The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  “Find a lead and keep moving.”

  “He started ’bout when we did. Moving. Running?”

  “No. Not away from something, anyway, certainly not from us. He doesn’t even know we’re after him. Look at the pattern of his contacts. On Nestor he bought a corvette. With its teeth pulled; but there was the arms operation at home, the one I thought shut down a year ago. He made that buy. Look at what he bought. Heavy stuff. He’s arming that ’vette for big game. Then Carrollis—that Prissy brokered more than blood. He’s moving in on something.”

  She sat down on the edge of his bed and said unhappily, “New. Don’t like new.”

  “Not so new. He’s had armed craft before. And used the arms,” Michael said, and there was another wrench in his stomach.

  “Not here.” Her eyes slanted up and she waited for the effect.

  But the answer was calm. “Not here. Nobody knows him here—at least, the Polity doesn’t, not Fleet, not I&S. He can go anywhere. Nobody looks twice. He wants to keep it that way. Why guns? What’s he going after? So maybe he’s getting ready to head out.”

  “Better catch up quick.”

  “Right.”

  “’Cause if he goes we lose him. Couple years at least.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Got this kid.”

  “I know. It’s a day yet to Valentine. We’ll think of something.”

  “Strays,” Shen said on her way out.

  “What?”

  “You got another stray.”

  Michael smiled. When Shen was gone he stopped smiling, not because of anything she had said but because the aftermath of desire had left him hollow. The trouble with a dream. He sat down and thought about it carefully. The trouble with a dream was that it had everything you wanted, promise and fulfillment at the same time. When you were awake there was the promise, or you thought it was there; then fulfillment was elusive. Not the women’s fault. They thought you promised something, too. Do you know what you want? What is the promise you think you hear?

  The Far-Flying Bird orbited Luna. Hanna had been aboard her many times, but she never approached the Bird without feeling the pleasure first sight had given her.

  An Interworld Fleet harbor jockey took her from Earth to the Bird, so she had nothing to do but watch the glorious silver sight come closer. The Bird was long and slender and carried what appeared to be folded-back wings like those of a diving water bird. The “wings” harbored the Bird’s mechanical and Inspace-analog systems, and they had an arrogant curve to them, a daring arch that challenged space. They were in no sense functional wings. The Bird had never entered atmosphere, and her designers might have housed her guts in a thousand different ways. But the Uskosians, so far as Hanna had been able to ascertain, made nothing without making it beautiful; not consciously or deliberately, but carelessly, easily, without thinking much about it.

  Presently the shuttle she rode docked at the junction of wing and body. When she stepped off the shuttle, she walked into a world where it was a little hot and she weighed just a little more than on worlds the human race had claimed. The walls were curved and colored so that the self-contained environment of the Bird offered an infinite selection of vistas. That was intentional. Rubee and Awnlee had been in space for three Standard years.

  Starr Jameson waited for her by appointment in a room designed (she had been told) to lift the spirits. It was an eruption of color and had many odd angles she liked. She heard voices far away, filtering through the air with a distant sound, as if they came from another star. They were human voices piped through the Far-Flying Bird’s internal communications system.

  “What is that?” she said. “What are they saying?”

  “It’s a check of the navigational computer seals,” Jameson said.

  She frowned at him. “Why?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said.

  She tried to pick out a comfortable-looking seat, but none looked better than another. The Bird was supposed to get some human-contoured furnishings before it departed with Hanna on board. She gave up and fitted herself as well as she could into a boxlike affair that had bumps in the wrong places. Jameson was standing. Hanna said, “Does Rubee know about this?”

  “Not yet…” He looked around and chose a seat for himself, easing into it gingerly. The apprehension that had grown on Hanna all the way from Willow bit at her.

  “Something has gone wrong,” she said, and it was not a question but the words for what she felt in him.

  “Maybe.”

