Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel

by David Gerrold

  Wolfe turns back to his table, looks speculatively at Rogers. In a softer, but no less hostile tone, he says, “I hear you’re off the gravity board, these days. Tell me, how’s the radec business? Seen any good bogies lately? If you can find a few more, you’ll be Korie’s friend for life—”

  He suddenly realizes that the room is silent. He looks up, sees the first officer standing in the door to the lavatory, still wiping his hands and looking thoughtfully at him. Korie glances scornfully at Rogers, then back to Wolfe. “Carry on,” he says. He tosses the towel into a disposal and exits.

  Wolfe stares after him, then whistles softly. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Of course, the wicked people control the world—they deserve it.

  —SOLOMON SHORT

  When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes.

  One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn’t know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, ‘How can we find out?’ Someone piped up, ‘We vote on it!’ The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can’t be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett.

  Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy.

  It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn’t it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of the people want is right—but is it?

  Our populace isn’t really informed, not the majority of them—most people vote by the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation—they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live. Though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a ‘representative government,’ they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat.

  I’m not so sure that an elected government is necessarily the best.

  —ROGER BURLINGAME

  “All right, what’s your problem?” says Barak.

  “I’d better tell it to you from the beginning,” answers Leen. “Then you can see if you agree with me.” They are in the tall, uneven area behind the engine room, an area that seems both cramped and roomy—roomy because of its height, cramped because of the great number of pieces of equipment hanging from its walls and lashed to its floor. This is the ship’s workshop; most maintenance and repair functions are performed here. A massive synthesizer and its smaller cousin sit against one wall. Other plastic-working machines are spaced around the room. One whole side of the shop opens onto the life-shuttle maintenance deck, which also opens onto the large cargo hatch; at the moment those large doors are closed.

  Chief Engineer Leen leads Astrogator Barak over to a worktable where parts of an intricate-looking device lay scattered across its plastic surface. “Remember, I was working on the Hilsen units? Well, I discovered something that made me start thinking. After I retuned the units, I opened them up again and looked at them a second time. That made me take another look at the phase adapters.”

  “This one?” Barak indicates the device on the table.

  “This is the one we burnt out.”

  The astrogator pokes at it; but shakes his head. “Chief, it might as well be a ham sandwich sitting there; I wouldn’t know one end of it from the other.”

  Leen waves that aside. “No matter, just let me tell you—I had just started to take this apart when Korie called me down to deflate the gym. I was so engrossed in what I was doing I hadn’t realized how close we were to the attack maneuver—that’s why I screwed up the gym, my mind wasn’t on it. I was still thinking about what I’d seen in the Hilsen units and what I suspected was in the adapter.”

  “Uh huh—what did you find in the adapter?”

  Leen takes a deep breath. “Look, do you know the way the adapter works?”

  “Chief, I don’t even know how the warp works. I’m an astrogator.”

  “Right. I forgot. Well, let me give you the two-minute cram course. You know the warp is a closed universe, right?”

  “That much I’ve got.”

  “Ever wonder how we see out of it?”

  “Why, I thought—”

  “We can’t, you know. Once we fold into warp, it’s like being on the inside of a big sphere, and the inner surface of it is a mirror. No matter what direction you look you’re only going to see yourself. It’s a closed, unbroken universe—you’ve heard the stories about a guy dropping a wrench over the side, only to have it come back from the opposite direction a couple of weeks later?”

  Yeah—all right, how do we see out?”

  “With the secondaries—they make the warp move by altering its shape within the stress field, but they also function like a window, through which we can look at the rest of the universe. Using the secondaries, we pick up vibrations off the stress field and the computers interpret them into the shimmers of the other ships’ warps or the gravitational masses of planets—it has to be a massive singularity for us to detect it in the stress field. Okay, turn off the secondaries, you close the window; what’s left—?”

  “Only your own reflection, right?”

  “Right—only very much distorted, spread out all over the inside of the warp. The only time we ever look at it is when we want to read the shape of our own warp; the rest of the time, the radec boys try and tune it out.”

  “Yes, I know. They’ve had some problems with that recently—”

  Leen looks at him sharply, “Then you know what I’m getting at?”

  Barak shakes his head.

  Leen goes on, “Anyway, I got curious when the Hilsen units kept slipping out of tune; those are the units that watchdog the secondaries and help us maintain shape. I figured they were getting some kind of feedback or vibration off the phase-handling system but where was the phase-handling getting it? That’s why I put MacHeath on the ‘monkey crew’—to find it. We needed to plug right into the generators because the systems analysis network is dead right there—I wanted him to monitor the phase adapters through a couple of maneuvers to see if that was the source of the vibration or not.”

  “Was it?”

  “I don’t know—and I’m not going to risk another man finding out.” He pokes at the adapter on the table. “That’s why I’ve taken this baby apart, but, uh—so far I haven’t found anything. You want to know what I think? We didn’t burn it out through any failure to compensate for inherent velocity—we watch that. It’s such a stupid and easy mistake to make that it’s on our check-lists seven times. I think we burnt this out because it wasn’t able to compensate. It wasn’t designed to operate with our present equipment, so the vibration is inherent in the way the pieces work together. At prolonged bursts of high speed, it’ll become magnified throughout the system.”

