“Five. Four. Three. Two.
One . . . ”
My targeting screen comes to life. The cracking tower lies dead
center amid the aiming rings. Sunlight washes a typical lunar
landscape, all black and white and sharp-edged shadows on the bones
of a world that died young.
“Away One,” Piniaz sings. “Away
Two.”
A missile’s exhaust scars the view on my screen. I hit my
triggering key.
A lance of emerald hell, startling against the monochromatic
background, slices a corner from the screen. It sweeps on
continuous discharge, vaporizing rock and exposed plant.
There’s chatter in Engineering as they compensate for the
surge of power being drained from the accumulator banks.
“Christ!” comes through from Ops at the same
instant. “The bastard is right on top of us!”
“What?”
“Away Three,” Piniaz chants. “Away Four.
Klarich, what the hell is wrong here?”
A sewing machine stitches a line of black holes up the cracking
tower an instant before my screen goes white with the violence of
the first missile. It blanks. The bulkheads ghost.
Four seconds. It seemed much longer. Everything happened so
slowly—
“Twelve minutes,” Nicastro intones. “Commence
target evaluation and selection.”
We’re safe now. Outside, lunar rock is boiling and fusing
into man-made obsidian.
The Commander says, “Mr. Piniaz, reprogram one missile for
above-surface pursuit. Berberian will give you the data. We had an
incoming destroyer at eight o’clock.”
Piniaz has problems of his own. “Commander, we’ve
got a jam in the elevator on Launch Three. Looks like the lead
dolly kicked back and knocked the mid dolly out of line. The Seven
missile is against the well wall. Programming and command circuits
have safety-locked.”
“Can you clear it?”
“Not remote. I’ll have to send some people out.
Which target do you want dropped?”
“Forget the destroyer. We’ll take our
chances.”
I slam my fist against my board. If we survive two more passes,
we’ll still have two missiles aboard.
The screen starts sending up target data. I sigh. Things look a
little better. Indications are we got Rathgeber’s comm
center. They can’t call for help. And the destroyer, which
may have been crippled, was the only warship around.
I’m obsessed with going home. Home? Canaan isn’t
home. My personal universe has shrunk to the hell of the Climber
and the promised land of Canaan. Canaan. What a choice of names.
Whoever selected it must have been prescient. Odd. I consider
myself a rational man. How can I make of the base-world a
near-deity?
Does this happen to all Climber people?
I think so. My shipmates seldom speak of other worlds. They
don’t mention Canaan that much, and then only in a New
Jerusalem context. The quirks of the human mind are
fascinating.
I see why they go crazy planetside. That business at the
Pregnant Dragon wasn’t for tomorrow we die. People
were proving they were alive, that they had survived a brush with
an incredibly hostile environment.
So. I’ll have to adapt my behavioral models. I’ll
have to see where and how each man fits this new scheme. And the
Commander? Is he a man for whom no proofs carry sufficient
conviction? Is he a prisoner in a solipsistic universe?
“Sixty seconds,” the good Chief says. Christ, twelve
minutes go fast. I’m not ready for another plunge into the
hexenkessel.
Alarm! I start, scattering notes.
“Away Five.”
I begin shooting immediately. I can’t see the purpose, but
any action holds the fear at bay. The movement of a finger makes
work for body and brain for a fractional slice of time.
“Away Eight.”
Climb alarm. “Thirty minutes. Commence target evaluation
and selection.”
“Magic numbers,” I murmur. Seven and Eleven are the
missiles that can’t be launched.
“Eh?” My nearest neighbor gives me a puzzled look
and headshake. The men think my brain was pickled by civilian
life.
The bugs don’t give me a thing. Engineering is a graveyard
peopled by specters reciting rosaries to Fusion and Annihilation.
In Ops, Yanevich observes that the destroyer weathered the first
pass and was trying to run. The Commander’s silence says this
is no news to him. Nicastro ticks time in colorless tones.
Tension mounts faster than the temperature. Third time counts
for all.
I amuse myself by nibbling tidbits of target evaluation data.
