by A. C. Ellis
She reached the hatch, stepped through, and the assault on her senses tripled in intensity. She was literally knocked back into the floater’s passenger cabin by its force. It took nearly a quarter minute for her to regain her composure. When she finally did, she realized the passengers behind her had pushed past.
Stepping out into the corridor, she scanned it for the fat, bearded man. He was gone. The other two civilians were just disappearing around a bend in the corridor to her left, and the fat man was not with them.
She had lost him. Now he could be anywhere, waiting beyond any turn, crouching in any shadow.
Cursing under her breath, she turned and headed for the luggage claim area. She had handled it poorly—like a rank amateur. She should have followed him, turning hunter into hunted.
But it was too late. All she could do now was collect her luggage, then head for the Survey Service compound on the far side of Luna City.
Chapter Seven
Less than half an hour after the floater docked, Susan checked in at the Survey Service duty desk and was assigned a small transient apartment outside the compound. The apartment’s furniture was worn and the small desk was fashioned of metal rather than wood, but the quarters were more than adequate.
As she entered, the phone chimed and a soft electronic voice spoke: “Two script messages for Captain Susan Tanner. Two script messages for Captain Susan Tann…”
“Display them,” she said, putting her luggage down and turning toward where the lens cluster should have been. It was then she noticed that the screen was two-dimensional. The device was not a holo-phone.
Instantly, the first message appeared, glowing phosphor letters on the flat screen.
TO: SUSAN TANNER, CAPTAIN, FEDERATION FLEET
FROM: BILL DARCY, MAYOR, LUNA CITY
TEXT: WELCOME BACK TO LUNA CITY, SUSAN. I’M TAKING YOU TO DINNER TONIGHT, THEN TO THE BALLET, AND I WON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER. I’LL PICK YOU UP AT 1830.
END SCRIPT-MESSAGE
It would be good to see Bill again. She hadn’t seen him since her last visit to Luna City, nearly four years ago. They had met more than twenty years before, when both Bill and his two-year-older brother, Sam, had been in Susan’s class at the Fleet Academy. Both men had resigned their commissions after the mandatory six year commitment, and had spent almost eight years as freelance miners in the asteroids. For the past six years both had been pursuing careers in Luna City politics.
But there was something wrong with that message—a glaring error in the From line. Sam Darcy, Bill’s older brother, was mayor of Luna City. Bill was a city councilman.
The other message was from Fredrik Hyatt’s office. Its text line read simply: REPORT TO CONFERENCE ROOM A-12 AT 1400 FOR BRIEFING. A map of the Survey Service facility accompanied it, the route from Susan’s apartment to the conference room traced in flashing phosphor.
Susan checked her wrist chronometer. It read 1337. She memorized the route, then quickly unpacked and left the apartment. On her way out she checked the door’s spore-lock. It seemed to be working.
Although Luna City was completely civilian owned and operated, it was in many ways quite similar to Fleet Base—particularly the Survey Service facility responsible for the city’s existence. The arid harshness of the lunar environment dictated a necessary compactness and leanness in both cases. From air and food to bedding and books, nothing was wasted.
Even the conference room to which Susan’s briefing had been assigned did double duty as an after-hours recreation room specializing in cards, dominoes, and board games. So said the hand-painted sign beside the door. A Survey Service corporal stood on the other side of the door, a blaster rifle held diagonally across his body.
Susan stepped to the door as she pulled her LIN/C from its pouch. She placed the card into the appropriate slot beside the corporal’s position, and the door irised open. The corporal nodded her through.
Her breath caught in her lungs. On the other side of a gray metal conference table, dressed in Survey Service blue, sat Karl Alterman.
Her gaze slid away from him, but not before she noticed he had changed very little since Aldebaran. As always, he was her physical match—tall and muscular— but now there was a little less set to his jaw, a bit more weight on his frame, a touch more gray in his hair. Still, he looked good, and Susan felt the animal maleness that had attracted her so many years ago.
Finally she worked up sufficient nerve to look into his light blue eyes. Nothing. She had hoped to see the love they had shared ten years ago, but it wasn’t there.
For an instant, she thought she saw another image superimposed over Karl’s. His body appeared disfigured, his uniform burnt and blackened, the skin beneath charred in spots to the bone. His face, too, was disfigured, bloated in some places and scorched to the skull in others. His eyes were gone, the sockets dark, wet pits.
The snowflake pattern filled her mind, driving the nightmare image from her thoughts. Involuntarily, she began mumbling the mantra.
“Are you all right?” Karl asked, snapping Susan’s thoughts back to reality.
“I’m fine,” she said, realizing that, in fact, she was fine. But what had that been? Why had she seen that horrible apparition?
Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the room. The door irised closed behind her as Karl motioned her to a chair across the table from him, and she sat.
She wished she could leave; she wasn’t ready for this. She knew she might never be ready for it.
“Susan,” he said, without emotion. “It’s been a long time.”
“It’s been nearly ten years,” she said, noting the hardness in her own voice. “And in all that time, you didn’t even try to see me…not once.”
Karl shrugged. “You had your life, and I had mine.”
