Rocket Fuel Read online

‘How right,’ Kate said. She turned the page, relaxed. The sun crept higher...lower.

  Higher.

  In a brashly illuminated lab on Sarpendon, several kilometres above, Dr Henry Grey heated a syrupy mixture in a test-tube, eyes wide as the unfocussing liquid turned nasty, converting a globe of flesh, glass and air into air alone, neatly severing his arm at the elbow.

  You had to laugh - Stylo appeared, wearing his hat.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Droover challenged, folding the comic in her lap, ‘is how Ernie ever found this out. Really...I mean it can't have happened like this.’ She got to her feet, waving the issue she'd been reading.

  ‘Don't be so impatient,’ Stylo told her. ‘You're fighting it; stop. Let the colours, the pictures absorb you.’

  She huffed. ‘They scare me.’

  He smiled. ‘They're meant to. Ernie intended it. All I do is translate his ideas, his beliefs - warnings if you like - into a form accessible to the subconscious.’ He stroked a long finger down her nose, lifted her chin. ‘Perhaps I shouldn't have let you in on the secret, eh? It would've been easier.’

  Kate turned away, wandered to the cliff edge.

  ‘The technophiles in Radio City understand the importance of escapism,’ he said. ‘But there’re different kinds.’

  ‘Now you're getting pretentious,’ she accused.

  ‘You'd rather be one of them?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then try, learn, let go, think of your sister and Amy Jones, what they've become.’

  That hurt her. Kate had yet to accept the captain's death. In her chest stirred a familiar, cold discomfort. ‘You're confusing me,’ she said, feeling cornered, trapped between the man, his pervasive illustrations, on and off the page, and the vacant drop before her.

  She didn't know in which direction to take the next step; either into the melting world, the capricious reality that was the burgeoning legacy of artificial retrograde, or over the safe, reliable edge...

  ‘Why us?’ she questioned, suddenly bitter.

  ‘They needed guinea-pigs,’ replied Uncle Stylo.

  He'd moved closer, Kate felt. ‘And Ernie, the captain, they were just casualties, the first of many, perhaps.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So where do we go from here?’

  ‘You already know the answer to that.’

  Yes, she thought, I do. There is only loneliness, the worst of all fates.

  ‘Hey.’ He touched her again, and this time she acknowledged the contact.

  ‘Give me the hat,’ she said.

  'Droover K?'

  ‘Yeah...who is it?’

  'The pink-people are taking over. The moon will be full in a few days. Make the most of it.'

  Sound advice...

  *

  He peered intently at the core sample. It was twenty centimetres long and eight in diametre. Like a cylindrical diamond, it shone, utterly beguiling.

  And there was something trapped inside.

  Morgan rubbed his eyes. He couldn't directly handle the frosty wonder, but with the help of thick gloves, tongs and a hammer, he could break it open.

  'Droover K?'

  ‘Yeah...who is it?’

  'Lumping Jack.'

  The something was a dog. Frozen Hound, he called it.

  She kissed him.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Mothertug...’

  2nd Part: STROMA

  The isles of Greece! The isles of Greece!

  Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

  Where grew the arts of love and peace,

  Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!

  Byron

  Twelve - Pushing: Darkened Jelly

  The hat was floppy...

  Kate Droover gazed at the stars. It was too dark to read and too important not to. But what she had plenty of - she realized now - was time.

  ‘Technophiles.’

  ‘How's that?’

  ‘You referred to the people of Radio City as technophiles,’ she said.

  Uncle Stylo shifted next to her, turning warm areas cold and vice-versa. He didn't reply, was being evasive.

  ‘I want to sleep out here,’ Kate went on. Then, ‘How did Ernie get his material to you?’

  Why hadn't she thought of it before?

  ‘Spot-beam.’

  ‘One way or two?’

  ‘I can send a message to the engine, if that's what you mean. But it will take a while.’

  She changed her mind - below ground seemed much the safer; although safe from what she couldn't say. It was as if the open sky compressed her, whereas the passage-ridden stone offered protection. It was, she supposed, like being aboard the ship, surrounded by confederates...

  Kate's mind drifted back to the Licencing Bureau, its staff and its office.

