The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus

by Vonda N. McIntyre

  He wished he had made time to go through spacewalk orientation. A line through to Arachne would have helped make up for that deficiency, but the web was still down. He wondered who had crashed it, and why he had not been told of an ally on board the starship.

  The tunnels grew increasingly dim, increasingly rough. He reached the turn-off to the airlock.

  A dozen spacesuits hung in the access room. He touched Cherenkov’s, but left it in its place. Even if it might have fit him, he lacked the gall to wear it.

  I’ve lost a lot of gall in the last couple of days, he thought. Maybe now is where I get it back.

  He picked a suit from its hanger and inspected it carefully, checking how the fittings worked. It was no more complicated than a radiation suit. He climbed into it.

  “Strasvuitye.”

  Griffith turned, disbelieving. From the doorway, Cherenkov regarded him with an expression as matter-of-fact as his voice.

  “My faith in human nature is obviously at a low ebb,” Cherenkov said. “Otherwise I might have expected to see you here. You did understand what I said to you, didn’t you?”

  Griffith could not trust himself to answer the question. “I didn’t expect to see you,” he said. “This is the last place I expected to see you. What are you doing down here?”

  “The same as you. Trying to save the expedition. Acting an old part, the part of an unregenerate hero.” He spoke drily, self-deprecatingly.

  “You can go back up, then,” Griffith said. “There’s no need for you to leave the expedition.”

  “You said you wanted to be like me, and I said you were a fool for it. You’re still a fool.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Griffith said. “What do I have to do, to make you — ” He stopped.

  “If you jump out into space and call for the carrier to rescue you, it won’t turn aside from its prey. Its masters will not permit it.”

  “I think I know them better than you do, and you’re wrong.”

  “I will not let you enter the airlock, Marion,” Cherenkov said.

  “How are you going to stop me?”

  “I may be out of practice, but one does not forget certain survival techniques.” He smiled. “Especially when one performs them against an opponent handicapped by spacesuit legs halfway down around his ankles.”

  “Don’t laugh at me!” Griffith jerked the bottom of the spacesuit straight so he was no longer hobbled by the legs. The back hung down behind him like an enormous tail. Cherenkov was right about his being handicapped, less by the suit than by his desperate wish not to fight with the cosmonaut.

  “You can’t seriously think I’d let you jump out instead!”

  “That would be the more rational course.”

  “Because you’re sure they will turn around to go get you? That’s fucking egotistical.”

  “I’m not sure. But I am sure that I have the better chance of slowing them long enough for Starfarer to reach transition.”

  “Maybe we ought to both jump out,” Griffith said sarcastically.

  “All right,” Cherenkov said. “That would be an acceptable compromise.”

  Griffith hesitated.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t allow it.”

  Curious, Cherenkov cocked his head. “But why? I’m sorry if I hurt your pride, believing your superiors will not stop to rescue you. Is that any reason to abandon a version of the plan that would work?”

  “It’s too risky.” Griffith hesitated. “If they won’t stop for me... maybe they won’t stop for you, either.”

  “I see.” Cherenkov let his long legs fold up; he sat on the stone floor and gazed at Griffith.

  “You don’t want to fight me, either,” Griffith said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” He managed to smile. “Checkmate.”

  “Not yet,” Cherenkov said. “Only check.”

  o0o

  J.D. watched Victoria soar away without a backward look. She hesitated, tempted to follow. But surely Victoria would have asked for her help if she had wanted it. Besides, J.D. did not want to leave Zev.

  “Just tell me where there’s a link!” Chandra said. “God forbid I should use any of your precious time.”

  “I’m sorry,” J.D. said. “Things are a little complicated up here right now. Come on, I’ll find you a place to transfer your information.”

  She and Zev towed the artist out of the waiting room, past the people listening, fascinated and appalled, to the conversation between Starfarer traffic control and the transport pilot.

