We keep chipping away at the mission duration record. Yanevich
says the longest was around ninety days. He doesn’t remember
the exact figure.
Memory gets tricky out here. It adapts to the demands of Climber
service. For instance, the men we lost—I can’t remember
their faces.
I knew none but Chief Holtsnider very well, and he not as well
as I’d like. I can make a list of physical characteristics,
but his face won’t come.
It takes an effort to mourn them.
The lack of feeling seems common enough. We’re under
pressure.
We’ve found ourselves an uninhabited star-covert. It has
planets and moons and a full complement of asteroidal debris. A
fine place to get lost. And just as fine a place for the opposition
to have installed a low-profile detection probe, a passive observer
as easily detected as our own beacons.
This guilt I have, about not hurting enough for those we lost,
isn’t an alien feeling. I used to feel the same way at
funerals. Maybe it’s a result of the socialization process. I
just don’t hurt.
Our grief and anger didn’t last long after Johnson’s
girls mounted Hecate’s Horse, either. Maybe this pocket
society has no room for them.
Piniaz has shifted me to the gamma radiation laser. The weapon
has a beam that can punch through the stoutest shielding when
properly target-maintained. It’s a notoriously unstable
weapon, and this unit is no exception. It’s been acting up
for weeks.
The first indication came when it produced barely discernible
anomalies in the power-pull readings. The draw varied despite a
constant output wattage. The tendency of the input curve was
upward, which meant we were putting more and more energy into waste
wavelengths.
That doesn’t cripple the weapon as a device for shedding
heat, but it does bode ill for its future as a weapon.
That’s bit one of a score of problems plaguing the ship.
Mold that can’t be beaten. Stench that seems to have
penetrated the metal itself. One system after another
getting crankier and crankier. In most cases we’ll have to
make do. We carry few spare parts, and not many are available at
beacons. Main lighting has begun to decay. The men are spending
more and more time on corrective maintenance.
Stores, too, are getting short.
It’s scary, watching a ship come apart around you.
It’s even spookier, watching a crew disintegrate. This one
is definitely headed downhill. We’ve reached the point where
Command’s policy of having men bounced from ship to ship is
paying negative dividends. They don’t have that extra gram of
spirit given by devotion to a standing team.
That’s critical when you’re down to the bitter end
and barely hanging on.
I say, “Mr. Piniaz, I have trouble here. Output wattage
oscillating.”
Piniaz studies the board sourly. “Shit. Guess we’re
lucky it held up this long.” He rings Ops. “Commander,
we’ve developed a major stress oscillation in our gamma gas
cartridges.”
“How bad?”
“It won’t last more than ten minutes if we keep
using it.” To me, Piniaz remarks, “I’ve been
saying we should be using crystal cassette lasers since I got here.
Will they listen to me? Absolutely not. They just tell me crystals
burn out too fast and they don’t want to waste the mass-room
needed to haul spares.”
“Wait one while I get some numbers, Mr. Piniaz.”
“Standing by, Commander.”
“No replacement cartridges?” I ask. “In the
bombards we could change units in five minutes. Like
click-click.”
Piniaz shakes his head. “Not here. Not in the
Climbers. You have to go outside to get at the cartridges. But
Command’s main argument is that we’re never in action
long enough to need spares.”
“But this star
business . . . ”
He shrugs. “What can you do?”
The Commander says, “Mr. Piniaz, go ahead and use it, but
only when Mr. Bradley needs it to sustain internal
temperature.”
Piniaz snorts. “Heavier load on the others.”
I listened with one ear while the Old Man talked it over with
Yanevich. My bugs steal everybody’s privacy. They decided the
weapon was wasted, that the ship has to move to a cooler hiding
place. Fine with me. Having all that incandescent fury under my
feet is doing nothing for my nerves.
Westhause is calculating a passage to the surface of a small
moon. Its gravity shouldn’t put undue stress on the
ship’s structure.
Varese, too, overhears the comm exchange. He reasons out the
consequences. “Commander, Engineering Officer. May I remind
you that we’re low on CT fuel?”
“You may, Lieutenant. You may also rest assured that
I’ll take it into consideration.” There’s a touch
of sarcasm in his tone. He has no love for Varese.
My guess is we have no more than thirty hours Climb time left.
That’s a tight margin if we haven’t been lucky with our
sun-hopping.
Are they still after us? It’s been a long time since the
raid. A long time since contact. Maybe they’ve overcome their
emotional response and gone back to guarding their convoy.
What’s going on out there? We’ve had no news, made
no beacon connections. The biggest operation of the
war . . . Being out of touch leaves me feeling
like my last homeline has been cut.
Has the raid given Tannian’s wolves the edge they need?
Have they panicked the logistic hulls? Once a convoy scatters, no
number of late-showing escorts can protect all the vessels.
Climbers can stalk the ponderous freighters with virtual impunity.
Some will get through only because our people won’t have time
to get them all.
Uhm. If the convoy has scattered, the other firm might feel
obligated to keep after their most responsible foe. They know this
ship of old. Her record is long and bloody. She’s hurt them.
Her survival, after what she’s done, might be an intolerable
threat.
I’m caught in the trap of circular thinking that lies
waiting for men with time on their hands and an invisible
uncertain enemy on their trail. I want to shriek. I want to demand
certain knowledge. Even bad news would be welcome at this juncture.
Just make it certain news.
Varese and the Commander, during the computation of the fly to
our new hiding place, have a rousing battle over the level of our
CT fuel. Finally, against his better judgment, the Old Man says
he’ll make the passage without Climbing.
“Goddamn!” Piniaz explodes as an illumination tube
above his station fails. “Damned shoddy Outworlds
trash . . . ” He excoriates
quality-control work on Canaan, insisting nothing like this would
happen with an Old Earth product. He’s vicious and bitter.
The men tuck their heads against their shoulders and weather the
storm.
He has a point, though his claim for Old Earth manufactures is
specious. The human race seems incapable of overcoming human
nature. Just do the minimum to get by.
With one weapon all but out and the others likely to degrade,
our ability to shed heat is crippled. We can’t rely on
radiator vanes alone if the pursuit closes in.
Teeter-totter, teeter-totter. Each time the situation shows
promise, something ugly raises its head. Lately, it seems, life is
a Jurassic swamp.
Sometimes things go from bad to worse without any intervening
cause for optimism.
The Commander was right, Lieutenant Varese wrong. We should have
made the transfer fly in Climb, and fuel levels be damned.
We fall foul of the other firm’s new tactical intelligence
system. They’ve been seeding tiny, instelled probes near
stars to catch sun-skippers. If the unit detects a Climber’s
tachyon spray, it sends one tiny instel bleep.
The sharks, who have been casting about in confusion, turn their
noses toward the scent of blood.
Fisherman gets a trace when the squirt goes out.
“Commander, I’ve got something strange here. A
millisecond trace.”
“Play it back.” A moment later, “Play it
again. Make anything of it, First Watch Officer?”
“Never seen anything like it.”
“Junghaus, you’re the expert.”
“Sorry, sir. I don’t know. Never had anything like
that in E-school. Maybe it’s natural.” There are
natural tachyon sources. Some Hawking Holes are known to produce
them in much the same fashion as a pulsar generates its beam.
“Maybe you should ask the writer,” Yanevich
suggests.
“No point. Wasn’t a ship, was it? That’s what
matters.”
“Maybe a Climber going up? Looks a little like
that.”
“Shouldn’t be anybody in the neighborhood. Keep an
eye on it, Junghaus.”
In ignorant bliss we settle gently into the soft dust of a lunar
crater bottom, cycle down to minimum power, and prepare to possum
for a few days. Sooner or later the other firm will go after
livelier game. If they haven’t already.
The Old Man says, “Old Musgrave used a trick like this
when he was in the Eight Ball.”
“Uhm?” The coffee is gone. Even the ersatz. We do
our fencing over juice glasses now.
For several minutes he doesn’t say anything more. Then,
“Found himself a little moon with a big hollow spot inside.
Don’t ask me how. Used to duck in there, go norm, and power
down. Drove the other firm crazy for a while.”
“What happened?”
“Went to the well too often. One day he showed up and that
moon was a gravel cloud with a half-dozen destroyers
inside.”
“They didn’t get him?”
“Not that time. Not in the Eight Ball.” He
swallows some juice, chews his pipe. “He was a wily old
trapdoor spider. He’d sit in there for a week sometimes, then
jump out and get himself a red star. He took out more destroyers
than any two men since.” Silence again.
“End of story?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the point?”
He shrugs. “You can’t keep doing the same
thing?”
They’re crafty. They do nothing for hours. They make sure
they have plenty of muscle before they move. We have twelve hours
to loaf and get fat thinking we have it made.
Fisherman says, “Got something here, Commander.” He
sounds puzzled.
I’ve been pestering Rose, trying to unravel a few strands
of a misty personality. Without success. It’s
Yanevich’s watch. He attends Junghaus.
“Playback.” We study it. “Same as
before?”
“Not quite, sir. Lasted longer.”
“Curious.” Yanevich looks at me. I shrug.
“Same point of origin?”
“Very close, sir.”
“Keep watching.” We go on about our business.
I go try to get Canzoneri to tell me about Rose.
Five minutes later Fisherman says, “Contact, Mr.
Yanevich.”
We swarm round. No doubt what this is. An enemy ship. Two
minutes of fast calculation extrapolates her course. “No
problem,” Yanevich says. “She’s just checking the
star.”
She gets in a sudden hurry to go somewhere. I sigh in relief.
That was close.
Two hours later there’s another one. She hurries to join
the first, which is now skipping around crazily the other side of
the sun. Yanevich frowns thoughtfully but doesn’t sound the
alarm.
“They act like they’re after somebody,” he
says. “Junghaus, you sure you haven’t had any Climber
traces?”
