A low, nearly subliminal pulse throbbed through Lissa. Dagmar could not hurl herself along at full power without a little of that immense energy escaping to sing in her structure. Hands and the miniature control panel on which they rested were enlarged in vision, seemed closer than they were. Yet shipmates on every side had gone dim, half unreal, in a greenish twilight.
Talk went by conduction from a diaphragm in the mask. After the scramble and profanity of getting positioned were done and boost had commenced, silence replaced a privacy that no longer existed.
Lissa broke it first. “Captain,” she said stiffly.
Valen never took his eyes off the single viewscreen, before which he was. “Yes?”
“Captain, I petition you to reconsider. I believe the others will join me in this.”
“I do, sir!” She had not expected shy Noel to speak up. “The science we’re losing, that we might do every minute if we weren’t idled here.”
[148] “The science we will lose, sir, if we don’t survive,” Tessa chimed in. “That all the human race will.”
“The chances of our survival are poor, you know,” Lissa said.
“A crazy gamble,” Elif felt emboldened to add, “and for what? For some lizards that did their best to keep us away.”
“Mind your language,” Valen reprimanded in an automatic fashion. “Esker, have you any comment?”
“Well, Captain, uh, well,” the physicist replied, “of course, when you commanded, we obeyed. We’re no mutineers. But it’s not too late for you to reconsider and turn back, sir. Your impulse was generous—fearless, yes—but thinking it over, wouldn’t you agree we have a higher duty?”
He’s actually desperate enough to behave reasonably, Lissa thought in amazement.
“Orichalc? ... No, I forgot, your trans wouldn’t work here.” Lissa thought fleetingly how lonesome that must feel. Valen turned his head. “But you have picked up a little Anglay, I believe. Nod if you vote for us going on, wave your tail if you vote for us going back.”
After seconds had mounted, it was the tail that moved.
Valen barked a laugh. “Unanimous, eh? Except for me.” He stared again at the viewscreen. From her post, Lissa saw it full of night; but he must be watching the flames. “However, I am the captain.”
She summoned her will. “Sir,” she said, “I have the authority to set our destination. It is in safe space.”
“I have the authority to overrule you if I see a pre-emptive necessity.”
“Crew may lawfully protest unreasonable orders.”
“If the protest is denied, they must obey.”
“This will mean a board of inquiry after the voyage.”
“Yes. After the voyage.”
“If the captain shows ... dangerous incompetence, the crew may relieve him of his duties. The board of inquiry will decide whether or not they were justified.”
[149] “How do you propose to do it? This ship is programmed to me.” Valen raised his voice, though it remained as cold as before. “Dagmar, would you remove me from command of you?”
“No,” came the level answer. “What you attempt is exceedingly difficult and may fail, but success is possible, and it is not for me to make value judgments.”
“Values,” Valen murmured. “Everybody always told me what value sentient life has. The old, old saying, ‘Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’ Don’t you agree any longer? Have your beliefs suddenly changed? We are seven. There must be ten or twenty times that many aboard those ships. Civilized spacefarers go to the aid of the distressed. We shall.”
Sharply: “My judgment is that we can do it, provided we keep our heads and work together. Otherwise we doubtless are doomed. I assume you are all able, self-controlled people when you choose to be. Very well, we’ll now develop a basic plan of action. As we approach, I’ll contact Moonhorn again, learn in detail what the situation is as of that time, and assign tasks.”
“No, please, sir,” Esker stammered.
Lissa unclenched her jaws. “You heard the captain,” she said. “Let’s get cracking.”
XXVIII
THE sky burned.
A fireball glared lightning-colored. It would have been blinding to behold, were it not shrouded in a vast nimbus that glowed blue, yellow, red with its own heat. Smoke streaked the vapors, ragged, hasty as the thing whirled. Currents twisted themselves into maelstroms. The limb of the flattened disc faded toward darkness. Tongues of flame leaped from it, arced over, streamed sparks behind their deluge. At the equator, many broke off and sprang free, cometary incandesences. Those that were aimed forward ran ahead of the mass that birthed them. Right, left, above, below, they passed blazing around the ships. They would not gutter out for thousands of kilometers more.
