Creation Node by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion

21

‘Can you see it yet?’

‘Not yet, damn it …’

Jeorg North was in the nominal pilot’s seat in the Aquila’s cramped bridge. Indeed he was nominal ship’s commander, given that the crew of this adapted Earth-Moon ferry numbered just two, for this stretch mission to Saturn.

His only companion was Doria Bohm, herself a leader of a diffuse rebel faction on the Moon.

Few of the Lunar Consortium’s ruling elite, such as it was – even those who had strongly approved of the mission of the Aquila – had been overjoyed about this choice of crew. Especially since Jeorg, their pilot, a defector from Earth, had a connection by marriage to somebody who was actually slated to be on the Cronus when it was sent to Planet Nine.

That, Jeorg admitted, was a strong, if not the only, motive for his volunteering for this mission: to get back at his husband, Bheki Molewa. Bheki, who had jumped at the chance, when he was surprisingly offered it, of riding the Cronus to Saturn, and then on to Nine. Without a backward glance, it felt like, at his husband of a decade.

Their divorce had been done in a helium-3-fast flash.

Well, however Jeorg and Doria had got into this ship, it had been one heck of a ride so far. A rebel pilot from Earth and a rebel lunar – both highly motivated to do this, if for different reasons, and somehow they had gotten along during the six years of this mission, shadowing Cronus all the way …

But a glance through the various views of their target drove home to Jeorg that the journey wasn’t over yet.

‘If you want pretty views of Saturn, I’ve got them,’ he said. ‘But the elevator hub and all the stuff going on around it is a blur. Still too far out.’

‘We’re doing our best, Jeorg. And so is this beat-up bird of ours …’

She was right, of course.

The Aquila had been designed as a Moon to Earth-orbit cargo ferry, in essence – but with the capability to go further, the asteroids in particular in mind. Its acceleration was not much less than that of the Cronus – both based on the same uranium-fission technology – and it had been able, just, to match the much larger ship in making this long, slow, mostly unpowered transfer from Earth to Saturn. But still, it was a rattly bird, a floating coffin, compared to the roomy liner they were chasing, and Jeorg, despite long periods of cryosleep, was old enough for the rattling to be a pain, and to suffer at long confinement in such a small craft.

Doria, absently stroking the obsidian-disc pendant at her neck, looked over his shoulder at various consoles. ‘Still too far out – that’s not good enough. We don’t have a rendezvous solution yet. The predictive algorithms must be able to do better than that. I mean we know what we’re looking for. The Cronus, in a damn jig … It’s pretty hard to miss.’

‘Yeah. But what we

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