Death Sentence

by Roger MacBride Allen

  "Constancy can't destroy the Adler--not with a shipful of Metrannan witnesses. It concludes that the aging treatment doesn't work on humans and maybe the biochemistry isn't all that similar--but then Trevor never arrives. Months pass with no word, no decryption key, and no joint human-Metrannan lab busily working away on the longlife treatment. Does that mean Trevor did die, and his ship was lost forever? Maybe Constancy figures out that the treatment did work--just not so fast on humans."

  "But wait a second," Jamie objected. "Something that kills over the course of a couple of weeks isn't much use against someone with a gun. Why did Constancy pull that spray gun on us?"

  Hannah counted off on her fingers. "One--it was the only weapon Constancy had. And/or two--it wasn't expecting us. It thought we were safely dead. It was expecting it might have to spritz a couple of Metrannan cops. Then it'd just have to stall long enough, requiring proper and respectful treatment, until they keeled over. It took Hallaben a couple of days to die--but he might well have been incapacitated long before he died. Three--you told me yourself that Constancy had gotten to the point of borderline deranged--and maybe it's crossed the border. Four, if you hadn't had the stun grenade, it would have just shaken off the bullets and kept coming. It almost did manage to spray you as it was. We just barely did have a defense. And five, maybe it was just very, very eager to have a guinea pig. It sprays us down, abducts us, locks you up for a couple of weeks, waits to see what happens--and knows for sure whether the stuff works on humans. I've run out of fingers, but I could probably come up with more motives if you gave me a chance."

  Jamie shivered. "No, I think that's a good enough list. But I've got another question. What, exactly, was Constancy doing there? What did Bulwark of Constancy hope to accomplish by breaking into the Bartholomew Sholto?"

  "Not a thing in the world," Hannah said. "My guess is that Constancy thought it was breaking into the Irene Adler to search for the decrypt key. It figured out that we had disguised one ship as the other--but got it backwards. At the very least, it needed to make sure the Sholto wasn't the Adler. Maybe it was going to steal the ship and take it somewhere private where it could spend years searching it, if need be."

  "But it wanted the decrypt key destroyed! Why not just blow up the ship and be done with it?"

  "If you want, I can stack a few more guesses on top of each other. It wanted to find the key, hold it in its manipulators, know that it controlled it as a matter of positive fact. It'd never know that for sure if it simply destroyed the spacecraft. Or maybe it figured that, someday, it would be to Constancy's advantage to have the key in its possession as a bargaining chip for use with this faction or that. Say, someone interested in using the data in the message to create bioweapons instead of a longlife treatment."

  "You've just convinced me that part was perfectly possible. Constancy used that spray gun like a weapon. It tried to aim and fire it at an opponent. And if it was expecting a few droplets of it on my skin, or my inhaling just a trace of it, was going to be enough to kill me--then the amount in that spray gun in the lockup is probably enough to kill half of Center City."

  "Yeah. Unless it's just distilled water and Hallaben died of natural causes and since we've been gone Doc Vogel has figured out that Trevor died of some rare disease with a long incubation that he contracted three missions ago."

  "I don't believe that any more than you do. What you're saying is that all you have right now is circumstantial evidence and some logic that holds together fairly well. But they've got Trevor's body still in the morgue, and we've got that spray gun full of something to be analyzed. I'd bet whatever you like Forensics is able to make a connection."

  "No bet," said Hannah. "I agree. We can't nail it down until we get that stuff back to the lab, but I feel quite certain we now know how Trevor was killed and who did it."

  "Great," Jamie said sourly. "Mission accomplished."

  "No," said Hannah. "Not until Trevor's mission is accomplished. Which brings me to our next decision, and it's a nice complicated one. If Taranarak is correct, we can expect pursuit by a faster and more powerful ship, and that ship could launch any minute. We might not have much of a head start. We've got the spray gun and the new information with us. Do we risk losing all that--and ourselves--by taking on the delay and confusion of linking up with the Adler--or do we give up on finding the decrypt key aboard her, use the remote-destruct system to blow her up as we go past, and just go home with what we've got?"

  "I say we don't write off the Adler," Jamie said. "We can't. I don't want to say a single syllable about why." He gestured toward Taranarak. "Not until we have her safely back in Center System. All I'll say is this: We've been led around by our noses and chivvied around since the moment we landed at Free Orbit Level Station. It's time that we call the shots and decide where to go and what to do. I don't feel like playing it safe or being chased away from finishing our job."

  "I'm with you," said Hannah. "But I felt I had to at least bring up the other option."

  "Fine. But just deciding to bring back both ships is step one. There are about forty-seven different scenarios for how to do it. I don't think there's any point in getting fancy about maneuver-masking or trying to pretend the Adler isn't there. We'll have to light her engines by remote command long before we're anywhere near her if the two ships are going to match velocities. If there is a fast ship chasing us, it will get close enough to see the energy output no matter what games we try to play. We might as well just run as fast as we can without wasting time and thrust reserves trying to fool someone who won't be fooled." Jamie thought for a minute. "There are a lot of variables to play with."

  "I think my tactical officer just requested time in the chair I'm in so he could start working out possibilities."

