The outercom blinked and buzzed. Flandry ignored it till he was lined out northward. The other spacecraft swung about and swooped after him. Several kilometers off, she proved to be a corvette, no capital ship but one that could eat a scoutboat for breakfast. Flandry accepted her call.
"Saniau to Terran vessel. Where are you bound and why?"
"Terran vessel, and she is a Terran vessel, to Saniau. Listen with both ears. Dominic Flandry speaks. That's right, the very same Dominic Flandry who. I'm going home. The datholch Ydwyr, Vach Urdiolch, nephew to the most exalted Roidhun and so forth, is my guest. If you don't believe me, check the native town and try to find him. When he recovers from a slight indisposition, I can give you a visual. Shoot me down and he goes too."
Pause.
"If you speak truth, Dominic Flandry, do you imagine the datholch would trade honor for years?"
"No. I do imagine you'll save him if you possibly can."
"Correct. You will be overhauled, grappled, and boarded. If the datholch has been harmed, woe betide you."
"First you have to do the overhauling. Second you have to convince me that any woe you can think of betides me worse than what does already. I suggest you check with the qanryf before you get reckless. Meanwhile," and in Anglic, "cheerio." Flandry cut the circuit.
At his velocity, he had crossed the Hellkettle Mountains. The northlands stretched vast and drear beneath, gleaming ice, glittering snow, blots that were blizzards. He cast about with his instruments for a really huge storm. There was sure to be one somewhere, this time of year . . . yes!
A wall of murk towered from earth to high heaven. Before he had pierced it, Flandry felt the thrust and heard the scream of hurricane-force winds. When he was inside, blackness and chaos had him.
A corvette would not go into such a tempest. Nothing except a weathership had any business in one; others could flit above or around readily enough. But a small spaceboat with a first-class pilot—a pilot who had begun his career in aircraft and aerial combat—could live in the fury. And detectors, straining from outside, would lose her.
Flandry lost himself in the battle to keep alive.
Half an hour later, he broke free and shot into space.
Talwin rolled enormous in his screens. Halfway down from either pole coruscated winter's whiteness; the cloud-marbled blue of seas between icecaps looked black by contrast. Flandry waved. "Goodbye," he said anew. "Good luck."
Meters shouted to his eyes of patrol ships waiting for him. You didn't normally risk hyperdrive this near a planet or a sun. Matter density was too great, as was the chance of gravitation desynchronizing your quantum jumps. The immediate scene was scarcely normal. Flandry's hands danced.
Switchover to secondary state in so strong a field made the hull ring. Screens changed to the faster-than-light optical compensation mode. Talwin was gone and Siekh dwindling among the stars. The air droned. The deck shivered.
After minutes, a beep drew Flandry's attention to a telltale. "Well," he said, "one skipper's decided to be brave and copy us. He got away with it, too, and locked onto our 'wake.' His wouldn't register that steady a bearing otherwise. We're faster, but I'm afraid we won't shake him before he's served as a guide to others who can outpace us."
Djana stirred. She had sat mute—lost, he thought when he could spare her a thought—while they ran the polar storm. Her face turned to him beneath its heavy coif of hair. "Have you any hope?" she asked tonelessly.
He punched for navigational data. "A stern chase is a long chase," he said, "and I've heard about a pulsar not many parsecs off. It may help us shed our importunate colleagues."
She made no response, simply looked back out at space. Either she didn't know how dangerous a pulsar was, or she didn't care.
Chapter Nineteen
Once a blue giant sun had burned, 50,000 times more luminous than yet-unborn Sol. It lasted for a bare few million years; then the hydrogen fuel necessary to stay on the main sequence was gone. The star collapsed. In the unimaginable violence of a supernova, momentarily blazing to equal an entire galaxy, it went out.
