Ghost Riders in the Sky Read online

  Ghost Riders in the Sky

  By Timothy Zahn

  Tunnelship trips took exactly five hours. All of them.

  Distance didn’t matter. Direction didn’t matter. One light-year or a thousand, it was always five hours. No one knew why.

  But after fifty years, with eighteen established human colonies and thirty more in the works, only a few people cared.

  Once, long ago, Nathan Skoda had been one of them.

  He’d asked every expert he ran across. He’d asked every tech who checked him out as he was strapped into his Sue Ann chair. He’d even asked an occasional Meerian glide rudder tech, if that particular Meerian had looked like he might be willing to talk to a human.

  None of the experts knew. None of the techs cared. None of the Meerians bothered to reply.

  But that was long ago. Too many years. Too many flights. Skoda didn’t care anymore, about really much of anything. His sole goal in life was to get through the final years of his indenture.

  “You good?” the tech asked.

  You good? At the beginning it had been How do you feel? or Is that comfortable? or even Safe flight. Now, it was just You good?

  “Sure,” Skoda said. He pressed his forearms gently to the right and left, then up and down, against the sleeve cuffs wrapped around his arms, feeling the slight give as the microswitches activated. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “Okay.” The tech hesitated. “Have a safe flight, sir.”

  Skoda frowned as the man slipped past the silent Meerian standing beside the hatchway and disappeared through the narrow opening. Not just a Safe flight, but also a Sir? Maybe courtesy was making a comeback.

  Or more likely, Skoda looked like hell and the comment was the tech’s way of saying he hoped the ship’s navigator wouldn’t die in mid-flight.

  The Meerian, as usual, didn’t say anything. He waited until the tech was gone, punched in the code to activate the rudder, then followed him out.

  Leaving Skoda alone.

  Two thousand six hundred and forty-two down. Three hundred fifty-eight to go.

  “Navijgator, thijs ijs the brijdge,” the Meerian voice came through the room’s speaker. His English was only passable, but at least he was trying. Most Meerians Skoda had met didn’t bother to communicate in the navigators’ native language. “You show green. Tweak left and rijght ijf you confijrm.”

  Obediently, Skoda shifted his forearms left and then right.

  “Acknowledged, Navijgator,” the Meerian said. “Leaving dock. Dijsassocijate in four mijnutes.”

  Skoda huffed out a sigh. Disassociate. Or to put it another way, die.

  On the status board above the glide rudder console, the green dot that showed the Burkandier’s position began moving away from the dark rectangle that was the space dock. Skoda watched, counting down the seconds, listening to his heart thudding as he awaited the order.

  Over twenty-six hundred trips under his belt, and it still made him nervous.

  The countdown reached zero, and the status board shifted to a view ahead of the ship, with the faint star directly in front of the bow marked by a slightly brighter white circle. A readout beneath the board marked the distance: 483 light-years. Not an insignificant distance, but a far cry from the nerve-wracking thousand light-years that was the navigators’ upper limit.

  “Navijgator: mark the target,” the captain ordered.

  Skoda focused on the star and again tweaked his arms left and right.

  “Navijgator: prepare for suspended anijmatijon.”

  The Sue Ann chair gave a warning chime, and Skoda felt the sudden sleepiness tugging at him.

  “Navijgator: dijsassocijate.”

  And with a final deep breath, as Skoda’s arms and legs and torso went numb, he left his body.

  Out-of-body experience, people had once called it. Astral projection had been the fashionable designation for a while. Near-death event was a romanticized term that had once sold a lot of books. Farther back, it had probably just been called witchcraft.

  Now, the people who could do it were called tunnelship navigators.

  An instant later Skoda was floating in the open space in the Burkandier’s concave nose cup, the edges of the cup enclosing him on all sides, facing the same collection of stars he’d just seen on the display.