“No sir. Just those two bleeps.”
“You think somebody heard us come out of the sun and went
up from norm?”
Fisherman shrugs. I say, “Those sprays don’t look
anything like a ship.”
“I don’t like it,” Chief Nicastro says.
“There’s a crowd gathering. We ought to sneak out
before somebody trips over us.”
“How?” Westhause snaps. For the first time in months
he doesn’t have more work than he can handle. The lack has
him edgy.
“We’ll get you home to momma, Phil,” Canzoneri
promises.
Laramie calls, “That’s what he’s afraid of,
Chief. He’s had time to think it over.”
I smile. Someone still has a sense of humor.
“Laramie . . . ” Nicastro starts
into the inner circle, thinks better of it, wheels on the first
Watch Officer. “At least go standby on annihilation,
sir.”
The neutrino detector starts stuttering, clickety-clack,
clickety-clack, like a typewriter under the ministrations of a
cautious two-fingered typist.
“Missiles detonating.” Nicastro says it with a force
suggesting he’s just confirmed a suspicion the rest of us are
too dull to comprehend.
“I’ve got another one,” Fisherman
announces.
“Picraux, wake the Commander.”
Nicastro nods glumly. This one will whip past less than a
million kilometers out. The Chief would die happy if she blew us to
ions.
More typewriter noise. It dies a little as Brown reduces the
neutrino detector’s sensitivity.
“They’re really putting it on somebody.”
“Here comes number four,” I say, catching the first
ghostly feather before Fisherman does.
“Carmon, better activate the tank.” Yanevich pokes
me with a finger. “Pass the word to Mr. Piniaz to wake
everybody up. Picraux. While you’re up there, shake everybody
out.”
When it’s no drill and there’s time, general
quarters can be handled in a civilized manner.
Brown reduces the detector’s sensitivity again.
“Another one,” Fisherman says.
“Any pattern yet, Carmon?”
“Not warm yet, sir.”
“Move it, man. Engineering, stand by to shift to
annihilation.”
The Commander swings down through the jungle gym. “What
have you got, First Watch Officer?” He’s so calm that
I, lingering near the Weapons hatch, get a flutter in the stomach.
The cooler he is, the more grave the situation. He’s always
been that way.
“Looks like we’re camped in the middle of the other
firm’s company picnic.”
The Commander listens impassively while Yanevich brings him up
to date. “Junghaus, roll that second sighting at your slowest
tape speed. On the First Watch Officer’s screen. Loop
it.”
“What’re we looking for?” Yanevich asks.
“Code groupings.”
The typist is a fast learner. His clickety-clack has
become a fast rattle. Brown cuts the sensitivity again.
“Poor bastards have had it,” Rose says. “Their
point is taking everything but the sink. Must not be able to
move.”
Better they than me, I think, the stomach flutters threatening
to mature into panic. And, hey, what does the Old Man mean, code
groupings?
“We ought to haul ass while we have the chance,”
Nicastro grumbles, trying his luck with the Commander.
“Two more,” Fisherman announces.
“Three,” I say, leaning over his shoulder.
“Here’s a big one over here.”
The Commander turns. “Carmon?”
The display tank sparkles to life.
“Damn! Brown. Turn that thing all the way back
up.” Clickety-clack nearly deafens us.
Floating red jewels appear where none ought to be, telling a
tale none of us want to hear. We’ve been englobed. The
trans-solar show is a distraction.
“Oh, shit!” someone says, almost reverently.
They aren’t certain of our whereabouts. The moon is well
off center of their globe.
“Commander.” Chief Canzoneri beckons. The Old Man
goes to look over his shoulder. After a moment, he grunts.
He says, “They’re beating the piss out of an
asteroid. Must be nice to have missiles to waste.” He strolls
toward Fisherman, his face almost beatific. “Fooled us,
didn’t they?” he tells me. “Wasted a few missiles
and locked the door while we sat here grinning.”
The distant firing ends.
The Old Man stares steadily at the craft Fisherman has in
detection.
Yanevich mumbles, “They reckon we’ve got it figured
up now and didn’t panic.” There’s agony in his
eyes when he meets Nicastro’s gaze.
Varese, you prick. I could choke you.
The swiftest reaction would’ve done us no good.
They’ve had half a day to tighten the net. What the hell can
we do?
I don’t like being scared.
The Old Man takes a pen from his pocket. He taps the end against
his teeth, then against one of the feathers on Fisherman’s
screen. “It’s him.”
Fisherman stares dumbly. He grows more and more pallid. Sweat
beads on his upper lip. He murmurs, “The
Executioner.”
“Uhm. Back from his holiday with Second Fleet. I’ll
take the conn, Mr. Yanevich.”
“Commander has the conn.” Yanevich doesn’t
conceal his relief.
I want to say something, to ask something. I can’t. My
gaze is fixed on that tachyon spray. The Executioner. The other
firm’s big man. Their number one life-taker. They want us
bad.
The Old Man grins at me. “Relax. He’s not
infallible. Beat him patrol before last. And Johnson, she had the
hex sign on him.”
I feel awfully cold. I’m shivering.
“Engineering, bring CT systems to full
readiness.”
This is a state of readiness midway between standby and actual
shifting. It’s seldom used because it’s such a strain
on personnel. Apparently the Commander does appreciate the fuel
problem.
“All hands. Take care of your personals,” he says.
“General quarters shortly.” He sounds like a father
calming a three-year-old with nightmares.
I’m so nervous my bladder and bowels won’t
evacuate. I stand staring at the display tank. A dozen rubies
inhabit it now. Flight would be suicidal. Amazing that they’d
devote so much strength to one Climber.
We have to stay put and outfox them.
Outfox the Executioner? His reputation is justified. He
can’t help but find us . . .
“Mr. Westhause, bring up the data for Tau and
Omicron.”
“Got it already, Commander.”
“Good. Program for Tau with just enough hyper to give it
away. Once we’re up, zag toward Omicron, then put us back
inside this rock.”
“It’s mostly water ice, Commander, with a little
surface dust. There seems to be a real rock surface several
thousand meters down, though.”
“Whatever. I trust you’ve resolved its orbitals? Can
you hold us deep enough to shield the point?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Can you or can’t you?”
“I can, sir. I will. Might have to run high Bevs to get
the cross section down so we don’t take core heat if we go
deep.”
“This rock isn’t that big. But keep gravity in mind.
Don’t let it upset your calculations.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t go down more than a couple
klicks. Just deep enough to escape their weaponry.”
“Can you hold it that fine?”
“I did on Rathgeber. Finer.”
“On Rathgeber you had a century’s worth of orbital
data. Go down twenty-five. Hell. Make it fifty, just to be safe.
They might try to blast us out.”
They’re doing this out loud to let the men know
there’s a plan. It’s an act. I try not listen. It
doesn’t sound like much. I check the time. Still got a chance
to piss before strap-in.
The alarm sounds. “To your stations. They’ve found
us. Missiles incoming. Prepare for Climb. Lift off, Mr.
Westhause.”
The lighting fades to near extinction as the drives go from
minimum to maximum power.
“Vent heat, max,” Yanevich orders.
Back in Weapons now, I commence firing. My unit survives, though
not without protest. The air gets colder and colder. The hyper
alarm howls. I push my bug plugs into my ears.
“Secure the gravity system, Mr. Bradley,” the
Commander orders. “Secure all visibility lighting.”
What? We’re going through this in the dark? I feel the
caress of panic. Blind panic. That’s a joke.
“Climb.”
The visibility lights aren’t necessary. The glow of Climb,
complemented by the luminescence of the idiot lights, provides
adequate illumination. So. A little more Climb endurance won.
The Commander shuts down systems till it seems nothing but the
Climb system remains on-line. Internal temperature is so low frost
forms on nonradiant surfaces and men exhale fog into their clasped
hands.
The first salvo arrives and delivers enough applied
cross-sectional kinetic energy to rattle bones and brains. I gasp
for breath, fight a lost bug back into my right ear.
Down in the basement Varese is frenetically trying to catch up
on a million little tasks he let slide during ready. The last hint
of refinement has fled him. His cussing isn’t inventive, just
strong enough to crisp the paint off every surface within three
kilometers.
The Commander continues securing systems. Even all detectors and
radios, which, normally, would be maintained at a warm idle.
Piniaz taps my shoulder. “Shut her down,” he says.
“Then go kill the cannon.” His dark face makes him hard
to read. As if catching my thoughts, he whispers, “I think
he’s going a little far. We ought to be ready to slash and
bite if we have to do down.”
“Yeah.” It’ll take time to bring everything
back to ready. Frightened, I close the systems down.
Up in Ops Yanevich and the Old Man are running and rerunning
Fisherman’s tapes, assembling the details of a cautionary
message to the rest of the Fleet.
Six hours. For every second of them the Climber has whispered
and stirred in response to forces acting on her Hawking point.
Twice the Commander has ordered us deeper into the moon.
We’re down nearly three hundred kilometers. We’re
running a hundred Bev, the most I’ve ever seen, giving our
point a diameter smaller than that of a hydrogen atom. We’re
gulping CT fuel . . .
Yet we’re being buffeted. Continuously. I don’t know
what they’re doing up there,
but . . . the whole surface has to be boiling,
throwing trillions of tons of lunar matter into space.
The buffeting gradually increases. “Take her down another
hundred kilometers, Mr. Westhause.”
I didn’t pay much attention to the moon when I had a
chance. Is it big enough to have a molten core? Are we trapped
between fires? Does the Executioner have the firepower to tear the
moon apart?
Waiting. Thinking. Always the fear. What if they blast away till
there’s nowhere left to go?
God. They must have brought a Leviathan. Nothing else has so
much firepower.