  Why hadn't they come after her?

  Perhaps she'd imagined the entire episode, but that didn't seem likely.

  And she was meant to have called...

  ‘They'll be worried about me,’ she said out loud, jumping up, flustered.

  Stylo rose, slower. ‘Among other things,’ he said ominously.

  *

  ‘It's going to be very dark in a minute,’ Byron stated. ‘And then anything might happen.’

  He could hear Sal's irregular breathing.

  ‘Do it!’ she retched drily.

  There were fireworks.

  Rockets...

  They were flying. He wasn't sure where, or if they'd make it in one piece, but they had escaped the Research Section, its masked representatives.

  Sally leant against a wall. He was right, she couldn't see a thing, only spectres, globs of chimerical light, angry photons clawing at her eyes, wanting in. There was sound, much of it coming from the engineer.

  ‘Well,’ he said presently, ‘we're not dead. If they fired they missed.’

  ‘And hit the guppy,’ she concluded. ‘That piece of shit stuck to the ship was probably a bomb.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ She could picture him nodding. ‘Practical,’ he added. ‘Multi-functional. Economic.’

  ‘We don't have much fuel, do we?’

  ‘Just enough to stop.’

  ‘Then what?’ She thought she knew already.

  ‘We look around, find some.’ Simple...

  Sally laughed despite the pain. ‘Robbers! Your retrograde or your life!’

  Friendly Byron came and sat beside her, a more tangible form in the dark, a thicker blackness. ‘You know, Sal, I'm starting to like you.’

  She pushed from the wall, sagged. ‘I feel the same as Kate,’ she told him jokingly. ‘We're the same size and everything. If you can imagine her with her head shaved...’

  ‘It's like a warm egg.’

  ‘Yes; so watch you don't crack it.’

  This time it was Byron who had the milk and doughnuts.

  Roman candles...

  There was an explosion.

  ‘What's the probability against us hitting something?’ the co-pilot asked.

  ‘Not nearly high enough,’ he answered. Moving gently he slipped from between her polished thighs.

  There was a series of lessening, prismatic waves, a presence.

  ‘What the...’

  ‘Luke?’

  The cook uncovered his torch. Naked, skin peeling, mouth hanging open, he stood at the foot of the bed.

  ‘Luke?’ Sal repeated, dazzled.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ said Abdul. ‘But we've visitors.’ His voice was lazy, the words sinking to the deck almost as soon as he spoke them.

  ‘Where've you been?’ Sally wanted to know. ‘Do you feel okay? Tell me...’

  ‘I'm fine,’ he lied. ‘I'll make it.’

  Byron wrestled with his trousers. ‘Who are they?’ The light crashed around the cabin, stinging his head. ‘Get that out of my face!’

  The ragged figure stepped outside the room and the blackness swelled once more.

  The engine's displacement had drained ever
y ounce of power, as Byron knew it would. He fumbled with batteries for his own torch which he should have checked beforehand, silently furious, puzzled more by Abdul's sudden reappearance than the million-to-one shot collision. Trillion-to-one if it were a ship. He was shaking, actually physically shaking, and it was excitement carousing through his veins. He couldn't believe it. He must have aimed the engine somewhere specific, unconsciously pointed it toward crowded space.

  Wasn't that good? They needed fuel, so it made sense. But it hadn't been intentional. Things were occurring the wrong way round. In this instance they were fortunate. Or where they?

  ‘Visitors?’ Sally echoed belatedly. ‘That's crazy.’

  ‘Not if we swallowed them whole,’ he said, enthused. ‘Like that whale in the bible...you know.’ He finally got the torch to function, its narrow beam mellow.

  ‘Then it's preposterous,’ she amended. ‘I'm sleepy.’

  ‘No - a blessing! There's been no decompression, so they haven't punctured the hull. What more can you ask?’

  But she was snoring.

  And Luke Farouke had gone.

  So he went to receive their guests - and to see what could be salvaged - alone.

  After all, Friendly was used to it.

  *

  Kate dozed in a hot bath up to her chin. The water cooled and she climbed out reluctantly, towelled dry, and dressed in jeans and t-shirt, borrowed clothing.

