Spin Vector Symmetry

Mostly ceramic, the Arrow would be barely affected by the electromagnetic disturbance of Mu Carinae. The crew of the Achilles were confident it would hit its target.

The armoury sergeant reported back to Lieutenant Faris, who said:

"Sir, the Arrow's prepared."

Captain Rhodes did not pause.

"Computer:" he said. "Record in the ship's log that I'm disobeying my order to destroy the asteroid-mine, MC10, in the Mu Carinae system. Instead, I'm following the advice of a civilian to launch an unarmed missile to try to tip over the asteroid. Martin, launch the Arrow."

The lieutenant gave the order and a catapult flung the Arrow sideways out of the Achilles, clear of the ship. No longer accelerating, the missile was left behind by the cruiser, until it was fifty miles away, when the lasers turned on, igniting the fuel.

There was a great flash of white light and a blast of orange fire from its exhaust, shooting the arrow forward. It quickly caught up with the Achilles and then overtook, streaking away toward the hyperspace beacon, leaving a scorching train of particles.

The captain and lieutenant watched the Arrow as it passed, until the intense light from the rocket caused the camera window to obscure itself, protecting the eyes of the viewers. When the viewscreen cleared, the Arrow was an intense white dot among the billion lights of the shimmering galaxy.

Vernon Rhodes went to his drinks cupboard and brought back two glasses and a bottle of Scotch.

"Let's make use of our acceleration while we can," he said, pouring the golden liquid. "Here."

"I'm on duty, sir."

"So am I, Martin. Though, if this fails, I can't say for how long. Still, it's been a good career."

"Was it a difficult decision, sir?"

"Could you kill a woman or a child?"

"No, sir, not deliberately."

"Nor me. Thank God the Anglosphere hasn't been at war for more than three-hundred years, so none of us has ever had to drop a bomb on a target where there were civilians; but that would be to kill innocent people inadvertently, which the rules of law allow. To kill innocents deliberately - worse, to kill women and children - is something I could never do.

"Chivalry's old-fashioned nowadays, sir."

"Yes, but it persists in the military. Given the choice of killing two women or allowing twenty men to die, I think my court martial will sympathise with me. I may even keep my pension."

"Yes, sir. I hope so, sir."

******

The Arrow missile was faster than any comms probe that the Achilles might have sent, so rigging team B and their passengers on the survey ship knew nothing of the launch until the missile punched through the hyperspace beacon at Mu Carinae, the white heat from its exhaust visible from a million miles away.

The survey ship was also accelerating, trying to get a safe distance from the asteroid.

The navicomms system reported the missile. Chris, who was at the piloting console, announced to the crew:

"There's a military missile, an Arrow. I think it's heading for MC10."

"Is it the one Princess wanted?" boy-rigger Jake, asked, concern in his voice. "Or is it the nuclear one?"

"Have faith, boyo," Geraint said. He put a massive hand on the lad's shoulder as they watched the progress of the Arrow on the navicomms screen.

******

On MC10, hoping the message got through, Ellen and Danielle put on their flight-suits and prepared themselves. They sat facing each other under the instrument desk, feet braced against the side panels, ready to hold each other, hoping to survive the impact.

******

The Arrow streaked across the face of Mu Carinae and left the orbit of the beacon. It dipped far below Carina Sunspark, which spun lifelessly, and traced a parabola outward to the asteroid belt. Its flash lasers died and the hot stream of particles was left to shimmer and go dark.

At thirty-nine minutes, the Arrow performed its final manoeuvre. The lasers fired again and the missile turned dead north, pointing directly at MC10.

Cruising at half-a-million metres per second, the Arrow smacked into the side of the asteroid-mine, shocking the whole structure. The payload lodged under the surface while the rocket motor bounced off, reeling through the asteroid field, destroying rocks and pulverising boulders, until it fled the solar system into empty space.

A crack like a million lightning bolts boomed through the asteroid. Its echo reverberated off floors, ceilings and walls.

