by Timothy Zahn
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant sighed. Another type of officer would probably have simply given in; but this one knew his job better than that. Reaching for the microphone, he flipped on the comm board.
The commodore was thoroughly annoyed—even from the single carefully guarded side of the conversation we could hear that much was evident. The entire discussion took most of the rest of our trip to the rocheoid, and it was only as we locked tubes with the dormant tug that the commodore finally relented.
“All right,” Grashchik said as we unbuckled from our seats, not even trying to hide his own irritation at having been put in the middle of this. “The commodore’s authorized me to run the pseudograv once, just long enough to make sure it’s working. I hope that’ll be satisfactory because, frankly, that’s all you’re going to get.”
“Quite satisfactory,” Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded. “Lead on … ?”
The lieutenant eased past us, far more graceful in zero-gee than the rest of us would ever hope to be. A quick but thorough check of the seal indicators, and he popped the lock door. A wave of cold air swept into the launch as he opened the tug and floated in. Shivering, from nervous anticipation as much as from the cold, I followed him.
The tug was dark, the only light coming from the small viewports and from a set of firefly indicator lights. A darker shadow—Grashchik—floated at the main panel. A faint glint of light from the edge of his cyl as he inserted it—
There was an audible click of relays, and abruptly the main lights came dimly on. Grashchik turned them up a bit, then moved to the other side of the helm chair. “You ready, Lord Kelsey-Ramos?” he asked over his shoulder. “Listen for the hum …”
He flipped a switch, and in the silence the faint drone of high-frequency oscillating current filled the tug. In Mjollnir space that current—or, rather, the flickering electric field it was generating—would take on the character of a gravitational field; right now, in normal space, about all it was doing was radiating a highly distinctive electromagnetic signal all over this part of the ring system.
The lieutenant was thinking about that, too. “That’s all I can do,” he said, switching it off after perhaps two seconds. “We’d just as soon not broadcast the fact that there are ships out here that aren’t registering on the traffic displays. Well. This is it, Lord Kelsey-Ramos. If you have any questions, I’ll try and answer them.”
Lord Kelsey-Ramos sent me a questioning glance, and I floated over to the board for a quick look. The controls seemed simple enough, certainly compared with the simulated helm Captain Bartholomy had set up aboard the Bellwether for my two-day piloting crashcourse. Set in place over the center of the helm board was the by-now familiar black Deadman Switch keyboard. “Looks all right, sir,” I told Lord Kelsey-Ramos, the words coming out with difficulty in my nervousness. This was it; time for Lord Kelsey-Ramos and Kutzko to ease Grashchik back into the launch.
Lord Kelsey-Ramos nodded his understanding. “Good. Now, Lieutenant, if you’ll come back into the launch for a moment—”
“All of you just stay where you are,” Kutzko’s voice came quietly from the lock. Quietly enough that the click of his needler’s safety was clearly audible …
I turned slowly, peripherally noting Lord Kelsey-Ramos’s stunned expression as I did so. So this was now Kutzko’s play entirely. “Kutzko—”
“Quiet, Benedar,” Kutzko cut me off. “Leave the cyl where it is, Lieutenant, and move this way. Slowly.”
“Whatever you think you’re doing,” Grashchik growled, “you’re not going to get away with it. Security could walk over here faster than you can fly this monstrosity.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Kutzko said calmly. “Now do like I told you—I don’t really want to have to shoot you. You, too, Lord Kelsey-Ramos, if you please.”
I looked behind Lord Kelsey-Ramos to where Adams was quietly floating … and in his face I saw that he, alone of all of us, hadn’t been caught unawares by Kutzko’s move. Something they’d cooked up together, probably while I was occupied with my flying lessons, in an obvious attempt to push Lord Kelsey-Ramos as far as possible out of direct implication in this. A scheme I’d been too wrapped up in my own worries to even notice …
“Not you,” Kutzko said into my thoughts. I focused on his face, saw the calm determination there as he looked at me. “You stay aboard with me. You too,” he added, glancing briefly at Adams.
