Niven, Larry & Jerry Pournelle - Fallen Angels

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Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-671-72052-X

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

First printing, December 1992

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

firm enough to walk on. An illusion; a geography of vapors as insubstantial

as the dreams of youth. If he were to set foot upon them . . . The clouds did

not float in free fall, as was proper, but in an acceleration frame that could

hurl the scoopship headlong into an enormous ball of rock and iron and

smash it like any dream.

Falling, they called it.

Alex felt the melancholy stealing over him again. Nostalgia? For that

germ-infested ball of mud? Not possible. He could barely remember Earth.

Snapshots from childhood; a chaotic montage of memories. He had fallen

down the cellar steps once in a childhood home he scarcely recalled.

Tumbling, arms flailing, head thumping hard against the concrete floor. He

hadn't been hurt; not really. He'd been too small to mass up enough kinetic

energy. But he recalled the terror vividly. Now he was a lot bigger, and he

would fall a lot farther.

His parents had once taken him atop the Sears Tower and another time

to the edge of the Mesa Verde cliffs; and each time he had thought what an

awful long way down it was. Then, they had taken him so far up that down

ceased to mean anything at all.

Alex stared out of Piranha’s windscreen at the cloud deck, trying to

conjure that feeling of height; trying to feel that the clouds were down and

he was up. But it had all been too many years ago, in another world. All he

could see was distance. Living in the habitats did that to you. It stole height

from your senses and left you only with distance.

He glanced covertly at Gordon Tanner in the copilot's seat. If you were

born in the habitats, you never knew height at all. There were no memories

to steal. Was Gordon luckier than he, or not?

The ship sang. He was beginning to hear it now.

And Alex MacLeod was back behind a stick, where God had meant him

to be, flying a spaceship again. Melancholy was plain ingratitude! He had

plotted and schemed his way into this assignment. He had pestered Mary

But bitter because ... That part he did not want to think about. Just enjoy

the moment; become one with it. If this was to be his last trip, he would

enjoy it while he could. If everything went A-OK, he'd be back upstairs in a

few hours, playing the hero for the minute or so that people would care. A

real hero, not a retired hero. Then back in the day-care center wiping snotty

noses. It would be years before another dip trip was needed. He'd never be

on the list again.

Which meant that Alex MacLeod, pilot and engineer, wasn't needed any

longer. So what do you do with a pilot when pilots aren't needed? What do

the habitats do with a man who can't work outside, because one more

episode of explosive decompression will bring on a fatal stroke?

Day care. Snotty noses. Work at learning to be a teacher, a job he didn't

much like.

Look on the bright side, Alex, my boy. Maybe you won't make it back at

all.

Sure, he could always go out the way Mish Lykonov had in Moon Rat,

auguring in to Mare Tranquilitatis. They'd have a ceremony-—and they'd

miss the ship more than him. Even Mary. Maybe especially Mary, since

she'd got him the mission.

He straightened in his seat and touched the controls again. Maybe just a

touch of resistance ...

"Chto delayet? Alex!"

Something had prodded Gordon awake. Alex glanced to the right.

"What is it?"

"I'm getting a reading on the air temperature gauge!"

"Right. There's enough air outside now to have a temperature."

Gordon nodded, still unbelieving.

Gordon had read the book. Come to that, Gordon read a lot of books,

but books don't mean much. No one ever learned anything out of a book,

anyway. This was why they always teamed a newbie with an old pro.

Hands-on learning. The problem with on-the-job training for this job was

Old war horse heard the trumpet again. Now it s your turn. Take the

stick." Fun was fun, but it was time for the kid to wrap his hands around

the real thing. There was only so much you could do in a simulator. "There.

Feel it?"

"Uh . . ." Gordon pulled back slightly on the copilot's stick. He looked

uncertain.

He hadn't felt anything. "Take over," Alex growled. "You're flying the

ship now. Can't you tell?"

"Well . . ." Another tentative move at the controls.

Piranha wobbled. "Hey! Yeah!"

"Good. Look, it's hard to describe, but the ship will tell you how she's

doing if you really listen. I don't mean you should forget the gauges. Keep

scanning them; they're your eyes and ears. But you've got to listen with

your hands and feet and ass, too. Make the ship an extension of your entire

body. Do you feel it? That rush? That's air moving past us at five miles per

second. Newton's not flying us anymore. You are."

Gordon flashed a nervous grin, like he'd just discovered sex.

"What's our flight path?" Alex asked.

"Uh . . ." A quick glance at the map rollout. "Greenland upcoming."

"Good. Hate to be over Norway."

"Why?"

Why. Didn't the kid listen to the downside news broadcasts? Gordon,

this is your planet! Don't you care? No, he probably didn't. It was his

grandparents planet.

