Why were they just talking? Lisele cut in: "Captain Delarov! You have to get all the Tsa-phobics in freeze. Right away. So that if there's contact-"
Anders stood. "Yes, she's right. If the Tsa caught my feelings-I tried the control methods, but couldn't make them work-it'd be like a lightning rod to this ship. And same with Alina, here. Captain: request relief from watch?"
Delarov's puzzled frown smoothed out. "Certainly. It's simply that this happened so fast. You're both relieved." Sliding into Kobolak's pilot-navigator position she turned to Lisele and said, "You'll have the comm now, Moray."
As Lisele moved to take Alina's place, Delarov punched up the intercom and called the galley. "First Hat? Are you there?" A male voice answered in the negative; Delarov muttered, "In quarters, then," tried that option, and got a response. "Mei, drop everything and heat your feet to the accel tanks; start setting them up for freeze." She paused. "Let me see: eight, we'll need. Off the Deux there's Kobolak, Rostadt, Rorvik, and Holmbach. Of our own, Molyneaux, Fredericks, Hassan, and Gray."
Lisele didn't get the words of Lu-teng's answer, but the tone of protest came clearly enough. Delarov shook her head. "I know it scalps us in Drive and Engineering. Can't be helped. There's a Tsa ship on the forward screens; if it comes within danger range we mustn't have any conscious minds aboard, that can't hold calm at all costs."
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Then came sounds of assent. Katmai Delarov ended the call and switched to all-ship broadcast mode. "Now hear this, and move fast." Quickly she gave the orders, getting acknowledgment from each person and making sure no watch station would be left totally unattended.
She turned to Lisele. "I think that does it. You agree?" Nodding assent, Lisele thought: after that first few seconds, getting oriented to the unexpected, Katmai Delarov took hold and really moved things.
At normal end of that watch-period, nothing had changed much. Lu-teng had the eight into freeze but was still checking adjustments on the tanks, so Aden Limmer reported out of turn, to take the First Hat's watch. Delarov moved to give him the major Control panel, and took a nearby aux position. After Arlen had checked the log and his screens, and acknowledged that he was taking over the watch in good order, Delarov said, "Very well. Now, Moray, give me all-ship again."
So Lisele flipped the intercom switches, and the captain spoke. "Delarov here. All-ship circuit. Status report. First, we made breakout about where we intended, a little over ninety billion kilos from where we expect the anomaly to be, which would give us leeway to decel down to zerch if we wanted to. We haven't had time to check any of that, or even look for the thing, because of detecting the Tsa ship."
She ran fingers up through her hair, splaying the heavy bangs into disarray. "That ship hasn't changed course; approaching us it's crossing from starboard to port. The angle between courses is not quite a radian. But its path lies a bit above us, so to speak-toward galactic-north from galactic ecliptic; it may not come close enough to be a danger."
From the intercom, Mei Lu-teng's voice came. "Are you saying I've done all this work for nothing?"
Lisele knew she should keep her mouth shut, but still she couldn't help saying, "If you'd ever seen what happens to Tsa-phobics in mind-attack range, you wouldn't say that!" Then she looked at Captain Delarov. "I'm sorry, I-
"No. I've heard about the problem, but you've experienced it. So you said it better."
When no answer came, the captain went on to other matters. "You all know our personnel complement is sadly
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depleted. To be exact, we now have seven people up and awake. Seven, no more."
She spelled it out. Herself, Lu-teng, and Arlen Limmer to handle Control, all the pilot-navigator work. Chief Engineer Darwin Pope with no subordinates awake, at all. Drive Chief deWayne Houk, and Comm Chief Eduin Brower, in the same predicament. No gunnery officer. "What we have," she said, "is nowhere nearly enough people to keep this ship running."
Her smile, then, startled Lisele. "So what we'll have to do, my friends-assuming we survive our near passage with the Tsa ship-is figure out how to make it work, anyway."
The Tsa did not break course. Aboard Hare, all seven persons awake were under orders to work at calm-maintaining methods, not to allow anything to break alpha-wave concentration so that fear or anxiety or anger might reach the Tsa.