Grashchik, halfway to the lock, suddenly stiffened, and I saw the impotent anger in his sense turn to horror as he abruptly realized that Kutzko wasn’t planning to fly the tug away through normal space … and recognized what the implications of that were to Adams and me. “Wait a minute—wait a minute,” he said, his voice beginning to shake. “You can’t—look, blaze it, that’s premeditated murder. This tug can’t possibly be worth that much to you—”
“You let me decide that, all right?” Kutzko cut him off coldly. “You just be a good boy and get into the launch.”
A sort of enraged panic flooded Grashchik’s sense—a panic built of duty, pride, and anger—and for that single moment I thought he would decide to fight back, after all. I clenched my hands into fists … but as he hesitated, the panic subsided, and with returning sanity he saw that resistance would accomplish nothing but the useless sacrifice of his own life. Clenching his teeth, muscles tight with bitter fury, he silently continued on into the lock.
Some of the tension went out of Kutzko’s face; he, too, had sensed Grashchik teetering on the brink. “Now you, sir,” he said.
Lord Kelsey-Ramos pursed his lips, followed Grashchik off the tug without comment. “Now—you, Benedar,” Kutzko gestured to me. “There’s a satchel just inside the lock. Get it—and don’t forget that I’ll be covering you.”
He winked reassuringly as I moved toward the lock. An unnecessary gesture; I already knew the threat had been solely for Grashchik’s benefit.
Another unnecessary gesture, as it turned out. Grashchik was nowhere in sight as I collected the massive satchel and carefully maneuvered it through the zero-gee onto the tug. “He’s gone forward,” I told Kutzko as I pushed the satchel over into a corner and eased it toward the deck. “Probably calling in the alert. Get going—we’ll seal the lock from here.”
“Don’t bother,” he said calmly, swinging the lock closed.
I stared at him, feeling a horrible tingle run through me. How had I failed to notice—? “Kutzko, get out of here,” I snapped.
“Get the engines fired up,” he said, ignoring the order. “I trust you remember how?”
“Mikha—”
“And you’d better get busy—like you said, Grashchik’s up there calling for help. Be a waste of a good hijacking if they get us while we’re sitting here arguing.”
I glared at him; but it was a useless gesture. If he was determined to come along, there was nothing I could do to stop him. And we both knew it.
Tight-lipped, I went over to the board, where Adams had already seated himself in the helm chair. By the time I had the power indicators reading operational, he was ready.
“Thunderhead?” I called. “Are you there?”
For what seemed like a small eternity there was no reply. Heart pounding in my ears, I watched Adams’s slack face, thoughts of treachery and betrayal spinning through my mind—
“I am here,” Adams whispered.
I swallowed, the worst of the tension draining from my muscles. “We’re ready to go. Do you know exactly where the Invaders are at the moment?”
“I do. But where is the zombi … for me to use?”
There was a totally uncaring attitude toward human life hidden beneath the words. “There will be no zombi,” I gritted. “Shepherd Adams—the man you’re speaking through—will act as your hands.”
For a long moment Adams just stared at me, an alien yet unmistakably surprised look on his face. Apparently that implication of their Seeker contacts hadn’t yet occurred to the thunderheads, either. “I don’t know i
f it will … be possible to—”
“So try it,” Kutzko broke in brusquely, nodding toward the displays. “We’ve got company coming.”
Adams’s face twisted, his hands reaching tentatively for the black Deadman Switch. I held my breath … and abruptly fell a few centimeters to the deck below me as the Mjollnir drive came on and the pseudograv began to function.
I exhaled raggedly, swaying a bit as my circulatory system adjusted to weight again. A moment, and my vision cleared … and I turned to find Kutzko looking at me. “Well,” I said to him. “It worked.”
He nodded, a quiet grimness to his sense. “So far, anyway,” he agreed. “Now what?”
“We see how long he can handle it,” I said evenly. “If he can get us all the way to the alien fleet in one jump, fine. If not … we see how long he needs to rest between contacts.”