  The t-shirt had a picture on the front, Earth with a sign hung on a rusty nail, reading: NO VACANCIES, a joke on the depleted population (approx. 0.5 billion) and their jealously-guarded rights of abode - when emigration and planet-hire were the fashion and the obscenely rich did as they pleased in the galaxy. Those who clung on lived mostly in the vast island that was Radio, cosseted in the mid-Atlantic doldrums, encapsulated by image and pretended form, safe in their micro-climates...

  She found Stylo at his desk, a pen in his fingers.

  ‘Your friends made the push,’ he said; ‘somehow.’

  ‘What do you mean, “somehow?”’

  He scratched his palm with the nib, marking ting circles. ‘I got through to the engine moments before it flew,’ he explained. ‘The beam was diverted, and I got this back.’

  Droover took the slip of paper from him. ‘To whom it may concern,’ she read. ‘We're monitoring.’ She turned it over; the reverse blank. ‘That's it?’

  ‘Yep,’ confirmed Stylo.

  ‘Monitoring what? Me?’

  ‘Go and read your comics,’ he told her.

  Kate frowned. The bath had refreshed her, but his obliqueness was getting to be infuriating.

  *

  The air seemed to wobble around the shaft of the torch-beam, rumbling quietly as Byron pressed through it, a resistance that to the engineer was deliberate. Like the dreamt wind gushing from the abyss it attempted to force him back, hold him a bay, keep him at a controllable distance.

  But he would have none of it. Byron was the engine, and as the engine he cut the blackness that was space, burrowed like a mole to his prescribed destination. Only a lack of fuel might stop him. Only destruction.

  He plunged in regardless...

  They were Topicans, he discovered, and their craft bisected four inspection tunnels, six walkways and the auxiliary tank Sal had recently mended. They'd had their throats cut.

  It was a time, he reasoned, for woundings.

  Cut, cut, cut, cut...one two three four murdered crewmen and a torch-bearing engineer.

  Quite a procession. He dumped the bodies in a wheeled receptacle and sent it thuddering to the nearest converter, there to be disposed of, evaporated.

  Whistling he next explored the interloper, its belly-hatch scorched and ajar, where possibly it had taken a hit, where definitely its crew had exited.

  To find what? Their end.

  ‘Lucky unlucky,’ Friendly said. The craft's interior was new and sparkling. ‘Anyone home?’

  A communications panel fizzled.

  War raged about the star Horus, he recalled, its six worlds and thirteen moons, one of which was his home.

  ‘Abdul?’

  No reply.

  Thirteen - Fast Out, Fast In

  He stared disconsolately at the few strands of tobacco in his pouch, the bedraggled papers, and wished he had searched the pockets of the Topican crewman before sending them to a unique cremation.

  A light flashed on a console. He examined it closer. It was a distress signal.

  ‘Oh,’ said Byron.

  Hurriedly, the engineer returned to Sally...

  ‘Go away,’ she told him.

  He shook her. ‘Listen...I've a plan.’ Her eyes opened, shot and bleary, but aware.

  ‘I don't want to hear - get me a drink.’

  ‘There's no water, only ice-cream.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘No power, just refrigeration.’


  Sal managed to focus her eyes in the torchlight. ‘What are
 you talking about, Byron?’
‘

  ‘The - forget it.’

  *

  Lumping Jack Morgan took off for the weekend in his guppy. It was raining in Sarpendon.

  It was feckless, he couldn't afford the fuel, but Frozen Hound wanted to talk...and visit some relatives on Triton...who went a bundle for pot-plants and cheeses.

  He knew a shortcut, also.

  And what they lacked in money they more than made up for in hospitality: of a variety Morgan hadn't come across before, of knowledge and virtuosity.

  The dog, a she, grew in proportion to his newfound adroitness, shedding her rimy fur.

  *

  The engineer finally got Sal into the suit, her reluctance verbal as well as physical. His plan was simple. Whether or not it would work was open to question.

  ‘Stay close,’ he instructed. ‘Move when I move, okay?’

  The co-pilot scowled, features partly obscured behind the dirty visor. She wondered where Luke was, her sister. Tensed and untensed her depleted muscles in preparation...