If any of those thunderbolts hits us, we’re done, Lissa knew.
Spacesuited, she clung to a handhold near the portside forward airlock and waited. A viewscreen showed a pale ghost of what lay ahead. Dagmar maneuvered now at fractions of a gravity. Magnetic fields must be crazily twisting her plasma jets as they left the ejectors. Shifts in direction brought momentary dizziness, as if chaos reached in to grab at her. The Susaian craft were outlined black across the oncoming lightstorm. Their impact had driven plates and ribs together, formed a single grotesque mass, two boughs reaching from a stump. It wobbled and tumbled. Shards danced around.
A fire-tongue streaked, swelled, was gone. It had missed Dagmar by a few hundred meters. At Lissa’s side, Valen caught a breath, half a cry. In her audio receiver it sounded almost like the scream of a bullet. Through their helmets she saw sweat runnel [151] down the creases in his face. “You shouldn’t be here,” she told him. “You belong in the command globe.”
He shook his head. “The ship c-can cope. We need ... every hand.”
At least, she thought, he has enough sense left to refrain from boasting he won’t send crew into any danger he won’t meet himself. The hazards are much the same wherever we may be, with that ogre booming down on us. But if he stayed behind, he wouldn’t be out among the meteors. And he’d have an overall view; he might make the snap decision a robot brain wouldn’t, that saves us.
No use. I’ve tried. He’s determined. And, true, we’re ghastly undermanned as is.
Lissa swallowed fear, anger, bitterness, and braced herself. They were about to make contact.
Weight ended. She floated free. Silence pressed inward, save for noises of breath and her slugging heart. Voices went back and forth, she knew, Dagmar’s and Moonhorn’s or Ironbright’s or whoever was in charge over there; but she wasn’t in that circuit. The screen showed her the silhouette of an extruded gang tube, groping for an airlock. Wormlike, obscene, amidst the terrible beauty of the flames. To hang here passive was to lie in nightmare. How long? Seconds, minutes, years? It had better be less than half an hour. That was about as much time as they had before death became inescapable. Could she choke down her shriek that long?
How had anybody stayed sane at Naia?
Contact. Linkage. Weight returned, low but crazily, sickeningly shifty as Dagmar matched the gyrations of the other hulls. The airlock valve moved aside. The mouth beyond gaped. Lissa pushed into the chamber before she should lose her last nerve. Valen followed. They collided, whirled about in clownish embrace, caromed off the side. The valve shut. For a moment they were adrift in blindness, and she wanted to hold him close.
The inner valve opened. Air brawled down the gang tube. The [152] compartment beyond lay bared to vacuum. Lissa let the wind help her along. Frost formed briefly on dust, little streamers that glittered in the beams from wristlights.
She and Valen came forth into a cavern. Air fled and light fell undiffused, hard-edged. Things sprang solitary out of shadow that otherwise engulfed sight—save where the hull was rent and stars marched manifold past.
The rotations of the conjoined wrecks caught at your blood and balance, cast you about. Space was too confined for safe use of a
jetpack. You must somehow recover, compensate, be a master juggler; and the ball you kept going was yourself.
Yourself and others. Susaians in their long, many-jointed spacesuits waited for deliverance. Most tumbled helpless. A number were violently nauseated, their helmets smeared with spew on which they choked. A handful of trained personnel were there to shepherd them as well as might be. The task was too much for so few. Victims, especially the injured, kept flopping and drifting away. The humans went after them.
Things couldn’t be so bad at the waist lock. It was joined to an unruptured section. Clumsy though they might be, Esker and his scientists could give the Susaian marshals some help. And elsewhere, Dagmar’s three robots flitted to a part torn entirely loose. They would break in and tow back those whom they found.
But this half of Amethyst had been barred from the rest. Damaged servos didn’t allow personnel trapped in it to transfer to the middle and await rescue. Instead, crewfolk from Supremacy must bring extra spacesuits and, as rendezvous neared, herd, drag, manhandle the people into this ripped compartment, the only one that Dagmar’s forward gang tube could reach when the middle one was engaged.