  “Zev, where were you all this time? Lykos has been worried, and I was just about to go back and help look for you.”

  “It was exciting. We almost got arrested.”

  “‘We’? You and the other divers? I thought — ”

  “‘We,’ him and me,” Chandra said. “I almost let them. I’ve never been arrested, it would have been good stuff to collect. But they didn’t look like regular police, and I was afraid it would take too long to get out.”

  “I suspect that’s an understatement,” J.D. said.

  She led them down the corridor toward one of the auxiliary equipment rooms.

  “Do both of you realize that we’re headed for transition right now? That if you stay, you’ll be on the starship permanently? The expedition may be longer than we planned... we’ve gotten ourselves in a lot of trouble.”

  Chandra laughed. “You think I was making an understatement?”

  “There’s still time to get on the transport.”

  “J.D.,” Zev said, “it would be silly to get on the transport. It is not going anywhere.” He loosened his tie and pulled it off.

  “I hope they change their minds about that, because Starfarer isn’t about to change course.”

  “We can’t go back,” Chandra said. “By now they’ll have figured out that my assistant doesn’t exist, and maybe they’ll have figured out who he really is. Besides, I’m in the art department, I signed on for the trip.”

  “Me, too,” Zev said cheerfully. He pulled the shirttail out of his trousers and unbuttoned his shirt so it flapped behind him.

  “All right... Whoa, stop.”

  They turned in at the equipment room.

  “There’s a link.”

  Chandra dove toward it. She would have piled headfirst into the wall if J.D. had not grabbed her as she passed. She had nothing to hold on to, to stop her, but their combined mass slowed them so they drifted to a halt before the console. Chandra did not notice. She hooked in with Arachne, fitting the direct sensors over her head.

  The rhythm of her breathing changed: long deep breaths changed to quick hard gasps. Her body quivered, and the skin over the nerve clusters grew livid. She moaned. It embarrassed J.D. to watch her. She turned away and pushed off, letting herself drift toward the other side of the room.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said to Zev.

  “I, too.” He glanced at her from beneath his arm. He hung sideways in the air in relation to J.D., with his knees pulled close to his chest so he could reach his feet. He was untying his shoes.

  “Your mother must be glad you’re all right.”

  “Did you call her already? When?”

  “No, I haven’t called her. Haven’t you called her?”

  “I could not. Chandra said they would know who I was if I did that.”

  “She was probably right. Poor Lykos!”

  “May we call her now?”

  “We can try.”

  Leaving Chandra, J.D. led Zev to another equipment room and another hard link.

  But they could not get through to Lykos.

  o0o

  The transport pilot, having run out of arguments, turned recalcitrant, then surly. It was a quarter of an hour since she had replied to anyone.

  Victoria took a second to check the position of the carrier. It was only a few thousand kilometers away, a hairsbreadth in astronomical terms, and its relative speed was fast enough that as she watched, it came perceptibly nearer.

&
nbsp; “They’re close,” she said. “They’re really close.”

  “Not close enough,” the traffic controller said. “They can’t accelerate enough to catch us and still have time to decelerate enough not to crash.”

  “First good news I’ve heard all day.”

  Dr. Thanthavong arrived at traffic control.

  “Can I be of any help?” she asked Victoria.

  “Please,” Victoria said with relief. “Surely she’ll listen to you.” She moved aside so the world-renowned geneticist could come within reach of the sound pickup.

  “Esther, my name is Thanthavong.”

  There was a long silence.

  “What?” the transport pilot said.

  “My name is Thanthavong.”

  “So? Am I supposed to know you?”

  Dr. Thanthavong drew her eyebrows together in surprise.

  “I am Professor Thanthavong, the geneticist. I developed viral depolymerase. I want to try to persuade you not to interfere with the expedition.”

  “I never heard of you and I don’t want to talk to any geneticist. What happened to Victoria?”

