by Zach Hughes
While on duty Vinn spent his time familiarizing himself with Rose's very interesting systems. She was, he found, one hell of a well equipped ship. Kara told him that Rose's detection instruments matched those aboard an X&A fleet cruiser. Her weapons were awesome. Her computer was the latest Zede development, a Phase II model that Vinn had not seen.
After having become acquainted with the computer's slight differences and peculiarities, Vinn decided that the Zede machine was not superior in general function to the standard Century series that was in use on U.P.
ships, but it did have minor features that offered him interesting little challenges. In addition to the inaccessible area wherein resided X&A's little black box—the "spy box," as Kara called it—another area of memory was closed off to the noninformed user. It took Vinn five watches to break into the closed file. It listed, defined, and gave operating instructions for the Carmine Rose's weapons system. That in itself was not surprising. The startling thing was that the Rose was even better armed than Vinn had dreamed.
"Pete," Vinn asked as soon as he had opportunity to be alone with de Conde, "did you know that this ship carries two planet busters?"
"Damn, Vinn," Pete said in surprise.
"You didn't?"
Pete scratched his nose.
De Conde's hesitation to answer was revealing. "You did know," Vinn said.
"I'm wondering how in hell you found out," Pete said. He scratched his nose again.
"One of my assignments when I worked on Xanthos was to develop methods to search out hidden files," Vinn said. "And when I'm alone with a computer I lose all self-control and can't keep my hands off it." He grinned, then sobered. "Why the illegal weapons, Pete?"
"It depends on where you are and how you look at the question whether or not they're legal," de Conde said. "Somewhere way to hell and gone out in the big empty where no X&A ship has ever gone there's no one to say they're not allowed."
Vinn knew and he knew that Pete knew that busters were forbidden to any vessel, anywhere. "You haven't told me why you need them," he said.
De Conde looked away. "Well, I suppose a buster could be considered a mining tool under certain circumstances."
"Damn," Vinn said. "I believe you're going to tell me that your company has used them in the past."
"Not lately." Pete grinned. "The last time was about ten years ago. The system was isolated. There was a big, airless moon orbiting a gas giant. It was a useless hunk of rock, except that it had a core of metals so pure that it was almost unnecessary to refine them."
"You blew a moon apart?"
"A lot easier to mine that way," Pete said.
"My God," Vinn said. "If X&A knew— Hell, if they knew that this ship had been within twenty light-years of Xanthos with two busters aboard—"
Pete chuckled. "But they don't." He put his hand on Vinn's arm. "Look, Vinn, we have the tightest security in the galaxy. You take Iain and Kara.
They've been submitted to every psychological test ever devised, and it's our policy to pay key employees enough to make them not just loyal but fanatic. They own shares in the company. They're as solid as people canbe. We damned sure wouldn't want a couple of unstable nuts running around with two busters aboard."
Vinn ran his hand through his hair. "Well, you said this ship would be well armed."
It took Vinn another few watches to puzzle out the complicated firing sequence for the planet busters. The process was even more of a challenge than breaking Kara's code to get into the file in the first place. It helped pass the long hours of charging time. He was working out the last sequence one day when Sarah came into control and looked over his shoulder. She asked questions. At first Vinn hedged, then he decided that she had a right to know.
She paled when he told her. "This ship could destroy a world?" she asked.
"Two of them."
"There are safeguards, of course."
"The firing orders are quite complicated."
"Show me."
"It's not that I don't trust you, Sarah, but one of the safeguards is that it takes both Iain and Kara to arm and fire one of the weapons," he said.
"But you're able to defeat the fail-safes?"
He shrugged. "I've spent a lot of time with these things. I'd say that there aren't more than half a dozen people in the U.P. who could break the entry code and dope out the steps it takes to send one of those things zapping toward a planet." He grinned wryly. "Don't intend to brag. It's just that I think in computerese."
"You could launch one of those things all by yourself?"
"If necessary," he said. "I can't imagine any sequence of events that would cause me to do it, though."
"It gives me the shivers," she said.
"You are not alone," he said, as he overrode the commands that had brought him within three steps of having one of the planet destroying weapons ready to fire. "By the way, if it's all the same to you I'd just as soon Iain and Kara don't know I busted into private areas."
The Carmine Rose made a left turn relating to the plane of the galactic disc and jumped inward to the one permanent blink beacon laid down by the Erin Kenner. There she paused, while those aboard her gathered in the control room and studied the sparse sprinkling of stars that lay within a relatively few light-years.
"Here's where the fun begins," Kara Berol said. "Offhand I'd guess that we have six months' work ahead of us just checking out the nearest stars."
But there was a Webster aboard, and, like Ruth and Sheba before her, Sarah Webster de Conde remembered her mother's shopping habits. So it was that the Carmine Rose followed the same procedures that had led three other ships carrying Websters to the ice planet.
