"Couldn't we turn that off too?"
"We'd die inside a day. Everything depends on it. Odds-on bet whether we suffocated or froze. If we had suspended-animation equipment—But we don't. This is no warcraft, not even an exploratory vessel. It's just the biggest lifeboat-cum-gig Queen Maggy could tote."
They moved toward the control room. "What's going to happen?" she asked.
"In theory, you mean?" He was grateful for a chance to talk. The alternative would have been that silence which pressed in on the hull. "Well, look. We travel faster than light by making a great many quantum jumps per second, which don't cross the intervening space. You might say we're not in the real universe most of the time, though we are so often that we can't notice any difference. Our friend has to phase in. That is, he has to adjust his jumps to the same frequency and the same phase angle as ours. This makes each ship a completely solid object to the other, as if they were moving sublight, under ordinary gravitic drive at a true velocity."
"But you said something about the field."
"Oh, that. Well, what makes us quantum-jump is a pulsating force-field generated by the secondary engine. The field encloses us and reaches out through a certain radius. How big a radius, and how much mass it can affect, depends on the generator's power. A big ship can lay alongside a smaller one and envelop her and literally drag her at a resultant pseudospeed. Which is how you carry out most capture and boarding operations. But a destroyer isn't that large in relation to us. She does have to come so close that our fields overlap. Otherwise her beams and artillery can't touch us."
"Why don't we change phase?"
"Standard procedure in an engagement. I'm sure our friends expect us to try it. But one party can change as fast as another, and runs a continuous computation to predict the pattern of the opposition's maneuvers. Sooner or later, the two will be back in phase long enough for a weapon to hit. We're not set up to do it nearly as well as he is. No, our solitary chance is the thing we've been working on."
She pressed against him. He felt how she trembled. "Nicky, I'm afraid."
"Think I'm not?" Both pairs of lips were dry when they touched. "Come on, let's to our posts. We'll know in a few minutes. If we go out—Persis, I couldn't ask for a better traveling companion." As they sat down, Flandry added, because he dared not stay serious: "Though we wouldn't be together long. You're ticketed for heaven, my destination's doubtless the other way."
She gripped his hand again. "Mine too. You won't escape me th-th-that easily."
Alarms blared. A shadow crossed the stars. It thickened as phasing improved. Now it was a torpedo outline, still transparent; now the gun turrets and missile launchers showed clear; now all but the brightest stars were occulted. Flandry laid an eye to the crosshairs of his improvised fire-control scope. His finger rested on a button. Wires ran aft from it.
The Merseian destroyer became wholly real to him. Starlight glimmered off metal. He knew how thin that metal was. Force screens warded off solid matter, and nothing protected against nuclear energies: nothing but speed to get out of their way, which demanded low mass. Nevertheless he felt as if a dinosaur stalked him.
The destroyer edged nearer, swelling in the screens. She moved leisurely, knowing her prey was weaponless, alert only for evasive tactics. Flandry's right hand went to the drive controls. So . . . so . . . he was zeroed a trifle forward of the section where he knew her engines must be.
A gauge flickered. Hyperfields were making their first tenuous contact. In a second it would be sufficiently firm for a missile or a firebolt to cross from one hull to another. Persis, reading the board as he had taught her, yelled, "Go!"
Flandry snapped on a braking vector. Lacking the instruments and computers of a man-of-war, he had estimated for himself what the thrust should be. He pressed the button.
In the screen, the destroyer shot forward in relation to him. From an open hatch in his boat plunged the auxiliary's auxiliary, a craft meant for atmosphere but propellable anywhere on gravity beams. Fields joined almost at the instant it transitted them. At high relative velocity, both pseudo and kinetic, it smote.
Flandry did not see what happened. He had shifted phase immediately, and concentrated on getting the hell out of the neighborhood. If everything worked as hoped, his airboat ripped the Merseian plates, ruinously, at kilometers per second. Fragments howled in air, flesh, engine connections. The destroyer was not destroyed. Repair would be possible, after so feeble a blow. But before the ship was operational again, he would be outside detection range. If he zigzagged, he would scarcely be findable.