  "He did indeed," Jamie said. "After I bed down somewhere for a while. I'm too tired to think straight. But with Taranarak's nest taking up half the deck, I'm not sure where. Maybe if I leave the air lock door open, I could sleep in there for a while."

  "Leaving me to doze off in this glorified dentist's chair?" Hannah asked. "Gee, thanks. We'll need to work out better sleeping arrangements and so on, but it's going to have to wait." She yawned hugely. "I'll rig some alarms on the detector system so it'll start howling if it spots a ship on our tail."

  "Okay," said Jamie. "But I wouldn't say no if you shifted to, ah, boost pattern seven-b before you turn in. It's optimized to give near-max boost, minimum time, and makes no effort at detection avoidance. Speed is going to be our best defense, I think."

  "Agreed," said Hannah. "Go climb over Taranarak, use the washroom, and turn in. I'll go after you."

  "That order I'll obey without argument, cap'n. Good night."

  Hannah watched him head down the ladder, then ordered the nav system to shift over to pattern seven-b. Jamie was right. Speed was likely to be their best protection.

  What worried her was that sometimes, even the best was none too good.

  TWENTY-SIX

  EDGE OF CENTER

  The days that followed were difficult in the extreme for Taranarak. She had often fantasized about escaping from Metran--but that was a far different thing than the harsh reality of being cast out, left homeless, dependent on the kindness of barely civilized aliens for her own survival. It was hard not to dwell on all she had lost. In all likelihood, she would never again set foot on her home planet.

  That was, far and away, the deepest wound and the widest. But it was far from being the only one. Life aboard the exceedingly cramped quarters of the Bartholomew Sholto made her life in house arrest seem the apex of luxury. There was scarcely room enough to turn around without bumping into one of the humans or the other. Privacy was virtually nonexistent, and using the human-style sanitary facilities was an exercise in humiliation.

  It was likewise most disturbing that she was forced to watch the two humans constantly scrambling up and down that dreadful flexible ladder arrangement. She grew somewhat more used to the sight in time, but t
he mere sight of it never failed to make her feel just a trifle queasy. Needless to say, she flatly refused to use the ladder or visit the flight deck herself.

  All she had in the way of clothing was two sets of maintenance worker's coveralls supplied at the last minute by the liftpod station crew, and the only food she had, aside from the emergency rations she had herself arranged to have aboard, were a few unappetizing long-store rations and lower-class leisure snacks scooped up by the liftpod crew.

  But all that was as nothing compared to the attitude of the two human agents. They were polite, yes, even courteous and respectful--but it was clear that they did not trust her in the least. They frequently shifted to their own tongue in order to exclude her from conversation on anything remotely technical or confidential. They spoke in low voices. They concealed datascreens and even hid their antique paper notebooks from her view. They seemed to work on the assumption that any or all of her possessions contained recording devices.

  She could not really blame them for the precautions. After all, an attempt had been made on their lives as well. Bulwark of Constancy had been attempting to break into their ship. And in their very brief stay on her world, they had spent nearly every moment entangled in murky plots and schemes.

  But understanding their motives did not wipe away the sense of humiliation--and of uselessness. She had nothing at all to do, while the humans were both constantly bustling about, making plans, making lists, discussing scenarios, working out contingencies.

  Toward the evening of their first day out, Taranarak at last felt she had actually contributed something, that she was something more than an encumbrance. Even so, it was not a happy moment. It happened when an alert started to sound on the main control board. Agent Mendez had been spending most of his time working on what he called "tactical options," whatever exactly that meant, and he was the first to see what the alert meant. "Ship launch from Free Orbit Station," he announced, doing her the courtesy of speaking in Lesser Trade Speech. He studied the displays as Agent Wolfson scrambled up the rope ladder to see for herself. "There have been plenty of those since we left, of course--but our nav plot projects this one on a near-intercept with us."

  "And the ship-thrust pattern signature matches what we have on file for a particular class of ships flown by the Unseen Race," Agent Wolfson said. "We're getting data from the ship's transponder. Definite Unseen Race ship. Massing about twenty times what we do. Even getting a ship name: the Stability. That's got to be our friend Constancy. Looks like you got it right, Taranarak," she said, calling down to the lower deck.

  "I sincerely wish I had it wrong," Taranarak replied sadly. "Bulwark of Constancy took a lot longer to get moving than I expected. I was beginning to hope that it wouldn't pursue."

  "Can we be sure that it is Constancy?"

  "If it is a ship of the Unseen People, yes. The controls on those ships are configured so that no Metrannan could operate them. And I cannot think of any other of the Unseen with any reason to pursue us."

  "Is Constancy going to catch us?" Mendez asked.

  "Yes," said Wolfson, quite calmly, as she studied the displays. "Assuming everything continues as it is. But our job is to make sure things don't stay the same."

  "If I understand the plan," said Taranarak, "we are to boost toward your other ship, brake to a halt next to her, transfer to that ship, then fly on to transit-jump range. Is that correct?"

  "No," said Wolfson. "But that's the profile we're flying right now. That's what we want Bulwark to think the plan is. I'll take the slight risk of telling you that much and a bit more."