Suppose they destabilize the moon’s orbit? The Commander
and Westhause are betting on its stability. What if the moon
can’t take it and breaks up? What if? What if? Will there be
any warning when it sours? Or will internal temperature just shoot
up too fast for us to react?
Maybe they’re punching their missiles deep by throwing
them in in hyper. Their sudden materialization and explosion would
crack the mantle to gravel—except that that massed energy
weapon fire will have turned it to a sea of lava. The water ice,
surely, has boiled off into space by now.
Why are they so damned determined to skin this particular cat? I
never did anything to them.
It’s stopped. Suddenly, like a light switch being thrown.
What the hell? God. I thought it would drive me insane. Alewel did
lose his cool for a minute, holding his head and screaming,
“Make it stop! Make it stop!” Piniaz had to sedate
him.
Silence. Stretching out. Getting spooky. Stretching, stretching.
Becoming worse than the bombardment.
Have they gone away? Are they laying back, waiting for us to
come down?
The Executioner, they say, is a master of psychological
warfare.
I unbuckle and venture to the honeypot. Sacrifice made, I prowl
the confines of the compartment, trying to calm myself. Piniaz
endures my footsteps for five minutes before snapping, “Sit
down. You’re generating heat.”
“Shit, man. That seat’s getting hard. And
wet.”
“Tough. Sit. You’re in the Climbers now,
Lieutenant.” My restlessness isn’t unique. This silence
is a rich growth medium for the jitters. Nobody looks anybody else
in the eye.
Ten hours. Somebody in Ops is whimpering. Curious. We’ve
been up this long before. Why is this time harder to endure?
Because the Executioner is out there? They use a sedative to quiet
the whimperer.
The Commander’s methodical madness has proven effective.
Internal temperature increase is lagging well behind the normal
curve despite the fact that we haven’t much fuel to use as a
heat sink. Soon after the whimperer goes quiet, the Old Man orders
the atmosphere completely recycled. Then, “Corpsman, I want
the Group One sleepers given.”
It’s warm now but I shiver anyway. Sleepers. Knockouts.
The last ditch effort to extend Climb endurance by reducing
metabolic rates and making the least critical men insensitive to
their environment. A desperation measure. Usually applied much
later than this.
“Voss, why don’t you just hand out capsules?”
I ask the Pharmacist’s Mate as he comes through Weapons with
his injection gun. It looks like a heavy laser with a shower-head
snout.
“Some guys would palm them.”
I roll up a tattered sleeve. Vossbrink ignores me. He turns to
Chief Bath, whom I consider more important to the ship’s
survival. The Chief looks like a man expecting never to waken.
“Why not me? How do you choose, anyway?”
“Psych profile, endurance profile, Commander’s
direction, critical ratings. You can almost always find somebody to
do a job. Can’t always find somebody who can take the heat
and pressure.”
“What about when we go down?”
He shrugs. “They’ll be gone. Or they won’t. If
not, it won’t matter.”
I lean his way, offering my arm. The sleeper looks like an easy
out. No more worries. If I wake up, I’ll know we made it.
“No. Not you, sir.”
“There’s nobody more useless than me.”
“Commander’s directive, sir.”
“Damn!” Right now I want nothing more than total
absolution of any responsibility for my own fate.
Fourteen hours. Feeling feverish. Unable to sit still. Soaked
with perspiration. Breathing quick and shallow because of heat,
stench, and the low oxygen content of the air. Pure oxygen.
It’s supposed to be pure oxygen.
What the hell is the Climb endurance record? I can’t
remember. How close are we? Looks like the Old Man means to break
it. And stretch it with every trick ever tried, including
predicting his heat curves with the discounts of the men we
lost.
Don’t look at the bulkheads. Mold blankets them now. I can
almost see it spreading, sporulating, filling the air with its dry,
stale smell. Jesus! There’s a patch of it on Chief
Bath’s shirt. I’m coughing almost continuously. The
spores irritate my throat. Thank heaven they don’t give me an
allergic reaction.
The last of our juice is gone. We’re down to water and
bouillon and pills. Yo-ho-ho. Famine in the Climbers.
Where’s that fearless old spacedog who jollied the boys on
the beacon? Ho! The life-takers have whisked away his disguise.
Vossbrink came round an hour ago. He bypassed me again. I cursed
him mercilessly. He gave me a tablet I’m to swallow only on
the Old Man’s orders.
Those of us still conscious are a little insane. I want out,
but . . . I don’t have enough residual
defiance to take the tablet. Been thinking about it, but
can’t get my hand to my mouth.
Christ, it’s gloomy in here!
Maintaining a tenuous touch with reality by hating the Old Man.
My old friend. My old classmate. Doing this to me. I could cut his
throat and smile.
And those bastards out there. Why the hell don’t they go
away? Enough is enough.
Westhause and the Commander are the only watchstanders left in
Ops. I can’t hear anything from Engineering, but somebody is
holding out. Only Bradley is active in Ship’s Services. The
Ensign is stubborn. Here in Weapons I have two open-eyed
companions, Kuyrath and Piniaz.
Kuyrath suddenly throws himself toward the Ops hatch. Muttering,
he tries to claw his way through. What the hell?
Aha. Another reason for the sedations. This could be contagious.
The madness howls along the frontiers of my mind. I force myself to
rise, to stalk Kuyrath with a hypo Vossbrink left for this
contingency.
Kuyrath sees me coming. He leaps at me. His eyes are wild, his
teeth bare. I punch the hypo into his stomach, yank its
trigger.
For a dozen seconds I shield my testicles and eyes, writhe away
from champing teeth, evade clawing fingers, and wonder what went
wrong. Why doesn’t he fold?
He collapses.
“What’s going on back there?”
I stagger to a comm, mumble. Somehow, the Commander understands.
I stare at Piniaz. Why didn’t he help me?
His eyes are open but he isn’t seeing anything. He’s
out. The bastard. What the hell did he do?
“All right.” The Commander sounds like he’s
talking from the next galaxy. “Take Alewel’s
board.”
“Huh?” I’m getting foggy. Want to give up. The
exertion drained me. I can’t get the drift.
“Take over on Alewel’s board. I’ve got to have
somebody on Missiles. Where’s Piniaz?”
“On Missiles. Somebody on Missiles.” I stagger to
Alewel’s seat. The Missileman is curled on the deck grates.
His breathing is strained and ragged. He’s in bad trouble.
“Tired. Going to take capsule now. Sleep.”
“No. No. Come on. Hang in there. We’re almost home.
All you have to do is activate the missile board.”
“Activate missile board.” My fingers act of their
own accord. My hands look like thin brown spiders as they dance
over the slimy, mold-green board, caressing a wakening galaxy of
key-lights. I giggle incessantly.
“Where’s Piniaz?”
This time the message gets through. “Sleeping. Gone to
sleep.” Alewel is making a thin, whining sound.
“Damn. Be ready to launch when we go norm.”
“Ready . . . Launch missiles.”
One spider starts dancing the arming sequence. The other explores
the mysteries of the safeties.
“Negative. Negative. Get your hands away from that board.
Waldo, I’m going to have to go back there.”
A semblance of reason returns. I draw my hands back slowly,
stare at them. Finally, I say, “Missiles prepared for launch.
Launch Control standing by.”
“Good. Good. I knew I could count on you. It’ll be a
while yet. Just hang on.”
Hang on. Hang on. Only five men conscious in the whole damned
ship and one of them is hollering hang on. Till when?
Till the Commander and I are the only ones left? Suppose the
party is still going on when we go down? It won’t matter to
the others, but what am I supposed to do? Bend over and kiss my ass
good-bye?
Alewel has stopped making noises. He’s even stopped
breathing. Mostly I feel puzzled when I look at him.
I don’t think he’s the only one. It’s that bad
in here.
I drive myself back into rituals of hatred and anger, thinking
up tortures to inflict on the Old Man. Curses and threats rip
themselves from my throat in an evil imitation of a Gregorian
chant.
It passes the time. It keeps me going.
Skulking on the borderlands of lunacy, I find myself victimized
by one of time’s relativistic pranks. Before it seems
possible, another two hours have fled.
“Hey down there. Stand by. Going down in five.”
Westhause. He sounds choky.
I glance at the time. A new endurance record, no doubt about it.
Hurray.
“Uhn.” The Commander. “Damn it, Waldo. Not
now. Wake up. We’re almost there. Shit.” He sounds as
if speech is pure torment.
Reluctance to leave the ghost world inundates me. Even hell
gives one a sense of security, I suppose.
What happens if the whole crew passes out before a Climber goes
down? I guess she’d keep heating till her superconductors
failed, her magnetics went, and she destroyed herself in a sudden
annihilation.
Why do I feel less uncomfortable now than I did two hours ago?
Internal temperature is higher than ever before. Literally,
we’re cooking.
Haltingly, the Commander says, “All I want is for you to
be faster on the trigger than anybody waiting for us. Quick enough
to keep them from getting out an instel.”
“I’ll try.”
“Ten seconds.
Nine . . . Eight . . . ”
It’s a savage plunge to zero Bev. The concretization of my
surroundings stuns my conscious mind.
The frightened old tree ape in the back of my mind is on
survival watch. I finish the launch sequence before the
venting machinery begins humming. In fact, I start before the ship
is all the way down, and launch before any instrument has anything
to say about targets.
The way Tannian fusses about wasting missiles, this could earn
me a Board of Inquiry . . .
Except there is a target. The Old Man and Mr. Westhause made an
astute guess.
We break cover less than ten thousand kilometers from the bones
of the murdered moon. Fate does us a favor. She puts the watcher in
the gap, not a hundred kilometers from our drop point. I can see
her on gun camera. So. They thought we were gone, but left somebody
just in case. They always do.
“About damned time it went our way,” I mutter.
The missile is on its way. The Fire Control system barely has
time to lock it on target.
