by Douglas Hill
Keill controlled his anger. Quern and his deadly plan would have to be stopped - but not here, he knew. And not with words. "And what's my role in all this ?" he asked curtly. This task you mentioned ?"
"Your task is the one most suitable for a legionary," Quern said, the icy smile returning. "You are to lead the raid on the Veynaan satellite."
The plan, as Quern unfolded it, was devastatingly simple. A group of five would take a shuttle up to the ultrafreighter. They would then transfer the mysterious weapon to the freighter and would pilot it away from the Ouster and into a parking orbit around Veynaa.
Three of them would then take the shuttle for the raid on the communications satellite, while the remaining two completed adjustments to the weapon.
The three raiders would then pick up the other two from the freighter and return to the Cluster. And the freighter would remain, orbiting Veynaa with its cargo of death.
Keill could see problems and flaws, but he left them unspoken. "Who else is coming?" he asked, when the albino had finished.
'Myself, of course," Quern smiled, "in charge of the weapon. Our lovely Joss will pilot the freighter, and will stay on it to lend me her ... delicate skills. Fillon will go with you, and will insert the tape into the vid system.
And Groll, here, will accompany you as well - to ensure that you do not forget where your... loyalties lie."
"If you still distrust me, Quern," Keill said flatly, "why tell me all this ?
Why include me at all ?"
Quern leaned forward, all humour banished from the death-white face. "Because your skills will be useful, and because it is the best way to keep an eye on you, Randor. Nor is there any harm in telling you the plan - because it will go forward this very night, and the five of us will remain together every second from now till we enter the shuttle."
The red-rimmed eyes glittered. "One more thing, Randor," Quern went on. "You will not be armed during the raid, but Groll will be. Should you show the slightest sign of interfering with the plan, Groll has been instructed, to kill you without hesitation."
Keill leaned forward from the narrow acceleration seat to peer past Quern through the shuttle's viewpoint. Ahead, the ultrafreighter loomed, a vast silhouette against the stars, dwarfing the shuttle.
Quern, at the shuttle's controls, glanced back. "Growing impatient, Randor ?" he sneered.
Keill ignored the question. "You realize that the moment Fillon puts that tape into the vid system, the Veynaans will throw ships up at the satellite."
"No doubt. But they will not at first know which of their satellites has been attacked. By the time they do, you will have made your escape and be out of range."
"Even so, they'll look for us," Keill persisted. "And they're likely to spot the freighter. What's to stop them blasting it to atoms?"
"Two things" Quern replied with a frozen smile. "The tape will have told them that the weapon will activate if tampered with. And to be doubly sure, I will have specially programmed the freighter. It will move in and out of Overlight at random points on its orbit- so the Veynaans will never pinpoint where it is, or where it will be."
Keill sat back, considering. The freighter was not equipped with the standard ion-energy drive for short-run planetary travel - it had only minimal boosters, to keep its orbit constant around a planet when it was stationary.
But it was equipped with the Overlight drive, for interstellar flight. So it could move cargo across the galaxy as quickly as a ship with planetary drive could cross a solar system.
Keill grudgingly realized that Quern had covered most possibilities, that the plan had every chance of succeeding. But if the Veynaans bowed to the threat, and gave way to the Ouster's demands, Keill also knew that the Cluster would merely find itself in the grip of new, far more deadly rulers. And the Warlord would have control of the priceless supply of ossidin.
Wait, he told himself fiercely, there will be a time - somewhere along the stages of the plan - when Quern can be stopped. And will be.
The shuttle was nosing up now to the huge sweep of the freighter's hull. A docking bay opened automatically, like a vast maw, at the stern of the giant ship, and the shuttle drifted in, retros throbbing, to settle on a landing pad. The bay closed, sealing itself against the vacuum of space, and the shuttle's drive faded into silence.
They waited in that silence for several moments. Again Keill peered out, studying the shadowy interior of the freighter. It was little more than an enormous shell, he knew, with solid bulkheads extending its full height and breadth to divide it into several separate compartments.