  “What is it?” But he did not answer at once, and she said, “We came very quickly, and disrupted the official schedule dreadfully. Rubee and Awnlee don’t like to do anything quickly—at least, Rubee doesn’t. While we were coming here, they learned from my thought that I was worried. They’re puzzled and unhappy and I couldn’t explain. Because I didn’t even know what I have to worry about.”

  “You will be able to explain when we have finished talking. I think you will like it even less than they will.”

  He told her in a few words what he had told Edward Vickery. She listened in bewilderment to the strange story: an informant, some suspicions, a name. “It is clear,” Jameson said at the end of his recital, “that if the Bird’s course program has been or will be pirated, someone within the project, someone who has been bribed, must be responsible. I tried to obtain authorization for probing all project personnel; of course I could not get it, but I thought that if I followed that with a request for probes of half a dozen key persons, the lesser demand might be met. It was not. There are political complications…So we must think of another way to protect the Bird. Changing the program is a logical solution. Rubee and Awnlee are highly skilled in trailblazing, in navigating unknown space. You are trained in the equivalent human techniques. It seems to me that the three of you could develop an alternate if less direct course. I want you to explain the situation to Rubee and Awnlee, and persuade them to do this.”

  Hanna looked at him in silence. What he said meant—and he knew it—the difference between a journey of weeks and one of years. Each Jump of an interstellar voyage required days of calculation, sometimes weeks—if it were the first-ever leap between one point and another. Charting a new course was a different matter from following, in reverse, an established path. And Rubee was determined to come home on a date already fixed in his mind.

  “They will not change it,” Hanna said.

  “Oh, but they must,” he said.

  “They know the difficulties of making contact in deep space, when one vessel does not want to make it, as well as you and I do. It’s a hard thing to take seriously.”

  “I have a feeling about it,” Jameson said, and Hanna blinked. She had never heard him say anything of the kind before.

  “That’s my specialty,” she said. “Premonitions, hunches—what’s got into you?”

  He took the question literally. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Well—start from the beginning. What’s the beginning?”

  He leaned back in the awkward chair cautiously, folding his hands and looking past Hanna as if he picked a pattern from obscure details and saw it clearly regardless of where his eyes rested. The ability was part of his genius. He also was exceedingly clever in the manipulation of human beings, and his will was potent. He did not respond to the anti-senescence procedures in universal use, and age had come upon him prematurely. The dark hair had grayed since Hanna’s first meeting with him, and a network of lines encroached on the hooded gray-green eyes; but they emphasized the strength locked in the bones of his face. The big body was strong and desirable as ever, the presence as self-contained. Even now a well-remembered movement could take Hanna by surprise, so that she would look at the powerful hands, their touch once intimately familiar, and feel her knees weaken. She had seen him so often as he was now that her heart tore a little though five years had passed since the day he told her they were not suitable for one another.

  She gave no sign of the mov
ement in her chest. She had learned from him how to conceal what she felt. She had learned a great deal from him.

  “An Intelligence and Security undercover agent on Valentine was the beginning,” he said. “This man or woman—I don’t know which, I don’t have a name, I don’t want one—has an informant— You’ve been to Valentine. How much do you know about it?”

  “What everybody knows. You can get anything you want there. About all you can’t do is kill somebody, because that discourages the vacationers.”

  “True, as far as it goes. But the salient point is that Valentine is concerned only with wealth. If you wish to transfer cash or credit to Valentine, no one will ask how you got it. If you get an illegal fortune elsewhere and can get it away, you can safely take it to Valentine. Occasionally—rarely—the authorities of Valentine will turn over an individual to the law enforcement agencies of another world; almost always a person known to be violent, with no appreciable wealth. But in general it is a safe place for men and women who would not be tolerated in a decent society. Consequently all the law enforcement agencies of the Polity are interested in Valentine, and so is I&S, which shares information with the domestic agencies. This is no secret, although you might not have known it.”

  “I didn’t…” She had been very young when she visited Valentine. Every amusement known to humankind was there, wholesome or not. Not all her pleasures had been those “tolerated in a decent society.”

