Almighty.”
Subaïda Rahman unbuckled her restraining harness and said, “Let’s go !”
o0o
It was reasonable, Kincaid knew, for them to be using a Scavenger ship. And a good thing. Scavengers were roughly the same size and shape as human beings, though they didn’t look much like them, not really. Still, they’d had things like hands on the ends of things like arms, were upright bipeds, had their sensory organs clustered on something like a head, head mounted, more or less, on the top end of the torso. Much narrower than us, of course. Narrower and lighter, all hollow bones and muscles like tendons, so a Scavenger really looked like a cross between a bright green parakeet and a walking skeleton.
Brucie’s crew had done a good job of taking out the Scavenger upholstery and welding in old airline seats. You’d hardly know they didn’t belong here. On the other hand, we’d never even get in a Colonial ship, Colonials the size of toy poodles, looking like a cross between a red squirrel and a Chinese dragon, fur and scales and silver fangs and six eyes of molten gold.
But the Colonials had antigravity and hyperdrive and God knows what else, technologies, whole sciences we hadn’t even begun to understand despite decades of trying. Scavengers just a little better than us, a little brighter, a little more advanced.
While the Colonials flew starships and then built the Gates...
Scavengers.
Hell.
We were no more than the bugs who clean up what the hyenas and vultures leave behind. Too bad I didn’t have a chance to follow up on Jensen’s latest article. Evidence, firm evidence, thoroughly referenced in Scavenger literature, indicating that hyperdrive experiments gave Colonial scientists the key to the Gates. Which, just maybe, brought down the Jug on their heads. No more than a hint. Because, just when they had it figured out, the Jug fell on them.
And almost fell on us.
Did we close the Gate in time?
Memory of fire and death.
Maybe so. Maybe not.
The ship’s jury-rigged human intercom rasped, and Brucie’s voice said, “General called. Says the Arabs have touched down.”
“So. Chinese?”
“Falling straight in. No orbit, apparently. They could be down in maybe ninety minutes.”
Ninety minutes. “When the Hell are we leaving?”
“Right now, Sarge.”
The Scavenger reaction drive screamed, white light flooding in through the windows, making the faces of her monster-soldier-children glow like demons, and the ship lifted, bulleting into the night sky at better than fifteen gee, leaving behind a splashed, bubbling pool of molten glass where the sandstone launch field had been.
Fifteen gee. Soldiers sitting up, peering out the windows, looking down on the falling Earth, gaping, astonished at the sight. And we feel nothing. I guess the compensators still work. Hell, another few years and maybe the Scavengers would have had antigravity too, then hyperdrive, then...
Brucie called out, “Up and at ‘em, guys! Three hours to the Moon.”
o0o
They were falling in now at what seemed like a very steep angle indeed. Left to its own devices, Ming Tian would miss the Moon’s northern limb by about eight thousand meters, whip around the farside and head out into planetary space, accelerated by a gravitational sling shot, lost and gone forever.
No. Not forever. We’d be back again in a year or so...
Imagine that. What if the engines don’t fire?
We pushed it too hard. Tried too hard to be ready by too artificial a deadline. Sure, they’re old, reliable engines we’ve been using on GEO transfer stages for the better part of a century. Ninety-eight point seven percent reliable. Just imagine the look on Chang Wushi’s face as he counts down, hits the toggle and... nothing.
Looking out the viewport, Ling Erhshan could watch the Moon grow closer visibly, minute by minute. A quick glance at the mission clock. Seventeen minutes to closest approach. Meaning fourteen minutes to retrofire. No, thirteen
Subaïda Rahman unbuckled her restraining harness and said, “Let’s go !”
o0o
It was reasonable, Kincaid knew, for them to be using a Scavenger ship. And a good thing. Scavengers were roughly the same size and shape as human beings, though they didn’t look much like them, not really. Still, they’d had things like hands on the ends of things like arms, were upright bipeds, had their sensory organs clustered on something like a head, head mounted, more or less, on the top end of the torso. Much narrower than us, of course. Narrower and lighter, all hollow bones and muscles like tendons, so a Scavenger really looked like a cross between a bright green parakeet and a walking skeleton.
Brucie’s crew had done a good job of taking out the Scavenger upholstery and welding in old airline seats. You’d hardly know they didn’t belong here. On the other hand, we’d never even get in a Colonial ship, Colonials the size of toy poodles, looking like a cross between a red squirrel and a Chinese dragon, fur and scales and silver fangs and six eyes of molten gold.
But the Colonials had antigravity and hyperdrive and God knows what else, technologies, whole sciences we hadn’t even begun to understand despite decades of trying. Scavengers just a little better than us, a little brighter, a little more advanced.
While the Colonials flew starships and then built the Gates...
Scavengers.
Hell.
We were no more than the bugs who clean up what the hyenas and vultures leave behind. Too bad I didn’t have a chance to follow up on Jensen’s latest article. Evidence, firm evidence, thoroughly referenced in Scavenger literature, indicating that hyperdrive experiments gave Colonial scientists the key to the Gates. Which, just maybe, brought down the Jug on their heads. No more than a hint. Because, just when they had it figured out, the Jug fell on them.
And almost fell on us.
Did we close the Gate in time?
Memory of fire and death.
Maybe so. Maybe not.
The ship’s jury-rigged human intercom rasped, and Brucie’s voice said, “General called. Says the Arabs have touched down.”
“So. Chinese?”
“Falling straight in. No orbit, apparently. They could be down in maybe ninety minutes.”
Ninety minutes. “When the Hell are we leaving?”
“Right now, Sarge.”
The Scavenger reaction drive screamed, white light flooding in through the windows, making the faces of her monster-soldier-children glow like demons, and the ship lifted, bulleting into the night sky at better than fifteen gee, leaving behind a splashed, bubbling pool of molten glass where the sandstone launch field had been.
Fifteen gee. Soldiers sitting up, peering out the windows, looking down on the falling Earth, gaping, astonished at the sight. And we feel nothing. I guess the compensators still work. Hell, another few years and maybe the Scavengers would have had antigravity too, then hyperdrive, then...
Brucie called out, “Up and at ‘em, guys! Three hours to the Moon.”
o0o
They were falling in now at what seemed like a very steep angle indeed. Left to its own devices, Ming Tian would miss the Moon’s northern limb by about eight thousand meters, whip around the farside and head out into planetary space, accelerated by a gravitational sling shot, lost and gone forever.
No. Not forever. We’d be back again in a year or so...
Imagine that. What if the engines don’t fire?
We pushed it too hard. Tried too hard to be ready by too artificial a deadline. Sure, they’re old, reliable engines we’ve been using on GEO transfer stages for the better part of a century. Ninety-eight point seven percent reliable. Just imagine the look on Chang Wushi’s face as he counts down, hits the toggle and... nothing.
Looking out the viewport, Ling Erhshan could watch the Moon grow closer visibly, minute by minute. A quick glance at the mission clock. Seventeen minutes to closest approach. Meaning fourteen minutes to retrofire. No, thirteen