Distant Friends and Other Stories

by Timothy Zahn

  I switched off the intercom and picked up the printout Pascal had left me. If Orlandis wanted to play games, fine. I could play games, too. Maybe sometime in the next few days I'd figure out what exactly was going on here. Preferably before we actually arrived at Baroja.

  Death and taxes are still the only two items universally acknowledged as inevitable; but on my own personal list a post-cascade visit from Orlandis was running a pretty close third. Correctly, as it turned out; and as I came down the spiral stair to the passenger deck at the end of my shift I found him waiting.

  At least this time he'd had the grace to stay where he belonged.

  "I just wanted to thank you for your assistance and cooperation, Captain," he said as I stepped around the stairway railing. "And I wanted also to assure you that my end of the arrangement will be carried out as soon as we reach Earth."

  "I just wanted to thank you for your assistance and cooperation, Captain," he said as I stepped around the stairway railing. "And I wanted also to assure you that my end of the arrangement will be carried out as soon as we reach Earth."

  "It should be," he nodded. "In fact, if you could allow me access to the ship's communication equipment once we're within range, I could practically guarantee it."

  "Well... we'll see, but it should be all right. I don't suppose this deal is anything I could get in on?"

  His smile wasn't quite condescending, but it was pretty damn close. "I'm afraid not, Captain. Not unless you have a hundred million in investment capital available to you. Tell me, what do you think happened to the Angelwing?"

  The abrupt change in subject threw me off guard. "The-uh-what do you mean?" I stammered at last.

  "You know-the accident you believe happened to it. What do you think went wrong?"

  My mind went blank. With my suspicions about Orlandis, I'd been fighting to avoid even thinking about the Angelwing in his presence, lest he pick up something odd in my attitude. To have him ask such a point-blank question was the last thing I'd expected... and with no plausible story prepared I had only one recourse. "Well, I'm not sure. But my computer expert thinks it may have been a field generator feedback..."

  I spun out Pascal's whole theory for him, working hard to make it sound plausible. I must have succeeded, because when I finished he nodded. "I see. Interesting. Would a blast of that sort actually be enough to disable a ship that big?"

  I shrugged. "The exploding Autotorque, probably not. But remember that the field generator would also have been ruined, and if the damage was extensive enough it might be beyond repair."

  "Leaving the ship helpless somewhere out in deep space," he nodded.

  "Exactly nine point two light-years out, if they were on Cunard Lines standard Baroja/Lorraine run," I said, obscurely glad I could quote him the exact number. "And of course they would have blown out a cloud of highspeed distress buoys as soon as they knew they were in trouble, so the rescue ships won't have to get closer than maybe five light-hours to find them."

  "Sounds like you've worked all of this through quite well," Orlandis said. "I trust the patrol rescue squads will be equally astute. How long now before we land?"

  "Uh-" I tried to remember how long it usually took from Shlomo Pass to Earth. "Should take three more cascade maneuvers, unless conditions have changed drastically in the past year or so. Which it may have-the Barnard's Star system can be a pain. Say, ten or eleven more days.

  "I see. Thank you, Captain; I'll let you get on with your business now."

  "Thank you," I said automatically as he turned and walked away. Scowling to myself, I headed the other way and escaped to the solitude of my cabin. There I threw myself down on my bed and roundly cursed Orlandis and the power he had to make me feel like one of his menials. For a long moment I seriously considered going to the man and telling him that we were headed for Baroja, and that if he wanted to go to Earth he could jolly well put together his fancy yacht, load his two Autotorques aboard, and leave.

  Orlandis and the power he had to make me feel like one of his menials. For a long moment I seriously considered going to the man and telling him that we were headed for Baroja, and that if he wanted to go to Earth he could jolly well put together his fancy yacht, load his two Autotorques aboard, and leave.

  I stared at the ceiling for a long, chilling moment. Then I got back up and left, forcing myself not to run.

  Matope was lounging in front of the main engine room status board when I got there a few minutes later with the canvas duffel bag I'd brought up from One Hold. "Everything under control and quiet, Captain," he reported, eying the bag.

  "Good," I told him, "because I've got work for you. Come here."

  He followed me back to the work table; and even with my peripheral vision I clearly saw his mouth fall open as I carefully withdrew the first of the two Aker-Ming Autotorques. "Captain! Where'd that come from?"

  "Same place this one did," I said as calmly as I could. "A box marked Harmax Industries in our Ming-metal shield."

  He looked at me with the kind of expression he usually reserved for sudden, unexpected problems with the Dancers engines. "Captain-"

  "I want you to take them apart," I interrupted him brusquely. "I think one of them might be rigged to destroy a Colloton generator."

  He stared at me for a long minute, gradually getting his face back together. Then, without a word, he picked up the two Autotorques and carried them over to the scale. One, it turned out, weighed nearly a hundred grams more than the other. Taking the heavier one back to the bench, he spread out his tools and got to work.