He hurtled among the stars. A clock counted one minute, two, three, five. He began to stop fighting for breath. Persis gave way to tears. After ten minutes he felt free to run on automatic, lean over and hold her.
"We did it," he whispered. "Satan in Sirius! One miserable gig took a navy vessel."
Then he must leap from his seat, caper and crow till the boat rang. "We won! Ta-ran-tu-la! We won! Break out the champagne! This thing must have champagne among the rations! God is too good for anything else!" He hauled Persis up and danced her over the deck. "Come on, you! We won! Swing your lady! I gloat, I gloat, I gloat!"
Eventually he calmed down. By that time Persis had command of herself. She disengaged from him so she could warn: "We've a long way to Starkad, darling, and danger at the end of the trip."
"Ah," said Ensign Dominic Flandry, "but you forget, this is the beginning of the trip."
A smile crept over her mouth. "Precisely what do you mean, sir?"
He answered with a leer. "That it is a long way to Starkad."
Chapter Fifteen
Saxo glittered white among the myriads. But it was still so far that others outshone it. Brightest stood Betelgeuse. Flandry's gaze fell on that crimson spark and lingered. He sat at the pilot board, chin in hand, for many minutes; and only the throb of the engine and murmur of the ventilators were heard.
Persis entered the control room. During the passage she had tried to improvise a few glamorous changes of garment from the clothes in stock, but they were too resolutely utilitarian. So mostly, as now, she settled for a pair of shorts, and those mostly for the pockets. Her hair swept loose, dark-bright as space; a lock tickled him when she bent over his shoulder, and he sensed its faint sunny odor, and her own. But this time he made no response.
"Trouble, darling?" she asked.
"'It ain't the work, it's them damn decisions,'" he quoted absently.
"You mean which way to go?"
"Yes. Here's where we settle the question. Saxo or Betelgeuse?"
He had threshed the arguments out till she knew them by heart, but he went on anyhow: "Got to be one or the other. We're not set up to lie doggo on some undiscovered planet. The Empire's too far; every day of travel piles up chances for a Merseian to spot our wake. They'll have sent couriers in all directions—every kind of ship that could outrun our skulker's course—soon's they learned we escaped. Maybe before, even. Their units must be scouring these parts.
"Saxo's the closer. Against heading there is the consideration they can keep a pretty sharp watch on it without openly using warcraft in the system. Any big, fast merchantman could gobble us, and the crew come aboard with sidearms. However, if we were in call range, I might raise Terran HQ on Starkad and pass on the information we're carrying. Then we might hope the Merseians would see no further gain in damaging us. But the whole thing is awful iffy.
"Now Betelgeuse is an unaligned power, and very jealous of her neutrality. Foreign patrols will have to keep their distance, spread so thin we might well slip through. Once on Alfzar, we could report to the Terran ambassador. But the Betelgeuseans won't let us enter their system secretly. They maintain their own patrols. We'd have to go through traffic procedures, starting beyond orbital radius of the outermost planet. And the Merseians can monitor those com channels. A raider could dash in quick-like and blast us."
"They wouldn't dare," Persis said.
"Sweethea
rt, they'd dare practically anything, and apologize later. You don't know what's at stake."
She sat down beside him. "Because you won't tell me."
"Right."
He had gnawed his way to the truth. Hour upon hour, as they fled through Merseia's dominions, he hunched with paper, penstyl, calculator, and toiled. Their flight involved nothing dramatic. It simply meandered through regions where one could assume their enemies rarely came. Why should beings with manlike biological requirements go from a dim red dwarf star to a planetless blue giant to a dying Cepheid variable? Flandry had ample time for his labors.
Persis was complaining about that when the revelation came. "You might talk to me."
"I do," he muttered, not lifting his eyes from the desk. "I make love to you as well. Both with pleasure. But not right now, please!"
She flopped into a seat. "Do you recall what we have aboard for entertainment?" she said. "Four animations: a Martian travelogue, a comedian routine, a speech by the Emperor, and a Cynthian opera on the twenty-tone scale. Two novels: Outlaw Blastman and Planet of Sin. I have them memorized. They come back to me in my dreams. Then there's a flute, which I can't play, and a set of operation manuals."