  Thanthavong spread her hands, defeated, embarrassed, and yet drily amused. “And here I thought I was a universal historical figure.” She returned the controller’s sound pickup to Victoria.

  Victoria gathered her thoughts and tried again.

  “Esther, you don’t want to be responsible for the first hijacking in space, do you? You’ve got a duty to your passengers.”

  “The first hijacking!” the pilot said angrily. “You’re a good one to talk about hijacking!”

  “We’ve all agreed what to do. Everybody on the transport has chosen to return — and everyone who chose to return is on the transport. Starfarer isn’t going to change course. There isn’t much time. If you stay docked...”

  “I don’t believe you’ll kidnap us,” Esther said.

  Victoria backed out of the pickup’s range.

  “I don’t know what to say to her.”

  “Is there anyone on board she might respond to?”

  Victoria could not think of anyone. She felt as if her thoughts were doing nothing but going around in confused little circles.

  “Sure!” the controller said suddenly. “She’s a pilot. Get Cherenkov.”

  “Of course,” Thanthavong said.

  “Where is he?”

  They both glanced at the controller, as if he could divine the cosmonaut’s whereabouts.

  He shrugged. “No idea.”

  Victoria reached for the web, but found only the empty blankness of the blasted connections.

  “Maybe we could go look...?”

  But there were too many places to look, and too short a time left in which to look for him.

  The traffic controller groaned. “Oh, shit. Listen.”

  The voice on the speaker changed.

  “Starfarer, this is the carrier Hector. Reverse your sail immediately. The starship must begin to decelerate immediately or we’ll be forced to take drastic action.”

  o0o

  Kolya grabbed Marion Griffith and kept him from crashing to the floor. Kolya knew many ways of killing a human being, but very few ways of taking a person’s consciousness without causing damage.

  He hoped Griffith would be all right. The young officer lay unconscious, but his pulse was strong, his breathing regular, and his larynx uncrushed.

  Kolya could not have overcome Griffith by a direct attack. Instead he had let Griffith believe he saw an opening. When Griffith came at him, determined to overwhelm him, Kolya gained the advantage by knowing what he planned.

  Kolya considered fitting Griffith into a spacesuit and taking him along. In the end, he decided against the plan. It was too dangerous. Griffith might be right to fear that the carrier would not pause to rescue one human being, or even two.

  You will not thank me, I suppose, Kolya thought. But you are fortunate. You will continue with the expedition, while I must stay behind.

  o0o

  Victoria wanted to be in the sailhouse, in the observatory, anywhere but here. She wanted to be watching as Starfarer‘s magnetic claws grabbed the cosmic string; she wanted to be in the center of everything that happened.

  “If you do not reverse the sail, Hector will shoot to cripple your ship.”

  “They can’t be serious!” Victoria cried.

  “Wait a minute!” the transport pilot shouted. She began to curse at the carrier.

  o0o

  Stephen Thomas shivered.

  “I don’t know about you, Fox, but I’m getting cold.”

  He did know about her. She was sitting on a washing-machine-sized ultra-centrifuge, and her teeth were chattering.

  “You could’ve picked a warmer place to hide. A nice meadow in the wild cylinder, maybe.”

  “You have to sign in,” she said. “You would have known where to look.”

  “Through all sixty square kilometers?”

  “Go ahead, make fun of me. I’m not getting on the transport.”

  “I really appreciate this,” Stephen Thomas said. “When we get back, we all get to go straight to jail for kidnapping a minor. A minor president’s niece, at that.”

  “Look on the bright side, Stephen Thomas,” Fox said. “You’ll get a lot longer sentence for helping steal Starfarer. Besides, maybe we won’t get back.” She sniffled. “It isn’t fair!”

  “I’m sorry. It isn’t fair. But you still have to get on the transport and go home.”

  “I thought you were my friend!”

  “Stephen Thomas?”

  Stephen Thomas glanced over his shoulder. “In here, Satoshi. I found her.”

  Satoshi came into the cold room.