Lissa’s light picked out a thrashing, drifting shape. She went for it. Spin changed its path. She kicked against a crumpled plate, intercepted, clutched. Panicky, the Susaian struggled in her arms. “Hold still, you idiot,” she groaned.
[153] Noises she could neither understand nor imitate gibbered in her ears. Some that were calm and steady came to damp them. The Susaian didn’t relax, but stiffened, became a load Lissa could manage. She heard the Anglay: “Honored one, I am informed that several victims are near the breach in the hull.” Back aboard Dagmar, translator, active, Orichalc was the living message switchboard.
Lissa bore her burden to the tube mouth and gave it an impetus. The passage was already half filled with bodies. A Susaian officer at either end clung by the tail to a handhold and issued orders. Several at a time, the fugitives were passing into the lock and thus to the Asborgan ship. Lissa kicked off toward the gap where the stars danced.
Hoo! Nearly went through it! She clutched a piece of metal in time and cast light rays about. The reptile-like forms appeared in the gloom, suits ashimmer. They had clung fast to whatever they found, lest they be cast adrift into space.
“Orichalc,” Lissa called, “tell them to link hands or tails or whatever and let go when I take the lead. I’ll guide them to the tube—”
Heaven vanished in a burst of brilliance. For a moment there was no more night. Throughout the cavern, each being, body, bit of wreckage sprang forth into sight. They had no color; that radiance showed them molten white. Thunder crashed in Lissa’s skull. The doomsday blow sent her off, end over end, barely aware. She heard a man howl and knew it was Valen. Dazzlement blew in rags. As if she dreamt, there passed across her: Very near miss. Electric field. Discharge. How close by now are we to the volcano?
Then a solidity captured her, and brought her to rest, and she heard, “Lissa, are you all right, oh, Lissa.”
Slowly, she looked about her. The fire-splash after-images began to fade; she glimpsed stars. The ringing in her ears diminished. I’m alive, she knew.
[154] “Get into the tube,” Valen chattered. “Back aboard Dagmar. I’ll finish here.”
“No,” she said hoarsely. “You go on. Back to your work. We’ve damn little time left. I’ll join you in a couple of minutes.”
A sob caught in his throat. He released her and sped off.
XXIX
STARS, Milky Way, sister galaxies shone in majesty. The black hole was lost to naked-eye sight. Even the cloud from which Dagmar fled was now scarcely more than another gleam in the brightness-crowded dark. The crimson that for minutes had raged and roared about her was become a memory. She had radiated its heat into space. The brutality of five-gee boost lingered only in aches, bruises, exhaustion, nothing that a good rest wouldn’t heal; she flew at gentle half-gee weight.
Memory still echoed. Nor had the ship yet relinquished her booty. Bodies crowded the decks. Pungent odors and sibilant words filled the air. Lissa picked a way among them, bound aft. When she thought some hailed her, she responded with a nod or a wave and passed on. It was all she could do. They had their medics and others tending to the hurt among them. She was ignorant of their requirements, and in any case wrung dry, wanting no more than to creep into her cubicle, draw the bunk sheet over her, and sleep.
Her course took her past the laboratory. Esker saw and shambled to the door. “Milady,” he called in an undertone. She heard urgency and stopped. He beckoned her to enter. They were alone there, the others having gone to their own places. His back was bent and fatigue showed leaden in every gesture. Nonetheless the ugly face grinned.
“What do you want?” she asked.
He rubbed his hands together. “I wanted you to know first, milady.” He leaned close. She was too tired to draw back. He spoke in a near whisper, although no Susaians were in this [156] corridor and probably none but Orichalc knew any Anglay. “As we were finishing the evacuation, milady, I saw one of them carrying a data box, and what’d be in it but their observations? Different model from any of ours, but it had to be a data box. Things were crowded, confused. I shoved in and slipped it right out of that ridiculous straw-fingered hand. The bearer didn’t notice; walking wounded. Nobody did. I’ve got it here, and I’m about to copy off the file. Then I’ll leave the box for them to find, as though it got dropped accidentally. But when the stuff’s translated, we’ll know what they found out, at least this part of what they did. So our efforts paid off that much, didn’t they, milady?”