Such energies did not soon bleed away. For ages the blown-off upper layers formed a nebula of lacy loveliness around the core, which shone less white-hot than X-ray hot. Eventually the gases dissipated, a part of them to make new suns and planets. The globe that remained continued shrinking under its own weight until density reached tons per cubic centimeter and spin was measured in seconds. Feebler and feebler did it shine, white dwarf, black dwarf, neutron star—
Compressed down near the ultimate that nature's law permitted, the atoms (if they could still be called that) went into their final transitions. Photons spurted forth, were pumped through the weirdly distorted space-time within and around the core, at last won freedom to flee at light speed. Strangely regular were those bursts, though slowly their frequencies, amplitudes, and rate declined back toward extinction—dying gasps.
Pulsar breath.
Djana stared as if hypnotized into the forward screen. Tiny but waxing among the stars went that red blink . . . blink . . . blink. She did not recall having ever seen a sight more lonely. The cabin's warmth and glow made blacker the emptiness outside; engine throb and ventilator murmur deepened the eternal silence of those infinite spaces.
She laid a hand on Flandry's arm. "Nicky—"
"Quiet," His eyes never left the board before him; his fingers walked back and forth across computer keys.
"Nicky, we can die any minute, and you've said hardly a word to me."
"Stop bothering me or we will for sure die."
She retreated into her chair. Be strong, be strong.
He had bound her in place for most of the hours during which the boat flew. She didn't resent that; he couldn't trust her, and he must clean himself and snatch some sleep. Afterward he brought sandwiches to his captives—she might have slipped a drug into his—and released her. But at once he was nailed to instrument and calculations. He showed no sign of feeling the wishes she thrust at him; his will to liberty overrode them.
Now he crouched above the pilot panel. He'd not been able to cut his hair; the mane denied shaven countenance, prim coverall, machine-controlling hands, and declared him a male animal who hunted.
And was hunted. Four Merseian ships bayed on his heels. He'd told her about them before he went to rest, estimating they would close the gap in 25 light-years. From Siekh to the pulsar was 17.
Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . . once in 1.3275 second.
Numbers emerged on a plate set into the console. Flandry nodded. He took the robotic helm. Stars wheeled with his shift of course.
In time he said, maybe to himself: "Yes. They're decelerating. They don't dare come in this fast."
"What?" Djana whispered.
"The pursuit. They spot us aiming nearly straight on for that lighthouse. Get too close—easy to do at hyperspeed—and the gravity gradient will pluck you apart. Why share the risk we have to take? If we don't make it, Ydwyr will've been more expendable than a whole ship and crew. If we do survive, they can catch us later."
And match phase, and lay alongside, and force a way in to rescue Ydwyr . . . and her . . . but Nicky, Nicky they would haul off to burn his brain out.
Should it matter? I'll be sorry, we both will be sorry for you, but Merseia—
He turned his head. His grin and gray eyes broke across her like morning. "That's what they think," he said.
I only care because you're a man, the one man in all this wasteland, and do I care for any man? Only my body does, my sinful body. She struggled to raise Ydwyr's face.
Flandry leaned over and cupped her chin in his right hand. "I'm sorry to've been rude," he smiled. "Sorrier to play games with your life. I should have insisted you stay on Talwin. When you wanted to come, with everything else on my mind I sort of assumed you'd decided you preferred freedom."
"I was free," she said frantically. "I followed my master."
"Odd juxtaposition, that." A buzzer
sounded. "'Scuse, I got work. We go primary in half a shake. I've programed the autopilot, but in conditions this tricky I want to ride herd on it."
"Primary?" Dismay washed through her. "They'll catch you right away!" That's good. Isn't it?
The engine note changed. Star images vanished till the screens readapted. At true speed, limited by light's, the boat plunged on. Power chanted abaft the cabin; she was changing her kinetic velocity at maximum thrust.
Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . . The blood-colored beacon glowed ever brighter. Yet Djana could look directly into it, and she did not find any disc. Stars frosted the night around. Which way was the Empire?
Flandry had given himself back to the machines. Twice he made a manual adjustment.
After minutes wherein Djana begged God to restore Merseian courage to her, the noise and vibration stopped. Head full of it, she didn't instantly recognize its departure. Then she bit her tongue to keep from imploring a word.