  Only here, there was no helpful circle superimposed to mark the one they were headed toward. If Skoda remembered wrong, or somehow lost track of which star was which, the ship would have to backtrack and find its way to the proper location. He’d be disciplined for that kind of mistake, and might possibly even have extra trips added to his indenture.

  That was the best-case scenario. The worst case was that the ship would head toward something far beyond the distance navigators could handle, and be lost forever. If that happened, Skoda would die along with everyone else aboard.

  There were times, he reflected, when that sounded like the better option.

  “Navijgator?” The word this time was much fainter, coming as it did from the navigation chamber and Skoda’s physical ears and brain. Skoda waved his arms left and then right, his disembodied spirit somehow moving his physical arms enough to activate the microswitches.

  No one knew how they did that. Meerian drift rudder tech was highly proprietary and the aliens’ best-kept secret. It was what kept them in control of the whole interstellar transportation industry, and they would probably commit genocide before they’d let that secret get out.

  Persistent rumors had it that, sometime in the distant past, they’d done exactly that.

  “Actijvatijng tunnel drijve,” the captain announced. There was another warning chime—

  And as the drive dropped the Burkandier into hyperspace, everything disappeared.

  Almost everything. Directly ahead of Skoda, in the open circle of space at the end of a half seen, half imagined black tunnel, were a handful of stars, including the one that was their destination.

  The tunnel seemed to quiver, and the Burkandier was off.

  Fifty years ago, when the Meerians first arrived at Earth, they’d explained the drive in terms of a frictionless transport tunnel cut through the crust and mantle of the Earth. A train traveling through such a tunnel would begin by falling, building up tremendous speed as it reached the center of the tunnel, then steadily slowing down as it rose back up the other side and finally arrived again at the surface. The whole trip, from one side of the Earth to the other, would take just over forty-two minutes.

  The thing that had always amazed Skoda was the fact that if the tunnel was cut along a chord that didn’t get anywhere near the center—a straight shot between New York and London, say—it would take the exact same forty-two minutes to make the journey. The train simply wouldn’t build up to the same speed as one passing through the Earth’s core.

  Two paths, between entirely different spots on Earth, taking the same time. Exactly the same as the five-hour trip between any two spots in the galaxy.

  Skoda didn’t know what that said about the nature of the universe. Once, he’d cared and had wanted to find out. Now, all he cared about was that it worked.

  For the first hour nothing happened. Skoda floated in the cup, watching the stars at the other end, making sure their target stayed directly ahead of the ship. Once he caught a glimpse of the ghostly phenomenon the navigators had dubbed stargulls, but as usual the image was too distant and went by too quickly for him to see any detail.

  They were into their second hour of travel when the ship experienced its first drift.

  It was to the left. Skoda flailed his arms, this time swinging them only to the right to mark the direction the rudder correction needed to go.

  For a moment nothing happened as the dr
ive rudder fought against the ship’s inertia. Then, slowly, the drift corrected, and the stars reversed their shift. Skoda waited until the target was back in the center, then flailed left and then right. He watched another minute to make sure the rudder hadn’t overcorrected, then went back to watching in the silence and the darkness.

  Once, he’d spent a couple of months keeping track of drift directions, wondering if there was any pattern. But he’d never spotted one, and eventually abandoned the project.

  The tunnel drive had opened up the universe, but vector drift severely limited the distance that could be safely traversed to about ten light-years. The Meerian drift rudder, in conjunction with navigator guidance, had solved that problem, allowing for much longer-distance transport. Earth had gone crazy with its new frontier, and the Meerians had gotten rich.

  But they needed humans like Skoda to make it all work. And they hated humanity for that.

  Not that they ever said so, of course. But Skoda could read between the lines of his indenture contract. Whether the Navigators Guild was simply lousy at negotiating, or whether there was bribery going in the Guild or with the Geneva government, there was no doubt in his mind that the human race was getting the short end of the stick.

  Skoda hoped the colonies were worth what it was costing.