  I'd never seen the inside of an Autotorque before, and it was only as Matope slowly moved down the table, leaving a neat line of components and fasteners in his path, that I began to understand exactly why the things were so damned expensive. About halfway into the disassembly it suddenly occurred to me that we would probably have to take both Autotorques apart in order to find out why the first was heavier, because whatever the extra component was it could probably crawl out and bite either of us without our recognizing it as spurious. The thought added one more twist to the wringer around my stomach: we were in plenty of trouble right now without having two Autotorques belonging to someone else that we couldn't put back together again.

  But that worry, at least, turned out to be unnecessary. Five minutes later, Matope carefully slid out the delicate global lattice and there, wedged in where it obviously didn't belong, was our culprit: a tiny mechanical timer and a heavy-duty sodium-bromine battery with attached capacitor.

  "Well?" I asked after Matope had spent a few minutes poking around the battery and its environs. "What does it do?"

  He fingered his screwdriver thoughtfully. "Hard to say exactly, Captain, but it looks like it's supposed to feed extra current into the lattice. Contact points here and here-see?"

  I thought about Pascal's theory. "Which would vaporize it and make it explode?"

  My eyes drifted to the timer. "Mid-maneuver. And what happens if the lattice melts?"

  He ran some numbers on his calculator. "Hard to say. If the voltage peak is strong enough, it could discharge across the safeties into the Colloton generator control cable here. No, wait a minute-there must surely be a surge protector to ground out dangerous pulses like that."

  "Show me."

  He poked around for another half hour before finally giving up. If there'd ever been a surge ground line, it wasn't there now. And at that point there didn't seem to be any conclusion available except the one I'd already come to: this Autotorque had been designed to kill its ship.

  If the control circuitry gets hit with that kind of voltage spike, you'll probably lose at least a couple of the major coils before it can be drained off to ground," Matope explained. His voice was as calm and dry as always, but the hand gripping his screwdriver showed white knuckles. "There's a feedback line that would kick in the emergency braking system for the flywheel, though, and even with the generator ruined there's enough hysteresis to hold the ship in Collot
on space for at least a few seconds."

  "Long enough for the ship to stop?"

  He hesitated, then shook his head. "Not if the flywheel and ship were already rotating at top speed. A

  liner just has too much inertia to stop that fast."

  And an instant later, both it and the device that had killed it would be disassociated atoms. I thought about that for a long minute, until I suddenly realized Matope was looking at me with an air of expectation. "All right," I said slowly. "Let's take the batteries and timer out and put the rest back together."

  "And after that?"

  "I'll put them back in their box in the shield and... figure out then what to do."

  It took longer to reassemble the Autotorque than it had taken to pull it apart, and I was feeling extremely nervous by the time I headed back to the hold. But my temporary theft had apparently gone unnoticed, and within a few minutes everything was back to normal. Five minutes after that, I was flat on my back on my bed, staring at the cabin ceiling and wondering what the hell I was going to do.

  Because suddenly the whole game had changed. Again. It'd started out as a freak event, moved on to become a logical puzzle, and then to a question of financial risk versus Good Samaritanship and the need to back Alana up in her fears about the Angelwing. But now the stakes had abruptly gone up... because there was only one reason I could think of for that gimmicked Autotorque to be aboard.

  Orlandis was planning the same fate for the Dancer as he'd planned for the Angelwing.

  And I was out of my depth. Completely. Logical problems I could tackle; equipment problems I could turn Matope and Tobbar loose on... but this was a situation of human invention, and I didn't have a handle on any of it. What did Orlandis ultimately hope to gain, for starters? Had the Dancer been doomed from the start, or was that decision still open?-and if so, what action of mine was likely to push it the wrong way? Orlandis thought we were going to Earth... or had he seen through my simple stratagem?

  And if I couldn't figure out the answers to any of those, how could I possibly save all of our lives?

  turn Matope and Tobbar loose on... but this was a situation of human invention, and I didn't have a handle on any of it. What did Orlandis ultimately hope to gain, for starters? Had the Dancer been doomed from the start, or was that decision still open?-and if so, what action of mine was likely to push it the wrong way? Orlandis thought we were going to Earth... or had he seen through my simple stratagem?

  And if I couldn't figure out the answers to any of those, how could I possibly save all of our lives?

  Her sensitivity.

  Slowly, I withdrew the hand that had been reaching for the intercom. Through design or accident, Orlandis had continued to spend a fair amount of time with her even after he'd gotten his confirmation of the Angelwing disaster. I didn't know how Alana was starting to view him, but even if she were merely being friendly as part of a crewer's normal duty toward the passengers I still couldn't risk it. What learning the truth would do to her...

  "All right, damn it," I snarled abruptly at the ceiling. "I'll figure it all out by myself."

  And for starters, I'd figure out what exactly-exactly-had happened to the Angelwing. Because if she'd been fitted with a doomsday Autotorque like the one in our hold, it was clear the thing had failed in its task. Only the captain in Alana's cascade pattern had died, which meant the Angelwing hadn't disintegrated. So... why?

  The timer had malfunctioned. If the generator had been fried too soon or too late, the ship could have possibly stopped rotating in time. Which would have left it disabled near one end or the other of its real-space translation.

  But why then would the captain have died?