Seven fusion warheads can do a hell of a lot of damage.
Molten rock and metal and people are quickening into concave
black glass lenses. A billion days hence, perhaps, some eldritch
descendant of a creature now wallowing mindlessly in a swamp will
gaze on that lunar acne and wonder what the hell it means.
I wonder myself. What’s the point?
Well, we can honestly say we didn’t start this one.
Right now, with death a-stalk, the only question that matters
is, How do we stay alive? The rest is foam on the beer.
The universe is very narrow, here in Rathgeber’s shadow.
It’s a long, lonely hallway through which even close friends
can do little to ease one another’s passage.
Again the ship lies panting in the embrace of that cold-hearted
mistress of Climber warfare, Waiting. Months of waiting. Climaxed
by what? Eight scattered seconds of action. Damned minuscule flecks
of meat in a huge, hard sandwich of time.
Almost indigestible.
My butt is driving me crazy. I can’t count the times
I’ve stayed seated longer, but those times I had the option
of moving. Getting up could become an obsession. Got to move. Got
to do something. Anything . . .
Nicastro’s countdown grows louder and louder. The
ass-agony vanishes. Death is a bigger pain. I have a sudden,
absolute conviction of my own mortality.
The orbitals will have their guns out. That hunter-killer will
be ready. She’ll be laying back, a big iron bushwacker eager
for a dry-gulching.
Unless we were damned lucky and skragged her instel wave guides,
she’ll have howled for her packmates. They’ll come
whooping to avenge the base. We’ll pull pressure off the
squadrons stalking the convoy. I should be pleased with such
success. But I can’t get excited about the gospel according
to St. Tannian.
The destroyers will be hours getting here. They’ll be way
too late to help Rathgeber. But I know they’ll catch our
trail. The way my life goes, it can’t happen any other
way.
Must be getting old. They say pessimism is a disease of the
aged.
Here we go!
Missiles away. Energy weapons blazing. My little cannon sowing
its seeds. There isn’t much to see. The same old bleached
bones of an aborted worldlet acned by ground zeros. The silhouettes
of startled beings in spacesuits. They’ll remain forever in
my memory, taking one futile step toward cover.
Ghostdom returns with a ship-wide shudder.
“Commander.” Varese is speaking. Softly,
metallically. “A low-intensity beam brushed us on the upper
torus, at plates twenty-four and twenty-five. Damage appears
minimal.”
“Very well. Keep an eye on it.”
Damned well better. Let’s not buy any trouble we could
avoid with a little attention to detail.
I secure the cannon board, then bestow a negative blessing on
our illustrious Admiral. His madman’s game put us in this
predicament. Being a pawn on a galactic chessboard wasn’t
what I had in mind when I asked on. The rewards are too small,
except in pain and doubt.
“Secure from general quarters,” the Commander
orders. “One hour, gentlemen.”
I exchange glances with Piniaz. This is an unprecedented breach
of Climb procedure. The crew is supposed to remain at battle
stations any time the ship is in Climb.
No one argues. We all need to move around, to interrupt tension
with frivolous activity.
Yet work goes on. I’m the one man free to stray far from
my station. I duck into Ops when the hatches open.
Fisherman hasn’t moved, though in Climb he and his station
are useless. Yanevich, more the butterfly than usual, flutters
round the compartment. Westhause and the Commander hug the
astrogation consoles. Already they’re trying to outguess the
hounds.
Rose, Throdahl, and Laramie have a tricorner game of When I
get back to Canaan going. It ignores the fact that we have
missiles aboard. They’re banking on the elevator
damage’s being irreparable. The names, addresses, and special
talents of loose women volley around, often accompanied by the hull
numbers of the ships of the men who have primary claim to them.
Chief Nicastro is staying out of the way, imitating a statue. He
moves just once that I see, to thumb a switch and announce,
“Forty-five minutes.”
I want desperately to badger the Old Man. Will he go norm and
clear the elevator right away? Will he run as far and fast as he
can? I can think of arguments for both courses.
He has no time to waste on me.
