Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel

by David Gerrold

  One of them drops an auxiliary filter across his faceplate. It glints brightly in the harsh glare of the spotlight. In the background, the dim latticework of the warp grids can be seen. Light reflecting off the hull gives them a soft, ghostly glow, turning them into great cobwebs in the night.

  “More light, please,” asks Willis. “Farther down—toward the stern.”

  “I’m working on it, I’m working on it,” growls the communicator.

  “Well, hurry it.”

  “I will, I will. When was the last time the damn things were checked anyway? They seem to be frozen.”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Beagle to check them while he’s out there?”

  “I’ll do that.” The communicator bleeps out.

  The screen shows two graceful one-eyed gods floating curiously above a metallic landscape, their movements taken from a ballet mysterieux. The surface beneath them is curved and the single harsh light gives the whole a surrealistic appearance of blazing whites and intense darks. Here and there the hull is studded with round-edged metal and plastic devices: cameras and spotlights, glistening sensor domes, disc-shaped scanners, innocent-looking laser and phaser mountings, and stress-field antennae looking like miniature warp grids. Many of the devices have plastic covers across their muzzles, shielding them until they are needed.

  Willis glances away from the screen, stabs a button on his board. Another hull camera slides out of its protective blister and an auxiliary screen blinks to pick up its image. Because of the camera angle, the two cyclopean figures are now in stark relief; this camera sees them lit from one side. A second spotlight swings around toward them and lights, throwing another bright cone of white against the hull.

  Other cameras and spotlights swing into place. Other screens light to follow the space-suited men. Now they no longer look as flat; they are illuminated from several sides. Slowly they drift down the curvature of the hull toward the stern.

  One of the men pauses, as if listening to his suit radio. He swims over to a nearby spotlight; the plastic cover of it is still across the lens.

  The man braces his feet against the hull and tries to move it with his hands. It’s no good; the cover is stuck. He lets go, drifting backward as he does. Unclipping a small cylinder from his belt, he moves toward the spotlight again.

  Holding the cylinder at arm’s length, he aims its stubby nozzle at the recalcitrant cover and sprays a pale mist across it. Almost immediately it slides open and the light within glares suddenly into his face.

  A short, sharp expletive is heard over the all-talk channel. “Goddamn it! What are you trying to do—blind me?” He lowers another filter across his eyes.

  There is amusement on the bridge. Here and there a contemptuous snort is heard. Korie, fidgeting impatiently in the pit, mutters softly, “Come on, you two . . .”

  Brandt, talking with Barak, glances up, notices the screen, hesitates, then touches his chair arm. “This is the captain. Why aren’t you men using gravitors? You know my orders about outside duty.”

  The speaker crackles. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Reflected on many of the screens lining the bridge, each from a different angle, a faint, almost unnoticeable aura envelops each space-suited figure. They drop to the hull of the ship; first one, then the other.

  Satisfied that his orders are being obeyed, Brandt turns back to Barak.

  The speaker crackles again. “Hey, Beagle,” calls one of the two space-suited men.

  “Yeah?” answers the other.

  “Sounds like the old man is in a bitch of a mood today.”

  Across the bridge, startled faces turn to look at the screen. One some there are surprised grins. Brandt glances up again.

  Beagle answers, “Maybe he didn’t get any last night.”

  This time there are one or two quickly stifled chuckles—and a snort of obvious annoyance from Korie. But most of the men remain uncomfortably silent, surreptitiously watching the captain. Brandt touches the chair arm again. “Yes,” he whispers into the mike, “I am in a bitch of a mood today. However, that is not the reason for it . . . and I will thank you to leave such speculation for your off-duty hours.” He cuts off.

  The two bright figures on the screen stiffen in surprise; they cut off their suit radios hurriedly. A ripple of laughter around the horseshoe underscores their embarrassment. Brandt turns again to his astrogator. “Now, what about those fuel consumption factors?”

