Jamie climbed the ladder once again and sat in the pilot's chair. He was more worried than he let on. He was starting to wonder if maybe Taranarak was right. Maybe Trevor had gone crazy. Maybe Hannah and he weren't too far behind. Playing word games seemed an insane way to spend their time when Bulwark of Constancy was out there, trying to track them down.
He rubbed his eyes and studied the plot, expecting to see that not much had changed.
That was not what he saw. What he saw instead was not good. Not good at all. "Hannah!" he cried out. "I need you! Now."
She was up the ladder and at his side almost at once. "What's happened?"
"My mistake. My big, fat mistake that might get us all killed. I assumed that the Stability was going to drop into her search pattern in a nice, efficient logical way, by boxing in the forward end of the volume first. I forgot Constancy's new to all this. It's doing what looks like a helical outward leg that doesn't make any sense at all. Except--"
"Yeah," said Hannah. "I can see it."
"It's pretty hard to miss," said Jamie. "And we will be too. Beginner's luck for Constancy, I guess." The pattern Bulwark of Constancy was flying was more or less parallel to the triangle defined by the positions of the Sholto, the Adler, and the booster. And in about half an hour, the Adler would sweep directly through its path.
"It's time to create a diversion," said Hannah. "I think we have to give her the booster. Squirt a signal and command it to light its engine and run. Do it so it's at least plausible that the booster was running away to avoid being spotted before the search pattern can catch it."
"Suppose Constancy doesn't take the bait?" asked Jamie.
"Then we light our engine and run before we get spotted."
"I'll do my best, but the pattern's not going to get anywhere near the booster."
"Yeah, but the Sholto's even farther out of position. We might be able to make the booster's run look like it was being flushed out--but not the Sholto," said Hannah. "If the Sholto ran, it would look like what it was--a diversion."
"Okay then. We fire the booster--and try to make it convincing. I'll have to use a low-power tight-beam radio signal. I'll do as tight and short a squirt as I can and wait until Constancy's ship is as far off-angle as it's going to get. I doubt her ship is even equipped to detect radio--but Constancy still might pick it up."
"Understood," said Hannah. "Make the risk as small as you can, but send the commands. And hurry. We've got other work to do."
"Huh?"
Hannah sighed. "The odds of our not living through this just went way up," she said. "We've got to solve that damned fool puzzle fast and hope it actually leads us to the decrypt key. If Constancy is going to kill us all, I'd just as soon we send the message first."
"It'll take me a little while to get this set up," he said. "I'll see you down there."
Hannah allowed herself a moment on the ladder. She stopped, rested her head on a rung, and let out her breath with a long and weary sigh. How had they come to this? Trying to wade through a morass of puns and riddles in order to save not just a way of making a whole species of beings live longer, but also to suppress a weapon that might be able to wipe out humanity. And that was the vital work! Dodging the homicidal Xenoatric who was trying to get another crack at them had to be treated as no more than a distraction.
Never mind. Press on. Keep going. She moved the step or two back to the table and slumped down in her chair.
"Is everything all right?" Taranarak asked.
Hannah laughed sadly. "No," she said. "Do you want the details?"
"I am not sure that I do."
"You don't." Hannah picked up Trevor's message from the other side of death and read the next line or two out loud in English. "Blank the town Red. Good sunset vision might mean a being gets the blanks with other end of Newton's glass."
That part was almost too easy. Paint the town red, and a being gets the blues. But this thing had layers to it. Good sunset vision? Red. Hannah thought of the strong red cast to all the lights on Metran. And Newton's glass? A telescope, maybe?
Jamie came back down and sat on his box. He set his datapad down on the folding table. "As the angles shift around and so forth, we'll get our lowest chance of Constancy detecting our squirt signal in about fifteen minutes," he said. "I've programmed things to send the message then. I can monitor well enough from here until then. I don't think Constancy's ship will be able to detect the squirt signal--but I've got to tell you--if she does, it's all over. The Stability's going to be on us fast. You're going to have to be in the pilot's station, ready for action."