"M-hm." He tried putting Brechdan's figures in a different sequence. It had been easy to translate from Merseian to Terran arithmetic. But what the devil did the symbols refer to? Angles, times, several quantities with no dimensions specified . . . rotation? Of what? Not of Brechdan; no such luck.
A nonhuman could have been similarly puzzled by something from Terra, such as a periodic table of isotopes. He wouldn't have known which properties out of many were listed, nor the standardized order in which quantum numbers were given, nor the fact that logarithms were to the base ten unless e was explicit, nor a lot of other things he'd need to know before he could guess what the table signified.
"You don't have to solve the problem," Persis sulked. "You told me yourself, an expert can see the meaning at a glance. You're just having fun."
Flandry raised his head, irritated. "Might be hellish important for us to know. Give us some idea what to expect. How in the name of Copros can Starkad matter so much? One lonesome planet!"
And the idea came to him.
He grew so rigid, he stared so wildly out into the universe, that Persis was frightened. "Nicky, what's wrong?" He didn't hear. With a convulsive motion, he grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and started scrawling. Finished, he stared at the result. Sweat stood on his brow. He rose, went into the control room, returned with a reel which threaded into his microreader. Again he wrote, copying off numbers. His fingers danced on the desk computer. Persis held herself moveless.
Until at last he nodded. "That's it," he said in a cold small voice. "Has to be."
"What is?" she could then ask.
He twisted around in his chair. His eyes took a second to focus on her. Something had changed in his face. He was almost a stranger.
"I can't tell you," he said.
"Why not?"
"We might get captured alive. They'd probe you and find you knew. If they didn't murder you out of hand, they'd wipe your brain—which to my taste is worse."
He took a lighter from his pocket and burned every paper on the desk and swept the ashes into a disposal. Afterward he shook himself, like a dog that has come near drowning, and went to her.
"Sorry," he smiled. "Kind of a shock for me there. But I'm all right now. And I really will pay attention to you, from here on in."
She enjoyed the rest of the voyage, even after she had identified the change in him, the thing which had gone and would never quite come back. Youth.
The detector alarm buzzed. Persis drew a gasp and caught Flandry's arm. He tore her loose, reaching for the main hyperdrive switch.
But he didn't pull it, returning them to normal state and kinetic velocity. His knuckles stood white on the handle. A pulse fluttered in his throat. "I forgot what I'd already decided," he said. "We don't have an especially good detector. If she's a warship, we were spotted some time ago."
"But this time she can't be headed straight at us." Her tone was fairly level. She had grown somewhat used to being hunted. "We have a big sphere to hide in."
"Uh-huh. We'll try that if necessary. But first let's see which way yonder fellow is bound." He changed course. Stars wheeled in the viewports, otherwise there was no sensation. "If we can find a track on which the intensity stays constant, we'll be running parallel to him and he isn't trying to intercept." Saxo burned dead ahead. "S'pose he's going there—"
Minutes crawled. Flandry let himself relax. His coverall was wet. "Whew! What I hoped. Destination, Saxo. And if he's steered on a more or less direct line, as is probable, then he's come from the Empire."
He got busy, calculating, grumbling about rotten civilian instrumentation. "Yes, we can meet him. Let's go."
"But he could be Merseian," Persis objected. "He needn't have come from a Terran planet."
"Chance we take. The odds aren't bad. He's slower than us, which suggests a merchant vessel." Flandry set the new path, leaned back and stretched. A grin spread across his features. "My dilemma's been solved for me. We're off to Starkad."
"Why? How?"
"Didn't mention it before, for fear of raising false hopes in you. When I'd rather raise something else. But I came here first, instead of directly to Saxo or Betelgeuse, because this is the way Terran ships pass, carrying men and supplies to Starkad and returning home. If we can hitch a ride . . . you see?"
Eagerness blossomed in her and died again, "Why couldn't we have found one going home?"
"Be glad we found any whatsoever. Besides, this way we deliver our news a lot sooner." Flandry rechecked his figures. "We'll be in call range in an hour. If he should prove to be Merseian, chances are we can outspeed and lose him." He rose. "I decree a good stiff drink."