Those who studied the human brain and mind had long since negated the myth of racial memory. The experts were in agreement, however, that the actions and attitudes of a people could be affected by their legends. A
Zedian had, somewhere in his subconscious mind, the semi-memory of dying worlds. Therefore, in unknown space, a Zedian ship's captain, such as Iain Berol, often took precautions that would have made the most meticulous X&A commander seem reckless. As the Rose approached the planet, she bristled with weapons at the ready, and she sent out an electronic cacophony of detection signals.
Kara Berol, at instrument control, pointed out to the others, first of all, the total lack of life signals and electromagnetic radiation from the icy world. This precautionary survey completed, she turned herself to other tests.
"What we have here is a round ice cube with a hot core," she said. "The depth of the ice cover ranges from roughly two hundred feet to several miles in the ocean basins, where the density of the deep ice shows salinity."
Iain, at weapons control, was scanning for metal. "Boss," he said, "I think we'd better file a claim as soon as we can. This one has good ore fields, light metals to heavy."
"Wouldn't that have been the first thought of anyone else who took the same readings?" Vinn asked.
Iain frowned. "To answer that you have to assume that the other ships came here."
Kara was bent over her instrument panel, her fingers busy at the detection station keyboard. Suddenly she straightened. "I think you all had better take a look at this," she said.
She displayed the findings of a surface scan. On the screen the regular pattern of metallic installations extended to the horizons of the world that turned slowly beneath them.
"What we should do, right now, is jump back to the beacons and yell loudly for an X&A alien contact ship," Kara said.
Pete de Conde said, "If I had always done what I should have done, at least according to the rules, I'd still be crunching numbers in an accounting office." He turned to Iain. "There's nothing living down there?
Nothing to indicate any sort of activity?"
"None," Iain said.
Pete took Sarah's hand. "We came out here to find your family," he said. "Do you want to go back now?"
"I don't want to endanger the ship, nor anyone in her," Sarah said.<
br />
"I see no harm in taking a few more readings," Vinn said.
"I'm thinking of a share of discoverer's rights when the mining crews go to work out here," Kara said, lighting the room with her happy smile.
"Kara, set us up in a polar orbit so that we'll cover the whole surface,"
Vinn said. He lifted one hand. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound as if I was giving orders."
"No problem," Kara said, her fingers flying as she punched in the problem. A few quick bursts of flux power positioned the Rose into the desired orbit. Instruments charted the surface. Pete and Sarah left control to have a meal and a rest. Iain was alert, watching the detectors diligently.
Kara was monitoring the viewer as the grid of regularly shaped metal objects was charted. Vinn was using the most powerful of the optics to examine the surface.
"Oh, ho," Kara said.
"What? What?" Vinn asked.
She read off figures to indicate a specific spot on the surface. Vinn focused the optics on a mound of ice that protruded slightly above the level plain.
"See anything interesting?" Kara asked.
"Something on the surface. It's not covered as thickly as its surroundings."
"Durametal," Kara said.
Vinn felt his heart flip. "Program for stationary orbit," he said.
"Aye, aye."
Holding her position directly over the mass of durametal, Rose used all of her sensors and detectors. "There are two separate objects," Kara said.
"The mass of one matches that of a Mule, the other a Zede Starliner."
Iain said, "It's decision time, kiddies."
Vinn chewed on his lower lip, thinking of Sheba. They couldn't know for sure, not just yet, but it was odds on that the two durametal objects under a shallow coating of ice were Old Folks and David's Starliner. "Iain, before we call Pete and Sarah in for a conference, let's complete the surface sweep."
"I can understand how civilians might disregard standard procedure and land on an untested planet," Iain said, "but I don't think you're going to find an X&A explorer down there."
"Resuming polar orbit," Kara said.
They did not, of course, find an X&A ship on the surface of the planet.
They found only more of the grid installations. Twenty-four hours later,the planetary sweep completed, Rose floated in stationary orbit above the two durametal objects. A port opened. A small, projectile-shaped drone fluxed away toward the surface.
The drone represented Zede technology at its best. It was thought controlled. Kara wore the control helmet. As the probe reached the icy mound on the surface, she projected the probe's binocular vision images onto a screen. The little vessel hovered, sent out a beam of heat.
Durametal was quickly exposed. Kara shifted the drone's position and the heat beam penetrated the open lock of a Zede Starliner.
Sarah held her breath as the optics of the probe took them inside the hull of the ice-bound ship.
"Look at this," Kara said, zooming in on a specimen container that hovered on flux two feet above the icy deck.
"How long would the power last in that flux engine?" Iain asked.
"Just over a year," Vinn said. "Kara, can you clear away the frost there on the front of that bin?"
The probe flared heat, and he knew that Sheba was dead, for the ice melted to show the X&A logo, and, under it, the name Erin Kenner. The specimen bin had belonged to Joshua's ship. He felt heavy. He wanted nothing more than to be alone, to grieve for what might have been. But Kara, in grim silence, had moved the probe to scan the control room of the starliner. There were four bodies on the deck. Through the film of ice came a definite tinge of Service blue.