  “Have you told Korie?”

  “No.” Leen’s features are craggy and not unfriendly, but at the mention of the first officer’s name, his lips tighten.

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the phase adapter—you know where we got it?”

  “Some parts depot or something—?”

  “Uh-uh. Korie scavenged them off an F-class hulk. Remember the Calvington?”

  “No.”

  “No matter, but that’s the ship that Korie got these phase adapters off of. Uh, let me tell you about them. The Calvington was one generation before this ship—pre-Hilsen; she used Grier units instead—”

  “Uh, Chief, you’re losing me.”

  “Sorry. What I’m getti
ng at is that these phase adapters are not necessarily complementary to our equipment. I had to jury-rig a lot of control systems. It was none too neat a job, but Korie wanted phase adapters—”

  “I can understand that. I prefer a ship with a phase-handling system.”

  “We don’t need ‘em, though.”

  “Well—” Barak is skeptical on that. “It depends on your point of view. To go from one place to another, no, we don’t need them. We just fold into warp and go—but because we can’t maneuver our inherent velocity without phase adapters, we’re really not an independent ship. We’re at the mercy of tugs.”

  “For the kind of patrolling we’re supposed to do,” asks Leen, “do phase adapters make a difference?”

  Barak considers it. “Not really. DV base moves in a steady orbit. We kick off from it, go on patrol, stay in warp the whole time—when we come back, we only have to come up behind the base to unwarp and we’re still moving in the same direction and at the same velocity as when we started.”

  “Right—so why do we have phase adapters?”

  “So we can turn the ship in warp—”

  “Because Korie wanted them!” Leen’s voice is suddenly loud.

  Barak pauses after the other’s outburst; he says quietly, “We had the basic phase-handling system to start with, Chief. All it needed was some rebuilding and some new adapters.”

  “But don’t you think that if Threebase had felt they were necessary, they would have given them to us?”

  “I think that if they’d had a better ship, they would have given her to us; it’s no secret that the Burlingame was rescued from the scrap heap at the last minute.”

  Leen doesn’t answer right away. “Look, Al—that’s the whole point. This ship is a mess; I ought to know better than anyone. The phase-handling system that Korie had me jury-rig is—well, it’s not a regulation system. We’ve got parts in it cannibalized from three or four different ships. None of them was specifically designed to work with the others, so we get distortions, interferences, vibrations—the thing has to be nursed.” He leans across the worktable and switches on a monitor screen. “I want you to take a look at something.” Punching buttons, “There. That’s a simulation. If the phase adapters are magnifying the vibrations of our inherent velocity against our warp, that’s the kind of patter we’ll get.”

  Barak stares at the screen for a long moment—the shimmering lines on it are disturbingly familiar. A thought starts to take shape in his head—he shakes it away. “No, Chief—it couldn’t be.”

  “The way the Hilsen units were tuned,” says Leen, “they could have acted as a focus.”

  Barak goes silent. His gaze remains fixed on the screen, his face is creased into a dark frown. That shimmer is all wrong; its shape—

  “Oh, look,” says Leen. “I could be wrong about this; but what if I’m not?” He says intently, “What about the spare that’s in there now? What do I do?”

  “You say you’re not sure—?”

  “Not without monitoring the actual adapters—”

  “No, don’t do that. It wouldn’t look right now. What about the Hilsen units—are they back in tune?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay that way—”

  The astrogator is troubled and thoughtful “And you haven’t told anyone—not Korie? Not the captain?”

  Leen shakes his head. “You’re the first. I can’t talk to Korie—or Brandt—” He breaks off without explaining. “Al?”

  Abruptly, Barak makes a decision. “Chief—there’s only a day or two left to the search; then we’ll be turning home. Let’s just leave things like they are—you stash this adapter away and forget about it. I won’t say anything to anyone, neither will you. The search will end and we’ll go home. You can re-check the adapters at base and no one will be hurt.”

  Leen’s eyes are skeptical. “You really think so, Al?”

  The astrogator says slowly, “No, I don’t. But I don’t want to consider the alternative.” He reaches over and switches off the monitor.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  In each ship there is one man who in the hour of emergency or peril at space can turn to no other man. There is one alone who is ultimately responsible for the sage navigation, engineering performance, accurate gunfire, and morale of his ship. He is the commanding officer. He is the ship!

  —Bronze plaque, Office of Chief of Fleet Operations

  At zero three hundred hours and seventeen minutes, when the ship is at a low ebb of activity, an alarm—an electric and raucous scream—startles the crew into life.

  Lights blink in confusion, fade out abruptly with just as much puzzlement, fade in again, then switch to battle-alert orange. Hurried footsteps, muffled curses, confused mutterings—men, pad-pad quickly down corridors. “What the—?” followed by others, swearing, “Come on! That’s an alarm! They’ve found something!”