The Commander holds norm for just four seconds. Hardly long
enough to make a microdegree’s difference in internal
temperature. We run.
The missile, accelerating at one hundred gravities, strikes home
before the gentlemen of the other firm get their thumbs out of
their ears.
In essence, a classic Climber strike. With a lot of luck thrown
in.
The Commander goes down again five light-seconds away. He vents
heat and watches.
The destroyer dies. And neither the radio nor tachyon detectors
react with anything but blast noise. No messages out. The Commander
played the right card. He outwaited the hunt. The Executioner has
gone looking elsewhere.
The glare of the fireball fades. I check the temperature.
It’s falling slowly. Maybe a degree a minute. The minutes
tramp away on the feet of snails.
The destroyer got no message out, but that treacherous probe
remains.
The first hunter hypers in an hour later.
A dozen men have recovered sufficiently to resume work.
Several more are gone forever . . . The
Commander commences a new ploy. He calls me, says, “Program
the Eleven bird for maximum straight-line hyper fly.” Piniaz
hasn’t recovered. For the moment I’m in charge.
The new arrival is moving away from us, into the nether reaches
of the system. Westhause hits hyper and runs.
Five minutes pass. Fisherman reports, “She’s
turning, Commander.”
“Very well. Weapons, stand by to launch. Mr. Westhause,
stand by to Climb.”
The minutes roll away. The hunter gains slowly.
“She’s close enough, Commander,” Canzoneri
says.
“Thank you. Weapons? Ready?”
“Aye, Commander.” I quickly hammer orders to the
missile. The destroyer will recognize the fake if the weapon tears
away too fast.
“Ready, Mr. Westhause? Go, then.”
I launch. My surroundings ghost. The Commander directs Westhause
onto a new course. This should work. It’s a new trick.
The missiles can run for hours in hyper. I programmed its
translation ratio high. Hopefully, we’ll get a good start
before the destroyer gets close enough to unravel the
deception.
Fearless Fred will roar like a wounded bull when he hears about
this.
The Commander no longer gives a damn what Command thinks. He
wants to bring his people home alive.
We drop back to norm as soon as the destroyer has time to pass
the limits of detection. We drift for hours, on minimum power,
still venting heat. That’s a laborious process. We
can’t use the energy weapons for fear of giving ourselves
away. The hunt should be gathering again.
Normal cruising temperature feels incredibly cold. I’m in
pain when it hits a pre-Climb level.
We have twenty-three men effective when, after three hours, the
Commander takes us up again.
We leave three men behind, buried in space, eulogized and
mourned only after the vessel is safely in Climb. Picraux and Brown
from Ops, and Alewel. They were luckier down below.
“It’s criminal,” Fisherman mutters. “Out
the garbage lock. It’s criminal.”
“You maybe want to keep them aboard?” Yanevich
demands.
Fisherman doesn’t answer. Heat and bacteria would work
horrors during an extended Climb. The bodies got a gross enough
start as it was.
I remember that story about the Commander who insisted on coming
home with his dead.
Funny. My threshold for smell seems to adjust as the ship grows
more fetid. Our atmosphere is only mildly annoying, though it would
gag somebody plucked off a ranch on Canaan.
Lieutenant Diekereide has been running Engineering while his
boss is indisposed. Varese recovers suddenly. With a howl.
“Get out of the fucking way, Diekereide. Goddamnit,
Commander, what the fuck did you do to my CT stores? You
jackass . . . ”
“Shut your mouth, Varese. Thank me for the chance to
bitch.”
Varese succumbed early. The more thoughtful Diekereide kept
himself in action by donning our one remaining suit and using its
cooling capability.
The squabble goes on. Pure stress talking. Will the Old Man
press it? He’ll have the evidence on the Mission Recorder.
Varese is insubordinate. I take no notes, wanting nothing on paper
that might be subpoenaed.
“We’re down to a cunt hair over four hours of Climb
time,” Varese rages. “With that and some luck,
we’ll only get our asses blown off, not baked.”
Yanevich takes over for the Old Man. “Be glad you’re
alive. Now tend to your knitting. Don’t give me any
of your shit. Understood, mister?”
Varese has sense enough to shut his mouth. He sulks instead.
Time to get some sleep.
I waken with a heightened sense of fatalism. I’m not
alone. The CT is practically gone. The missiles have flown. The
graser could be one shot from failing. The other energy weapons are
unreliable. Only the magnetic cannon can be used for any length of
time. We won’t show much in a fight.
I paid my dues. I hung in there. I did my job while the others
fell. I can be proud of myself. Maybe they’ll give me a
medal.
We’re still a long way from home. It’ll be a tough,
hungry trip. Then we’ll have to run the steel curtain around
Canaan. Do we have enough CT?
In Weapons everyone is at war with the mold. “Looks like a
victory for mold,” I say to a slightly shy Kuyrath.
“Got a good hold this time, sir. The paint’s ruined.
Some of the plastic, too.” He tears the protective wrapping
off a roll of electrician’s tape. Two empty cores lie beside
him already. “Had to let it ride, though.”
“Yeah. What can you do?”
“Wouldn’t it be the shits if this crap did us in? I
mean, they gave it their best shot. The Executioner. But the Old
Man pulled us through. So we got mold. What do you do about fucking
mold? You can’t outthink it.”
“It would be an ironic end,” I agree. And
don’t count the other team out. They’re still looking,
my friend.
Piniaz drifts over. “Understand you did some first class
shooting, Lieutenant.”
“Uhm.” His attitude has mellowed. “It really
happened? Seems like a dream.”
“You took notes the whole time. Interesting. I put them in
Bath’s hammock for now.”
“Don’t remember any notes. Be like reading somebody
else’s report.” I snort. “Gunners. No respect for
anybody but the fastest draw.”
Piniaz frowns, perplexed. “I was offering the olive
branch, Lieutenant. I didn’t figure you’d bite my
hand.”
“Sorry. Thanks. Just lucky, I guess. What’s
happening?”
“We lost them. Or they let go. Something funny about it,
if you ask me. Shouldn’t have been this easy.”
“Maybe it wasn’t.”
“They had to know our CT was about gone. That gets them
excited.” He shrugs. “The Old Man will take what they
give him.”
“For instance?”
“First we make an instelled beacon. Let Command know
we’re alive.”
“Uhm. Think Tannian will be disappointed?” Sometimes
I think he wants us dead.
Piniaz is capable of his own paranoid reasoning.
“I’d guess the Old Man is gambling. People will hear
we’re alive before the news reaches the top.”
Could it be true? . . . No. Not even
Tannian . . . Crazy thinking. I’ve been
out too long. “You figure Fred will have to pull all the
stops to bring his heroes in?”
“Exactly.”
Ito’s strained, dark little face reveals a truth.
He believes there’s a plot. The upcoming leave best
be long. These men are all out of their minds. I wouldn’t
want to space with them again.
I won’t have to. I smile to myself. One patrol is all I
have to survive.
Get me home, Commander. Get me home.
We’ve made our beacon. The Commander reported yesterday.
After putzing around for hours, Command told us to come on home,
following normal patrol routine, beacon to beacon. They showed no
inclination to gossip.
We’ve scrounged a little water and food. Pity we
can’t get any CT. Going to be rough if we hit unfriendly
territory.
Lunch with the Commander; He’s near the end of his tether,
yet remains as inaccessible as ever. How do I reach the man? How do
I reassure him? I don’t think it can be done now.
He speaks of the pursuit as though it were normal patrol
routine.
Six days gone. Six days closer to home. The Old Man is avoiding
routine, rather than pursuing it. He doesn’t want to give
potential watchers anything they can use. We’re proceeding in
short hyper flies separated by extended periods in norm. We do a
lot of listening. Paranoia has become a norm.
The computer people winnow every bit of information gathered
from the beacons, hunting a clue, believing Command an enemy more
deadly than the other firm. I can unearth no rational reason for
the attitude. I occasionally succumb myself.
This is dangerous. Too much time wasted on speculation. We could
get so spooky we turn into our own worst enemies. This could create
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
More time gone. I’ve lost track of the days. We’re
close. I’m not sure how close, but near enough that Canaan
seems real again. Here, there, men are talking like there’s a
human universe outside the Climber.
Space here is crowded. We have frequent contacts. Hardly a watch
slides by without Fisherman’s being startled into a croaking
panic. Curiously, none of the contacts are interested in us.
We’ve been lucky, maybe. Every contact has been remote,
while we were in norm. Chances are we’ve just not been
spotted. A ship in norm is harder to detect from hyper than vice
versa.
A tongue-in-cheek theory goes the rounds. It says we’re
dead already. We’re really a ghost ship. We’re going on
because the gods haven’t given us the message yet.
Lieutenant Diekereide half-seriously postulates that our record
Climb rendered us permanently invisible. We’d all like to
believe that.
I have my own thoughts on why we’re having no trouble.
They terrify me.
“Contact, Commander,” Fisherman says. He’s
said it so often, now, that he no longer gets upset. He gives
bearing and range and elevation, and, “Unfriendly.”
This one’s coming right at us. Fast. A destroyer. What the
hell can we do? Where the hell can we run?
The Old Man powers down, plays possum.
The terror is over. She’s gone. She passed within a few
hundred thousand kilometers of us. Is it possible she didn’t
see us? What the hell is happening?
The Commander knows. I can see that now. He becomes shifty and
evasive when I try to talk to him. All the men have their
suspicions. The other firm just doesn’t ignore crippled
Climbers. Not without a damned good reason. Somehow, our importance
has declined dramatically.
As I say, I have my thoughts. I don’t want to think them.
Sufficient unto each watch that I waken and find myself alive.
Later, maybe, I’ll want more.
Later, we all will. We’ll want Tannian as guest of honor
at a cannibal feast.
