Chapter 13

On board Captain MacPherson proved himself no less dour than at the pre-launch briefing. For the most part he remained sequestered in his cabin, where he'd repaired shortly after the Ark had left Earth orbit, and where none but his first mate Cromartie saw him. On the rare occasions when he ventured forth he had few words for anyone he might encounter, generally no more than a gruff "G'day" as he moved quickly past without pausing. He mostly ignored any pleasantries others directed at him.

Because the ship's complement was so small they had, by unspoken accord, quickly adopted the practice of all dining together. The captain was never present at these gatherings, eating alone in his cabin, so it was the far more sociable Cromartie who acted as informal host. But MacPherson, by his chronic absence, thereby rendered himself a frequent topic of conversation over the meal.

"It's just his way," Cromartie responded again and again to inquiries. "I've never flown with him before, but he's a legend at SES. Best starship captain there ever was, or probably ever will be."

One evening, after Heisinger renewed the questioning, Cromartie grew more expansive about just what had rendered MacPherson such a "legend."

"It was ten years ago or so," the first mate narrated. "He was pretty well known even then, but no more than any other captain at the time. It was I think his third command out, or maybe his fourth, I'm not sure.

"Anyhow, they got to this sort of weird planet. Way outside the Goldilocks zone"—the narrow range of distance from its star where temperatures were considered neither too hot nor too cold for life, but "just right"—"way too far out for water to be liquid. But even so there were indications that something was growing down there in a few spots even as cold as it was. They figured some kind of internal heat source, and the biologists along were pretty keen to see what it was.

"So down they went, they figured just for a quickie, grab some specimens and then home again. It all went OK up to the point they were ready to jump in the shuttle and hightail it back, and then they got a lot closer look than they wanted at what made that particular area so warm. It was volcanic activity just like they'd thought, but they hadn't counted on a volcano breaking through just about under their feet. Well, not completely through, not yet, but it ruckled up the rock abruptly and tipped the damn shuttle completely over."

"My God!" Igwanda exclaimed. Shuttles had extraordinarily stable landing gear because they could only lift off in an upright or semi-upright position; a shuttle on its side on the ground couldn't focus its gravitronic engines to move, it was a beached whale.

"Right," continued Cromartie. "So that shuttle's not going anywhere, time to break out the emergency backup." Each starship had dual shuttles. "Which they did, and down it went. Got everybody on board OK, but just as they started to lift the volcano finished breaking through and there was all of a sudden hot lava under the tail."

"Did they lose everybody?" Heisinger asked when he paused.

"Nope, they got it up and moving all right, but the magma had caught a lot of the rear end, including the vents"—portals meant to disperse accumulated heat generated by the shuttle's engines. "Usually there's a safety override that won't let you even start the engines if the vents aren't open and working"—Meiersdottir remembered that vividly from the initial near catastrophic attack by the Edenites on their first trip—"but in this case the engines were already going, they were off the ground, so the ship's audio and visual just started bitching loud and long about overheating and how they needed to set back down right now. Except there wasn't anywhere for them to set down, and if they did they weren't ever going to get back up anyhow.

"So that's when Mac did his legend thing."

Cromartie, who was clearly enjoying his story and its impact on his rapt audience, paused again for effect. Meiersdottir, amused, gave him the lead-in he was clearly awaiting. "What did he do?" she asked soberly.

"He told 'em ignore the warnings and keep pushing," the mate said. "And he got the mothership moving, dropped it out of orbit." Again he paused, but this time more briefly.