The Alien Web (Masters of Space Book 2)

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “You know how to fix the engines.”

  “I’m an engineer. I spent most of my time tinkering, getting machines to work properly, finding glitches in electronic circuits, figuring out why the cutting lasers never worked just the way I intended.”

  “But you know how to do those things. I don’t know how to do anything. Except have fun.”

  He was not sure Lark was complaining or simply stating a fact. Or if it mattered to her at all.

  “Did you go to college?” She shook her head. “Did you want to?”

  “I suppose,” Lark answered. “But why bother when there’s nothing to gain? My daddy is so rich I could never spend a fraction of his money if I spent ten lifetimes trying.”

  “There’s more than money, more than just having fun. Do you ever get a sense of accomplishment for anything you do?”

  “Not really.”

  “When have you been the happiest?” Kinsolving asked, taking a different course to get to his point.

  “Maybe when I was with — ” She cut the words off abruptly and shook all over. “It’s hard thinking about him, but I do when I’m with you. But you’re so much different. Not like him at all.”

  “Someone you loved?” Lark nodded. Kinsolving let the matter drop. He had repair work to do on the yacht. They could not continue at this twilight illumination for long. The internal lights carried a full spectrum of radiation to maintain health, both mental and physical. For a short time, it would not matter, but over longer spans it had to.

  “What are you going to do when you reach Web?” asked Lark.

  “I’ve told you what Fremont and the others at IM are planning. I’ve got to stop them.”

  “But it’s so dangerous, Bart. And why bother? What do the aliens mean to you? I know Daddy is always saying that they’re in the way, that they hold us back from freely trading, but are they worth the risk? Really?”

  “If you don’t see anything wrong in what Fremont and the others call their Stellar Death Plan, there’s nothing I can say.”

  “It’s wrong to kill, but they’re just weird-looking and they don’t care for us. Why should we care for them?”

  Kinsolving did not answer her directly. “Intelligence, no matter what form it takes, is precious. There’s so little of it in the galaxy, at least as far as we’ve explored. The aliens might not like us because they think we’re inferior and haven’t evolved enough, but killing them off doesn’t prove we aren’t the animals they think us.”

  “So we have to fight them on every front, face to, uh, beak or antenna or whatever, to prove we’re their equal? That doesn’t sound like ‘people’ I’d ever want to know or call friends.”

  “Why not? Has mankind backed down from a challenge before? I believe we can meet and match their best, no matter whose rules we’re playing by. My professors at the university thought so, too. I remember Professor Delgado saying as much.”

  “There are some things that maybe a university shouldn’t teach,” Lark said. She pulled her arms in tightly around herself and stared at the forward vidscreen. The patterns dancing on it were those randomly generated by hyperspace and meant nothing.

  Kinsolving saw that argument would not work. He said, “I’ll fix the lighting, if I can. You want to help me?” She shook her head. He heaved a deep breath and then went to the galley to find where Cameron’s robot had started its sabotage.

  The man worked in silence. Finding the problem proved more difficult than he had thought. Whether he worked ineptly because his mind kept turning over everything Lark had said or the robot had done its work too well, he could not say. Eventually he found the almost microscopic cut through the power cable. A single strand had been severed by the robot’s boring tool.

  Once found, the break proved simple to repair. Kinsolving finished and waited. Slowly, the ship’s computer powered up the lights. In less than five minutes the yacht seemed its normal self.

  All except for Rani duLong’s body and the puddles of coolant still on the engine-room floor. Kinsolving did not ask Lark if she wanted to help with this depressing chore. He lifted Rani’s corpse and pulled it through the coolant to a vacuum locker. He levered the woman’s body into the coffin-sized glove box and sealed the lid. Through the plastic window he saw her face peering up, almost as if she would open her eyes and speak. But she was dead as surely as if Cameron had personally fired a laser or driven a knife deep into her heart.