We keep chipping away at the mission duration record. Yanevich
says the longest was around ninety days. He doesn’t remember
the exact figure.
Memory gets tricky out here. It adapts to the demands of Climber
service. For instance, the men we lost—I can’t remember
their faces.
I knew none but Chief Holtsnider very well, and he not as well
as I’d like. I can make a list of physical characteristics,
but his face won’t come.
It takes an effort to mourn them.
The lack of feeling seems common enough. We’re under
pressure.
We’ve found ourselves an uninhabited star-covert. It has
planets and moons and a full complement of asteroidal debris. A
fine place to get lost. And just as fine a place for the opposition
to have installed a low-profile detection probe, a passive observer
as easily detected as our own beacons.
This guilt I have, about not hurting enough for those we lost,
isn’t an alien feeling. I used to feel the same way at
funerals. Maybe it’s a result of the socialization process. I
just don’t hurt.
Our grief and anger didn’t last long after Johnson’s
girls mounted Hecate’s Horse, either. Maybe this pocket
society has no room for them.
Piniaz has shifted me to the gamma radiation laser. The weapon
has a beam that can punch through the stoutest shielding when
properly target-maintained. It’s a notoriously unstable
weapon, and this unit is no exception. It’s been acting up
for weeks.
The first indication came when it produced barely discernible
anomalies in the power-pull readings. The draw varied despite a
constant output wattage. The tendency of the input curve was
upward, which meant we were putting more and more energy into waste
wavelengths.
That doesn’t cripple the weapon as a device for shedding
heat, but it does bode ill for its future as a weapon.
That’s bit one of a score of problems plaguing the ship.
Mold that can’t be beaten. Stench that seems to have
penetrated the metal itself. One system after another
getting crankier and crankier. In most cases we’ll have to
make do. We carry few spare parts, and not many are available at
beacons. Main lighting has begun to decay. The men are spending
more and more time on corrective maintenance.
Stores, too, are getting short.
It’s scary, watching a ship come apart around you.
It’s even spookier, watching a crew disintegrate. This one
is definitely headed downhill. We’ve reached the point where
Command’s policy of having men bounced from ship to ship is
paying negative dividends. They don’t have that extra gram of
spirit given by devotion to a standing team.
That’s critical when you’re down to the bitter end
and barely hanging on.
I say, “Mr. Piniaz, I have trouble here. Output wattage
oscillating.”
Piniaz studies the board sourly. “Shit. Guess we’re
lucky it held up this long.” He rings Ops. “Commander,
we’ve developed a major stress oscillation in our gamma gas
cartridges.”
“How bad?”
“It won’t last more than ten minutes if we keep
using it.” To me, Piniaz remarks, “I’ve been
saying we should be using crystal cassette lasers since I got here.
Will they listen to me? Absolutely not. They just tell me crystals
burn out too fast and they don’t want to waste the mass-room
needed to haul spares.”
“Wait one while I get some numbers, Mr. Piniaz.”
“Standing by, Commander.”
“No replacement cartridges?” I ask. “In the
bombards we could change units in five minutes. Like
click-click.”
Piniaz shakes his head. “Not here. Not in the
Climbers. You have to go outside to get at the cartridges. But
Command’s main argument is that we’re never in action
long enough to need spares.”
“But this star
business . . . ”
He shrugs. “What can you do?”
The Commander says, “Mr. Piniaz, go ahead and use it, but
only when Mr. Bradley needs it to sustain internal
temperature.”
Piniaz snorts. “Heavier load on the others.”
I listened with one ear while the Old Man talked it over with
Yanevich. My bugs steal everybody’s privacy. They decided the
weapon was wasted, that the ship has to move to a cooler hiding
place. Fine with me. Having all that incandescent fury under my
feet is doing nothing for my nerves.
Westhause is calculating a passage to the surface of a small
moon. Its gravity shouldn’t put undue stress on the
ship’s structure.
Varese, too, overhears the comm exchange. He reasons out the
consequences. “Commander, Engineering Officer. May I remind
you that we’re low on CT fuel?”
“You may, Lieutenant. You may also rest assured that
I’ll take it into consideration.” There’s a touch
of sarcasm in his tone. He has no love for Varese.
My guess is we have no more than thirty hours Climb time left.
That’s a tight margin if we haven’t been lucky with our
sun-hopping.
Are they still after us? It’s been a long time since the
raid. A long time since contact. Maybe they’ve overcome their
emotional response and gone back to guarding their convoy.
What’s going on out there? We’ve had no news, made
no beacon connections. The biggest operation of the
war . . . Being out of touch leaves me feeling
like my last homeline has been cut.
Has the raid given Tannian’s wolves the edge they need?
Have they panicked the logistic hulls? Once a convoy scatters, no
number of late-showing escorts can protect all the vessels.
Climbers can stalk the ponderous freighters with virtual impunity.
Some will get through only because our people won’t have time
to get them all.
Uhm. If the convoy has scattered, the other firm might feel
obligated to keep after their most responsible foe. They know this
ship of old. Her record is long and bloody. She’s hurt them.
Her survival, after what she’s done, might be an intolerable
threat.
I’m caught in the trap of circular thinking that lies
waiting for men with time on their hands and an invisible
uncertain enemy on their trail. I want to shriek. I want to demand
certain knowledge. Even bad news would be welcome at this juncture.
Just make it certain news.
Varese and the Commander, during the computation of the fly to
our new hiding place, have a rousing battle over the level of our
CT fuel. Finally, against his better judgment, the Old Man says
he’ll make the passage without Climbing.
“Goddamn!” Piniaz explodes as an illumination tube
above his station fails. “Damned shoddy Outworlds
trash . . . ” He excoriates
quality-control work on Canaan, insisting nothing like this would
happen with an Old Earth product. He’s vicious and bitter.
The men tuck their heads against their shoulders and weather the
storm.
He has a point, though his claim for Old Earth manufactures is
specious. The human race seems incapable of overcoming human
nature. Just do the minimum to get by.
With one weapon all but out and the others likely to degrade,
our ability to shed heat is crippled. We can’t rely on
radiator vanes alone if the pursuit closes in.
Teeter-totter, teeter-totter. Each time the situation shows
promise, something ugly raises its head. Lately, it seems, life is
a Jurassic swamp.
Sometimes things go from bad to worse without any intervening
cause for optimism.
The Commander was right, Lieutenant Varese wrong. We should have
made the transfer fly in Climb, and fuel levels be damned.
We fall foul of the other firm’s new tactical intelligence
system. They’ve been seeding tiny, instelled probes near
stars to catch sun-skippers. If the unit detects a Climber’s
tachyon spray, it sends one tiny instel bleep.
The sharks, who have been casting about in confusion, turn their
noses toward the scent of blood.
Fisherman gets a trace when the squirt goes out.
“Commander, I’ve got something strange here. A
millisecond trace.”
“Play it back.” A moment later, “Play it
again. Make anything of it, First Watch Officer?”
“Never seen anything like it.”
“Junghaus, you’re the expert.”
“Sorry, sir. I don’t know. Never had anything like
that in E-school. Maybe it’s natural.” There are
natural tachyon sources. Some Hawking Holes are known to produce
them in much the same fashion as a pulsar generates its beam.
“Maybe you should ask the writer,” Yanevich
suggests.
“No point. Wasn’t a ship, was it? That’s what
matters.”
“Maybe a Climber going up? Looks a little like
that.”
“Shouldn’t be anybody in the neighborhood. Keep an
eye on it, Junghaus.”
In ignorant bliss we settle gently into the soft dust of a lunar
crater bottom, cycle down to minimum power, and prepare to possum
for a few days. Sooner or later the other firm will go after
livelier game. If they haven’t already.
The Old Man says, “Old Musgrave used a trick like this
when he was in the Eight Ball.”
“Uhm?” The coffee is gone. Even the ersatz. We do
our fencing over juice glasses now.
For several minutes he doesn’t say anything more. Then,
“Found himself a little moon with a big hollow spot inside.
Don’t ask me how. Used to duck in there, go norm, and power
down. Drove the other firm crazy for a while.”
“What happened?”
“Went to the well too often. One day he showed up and that
moon was a gravel cloud with a half-dozen destroyers
inside.”
“They didn’t get him?”
“Not that time. Not in the Eight Ball.” He
swallows some juice, chews his pipe. “He was a wily old
trapdoor spider. He’d sit in there for a week sometimes, then
jump out and get himself a red star. He took out more destroyers
than any two men since.” Silence again.
“End of story?”
“Yep.”
“What’s the point?”
He shrugs. “You can’t keep doing the same
thing?”
They’re crafty. They do nothing for hours. They make sure
they have plenty of muscle before they move. We have twelve hours
to loaf and get fat thinking we have it made.
Fisherman says, “Got something here, Commander.” He
sounds puzzled.
I’ve been pestering Rose, trying to unravel a few strands
of a misty personality. Without success. It’s
Yanevich’s watch. He attends Junghaus.
“Playback.” We study it. “Same as
before?”
“Not quite, sir. Lasted longer.”
“Curious.” Yanevich looks at me. I shrug.
“Same point of origin?”
“Very close, sir.”
“Keep watching.” We go on about our business.
I go try to get Canzoneri to tell me about Rose.
Five minutes later Fisherman says, “Contact, Mr.
Yanevich.”
We swarm round. No doubt what this is. An enemy ship. Two
minutes of fast calculation extrapolates her course. “No
problem,” Yanevich says. “She’s just checking the
star.”
She gets in a sudden hurry to go somewhere. I sigh in relief.
That was close.
Two hours later there’s another one. She hurries to join
the first, which is now skipping around crazily the other side of
the sun. Yanevich frowns thoughtfully but doesn’t sound the
alarm.
“They act like they’re after somebody,” he
says. “Junghaus, you sure you haven’t had any Climber
traces?”