Time has turned its coat. It’s gone over to the other
firm. It’s become their standard-bearer, almost. Whatever the
Old Man decides, he has to do it quick. The death hounds are
slavering toward Rathgeber.
No one has time for me. If they’re not on station,
they’re busy scrubbing mold. They’re losing themselves
in ritual. I’ll try Ship’s Services and
Engineering.
Same story. The Commander’s ploy hasn’t worked.
After a moment of release, the men have grown tense again,
retreating into themselves. Even Diekereide is stone-silent.
Trudging back, I note a lump in my hammock. “Where you
been, fat boy?”
Fearless opens his eye, yawns, meows softly. I scratch his head
listlessly. His purr has no heart in it either. “Going to be
hard times,” I tell him. He’s getting lean. He’s
been on short rations lately.
Fearless is in one of his lonely moods. So am I. I’m a
little hurt. They’re shutting me out. We share a silent
commiseration, the cat and I. My thoughts, when not lusting after
hammock, wolf after other worlds, other times, other companions.
I’m very sorry that I’m here.
The reporter, the observer, ideally, remains neutral and
detached. However, I’ve altered the experiment simply by
being here. I’ve tried to be both remote and intimate, bom
Climber man and reporter. I’ve failed. My shipmates, so
young, came to Navy with near-virgin pasts. Trying to mirror their
innocence, I’ve kept my own past fairly private.
And so I’ve been hiding from myself as well.
There with the cat, waiting and wishing I could sleep, I
rediscover my once-had-beens and should-have-dones, the tortoise
shell of pain and past all men drag with them forever.
A dam cracks. It begins as a leak . . . I
understand why so many mouths are sealed.
This ship is filled with a conviction of imminent death, tainted
with only the slightest uncertainty.
Maybe now . . . Maybe in a few hours. The
condemned man wants to order his life and explain everything. To,
perhaps, make someone understand.
These men are just reaching their conclusions of condemnation.
Maybe, now, I’ll learn more than I ever wanted to know.
The conviction has hold of the Commander, I’m sure, though
he hides it well. His face is more pale, his smile more strained,
his primary expression the one you see before the body goes into
the coffin.
This is a ship manned by zombies, by corpses going through
life-motions while awaiting cremation. We died the moment that
destroyer sent her call.
We know she did. Fisherman caught the leakover of an instel link
during second attack.
Nicastro is listless because his revelation came early.
“Five minutes.”
“Take care, Fearless.” I’m sure we won’t
meet again. “Make yourself a home here.” I ease him
back into the hammock.
A syrupy silence has swamped Weapons. The gunners have had time
to mourn themselves.
They don’t seem afraid. Just resigned or apathetic. I
suppose that’s because they’ve been waiting for so
long. Why panic in the face of the inevitable?
Fear is a function of hope. The bigger the hope, the greater the
fear. There’s no fear where hope doesn’t exist. I park
myself in Ops.
The general alarm sounds briefly.
“This’s the Commander. We’re going norm to
clear a jammed missile elevator. EVA is required. All compartments
will remain prepared for extended Climb. Mr. Piniaz, sustain your
accumulators at minimum charge. Mr. Bradley, maintain internal
temperature at the lowest tolerable level. Scrub atmosphere. Empty
and clean all auxiliary human waste receptacles. Distribute combat
rations for three days. Mr. Varese, Mr. Piniaz, select your working
parties. Suit them and brief them. Mr. Westhause, take us down when
they’re ready.”
We go norm in the depths of an interstellar abyss. The nearest
star flames three light-years distant. The universe is an inkwell
with a handful of light motes populating its walls. It’s a
forceful reminder of the vastness of existence, of just how far
beyond the Climber’s walls other realities lie.
The constraints of concerted activity nibble away at the
pandemic gloom. Embers of hope and fear begin to glow. My belief in
my immortality revives. The big goal, survival, looks more and more
attainable as the little problems come to successful
conclusions.
When you think about it, how would God Himself find us amid all
this nothing?
There isn’t much for me to do. Visual watch is a waste of
time. Fisherman will spot any traffic long before I could. To kill
time I help Buckets with the honeypots. A minor morale builder.