  Kinsolving slipped his hands into the gloves and worked around the body until he found the evacuation valves mounted inside the ship’s hull. He turned them and waited until the indicator lights flashed red. Then he pulled his hands free of the gloves, flipped the toggle that powered open tiny jets inside. The atmosphere gusted into hyperspace, going wherever anything from four-space entering this peculiar realm went.

  Rani duLong lay in peace now, preserved by a vacuum harder than any generated in a planet-bound laboratory.

  Kinsolving stood and stared at her, thinking how tranquil she looked now. Life had been frantic for her — as it was for Lark — and she had lived an existence Kinsolving could not appreciate.

  Rani had drifted like a piece of spacial debris, blown wherever the protonic solar winds willed. Kinsolving could not exist with such little purpose.

  He settled down, perched against the side of the vacuum locker. Was he pursuing the problems created by the Stellar Death Plan just to give his life meaning? He had lost Ala Markken and his job and had been branded an outcast by most of society, both alien and, he imagined, human. Word would pass slowly through space and in a few years he might be forgotten, but until then he was a fugitive.

  “Tilting at windmills,” he mused. Then Kinsolving laughed. “Hell, I don’t even know what that means.”

  He slopped through the coolant, found a control pad for a service robot and tapped in orders to clean the floor. He waited until the ankle-high robot slipped from its berth in the wall and began sucking up the coolant. It made gobbling noises and whined as the thick fluid entered its storage tank, but other than this it seemed to do well. Kinsolving left it to its task. He did not think the fluid would harm anything if not tended to, but any further malfunction in the engines might heat it.

  He did not like the idea of having an engine room filled with poisonous gases.

  Kinsolving paused in front of the door leading to the spacious sleeping quarters that had been Rani duLong’s. Lark lay sprawled on the massive bed, eyes open and staring straight at the ceiling. Kinsolving glanced up; she was watching herself in a magnifying mirror. He left her to her thoughts, whatever they might be, and entered the cockpit.

  He sighed as much as the couch when he lowered himself into it. The strain had been more than he had expected. Barely escaping the lasers on Gamma Tertius, the troubles with Cameron’s hidden robots, Rani’s death — everything had drained him.

  Before he dozed off, he checked the few simple indicators on the control panel. Less than twelve hours until they reached Zeta Orgo 4.

  And then what? Barton Kinsolving was not sure he knew. He slipped off into heavy, dreamless sleep.

  Kinsolving came instantly awake when the sirens sounded. Heart pounding, he gripped the edge of the couch, ready to spring out and fight. The blinking red light on the control panel at first panicked him; he thought the engines had again failed. Then he realized that he had slept up until the instant of shift back into four-space.

  “Twelve hours,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t want to wake you. I thought you needed the sleep,” said Lark Versalles. He looked over his shoulder. She stood in the entryway, leaning heavily against the doorjamb. She had changed her clothes, probably going through Rani’s until finding something that fit. The two women had been similar enough in size — as if it mattered when most of what Lark wore was stretched skintight.

  “Just as well. It’s going to be dangerous getting landing permits. I don’t know much about Web, but I doubt if they appreciate or encourage human sightse
ers.”

  “I had the ship’s computer feed what it knew into this.” She tossed him a small data recorder. The screen had been cracked but the device seemed intact otherwise.

  “Thanks.”

  “You won’t have much trouble getting down. I’ll vouch for you. A visa for prolonged stay might be hard, though. That’s up to you.”

  Kinsolving felt a momentary loss when he understood what Lark was saying. He had assumed that she would go with him, be a part of his crusade to save the aliens from Fremont and the others who had concocted their Stellar Death Plan. But the way she spoke told him gently that she wanted no part of it.

  Why should she? This was not her fight. All he had brought her was misery and death. Her friends back at GT4, Rani, her lost luxury ship, notoriety that might make her as wanted on alien worlds as he was.

  She had, after all, rescued him from the aliens’ prison worlds. That should be enough.

  “Is there anything else aboard the von Neumann that might be of use?” he asked. “I haven’t had time to inventory the stores.”