  Grinning broadly, Barak says to him, “I think we can control it, sir. I’ll run some more checks.”

  The captain allows himself the hint of a smile—an unspoken acknowledgment of Barak’s grin. “Fine,” he says. “You take care of that and let me know.”

  Barak nods and returns to his console. Brandt turns his gray-eyed attention back to the screens, shifting his position slightly, the better to see past Korie who still fumes impatiently in the pit.

  Above, the two golems, heavy-footed, walk toward the stern. Cameras and spotlights swivel to follow them, marking their passage with slow uncurious stares. As the men move nearer to the stern of the ship, the warp grids loom ever closer overhead. The three giant grids are mounted at the stern, but arch gracefully forward to envelop the ship in a fragile crystalline latticework. The cruiser is a fat beetle in a silver-veined web.

  The men move around the curve of the hull and disappear from view. The screen blinks as another camera picks them up. For a brief moment, they are again dark shapes against the star field, hunchbacked silhouettes, bulbous heads and bulky yet slender bodies outlined in white by the glare of unseen lights behind them.

  At the base of one of the grids, a spotlight swings around to point its wide flaring mouth at them. It throws a sudden splash of white against the side of the ship and outward too; the light shatters across the grids with eye-glaring intensity—shards of it glitter and glint among the vanes.

  The men pause briefly—they lean back in order to survey the bright-blazing frames overhead. Beagle seems to sigh, then resolutely lowers a third and final filter across his faceplate.

  They bend to the hull and start unwelding the metalloid plates at the base of the number two grid. The magnetic welds give easily, exposing a gaping hole, an open mouth screaming in silent outrage at two gay-colored cyclopes. The cyclopes look silently at each other, then touch their great dark eyes together to confer without the use of the radio. After a moment, they break apart and again bend to the task before them.

  Satisfied that the work is progressing, Brandt nods to himself. Idly, he glances around the bridge. Most of the crew is following the operation on the screens, though one or two are still casually monitoring their boards.

  Brandt nudges Korie, who has moved back to stand on the control island, just to one side of the seat. “Who’s minding the store?” he asks.

  “Huh?” Korie is startled out of his thoughts.

  Brandt indicates the bridge with a sharp nod. For the first time Korie notices the distracting influence of the large viewscreens.

  Taking the captain’s remark as an indication to act, he steps down into the pit, calling angrily, “Let’s keep an eye on those boards! We’re not here to entertain you!”

  The crew reacts as if stung; they turn quickly back to their control boards and pretend to be busy.

  Korie’s blue-gray eyes drift inevitably back to the huge forward screen. He folds his arms across his chest and relaxes into a more comfortable stance. A lean figure in a blue and gray uniform, he stands alone in the center of the pit and gazes resolutely ahead.

  Around the bridge, behind him, the crew silently follows his example. One by one they turn away from their boards to again watch the progress of the work.

  Brandt smiles—a tightening at the corners of this mouth. Abruptly he purges it in a quick flash of annoyance: annoyance at Korie for giving an unenforceable order, annoyance at the crew for lack of discipline. He makes a mental note to bring it up at the next briefing, knowing as he does so that unless
he writes it down, he’ll probably forget, but—

  A sudden voice cuts into his thoughts. “Captain?”

  Startled, Brandt looks up—it is Barak, a headset pressed to one ear. “It’s radec, sir. He says he’d blown the bogie!”

  Brandt straightens in his seat. Korie’s head jerks around. “What was that?”

  Barak repeats it. “We can’t find the bogie anywhere—he’s dropped out of warp!”

  THREE

  The rocket made space travel possible; the energy field made it practical.

  —GUNTER WHITE,

  The Economy of the Stars

  The warp theory of my esteemed colleagues (and I am sure they will correct me if I am wrong) is based on the principle that two separate units of anything cannot exist in the same place at the same time; nor can they coexist without each having an effect upon the other. When the units are energy fields, the effect is supposed to be spectacular. (The effect is spectacular—I will admit that. As my esteemed colleagues have already so admirably demonstrated, the effect is certainly spectacular . . . though I somewhat doubt that this was the specific effect they had hoped for.)