“You still blame me for Aldebaran, don’t you? You blame me for all those deaths.”
“No, I don’t—not any longer. You did what had to be done.”
Again she stared into his eyes, hoping to see at least a hint of the love she had once known. But still she saw nothing.
“It can never be the same between us, can it?” she asked.
“No. You’re not the same woman you were ten years ago. And I guess I’ve changed, too.”
They were silent for a few seconds. When Susan finally spoke, it was with reluctance.
“How long have you been with the Survey Service?”
“Almost three years.”
“Why? You were always such a Fleet man.”
After a few seconds, he said, “I guess I finally saw things Survey’s way.”
Susan looked for a specialty insignia on Karl’s uniform. She could not find the Caduceus he had worn ten years ago. “You’re no longer in medicine.”
He shook his head. “I’m with the Survey security branch.”
Susan nodded. “Then this is a security assignment.”
“Not exactly. But there is a security angle you should be made aware of.” He fished a small memory chip carrying case from a pouch at his waist and pushed it across the table to Susan. She opened it and found four unmarked chips filed inside.
“Scan one,” he said.
Susan took her LIN/C from its pouch and set it on the table beside the case, then plucked out a chip. It was unmarked. She placed it over the appropriate spot on her LIN/C, then leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
Instantly she was Rosco Hamm, a prime Survey Service security operative.
He crouched in the shadows between two disposal chutes, the scent of garbage heavy in his nose, waiting for his target to emerge from the restaurant entrance twenty yards away. The target had been in there more than two hours. He would have to come out soon.
A shiver ran up Hamm’s spine—not of cold, but one of apprehension. Normally, he enjoyed his job; he was permitted more freedom than most men, or he took it. At any rate, he enjoyed the thrill of danger that came with the job, and what it did to him.
But this time was
different. Here he was, in Ceres Colony, skulking in an alley in the bad section, waiting for a man who had already killed three Survey security operatives.
This target was simply too good. Those he had killed were three of Survey’s best. Not as good as Hamm, of course, but still…
He felt a sudden dull pain on the back of his head. Instantly that pain became more intense, then spread throughout his body. His arms and legs went suddenly numb, and he collapsed, falling onto his back.
Looking up through the fog of pain, he saw a blurred figure standing over him. His vision cleared and his attacker came into focus. Dark piercing eyes, high cheek bones, close cropped salt-and-pepper hair. And he was extremely short, with a slim build bordering on frail. A small pendant made of pitted gray metal hung from a fine silver chain around his neck.
This was Hamm’s target—the man on whom he had been conducting his surveillance.
As Hamm watched in growing horror, the other pointed a blaster at his head, then pulled the trigger…
Susan opened her eyes and pulled the chip from her LIN/C. Again she sat in the small conference room on the Survey Service compound. Karl sat across the table, watching intently.
That man—Hamm’s target—it had been Hyatt! And he had worn a pendant exactly like the one Susan bought in the curio shop on Fleet Base.
While she was Rosco Hamm, the man’s subconscious thoughts had been almost unnoticeable. Now they flooded her conscious mind.
That target had not been Hyatt, she suddenly realized. He had been an impostor.
“He’s good!” The statement was nearly involuntary.
“He is that,” Karl responded.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was Hyatt.”
Karl nodded. “He’s fooled Survey’s best. And he’s been using Hyatt’s identity for more than a year now, making underworld contacts in locations Hyatt has never visited.”
“Why?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Hyatt’s a powerful man. And he’ll be still more powerful when Luna achieves independence.”
“Then you think he’s trying to replace the Director?”
“Don’t you?”
“But you said this isn’t a security assignment. If I won’t be protecting Hyatt, what will I be doing?”
“Hyatt will brief you on that himself,” Karl said. “He simply thought you should know about this first. Study those chips at your leisure. Learn all you can about this impostor, and let me know if you experience anything out of the ordinary— particularly as regards the Director.”
Susan fell silent. Should she tell him about what was happening to her. Of course, he knew about the attacks—in general, if not the specifics. Should she tell him about the strange parts, the disappearances and the pendants?
No, not just yet. There was still no emotion in those blue eyes and, as much as she wanted to, she wasn’t sure she could trust him with that kind of information. Again she thought of the two attackers. They had both worn Fleet Base Security uniforms, but there was no reason to ignore the possibility that someone in the Survey Service might be recruited to kill her.
Maybe even Karl.
After a moment she said, “Is that all? Are you through with me?”
“For now. Tell the corporal outside to take you to hangar four. Hyatt’s waiting for you there.”
Susan got to her feet, then turned and went to the door. Karl didn’t say a word as the door irised open and she stepped through, out into the corridor.
Chapter Eight
The corporal did not talk as he and Susan walked the near-deserted corridors. Somehow, he sensed she could not make idle conversation just now. She had too much on her mind. Again that strange apparition haunted her thoughts, the charred image she had seen superimposed over Karl’s form.
What had it been? What had it meant?
She didn’t know.
She banished it from her thoughts, and instantly something from her past bubbled up to take its place—memory of her tour of duty aboard the Federation Fleet cruiser Defiant ten years ago.
