The moment came when Aleka looked into the eyes behind Kenmuir^s helmet and said through the radio, “Aloha. Let’s hope it’s not forever. You’ve become … more than a friend, do you know?” He found no words, could merely smile and touch a glove to her hand before they went their separate ways.
Waiting, enclosed in an airlock chamber, the drive unit and its mass tank so heavy under the acceleration that he must sit against them, he felt a slight shock, and after a minute or two another. Aleka had dispatched their decoys. He imagined the carrier modules, braking down toward widespread points on the surface—points not far from Selenarchic strongholds. He pictured Aleka, hastening back to the command cabin, transmitting to Zamok Vysoki: Lilisaire, have someone retrieve those cylinders before the opposition does. No telling if the Lunarian, or any Lunarian, got that message, or was able to act on it, or willing to try. But it should distract the government’s forces. With reasonable luck, his departure should escape their attention.
Of course, they’d keep their radars and other detectors constantly on this vessel. However, she’d oriented her hull so that he probably wouldn’t register as he left. If a beam did happen to sweep across- him afterward, he could hope the program would note him as a piece of cosmic debris and continue following the ship.
The plan might not work. No matter how carefully he and Kestrel had calculated the odds on the basis of accessible data, it was a gamble.
Life always was.
Weight vanished. Engine turned off, the ship swung around Luna at scarcely more than low orbital speed. He felt the throb of the air pump emptying the chamber. Light from the overhead fixture shrank to a puddle, with vague reflections off the sides, as diffusion ceased. He braced his muscles. Time to go. An uncanny calm was upon him.
The outer valve opened. Starful darkness welled in the portal. By the handhold he grasped, he pulled himself to the flange and pushed his soles down against the little platform of the personnel springer. His free hand sought its touchoff. The platform tilted, jerked, and tossed him out.
Slowly tumbling, he saw the universe whirl, Milky Way, Earth, Luna. The sun crossed his vision and his helmet dusked to save it, turning the disc to dull gold, a coin on which the spots were a mintage he could not read. At first Kestrel stretched gigantic. She receded from him at the several meters per second he had gained relative to her. She was still large across the stars when he guessed it was safe for him to boost, but now he saw her whole, slim and beautiful.
Aleka, though, was locked inside, Aleka who would have wished to die on the sea with the wind caressing her hair.
Kenmuir got busy.
The frame of the drive unit curved a member around in front to support the control board before his chest, an incongruously cheerful array of coloredlights. He keyed for despin. A short thrust stabilized the sky around him. The unit’s computer was comparatively simple, but adequate for the tasks ahead. Earth steadied to a thick, broken piece of blue-and-white glass. Luna reached across a quarter of the heavens, its night part like a hole down to infinity, its day part mercilessly lighted, wrinkled, pocked, and blotched. Without opticals, he saw no trace of manwork. Memory could have given him cities, huge flowers, birds and soarflyers above a lake, Lilisaire; but he lacked time for remembering.
He deployed navigation gear, peered and measured, identified three landmarks and put their bearings into the computer. After a bit he repeated, thus getting the information for it to figure his location, altitude, and vector function. Radar would have been better, more direct, but he dared not risk it. He had already entered the coordinates at which he wanted to land. Now he keyed for thrust.
The drive unit swung him around to the proper orientation. Accumulators commenced discharging their energy in earnest. From a mass tank as broad as he was and half as long, three jets sprang. Condensation made a cloud some distance beyond the nozzles —this system was not as efficient as a nuclear-driven plasma jet, nor remotely as powerful—but the cloud was thin, barely visible at close range, and rapidly dissipated. Weight tugged again at Kenmuir. Ever faster, Kestrel went from him, became a toy, a jewel, a star, and was gone.