"Thanks for the cheery thought," Hannah replied. "Meanwhile, back in the message--any idea what Newton's glass might be?"
"What classes did you sleep through? A prism, of course. He used a prism to split white light into the colors of the spectrum."
"That makes more sense here than telescope."
"You're thinking of Galileo."
"Whatever. I think I have the next part of the message. 'Paint the town red.'"
"Gee, I thought I would have to use my secret decoder ring to crack that part."
"So there was one easy section. The next bit is something like 'the ability to see well in red light might mean a being gets the blues with--has trouble with--the other end of the spectrum.'"
"Not much of a shocker there, either," said Jamie. "A species able to see well in the red end of the spectrum generally can't see well in the blue end of the spectrum." He turned to Taranarak and spoke in Lesser Trade Speech. "There is something in the puzzle-message that seems to be about differences in how your people and mine see color. The lighting in this ship. Is it comfortable for you?" As he spoke, he worked his datapad, holding it so neither Hannah or Taranarak could see what he was doing.
"Not particularly. It is a bit harsh, and bright. It makes things seem cold and washed-out."
"If we live through this, I will see what I can do to adjust it," Jamie said. He turned the datapad over and showed the display to Hannah and Taranarak. "What color or colors do you see? Taranarak, you go first," he asked. To Hannah's eye, the display showed five thick stripes in varying shades of blue.
Taranarak peered carefully at the screen. "There are two--no, three variations of blue," she said.
"I see five different shades," said Hannah.
"Actually, according to my datapad's painting program, there are eight--but I can only distinguish six myself," said Jamie. "Thank you, Taranarak. That was extremely useful." He switched back to English. "So we've got a lot about red and blue, and something about paint," he said.
"There were cans of touch-up paint in that locker behind you. One of them was slightly used."
Jamie jumped up and opened the locker and pulled out the cans of paint. He set them on the table. "Red. Black. And blue-grey. The blue-grey is the one that's been opened. And it's the one that matches the ship's general interior."
He looked at Hannah, and she looked at him. "I think we're getting close," she said quietly.
"So do I," said Jamie. He checked the time. "But right now we need you in the pilot's seat again. This is where we blow our cover."
"Grab the message and some notepaper," said Hannah. "We're going to work the rest of this from the flight deck. Taranarak--wish us luck."
TWENTY-NINE
ALL FOR ONE
Hannah buckled herself into the pilot's chair as Jamie watched the countdown on his datapad. "Okay," he said. "The Adler's sending her command signal to the booster in five, four, three, two, one--now."
Hannah's throat was dry, and the palms of her hands were sweaty. She stared at the nav display, eyes locked on the dot that represented Constancy's ship. Any change there, any sudden movement, meant the signal had leaked and Constancy had seen it--and gotten a lock on the Adler. If that happened, they wouldn't have a prayer of outrunning the bigger ship--but they would have to try.
Nothing. No response. Not that it meant anything. Constancy could be a little slow off
the mark or just taking its time getting the Stability's weapons hot.
"How long until the booster makes its move?" Hannah asked. "And for that matter, what is it going to do, exactly?"
"The engines should light three minutes from now. It'll boost directly away from Constancy's ship at maximum thrust until it runs out of power," said Jamie, watching the display as intently as Hannah. "Not subtle, but I didn't have much time for finesse. And I really wish we weren't throwing away one of the only two cards we have to play."
Hannah chose not to remind him they had three cards to play, three ships to sacrifice. "'Climbing Jacob's leads to heavens door held open,'" she quoted. "Gotten anywhere with that?"
"Jacob's ladder, obviously," said Jamie.
"Ah, but it wasn't a ladder," said Hannah. "There's a fun fact for you. That's a mistranslation. It was a staircase, or a stile, or something."
"Thanks for clearing that up. I'm sure Trevor was working from the original Greek."
"Aramaic, I think."
"Whatever. I don't think Constancy detected our message to the booster. It would have responded by now."
"Let's hope the booster gets its attention."