He also knew that such freighters had basic life-support systems and minimal gravity, not only in their control rooms but throughout the whole of the great shell, to maintain the condition of cargo. They were waiting now for atmosphere and pressure to be restored after the docking bay had closed.
Shortly Quern and Joss rose and moved towards the airlock of the shuttle.
Quern looked down at Keill. "You three will remain here - and try not to let your curiosity get the better of you, Randor. When I signal, your work begins."
Keill did not reply, but merely slid forward into the pilot's seat. Behind him Groll stirred, and Keill glanced briefly back. The big man sat glowering, once again cradling a laserifle, while next to him Fillon stared worriedly after Quern.
All three were spacesuited, in readiness for their attack on the satellite.
And Keill was glad that he had been able to collect his own spacesuit before leaving the Cluster. Legion spacesuits were specially made, unusually light and flexible so they would not hamper a legionary's movements. Keill had no doubt that, unarmed in Groll's company, there might come a time when he would need to move with all his speed.
He turned back and looked again through the viewport.
The great shell of die freighter was deserted - though in the gloomy depths next to the wall of the nearest bulkhead he could see the forms of some work-robots, motionless, inactive.
He could also see, stretching out from the landing pad, the metallic shine of two parallel auto-magnetic strips, on a trackway that presumably ran all the way to the control room in the freighter's distant nose. The trackway was fixed high along the side of the freighter, many metres above the deck of the hold where the robots stood. Along the strips ran low, wheel-less, two-seater vehicles that carried personnel back and forth within the freighter.
And as Keill watched, Quern and Joss came into view, riding one of the personnel carriers as they moved away from the shuttle.
Keill's eyes shifted downwards, to a work-robot, rolling along in the gloom of the deck below, bearing the metal container he had seen before on the shuttle.
Both carrier and robot vanished through openings in the great bulkhead.
Several silent minutes later, Keill felt an eerie sensation deep within his body, as if at the nucleus of each cell. But he hardly noticed it, for it was long familiar to him. It meant that the freighter had entered Overlight.
There was no sense of movement within Overlight. It was not so much travel as transference. When that unique field came into being round a ship, the ship no longer existed in any real sense. It had left the known universe, where the laws of nature held true, and had begun something like a shortcut through a realm where no one knew for certain what sort of laws operated, if any. In Overlight a ship was in nothingness, in a non-place, beyond human imagining.
Keill knew that, had they been able to see outside the freighter just then, the viewscreens would have revealed only a void, a total, empty formlessness without colour, texture or depth. By comparison, even the blank vacuum of deep space at the rim of the galaxy seemed lively and welcoming.
Because the freighter was moving only from one planet to another "within the same system, the almost unfelt physical sensation occurred again within only a few seconds. So the freighter had arrived in an orbit around Veynaa, and had returned to normal space. It would have to be well beyond the planet, Keill knew. Ship
s did not risk entering or leaving Overlight when they were within a planet's gravitational pull. It did strange things to the Overlight field, and no one took risks with Overlight.
Quern's cold voice sounded from the communicator.
"You will lift off now." The voice grew even colder. "And remember, Randor - no mistakes, or you die."
Keill swept the shuttle along the course that its computer, pre-set by Quern, had worked out, towards the Veynaan communication satellite. Within a few minutes the freighter's bulk had vanished into the glimmering black depths behind them. Many long minutes later, the pinpoint of light that was the satellite winked into view ahead.
The retros boomed into action, and Keill delicately jockeyed the shuttle, swinging it close to the satellite, reducing speed, until at last it came to what seemed like rest in a perfect parking orbit less than thirty metres from their goal.
All three wordlessly checked their suits and fastened their helmets. Keill noticed beads of sweat on Fillon's forehead and recognized the groundsman's terror of leaving a ship in vacuum. But there was no risk. They would move across the intervening space with flitters - small, hand-held cylinders that released bursts of compressed gas, enough to propel them ahead and to control their free-fall movements.