Having finished, I feel a sense of accomplishment. It segues over
into the bigger picture. I get this feeling of having yanked old
Death’s beard with impunity.
The Seven missile is solidly wedged. A riser arm has to be
removed from the lift linkage before the missile can be manhandled
into proper alignment. The riser arm and related hardware then have
to be reinstalled. Only afterward can the missile be elevated into
the firing rack in the launch bay.
Piniaz wants to replace the entire riser assembly with another
taken from the number two elevator. He’s afraid the arm is
warped and will jam again when he tries to elevate the Eleven
missile.
“Negative,” the Commander says to the proposal.
“We’re pushing our luck now. We can’t stay put
long enough. Use the old arm. How long for that?”
“Five hours,” Chief Holtsnider says from Launch
Three. The Chief doesn’t belong out there. That’s
Missileman’s work. Piniaz disagrees. He wants his best man on
the job. He says Chief Missileman Bath doesn’t have enough
EVA experience.
“My ass, five hours. You’ve got two. Get done or
walk home. Mr. Varese, your men just volunteered to help Chief
Holtsnider. Two hours.”
Varese had Gentemann and Kinder out examining the torus plates
touched by the other firm’s beam. They’re in the lock,
coming back. They do colorful things with the language when Varese
tells them to turn around. I use my camera to watch them glide out
the safety lines to Launch Three.
Kinder and Gentemann are Canaanites. They have homes and
families. It doesn’t seem right to risk them. Gentemann is a
sensible choice, though. He’s the ship’s Machinist.
They realign the Seven missile in forty minutes. Eleven
isn’t jammed. It lifts to ready without difficulty.
Holtsnider studies the riser arm. He says it should lift if
it’s properly adjusted.
“Commander!”
Fisherman’s shout rocks the ship.
Junghaus has been distracted by the working party. He
hasn’t been watching his screen.
“Goddamned! That mother’s really coming!”
Throdahl yelps.
“Varese!” the Commander shouts. “CT shift. Mr.
Westhause, all departments, stand by for Emergency
Climb.”
“Commander . . . ” Varese
protests. Five men are outside. Their chances are grim if they slip
out of the field or the ship stays up long.
“Now, Lieutenant.” I can’t tell if he’s
growling at Varese or Westhause. The astrogator is the sick color
of old ivory piano keys.
Fisherman’s screen looks bad.
“Right down our throats. Couldn’t miss us if they
were blind.” The Old Man has done his sums. He’s
balancing five lives against forty-four. The men won’t like
it but they’ll live long enough to bitch. “Shitty
fucking luck.”
That damned ship is going to land in our pocket. Fisherman,
where the hell was your mind? Why the shit didn’t you have
your buzzer on?
The frightened questions from the working party end abruptly
when we hit hyper. Radio is useless here. Nor is there anything
when we flash into the ghost abode. The men remain silent. They
exchange guarded glances.
Holtsnider comes through on the intercom links used by
inspection personnel in wetdock. A quick thinker, the Chief. His
voice is calm. It has a relaxing effect.
“Operations, working party. Commander, how long will we
stay in Climb?” Fear underlies Holtsnider’s words, but
he’s in control. He’s a good soldier. He sticks to his
job and lets a narrow focus see him through the tight places.
“Give me that,” the Commander says softly.
“I’ll cut it as short as I can, Chief. We’ve been
jumped by a singleship. We’ll drop back when we have her
going into her turn. Be ready to come in. How’re you doing
out there?”
“I think we lost Haesler, Commander. He was clowning on
tether. The rest of us are in the launch bay.”
Poor Haesler. Floating free nine lights from nowhere. The ship
gone. Must be scared shitless right now.
“How’s your oxygen, Chief?”
“Manolakos is down to a half hour. We can share if we have
to. Say an hour.”
“Good enough. Hang on.” Mutedly, “Mr.
Westhause, go norm as soon as your numbers show her going
away.”
“Fourteen minutes, Commander.”
