and could picture his expresson. "Well, if this is what you consider pleasant conversation, I'll pass, thank you."

"Well, that's fine by me," Cindy snapped.

"Then that makes it fine for two of us."

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

Cindy hunched back in her seat and glared at the gravimetric meter, her boredom and growing anxiety gone. Stupid patronizing brainiac, she fumed silently. Just because he's been on these trips dozens of times and I've only gone on a few he thinks he's the only one who can handle space travel. When we get back to Earth -

Something in the back of her mind halted her inner tirade. What had Jimmy said? Cindy had been timing the flight with her watch, and it had been thirty minutes when Jimmy had told her that they had travelled about three thousand miles and they were travelling at a constant speed now. Simple arithmetic told her that in an hour they would cover six thousand miles. The thought alarmed her. Her next thought sent a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the chill in the spacecraft.

The Earth is eight thousand miles across.

Jimmy had been careful to provide just enough oxygen for two people for a seventy-minute flight due to the cramped confines of the Strato XL. Three minutes had been spent getting to the meteor. That left a total of sixty-seven minutes for the rest of their trip. Try as she might she could not get the numbers to work out to where they could survive an eight thousand mile trip at six thousand miles an hour. They would run out of oxygen twenty minutes too soon. They had enough oxygen left to last both of them for another three thousand miles, or enough for one of them to make it the rest of the way – if something were done in time. But what?

The answer was obvious.

"Jimmy?" she asked, her voice calm but oddly quiet.

"Yes?" Jimmy seemed preoccupied to Cindy. Had he realized his oversight?

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

"Mad? No. Why?"

"I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry if I sounded angry before."

"That's okay. It happens. It's amazing how being in a vacuum can put a lot pressure on someone."

Cindy got the joke but didn't laugh. That didn't surprise Jimmy, but her next words startled him. "I just want you to know that what you're doing…everything you've ever done for us…for me…even if no one else ever knows…I appreciate it. Thanks for everything."

Jimmy's voice was hesitant. "Uh…you're welcome…I guess. Are you okay?"

Her voice was firmer now. "Yes. I'm fine." She glanced at her watch and saw that there were still a few precious minutes left. "Not much longer now, is it?"

"No. Not much longer." He sighed. "And I'm sorry if you thought that I thought that you were afraid."

"That's all right. I may have been, but not anymore. I guess we've always been lucky."

"Lucky?" Jimmy sounded cheerfully derisive. "There's no room for luck in science."

"I mean…we've always been lucky that you were there. And I guess it's important that you always are." She paused. "I think that things will always work out if you're around." There was another pause as she checked her watch again. Time was up. "Best of luck always, Jimmy."

"Okay. And same to you…I guess." Jimmy's voice trailed off into mildly baffled silence.

What Cindy did not know was that while the Earth was eight thousand miles in diameter their course would not take them through its center. The angle of its trajectory would take them about a thousand miles below the surface, making their flight through the Earth about six thousand miles, just as Cindy had calculated. Cindy did not know this. Neither did she know that Jimmy had known, but had not thought to tell her.

All Cindy knew, as she turned her oxygen regulator valve all the way off, was that it was the only solution to a cold equation.

End of Part 14

Author's Note:

A classic science fiction story that was made many years later into a fairly entertaining made-for-cable movie was "The Cold Equations". The original story tells of a young girl who stows away on an emergency shuttle equipped with just enough fuel to take the intended pilot and cargo safely to its destination. If the girl remains on the shuttle the space flight equations state that the ship will run out of fuel and crash, killing her and the pilot and dooming the intended recipients of the emergency medical supplies on board. The only way to ensure the safety of the flight is for the stowaway to be jettisoned into space. The premise of the story is that as much as the human element will fight against them the cold equations must be balanced.