  “There’s a can of those salty fish eggs that Rani liked to eat with her plant proteins. Imported from Earth. Everything else is pretty ordinary.”

  Kinsolving started to thank her, but the words jumbled and caught in his throat when the von Neumann slipped back into regular space. The colours twisted and turned in a mind-dazzling vortex in front of his eyes and his stomach threatened to come out his ears. Kinsolving recovered and immediately found the Zeta Orgo 4 approach control demanding clearance codes.

  The ship’s computer supplied the basic information. It did not satisfy the controllers.

  “You had better answer something fast, Bart,” the blonde told him. “Part of that data block I gave you says they have an elaborate orbital defence system. The spiders don’t like visitors. They armoured four moons and have roving killer satellites scattered throughout the system.

  Even if you get away from the planet, the satellites can be activated to lock onto the ship and hunt us down.”

  “Even through a shift?”

  Lark shook her head. Kinsolving decided that he did not want to find out if the aliens had developed a detector capable of tracking through the multidimensions of hyperspace.

  “Yacht von Neumann requesting landing for…” Kinsolving looked at Lark. Her face had been chiselled out of stone. No expression betrayed whatever emotions raged within her. Only the quick pulsing of a vein on the side of her forehead told the strain she felt.

  “Landing visa for one required,” he said. Kinsolving felt a tension flow from his muscles when he spoke. The decision had been made. Lark would be free of him and his absurd quest to keep fellow humans from killing beings who held only scorn for his kind.

  “Denied.”

  “Diplomatic mission,” he said.

  “Denied. Earth has full component of diplomats on-planet. Our weapons are trained on your ship. Do not attempt to flee.”

  The tension returned. “I am an employee of Interstellar Materials,” he lied. “We control mining rights on this world, in addition to a considerable import-export trade.” He had no idea if the latter was true, but if IM intended smuggling the brain-burner devices onto Web, some prior formal agreement had to have been transacted to hide the perfidy. From all Kinsolving had seen, sneaking to the surface of Zeta Orgo from space might be impossible.

  “Full Identification required,” came back the immediate response.

  “Supervisor Barton Kinsolving,” he said, adding his employee ident code. The distances were too great between planets for anyone from IM to have beaten him here from Gamma Tertius 4, and, as far as he knew, no device for communication without physical transfer existed between the worlds. Rumours had abounded for years that the aliens had an interstellar radio, but these were only rumours.

  If they were not, if the authorities from the prison world had notified all species of his escape, he would find himself sent back so fast that there might as well be instantaneous communication.

  “Your trade commissar knows nothing of your arrival,” came the harsh reply.

  “But yours does,” Kinsolving snapped. “Do you want me to turn around and return to headquarters? If you do, valuable trade concessions will be lost. I will make certain of that.”

  “Do so,” said the controller.

  Lark put one hand on his shoulder. His thick, heavy hand covered her more fragile one. He motioned her to silence. The controller seemed disinclined toward friendly commerce, especially with a human. Or perhaps this was only the arachnoid’s way. Kinsolving had never even seen a tri-vid of a Web native. Their psychology, their way Of conducting business, were total unknowns.

  The communicator crackled after a few minutes and the controller spoke. “Landing allowed for one human. The ship will dock and be held under the authority of the Supreme Web.”

  “The ship is shifting immediately after I disembark.” Lark’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “There is no need for servicing or other amenities.”

  “You will be blown into plasma if you attempt to flee.”

  “Send an orbital vehicle to shuttle me to the planet’s surface. The von Neumann will shift immediately.”

  “What is its destination?”

  “This is of no concern to you.”

  Lark moved closer and whispered, “Should you be so rude? Look.” She pointed to the forward vidscreen. The knobby protrusions on the two closest moons showed the heavy space artillery trained on them. One miscalculation on either side’s part and the von Neumann would be turned into a thin fog of expanding ions.

  “I’m only treating them as they’re treating me.”

  “But they have such big guns.”

  Kinsolving had no answer for that.