“We go norm in mikes fourteen, Chief,” the Old Man
repeats for Holtsnider’s benefit. “We won’t have
a big window. Start Manolakos in now. Safety line him with the man
next shortest on oxygen. The rest of you double-check that Eleven
bird. Then start in too. Don’t waste time. We’re
borrowing it now. We’ll have to do some fancy dancing to pick
up Haesler and dodge this singleship, too.”
“Understood, Commander. I’ll keep this line
open.”
“Balls!” Picraux growls, punching a cross-member. I
can’t tell if he’s cursing the situation or commending
Chief Holtsnider.
I’ve never heard of anyone’s going outside in Climb.
“Anyone tried this before?” I ask Yanevich.
“Never heard of it.”
No one knows how far beyond the ship’s skin the effect
extends. It might slice the universe off a millimeter away. Anyone
who leaves that launch bay stands a chance of joining Haesler.
Manolakos and Kinder are convinced that will happen.
Everyone overhears Holtsnider’s half of the argument. The
protests of his men are too muted to make out. They’re
communicating by touching helmets.
The discussion is bitter, embarrassing; and, I suspect, each of
my shipmates is wondering if he’d have the guts to try
it.
One of them breaks down. We hear him crying, begging.
“Holtsnider,” the Commander snaps, “tell those
men to move out. Tell them they have to do it this way or they
don’t have a chance at all.”
“Aye, Commander.” The Chief’s tone makes it
clear he doesn’t like this any better than his men do.
Moments later, “They’re off, sir. Gentemann, get up
there and make sure the bird’s nose stays level when I start
the lift cycle. Commander, looks like Seven jammed because the
riser arm hydraulics didn’t equalize. If it looks like the
nose won’t stay with the tail, we’ll balance with the
hand crank.”
“Very well.”
Once the handful of novels have been read, the drama tapes have
been run to death in the display tank, the music tapes have been
played to boredom, once the lies have all been told and the card
games have faded for lack of a playable deck, Climber people turn
to studying their vessels. To what we call cross-rate training, the
study of specialties other than their own. Gentemann is an old
hand. He can help the Chief without complicated instructions.
I’ve browsed a few Missileman’s manuals myself.
(Like most writers, I spend a lot of time avoiding anything that
smacks of writing.) I could manage Gentemann’s task myself.
Not that I’d want to.
The mechanical drama continues. Concern for Kinder and Manolakos
overshadows the inexorable march of time.
“One minute.” Nicastro’s voice shows some
life. This is waking him up.
“Eleven’s ready, Commander. She tests go all the
way. We’re coming in.”
“Good, Chief. Hang on where you are. We’re going
norm. Scramble when we do.”
“Aye, Commander.”
The alarms play their cacophonous symphony strictly by the
book.
“Mr. Varese, stand by the airlock.” That has to be
the most needless instruction I’ve heard all mission. Half
the engineering gang will be there waiting. “Throdahl, you
ready to fix on Haesler’s beeper?”
“Ready, Commander.”
We drop.
Holtsnider comes through on radio. “Commander, I
don’t see any suit lights. Have they reached the lock?”
The lock, at the bottom of the Can, can’t be seen from the
torus.
“Over there, Chief,” Gentemann says.
“Shit. Commander, they fell loose. They’re drifting
pretty fast. Okay. They’ve spotted us.”
“Lights on,” the Commander snaps.
Kinder’s voice whispers, “There she is, Tuchol. Yo!
I see you! I’m bringing us in on my jets.”
Manolakos is babbling.
“Kinder, this’s the Commander. What’s the
matter with Manolakos?”
“Just panic, sir. He’s calming down.”
“You see Haesler’s lights? Anybody?”
“Not . . . ”
Fisherman interjects an “Oh, goddamn!” startling
everyone. “Commander, I’ve got another one. Coming in
from two seven zero relative at forty degrees high.
Destroyer.”
“Berberian?”
“Singleship in norm, Commander. Tracking.”
“She’s coming in, Commander,” Fisherman says.
“We’re fixed.”
“Time?”
