Fiction River: Moonscapes Read Online Free Page B

flush with oxygen, his heart hammering in his chest. Saxon hauled himself painfully to his feet, bent down and retrieved the strange device, stared at it in disbelief.
    Had it—He shook his head. Had the little device just altered the universal constant of gravitation?
     
    ***
     
    Standing in the small, cramped bridge of the little shuttle that was both refuge and prison, Monica peered at the delicate rose cupped in her hands. In her grasp it resembled some kind of ornament, a work of art meant to accent a woman’s beauty.
    She frowned, delicate brows hunched over those pretty blue eyes.
    “You’re saying it’s some kind of ... remote control?”
    “Exactly,” said Saxon. “ Exactly . I played around with it while I was rolling back in. It changes gravitational force and the duration of time and heat transfer and look at this.”
    He snatched the rose away from her, touched a certain petal, spun one of the metal rings. He pulled out a cutting laser from the right front pouch of his suit, thumbed the safety off.
    Monica’s eyes widened in alarm. Her voice rose in alarm. “ Hey, wait, what’re you —”
    He pointed the laser down at the deck and pressed the rose up against its barrel.
    “ Saxon, don’t! You could cut right through the— ”
    He touched the firing stud and sparks of dust-scattered ruby light poured out of the krypton laser, but slowly, ever so slowly, as if the scarlet photons were particles of molasses. The laser should have emitted a high-pitched shriek, but instead a bass hum emanated from the machine, as strange and wrong as the light.
    Saxon released the firing stud watching the flickering light slant slowly toward the deck.
    And then, suddenly, there was a small whip crack of sound and a ruby flash of light that left behind a black-burn scar on the deck and the ugly odor of ozone and burning plastic.
    “It controls ... the speed of light?” she whispered.
    Saxon nodded. “Within a certain range.”
    Monica stared down at the burnt spot on the gray tile, her lips slightly parted, her breathing a rasp.
    Saxon replaced the laser and set the rose on the pilot’s chair.
    She did not pull her gaze up from the deck.
    After a minute he couldn’t stand it anymore. He grabbed her by the shoulders and her gaze jerked up to him.
    He laughed, his laughter loud and maybe a little wild. “Don’t you see, Monica? This’ll save us. This explains why our orbital insertion went bad. The planet’s gravity was too high. But with this device,” he glanced at the rose, “we can change gravity. It’ll be ridiculously easy to break free of the moon. We’ll have enough delta vee to reach Osiris, refuel.”
    She shrugged. “And what do we do then?”
    “We set course for Earth.”
    Monica frowned. “Earth? Earth’s more than 150 lightyears away. How can we—”
    She stopped. She saw it, too.
    Saxon let go of her and lifted the rose, held it up. “Earth’s 47.1 parsecs away, but how many lightyears is up to us. We can go home, not in a thousand years, not in a hundred, not in ten. We can go home whenever we want to.”
    The blood drained from Monica’s face, that lovely skin suddenly china-doll pale. She reached a trembling hand out to the right-hand chair to brace herself.
    “I don’t think you’ve thought this all the way through yet, Saxon.”
    “What? Yes, I have. This’ll get us home, Monica.”
    “Yes,” she admitted, “but—”
    “Look,” he said, “you didn’t come with me because you loved me. And you didn’t come with me because you thought my hot jupiter research was important. You came with me for another reason.”
    Monica licked dry lips, but didn’t look up at him.
    “Didn’t you?” he demanded.
    She nodded, the movement of her head so slight, it almost wasn’t there.
    “You came with me for the same reason you cheated on me. Because your life is empty.”
    She looked up sharply, her eyes blazing with fury.
    “ You son of a bitch. ”
    He shook his head.