“No sir. Just those two bleeps.”
“You think somebody heard us come out of the sun and went
up from norm?”
Fisherman shrugs. I say, “Those sprays don’t look
anything like a ship.”
“I don’t like it,” Chief Nicastro says.
“There’s a crowd gathering. We ought to sneak out
before somebody trips over us.”
“How?” Westhause snaps. For the first time in months
he doesn’t have more work than he can handle. The lack has
him edgy.
“We’ll get you home to momma, Phil,” Canzoneri
promises.
Laramie calls, “That’s what he’s afraid of,
Chief. He’s had time to think it over.”
I smile. Someone still has a sense of humor.
“Laramie . . . ” Nicastro starts
into the inner circle, thinks better of it, wheels on the first
Watch Officer. “At least go standby on annihilation,
sir.”
The neutrino detector starts stuttering, clickety-clack,
clickety-clack, like a typewriter under the ministrations of a
cautious two-fingered typist.
“Missiles detonating.” Nicastro says it with a force
suggesting he’s just confirmed a suspicion the rest of us are
too dull to comprehend.
“I’ve got another one,” Fisherman
announces.
“Picraux, wake the Commander.”
Nicastro nods glumly. This one will whip past less than a
million kilometers out. The Chief would die happy if she blew us to
ions.
More typewriter noise. It dies a little as Brown reduces the
neutrino detector’s sensitivity.
“They’re really putting it on somebody.”
“Here comes number four,” I say, catching the first
ghostly feather before Fisherman does.
“Carmon, better activate the tank.” Yanevich pokes
me with a finger. “Pass the word to Mr. Piniaz to wake
everybody up. Picraux. While you’re up there, shake everybody
out.”
When it’s no drill and there’s time, general
quarters can be handled in a civilized manner.
Brown reduces the detector’s sensitivity again.
“Another one,” Fisherman says.
“Any pattern yet, Carmon?”
“Not warm yet, sir.”
“Move it, man. Engineering, stand by to shift to
annihilation.”
The Commander swings down through the jungle gym. “What
have you got, First Watch Officer?” He’s so calm that
I, lingering near the Weapons hatch, get a flutter in the stomach.
The cooler he is, the more grave the situation. He’s always
been that way.
“Looks like we’re camped in the middle of the other
firm’s company picnic.”
The Commander listens impassively while Yanevich brings him up
to date. “Junghaus, roll that second sighting at your slowest
tape speed. On the First Watch Officer’s screen. Loop
it.”
“What’re we looking for?” Yanevich asks.
“Code groupings.”
The typist is a fast learner. His clickety-clack has
become a fast rattle. Brown cuts the sensitivity again.
“Poor bastards have had it,” Rose says. “Their
point is taking everything but the sink. Must not be able to
move.”
Better they than me, I think, the stomach flutters threatening
to mature into panic. And, hey, what does the Old Man mean, code
groupings?
“We ought to haul ass while we have the chance,”
Nicastro grumbles, trying his luck with the Commander.
“Two more,” Fisherman announces.
“Three,” I say, leaning over his shoulder.
“Here’s a big one over here.”
The Commander turns. “Carmon?”
The display tank sparkles to life.
“Damn! Brown. Turn that thing all the way back
up.” Clickety-clack nearly deafens us.
Floating red jewels appear where none ought to be, telling a
tale none of us want to hear. We’ve been englobed. The
trans-solar show is a distraction.
“Oh, shit!” someone says, almost reverently.
They aren’t certain of our whereabouts. The moon is well
off center of their globe.
“Commander.” Chief Canzoneri beckons. The Old Man
goes to look over his shoulder. After a moment, he grunts.
He says, “They’re beating the piss out of an
asteroid. Must be nice to have missiles to waste.” He strolls
toward Fisherman, his face almost beatific. “Fooled us,
didn’t they?” he tells me. “Wasted a few missiles
and locked the door while we sat here grinning.”
The distant firing ends.
The Old Man stares steadily at the craft Fisherman has in
detection.
Yanevich mumbles, “They reckon we’ve got it figured
up now and didn’t panic.” There’s agony in his
eyes when he meets Nicastro’s gaze.
Varese, you prick. I could choke you.
The swiftest reaction would’ve done us no good.
They’ve had half a day to tighten the net. What the hell can
we do?
I don’t like being scared.
The Old Man takes a pen from his pocket. He taps the end against
his teeth, then against one of the feathers on Fisherman’s
screen. “It’s him.”
Fisherman stares dumbly. He grows more and more pallid. Sweat
beads on his upper lip. He murmurs, “The
Executioner.”
“Uhm. Back from his holiday with Second Fleet. I’ll
take the conn, Mr. Yanevich.”
“Commander has the conn.” Yanevich doesn’t
conceal his relief.
I want to say something, to ask something. I can’t. My
gaze is fixed on that tachyon spray. The Executioner. The other
firm’s big man. Their number one life-taker. They want us
bad.
The Old Man grins at me. “Relax. He’s not
infallible. Beat him patrol before last. And Johnson, she had the
hex sign on him.”
I feel awfully cold. I’m shivering.
“Engineering, bring CT systems to full
readiness.”
This is a state of readiness midway between standby and actual
shifting. It’s seldom used because it’s such a strain
on personnel. Apparently the Commander does appreciate the fuel
problem.
“All hands. Take care of your personals,” he says.
“General quarters shortly.” He sounds like a father
calming a three-year-old with nightmares.
I’m so nervous my bladder and bowels won’t
evacuate. I stand staring at the display tank. A dozen rubies
inhabit it now. Flight would be suicidal. Amazing that they’d
devote so much strength to one Climber.
We have to stay put and outfox them.
Outfox the Executioner? His reputation is justified. He
can’t help but find us . . .
“Mr. Westhause, bring up the data for Tau and
Omicron.”
“Got it already, Commander.”
“Good. Program for Tau with just enough hyper to give it
away. Once we’re up, zag toward Omicron, then put us back
inside this rock.”
“It’s mostly water ice, Commander, with a little
surface dust. There seems to be a real rock surface several
thousand meters down, though.”
“Whatever. I trust you’ve resolved its orbitals? Can
you hold us deep enough to shield the point?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Can you or can’t you?”
“I can, sir. I will. Might have to run high Bevs to get
the cross section down so we don’t take core heat if we go
deep.”
“This rock isn’t that big. But keep gravity in mind.
Don’t let it upset your calculations.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t go down more than a couple
klicks. Just deep enough to escape their weaponry.”
“Can you hold it that fine?”
“I did on Rathgeber. Finer.”
“On Rathgeber you had a century’s worth of orbital
data. Go down twenty-five. Hell. Make it fifty, just to be safe.
They might try to blast us out.”
They’re doing this out loud to let the men know
there’s a plan. It’s an act. I try not listen. It
doesn’t sound like much. I check the time. Still got a chance
to piss before strap-in.
The alarm sounds. “To your stations. They’ve found
us. Missiles incoming. Prepare for Climb. Lift off, Mr.
Westhause.”
The lighting fades to near extinction as the drives go from
minimum to maximum power.
“Vent heat, max,” Yanevich orders.
Back in Weapons now, I commence firing. My unit survives, though
not without protest. The air gets colder and colder. The hyper
alarm howls. I push my bug plugs into my ears.
“Secure the gravity system, Mr. Bradley,” the
Commander orders. “Secure all visibility lighting.”
What? We’re going through this in the dark? I feel the
caress of panic. Blind panic. That’s a joke.
“Climb.”
The visibility lights aren’t necessary. The glow of Climb,
complemented by the luminescence of the idiot lights, provides
adequate illumination. So. A little more Climb endurance won.
The Commander shuts down systems till it seems nothing but the
Climb system remains on-line. Internal temperature is so low frost
forms on nonradiant surfaces and men exhale fog into their clasped
hands.
The first salvo arrives and delivers enough applied
cross-sectional kinetic energy to rattle bones and brains. I gasp
for breath, fight a lost bug back into my right ear.
Down in the basement Varese is frenetically trying to catch up
on a million little tasks he let slide during ready. The last hint
of refinement has fled him. His cussing isn’t inventive, just
strong enough to crisp the paint off every surface within three
kilometers.
The Commander continues securing systems. Even all detectors and
radios, which, normally, would be maintained at a warm idle.
Piniaz taps my shoulder. “Shut her down,” he says.
“Then go kill the cannon.” His dark face makes him hard
to read. As if catching my thoughts, he whispers, “I think
he’s going a little far. We ought to be ready to slash and
bite if we have to do down.”
“Yeah.” It’ll take time to bring everything
back to ready. Frightened, I close the systems down.
Up in Ops Yanevich and the Old Man are running and rerunning
Fisherman’s tapes, assembling the details of a cautionary
message to the rest of the Fleet.
Six hours. For every second of them the Climber has whispered
and stirred in response to forces acting on her Hawking point.
Twice the Commander has ordered us deeper into the moon.
We’re down nearly three hundred kilometers. We’re
running a hundred Bev, the most I’ve ever seen, giving our
point a diameter smaller than that of a hydrogen atom. We’re
gulping CT fuel . . .
Yet we’re being buffeted. Continuously. I don’t know
what they’re doing up there,
but . . . the whole surface has to be boiling,
throwing trillions of tons of lunar matter into space.
The buffeting gradually increases. “Take her down another
hundred kilometers, Mr. Westhause.”
I didn’t pay much attention to the moon when I had a
chance. Is it big enough to have a molten core? Are we trapped
between fires? Does the Executioner have the firepower to tear the
moon apart?
Waiting. Thinking. Always the fear. What if they blast away till
there’s nowhere left to go?
God. They must have brought a Leviathan. Nothing else has so
much firepower.