You little tumor, she thought. I shouldn’t accept this. But I suppose I must. Maybe I should even congratulate you.
He peered at her. “I did well, don’t you think, milady?” he asked. “You’ll put in a good word for me when we get home, won’t you, milady?”
“I’ll stay neutral, if I can. It’s up to you.” She turned and left.
Orichalc, bound forward with his personal kit, met her farther on. They halted. “How fare you, honored one?” he greeted. Under the flatness of the trans, did she hear concern? “I have not seen you since you went to aid in the rescue.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “Everybody is, or as much as could be expected, I guess. You?”
“Sh-s-s, I hold back. The Susaian officers know that a member of their race has been aboard this ship, but they know no more than that. Captain Valen agrees it is best they not meet me. On his advice, I seek the Number Two hold.”
Slightly surprised, Lissa noticed herself bridle. “I should hope, after what we’ve done, they won’t cause trouble.”
“No, but why provoke emotions? I can bide my time. Soon we make rendezvous and transfer our passengers. After that, in view of our condition and the delta vee we have expended, Captain Valen says we shall go straight home. Surely other researchers will come from Asborg, and from many more worlds.”
[157] “I don’t imagine those beings are so grateful to us they’ll make their discoveries public.”
“Would you in their place, honored one?”
Lissa laughed a bit. “No, probably not.” Though in the long run, now that the great secret is out, everybody will know everything that can be known about it.
She stroked Orichalc’s head. “Go rest, then,” she said. “Pleasant dreams.”
“I fear yours will not be,” he replied.
Her hand froze where it was. After a space she said, “Well, of course you feel what I’m feeling.”
“I feel that you are woeful. I wish I could help.”
“And, and him?”
“He was full of pride and gladness, until there came a dread I believe was on your account. That was the last I saw of him, about a quarter hour ago.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I do not worry much about you, honored one. You are undaunted. He— But go, since that is your wish. May the time be short until your happ
ier day.”
Lissa walked on.
In the crew section, the assistant physicists had already closed their doors and must be sound asleep. Deck, bulkheads, overhead reached gray and empty, save for the tall form that waited.
She jarred to a stop. They stood for a time. Air rustled around them. “Lissa,” Valen said finally.
“I should think you’d be resting, or else in conference with Moonhorn and Ironbright,” she stated.
“This is more important.” He made as if to approach her, but curbed the motion. “Lissa, why are you here? Why not the cabin? When you didn’t show, I asked Dagmar, and—”
“If you please,” she said, “I am very tired and need some rest of my own.”
Bewilderment ravaged the haggard features. “Lissa, what’s [158] wrong? We saved those beings, we’re safe ourselves, why do you look at me that way?”
Get this over with. “You saved them. It was your decision, your will.”
“But— No, wait.” He swallowed, straightened his shoulders, and said, “I see. You’re angry because I put your life at risk. No, that’s unfair. Because I gambled with everybody’s. Including mine.”
“No,” she sighed, “you do not see. It’s because of why you did.”
He stared.
“Worse than staking us, you staked what we’d gained here for our people,” she told him. “It was in fact a crazy thing to do, from any normal viewpoint. Maybe, morally, it was justified. Seven lives, a valuable ship, and an invaluable store of knowledge, against half a hundred other lives. We did win through, and we may have gotten some goodwill that our leaders can draw on in future negotiations. But ... Valen, none of this was what you had in mind. Not really. Was it?”
“What do you mean?” she barely heard.
She shook her head, like one who remembers a sorrow. “You redeemed yourself. You met again with the Terror you’d run from, and this time you overcame it, first in your spirit, then in reality. Even if you’d died, you’d have won what mattered, the respect of your peers back, and of yourself.
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