"Bible trivia to one side," said Jamie, still watching the displays, "if we assume that all the mistakes in Trevor's message were deliberate, it might mean something that Jacob's whatever doesn't lead to Heaven's door--capitalized singular possessive. It leads to the lowercase-plural heavens door. It leads to the heavens--the sky and stars, not to paradise."
"Kind of the way that ladder behind you leads to a hatch that opens to the heavens."
"Kind of like that, yeah. Exactly like it, in fact. But what's the part about 'held open' mean?"
"Hold it," Hannah said. "Coming up on the booster firing. We've got to watch this."
The booster lit its engines, and even at the small scale of the nav display, it started to move, and move fast.
But it did not move for long. The Stability responded with astonishing speed. The glowing dot that represented the Stability accelerated violently, straight for the booster. It was another stern chase, but it was not a long one. Jamie and Hannah watched in silence as the xeno ship moved in on their decoy--but neither of them expected the end to come as soon as it did.
The two ships were still separated by thousands of kilometers when the booster flared up, flashed over into nothing, and then vanished from the nav plot as if it had never existed.
"My God!" said Hannah. "What did it use to destroy it at that kind of range?"
"I don't know," said Jamie. "Maybe some kind of heavy particle beam. But that ship's got weapons I wasn't expecting."
"But maybe--maybe--that's bought us a little time," said Hannah. "Constancy's going to have to put on the brakes, slow down again, reverse course, and resume the search pattern." The thought wasn't much comfort, seeing how fast that ship could attack. How long would they last when their time came?
Maybe not long at all. They would have to be ready by then, all their duties complete. "No more leaving the flight deck," she said. "Things might happen fast. I'm going to have to be close to the controls from now on. But even so--back to work," she said, not bothering with false heartiness or bravado. She looked Jamie straight in the eye. "We couldn't be much closer. We almost have it. I'm sure of it."
It seemed to take Jamie a moment to come back to himself. The effortless, casual suddenness of the booster's destruction had thrown him as well. "Ah, yeah," he said. "Yeah."
"'Held open,'" said Hannah. "'Climbing Jacob's leads to heavens door held open.' What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know."
Hannah stood up, grabbed on to the rope ladder, and climbed upward a rung or two. Suddenly she had it. "I know," she said. "At least I think I do. It doesn't seem like much. The top of the ladder is on those little rails that slide back and forth. You have to push the top of the ladder one way to line the ladder up with the hatch lip, but you have to shove it back the other way to close the hatch properly. 'Climbing Jacob's leads to heavens door held open' translates to mean 'You can climb the rope ladder through the nose hatch when it's open."
"Yeah, but so what?" asked Jamie.
Hannah climbed back down and shook her head. "I have no idea." She glanced at the nav plot. "There's good news. It looks like Bulwark of Constancy has decided to examine the wreckage or some bloody fool thing. The Stability's matching velocities with the debris cloud from the booster."
"If it exploded violently enough for our little nav plot display to come close to overloading, there probably aren't any fragments larger than five centimeters across."
"Yeah, but apparently Constancy doesn't know that," said Hannah. And we get to live a little bit longer while it discovers that. But there was no point in saying that out loud. "What's next on our little list of riddles?" she asked.
"I copied it into my datapad," he said. "Lemme see. 'A killing lightness weighs them down.'" Hannah looked down--and saw Taranarak, sitting on the lower deck because she couldn't bear heights, and was just barely fully recovered from her brush with death, caused by a few seconds' exposure to zero gee during the transit jump. "Metrannans," said Hannah. "'A killing lightness weighs them down.'"
"Of course!" said Jamie. "One more left," he said. "'Edgar's mantel, like Vogel's Eagle Name Source.'"
"Vogel. I hadn't really focused on that before. That's got to be Doc Vogel, back at base. It's an in-joke reference that would only make sense to a BSI agent who'd served at HQ since Vogel started there."
"Okay, so what? What's Vogel's Eagle?"
"Hold it. Hold it. Your datapad. Link into the ship's database and pull up a German-English dictionary. Get me the German word for 'eagle.'"
