Starship Summer (Starship Seasons, #1)(34)

I sat and thought about what the alien had told me…

Matt arrived first, riding his wave-hopper around the far headland and along the beach rather than risk crossing the choppy waters. Seconds later a battered roadster drew up beneath the nose of the starship, and Hawk climbed out and limped up the ramp and into the ship after Matt.

“In the lounge,” I called out, just as Maddie came into sight along the beach, a small doll-like figure, her home-made cape pestered by the rising wind.

Minutes later all three were sitting in the lounge, pouring coffee and looking at me expectantly.

“Well?” Matt said.

I stared at my friends and wondered where to begin.

“I had another dream,” I said, “only it wasn’t a dream. It happened. The alien came to me and explained what it wanted.” Matt sipped his coffee. The others watched me expectantly. I looked at Hawk.

“Do you think you can pilot the Mantis?” I asked.

He stared at me, puzzlement lending his experienced, battered face a sudden look of innocence. “Pilot the ship?” “Get it running, get it up and flying?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know… In principle, yes.”

“I know the codes,” I said. “I know the override commands that will start the engines. They were given to me by the creature.”

“Then… in that case it can be done. But not by me.”

I stared at him. “Hawk?” Disappointment flooded the word.

He looked pained. “David, I haven’t flown for thirty years. For that long I’ve tried to forget what happened…” He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to even think about flying again.”

“Not even one last time?”

Hawk stared at me, wrestling with demons.

Matt leaned forward and said,“Why?” watching me closely.

I shook my head. “That I don’t know. The alien said it wanted us to fly the ship. It gave me the co-ordinates for the flight. All we need to do is get the ship running.”

Maddie said, “It wanted us to fly the ship, David?”

I nodded, dredging the dream for the alien’s explanation. “The ship needs more than the pilot to get it up and moving. Don’t ask me for the technical details. We’d be… plugged into the systems matrix, in some way powering the vessel. Our presence is vital for its operation.”

“And where would the ship be bound?” Matt asked. “And why?” Again I shook my head, spreading my hands in mute appeal. “I don’t know that. The alien told me that what we’d do would change things—it said that the Yall had given the galaxy a gift, and that we humans were now advanced enough to accept it.”

We stared at each other.

Maddie said, “I’m up for it. How can we refuse?”

Matt inclined his noble head. “I agree with Maddie. We’ve got to do it. Imagine not taking up the challenge, and looking back at our failure, and forever wondering…”

I looked across at Hawk. He was staring down at his big hands. He looked up, staring past me through the viewscreen.

The storm had started. They sky had darkened. Wind howled around the contours of the ship, whistled through aerials and antennae, and the rain came down in torrents.

“Hawk?” I said.

“I don’t know…”

I said, and I wasn’t proud of myself for what might be considered a blackmail tactic, “If we do it, Hawk, then the alien said it’d banish my nightmares. I know, there’s a greater thing we need to do it for, something we can’t even guess at as yet. But one of the results would be that I’d no longer be haunted by the nightmares of what happened.”

Maddie said in a small voice, “What did happen, David?”

I nodded, and gathered myself, my thoughts, the memory of that day, and I told them what I had not told anyone before.

“Three years ago I was involved in an accident which killed my daughter,” I began.



I’d taken Carrie across the straits to the fun-fair as a birthday treat. It had been a great day, one of those special times together that live in the memory. On the way back we’d chatted about the various rides; I’d bought a couple of hot dogs and we’d chomped them on the deck, leaning against the rail and watching the waters churning away far below us.

I saw the ship that hit the ferry, seconds before the impact. It was a tanker, and it seemed to appear from nowhere. As the great mountain of metal bore down on us, I experienced that strange frozen clarity of knowledge when the eye sees impending disaster, and the brain is aware of exactly what will happen but the body fails to respond.

I just stared, a cry silent on my lips.

Carrie had not seen the looming hull of the tanker, and the impact, when it sliced the ferry almost in two, brought an expression of cartoon startlement to her pretty face.

A second later she was pitched over the rail and into the sea. The ferry tipped and I dived in after her, thrashing through the turbulent water in search of the most precious thing in my life. I caught sight of her, once, twice, as she was dragged under the waves and tossed around like something inanimate. I heard her cries and I fought through the water to reach her…

That was the last I recalled. When I regained consciousness, my head swaddled in a compression band, I was in hospital and my wife was at my bedside. She was weeping uncontrollably, and I knew that her tears were not for me.