Space Stations

“Flow increasing to perimeter grid. Magnetoelectric field intensity growing to plus one fifth of standard.” Narisara's voice rose excitedly. “Magnetodynamic flux noted in the channel, but the quantum structures appear stable. They are doing it, Tarrischall! They understand! The Upright gate is reducing flow! They are cycling with us!”

“Yes! Yessss! Marta-of-the-Place-Called-New-England thinks as one of the People! Four limbs or not, I'd put a pup in her come the next season!”

The otherworldly music ran on, trickling from the sphere.

“Director Lane, the switching arrays don't like this. We're throwing thermal spikes at each power shift and the cyclic rate we've set isn't giving us the time we need to cool them down.”

“Blame Glenn Miller, not me, Mr. Desvergers. Stay on the cycle and do the best you can.”

“Marta, check your quantum structure readouts!”

“What is it, Estiban?”

“We are registering a shift! We have mass movement! She's starting to rock!”

A rising chorus of warning tones from the tasking displays sang a song of incipient disaster that threatened to drive out the twelfth replay of the Terran melody.

“Tarrischall, the raft was displaying a slow but definite lateral drift on that last emergence. If she angles off enough to collide with the grid…”

“Don't encourage the curse with your words, Black Fur, I saw it. Claws out, pups! This strike ends the chase. Marrun, maneuvering room be damned! This time grab her by the throat and hang on till your jaws crack!”

The Voice-of-Pusher-Guidance grunted an acknowledgment. He had his six most

powerful units hovering around the mouth of the perimeter grid, ready to pounce like a hunter's pack on a surfacing deep rover. It wasn't a bad analogy for the situation.

The shadow sphere within the grid began to shimmer.

“The time is on us! Narisara. Full flow on the gate fields! Full flow! Haul her in!”

The stern of the cargo raft burst out of the event horizon, no longer tracking true but drifting off side and angling across the channel, its dead gyros and propulsor vents incapable of stabilization. Even if the straining function nets of River-'Tween-Worlds could withstand another modulation cycle, a few more fractions of drift would bring about a catastrophic collision between the raft and the grid structure. It had to be now!

Tarrischall held a diving breath as the curve of the raft's stern protruded a few lengths from the lip of the grid, hovering on the cusp of the cycle.

“Take her! Take her now!”

Marrun socked his Pushers in. Not even attempting a run at the bonding points, he rammed the robotic propulsor units into the raft, spearing it with expanding crash harpoons. Vents flared and raged as Marrun countered the drift and applied extraction power in a wild paw dance across his tasking board.

Like two pups with a scrap, the Pusher units and the magnetic pull warred… then, ponderously, the raft was floating back and out of the grid it had entered far too long before.

Joyous pandemonium raged in the two control rooms stars apart.

There was, of course, an aftermath. Communications between the gate control centers had to be reestablished, the wormhole had to be closed, and the emergency power diversions rerouted. A protracted series of systems tests and repairs were initiated and a start had to be made on establishing a new set of operational protocols that would ensure a like event could never happen again.

And finally there was the press conference.

At Marta's insistence it would be an audio interview only, conducted over the communications link from her quarters. She was not about to present herself to the video scrutiny of two entire civilizations after an all-nighter at crisis stations. At least not until she had enjoyed a three water-credit bath, a gluttonous Earth import meal, and at least ten hours of sleep.

Over the laser-link channel from Life-Waters, good old Furry Tarrischall, as ebullient as ever, was more than willing to carry the show for her. She had only to add the occasional word at the interviewer's prompt.

“We have solution,” he proclaimed dramatically. “I know wise Friend-Marta must have same solution as well. But we must coordinate or all is lost. We must begin the cycling of magnetic fields at the same instant! Same instant! We must cycle at same interval and one or other must start cycle. But how is to do this when we cannot speak? Tchah! It must be done through things already said, from commonalities already available and recognized.

“My mind chases itself. Then I recall last words spoken with Friend-Marta and the music of the Artist-Called-Miller given to me. Here is our commonality!”

“Er, Artist-called-Miller, Director Lane?” The interviewer inquired cautiously.

“As in Glenn,” Lane replied into her interphone deck. “Tarrischall and I share a mutual appreciation of Terrestrial pre-atomic age swing music.”