  And you allowed me to believe the same thing up until now, just in case I was somehow relaying information back to Metran. But there was no point in taking offense when her hosts were fighting to save all their lives.

  "We don't have enough stored boost energy to fly that profile," said Agent Mendez. "Human ships aren't as efficient as Elder Race ships. A ship this small can't afford to speed up, slow down for a rendezvous, then speed up again. Besides, if we're being pursued by a ship as fast as the Stability, we don't dare to slow down for a heartbeat. So the Adler will have to light her own engines and accelerate enough to match speeds with us. We configured her for remotely controlled operation before we left her behind."

  Wolfson studied the plots a moment or two longer. "Once Bulwark of Constancy sees two vehicles under boost and moving toward mutual intercept, it will know it's seeing the real situation. Let's confuse her a bit more before we do anything else. We'll let her build up some velocity in a slightly wrong direction. Then we'll shift our course and increase our thrust to a matched-velocity intercept and rendezvous with the Adler--but we won't activate the Adler or light her engines until we're well under way on our new course. Let Constancy see it all in stages, and perhaps be deceived or confused by each one in turn."

  "If so, Constancy will not be the only one deceived or confused," said Taranarak.

  "Our apologies for that," said Agent Wolfson. "I acknowledge that we have not been entirely forthcoming. We believe you to be our friend and ally--but we are playing for such high stakes that we dare not trust our own personal feelings. And it is possible that you could be an unwitting spy. Transmitters or other devices could have been inserted into your clothes or other belongings without your knowledge. Surely you would rather be a living friend whose feelings had been slightly hurt, rather than all of us getting killed--and the longlife treatment lost, perhaps forever--because we extended our trust too far."

  "I accept your apologies and explanations, and appreciate the situation," said Taranarak. But that didn't mean she had to like it. It also crossed her mind that if the Stability changed her heading to match the Sholto's final intended course before the Sholto made her own move, the humans would know--or at least assume--that Taranarak was the source. They were giving her a test. And if she failed it, they weren't likely to stop to ask if it was accidental or deliberate before they responded.

  "Well," said Jamie, hours later, "I've heard the phrase 'a long stern chase' before, but I never thought I'd be in one."

  "Let's hope we get out of it," said Hannah. "What's the current projection?" They had shifted their burn profile ninety minutes before and seen the pursuing vehicle alter her own course to a new intercept point.

  "The short form is that we got a big head start, and the Stability didn't start pursuit anywhere near as soon as we expected. However, her ship has much higher acceleration than we do, and will catch up with us. If all the projections about how our ship and Constancy's ship will perform are correct, we'll beat her to the transfer-jump point by a hair under two hours--if everything goes perfectly. That projection is still trending downward a little bit."

  "A little bit? You were projecting it at two and a half hours a while back. I'm starting to get really twitchy. I think it's time to wake up the Adler."

  "Once we do that, we'll have all our cards on the table," Jamie cautioned. "The Adler could still match with us if she lit an hour from now--if we cranked her engines up to max boost, full throttle the whole way."

  "And if she held together under the stress, and if she hasn't been leaking thrust power at more than the projected rate since we left her, and if about six other things. We've got to allow for some margin of error. That ship--and this ship--have both been through too much to crank them up to max anything and expect them to function properly. And there is one other card we could play, if need be. If the Stability suddenly cranks her acceleration past where we think she can go, and we project interception before we can make our transit-jump--then we can still escape. We light the Adler's engines, fly both ships toward our intended matched-velocity rendezvous--then skip the rendezvous and docking. If we abandon the Adler, we won't have to cut the Sholto's engines and fiddle about with the docking and transfer and so on. That will save us a couple of hours right there.

  "Plus we can detonate the Adler remotely and use the explosion to mask the exact parameters of our jump from Constancy. Tha
t'll make us a lot harder to track if Bulwark pursues us into Center System--and I think we have to assume it will, if it doesn't manage to finish us off here. Abandoning the Adler might be the difference between life and death."

  "We cannot abandon the Adler," said Jamie. "I am not going to say one word about why until we're safely aboard her and through the transit-jump--but we can't."

  Hannah was quiet for a moment before she spoke again. "Jamie," she said in a low and gentle voice, "if this was just about risking our lives, I wouldn't mind so much. That's our job. But if we're right, and that stuff in the spray gun is what killed Trevor, we need to get it back to Center and analyzed, give them a chance to find countermeasures, before Bulwark of Constancy decides all humans are degenerate troublemaking Younger Race scum and figures it can solve the problem by dropping a thousand liters of the stuff into Center City's water supply. It could wipe out the city. Or maybe it wouldn't take even that much. Maybe a thousand liters would be enough to wipe out the entire population of Earth."

  "I know," said Jamie. "I understand that. But Bulwark of Constancy could launch an attack like that right now, if it wanted to. It could beat us to transit-jump range, jump to Center System or the Solar System, and get there long before we did.

  And even if we managed to get that spray gun back to Center, who knows how long finding a countermeasure might take? Maybe there isn't a countermeasure. But if we can get that message cracked, the odds are very good that there will be information inside it that would save the labs weeks or months or years in counteracting it."