Jamie's eyes went wide. "I don't have to," he said. "I know that one. I just didn't put it together. The German for eagle is 'Adler.'"
"So, so that becomes--the name source for the Irene Adler. The Sherlock Holmes story. 'A Scandal in Bohemia.' Is there an Edgar in that story?"
"No! But there's an Edgar who wrote stories!" Jamie said. "Edgar Allan Poe. And he had a story, a detective story, a famous one, where there was a mantel that played a big part in the plot."
"That class I didn't sleep through," said Hannah. "'The Purloined Letter,' by Edgar Allan Poe. The whole point of it was that the letter was hidden in plain sight, on the mantel, but disguised to look like something else."
"And that links back to the earlier clue, with 'Her' capitalized," said Jamie. "Name Source is capitalized. The other 'Her' refers to the same thing--Irene Adler."
"Not the character in the story. The ship. This ship."
Jamie rubbed his head and groaned. "All right," he said. "If--if--we've got all this right, and if Trevor's mind hadn't aged into senile dementia before he wrote this down, then what the hell does it all mean?"
Hannah glanced at the nav plot again. Bulwark of Constancy was just coming up to the volume of space where the booster had been when it blew. Maybe--maybe--it could find some debris there that might tell it that the wreckage wasn't the Sholto or the Adler, but Hannah doubted it. The main thing was that the search would keep Constancy busy for a few more minutes. It might just be long enough. "Let me go over it again." She took the datapad from Jamie, read the original message, and translated it into what they thought the answers were.
"'If you want longevity, show the results of reading this to Hallaben. When a female hermit sights her dog, she is no longer alone,' or maybe the dog isn't in there. It might mean something can be seen only when the hermit is alone--or maybe only when the hermit isn't alone. 'Blank the town Red' brings 'paint' to our minds--and some paint has been used. Leaks hate patches--and the fact that there's one gone is called to our attention. The Metrannans get the blues when they try to see blue--and it's blue paint that has been used. And pardon the expression, but maybe the mentions of red are just red herrings. Climbing the ladder leads to the hatch--when it is open. Metrannans have to have gravity. In 'The Purloined Letter' the ob
ject of interest was hidden in plain sight."
"Let's leave the dog out. I think the dog is the real red herring, if you know what I mean," said Jamie. "We're reading in one or two layers too many. I think 'Her mutt' just means 'hermit.' But anyway, probably a patch has been painted blue, and slapped over something in plain sight, and that's where the decrypt key is hidden. And it's been done in such a way that it would be harder for Metrannans to find, because of their bad blue-end vision and need for gravity."
"There's a lot about sight and seeing in all the clues," Hannah observed.
"Yeah," said Jamie. "Trevor's telling us that we can see it from where we are, right now, inside the ship's cabin."
"But you can only see it when the Adler is or isn't alone, or on the ladder, or with the hatch open, or when--"
Jamie looked up sharply at Hannah. "We never closed the upper hatch at all while the two ships were together--except from the other side, from the Sholto. But there's no outer nose hatch to give us an air lock, so when the Adler's away from other ships, when she's alone--"
"The hatch is shut. It has to be. And if the Metrannans entered through the upper hatch, they would have to have the gravity system on, and they'd have to pull the ladder into position over the hatch lip to get up and down. The hatch would have to have stayed open the whole time they were here!"
"But wait a second. Trevor didn't rehide the key until after that search was over. If there's anything we've worked out with a great deal of confidence, that's it. He didn't hide the key until after the search. So why would the hatch position matter? It would only matter if he knew they'd never use the lower-deck air lock hatch."
Hannah shifted to Lesser Trade Speech, and called down to the lower deck. "Taranarak! You were telling me about the day you were arrested, when you went to meet with Bulwark of Constancy and they picked you up on the way home."
"Yes. That was the day it all started to fall apart, so far as I was concerned."
"Tell Jamie. Tell him what Bulwark's main argument was, the reason you couldn't let everyone on the planet, and all the Metrannans in the Galaxy, live twice as long."
Death Sentence Page 33