Only when they reached the satellite would an element of risk occur. But Quern had assured them that such satellites contained at most a maintenance and control staff of two men, only one of whom was on duty at a time. And the shuttle's arrival would not have alerted them: Keill had brought it in from the rear, out of sight from the satellite's viewports, while the noise of their arrival could not, of course, travel in vacuum.
He reached to the sleeve pocket of his suit and took out the flitter cylinder.
Opening the airlock, he jerked his head at the other two, and stepped out into space. He sailed ahead slowly, staring at the immense wheeling curve of the planet Veynaa, dominating his range of vision, the thin cloud cover in its atmosphere drawn like veils across clearly visible land masses. Then he let his body curve slightly to glance back. Fillon had clearly been reluctant, for Groll had a tight grip on one of his arms as if he had had to drag the other man out. They, too, curved in free-fall, the laserifle swinging slowly where it was slung across Groll's shoulders, until a burst of ice crystals showed that Groll had fired his flitter, to bring their glide on target.
Keill fired his own flitter, and the three figures surged silently towards the satellite.
It was more precisely a space station, resembling two slightly flattened eggs joined at their sides and bristling with aerials, solar panels and a complicated tangle of other equipment. Keill had no difficulty in opening the outer door of its airlock, and then they were standing in the chamber of the lock, already feeling the artificial gravity grip them, waiting for the inner door to open.
If something had gone wrong, Keill knew, they might well find themselves staring at the muzzle of a gun. He gathered himself on a fine edge of readiness.
But it seemed that the Veynaan who was on duty had been dulled by tedium and sleepiness. The inner door was halfway open before his frozen, horrified stare at the men in the airlock changed into a scrambling lunge for a hand-gun, resting on a nearby panel.
By then Keill had almost reached him. But in the last second, Groll's laserbeam scorched past Keill's shoulder and drilled a small, neat hole in the Veynaan's head. The man collapsed face forward on to the panel, a thread of smoke osing from the singed hair.
Keill whirled in fury. "You didn't need to kill him I" he shouted into his helmet communicator.
"Ain't takin" chances," Groll snarled, his finger still curled over the firing stud.
'Try to fire that thing again," Keill told him coldly, "and Til take it away from you and stuff it down your throat."
His eyes locked with Groll's, and for a moment the big man seemed about to take the challenge. But then Groll's eyes shifted, and his finger slid away from the stud.
Keill turned away, in time to see the hatchway connecting the two segments of the satellite swing open. Through it stumbled the second Veynaan, half-asleep, yawning and rubbing his eyes.
He had no time even to open those eyes before Keill sprang. Nor did Groll have time to swing his rifle round. The knuckle of Keill's middle finger struck a perfectly weighted blow just behind the Veynaan's ear. He sighed and crumpled, and Keill eased him to the floor.
"You sure keen on keepin" Veynaans alive," Groll rumbled.
Keill ignored him. "Tillon - get moving!" he barked.
Fillon, who had been watching tremulously, jumped and scuttled quickly over to the panel where the dead Veynaan had been sitting. For Keill, even with his fair grounding in computer and communication systems, the tangle of equipment was a maze that would have taken weeks to sort through. But Fillon's hands moved unerringly among the circuits, making the cross-connections that would allow the inserted tape to override the system.
As he watched, Keill toyed with the idea of disarming Groll and preventing the tape from being broadcast. But in the end he rejected it. Quern would certainly be alerted by such an action - and stopping the Cluster's taped ultimatum was far less important than stopping Quern.
He stepped towards the hatch into the other section. Quern had said there were only two men on the satellite, but no professional fighting man would take another's word on such a matter - even less Quern's. Silently he entered the compartment, his eyes sweeping over the unmade bunks, the discarded clothing, the clutter and mess created by two bored men living together in a tiny capsule in space. But only two.