"You might not want to see this, Sarah," Kara said, as she positioned the probe and focused. The frozen face looked up at them with an expression of surprise.
"Oh, Josh," Sarah whispered. "Oh, please, no."
"That's your brother?" Iain asked.
Pete put his arm around Sarah. "Yes," he said. "That's Joshua Webster."
"What's in the bins?" Iain asked.
"Let's have a look," Kara said.
It took a while, after the probe was positioned above the bin, to make out the mass inside. Kara played the heat beam lightly over the frozen contents. Ruth Webster's face emerged, ruptured eyeballs looking upward past a male head.
It took some time to discover the second specimen bin, which had been left outside when Josh and his party entered the Fran Webster.
"They are all here," Sarah said weakly, when she recognized the ruined faces of her mother and father. "All except Sheba."
"So now we know," Iain said. "Is it time to call in the shock troops?"
"I'm going to take Sarah to our cabin," Pete said.
"That wasn't an answer, was it?" Kara asked, after the de Condes were gone.
"I'm feeling a small suggestion of outright panic," Iain said.
"Pete de Conde didn't get to be one of the richest men in the U.P. by following the letter of the rules," Kara said.
"I'm going to bring up the probe," Iain said.
"No," Vinn said sharply.
"Huh?" said Iain.
"There are eight bodies down there," Vinn said. "And we have no idea what happened to the Erin Kenner and the rest of her crew."
"That machine represents a lot of credits," Iain said. "And I'm signed for it."
"Leave it. Park it. Maybe we can retrieve it later."
"Leave it, Iain," Kara said. "He's right. We don't know what we're dealing with here."
"I want no physical contact with the surface, either direct orsecondhand, not until we know a lot more."
Iain bristled, but subsided. He'd had not a few conversations with Vinn during the trip out, and he knew that Vinn had good credentials. "All right," he said, "what's your suggestion?"
"Run all the tests again, and any others that we can think of."
"Polar orbit?" Kara asked.
"Please, Kara," Vinn said.
The monotonous task of scanning the entire surface of the planet again.
Iain took a sleep break, leaving Kara on weapons and Vinn watching the instruments. The long hours passed.
"Do you mind if I have a look at the planet's magnetic field?" Vinn asked.
"Not at all," Kara said. "Punch in magnoscan."
"I think I know the procedure," Vinn said, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
There was nothing unexpected about the planet's magnetic field. A
series of solar flares were sending strong flows of radiation into the thin atmosphere. Vinn measured the power of the flares and the intensity of the auroral display at the north pole. He used the computer's files to compare the readings to those of other planets and found nothing out of the ordinary.
Rose's instruments located an area of relatively thin ice which covered a broad, flat zone lacking the gridded metallic installations. Kara investigated.
"Hey, Vinn," she called out, "this empty area was hit by no less than three blasts from a laser cannon within the last year."
"The Erin Kenner," Vinn said.
"That's my guess, too," Kara said.
"Anything else?"
"Nope. No metal directly under the blast area. At least not enough to show on the ore field detectors. Whoever shot up the joint was using full power, because destruction was complete."
It was, it seemed, another blind lead, another dead end. Vinn looked at the viewscreen moodily. His fingers rested lightly on the keyboard. He sent out another search for life signals and there was nothing. Idly he punched in an order for detection of gravitational waves. That test hadn't been run previously because the duration and strength of the waves could be readily predicted by measurement of the planet's density, mass, and position in relationship to other solar system bodies. He was looking at the screen with only half of his attention, his thoughts once again with Sheba. It is human to hope, and he was trying desperately to abandon the mindset that she was dead.
At first he didn't
realize what he was seeing. In addition to the image and measurements of standard gravitational waves there was a connected grid of waves covering the surface of the planet. Directed gravitational force joined each of the metallic installations of the grid.
"Vinn, what is it?" Kara asked, as he bent forward in obvious agitation.
"I don't know," he said. What he was seeing was impossible. While it was true that gravity could be created artificially aboard ship and nullified by the flux engine, it was not possible to direct such forces in straight lines, as was obviously being done under the ice of the planet.
Someone or something was vectoring gravity waves as power or communications or both. The implications of such advanced technology made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pete de Conde sipped a cup of coffee as he stared at the grid pattern on the large screen. "Vinn, you're telling me that someone down there has found a way to direct the force of gravity along a single vector?"
"It looks that way," Vinn said, as he waited for the computer to print upthe conclusion of a long and involved calculation. He was trying to figure the relative intensity of one of the straight lines of gravitational force that connected the metallic installations. In relation to the planetary force the answer involved one heck of a lot of zeros after a decimal point. But that figure was misleading, for it measured only the size of the gravitational increment represented by the line of direction and not the applied force or the energy equivalent.
