“Say again?”
“I say it’s a god-damned ship from Pluto with the god-damned old Autocrat himself along for the ride.”
“Autocrat? Ceres Autocrat? The Big Cold Fish himself?” None too surprisingly, the Naked Purple movement had never gotten along well with the Autocrat of Ceres.
“Stand by, Wind. Yeah, you bet. Got him on the viddy now, wriggling on the slab with his gills flapping.”
“He sick? Hurt?” Windbag asked, suddenly alarmed. No one wanted to be the guy in charge when the Autocrat keeled over. His followers might take a dim view.
“Huh? Naw, he’s okay. But he’s sure a Fish outta water. Who’s gonna do what he says here?”
“Ah. Oh. Got it.” Sometimes Purpspeak was a bit too colourful.
But a ship from Pluto, from Solar Area? How could that be? What did it mean?
Well, one thing fershure. Had to talk to these people.
Gerald MacDougal stood by the entrance to the lock, and nothing in the Universe mattered but the fact that the lock was about to open. Marcia. Here. Now. Alive.
Shattered Spheres and invisible objects that killed SCORES and wormhole transits to habs full of lunatics. None of it was of the least importance. Marcia. Here.
It was impossible, it couldn’t be true, and it was happening. Five years and more since he had last seen her, since he had touched her. Five years since the Charonians had torn them apart—and now the Autarch of Ceres and NaPurHab were bringing them together. It made no sense at all, but that didn’t matter either.
The airlock hatch swung partway open, and then paused for a moment. Gerald stepped forward, his heart slamming in his chest.
And then the hatch swung clear, and she stepped through.
Marcia. Here.
They were in each other’s arms before either of them knew it. His body remembered the feel of her close and warm against him, and some part of himself that had been lost for far too long was suddenly there again. He breathed in the smell of her hair, wrapped his arms around her and held her. Never again. Never again would they be separated.
They let go of each other just enough so that they could take that quarter step back to look in each other’s eyes, and he knew that he was seeing what she saw. An age line or two, a grey hair that had not been there before—but none of that mattered either. The last five years had not happened. They had always been together, and they always would be.
She reached her hand up and caressed the side of his face, pulled him close, and they kissed.
They drew back again, after a time, and looked at each other again. “Hello, Gerald,” Marcia said, her voice warm and low. “Did you miss me?”
◊ ◊ ◊
Sianna Colette sat and listened, sat and watched, as the meeting lumbered on. There he was. That was him. Larry Chao, the man, the monster, the ogre who had caused the Abduction. She—or at least her subconscious— had been expecting someone nine feet tall with fangs. But not a man, a rather ordinary, shy, gentle-looking man with dark hair and a haunted look in his eyes.
But there were other matters in hand. “There is no doubt in my mind at all,” Chao was saying. “The object that Miss Colette and Mr. Sturgis have been tracking is the Adversary, the danger that terrifies the Sphere that holds Earth captive. The danger that could kill Earth and everything on it. The Multisystem Sphere will not hesitate to throw Earth at the Adversary in order to kill it.”
“How canbe that?” Eyeball said. “Can’t quite believe it’d take Earth-smash to clobber that thing. Wally, Adversary is what size, tops?”
“No way to know,” Wally said. “My really rough guess is that it is about the size of a very small asteroid. Say, less than a kilometre across. Maybe a lot less.”
“How massive is it?” Captain Steiger asked.
“Well,” Wally said, “We’ve tracked a bunch of debris within orbits perturbed by near passes of the Adversary. We can work from there directly into a computation of its gravitation, and thus its mass. It comes out to something on the order of a lunar mass.”
“It weighs as much as the Moon and it’s too small to see?” Steiger asked.
Wally shrugged and smiled. “Strange matter is pretty strange,” he said.
“There is not much funny about this, Sturgis,” Steiger said. “A mass the size of the Moon striking the Earth is not a joking matter.”
“But would it even work?” MacDougal asked. “I mean, would it kill the Adversary? It seems to me that this Adversary has taken a lot of punishment.”