  Lark’s grip tightened until he thought she would draw blood with her fingernails. A sharp, bright point blossomed on the vidscreen, then grew in size. Dopplering factors showed on the bottom of the vidscreen. Whatever it was came directly for the von Neumann at high speed.

  Weapon? Shuttle? Barton Kinsolving knew of only one method to find out.

  He waited.

  CHAPTER VI

  Barton Kinsolving put the small data recorder into his pocket. He had little else to carry with him when he left the von Neumann. One quick touch to another pocket reassured him that his identicard and the card-keys he had stolen from Director Liu were safe. How often he could use them — if at all — before being tracked down by Cameron depended on his confidence and audacity.

  At the moment, he felt anything but audacious. Lark stood silent and closed, her eyes occasionally darting but never meeting his directly. Kinsolving had not thought it would be difficult leaving the woman and her mindless pursuit of pleasure.

  It turned out to be harder than he had ever believed.

  “Be careful, Bart,” she said. “It…it’s been fun. Some of it anyway.”

  “Lark.” He took her in his arms. She felt cold and stiff and stony. He released her. “I’m sorry I’ve disrupted your life so. What are you going to do now?”

  She shrugged. “I might go home for a while. I may take a quick trip to Earth and see if I can find Aron. He…he ought to be told about Rani. This is her ship, too.”

  Kinsolving did not ask what Lark would tell Aron du-Long about his sister’s death. Whatever was said, Barton Kinsolving would play a large role in the tale. And he would have still another enraged hunter on his trail.

  The aliens who tended the prison world wanted him for both escape and the crime that had put him in exile. Interstellar Materials must have Cameron seeking him out. Hamilton Fremont did not seem the sort to believe in remote-control death. He would demand proof of Kinsolving’s death. A mere “accident” in hyperspace would not satisfy the chairman of IM. Kinsolving smiled wanly. It would not satisfy any of the directors. Any group able to conceive of and begin executing a plan to wipe out an entire race had to be ruthless.

  “Tell Rani’s brother that it was
an accident, that there wasn’t anything we could do about it.” Kinsolving knew how lame and hollow this sounded. He was trying to think of something more to say when the ship shuddered slightly.

  The docking shuttle had attached itself to the magnetic ring surrounding the air lock. It was time to leave.

  “Good-bye, Bart,” Lark said.

  She turned and hurried off before he responded. The lock cycled open to reveal a strangely fragile alien inside. The creature’s space suit consisted of a large clear plastic bubble with four protruding gloves, each containing a hairy leg. The spider head with its parody of a human face rocked from side to side. Kinsolving interpreted this as impatience. He quickly donned a suit from the rack beside the lock; this one proved even smaller than the suit he had worn when repairing the coolant coils.

  Kinsolving rocked forward in an awkward gait and pressed past the spider being and into the shuttle. He looked around and saw nothing resembling an acceleration couch. The arachnoid lifted one leg and pointed to rings fastened in the deck plates.

  It took several seconds before Kinsolving realized that he was supposed to lie down and grip the rings. The spider lumbered back and locked all four free legs through metal rings. Within the confines of its bubble, the spider held a remote controller in curiously tiny pink-fingered hands that appeared from a flap on its underside.

  The airlock cycled shut. The decks quivered with power. The shuttle jerked free of the von Neumann and started down to the planetary surface. Kinsolving marvelled at the differences in approach to transferring passengers from orbit to the planet. No human world used unpressurized shuttles. The inhabitants of Zeta Orgo 4 seemed to find nothing wrong with keeping both pilot and passenger in hard vacuum for the trip’s duration.

  Kinsolving lifted his chin and toggled the suit radio. “How long until we ground?” he asked.

  For a few seconds he thought the spider had not heard him or did not understand. Kinsolving started to repeat when the arachnoid said, “No talking. Distracts pilot.”

  A surge pressed Kinsolving flat. He struggled to keep from blacking out under the intense acceleration. As suddenly as it had come, the weight left his chest. Only a frantic grabbing of the rings kept him from floating free. Then came the deceleration.