  “Hello, Fox.”

  “Hello, Lono.”

  “This is not a great place to hide.”

  “I didn’t think anybody would look here.” She glanced at the rock in her hand. “You know... if you tried to force me out, and I busted a few things in here, I might infect the whole ship with... with...” She searched for a suitably horrible possibility. “With black plague.”

  “Forget it,” Stephen Thomas said. “We don’t keep pathogens on board except in transcribed form. You might as well try to infect somebody with a book.”

  “I bet I could do some damage to the gene stocks.”

  “You’re a good geographer,” Satoshi said, “but you haven’t done any homework on genetics — or on the expedition’s backups.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me,” Stephen Thomas said. “Dr. Thanthavong doesn’t take chances. We keep backups of everything at the other end of the building.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then how come you guys don’t drag me up to the transport?”

  “I don’t believe in physical violence.”

  “I don’t either,” Stephen Thomas said, “but I’m beginning to understand its attraction.”

  o0o

  The final countdown to transition began. As the carrier sped toward Starfarer, the starship’s sail changed. Not reversing, as the carrier commanded, but withdrawing entirely. In the sunless, starless place they would soon enter, no solar wind existed to fill it and keep it untangled.

  “Redeploy the sail,” the voice of the carrier commanded. “You will not be permitted to draw in the sail. You must reverse it.”

  “The starship won’t go into transition!” the transport pilot shouted. “I know these people, they won’t — ”

  “Esther, undock now, dammit!” Victoria cried.

  Victoria let her breath out hard. She wished she were with Stephen Thomas and Satoshi. She wished they were all with Iphigenie in the sailhouse. The halyards drew in the great silver sheet, stretching and compressing it into taut folds, gently twisting it into a cable kilometers long, but only a few meters in diameter.

  “Magnetic fields at full strength,” Arachne said through the speaker of the nearby hard link. “Magnetic fields engaged.”

  “Shit!” Esther shouted. “Undock!
”

  “It’s too late!”

  “Undock, dammit!”

  “Encounter,” Arachne said, in its completely matter of fact computer voice.

  The magnetic claws engaged with the cosmic string, transformed an infinitesimal percent of its unlimited energy, and began to build transition energy.

  The countdown reversed, leading toward transition. Victoria imagined she could feel the increase of the starship’s potential.

  They can’t stop us, she thought. No matter how fast the carrier moves, it can’t catch us, it can’t follow us, it can’t stop Starfarer.

  Ecstatic, she shouted in triumph and flung her arms around Thanthavong.

  The voice of the carrier spoke.

  “Fire.”

  A point of light detached itself from the carrier and accelerated at terrifying speed toward the starship.

  The missile hit.

  Chapter 13

  Starfarer shuddered.

  Victoria gasped. She held Thanthavong tighter, as if she could protect her if the starship collapsed around them.

  Drifting free, Victoria saw the ship vibrating, and felt the trembling of the heavy, oppressive air. The rumble of the attack pressed against her hearing, a drumming of such low frequency that she felt it in her bones.

  “Esther!” The traffic controller’s voice rose as he tried to reach the transport pilot.

  J.D. and Zev propelled themselves into the traffic control cubicle, J.D. pale with shock, Zev excited.

  “What happened?”

  “The missile,” Thanthavong said. “Was it armed?”

  “It can’t have exploded,” Victoria said. “We’d... we’d know.” She dove for the hard-link and desperately demanded real-time information on Starfarer’s status.

  Arachne responded sluggishly, but it did respond. The campus and the wild side both maintained their air pressure: neither cylinder had been seriously breached. They had been built well, to retain their integrity under the stress of the spin, the pull of the solar sail, the unknown changes of transition.

  Equally important, the starship remained magnetically bound to the cosmic string, gathering energy.

  “We’re still docked!” The transport pilot’s voice sounded hollow and feverish. “I don’t believe they — I’m going to — ”