“Should work great,” Eyeball said. “Charos accelerate Earth to high-nuff speed, you bet. Force equal mass times acceleration. Big enough mass, enuff accel, no prob.”
“Nuff to zap strange matter?” the Windbag asked. “Turn it to normal matter or mebbe energy? E-equals-MC-square it?”
E = MC2. That phrase tickled something in Sianna’s memory. Not the formula itself. But sometime, somewhere, when someone had said it. What had it been about? Suddenly this meeting seemed very familiar, as if she had been through all this before. Some other meeting, or bull session, or whatever, when someone had not been believed and that equation had come up in conversation.
“Don’t think so,” Eyeball was saying. “But you can kill me without turning my body into energy pulse. High-speed impact with Earth oughta benuff to break bonds between strange atoms, reduce Adversary to thin cloud of by-themself atoms. Kill it bigtime.”
“Sides, if it don’t work, Earth death anyho,” the Windbag pointed out. “Adversary kills Sphere, Earth loses orbit, and whammo.”
“That’s getting just a bit off the point, isn’t it?” Steiger said. “I really don’t care how Earth would die. I don’t want Earth to die in the first place.”
“Which brings us,” the Autocrat said, “back, once again, to the question of alternatives. Is there anything we can do?”
“How about wrecking the wormhole?” Sondra Berghoff asked. “We could blow up the Ring around the black hole so it couldn’t be used to tune and amplify the wormhole signal.”
Gerald MacDougal shook his head. “If that would do any good,” he said, “then the Charonians would have done it long ago.”
“The Ring’s dormant anyway,” Sianna said. “We can detect a few trace signals to show it could be activated, but it didn’t power up at all when the SCOREs or our ships came through. The other side provided all the power and control.” Something in her own words teased at the idea in the back of her head. Dormant. Not dead. Dormant.
“And presumably the Adversary would do the honors for its own transit,” Captain Steiger said. “Besides, I don’t know that we could rig up powerful enough bombs to be sure of destroying the ring—and the SCOREs on guard duty around the wormhole aperture would take out our missiles anyway.”
“How about some sort of particle beam at the Adversary?” MacDougal suggested. “Something with enough directed energy to do some damage. Maybe induce the strange matter to reform into normal matter.”
“Sure, no problem, if we had a twenty-year research schedule and an unlimited budget and a hell of a lot of luck,” Steiger replied. “Besides, none of us are particle physicists. Where would we even begin?”
“Could we be diverting?” Eyeball asked.
The Autocrat frowned and turned to look at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Divert it. Shunt the Adversary some other way ‘sides through the wormhole?”
Yes. Yes. That was it. Or at least it was close. Sianna looked from one face to the next. One more hint, one more notion from the outside, and she would have it. She knew she would.
“How?” the Autocrat asked.
Sianna looked hard at Eyeball, willing her to give an answer that would set free the idea Sianna was trying to have.
Eyeball shrugged. “Dunno.”
Oh, hell. No joy there. All illusion anyway. There was no idea— just the wish for one, so strong it made her think she was really close to something.
“Could we divert to the Solar System?” t
he Autocrat asked. “Find some way to retune the wormhole so the Adversary came out there instead of the Multisystem?”
There was a moment’s shocked silence, no one quite sure what to say. But then Eyeballer Maximus Lock-on found words. “You cold fish or loonie? Set that thing loose in Solar Area? How many it kill there?”
“I see no reason for it to kill anyone at all in the Solar System,” the Autocrat said, rather primly. The Purps obviously irritated him deeply. For some reason, their determination to call it the Solar Area seemed to be the thing that grated most on him. “It is in search of the sort of energy source the Charonians’ Spheres contain. There is no such there.”
“But what’s to stop the Adversary from using the Ring of Charon or the Lunar Wheel and the Earthpoint Singularity to link back to the Multisystem?” Sondra asked. “It knows where the Multisystem is now, and it doesn’t seem like the sort to give up easy.”
“And it’s awfully optimistic to assume it would do no damage in the Solar System. How do we know that it wouldn’t decide it could dine on the Sun in a pinch? Suppose you’re wrong?” Captain Steiger asked.