  Ahead, the stars were drifting again, this time downward. Skoda raised his arms, watched as the rudder corrected, and went back to watching.

  Three and a quarter hours and seven corrections later, five hours exactly from the moment the ship left port, the black tunnel vanished and the star Skoda had been aiming for became a sun blazing cheerfully in the near distance. There was a warning chime, and as the Sue Ann chair began reversing the suspended animation, he found himself once again a creature of flesh and blood.

  A creature whose lips felt chapped, whose stomach churned with freshly released acid, whose head ached, and whose mind swirled with dark, nameless images like those of half-remembered nightmares.

  But at least he was alive. Sometimes the chair failed, or the disassociate somehow forgot how to return to its body, and then the navigator was dead. Skoda, at least, was alive.

  He took a long, painful breath. Two thousand six hundred and forty-three down.

  Three hundred fifty-seven to go.

  #

  He was in the common room of the station’s navigator hostel section, finishing up his third margarita and thinking about ordering a fourth, when a shadow fell over his table. “Mr. Skoda?” a pleasant baritone voice came.

  Skoda looked up. The man casting the shadow and the voice was tall and thin, with white hair and a scraggly mustache. Skoda didn’t know him, and was pretty sure he didn’t want to. “Yes?”

  “I’m Walker McDerry,” the man said. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “Not interested,” Skoda said, looking down again. Yes; a fourth margarita would just about do it.

  “Would you at least hear me out?” McDerry asked, making no move to leave.

  “My life’s pretty well booked for the next couple of years, thanks,” Skoda said.

  “So I hear,” McDerry said. “I also hear you’ve been pushing the time limits for all they’re worth, and are going to finish out your indenture two to three years early.”

  Skoda looked up again, feeling a frown creasing his forehead. Whoever this guy was, at least he’d done his homework. “What’s that to you?”

  “It tells me you don’t like being under Meerian indenture, and that you want to get out of it as soon as you can,” McDerry said. “It also tells me you’re mentally very tough. Both those qualities suggest you might be interested in what I have to say.”

  “Do they, now,” Skoda said. He probably still didn’t want to know this man, but he had to admit McDerry had the sincerity bit down pretty well. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “It’s rather confidential,” McDerry said. “I have a suite in Red Section where we can talk more privately.”

  “Ah,” Skoda said, tapping his glass. “Too bad. All the good liquor is here.”

  “I believe we might be able to find a bottle or two,” McDerry said. “Tell you what. You come to our suite, I’ll pour you a drink, and you let me talk. If you’re still not interested by the time you finish, you’re free to go.”

  “A free drink, huh?” Skoda said. “I see you’ve dealt with navigators before.” He lifted his glass, drained the last few drops, and stood up. “Fine. You’re on.”

  Skoda had never been to this particular transfer station before, but as one of the Meerians’ major hubs he knew it would be big and probably impressive. Red Section, to his lack of surprise, turned out to be one of the mid-range areas, on both the social and expense scales.

  There were three other people talking quietly in the conversation circle as McDerry ushered Skoda through the door and down the carpeted foyer steps. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the group,” he said, gesturing to them in turn. “This is my wife, Elaine; our son Galen; and Chandra Kaiser. Everyone: Nathan Skoda.”

  “Yeah,” Skoda said, his stomach tightening as a murmur of greetings came from the others. Elaine looked a lot like her husband, with the same white hair and aged eyes. Galen was half their age, with the commensurate lack of experience and abundance of enthusiasm.

  Chandra was another navigator.

  Or at least she’d been one once. The tiredness and deep care lines in her face, her slightly slumped shoulders—they were the marks of someone who’d done her time in the Sue Ann chair.

  Or the marks of someone who’d burned out early and been tossed aside like a broken machine.

  “I do hope you’ll be joining our team, Mr. Skoda—” Elaine began.