“And once we’re there?” Kutzko persisted. “You can’t have him fading in and out on you while you’re trying to hold a conversation with the Invaders.”
“Let’s just see what happens, all right?” I snapped, my mouth dry. Beneath his casual words I knew what it was he was offering.
For a moment Kutzko studied me. Then he nodded, once, and turned back to the satchel in the corner. “Sure,” he said over his shoulder. “There’s no rush. Come on—give me a hand and we’ll get this comm gear of yours set up.”
I stared at his back, my muscles trembling with anger and dread. No, there was no rush; and if we were lucky, there might be no need to go through with it at all.
But I could tell Kutzko didn’t believe that. And down deep, neither did I.
Chapter 36
WE WERE FORTY-FIVE MINUTES out from Solitaire, three-quarters of the way to the alien fleet, when our luck ran out.
There was no warning at all that I could see—nothing in Adams’s face or body language that preceded it. One minute he was sitting at the Deadman Switch, glazed eyes staring tautly into space; the next minute, there was the crack of circuit breakers, gravity abruptly vanished, and Adams was gasping frantically for breath.
We reached him at the same time, Kutzko jamming the oxygen inhaler we’d brought over his nose and mouth as I searched his face for other symptoms.
It didn’t look good.
“I’m all … all right,” Adams managed after a couple of tense minutes under pure oxygen. “Just let … me catch my … breath, okay?”
Kutzko turned to me. “How is he?”
I took a careful breath of my own. “Not in any immediate danger, I don’t think,” I said. Before Aaron Balaam darMaupine and the paranoia that had followed in his wake, Watchers had sometimes been employed by hospitals as complements to the standard medical sensors. Fleetingly, I wished some of that specialized training had been available to me. “Heartbeat’s stabilizing, and blood pressure seems all right. Brain functions …” I peered into Adams’s eyes. “Pupils are responding normally, and … I don’t see any evidence of pain.”
“Nothing hurts,” Adams confirmed, still somewhat short of breath. “Just give me a few … more minutes to rest.”
I looked up to find Kutzko’s eyes on me … and I knew what he was thinking. “We can do the rest of the trip in shorter stages,” I told him firmly. “We’re only fifteen minutes or so from the alien fleet—we can let him rest up and then go on.”
“What about your talk with the Invaders?” he countered. “You going to confine that to fifteen-minute chunks, too?”
“If need be, yes,” I said, keeping my voice steady. The lie was an unnecessary caution, perhaps, with the thunderheads presumably no longer listening in … but with so much hanging in the balance, I preferred unnecessary caution to unnecessary chances.
How easily I’d learned, and learned to rationalize, the art of lying. There are ways that some think straight, but they lead in the end to death … “Besides,” I added to Kutzko, hurrying to get my mind off that thought, “any talking I do with the aliens will necessarily be chopped into short segments. They’ll be shooting past us at twelve percent lightspeed, remember?”
He grimaced, but for the moment at least he seemed willing to trust me. “All right,” he said at last. “We’ll give him some time—maybe give him another shot of Dr. Eisenstadt’s fancy mixture. See how quickly he recovers.”
I glanced at Adams; but if he’d heard the unspoken and if not in Kutzko’s tone, he gave no indication of it. “Agreed,” I nodded, my stomach tightening. And if not … then either Kutzko or I wouldn’t be returning to Solitaire.
We waited a little more than an hour … an hour that will forever remain etched on my memory.
Not for anything in particular that happened. On the contrary, the most dominant feature of that time was its extreme boredom. Wrapped in our own individual thoughts and fears about what lay ahead, none of us really felt like talking; and with our equipment already set up there was absolutely nothing for any of us to do. I don’t know how many times I floated past the board, studying the never-changing indicators, or how many minutes I spent at the viewport, looking out at the stars and straining my eyes to try and follow the contours of our tethered rocheoid in their dim light.
But what I did mainly was fight against terror.
