þ7# £QÝ" ¢QÆÆÆÆÆÆ(Ú0Ú0Ú0Ú0 Ú:~Û¸Û¸NÜxÚ0Ü~ Üž!ÜÍ*Ü÷Æ?ÜÍÜ¿ÜÍÜÍÜ÷+ÜÍÜÍÜÍÜÍÜÍÜÍ FALLEN ANGELS by Larry NivenJerry Pournelle Michael Flynn DEDICATION FOR SCIENCE FICTION FANDOM All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 http://www.baen.com Production by Windhaven Press Auburn, NH Electronic version by WebWrights http://www.webwrights.com This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. First printing, December 1992 Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Printed in the United States of AmericaCHAPTER ONE "Aspiring to Be Gods . . ." High over the northern hemisphere the scoopship's hull began to sing. The cabin was a sounding box for vibrations far below the threshold of hearing. Alex MacLeod could feel his bones singing in sympathy. Piranha was kissing high atmosphere. Planet Earth was shrouded in pearl white. There was no break anywhere. There were mountain ranges of fluff, looming cliffs, vast plains that stretched to a far distant convex horizon, a cloud cover that looked 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 hildhood; 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 and pestered Mary until she had relented and bumped his name to the top of the list just to be rid of him. He had won. Of course, there was a cost. Victories are always bittersweet. Sweet because . . . He touched the stick and felt nothing. They were still in vacuum . . . thicker vacuum, that was heating up. If there wasn't enough air to give bite to the control surfaces, a pilot must call it vacuum. How could you explain the sweetness to someone who had never conned a ship? You couldn't. He relaxed in the acceleration chair, feeling the tingling in his hands and feet. The itching anticipation. Oh, to be useful again, even if for a moment. 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-Ñand 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 that there was not a hell of a lot of room for trial and error. Alex moved the stick gently, and felt the ship respond. Not vacuum anymore! He banked and brought them up level, feeling the air rushing past just outside the skin. His eyes danced across the gauges. Here. There. Not reading them. Just a glance to see if something was wrong, or if something had changed since the last glance. Dynamic air temperature. Stagnation air temperature. The Mach number needle sprang to life, leaped from zero to absurdity, then hunted across the dial. A grin stretched itself across his face. No blues now. He hadn't forgotten at all; not a damned thing. "What is funny?" Gordon demanded. "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. "Which side?" Gordon mused. "What are the sides?" Alex laughed. "That's one of the reasons we can't be sure. When it started, it was what was left of NATO defending the Baltics." Non-nuclear, but it just went on and on and on. Alex didn't really care who won any more than Gordon did. "After a while, the Scandinavians and the Russians took a nervous look over their shoulders at the glaciers, and East versus West became North versus South." "Silly bastards. Nye kulturni." "Da." It didn't surprise him anymore. All the younger Floaters spoke Russian as automatically as English. Russlish? Ever since Peace and Freedom 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 hav...
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