There had never been much room in her life for men; she’d set her career goals high and was now a captain in Fleet because she had allowed nothing and no one to stand in her way. But Karl had been different. From the very beginning she had known he was something special—that all-too-infrequent man who could appreciate her goals, and not subjugate them to his own.
At that time Susan was a commander and Executive Officer onboard Defiant, second in command only to the ship’s captain. Karl was two years her senior, and ship’s physician. Yet in rank he was her junior, a lieutenant commander, stuck in a designator group that advanced officers at a slower rate than many others.
And, although at first she fought it, they fell in love.
After finally accepting the inevitable, she let down the barriers she had spent a lifetime erecting and for the first time in years allowed herself to become close to another. Initially she felt fear; she was truly vulnerable, her soft spots exposed. But Karl quickly vanquished those fears with love and understanding. With him, there was no competition. He was a kind and gentle man, but also strong and wise, and he made a warm, protected place in his life for her.
Then, almost before their life together had begun, there was Aldebaran. Susan was sent Earth-side, to nearly a year in the hospital and then her work in security, while Karl was transferred to another shipboard command. She hadn’t heard from him since Aldebaran.
But now, here he was—again in her life. And in spite of what he said, he still held her responsible for Aldebaran. Without him actually saying so, Susan knew he did. It was evident in the lack of emotion in his gaze.
She could not fault him for that. After all, she, too, blamed herself.
“This is hangar four, Captain,” the corporal said as he stepped to a door. He inserted his LIN/C and the door irised open.
Hyatt stood with his back to Susan and her guide, leaning on a railing, looking down at something below her field of view. The corporal motioned her through, then followed. The door irised closed behind him.
The Survey Service Director turned from the railing as Susan stepped out onto the narrow catwalk ringing the large hangar high up on its wall. His gaze met hers and held it, as it had in Admiral Renford’s office on Fleet Base. They both remained silent for several seconds.
“There she is,” he finally said, turning back to the railing, “S. S. Photon.” There was a strange expression on his face—unnatural. Then Susan suddenly realized the Survey Service Directory was actually smiling, something she had never before seen him do—neither in person nor on any of his many holovid broadcasts.
She stepped to the railing and looked down into the hangar. Beneath brilliant overhead lights, in one corner of the cavernous hold, sat a ship.
As a rule, a space craft was not a thing of beauty, but a highly sophisticated and strictly functional collection of hardware. This ship was no exception. Its nearly spherical outer hull was painted non-reflective black and deformed by the myriad bumps, pits, and spikes of sensor pickups. The ship was smaller than any Federation Fleet ship Susan had ever served aboard—as small as a lifeboat. A dozen men in white coveralls crawled over its skin like achromatic ants on an apple, adjusting its supersensitive eyes and ears.
“It will be cramped in there,” Susan said, more to herself than to either of the men present.
Hyatt again turned his grim stare on her. “She is not a Fleet destroyer, Captain.” His voice became comically high with sudden rage. “She is a one-man Survey Service scout ship. We refuse to waste limited General Fund money on unnecessary luxuries.”
He had used the feminine pronoun in referring to the ship, a practice that had gone out of style nearly two hundred years ago. And, although he didn’t actually say it, the implication had been plain enough: Fleet did waste money on luxuries.
Letting the insult go unanswered, Susan asked, “Is that the ship I’ll be piloting?”
Hyat
t nodded, then turned back to the ship. “She’s something very special— totally unlike anything you’ve ever flown. There is only one other like her in existence.”
Susan glanced to the young corporal who had been her guide, standing at Hyatt’s right elbow and gazing out past the older man, into the hangar. It was evident from the look of rapt awe in his hazel eyes that he longed to take a more active part in the adventure unfolding around him.
“How long before I lift?”
“I don’t know yet. My technicians aren’t finished outfitting Photon. Then there’s my impostor—we’ve momentarily lost track of him. We know he’s somewhere in the asteroid belt, but we’re not sure where. And until we know exactly where he is, your mission has been put on indefinite hold.”
“What is this mission?”
“You will be told that when the time is right.”
Again Susan fell silent. Finally she asked, “Why me? Why not send one of your own people?”
“Let’s just say it would not be the political thing to do right now.” He turned toward Susan. “If I sent out another civilian, and he didn’t return, the publicity would be far worse than if I lost a military pilot. The press would have a field day, and I’d lose General Fund money.”
“Another civilian?”
“That’s correct. Photon’s sister ship, Tachyon, has been missing nearly a year.”
Susan nodded. It was beginning to make sense. If she failed, all the blame could be placed on Fleet, and again Survey Service would come out unblemished. But if she succeeded, she knew Hyatt would not hesitate to take the credit.
“Then it is mere politics, like Admiral Renford said?”
Hyatt’s face flushed, and for several seconds he seemed unable to speak. Finally he said, “There is nothing mere about politics, Captain. Politics can feed the poor, or put a man into deep space and keep him there. Or, for that matter, a woman.”
When she did not respond, he continued. “As far as I’m concerned, this assignment is strictly volunteer. I didn’t want you to begin with, and I’m sure there are plenty of other Fleet pilots who would be glad to take the assignment.”