  Theoretically—at least, as their theory says—when two continuous fields are overlapped, it will cause a wrinkle in the fabric of existence. Unfortunately, the continuous energy field is only a myth—a mathematical construction. It is a physical impossibility and cannot exist without collapsing in upon itself.

  Of course, there are still some members of this learned academy who insist on remaining doggedly skeptical of this fact of life. It is almost pitiful to watch them continue these attempts to generate an energy field that is both continuous and stable. So far, the only thing that they have succeeded in doing is to convert several dollars’ worth of equipment, buildings, and surrounding property into so much slag. (Oh, and incidentally, in doing so, they have also proven me correct.)

  —DR. J. JOSEPH RUSSELL, PhD, MA, etc.,

  comments to the Board of Inquiry

  into the Denver disaster

  Insufferable old windbag!

  —ANONYMOUS “ESTEEMED COLLEAGUE”

  Dammit! It’s like trying to stack soap bubbles!

  —DR. ARTHUR DWYER PACKARD,

  remark overheard by lab assistant

  and quoted by Duffy Hirshberg in

  “Packard—Behind the Myth”

  In light of events, it would be criminal to let them continue.

  —DR. J. JOSEPH RUSSELL,

  comment to newsmen after

  appearing before the Board of Inquiry

  Actually, they were on the wrong track to begin with. The problem was not to create a continuous and stable energy field at all—but only to overload a section of space. Once they began thinking of it in those terms, the solution was obvious—and even practical, considering the then existing technology.

  The answer lay in the use of a series of interlocking continuous fields. The noncontinuous field gives the illusion of continuity, but like a strobe light, the field is actually a very rapid series of ons and offs. Several noncontinuous fields working in phase can create a stable field. Each of the separate noncontinuous energy fields fills in the gaps of the others.

  Three noncontinuous fields can dovetail their functions to make one continuous one, and two continuous energy fields can be overlapped to generate the much sought after warp.

  When six field generators are working in phase and all on the same section of space, a great pressure quickly builds up. Something has now to give. Usually space does.

  —HOWARD LEDERER,

  Encyclopedia of 1,000 Great Inventions

  Dammit! Why didn’t I think of that!!

  —Remark attributed to DR. ARTHUR DWYER PACKARD

  Because, I did.

  —Remark attributed to DR. J. JOSEPH RUSSELL

  The warp has no relation at all to normal space. It is a bubble, or miniature universe. Within it a ship still obeys all the known laws of physics, but it is totally separated from the outer universe.

  The bubble, or warp, is made up of great energies locked together in a titanic embrace. The potential power inherent in that embrace is far greater than the sum of the component energy fields—not just because the bubble is a stable construct, but because it is a dimple in space itself. The very structure of existence is pressing against it, trying to restore itself to a condition of minimum distortion. With such an infinite store of unexpressed force to draw upon, the potential power of the system is almost unlimited. (In practice the limit is the size of the ship’s generators.)

  If the secondary set of fields is superimposed across this point of pressured space—that is, the warp—it acts to liberate some of this great power and simultaneously provides a focus for it. As every second sees the warp restored to stability, the bubble cannot collapse; but this continued release of energy must be somehow sublimated—and it is; the effect is the introduction of a vector quantity into the system.

  Because the shape of the secondary fields can be controlled, they can be used to produce a controllable velocity in any direction. The warp can be made to move at velocities many times the speed of light.

  The Einsteinian time-distortion is neatly sidestepped, as the ship is not really traveling faster than light—only the warp is. The ship just happens to be inside it. It is the warp that moves, the ship moves within the warp and is carried along by it. Consequently, a starship has two velocities, one is the realized faster-than-light velocity; the other is the inherent normal space velocity. . . .