"There's war in Norway. If we flew over, somebody would cruise a

missile at us sure as moonquakes, and we'd never even know which side

did it."

The new tiling was wonderful. In the old days, the ship's skin would be

glowing; but now . . . Four thousand degrees and no visible sign at all. Still,

they'd be glowing like a madman's dream on an IR screen, new tiles or no,

and that was all the Downers would need to vector in on.

had pooled their resources, everyone was supposed to learn each other s

language; but Alex hadn't gotten past "Ya tebye lyublyu." Hello was

"zdravstvuitye." Alex thought there was something masochistic about

speaking a language that strung so many consonants together. "Be fair,

Gordon. If you had ice growing a mile thick in your backyard, wouldn't

you want to move south?"

Gordon mulled it. "Why south?"

He couldn't help the grin. "Never mind. Let me take her again. Hang on,

while I kill some velocity. Watch what I do and follow me." He stroked the

stick gently.

Here we go, baby. You'll love this. Drop the scoop face-on to the wind.

Open wide. That's right. Spread your tail, just for a moment ... Alex

realized that his lips were moving and clamped them shut. The younger

ones didn't understand when he talked to the ship. Gordon was having

enough trouble feeling the ship. "Okay," he said finally, "that's done. Take

over, again."

Gordon did, more smoothly than before. Alex watched him from the

corner of his eye while pretending to study the instruments. Piranha was a

sweet little ship. Alex had flown her once, years before, and considered her

the best of the three remaining scoopers. Maybe that was just Final Trip

nostalgia. Maybe he would have felt the same about whichever ship he

flew on his last dip; but he would shed a special tear for Piranha when they

retired her. The scoopers were twenty-two years old already and, while

there was not much wear and tear parked in a vacuum, screaming through

the Earth's atmosphere like a white hot banshee did tend to age the gals a

bit. Jaws was already retired. Here was Gordon at nineteen, just getting

started; and the ships at twenty-two were ready to pack it in. Life was

funny.

Alex ran a hand lightly across the instrument panel. Scoopships were

pretty in an ugly sort of way: lifting bodies with gaping scoops that made

them look like early jet airplanes. They could not land-—no landing gear-—

Alex? Gordon said suddenly. Why not Greenland?

"Hmm?"

"Why isn't anyone in Greenland shooting missiles?"

Alex grinned. That was good. Gordon was flying a scoopship on a dip

trip, sucking air at five miles per, and trying to make casual conversation.

That's right, Gordo. You can't do this sort of thing all tensed up; you've got to be

relaxed.

"Nobody there but Eskimos," he explained. "An Ice Age doesn't bother

them any. Hell, they probably think they've all died and gone to Inuit

Heaven."

"Eskimos I do not know. Gogol once wrote good story that speaks of

Laplanders but I did not understand-—" The sky had turned from black to

navy blue. Wouldn't want to get any lower. Gordon glanced out the

windscreen and said, "Shouldn't we be seeing land by now?"

Alex shook his head, realized Gordon wasn't looking at him and

answered. "No, the cloud-deck off the pole . . ." He stopped. The white

below them wasn't the cloud shroud any more. They must have gone past

the southern edge or hit a hole in it. White on white. Cloud or ice. If you

didn't actually look you, might not notice. "Damn, damn. The ice is still

growing."

Gordon didn't say anything. Alex watched him a moment longer then

turned his attention to the gauges. Gordon was nineteen. There had always

been an Ice Age, so it did not surprise him that the glaciers had crept

farther south. Alex thought he remembered a different world-—green, not

white-—before his parents brought him upstairs. He wasn't sure how much

of it was genuine childhood memories and how much was movies or

photographs in books. The habitats had a fair number of books on tape,

brought up when they still got along with the Downers.

The green hills of earth, he thought. Now the glaciers-—not rivers of ice,

but vast oceans of ice-—were spreading south at tens of miles a year.

Hundreds of miles in some places. In the dictionary, "glacial" meant slow;

Alex looked again through the cockpit windscreen and sighed.

"We could have stopped it," he said abruptly.

"Eh?" Gordon gave him a puzzled glance.

"The Ice Age. Big orbiting solar mirrors. More microwave power

stations. Sunlight is free. We could have beamed down enough power to

stop the ice. Look what one little SUNSAT has done for Winnipeg."

Gordon studied the frozen planet outside. He shook his head. "Ya nye

ponimál," he admitted. "I faked the examiners, but I never did get it. The

what-did-they-call-it, polar ice cap? It stayed put for thousands of years.

Then, of a sudden it reaches out like vast white amoeba."

All of a sudden, Alex's earphones warbled. He touched a hand to his

ear. "Piranha here."