  “Why?” Skoda interrupted. “You’ve already got a navigator. You don’t need two of us.”

  “Actually,” Galen said, a hint of a gleam in his eye, “we do.”

  “Please sit down,” Elaine added, gesturing to a chair beside Chandra.

  There was another open seat between Elaine and Galen. Skoda took that one instead. “I was promised a drink,” he said.

  “On its way,” McDerry assured him, crossing to a wet bar on the other side of the conversation circle.

  No one spoke as McDerry poured the drink—a bourbon, from what Skoda could see of the bottle—and brought it back. “We ready?” McDerry asked.

  Skoda took a sip. Not his usual brand, but it should have the usual numbing effect on his brain and nightmares. “Sure. Go.”

  “Let’s skip the small talk and get to the nub,” McDerry said, crossing the circle and sitting down in the chair Elaine had pointed Skoda to. “The Meerians control interstellar travel because they own the glide rudder. What if we had a new method for long-distance navigation?”

  “Can’t be done,” Skoda said flatly. “Anything over ten light-years and you’re going too fast at midpoint for the inertials to dampen out drifts. Once you drift, you’ve had it.”

  “What if you had another way to know if you were drifting and be able to compensate?” Elaine asked.

  “There isn’t any other way,” Skoda said. “You can’t see or track or view the stars in a body. Only disassociates can do that.”

  “Agreed,” McDerry said. “But you don’t have to see the stars to keep a tunnelship on course. You just have to know where you’re drifting so you can correct it.”

  “And you have to see the stars for that,” Skoda said, a trickle of annoyance starting to push through the weariness. This had been common knowledge for five decades. Maybe McDerry wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

  “Not the stars,” Chandra said quietly. “You just have to see the disassociate who can see the stars.”

  “There are no cameras or—” Skoda broke off as her words suddenly penetrated his alcohol-induced fog. “What?”

  “You just have to see the soul of the person floating outside,” Chandra said. “He spots a drift, he moves, you correct course, and you’re done.”

  “And w
ho are you going to get to see that soul?” Skoda shot back. “A medium? Fortune-teller? Fraud psychic?”

  “No,” Chandra said. “An old, burned-out navigator. Someone who’s spent enough time and done enough trips that she can now see other disassociates.” Her throat worked. “Me.”

  For a long moment Skoda just stared at her. “You can see disassociates?” he asked. “I mean, really see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not just guess where they are?”

  “I can see them.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we’ve already done it,” Galen said.

  Skoda twisted his eyes away from Chandra. “You’ve done it?”

  “Well, not a full navigation,” Galen hedged. “We did a couple of short-haul flights—a few light-years out and back—where it wouldn’t matter if Chandra lost track.”

  “And everything went perfectly,” Elaine said. “Chandra can see a dissociate through the observation bubble we’ve installed in the bow of our tunnelship, and can follow every movement. We’re ready to try a longer trip.”

  “We just need a second navigator to handle the outside part,” Galen said. “Understand: this is our chance to break humanity out of our servitude to the Meerians. If we don’t need their drift rudders and the fancy sensors in their Sue Ann chairs anymore—”

  “Yeah, yeah, spare me the flag-waving,” Skoda growled. “Earth will still need navigators, so it’s not like our lives will get a hell of a lot better.”

  “They might,” McDerry said. “Without the Meerians forcing their contracts on us you should get better working conditions and shorter indentures.”

  “Yeah, because that’s how things always work out,” Skoda said, eyeing him suspiciously as a sudden thought struck him. “So if you’ve already tested this, you must already have a second navigator on call. So again, why me?”

  Elaine and McDerry exchanged looks. “He quit,” Elaine said.

  “Why?”

  “He saw…well, he was disturbed by…” Elaine looked at her husband.

  “Have you ever seen a stargull?” Chandra asked.

  “Once or twice,” Skoda said, frowning. “Enough times to know they’re not a myth. Did he see one, too?”