  Byron extinguished the torch. A deep rumble oscillated through the hull. They were somewhere below the main tank and she felt like Atlas with the world on her shoulders. The noise echoed, died, rose again. The canned air she breathed tasted of garlic and tomatoes. Friendly moved and she responded.

  He carried a switch taped to his thumb and tuned to the array of instruments on the cabin table. The confidence he showed in its primitiveness was juvenile, almost ludicrous, yet Sally appreciated the thinking behind its one-off design. He planned to depressurize the engine, give those now arriving, drawn by their comrades signal, an uncomfortable surprise. She just hoped they were few, and careless.

  The two of them meandered, followed a grimy walkway, outstretched hands palming the unseen walls. Sal found if she closed her eyes she could imagine the passage a street, houses lining its pleasant bustle, automobiles, women with prams, lamp-posts, kids on bikes leaping over concrete curbs, drains clanking under rubber. Byron was her guide-dog, for she was blind, an old lady whose joints swivelled like ratchets, corroded by time.

  She hadn't realized he'd stopped and bumped into him. Opening her eyes Sal discovered varicoloured lights, dancing motes in the blackness.

  Byron touched his helmet to hers. ‘They're cutting their way in,’ he said.

  The lights grew in vividness. They lodged behind a duct, its vaguely glinting outline reminiscent of a moonscape, some childhood image just now leaking from Sally's tired brain. Memories flooded back, filled the long-vacated niches of her once innocent mind. She saw Kate flying a helium balloon, their parents' warm faces - for the last time, the short trip across the Mare to end, for Emily and Lloyd, in disaster. She'd laid flowers on their grave, the Sea of Tranquillity a suitable resting place. Her sister had refused to go, refused to believe, refused...

  Always looking for a way out, that was Kate. A stealer of birthday cards, party dresses and makeup.

  The light fashioned into a square, its own after-impression, blue and pu
rple and green, fading to blood and cobalt, a mass of warped sapphires.

  Had he pressed the switch? She couldn't make out his face, see his hands.

  She held her breath; nothing was happening. Sally poked him with her foot, enjoying the sensation.

  Byron shifted his weight, leaning more heavily against her, forcing her full of pain, squashing, crushing. Then it was as if her mind surfaced, and the world, the limited world, the world of pulsing agony, was dismantled, vomiting chaos.

  Heads sailed past, and torsos, limbs, metal appendages and giant, curled fingers, each several metres long, black as the space around them, visible to Sal via their preternatural luminescence. Planets, moons affixed themselves, grew like warts, glowing solely for her benefit, reinvented hues...present in her estranged psyche...cute and pretty, a reality quenched by eerie daylight.

  Suns, stars.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked how you were feeling,’ said Byron, hovering over Sal, smoking.

  ‘Can I go outside?’

  He laughed. ‘There is no outside.’

  ‘That can't be!’ She felt cheated. The blue clouds about the engineer concealed his proximity.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ he intoned. ‘But I can get you that drink now.’

  ‘I'm not thirsty.’ Sal was crying.

  Byron looked puzzled. ‘I had to carry you, I was worried.’

  Sally thought about this a while, then said, ‘It matched my eyes.’

  His puzzlement magnified.

  ‘The dress,’ she said. ‘Kate tore it...’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Don't make fun of me!’

  ‘I'm not trying - Do you know where we are?’

  She pouted. ‘I saw the sun.’

  ‘No, no sun, not in here.’ He drew on the cigarette. ‘Maybe the lasers. I think one exploded.’

  She recalled the street vision, the scenes of domestic life from an earlier century. It had fallen apart, invaded her, and fled. ‘It all happened so fast,’ she ventured.

  He offered her a cup of water. She drank.

  ‘Right,’ Byron agreed. ‘After I blew the hatches...’

  But she wasn't listening. He'd ripped the interior out of the Topican craft, she knew, nearly killed them both, made sure of their latest visitors. And Abdul.

  Fast...out and in, and they were flying...where? She dreamed a multitude of answers.

  The engineer provided others. ‘If you're ever in the market for a second-hand ship, make sure it isn't Topican,’ he said eagerly, sucking burnt digits.