“Five or six minutes to red zone, Commander. In the yellow
now.” Red zone: optimum firing configuration. Yellow zone:
acceptable firing configuration.
“Damned instel link with the singleship,” Yanevich
growls.
The Old man thunders, “Holtsnider, get your ass in here
now!”
“Commander, I’ve fixed Haesler’s
beeper,” Throdahl says. “Nineteen klicks out, straight
past Manolakos and Kinder.”
“Commander, the destroyer is launching missiles,”
Fisherman says. “Double pairs. Multiple track.”
“Time. Canzoneri.”
Weapons has the missiles boarded but can do nothing to stop
them. They’re coming in hyper, will drop at the last second.
The way a Climber beats that is maneuver. We can’t maneuver.
We’re no Main Battle. We carry no interceptors. All the
Commander can do now is Climb.
Piniaz orders the accumulators discharged again. He does so on
his own authority. The Commander doesn’t rebuke him.
“Throdahl, get on the twenty-one band and put a tight beam
on that singleship,” the Commander says. “Stand by for
Climb, Mr. Westhause. Mr. Varese, do you have anyone up to the lock
yet?”
“Negative, Commander.”
A murmur runs through the ship. Men releasing held breath. The
situation is tighter than I suspected. Looks like the Old Man is
going to tell the other firm he has to leave people behind.
There’s no policy, no agreement, but in those rare
instances where something like this happens the other team usually
honors the lifesaving signals—if they’re heard over the
tactical chatter. They’re even kind enough to relay the names
of prisoners taken.
Our side isn’t always that polite.
“Holtsnider, where are you?”
“Coming up on the lock, Commander. Five meters more. I
have Kinder and Manolakos with me.”
“Damn it, man . . . ”
“What’s happening?” Kinder demands. He’s
been holding up. Panic now edges his voice. Manolakos is babbling
again.
Chief Canzoneri says, “Commander, we’re running out
of time. We won’t clear the fireballs if we don’t go
soon.”
“Mr. Varese, get those men in here!”
Westhause has more guts than seems credible. He holds Climb till
the last millisecond. A schoolteacher!
And still we go up without the Chief or Machinist, without
Kinder or Manolakos or Haesler.
The walls mist. And Varese sighs, “Oh, shit. I can see
Holtsnider . . . He’s trying to turn
the wheel . . . He’s gone.
Just seemed to fall off.”
He falls, with Gentemann, Kinder, and Manolakos, into multiple
fireballs. The ship bucks, rattles, and warms appreciably.
They’re shooting straight over there.
Pale faces surround me. Four men have reached the end of the
line. Maybe Haesler was lucky.
“Think they’ll count us out?” Westhause
asks.
“Organics in the spectrum?” Yanevich counters.
“I doubt it. Not enough metals.”
“Evasive program, Mr. Westhause,” the Commander
snaps. “Take her up to fifty Bev.” His voice is tightly
controlled. He’s become a survival computer dedicated to
bringing the rest of us through.
His face is waxy. His hands are shaking. He won’t meet my
eye. This is the first he’s ever lost a man.
“Too old a trick, waiting till the last second,”
Yanevich says. His voice sounds hollow. He’s talking just to
be doing something. “They won’t buy it
anymore.”
“I wasn’t trying to sell anything, Steve. I was
trying to save four men.” Westhause too is shaken.
The Climber bucks again. And again. The plug-ups skitter around.
Odds and ends fall. Gravity acts crazy for a second.
“Damn!” somebody says. “She’s got us
figured close. Damned close.”
“See what I mean?” That’s Yanevich. I
can’t tell who he’s talking to. Maybe the
Commander.
The Old Man isn’t one to abandon a tactic because
it’s familiar. Nor will he not take advantage of the
inevitable loss of men. He’ll try anything once, because it
might work, and do his crying later. In this situation his
inclination is to sit tight and hope the destroyer thinks she got
us.
First move in a larger strategy.
The Climber rocks again. The lights wink. So much for fakery.
Someone snarls, “It’s that damned singleship. She has a
fix on our point.”
So it begins. The run after the Main Battle was never this
hairy.