Not fear. Fear I’d expected, and had been more or less prepared for. But as the minutes ticked by, and I ran out of other things with which to occupy my mind, I began to focus more and more on the image of the alien ships rushing inexorably down on us. It did no good to remind myself that they were two years away at their normal-space speed—my gut instincts had already latched firmly onto the fact that, as far as we were concerned, they were a bare fifteen minutes away. It was a totally irrational terror, but reminding myself of that did nothing except make me too ashamed of myself to try and talk it out with the others. More than once I told myself that the thunderheads might be behind at least some of the emotion, amplifying my feelings as they had back in the Pravilo cell on Solitaire. But this time, even that knowledge didn’t help.
And so, for an hour, I suffered; alone, bored, terrified, and ashamed. It was like a foretaste of hell … and as close as I ever again want to be.
Which probably also explains why, when Adams finally decided he was ready, I immediately agreed to let him do so. I’ve often wondered whether things would have worked out differently if I’d been more cautious.
“You will reach the Inva … ders in three minutes,” the thunderhead whispered through Adams’s lips. “What are your instructions?”
My throat was dry enough to hurt. Against all odds—against all opposition—we’d made it. Now it was in my hands alone. “Stop us here,” I ordered, “as close to being in the path of the lead ship as possible. If you can control our position that accurately, that is.”
“I can,” the thunderhead hissed, and I got the distinct impression I’d just stepped on his pride. I’d rather thought he would take it that way; hopefully, that would translate into the pinpoint accuracy I needed. Holding my breath, I watched as Adams’s hands moved to make a slight correction in the course; then, with a crack of circuit breakers, gravity vanished and the stars once again appeared in the viewport.
We were there.
“All right,” I said, fighting to keep my voice from trembling. “Now. Pay attention to this, thunderhead, because this part is crucial.” I pulled myself over to Adams and indicated an instrument Kutzko and I had wired into the main board. “This device is measuring the magnetic field strength outside the tug,” I explained. “Magnetic fields are what the Invaders are using to scoop hydrogen into their ships’ engines, and fields of that strength can be dangerous to our species. You understand?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Good. Now, this has been set to give you a short—a very short—warning before the strength gets to dangerous levels. When the red light here goes On—” I touched the test button to demonstrate—“you must immediately take us back into Mjollnir space. Understand?—immediately.”
“I u
nderstand,” the thunderhead said.
I desperately hoped so; Lord Kelsey-Ramos’s best estimate was that the red light would give us barely three seconds to get out of the aliens’ way. A tape-thin margin for error; though at the speed the fleet was making, I suppose we were lucky to get even that much warning. “Good,” I told the thunderhead, trying to sound confident in his abilities. “You watch the light while I get this transmitter ready to go.”
I moved to the comm gear we’d set up, watching Adams out of the corner of my eye … and I had no trouble catching the thunderhead’s sudden surprise. “You are already pre … pared to signal the In … vaders?” he asked.
“Well, of course I’ve got to tune this thing first,” I said off-handedly. “After that, I’ll need you to tell me exactly what to say. You did tell me you could communicate with them, didn’t you?”
Some of the thunderhead’s nervousness left Adams’s body. “Yes,” he whispered. “We have promised to give … you whatever aid is … necessary.”
I nodded, as if I really believed the face value of the words, and turned to the comm. “Okay, now. Let’s see …
I had asked Lord Kelsey-Ramos for the most sophisticated equipment he could get, and he’d taken me doubly at my word. The comm gear, for all its compact size, was a virtual catalog of dials, setting switches, readouts, and adjustments. I fiddled busily with them, keeping a careful eye on Adams and the red light sitting in front of him. If the warning came and the thunderhead didn’t notice—
Abruptly the light flicked on. “Thun—” I started to shout; and then gravity returned and we were once again safe in Mjollnir space.
I took a shuddering breath, fighting to banish the vivid image of flaming death hurtling down on me. “That was very good, thunderhead,” I managed. “Well. That came sooner than I expected, somehow. Where are we headed?”
“Outward,” Adams whispered. “Beyond the Invaders.”
“Come back around, please,” I instructed him. “Put us back in front of the lead ship, again three to four minutes ahead of them.”
