COUNTERPOINT
0 NC, Day Minus 161
Balo Ransa was worse, adding new bruises on top of Miriam‘s first set, now mottled to aquamarine and dark olive under her golden brown. Then came the Sling.
To save the last stores of fuel for the lander, they had to jettison the interstellar debris shield at Tompuso‘s bow. The long-ago Hau Ren engineers had designed a maneuver which would slow the ship still further while casting off the shield: the attitude jets would put the ship under slew-spin, turning it end for end faster and faster until the release bolts would blow, sending the massive shield on ahead and slowing the lighter-weight main body of the ship.
Nobody had liked this idea back in the training sessions. Now, as the countdown echoed through the depleted ship, everybody hated and feared it. Miriam tightened the webbing on her body so much that her legs started to go numb. She stared wildly around, craning her neck, looking for any unsecured junk she might have missed. Her bunk was now on the after bulkhead, stuffed with cushions, and she was sandwiched between the cushions and the webbing. A couple she didn’t know occupied the two bunks adjacent to hers; the woman sobbed.
The acceleration began, and grew slowly over an hour’s time, until Miriam could barely breathe. The usual rubbish clatter had swelled and subsided; the ship’s framework, now under tension instead of compression, squawked and snapped its complaints.
The sobbing woman had finally stopped; the man’s breath came in gasps as he called out, “Clara, Clara,” grunting with the effort. Then the music started.
Hau Ren had evidently hired a mood engineer to keep the starship‘s passengers in a calm and happy state, and this blissful soul had programmed music for special occasions. Most of the time it could be ignored, soft and vague, but now its lyrics drilled into Miriam like a torch.
“The sky so blue, so filled with light and hope,”
A clanking sound told Miriam that the man in the next bunk had somehow freed a buckle from his webbing. He was probably trying to reach the woman.
“We look to you, our bold young pioneers,”
Another clank. Miriam shifted her head, but could see nothing. A rending creak from the ship.
“A world unfolds, with green and gentle slopes,”
His hand appeared by Miriam‘s face, its knuckles whitened as it gripped the bunk frame.
“New hopes of gold, to last you through the years.”
“Don’t–” Miriam gasped.
The music swelled into a dreamy stanza of synthesized passionate exaltation. A crash punctuated it, followed by mingled cries of pain that surged in a discordant crescendo over the joy-clotted instruments. Both the man and the woman screamed.
