A Glibertarians Exclusive: A Glibertarians Exclusive: Riding the String III

Somewhere else

Only a faint hum marked their passage along the String.

I need time to think.  Will looked over at Anne’s station; she had extended her chair down into a cot and had, mercifully, fallen asleep. Will reached out to the touchscreen, tapped an indicator, and dragged it down some. The reactor’s hum changed, subtly.

Where the hell was that place? How did we end up there? Couldn’t be another planet, those were dinosaurs. Some kind of… evolved, intelligent raptor.  And the atmosphere was Earthlike.

Another dimension?

He frowned and looked out into the black; he hadn’t told Anne but had harbored a few doubts about his calculations and had not felt confident enough to tell her.

I wanted so badly to make all this work, he remembered. And now we’re lost. I got us lost.

I got her lost.  And she’s not strong enough to deal with all this.

Will looked again at the display and double-checked his countermarch program; if he was correct, the Transiter should come out off the String within view of Sutter High Orbital. He tapped the indicator again and dragged it back up.  Here we go.

The Transiter shuddered, and the ports filled with light.  Anne suddenly sat up with a startled squawk.

Will looked out the portal, then at the camera displays.  “Huh,” he said. “There’s a planet out there.  There are two planets out there.”

The system looked to be not a planet-moon system like Earth and Luna, but a binary planet system, with the smaller about two-thirds the size of the Earth-like larger.  Both orbited at some distance from a blue-white supergiant star.

Will looked out at the larger planet. “Anne,” he asked, thinking of the need to keep her focused on some task or other, “how far away is the bigger planet?”

Anne looked out the port at the bigger planet, swirling golden in the blue-white light of the giant star. “Uh,” she said, “give me a couple minutes.”

“Looks like about five hundred thousand kilometers,” she said at last. “A little farther than from Earth to Luna.”

“How long to get there with the gravitic drive?”

“A day, maybe.”

“Our air should hold out OK.” Will had not failed, at least, to anticipate every possible problem, so the Transiter was equipped with an oxygen reserve and CO2 scrubbers. “Let’s head that way. If we can top off the water tanks, then I’d like to do that, and maybe we can get some kind of clue as to where we are.”

“All right. I’ll program it.”

Twenty-six hours later, the Transiter settled gently to the surface.  Will checked the environmental readout. “Warm,” he said. “About thirty-eight degrees. Oxygen is on the low side. The relative humidity is damn near a hundred percent. Won’t be comfortable, but we can survive it. For a while.”

“Are we going out, then?”

“You can stay in the Transiter, hon,” Will assured her. “If it’s this humid, there should be groundwater; I can send the auto spike down for water.  Don’t know why I didn’t think of it at the last stop.  But I want to go out and have a look around.”

“Don’t go far,” Anne warned.  She was calmer, but her face was still flushed, her eyes damp.

I’ve gotta get her home, Will thought. She’s not taking this well at all.  I thought she was stronger than this.  She knows I’d move the sun and the moon if it would make her happy; I just wish she was holding up a little better.

I only did this to try to make a home for us both.  Something better than a damn Medium Personal on Sutter High Orbital.  Maybe even a place down on Earth.  Instead, now I seem to be stuck in a bad horror story.

He hugged Anne, then undogged the hatch and climbed outside. The ground underfoot let out a soft squish when he put his feet down; a damp feeling made him look down to see water bubbling up around his shoes, up from between the short, golden, grass-like growth that seemed to cover every inch of the ground.

No wonder it’s so damn humid. Sweat broke out on Will’s face almost instantly; the air was like a steam bath.  He looked up to see the rust-red mass of the secondary planet off to the east, appearing several times larger than Luna as seen from Earth, while behind him, the great blue-white star dominated the western sky.

Will opened the recharger panel and tapped the contact that sent the auto spike down into the wet soil; a pump started to whir, drawing water into the reaction chamber.  With that done, Will wandered a few meters away, examining the strange surroundings.

The odd, golden grass-like… plants?  They seemed to be everywhere, covering the ground like a carpet. Will squatted down to examine them more closely.  They looked more grass-like up close, each a long, slim, golden leaf-like structure, flattened like a blade.  He noticed that each blade had the flat side facing the great blue-white star.

Then Will noticed a faint rumble. The ground shook.  Will stood up.

The rumble had come from the east, and to the east, the ground was… changing.

The gold of the grasslike plants was fading, giving way to a darker, yellow brown of the soil underneath.  Curious, Will walked a few paces that way and looked ahead.

The golden blades were retracting, into the soil, in a wave that was rushing towards him and the Transiter.

Will looked back and the Transiter, then to the east again.  The rumble was growing louder.

Oh, shit, he thought.  Tides.  The wet ground.  That big planet…

He ran for the Transiter.  Behind him, the rumble grew louder.  The wave of retracting golden plants shot past him, past the Transiter, off to the west.  Will slapped the control to retract the auto spike, slammed the panel and dogged it shut, then opened the hatch and climbed inside.

He looked out the port to the east. In the distance, a wave was building, a wave of water.  “Get us out of here, Anne,” he barked.  “Straight up!  Low orbit, for now, we’ll figure out what to do but get us out of here fast!”

Anne sat up.  Her hands flew over the gravitic controls. The Transiter lifted, slowly, then faster.

Will watched the camera displays.  They had just gotten off in time; beneath them, a kilometer-high wall of water flooded over the landscape, reaching from horizon to horizon.

“What the hell?” Anne demanded.

“It’s a binary planet,” Will reminded her, “And this one, at least, has an ocean.  You know how Luna pulls on the oceans of Earth, and that causes tides?”

Anne nodded, an impatient look on her face; she had learned that in elementary school.

“The secondary planet does the same thing here.  Only it’s a lot bigger than Luna, and it drags the whole ocean behind it, with every rotation.  Those little golden grass-like things that grow everywhere, they retract when it’s coming in, probably the only way they can survive it.  And if they didn’t, if I hadn’t noticed them doing it, noticed a wave of them retracting ahead of that water…”

“…Then we’d still be down there,” Anne finished for him.

Surprisingly, Anne flew into Will’s arms, hugging him fiercely.  “You saved us,” she breathed into his ear.  “You saved us, and you’ll get us home again.  I know you can do it.”

The interlude that followed was enjoyable, but at the end of it, they still had to face being lost in a way that no humans in history had ever been lost before.  Beneath them, the golden planet still rotated; the ocean was draining away to the west, following the secondary planet.  The hot light of the blue-white supergiant flooded in through the ports.

“Well,” Will said, “I could try another countermarch; if it takes us back to the world where the raptors are, we can always bounce into orbit and think about what to do from there; it’s one step closer to home, anyway.”  He checked a gauge.  “We got the reaction tanks full up, anyway.”

“We can try,” Anne agreed.  “We sure can’t stay here.”

“I’ll program it.” Will made the proper entries, then tapped the contact to execute.  They sat back in their chairs as the light of the supergiant star faded, and the Transiter rode the String into the now-familiar black of nothing and nowhere.

Then they emerged. Into a howling chaos.

***
I ain’t too good at conversation, girl
So you might not know exactly how I feel
But if I could, I’d bring you to the mountaintop, girl
And build you a house made out of stainless steel
But it’s like I’m stuck inside a painting
That’s hanging in the Louvre
My throat start to tickle and my nose itches
But I know that I can’t move

Don’t fall apart on me tonight
I just don’t think that I could handle it
Don’t fall apart on me tonight
Yesterday’s gone but the past lives on
Tomorrow’s just one step beyond
And I need you, oh, yeah