“It’s them! They’re here! That’s them banging on the door!” he heard himself shouting. Joe brought up the lights. Within seconds, everyone in the cabin was shouting and hugging, laughing and crying. Keene grabbed one of the rifles, which for some reason they had brought aboard, and hauled himself into the entry space behind the hatch. Thunk, thunk, thunk.
Joe had a camera trained along the outside of the shuttle’s hull. Two figures in bulky, Kronian-style suits were outside the hatch, one poised to beat the surface again with a metal hand tool, the other holding the end of some kind of tube pressed to the hull. Keene beat against the ribbed inner surface of the door again. Thunk, thunk, thunk. On the screen, the figure with the tube started making excited gestures and pointing at the ship. The other leaned forward.
Clang, clang, clang sounded from outside the hatch.
Keene responded deliriously. Thunk, thunk, thunk . . . thunk, thunk, thunk . . . thunk, thunk, thunk . . .
* * *
The lander moved in to make a docking connection, and the fourteen exhausted survivors from the shuttle were transferred over. The two Kronians who had come across were Sariena and Thorel, the engineer from the Osiris’s crew. Sariena had wanted to be one of the first to greet them if they were found.
Kronia was sending all the help that could be mobilized. In the meantime, the Osiris had been searching the vicinity for days. A number of other ships from Earth had also managed to get away, and the Osiris had collected a full complement to take back. The shuttle that Keene had been hoping to organize when last heard of was the last it could afford to wait for. Idorf had been ready to give up, but Gallian wouldn’t hear of it.
Events after the launch of the Boxcar from Vandenberg had been as Keene deduced. A second, mysterious ship had inserted itself ahead of the Boxcar as it closed, transmitting fake signals claiming to be the Boxcar pursued by a would-be attacker attempting to use it as a shield. Keene’s on-the-spot guess of which one to fire on had been correct. On a sadder note, after all the heroic effort that had been put in, the second Boxcar sent up from Vandenberg later had never been seen. Just one more tragedy among the billions.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, the Kronian vessel detached and drew away under a mild nudge from an auxiliary thruster. On a screen inside, Keene looked at the empty, silent hulk turning slowly in the sunlight, presenting on its side the last, scarred rendering he would probably ever see of the Amspace Corporation logo.
The lander’s main engine fired, and the craft pulled away into a curve that would take it to the waiting Osiris.Hogan is a science fiction writer in the grand tradition, combining informed and accurate speculation from the cutting edge of science and technology with suspenseful storytelling and living, breathing characters.
Born in London in 1941, he worked as an aeronautical engineer specializing in electronics and digital systems, and for several major computer firms including DEC, before turning to writing full-time in 1979. His first novel was greeted by Isaac Asimov with the rave, “Pure science fiction . . . Arthur Clarke, move over!” and his subsequent work quickly consolidated his reputation as a major SF author.
He has written over a dozen novels, including Paths to Otherwhere and Bug Park (both Baen), the New York Times bestsellers The Proteus Operation and Endgame Enigma (both available from Baen), the “Giants” series (Del Rey), and the Prometheus Award Winner The Multiplex Man (now in a new Baen edition). Hogan currently splits his time between residences in Ireland and Florida.