Under the instrument desk, Ellen and Danielle held each other tightly as the control room shook. There were cracks, groans and horrible shearing noises outside. The air was hot and filled with choking dust.

The impact made a molten crater, an orange wound that bubbled and grew, spitting hot lava into space.

"Holy crap!" said Jake, watching in awe. "How could anyone survive that?"

"Now, lad," Geraint said. "The Princess knows what she's about. She's calculated it."

The orange crater moved in a spiral as MC10 now spun on two axes. Added to the fast horizontal rotation was a slow rotation at right angles, shifting the poles around.

Shaking and jolting, the asteroid tipped forward. Danielle pushed hard with her legs against the side panel and held Ellen tightly. The asteroid tipped further and it was Ellen's turn to brace the pair with her feet. Then the second torque vanished and the shaking stopped.

There were a few wobbles but the gyroscopic effect settled the asteroid in a horizontal spin. The poles no longer shifted and the noise abated. There was only darkness and the dust.

Amazingly, the asteroid was still spinning in the same direction. The bubbling orange crater was now in the northern hemisphere, but moving clockwise, as it had done in the southern hemisphere.

"It worked!" the lads on the ship shouted with joy. "It bloody well worked!"

The men shook hands and slapped each other on the back.

"Aye," Geraint said, the most relieved of them all. "Princess said it'd work."

"It worked!" Ellen cried when the jolting stopped. "It damn well worked! You're a genius. I could kiss you! I'm going to kiss you!"

She smeared Temptress lipstick over Danielle's lips and cheeks.

"You did it!" Ellen said again.

"I think so," Danielle said with relief. "We're definitely upside-down, though I can't tell yet if we're veering away from Sunspark."

******

Turned upside-down, MC10's magnetic poles were reversed. The force from the star was now a repulsion. The asteroid-mine began to veer away from the space station, back toward the asteroid belt.

The men of rigging team A wanted to join team B on the rocket launch back to the asteroid, to dig out Ellen and Danielle, but Geraint was firm.

"You're brave boyos, no doubt of it, but you've got these here miners to care for. Mu Carinae seems quiet now, and the Achilles will be here soon. They can see to Sunspark. Chris, take us close to MC10 then drop these good boyos back on their ship."

Rigging team B took the rocket launch back to the asteroid. They negotiated the collapsed tunnels and the broken pillars. After so much relief and elation, their confidence was impregnable. Nothing could impede their desire to get their Princess back.

Enough of the asteroid's structure held for them to get safely down to level 37 and drill a small hole through the floor to send down comms and air. In an hour they spoke to Ellen and Danielle, rejoicing that they had survived. A few hours later there was a big enough hole for the two women to be hauled up on ropes and hugged so firmly by all the men that they were once more in danger of asphyxiation.

5Aftermath

With the crew of Carina Sunspark and the five miners safely rescued, Ellen, Danielle and the two rigging teams returned to Earth to a blaze of publicity.

Stephen Oakshott gave them all a week off, asking only that they allow the importunate reporters and their videocomms teams to conduct interviews.

The lads managed a few hours of interviews, during which they denied their own courage and praised Princess Danielle and Princess Ellen. As soon as they could, they went to the pub and did the blokey thing of ribbing each other mercilessly and getting plastered. Then they went home to their wives and girlfriends for a well-earned break.

Danielle and Ellen endured the publicity tour for most of the week. It suited the news reporters anyway, who favoured a story of heroic and beautiful women scientists.

Ellen vamped it up in front of the videocomms, with perfect makeup and the sexy kind of business suit whose skirts were unconventionally short, her jacket cut to emphasise her thin waist and push out her magnificent tits.

Danielle did not care how big she thought her bum looked. She wore trousers and was comfortable.

She was willing to talk to the reporters, despite their inane questions about her feelings and their complete ignorance of science, because she thought the publicity would help Oakshott Engineering. Ellen was in her element, sparkling happily in front of the videocomms. However much she wanted to help Oakshott Engineering, she had an ulterior motive as well.