  . . . . For maneuvering within a planetary system, inherent velocity is an important resource; but unless it is compensated for, it can cause havoc to a ship in warp. . . .

  —JARLES “FREE FALL” FERRIS,

  Revised Handbook of Space Travel

  Finally, any system will automatically try to tune out external disturbances by introducing a compensating multiplex vibration. Disturbances will be interpreted by each element of the system in terms of the specific function which the element was designed to cope with, and that element will react in terms of its interpretation of that disturbance. When all elements in the system are functioning so as to introduce their one interpretive vibrations, the resultant multiplex vibration is often enough to cause undue strain on the system as a whole, and on the individual elements themselves—especially on those functions not designed to cope with such violent interplay of energies.

  Undue strain means something has to give. Usually, it’s the weakest part of the system . . .

  —GUNTER WHITE

  Mechanics of Government

  There is a startled pause on the bridge. Heads turn to look at the astrogator.

  “How far out is he?” asks Brandt.

  Barak frowns in confusion. “They don’t know—you’d better talk to him yourself.”

  Brandt thumbs his communicator to life. “Radec?”

  “Sir?”

  “What’s the story on that bogie?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I can’t find him.”

  “What do you mean you can’t find him?” Korie steps in closer. Brandt flashes him a look of annoyance, but the first officer doesn’t notice.

  “Just that,” answers the intercom. “I lost him during warp and I haven’t been able to pick up a shimmer since.”

  “Could he be out of range?” asks Brandt.

  “No, sir. Not a chance. It’d take him at least five hours at top speed to get out of range. Maybe six.”

  “Do you have any idea of his location?” Korie again.

  “Well, it’s kind of rough . . . approximately fifty-five light days away—give or take eight light hours in either direction.”

  Korie says thoughtfully, “It seems unlikely that we’d both have engine trouble at the same time.”

  “Mm.” Brandt is silent.

  Korie steps into the breach. “You never picked him up again at all?”

  “No, sir. It must be that wobbly—during unwarp we picked up an electronic trauma. We h
ad to clear our sensor fields entirely and then recalibrate as well.”

  Korie opens his mouth to reply, but Brandt cuts him off, “All right. We’ve got the picture. Keep watching for him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brandt breaks the connection, looks to his officer.

  Korie is frowning darkly, but Barak says, “‘Give or take eight light hours.’ That’s sixteen across—that’s an awfully big area; bigger than the average star system.”

  “Not important,” puts in Korie. “What we want to know is why he dropped out of warp in the first place.”

  “A good question,” says Brandt. “A good question. . . .” With a sudden motion, he heaves his bulky frame out of the chair. “Let’s consider the possibilities here. . . .” He paces the bridge thoughtfully. “Either he’s stopped by choice, in which case he’s taking advantage of our inability to come after him, or he’s stopped because he has no choice. . . .”

  Brandt comes to a stop behind the seat and rests his hands thoughtfully on the headrest. “Now, let’s consider that latter—that he’s had no choice. That’d mean that we’ve finally pushed him to his limit. His cells are exhausted, his engines are beginning to throw off sparks, his endurance is cracking. Sooner or later, he has to stop. Our wobbly just gave him that opportunity a little sooner. He could be trying to recharge his cells right now.”

  “Then let’s get fixed and go after him.”

  Brandt looks at his impetuous first officer. “On the other hand,” he continues, “there is the possibility that it’s a trick. But I don’t see what’s to be gained by it. . . .” He moves away from the chair, continuing in a thoughtful monotone, “He knows we won’t give up the chase willingly, so if we’ve stopped, it means we’ve blown something. . . . He could be taking advantage of our handicap to lose himself in normal space.”

  The captain turns suddenly to the astrogator. “Can he do it, Al?”

  Barak shakes his head. “Uh-uh—it’s too empty. There probably isn’t a chunk of solid matter in the entire sector. There’s nothing for kilometers in any direction but kilometers. All we’d have to do is scan the area at close range and he’d be as obvious as a fart in an air lock.”