And it worked. Closer and closer in the forward screens, though well "above" Hare's path, the Tsa ship came. Then it moved offscreen, was picked up by the side monitors, and finally receded past any possible danger point.
Once, half into sleep between two long watches, Lisele thought she felt the feathers-and-chimes feeling of a Tsa probe: the friendly kind, seeking to communicate. But when she came fully awake, it was gone. She called captain's digs and reported. But either way, there was nothing to do about it.
Before her next watch, Lisele got a little sleep. Not as much as she needed, but enough to make do with.
"So," said Katmai Delarov, "let's get on with it." Eduin Brower, working comm, had spotted the anomaly they intended to explore. It wasn't exactly at the expected location, but near enough. From Hare's position, less than one-percent of a light-year distant, the normal monitors showed only a dust cloud that spewed great jets of gases, charged particles, and radiation.
Meanwhile the inertial indicators reported that the thing's gravity field varied, sometimes fluctuating off the meters' scales. What this did to navigational data kept the Control crew on its toes, estimating and trying to correct. It would have been nice to have more help, but no one could be
26
spared for the laborious task of getting the rest of the crew up out of freeze.
For one thing, first there was Turnover: swinging Hare end-for-end to point the drive-nodes forward and apply deceleration. With only Darwin Pope and Drive Chief deWayne Houk left, out of six people qualified to work in Drive, the two men were working twelve-hour watches and sleeping on improvised bunks: Houk in the aisle beside the log desk, and Pope behind the exciter racks. Nonetheless, between them coordinating three control consoles, the two men swung ship smoothly and brought the Drive solidly up to redline-max thrust without pause or misfire.
What nobody liked, though, was the v/ay the anomaly's variations screwed up the approach schedule. Only a light-day out, with the screen and other instruments showing vast and frightening phenomena in the space ahead, Lisele reported for watch duty. Short on sleep, her hair a tousled mess and skin itching for an overdue shower, she tried to remember what her job was, on this particular shift. Comm, probably, because Eduin Brower, seeing her, was leaving that position. Brower was another who had made impromptu sleeping arrangements; his pile of bedding lay over to one side of Control, behind the aux positions. When he ran out of energy and Lisele couldn't be there to relieve him, he set audible alarms on his circuits and sacked out anyway.
Now he waved her a grumpy hello and shuffled his way out of Control. Probably to go fix himself something to eat. Oh, damn! A little more awake, Lisele would have thought to visit the galley and bring up some kind of snacks. Well, she hadn't.
Arlen Limmer was sitting Nav. Lisele said, "Any better figures now?"
Scowling, Arlen shook his head. "We're not getting the decel we ought. It's that damned variable gravity. And going in tailfirst, we're having trouble getting any lateral course change away from the nasty bugger."
Lisele knew what he meant. "Tregare used to say about that. When you go in bassackwards, it makes your steering tough."
His face showing fatigue, young Limmer glared at her. "Oh, that's fine! Words of wisdom. So tell me, then: what did he do about it?"
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Her mind blanked. "I guess I don't know, Aden. Except, maybe-well, he could have swung ship and steered straightforward again."
"When we're already going too fast?"
"It could be a thought," said Katmai Delarov.
Lisele hadn't heard her come in, and now turned to give greeting. Then, "Are we in real trouble?"
"I can't know; I have no data on anything like this. I've been trying to think what this thing could be."
"Any ideas, skipper?" said Arlen.
Delarov waved him free of watch duty, sat to check his log and then okayed it, before she answered. "Some theoretical ones. No, not even theory; call it speculation. In the latest text Pennet Hoyfarul published before we left Earth.'
Lisele cleared her throat. "Not easy reading, then."
Tired or not, the captain smiled well. "Is he ever?"
Arlen broke in. "What does the book say?"
Delarov's face wrinkled with scowl lines. "Do you know what 'anisotropic' means?"
Arlen didn't answer, so Lisele did. "When the properties of something aren't the same in all directions. Like a magnet; it's polarized from one end to the other, but not sideways. Right?"
"Right." The captain nodded. "And Hoyfarul hypothesizes, which is at least one jump better than speculating, that perhaps even very dense forms of matter/energy can be anisotropic."