Suppose they destabilize the moon’s orbit? The Commander
and Westhause are betting on its stability. What if the moon
can’t take it and breaks up? What if? What if? Will there be
any warning when it sours? Or will internal temperature just shoot
up too fast for us to react?
Maybe they’re punching their missiles deep by throwing
them in in hyper. Their sudden materialization and explosion would
crack the mantle to gravel—except that that massed energy
weapon fire will have turned it to a sea of lava. The water ice,
surely, has boiled off into space by now.
Why are they so damned determined to skin this particular cat? I
never did anything to them.
It’s stopped. Suddenly, like a light switch being thrown.
What the hell? God. I thought it would drive me insane. Alewel did
lose his cool for a minute, holding his head and screaming,
“Make it stop! Make it stop!” Piniaz had to sedate
him.
Silence. Stretching out. Getting spooky. Stretching, stretching.
Becoming worse than the bombardment.
Have they gone away? Are they laying back, waiting for us to
come down?
The Executioner, they say, is a master of psychological
warfare.
I unbuckle and venture to the honeypot. Sacrifice made, I prowl
the confines of the compartment, trying to calm myself. Piniaz
endures my footsteps for five minutes before snapping, “Sit
down. You’re generating heat.”
“Shit, man. That seat’s getting hard. And
wet.”
“Tough. Sit. You’re in the Climbers now,
Lieutenant.” My restlessness isn’t unique. This silence
is a rich growth medium for the jitters. Nobody looks anybody else
in the eye.
Ten hours. Somebody in Ops is whimpering. Curious. We’ve
been up this long before. Why is this time harder to endure?
Because the Executioner is out there? They use a sedative to quiet
the whimperer.
The Commander’s methodical madness has proven effective.
Internal temperature increase is lagging well behind the normal
curve despite the fact that we haven’t much fuel to use as a
heat sink. Soon after the whimperer goes quiet, the Old Man orders
the atmosphere completely recycled. Then, “Corpsman, I want
the Group One sleepers given.”
It’s warm now but I shiver anyway. Sleepers. Knockouts.
The last ditch effort to extend Climb endurance by reducing
metabolic rates and making the least critical men insensitive to
their environment. A desperation measure. Usually applied much
later than this.
“Voss, why don’t you just hand out capsules?”
I ask the Pharmacist’s Mate as he comes through Weapons with
his injection gun. It looks like a heavy laser with a shower-head
snout.
“Some guys would palm them.”
I roll up a tattered sleeve. Vossbrink ignores me. He turns to
Chief Bath, whom I consider more important to the ship’s
survival. The Chief looks like a man expecting never to waken.
“Why not me? How do you choose, anyway?”
“Psych profile, endurance profile, Commander’s
direction, critical ratings. You can almost always find somebody to
do a job. Can’t always find somebody who can take the heat
and pressure.”
“What about when we go down?”
He shrugs. “They’ll be gone. Or they won’t. If
not, it won’t matter.”
I lean his way, offering my arm. The sleeper looks like an easy
out. No more worries. If I wake up, I’ll know we made it.
“No. Not you, sir.”
“There’s nobody more useless than me.”
“Commander’s directive, sir.”
“Damn!” Right now I want nothing more than total
absolution of any responsibility for my own fate.
Fourteen hours. Feeling feverish. Unable to sit still. Soaked
with perspiration. Breathing quick and shallow because of heat,
stench, and the low oxygen content of the air. Pure oxygen.
It’s supposed to be pure oxygen.
What the hell is the Climb endurance record? I can’t
remember. How close are we? Looks like the Old Man means to break
it. And stretch it with every trick ever tried, including
predicting his heat curves with the discounts of the men we
lost.
Don’t look at the bulkheads. Mold blankets them now. I can
almost see it spreading, sporulating, filling the air with its dry,
stale smell. Jesus! There’s a patch of it on Chief
Bath’s shirt. I’m coughing almost continuously. The
spores irritate my throat. Thank heaven they don’t give me an
allergic reaction.
The last of our juice is gone. We’re down to water and
bouillon and pills. Yo-ho-ho. Famine in the Climbers.
Where’s that fearless old spacedog who jollied the boys on
the beacon? Ho! The life-takers have whisked away his disguise.
Vossbrink came round an hour ago. He bypassed me again. I cursed
him mercilessly. He gave me a tablet I’m to swallow only on
the Old Man’s orders.
Those of us still conscious are a little insane. I want out,
but . . . I don’t have enough residual
defiance to take the tablet. Been thinking about it, but
can’t get my hand to my mouth.
Christ, it’s gloomy in here!
Maintaining a tenuous touch with reality by hating the Old Man.
My old friend. My old classmate. Doing this to me. I could cut his
throat and smile.
And those bastards out there. Why the hell don’t they go
away? Enough is enough.
Westhause and the Commander are the only watchstanders left in
Ops. I can’t hear anything from Engineering, but somebody is
holding out. Only Bradley is active in Ship’s Services. The
Ensign is stubborn. Here in Weapons I have two open-eyed
companions, Kuyrath and Piniaz.
Kuyrath suddenly throws himself toward the Ops hatch. Muttering,
he tries to claw his way through. What the hell?
Aha. Another reason for the sedations. This could be contagious.
The madness howls along the frontiers of my mind. I force myself to
rise, to stalk Kuyrath with a hypo Vossbrink left for this
contingency.
Kuyrath sees me coming. He leaps at me. His eyes are wild, his
teeth bare. I punch the hypo into his stomach, yank its
trigger.
For a dozen seconds I shield my testicles and eyes, writhe away
from champing teeth, evade clawing fingers, and wonder what went
wrong. Why doesn’t he fold?
He collapses.
“What’s going on back there?”
I stagger to a comm, mumble. Somehow, the Commander understands.
I stare at Piniaz. Why didn’t he help me?
His eyes are open but he isn’t seeing anything. He’s
out. The bastard. What the hell did he do?
“All right.” The Commander sounds like he’s
talking from the next galaxy. “Take Alewel’s
board.”
“Huh?” I’m getting foggy. Want to give up. The
exertion drained me. I can’t get the drift.
“Take over on Alewel’s board. I’ve got to have
somebody on Missiles. Where’s Piniaz?”
“On Missiles. Somebody on Missiles.” I stagger to
Alewel’s seat. The Missileman is curled on the deck grates.
His breathing is strained and ragged. He’s in bad trouble.
“Tired. Going to take capsule now. Sleep.”
“No. No. Come on. Hang in there. We’re almost home.
All you have to do is activate the missile board.”
“Activate missile board.” My fingers act of their
own accord. My hands look like thin brown spiders as they dance
over the slimy, mold-green board, caressing a wakening galaxy of
key-lights. I giggle incessantly.
“Where’s Piniaz?”
This time the message gets through. “Sleeping. Gone to
sleep.” Alewel is making a thin, whining sound.
“Damn. Be ready to launch when we go norm.”
“Ready . . . Launch missiles.”
One spider starts dancing the arming sequence. The other explores
the mysteries of the safeties.
“Negative. Negative. Get your hands away from that board.
Waldo, I’m going to have to go back there.”
A semblance of reason returns. I draw my hands back slowly,
stare at them. Finally, I say, “Missiles prepared for launch.
Launch Control standing by.”
“Good. Good. I knew I could count on you. It’ll be a
while yet. Just hang on.”
Hang on. Hang on. Only five men conscious in the whole damned
ship and one of them is hollering hang on. Till when?
Till the Commander and I are the only ones left? Suppose the
party is still going on when we go down? It won’t matter to
the others, but what am I supposed to do? Bend over and kiss my ass
good-bye?
Alewel has stopped making noises. He’s even stopped
breathing. Mostly I feel puzzled when I look at him.
I don’t think he’s the only one. It’s that bad
in here.
I drive myself back into rituals of hatred and anger, thinking
up tortures to inflict on the Old Man. Curses and threats rip
themselves from my throat in an evil imitation of a Gregorian
chant.
It passes the time. It keeps me going.
Skulking on the borderlands of lunacy, I find myself victimized
by one of time’s relativistic pranks. Before it seems
possible, another two hours have fled.
“Hey down there. Stand by. Going down in five.”
Westhause. He sounds choky.
I glance at the time. A new endurance record, no doubt about it.
Hurray.
“Uhn.” The Commander. “Damn it, Waldo. Not
now. Wake up. We’re almost there. Shit.” He sounds as
if speech is pure torment.
Reluctance to leave the ghost world inundates me. Even hell
gives one a sense of security, I suppose.
What happens if the whole crew passes out before a Climber goes
down? I guess she’d keep heating till her superconductors
failed, her magnetics went, and she destroyed herself in a sudden
annihilation.
Why do I feel less uncomfortable now than I did two hours ago?
Internal temperature is higher than ever before. Literally,
we’re cooking.
Haltingly, the Commander says, “All I want is for you to
be faster on the trigger than anybody waiting for us. Quick enough
to keep them from getting out an instel.”
“I’ll try.”
“Ten seconds.
Nine . . . Eight . . . ”
It’s a savage plunge to zero Bev. The concretization of my
surroundings stuns my conscious mind.
The frightened old tree ape in the back of my mind is on
survival watch. I finish the launch sequence before the
venting machinery begins humming. In fact, I start before the ship
is all the way down, and launch before any instrument has anything
to say about targets.
The way Tannian fusses about wasting missiles, this could earn
me a Board of Inquiry . . .
Except there is a target. The Old Man and Mr. Westhause made an
astute guess.
We break cover less than ten thousand kilometers from the bones
of the murdered moon. Fate does us a favor. She puts the watcher in
the gap, not a hundred kilometers from our drop point. I can see
her on gun camera. So. They thought we were gone, but left somebody
just in case. They always do.
“About damned time it went our way,” I mutter.
The missile is on its way. The Fire Control system barely has
time to lock it on target.
