In the Ocean of Night by Gregory Benford Read Free Book Online

cover.
    “I… I’ve got to go with Dave, buddy. This thing is too big for me to—”
    “Okay,” Nigel said abruptly. “Okay, okay.”
    “Look, I don’t want you to feel—”
    “Yeah.” He reached up and pulled himself through the hatch, into the full glare. Looking up, his inner ear played a trick and he suddenly felt as though he was falling down a narrow canyon and into the sun, drawn by it. Automatically he clung to the hatch and twisted himself out, letting his equilibrium return with the sense of motion. He felt curiously calm.
    “Nigel?”
    He said nothing. Halfway along the module’s length was a flat brown box the size of a typewriter. He went for it hand over hand, legs free, his breath sounding abnormally loud. The clamps around the box opened easily and with one hand he swung it to his side and clipped it to his utility belt.
    “Nigel? Dave wants to know—”
    “I’m here. Wait a second.”
    He found the extra food and air units to the aft of the module—emergency supplies, easily portable. He felt clumsy with all of them clinging to his waist, but if he moved carefully he should be able to carry them some distance without tiring. Sluggishly he made his way to the brownish-black rock below.
    “Nigel?”
    He checked his suit. Everything seemed all right. His shoulder itched around his suit yoke and he moved, trying to scratch.
    The irony was inescapable: the blowout of gases through the vent made the cometary tail flare out from this ancient vessel, causing him and Len to come here and discover it—but that same eruption deflected Icarus enough to strike the Earth, and made necessary its destruction. Fate is a double-edged blade.
    “Nigel?”
    He started toward the vent and then stopped. Might as well finish it.
    “Listen, Len—and be sure Dave hears this, too. I’ve got the arming circuits and the trigger. You can’t set off the Egg without them. I’m taking them into the vent with me.”
    “Hey! Look—” Behind Len’s voice was a faint chorus of cries from Houston. Nigel went on.
    “I’m going to hide them somewhere inside. Even if you follow me in, you won’t be able to find them.”
    “Jesus! Nigel, you don’t under—”
    “Shut up. I’m doing this for time, Len. Houston had better send us more air and supplies, because I’m going to use the full week of margin I think we’ve got. One week—to look for something worth saving out of this derelict. Maybe those computer banks, if there are any.”
    “No, no, listen,” Len said, a thin edge of desperation in his voice. “You’re not just gambling with those Indians, man. Or even with everybody who lives near the seacoasts, if you even care about that. If the Egg doesn’t work and Houston can’t reach that rock with the unmanned warheads, and it hits the water—”
    “Right.”
    “There’ll be storms.”
    “Right.”
    “Enough to keep a shuttle from coming up to get us back into Earth orbit.”
    “I don’t think they’d want to bother, anyway,” Nigel said wryly. “We won’t be too popular.”
    “
You
won’t.”
    “The search will be twice as effective if you come down here and help, Len.” Nigel smiled to himself. “You can gain us some time that way.”
    “You son of a bitch!”
    He began moving toward the vent again. “Better hurry up, Len. I won’t stick around out here for long to guide you in.”
    “Shit! You used to be a nice guy, Nigel. Why are you acting like such a bastard now?”
    “I never had a chance to be a bastard for something I believed in before,” he said, and kept moving.

PART TWO
     
    2034
     

ONE
     
    H e awoke, basking in the orange glow of sun on his eyelids. A yellow shaft of light streamed through the acacias outside the window and warmed his shoulder and face. Nigel stretched, warm and lazy and catlike. Though it was early, already the heavy, scented heat of the Pasadena spring filled the bedroom. He rolled over and looked appreciatively at Alexandria, who was