  “That’s where the informant comes in. He, or she, told the agent, for a price, that—I quote—‘somebody knows where the Bird will fly.’ This seemed to be the extent of the informant’s knowledge. He confirmed—I say ‘he’ for convenience—that he was indeed talking about the Uskosian vessel, and specifically about its detailed course program. So,” Jameson said, coming back abruptly to the present, “the course must be changed.”

  “Couldn’t he find out more?”

  “Could not or would not. He was encouraged to do so. He has not been heard of since, although he was promised a rich reward. Or perhaps he tried, and asked too many questions. More murder is done on Valentine than comes to light.”

  “You said I&S suspects someone—what about him?”

  “Michael Kristofik? He disappeared from Valentine three weeks ago; another cause for concern. And he is protected, Hanna. He is very wealthy, and has become respected on Valentine, as such things go. He has been politely, adamantly sheltered. He is quite safe on Valentine—though he has not dared to set foot on a Polity world for fifteen years—not since his connection with the Pavonis Queen affair was discovered.”

  “What was that?—I never heard of it.”

  “It began the same way,” he said. “With a pirated program…”

  He was silent for a moment. She saw him gather and pattern the threads of the story. Then he said, “The course was taken by a man named Ivo Tonson. He was a high official of the Polity, a member of the Exchange Committee. He had arranged all the details of the Queen’s mission. That was to pick up from many worlds an enormous quantity of currencies of all sorts given up by governments, banking organizations, merchants based everywhere, in trade for equal value in the credit networks of the Polity. Nothing wrong with the money, though. No, it was spendable. No doubt some of it circulates still…I must talk with the inspection team.”

  There was a reader near his hand. He picked it up and scrolled through the index. When he had found what he wanted he held it out to her. She got up, moving carefully because she was suddenly aware of the extra weight the Bird seemed to have piled on her shoulders. When she took the reader it was unexpectedly heavy, too, and she nearly dropped it.

  “What is this?” she said.

  “An eyewitness account of what happened. It is the report of the chief of security on the Pavonis Queen.”

  “He survived it, then?”

  “She did. All of them did, except one of the attackers Study it carefully.”

  He got up, too. She did not look up at him; she looked at the reader in her hand. She said, “What am I supposed to learn from it?”

  “Whatever you can,” he said.

  * * *

  The first page the reader showed was an unintelligible mix of file codes. When Hanna tried to go on to the next, nothing happened; then the reader began talking. A woman’s voice came out of it, cold, methodical, untouched by the twenty years that had passed since the statement was recorded. Hanna put the reader on a chair and settled on the floor in front of it. The voice said:

  “My name is Honoria Hood. I have the rank of commander in the Interworld Fleet, and I am a specialist in the transport of sensitive materials. On ST July 21, 2822, I was assigned chief of the Interworld Fleet security team ordered to accompany the merchant Pavonis Queen, a civilian vessel which was under contract to the Coordinating Commission of the Interworld Polity for a one-time mission involving the transfer of negotiable currency.

  “The mission schedule called for the Pavonis Queen to leave the Terrestrial stellar system on September 20, 2822, and to return to her point of departure on or about January 27, 2823. All security arrangements were approved and in place before the Pavonis Queen departed Earth. The vessel carried a civilian crew of twenty-six and a security force of ten. The Pavonis Queen was unarmed, but warships of the Interworld Fleet were to meet her at each berth and remain in sentry position for the duration of each stop on the itinerary. Precautionary measures were concentrated at all times on the Pavonis Queen’s ports of call.

  “The itinerary of the Queen included Nestor, Lancaster, and D’neera, along with twelve lesser settlements. The last port before the Pavonis Queen returned to Earth was Alta. We left Alta on January 4, slightly ahead of schedule. The final leg of the journey was Common Route Gamma between Alta and Earth. This route uses one hundred twenty Jumps, and for a ship of the Pavonis Queen’s class the usual time in transit is five-point-five to six-point-five days.