The Commander holds norm for just four seconds. Hardly long
enough to make a microdegree’s difference in internal
temperature. We run.
The missile, accelerating at one hundred gravities, strikes home
before the gentlemen of the other firm get their thumbs out of
their ears.
In essence, a classic Climber strike. With a lot of luck thrown
in.
The Commander goes down again five light-seconds away. He vents
heat and watches.
The destroyer dies. And neither the radio nor tachyon detectors
react with anything but blast noise. No messages out. The Commander
played the right card. He outwaited the hunt. The Executioner has
gone looking elsewhere.
The glare of the fireball fades. I check the temperature.
It’s falling slowly. Maybe a degree a minute. The minutes
tramp away on the feet of snails.
The destroyer got no message out, but that treacherous probe
remains.
The first hunter hypers in an hour later.
A dozen men have recovered sufficiently to resume work.
Several more are gone forever . . . The
Commander commences a new ploy. He calls me, says, “Program
the Eleven bird for maximum straight-line hyper fly.” Piniaz
hasn’t recovered. For the moment I’m in charge.
The new arrival is moving away from us, into the nether reaches
of the system. Westhause hits hyper and runs.
Five minutes pass. Fisherman reports, “She’s
turning, Commander.”
“Very well. Weapons, stand by to launch. Mr. Westhause,
stand by to Climb.”
The minutes roll away. The hunter gains slowly.
“She’s close enough, Commander,” Canzoneri
says.
“Thank you. Weapons? Ready?”
“Aye, Commander.” I quickly hammer orders to the
missile. The destroyer will recognize the fake if the weapon tears
away too fast.
“Ready, Mr. Westhause? Go, then.”
I launch. My surroundings ghost. The Commander directs Westhause
onto a new course. This should work. It’s a new trick.
The missiles can run for hours in hyper. I programmed its
translation ratio high. Hopefully, we’ll get a good start
before the destroyer gets close enough to unravel the
deception.
Fearless Fred will roar like a wounded bull when he hears about
this.
The Commander no longer gives a damn what Command thinks. He
wants to bring his people home alive.
We drop back to norm as soon as the destroyer has time to pass
the limits of detection. We drift for hours, on minimum power,
still venting heat. That’s a laborious process. We
can’t use the energy weapons for fear of giving ourselves
away. The hunt should be gathering again.
Normal cruising temperature feels incredibly cold. I’m in
pain when it hits a pre-Climb level.
We have twenty-three men effective when, after three hours, the
Commander takes us up again.
We leave three men behind, buried in space, eulogized and
mourned only after the vessel is safely in Climb. Picraux and Brown
from Ops, and Alewel. They were luckier down below.
“It’s criminal,” Fisherman mutters. “Out
the garbage lock. It’s criminal.”
“You maybe want to keep them aboard?” Yanevich
demands.
Fisherman doesn’t answer. Heat and bacteria would work
horrors during an extended Climb. The bodies got a gross enough
start as it was.
I remember that story about the Commander who insisted on coming
home with his dead.
Funny. My threshold for smell seems to adjust as the ship grows
more fetid. Our atmosphere is only mildly annoying, though it would
gag somebody plucked off a ranch on Canaan.
Lieutenant Diekereide has been running Engineering while his
boss is indisposed. Varese recovers suddenly. With a howl.
“Get out of the fucking way, Diekereide. Goddamnit,
Commander, what the fuck did you do to my CT stores? You
jackass . . . ”
“Shut your mouth, Varese. Thank me for the chance to
bitch.”
Varese succumbed early. The more thoughtful Diekereide kept
himself in action by donning our one remaining suit and using its
cooling capability.
The squabble goes on. Pure stress talking. Will the Old Man
press it? He’ll have the evidence on the Mission Recorder.
Varese is insubordinate. I take no notes, wanting nothing on paper
that might be subpoenaed.
“We’re down to a cunt hair over four hours of Climb
time,” Varese rages. “With that and some luck,
we’ll only get our asses blown off, not baked.”
Yanevich takes over for the Old Man. “Be glad you’re
alive. Now tend to your knitting. Don’t give me any
of your shit. Understood, mister?”
Varese has sense enough to shut his mouth. He sulks instead.
Time to get some sleep.
I waken with a heightened sense of fatalism. I’m not
alone. The CT is practically gone. The missiles have flown. The
graser could be one shot from failing. The other energy weapons are
unreliable. Only the magnetic cannon can be used for any length of
time. We won’t show much in a fight.
I paid my dues. I hung in there. I did my job while the others
fell. I can be proud of myself. Maybe they’ll give me a
medal.
We’re still a long way from home. It’ll be a tough,
hungry trip. Then we’ll have to run the steel curtain around
Canaan. Do we have enough CT?
In Weapons everyone is at war with the mold. “Looks like a
victory for mold,” I say to a slightly shy Kuyrath.
“Got a good hold this time, sir. The paint’s ruined.
Some of the plastic, too.” He tears the protective wrapping
off a roll of electrician’s tape. Two empty cores lie beside
him already. “Had to let it ride, though.”
“Yeah. What can you do?”
“Wouldn’t it be the shits if this crap did us in? I
mean, they gave it their best shot. The Executioner. But the Old
Man pulled us through. So we got mold. What do you do about fucking
mold? You can’t outthink it.”
“It would be an ironic end,” I agree. And
don’t count the other team out. They’re still looking,
my friend.
Piniaz drifts over. “Understand you did some first class
shooting, Lieutenant.”
“Uhm.” His attitude has mellowed. “It really
happened? Seems like a dream.”
“You took notes the whole time. Interesting. I put them in
Bath’s hammock for now.”
“Don’t remember any notes. Be like reading somebody
else’s report.” I snort. “Gunners. No respect for
anybody but the fastest draw.”
Piniaz frowns, perplexed. “I was offering the olive
branch, Lieutenant. I didn’t figure you’d bite my
hand.”
“Sorry. Thanks. Just lucky, I guess. What’s
happening?”
“We lost them. Or they let go. Something funny about it,
if you ask me. Shouldn’t have been this easy.”
“Maybe it wasn’t.”
“They had to know our CT was about gone. That gets them
excited.” He shrugs. “The Old Man will take what they
give him.”
“For instance?”
“First we make an instelled beacon. Let Command know
we’re alive.”
“Uhm. Think Tannian will be disappointed?” Sometimes
I think he wants us dead.
Piniaz is capable of his own paranoid reasoning.
“I’d guess the Old Man is gambling. People will hear
we’re alive before the news reaches the top.”
Could it be true? . . . No. Not even
Tannian . . . Crazy thinking. I’ve been
out too long. “You figure Fred will have to pull all the
stops to bring his heroes in?”
“Exactly.”
Ito’s strained, dark little face reveals a truth.
He believes there’s a plot. The upcoming leave best
be long. These men are all out of their minds. I wouldn’t
want to space with them again.
I won’t have to. I smile to myself. One patrol is all I
have to survive.
Get me home, Commander. Get me home.
We’ve made our beacon. The Commander reported yesterday.
After putzing around for hours, Command told us to come on home,
following normal patrol routine, beacon to beacon. They showed no
inclination to gossip.
We’ve scrounged a little water and food. Pity we
can’t get any CT. Going to be rough if we hit unfriendly
territory.
Lunch with the Commander; He’s near the end of his tether,
yet remains as inaccessible as ever. How do I reach the man? How do
I reassure him? I don’t think it can be done now.
He speaks of the pursuit as though it were normal patrol
routine.
Six days gone. Six days closer to home. The Old Man is avoiding
routine, rather than pursuing it. He doesn’t want to give
potential watchers anything they can use. We’re proceeding in
short hyper flies separated by extended periods in norm. We do a
lot of listening. Paranoia has become a norm.
The computer people winnow every bit of information gathered
from the beacons, hunting a clue, believing Command an enemy more
deadly than the other firm. I can unearth no rational reason for
the attitude. I occasionally succumb myself.
This is dangerous. Too much time wasted on speculation. We could
get so spooky we turn into our own worst enemies. This could create
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
More time gone. I’ve lost track of the days. We’re
close. I’m not sure how close, but near enough that Canaan
seems real again. Here, there, men are talking like there’s a
human universe outside the Climber.
Space here is crowded. We have frequent contacts. Hardly a watch
slides by without Fisherman’s being startled into a croaking
panic. Curiously, none of the contacts are interested in us.
We’ve been lucky, maybe. Every contact has been remote,
while we were in norm. Chances are we’ve just not been
spotted. A ship in norm is harder to detect from hyper than vice
versa.
A tongue-in-cheek theory goes the rounds. It says we’re
dead already. We’re really a ghost ship. We’re going on
because the gods haven’t given us the message yet.
Lieutenant Diekereide half-seriously postulates that our record
Climb rendered us permanently invisible. We’d all like to
believe that.
I have my own thoughts on why we’re having no trouble.
They terrify me.
“Contact, Commander,” Fisherman says. He’s
said it so often, now, that he no longer gets upset. He gives
bearing and range and elevation, and, “Unfriendly.”
This one’s coming right at us. Fast. A destroyer. What the
hell can we do? Where the hell can we run?
The Old Man powers down, plays possum.
The terror is over. She’s gone. She passed within a few
hundred thousand kilometers of us. Is it possible she didn’t
see us? What the hell is happening?
The Commander knows. I can see that now. He becomes shifty and
evasive when I try to talk to him. All the men have their
suspicions. The other firm just doesn’t ignore crippled
Climbers. Not without a damned good reason. Somehow, our importance
has declined dramatically.
As I say, I have my thoughts. I don’t want to think them.
Sufficient unto each watch that I waken and find myself alive.
Later, maybe, I’ll want more.
Later, we all will. We’ll want Tannian as guest of honor
at a cannibal feast.