Satisfied, Keill turned back towards the hatch. It had swung shut behind him.
But when he grasped the handle and twisted it, the hatch did not budge.
It was locked, or jammed. And Keill knew beyond doubt that it was no accident.
"Groll!" he shouted.
No reply. His helmet communicator remained silent. "Don't be stupid, Groll I Open itl" Silence.
Keill took a step backwards, and another. He neither knew nor cared, just then, what Groll was trying to do, whether he was carrying out Quern's orders or acting on his own. Within Keill at that moment there was no room for analytic thought. There was merely a controlled but towering anger.
He breathed deeply, gathering that anger, channelling it; letting it flow and mix with the adrenalin that was pouring power through his body. Then he exploded into movement, leaping at the hatch.
At the instant that a sharp yell burst from his lips, focusing the release of power, his booted foot smashed with terrifying force just above the hatchway's handle.
The hatch was made of the same metal as the satellite's hull, as the hull of most spacecraft. True, the hatch contained only one layer - but it was the strongest, most resistant metal that technological man had yet devised.
But the metal bulged like a blister beneath the impact of Keill's boot. And the hatch flew open as if on springs, slamming back resoundingly against the wall on the far side.
Keill leaped through the opening. The dead Veynaan had slid to the floor, the unconscious one lay where Keill had left him. Otherwise the compartment was empty.
He hurtled to the airlock, willing it to more speed as the J^ner door opened, closed, and the outer door slid aside. Snatching the flitter from his sleeve pocket, Keill stepped out into space - in time to see the shuttle just beginning to edge away from its parking orbit. Helpless, he ground his teeth in rage as he watched the bulbous ship curve away, accelerating, the flame of its drive dwindling into a light-speck as it sped away into the distance.
Then from another part of the darkness around him, Keill's eye caught sight of other points of light.
Spacecraft - five at least - hurtling up from the surface of the planet, clearly on a course that would bring them to the satellite.
Keill drifted for a moment, just beyond the airlock, knowing that the Veynaans were still too far away to see him, a comparatively minute speck in the vastness. As he watched, the five ships c
hanged course. Their detectors had clearly picked up the fleeing shuttle, and they swept away in pursuit.
They would be very unlikely to catch it, he thought, before it could reach the freighter. And the freighter would simply go into Overlight, to reappear on the other side of the planet, beyond the reach of the pursuers.
Then, of course, the Veynaans would turn back to the satellite.
More calmly, he weighed his chances.
He could use the flitter to get out into space, far enough away to be undetectable by the ships when they returned. But that would exhaust the flitter and he would be stranded -and a call to Glr woxild be his only hope.
But he could not reach Glr until Quern returned to the Cluster. Only then would she know that Keill, whose mind she would still be shielding, had been left behind in space.
Then, of course, she would come at once, being able to drop the shields when she and Keill were both out of Quern's telepathic range. But it would all depend on Quern moving back to the Cluster quickly - before the airpack on Keill's spacesuit became exhausted.
Otherwise...
He grimaced, disliking the idea of floating helplessly in space and merely hoping that Quern would move in time. Jfo, far better to stay on the satellite, Veynaans or not.
After all, they would not expect to find anyone there but their own men. He would have the element of surprise, at grst, and he would have the gun of the dead Veynaan inside if be needed it. The ships would not blast the satellite itself, not with a Veynaan alive inside as a hostage. At least, he hoped they wouldn't.
In any case, he thought fiercely, Td rather make a fight of it here, whatever happens, than drift around out there and suffocate.
The flitter fired, and he dived back into the satellite's airlock.
Back inside, he unfastened his helmet and placed it within reach, then picked up the dead Veynaan's gun - an energy gun, he saw gratefully - and tucked it into a leg pocket on his suit.
The other Veynaan was beginning to stir and moan. Keill bent and lifted him effortlessly, carrying him into the other compartment and dumping him on a bunk, then tying his hands with the sleeves of a dirty shirt plucked from the floor.