“Then many people might well die, including many of my own citizens—but far fewer than if the Earth were destroyed. But let me ask again. Do we have the capacity to change the coordinates on the wormhole aperture, and send the Adversary to some other location?”
“Well, yes, I suppose,” Sondra Berghoff said. “We can’t shut it off altogether, but we might be able to change the settings—but only to a valid tuning. And the only tuning we know is the Ring of Charon.”
“With all due respect,” Gerald MacDougal said, “that’s not a solution. It’s gambling with mass murder. Suppose we divert the Adversary to the Solar System and it wreaks havoc there, and then it heads for the Multisystem. Your solution might result in the last surviving humans being those of us here in the Shattered Sphere system.”
The Autocrat’s face grew stern and angry, and he nodded rather curtly. “Your points are all well taken. But these are desperate times, and we may well be forced to make desperate choices. I will withdraw my suggestion—for now.”
There was silence again in the room, and the definite feel of tension rising. Tempers were starting to fray.
“I still have trouble believing in the damned Adversary,” Steiger said, in a tone of voice that suggested she was speaking as much to change the subject as anything else. “Is there any chance that we’ve got this wrong? That there’s something else going on? Something we’ve missed?”
Sondra Berghoff shook her head. “Not that I can see. Believe me, I want to be wrong. Up until we got here and heard about this invisible object smashing SCOREs to dust, we didn’t have any direct proof besides the data Larry got out of the Lunar Wheel. But everything here corroborates those images.”
“But the idea that it would take impact with a planet to stop something that small. How could that be?”
“How could something that small kill a whole Sphere system?” Sondra replied. “But it did. Look around you.”
“But that’s not proof—”
“Please! Please!” the Autocrat called out. “Come now, we have covered all this, and time is short. We can’t spend time going around and around in circles.”
And that was it. Good God, that was it. Sianna sat stock still, holding her breath, working it through. Yes. It would work. Right now, if they started this minute. Everything they needed had come together. It would not have been possible before the Terra Nova and the Autarch arrived, and it would be too late all too soon. But now. Now the tide was at its crest. It could be done.
She stopped listening to the conversation and grabbed Wally by the arm, digging her fingers deep in. “Wally,” she whispered, leaning in close to him. “Around in circles,” she said. “We can send it around in circles.”
Wally turned and looked at her, clearly puzzled. But then it clicked. She could see it in his eyes, the way his eyebrows twitched. “Yeah,” he whispered back. He thought for a minute, and then frowned. “At least I think we could. Maybe. There’s a lot we’d have to—”
“Mr. Sturgis. Miss Colette. Is there something you’d like to contribute to the discussion?” the Autocrat said, cutting into their private conversation in the classic, sarcastic tones of a pompous teacher chiding an unruly student.
Sianna looked up at him, and opened her mouth, but the words jammed up in her throat. Every trip to the principal’s office, every social and scholastic disaster of her childhood suddenly flashed through Sianna’s mind all over again. She swallowed hard and wished she could just slide under the table. It was absurd. She had a good idea—a wonderful idea. But the Autocrat’s sarcasm had her rooted to the spot, as helpless as a jacklighted deer in a hunter’s sights.
Fortunately, however, Wally wasn’t much for noticing sarcasm. He grinned and nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I think we’ve got plenty.”
chapter 32: Once Around
Hotspur:… I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pick this flower, safety.
—Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I
Terra Nova
Docked to NaPurHab
THE SHATTERED SPHERE SYSTEM
Dianne Steiger turned and grinned at Sianna and Wally as they hustled through the accessway and came aboard. Marcia MacDougal and Larry Chao came through the hatch right behind them. “Welcome to the Terra Nova. Take a good look around,” she said.
Sianna nodded nervously. “It’s funny. I’d almost forgotten this was where we were going in the first place. I guess we finally got here,” she said. “Even if we aren’t going to stay long.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Gerald MacDougal. “We can’t afford any delays. Speaking of which—” He turned and slapped down an intercom panel. “This is the executive officer. All personnel and cargo now aboard. Cast off at will. All hands to manoeuvring stations.”