"Alex!" It was Mary Hopkins's voice. She was sitting mission control for

this dip. Alex wondered if he should be flattered . . . And if Lonny was

there with her. "We've got a bogey rising," said Mary. "Looks like he's

vectoring in on you."

So, they don't shoot missiles out of Greenland? Find another line of

work, Alex—boy; you'll never make it as a soothsayer. "Roger, Big

Momma." He spun to Gordon. "Taking over," he barked. "Close the scoop.

Seal her up. Countermeasures!"

"Da!" He said something else, too rapid to follow.

"English, damn your eyes!"

"Oh. Yeah. Roger. Scoops closed."

Piranha felt better. Under control. "Close your faceplate." Alex pulled his

own shut and sealed it.

"Alex, I have something." Gordon's voice sounded tinny over the radio,

or maybe a wee bit stressed. "Aft and to the left and below," he said.

Seven o'clock low.

"Constant bearing and closing."

tear off. Just small, fat fins and a big, broad, flat belly to be melted,

evaporated or pierced. Alex bit his lip. Don't think about that. Concentrate

on what you can do.

The sharp turn pushed him against the corner of his seat. Alex relaxed

to the extra weight and prayed that his Earth-born bones would remember

how to take it. Decades of falling had turned him soft. The acceleration felt

like a ton of sand covering him. He felt the blood start in his sinuses. But he

could take it. He could take it because he had to.

Gordon sat gripping the arms of the copilot's seat. His cheeks sagged.

His head bowed. Gordon had been born in free fall and thrust was new to

him. He looked frightened. It must feel like he'd taken sick.

The turn seemed to go on forever. Alex watched the bogey on the scope.

Each sweep of the arm brought the blip closer to the center. Closer. He

pulled harder against the stick. The next blip was left of center. Then it

arced away. Alex knew that was an illusion. The missile had gone straight;

Piranha had banked.

"You lost it!" Gordon shouted. He turned and looked at Alex with a grin

that nearly split his face in two.

Alex smiled back. "Scared?"

"Hell, no."

"Yeah. Me, too. Anyone flying at Mach 26 while a heatseeking cruise

missile tries to fly up his ass is entitled to be scared." He toggled the radio.

It was Management Decision time. "Big Momma, we have lost the bogey.

Do you have instructions?"

There was a pause; short, but significant. "We need that nitrogen," said

Mary's voice.

Alex waited for her to finish, then realized that she had. We need that

nitrogen. That was all she was going to say, leaving the ball in his octant.

Of course we need the nitrogen, he thought. Recycling wasn't perfect.

Gas molecules outgassed right through the walls of the stations. Every now

and then someone had to take the bucket to the well and get some more.

Well, Mary was a free citizen, wasn t she? If the wife of the station

commander wants a little extracurricular, it's her choice. She had never

pushed him away; not until that last night together. We're hanging on up

here by our fingernails, she had said then. We've got to all pull together;

stand behind the station commander.

Right.

Nobody could stand behind Lonny Hopkins because he never turned

his back on anyone. With good reason. Maybe he's right. He is good at the

goddam job, and maybe our position is so precarious that there's no room

for democratic debate. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

And it's decision time.

"Understood, Big Momma. We'll get your air." Take that, Commander

Lonny Hopkins. He clicked off and turned to Gordon. "Open the scoops, but

bleed half of it to the scramjets."

"Alex . . ." Gordon frowned and bit his lip.

"They say they need the air."

"Yeah-da." Gordon's fingers flipped toggled switches back up.

Alex felt the drag as the big scoop doors opened again. The doors had

just completed their cycle when Gordon bean shouting. "Ekho! Ekho

priblizháyetsya!"

"English!"

Something exploded aft of the cabin and Alex felt his suit pop out. His

ears tried to pop, and Alex MacLeod whined deep in his throat.

He'd forgotten, but his nerves remembered. It wasn't falling he feared, it

was air tearing through his throat, daggers in his ears, pressure trying to

rip his chest apart. Five times his suit had leaked air while they worked to

save Freedom Station. He wore the scars in ruptured veins and arteries,

everywhere on his body, as if Lonny Hopkins had given him to a mad

tattoo artist. There were more scars in his lungs and in his sinus cavities. A

sixth exposure to vacuum would have his brains spewing through his nose.

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Riverdale,NY10471www.baen.comISBN:0-671-72052-XCoverartbyBobEggletonFirstprinting,December1992DistributedbySimon&Schuster1230AvenueoftheAmericasNewYork,NY10020ProductionbyWindhavenPress,Auburn,NHPrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericafirmenoughtowalkon.Anillusion;ageographyofvaporsasinsubstantialasthedrea...

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