Persis held her hands up. They trembled. "We do need something for our nerves," she agreed, "but there are psychochemicals aboard."
"Whisky's more fun. Speaking of fun, we have an hour."
She rumpled his hair. "You're impossible."
"No," he said. "Merely improbable."
The ship was the freighter Rieskessel, registered on Nova Germania but operating out of the Imperial frontier world Irumclaw. She was a huge, potbellied, ungainly and unkempt thing, with a huge, potbellied, ungainly and unkempt captain. He bellowed a not quite sober welcome when Flandry and Persis came aboard.
"Oh, ho, ho, ho! Humans! So soon I did not expect seeing humans. And never this gorgeous." One hairy hand engulfed Flandry's, the other chucked Persis under the chin. "Otto Brummelmann is me."
Flandry looked past the bald, wildly bearded head, down the passageway from the airlock. Corroded metal shuddered to the drone of an ill-tuned engine. A pair of multi-limbed beings with shiny blue integuments stared back from their labor; they were actually swabbing by hand. The lights were reddish orange, the air held a metallic tang and was chilly enough for his breath to smoke. "Are you the only Terran, sir?" he asked.
"Not Terran. Not me. Germanian. But for years now on Irumclaw. My owners want Irumclagian spacehands, they come cheaper. No human language do I hear from end to end of a trip. They can't pronounce." Brummelmann kept his little eyes on Persis, who had donned her one gown, and tugged at his own soiled tunic in an effort at getting some wrinkles out. "Lonely, lonely. How nice to find you. First we secure your boat, next we go for drinks in my cabin, right?"
"We'd better have a private talk immediately, sir," Flandry said. "Our boat—no, let's wait till we're alone."
"You wait. I be alone with the little lady, right? Ho, ho, ho!" Brummelmann swept a paw across her. She shrank back in distaste.
On the way, the captain was stopped by a crew member who had some question. Flandry took the chance to hiss in Persis' ear: "Don't offend him. This is fantastic luck."
"This?" Her nose wrinkled.
"Yes. Think. No matter what happens, none of these xenos'll give us away. They c
an't. All we have to do is stay on the good side of the skipper, and that shouldn't be hard."
He had seen pigpens, in historical dramas, better kept up than Brummelmann's cabin. The Germanian filled three mugs, ignoring coffee stains, with a liquid that sank fangs into stomachs. His got half emptied on the first gulp. "So!" he belched. "We talk. Who sent you to deep space in a gig?"
Persis took the remotest corner. Flandry stayed near Brummelmann, studying him. The man was a failure, a bum, an alcoholic wreck. Doubtless he kept his job because the owners insisted on a human captain and couldn't get anyone else at the salary they wanted to pay. Didn't matter greatly, as long as the mate had some competence. For the most part, antiquated though her systems must be, the ship ran herself.
"You are bound for Starkad, aren't you, sir?" Flandry asked.
"Yes, yes. My company has a Naval contract. Irumclaw is a transshipment point. This trip we carry food and construction equipment. I hope we go on another run soon. Not much pleasure in Highport. But we was to talk about you."
"I can't say anything except that I'm on a special mission. It's vital for me to reach Highport secretly. If Donna d'Io and I can ride down with you, and you haven't radioed the fact ahead, you'll have done the Empire a tremendous service."
"Special mission . . . with a lady?" Brummelmann dug a blackrimmed thumb into Flandry's ribs. "I can guess what sort of mission. Ho, ho, ho!"
"I rescued her," Flandry said patiently. "That's why we were in a boat. A Merseian attack. The war's sharpening. I have urgent information for Admiral Enriques."
Brummelmann's laughter choked off. Behind the matted whiskers, that reached to his navel, he swallowed. "Attack, you said? But no, the Merseians, they have never bothered civilian ships."
"Nor should they bother this one, Captain. Not if they don't know I'm aboard."
Brummelmann wiped his pate. Probably he thought of himself as being in the high, wild tradition of early spacefaring days. But now his daydreams had orbited. "My owners," he said weakly. "I have obligation to my owners. I am responsible for their ship."
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