When Flandry gave her one, she started shivering.
He spoke calmly, as if these were the lost days when they two had fared after treasure. "We're in the slot, near's I can determine. Let's relax and give the universe our job for a bit."
"Wh-wh-what are we doing?"
"We're falling free, in a hyperbolic orbit around the pulsar. The Merseians aren't. They're distributing themselves to cover the region. They can't venture as close as us. The potential of so monstrous a mass in so small a volume, you see; differential forces would wreck their ships. The boat's less affected, being of smaller dimensions. With the help of the interior field—the same that gives us artificial gravity and counteracts acceleration pressure—she ought to stay in one piece. The Merseians doubtless figure to wait till we kick in our hyperdrive again, and resume the chivvy."
"But what're we getting?" Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . . Had his winter exile driven him crazy?
"We'll pass through the fringes of a heavily warped chunk of space. The mass concentration deforms it. If the core got much denser, light itself couldn't break loose. We won't be under any such extreme condition, but I don't expect they can track us around periastron. Our emission will be too scattered; radar beams will curve off at silly angles. The Merseians can compute roughly where and when we'll return to flatter space, but until we do—" Flandry had unharnessed himself while he talked. Rising, he stretched prodigiously, muscle by muscle. "À propos Merseians, let's go check on old Ydwyr."
Djana fumbled with her own buckles. "I, I, I don't track you, Nicky," she stammered. "What do we . . . you gain more than time? Why did you take us aboard?"
"As to your first question, the answer's a smidge technical. As to the second, well, Ydwyr's the reason we've come this far. Without him, we'd've been in a missile barrage." Flandry walked around behind her chair. "Here, let me assist."
"You! You're not unfastening me!"
"No, I'm not, am I?" he said dreamily. Leaning over, he nuzzled her where throat met shoulder. The kiss that followed brought a breathless giddiness which had not quite faded when he led the way aft.
Ydwyr sat patient on a bunk. Prior to sleeping, Flandry had welded a short length of light cable to the frame, the other end around an ankle, and untied the rope. It wasn't a harsh confinement. In fact, the man would have to keep wits and gun ready when negotiating this passage.
"Have you been listening to our conversation?" he asked. "I left the intercom on."
"You are thanked for your courtesy," Ydwyr replied, "but I could not follow the Anglic."
"Oh!" Djana's hand went to her mouth. "I forgot—"
"And I," Flandry admitted. "We Terrans tend to assume every educated being will know our official language—by definition—and of course it isn't so. Well, I can tell you."
"I believe I have deduced it," Ydwyr said. "You are swinging free, dangerously but concealingly near the pulsar. From the relativistic region you will launch your courier torpedoes, strapped together and hyperdrives operating simultaneously. What with distortion effects, you hope my folk will mistake the impulses for this boat's and give chase. If your decoy lures them as far as a light-year off, you will be outside their hyperwave detection range and can embark on a roundabout homeward voyage. The sheer size of space will make it unlikely that they, backtracking, will pick up your vibrations."
"Right," Flandry said admiringly. "You're a sharp rascal. I look forward to some amusing chit-chat."
"If your scheme succeeds." Ydwyr made a salute of respect. "If not, and if we are taken alive, you are under my protection."
Gladness burst in Djana. My men can be friends!
"You are kind," said Flandry with a bow. He turned to the girl. "How about making us a pot of tea?" he said in Anglic.
"Tea?" she asked, astonished.
"He likes it. Let's be hospitable. Put the galley intercom on—low—and you can hear us talk."
Flandry spoke lightly, but she felt an underlining of his last sentence and all at once her joy froze. Though why, why? "Would . . . the datholch . . . accept tea?" she asked in Eriau.
"You are thanked." Ydwyr spoke casually, more interested in the man. Djana went forward like an automaton. The voices trailed her:
"I am less kind, Dominic Flandry, than I am concerned to keep an audacious and resourceful entity functional."
"For a servant?"
"Khraich, we cannot well send you home, can we? I—"
Djana made a production of closing the galley door. It cut off the words. Fingers unsteady, she turned the intercom switch.