After the interviews, Ellen had conversations with men in grey pinstripe suits with pink ties and gold cufflinks. The men smelled of money and Danielle guessed they were from the Beltway consortium, eager to capitalise on Ellen's status as photogenic heroine of Mu Carinae. No doubt a job-offer would follow.

With the initial rush of publicity over, after Danielle had reassured her doubting parents that she had never really been in danger, that the news reporters were exaggerating for the sake of a story, the two women went to a spa to recuperate. Ellen persuaded Danielle to have her hair dyed, and Danielle agreed that wavy platinum blonde suited her.

A few days later, Ellen received a job offer. Stephen Oakshott allowed her to leave without working her notice. He put on a big party to say goodbye and to wish Ellen luck as the face (and sexy figure) of the Beltway Hyperspace System.

******

A week after Ellen's party, Danielle arrived at her desk in the laboratory early on a Monday morning to find an invitation to visit Stephen Oakshott in his office.

She liked taking the lift to the top of the tower on an industrial estate north of Cambridge, England. The plastiglass cubicle gave views of the venerable city two miles to the south. Its old grey churches and medieval colleges were rarely so handsome as when they glistened in the morning sunlight of a spring day.

"Come in, Doctor Goldrick," Stephen said, standing to offer her a seat. He gave her a letter with some numbers on it and sat behind his large desk.

She studied the letter and looked up, her face a question-mark.

"Your pay-rise with back pay," Stephen said. "It's early. Three months. Should be a year. Appropriate now."

"Thanks for the pay rise, Mister Oakshott, but why is there back pay?"

"Underpaid you at first. Deliberately. Offered less than rivals. Appealed to your ambition."

Not for the first time in her young life, Danielle was lost for words.

"Big project coming up," Stephen went on. "Beltway Hyperspace System. Ring of beacons around Earth. Big prize for inventing junction. Change direction in hyperspace plume. Thank Ellen. She told Beltway group: ask us to propose design. Putting my best egg-heads on it. Includes you now."

"You know it's generally believed you can't change direction from one hyperspace pathway to another inside the plume," Danielle said cautiously.

"Not interested in 'generally believed', Goldrick. Want you to try."

There was silence. Danielle seemed to be having an internal conversation. Stephen waited patiently. Five minutes later Danielle looked up. Her eyes focussed.

"Good thoughts?" Stephen asked.

"Maybe. I was wondering about the speed of entry to a hyperspace beacon. Everyone knows there's a maximum speed, but most people don't consider there's a minimum speed as well because no one goes slower than he needs to when there's a big distance between beacons to travel.

"But if the maximum and minimum speeds were close together, to make a narrow band, and if the junction is made from a series of beacons joined together, then we could use speed to determine whether a traveller stays on a hyperspace pathway or is diverted onto another pathway. Too fast for the first beacon, too slow for the second beacon but just right for the third beacon, and so on.

"The maths will be formidable and I've no idea if it'll work, but maybe it's an idea I can start with."

"Ellen was right. Said you'll be my best egg-head. Off you go, Goldrick. Perform miracles."

Smiling to herself, Danielle left the office and took the elevator down to the laboratory in a sort of a daze. There was a lot to process in the last couple of weeks.

She was sorry she would no longer be working with Ellen, who was not a cold-hearted bitch but a fun and interesting woman, and now a friend.

She loved her boys, who protected her (when she let them) and manfully came to her rescue, despite nerve-shredding danger.

She loved her job, especially now that she had the opportunity to work on the biggest astrophysical engineering project in the galaxy. It was her chance to make a contribution to science. Beltway hyperspace junctions. What a challenge! It was her chance, as Stephen Oakshott said, to perform miracles.

Danielle smiled to herself and felt excited. She did not know what the future held but there was one thing she knew for certain: it was going to be gloriously unpredictable.