  “The Pavonis Queen completed Jump Number Fifty-five at oh-two-hundred hours on January 6. At approximately oh-three-hundred hours I was awakened by First Officer Philip Seal, who told me that upon completing Jump Number Fifty-five the Pavonis Queen had picked up a mayday from a vessel identifying itself as the freighter Pastorale out of Colony One. I met on the bridge with Mr. Seal and Captain Karsh. At that time we were in position near Relay Number 18.09.232, through which the mayday was being transmitted. The Pastorale’s reported position was also in the vicinity of the relay. According to the mayday, a reactor malfunction had rendered the Pastorale unfit for habitation, and the crew had abandoned ship in lifeboats. Of the crew of fifteen, five men were said to be suffering acute radiation poisoning, and rescue was urgently needed.

  “After discussions with Captain Karsh and Mr. Seal, I approved their request to proceed to the aid of the Pastorale. I made the decision at oh-four-thirty hours after discussions with Colony One, Intelligence and Security, and my Fleet superiors. My opinion of the authenticity of the mayday and the minimal security risk involved was based on the following facts as they were reported to me. One, the owners of the Pastorale had reported her out of contact twenty-two hours previously. Two, search efforts already were underway—not at Jump Number Fifty-five, however, but at Jump Number Sixty-one, her last reported position. Three, the Pavonis Queen was three hours away from the point of contact, whereas all other vessels were no less than ten hours away. Four, the reported condition of the ill crewmen made early rendezvous essential. These are the reasons I agreed to Captain Karsh’s request to undertake the rescue, with the approval of my superiors.

  “We made audio contact with the Pastorale at once. A transcript of Captain Karsh’s and Mr. Seal’s communications with the presumed captain of the Pastorale is available. They were marked by the highest degree of tension on the part of the presumed Captain Weng. We were told that the sickest of the crewmen was aboard Captain Weng’s lifeboat, and background sounds bore this out. Crewman Durand was said to be—well, never mind. They had invented a history for this
imaginary man. It’s still hard to believe there isn’t a Crewman Durand with a sick mother and a very young wife. It was impossible not to be concerned about him. This was meant to keep our attention engaged, and it worked.

  “Visual contact with the supposed Pastorale followed at oh-eight-hundred hours. It was definitely radioactive. There were three lifeboats, each said to have one or more toxic patients aboard, and Captain Karsh ordered all three to be onloaded at once. The men in them did not come out immediately, even when the docking bay was fully pressurized and all the Pavonis Queen’s people were waiting, with the medics at the front. I believe they had a scanner and were studying the dispersal of the persons aboard the Pavonis Queen. Everyone was in the docking area except myself, Captain Karsh, and Communications Officer Alves on the bridge; two persons in the engineering section; and two members of the security team, who were standing their regular watch at the internal entry to the cargo hold. Three members of the security team were on standby in the docking bay staging area, with a clear view of the bay itself. The others were inside with the Pavonis Queen’s crew, having reported to offer assistance.

  “After approximately two minutes, the men inside the supposed lifeboats attacked without warning. A large quantity of sleepygas was released from all three vessels. None of the persons in the docking bay escaped; all were unconscious in less than half a minute. Simultaneously with the release of the gas, the personnel in the vessel nearest the hull fired on the inner pressure seal of the Pavonis Queen’s docking bay, damaging but not disabling it. The attackers threatened to vaporize the inner and outer seals, which would have resulted in the deaths of all the sleepygas victims, if the guards in the staging area did not lay down their arms. I ordered them to comply. Immediately upon entering the bay, they also were overcome by gas. At that time the attackers finally emerged from the lifeboats. There were four of them; I do not know if others remained inside the vessels. They were dressed in utility spacesuits, so no physical description of them is available, and by sight they were indistinguishable. There were now only seven able-bodied persons free to defend the cargo—myself, Captain Karsh, Mr. Alves, the guards by the cargo hold, and two members of the engineering staff. I advised the civilians to remain where they were, although I am told that Captain Karsh later disregarded my order and was stunned for his trouble. Note that the attackers did not at any time use lethal weapons, only sleepygas and, later, stunners.