"—sorry. You mean well by your standards, I suppose, Ydwyr. But I have this archaic prejudice for freedom over even the nicest slavery. Like the sort you fastened on that poor girl."
"A reconditioning. It improved her both physically and mentally."
No! He might be speaking of an animal!
"She does seem more, hm, balanced. It's just a seeming, however, as long as you keep that father-image hood over her eyes."
"Hr-r-r, you have heard of Aycharaych's techniques, then?"
"Aycharaych? Who? N-n-no . . . I'll check with Captain Abrams . . . Damn! I should have played along with you, shouldn't I? All right, I fumbled that one, after you dropped it right into my paws. Getting back to Djana, the father fixation is unmistakable to any careful outside observer."
"What else would you have me do? She came, an unwitting agent who had acquired knowledge which must not get back to Terra. She showed potentialities. Instead of killing her out of hand, we could try to develop them. Death is always available. Besides, depth-psychological work on a human intrigued me. Later, when that peculiar gift for sometimes imposing her desires on other minds appeared, we saw what a prize we had. My duty became to make sure of her."
"So to win her trust, you warned her to warn me?"
"Yes. About—in honesty between us, Dominic Flandry—a fictitious danger. No orders had come for your removal; I was welcome to keep you. But the chance to clinch it with her was worth more."
Anglic: "No! I'll—be—especially—damned."
"You are not angry, I hope."
"N-n-no. That'd be unsporting, wouldn't it?" Anglic: "The more so when it caused me to break from my cell with a hell of a yell far sooner than I'd expected to."
"Believe me, I did not wish to sacrifice you. I did not want to be involved in that wretched business at all. Honor compelled me. But I begrudged every minute away from my Talwinian research."
Djana knelt on the deck and wept.
Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . . furnace glare spearing from the screens. The hull groaned and shuddered with stresses. Fighting them, the interior field set air ashake in a wild thin singing. Often, looking down a passage, you thought you saw it ripple; and perhaps it did, sliding through some acute bend in space. From time to time hideous nauseas twisted you, and your mind grew blurred. Sunward was only the alternation of night and red. Starward were no constellations nor points of light, nothing but rainbow blotches and smears.
Djana hel
ped Flandry put the courier torpedoes, which he had programed under normal conditions, on the launch rack. When they were outside, he must don a spacesuit and go couple them. He was gone a long while and came back white and shaken. "Done," was everything he would tell her.
They sought the conn. He sat down, she on his lap, and they held each other through the nightmare hours. "You're real," she kept babbling. "You're real."
And the strangeness faded. Quietness, solidity, stars returned one by one. A haggard Flandry pored over instruments whose readings again made sense, about which he could again think clearly.
"Receding hyperwakes," he breathed. "Our stunt worked. Soon's we stop registering them—First, though, we turn our systems off."
"Why?" she asked from her seat to which she had returned, and from her weariness.
"I can't tell how many the ships are. Space is still somewhat kinky and—well, they may have left one posted for insurance. The moment we pass a threshold value of the metric, there'll be no mistaking our radiation, infrared from the hull, neutrinos from the powerplant, that kind of junk. Unless we douse the sources."
"Whatever you want, darling."
Weightlessness was like stepping off a cliff and dropping without end. Cabin dark, the pulsar flash on one side and stars on the other crowded near in dreadful glory. Nothing remained save the faintest accumulator-powered susurrus of forced ventilation; and the cold crept inward.
"Hold me," Djana beseeched into the blindness. "Warm me."
A pencil-thin flashbeam from Flandry's hand slipped along the console. Back-scattered light limned him, a shadow. Silence lengthened and lengthened until:
"Uh-oh. They're smart as I feared. Gray waves. Somebody under primary acceleration. Has to be a ship of theirs."
Son of Man, help us.
At the boat's high kinetic velocity, the pulsar shrank and dimmed while they watched.
"Radar touch," Flandry reported tonelessly.
Young Flandry Page 38