  Doors slam shut; there is the whoosh of air as compartments seal themselves off and pressurize. Emergency panels flash in indecision, then abruptly a voice—Barak’s—on the intercom: “All hands, battle stations! All hands, battle stations!”

  “Dammit! I thought we weren’t going to have any more drills—”

  “Shut up, you idiot! This isn’t a drill!”

  “Huh—?”

  “That’s Barak on the com. Let’s go.”

  And suddenly, Korie is sliding through the tumult and confusion like an eel. Unruffled, he hurries surely down the narrow corridor to the bridge, still buttoning his tunic. Other men shoulder past him, some in various stages of undress, rushing to their battle stations. Korie starts to bark an order, then checks himself. If they don’t know what to do by now, it’s too late to teach them.

  The bridge is a bowl of organized confusion. Men stand before their boards, but are staring at Barak. The dark-skinned astrogator is standing on the command dais, one hand on the seat’s control, but he is looking toward a still-sleepy Jonesy on the astrogation console. “Where is it now?”

  “Still flashing on the edges—”

  “What’ve you got, Al?” Korie drops into the seat.

  “Not sure—we’re picking up a persistent flash on the edge of our sensibilities. It’s too definite to be a will-o’-the-wisp, but—”

  “Then it’s the bogie,” Korie snaps; he smiles—a thin flash of triumph. I knew it. I knew it.

  “I’m not so sure,” says Barak. “It’s still too vague to have a pattern.”

  And then Brandt is on the bridge. “What is it?”

  “The bogie!” Korie says exultantly, “I’ve got him.”

  Brandt steps toward the seat, but Korie ignores him. Brandt covers by turning to Barak. “Let’s get it on the screen.”

  Barak shakes his head. “It’s too vague to show in the gridwork. We’ve got it on the high-gain sensors; still too fuzzy to pinpoint.”

  “We’re going in after it,” says Korie. He raises his voice to give the order. “Go to full warp.”

  The officer at the pilot console looks back at them, the first officer, the astrogator, the captain—but Korie is in the seat.

  “Go to full warp!” Korie repeats.

  Puzzled the man glances at Brandt—why didn’t the captain give or confirm the order? But he turns back to his console and obeys. After a moment, the gridwork begins flashing by faster.

  “You getting it any clearer yet?”

  “No, sir,” Jonesy says, “not yet. They could be running.”

  Korie hits the chair arm. “Radec. What’ve you got?”

  Rogers’ voice: “I don’t know, sir. We can’t make out a pattern—it’s a moving singularity, but that’s all—”

  “All right. Stand by.” He switches off. To Jonesy, “How far is it? How long will it take to close with him?”

  “Can’t say—it depends on a lot of things—I won’t be able to tell you until we get a clearer fix.”

  Brandt interrupts, “Mr. Korie, that bogie may be beyond our reach—”

&nb
sp; “We don’t know that yet—”

  “He’s too far away for a clear scan.”

  “Not for long—”

  “And your ten days are almost up.”

  “We can do it!” Korie insists. He stands suddenly. “I’m going back to the radec room. I’ll get a fix on him.” He darts from the bridge.

  The radec room is flickery-dark; only the screens are bright. Korie lunges in and stops. Rogers is setting up a new routine on his board; the monitors flash with the shimmering vagueness—he clears them, cross-circuits, and starts again. Again, the same shimmer, no larger, no brighter. He sets up a third routine—“Nothing, sir.” He is curiously exultant, as if the elusiveness of the bogie is a personal attack on the first officer. He clears his board and starts over; every new scan he programs digs that much deeper into Korie.

  The first officer watches with nervous impatience. Rogers’ able hands move skillfully across his console. “Can’t you pump more power into that scan?”

  “Sorry, sir—I’m at maximum now. He seems to be maintaining his position in relation to us. He must be running. Wait a minute—” He adjusts a knob. “—No, he’s not quite maintaining his position. We’re gaining on him—I think—but very slowly.”

  Korie mouths a curse under his breath—“Damn! This is where we were twelve days ago—” He turns to go. The corridor back to the bridge is troubled and oppressive.

  “Well?” says Brandt, as Korie steps down into the pit.

  “We’re gaining on him,” he replies, “but only slowly.”

  Brandt lets his gaze meet that of Korie—the first officer is grim and pale. “I guess you know what that means—we’re going to have to let him go—”

  “We can’t! Not after all this time! We’ve almost got him—”

  “With what?!! You’ve got nothing left to fight him with—”

  “We do!” Korie insists. “We have that extra margin—”

  “We need that to get home—”

  “We have enough for that and to catch him. He’s not as far as he was before; we can close with him in a few days.”

  “And be left here without the power to return to base,” rumbles Brandt. “No, Mr. Korie, we’re going to have to let him go. You were given ten days to make the kill; they’re almost up. I can’t extend that deadline—we don’t have the power.”