Sianna followed the others out of the airlock complex, moving hand over hand through zero gee. They came to what was clearly a main passageway running the length of the ship and stopped.
Gerald turned toward Captain Steiger. “I might not see you again until it’s over,” he said. “Good luck.” He raised his hand and offered her a salute. Salutes had to be rare on this ship, after five years of day-to-day living. Much as Steiger and MacDougal were trying to pretend otherwise, this was a special occasion indeed.
Steiger returned the salute. “Wish I could join the party,” she said.
“Should have thought of that before you let them make you captain,” Gerald said, smiling.
“Guess so,” Steiger said, her face set and determined. “Good luck, Gerald.”
“Good luck, Captain.” MacDougal turned toward Sianna and the others. “All right then,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
The five of them—Gerald, Marcia, Larry, Wally, and Sianna— headed toward the aft end of the ship as Steiger went forward. Gerald MacDougal set a stiff pace, moving along on the handholds. Sianna had a bit of a time keeping up, and Wally, who was not exactly in the best of shape, was flat out of breath almost immediately. Too bad, Sianna thought. No time left to lose. Not if there was going to be a hope in hell of pulling this off.
MacDougal led them into the hangar bay, a huge compartment filled with landers that had been meant to touch down on whatever worlds Terra Nova found at the end of her voyage to Alpha Centauri. But today, the biggest craft was being put to a somewhat different use.
“We’ve hardly used any of the auxiliary craft in all this time,” MacDougal said. “Not much point, when the COREs would have smashed any lander that got near a planet.”
“Maybe that’s all about to change,” Sianna said. “If this works, and we make it—then we ought to have learned enough to call off the COREs.”
“And the ways shall be open to us,” Gerald said. “Maybe. We’re not there yet. Come on. We’re on that boat over there, the biggest lander we have.”
“What’s her name?” Larry asked.<
br />
A shadow crossed MacDougal’s face for a moment, but his voice was calm as he answered. “She used to be the Scott,” he said, “but we rechristened her this morning. Now she’s the Hijacker II.”
Wally was looking up at the lander, and hadn’t noticed MacDougal’s reaction. “Hijacker?” he asked. “Strange name.”
“I’ll explain some other time,” MacDougal said. “Come on, everyone else should already be on board. We’d better join them.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Two hours later, the Terra Nova was well away from NaPurHab and, her main engines having fired, was heading down toward a low polar orbit of Solitude. Dianne Steiger watched the view from the exterior hull cameras as the outer doors of the hangar deck opened and the newly christened Hijacker II moved out into space.
It was a good name, a proper name, for a ship about to be dispatched on much the same mission as the first Hijacker— on a somewhat larger scale, of course, but even so.
The Terra Nova moved in on Solitude, closer than she had been to any planet in all the long, lonely years since she had boosted out of Earth orbit. This was her moment, her time. This was the day for which the Terra Nova and her crew would be remembered—if there were any left alive to remember.
The Hijacker II cleared the hangar, drifted away from the ship, and lit her engines. They were on their way.
NaPurHab
Sondra Berghoff set the last of the controls. There. That should do it. She pushed a button to send the first-level wake-up command to the dormant ring that had once controlled the wormhole link to the Multisystem. Thank heavens this ring had been built—or bred—to accept straight radio signals. If it had only taken gravitic commands, they would have had a much tougher job on their hands.
She watched her sensor board, looking for signs that the signal had been received and accepted. It would take a few seconds for the signal to cross the distance to the ring, and for the ring to process the signal and respond.
Focusing on the sensors, she could try to ignore the latest dustup at the far end of the compartment. Eyeball and the Autocrat made an odd pair—one could not even imagine using the word couple—to put it mildly. The absolute symbol of authority, and the absolute rebel. They shouldn’t have been in the same compartment together, even with a referee. Sondra briefly considered shooing the Autocrat out and letting Eyeball and herself get on with it—but no. The Autocrat had every right to see the last act of what he had helped to set in motion.
Hunted Earth Omnibus Page 86