  The overload device in toto had failed. Not enough power to ruin the generator at all, though possibly enough to change the lattice voltage balance and consequently foul that particular maneuver. Again, though, the captain should have come out of it alive.

  I thought about everything Alana had told me about Lenn Grandy. From the old school, she'd described him, uncomfortable with wizard gadgets like the Autotorque. Could he have positioned himself close enough to the device during the maneuver to have somehow taken a lethal shock from it while he slept?

  Or could he even have been awake?

  Awake.

  It was as if someone had suddenly turned on the air-conditioning to my overheated brain. Of course-Grandy had elected to remain awake during the maneuver, trading the pain of cascade point depression for the assurance his Autotorque was indeed performing properly. It was something I could easily visualize Alana doing in that position, especially with her captain's gold barely out of its box.

  So I now had a key piece to what had at least partially thwarted Orlandis's sabotage... a piece that Orlandis very possibly did not have.

  Did that really help me? At the moment I couldn't think how, but it was a good feeling regardless to be a step ahead of Orlandis in at least one aspect of this mess. Whatever theoretical knowledge he had about the Colloton Drive and cascade points, he had no first-hand experience with them. If there was any further information about the Angelwing's fate to be squeezed out of Alana's cascade pattern, I had a better shot of getting it than he did.

  the Colloton Drive and cascade points, he had no first-hand experience with them. If there was any further information about the Angelwing's fate to be squeezed out of Alana's cascade pattern, I had a better shot of getting it than he did.

  Assuming we stayed alive to report it.

  Gritting my teeth, I brought my mind back to the immediate problem at hand. So Lenn Grandy had been awake during the fatal cascade maneuver; had figured out what had happened and interrupted proceedings in time to save his ship. Possibly by unintentionally replacing the Autotorque's missing voltage surge drain, drawing enough of the extra current through his own body to slow the Colloton generator destruction those extra few critical seconds. In which case... the Angelwing could be literally anywhere along a line nine point two light-years long.

  Hell in a bubble-pack.

  No wonder Orlandis had been so phlegmatic about the idea of sending a rescue mission out after the Angelwing. Even if the searchers thought to look in the space that would normally have been bypassed, their chances of finding anything there would be virtually non-existent. Even a single light-year-hell, a single light-month-was just too much territory to cover, Colloton Drive or no. Somehow, we had to narrow that range down to something manageable.

  And all we had to do that with were Alana's cascade images.

  Or... perhaps Alana herself.

  I thought about it for several minutes, and the longer I looked at the idea the nuttier it sounded. Aside from the fact that its chances of proving anything were slimmer than my credit rating, it might very well drive a wedge between Alana and me, might finally precipitate her departure from the Dancer.

  I didn't want that. I'd grown accustomed to having someone with Alana's competence beside me in all the big and little emergencies that are part of a tramp starmer's life. To lose both her presence and her friendship-and I'd lose both if I lost either. Were the lives of a bunch of rich strangers I'd never met worth the risk?

  They would be worth it to Alana. That much I knew for sure... and I was willing to defer to her better judgment on such matters.

  Rolling onto my side, I poked at the intercom. It took a few seconds, but eventually Pascal woke up and answered. "Yes?" he said, yawning audibly.

  "I need you to work up a special program for the astrogate," I told him. "One that'll show our position as what it would be if we were on our way to Earth."

  "What do you mean, 'if?" he asked. "I thought we were headed for Earth."

  "We're going to Baroja," I said. "The passengers weren't-aren't-supposed to know, and to make sure not even a hint leaks out I don't want the other crewers to know, either."

  "Not even Alana?"

  "Especially not her. That's who the trick astrogate's for."

  There was a long p
ause, and I could just about hear his wheels spinning as he tried to come up with a theory to explain this one. Well, he could just stew; I wasn't in much of an explaining mood. "I'll do the calculations for the next maneuver," I continued, "but since she'll be the one actually doing the point she'll undoubtedly want to double-check the numbers. I want the computer gimicked so that hers come out identical to mine, even though her input will be different. Can you do that?"

  "Uh... yessir, I guess so. Uh..."

  "You'll get a full explanation after it's all over," I sighed. "For now, just do it. And do not let anyone know. Anyone. Clear?"

  He cleared his throat. "Yes, Captain."

  "All right. Your next shift's early enough to start, I guess, so go ahead back to bed. Sorry I woke you."

  "S'a'll right. Good night; or whatever."

  For a wonder, he did manage to keep it quiet. By the end of his next shift he had the fake astrogate program in place, and he spent the first few minutes of mine showing me how to bypass the facade to get back to the computer. Twenty-eight hours after that, Matope and I had the rest of the props in place.

  And then there was nothing left to do but worry.

  Six hours later, it was time.

  "Kate reports all the passengers have had their sleepers," Alana reported as she came onto the bridge.

  "What's this I hear about the air-conditioning up here not working?"

  "Matope's fiddling with the electrostatic precipitators in the vents again," I told her, striving for calm. "I've got all the doors locked open, though, so you shouldn't have any problems with stuffiness."