The Veil by William Bowden Read Free Book Online Page B

Justice Garr.
    “I have control.”
    Console status lights flick to green in unison.
    “All systems nominal. Three, two, one—ignition. Full thrust.”
    Close to four hundred thousand kilometers away three small stars burst into life within the Afrika drive cluster. Light vents reveal the ultra-brilliant flash to the Centaur crew and for a moment all that can be seen is a blinding white Sun, newly born. The light quickly fades as the engines settle, ejecting the reaction plasma through their containment fields to form three bright, luminescent-blue thrust cones.
    “Good God,” mutters Toor, mesmerized by the sight.
    “Pretty cool, huh?” beams Panchen, taking a high-five from Bebbington.
    “Dr. Panchen?”
    “What is it, Lucy?”
    “I am detecting a misalignment of the plasma injector in motor two, Dr. Panchen.”
    “It’s minor. Leave it. We don’t have the time. The lunar horizon is approaching and we can’t risk being seen from Earth.”
    “I really think I should tend to it, Dr. Panchen.”
    Montroy looks nervously to the observation booth, where Garr unbundles her folded arms. The display screens show the Afrika approaching the lunar horizon and a line of sight to the Earth.
    “Lucy, you need to keep them engines burning,” Montroy says.
    “I have control,” Lucy says. “Shutting down motor two on my mark.”
    “Lucy! No!” Panchen shouts.
    “Mark.”
    Engine number two immediately cuts out.
    Panchen would be out of her seat if it weren’t for the zero-gee restraints. “Lucy! What are you doing?”
    “I have control,” Lucy says. “Adjusting plasma injector on motor two. Cycling. One moment. One moment—restart.”
    Engine two bursts back into life, its thrust cone throttling to the max.
    “You’re going to breach the horizon!” shouts Panchen.
    “Throttling all motors to one hundred fifteen percent.”
    “Can they handle that?” Senator Blake asks.
    “She designed them,” Garr coolly remarks, only to quietly chuckle to herself.
    “What is it?” Blake demands.
    “Spaceships have engines , toys have motors .”
    Earth rise, as the Afrika’s bow slides into view of Earth, the drive cluster just moments behind it.
    And then, just as it breaches the horizon, and without any drama, the drive cuts out, the Afrika coasting onward.
    “Mars transit,” Lucy announces. “Ninety-seven days, five hours. Next burn in thirty-seven hours. All systems nominal.”

DAY 89
    The Afrika slides silently through space, its engines cold, the lack of any nearby reference masking the leviathan’s breakneck speed. The brightest object is the destination, some four million kilometers away.
    The habitat is quiet, the lighting subdued. Pools of shadow hide the fact that much of it is unfinished. It is organized around a central corridor running from the garage forward to the flight deck, with spaces leading off of it at regular intervals. What would have been labs, experiments and general work areas are all bare, save for a telemetry station used in the test flights, and now set up as a communications bay.
    Halfway between the garage and flight deck is the carousel—a constantly rotating drum, twenty meters across, spinning about the axis of the corridor to provide an artificial gravity environment. A section of the corridor rotates with carousel, providing access to the crew quarters and medical center within. It is comfortably furnished.
    At the far end of the corridor, just before the garage, are a series of recesses quite different from the others, each a circular glass-fronted chamber. There are two adjacent to each other set into each wall—eight in all. One is faintly lit. Within it a body in a fetal position slowly rotates head over heels in the zero gravity. It is Robert Cantor, unkempt hair and beard, dressed in a ribbed body-form suit, connected to the chamber by a series of tubes via a gimbal rotating in unison.
    The rotation slows, brought to a halt by puffs of air from nozzles around the rim