I have a feeling it’ll get hairier.
My expression must be grim. Seeing it, Yanevich smiles weakly.
“Wait till his family comes to the feast. That’s when
we separate the men from the boys.” He chuckles evilly, but
forcedly. He’s as scared as I am.
This kind of action is part of every Climber mission.
You’d think the old hands would get used to it. They
don’t. Even the Old Man shows the strain.
The hammering continues.
The Ship’s Commander aboard the hunter-killer will have
tactical control now. He’ll be nudging countless brethren
into position throughout the spatial globe defined by our estimated
range in Climb. Their strategy will be to jump us when we try to
vent heat, forcing us to Climb before we can shed it. Thus, the
globe they have to patrol can be reduced, densifying their
operation. And reducing our chance of venting much heat next time
we go down.
And round and round and round again, till the Commander is faced
with a choice of abandoning Climb or broiling.
When they can’t pull the noose that tight, they try to
force a climber to exhaust her CT fuel. That takes patience.
Unfortunately, they have patience to spare.
“Looks like the fun is over,” I tell Yanevich.
“Yeah. Damned Tannian. Just had to go after
Rathgeber.”
“Stand by, Weapons,” the Commander orders.
“Get your accumulators on the line.”
“What the hell?” Even the first Watch Officer seems
puzzled. “We’re barely getting warm.”
“Junghaus, Berberian, I want a course, range, and velocity
on that destroyer instantly. Take her down, Mr.
Westhause.”
The walls solidify.
We shed our heat in seconds, amid probing beams.
“Take hyper.” The destroyer is closing fast.
Mr. Piniaz discharged his weapons in her direction just to be
doing something.
“Four missiles, Commander,” Berberian says. He adds
the data the Old Man ordered before going down.
“The singleship?”
“Dead in space in norm, Commander.”
“Good. Maybe he’s collecting Haesler. He’ll be
out of it awhile. Junghaus. Anything else in detection?”
“Negative, Commander.”
“All right, Mr. Westhause. Take her up. Twenty-five
Bev.
Weapons, Ship’s Services, I want all heat shunted to the
accumulators. Chief Canzoneri, see if you have enough data to
predict that destroyer.”
“Course and speed, Commander. Want to guess which way and
how tight she’ll turn?”
The Old Man stares into the distance for a moment. “Take
it as standard. Looks like he’s following standard procedure,
doesn’t it? Mr. Westhause, when you have the data, put us
down on her tail. As soon as Mr. Piniaz has a charge on the
accumulators.”
“Sir?”
“Baiting her. She’s gotten off twelve missiles
already.” The Climber shakes. Fearless states a yowling
opinion from somewhere round the far side of the compartment.
“She only carries twenty.”
Is the man abetting Tannian’s mad strategies? If he keeps
kicking up dust he’s going to draw a crowd. We’ve got
to get hiking.
Piniaz murmurs, into an open comm, “Or twenty-four, or
twenty-eight, depending on her weapons system. What the hell is he
doing? She’ll still outgun us when her missiles are
gone.”
“Mr. Piniaz.” Icicles dangle from the
Commander’s words.
Let’s not count missiles before they’re hatched.
Whatever they have, they’ll use them intelligently. I
don’t like this. My stomach is surging up round my
Adam’s apple. We should be running, not dancing.
But the Commander is in command. His job—and curse,
perhaps—is to make decisions.
“Ready, Commander,” Westhause says.
“Take her down.”
We drop almost too close for the destroyer to see, in a perfect
trailing position, which presents her with an impossible fire
configuration.
“No imagination,” the Commander mutters.
“Fire!”
The Energy Gunners drain the accumulators.
The opposing Commander skips into hyper before we more than
tickle his tail. He sends return greetings by way of another
missile spread.
Through the chatter of Fisherman, Rose, Berberian, Westhause,
and others, comes the Commander’s, “That’ll give
him something to think about.”
Ah. I see his strategy. Little dog turning on big dog. Maybe
we’ll startle them into a mistake that’ll give us a
chance to break completely free.
An hour dancing with the hunter-killer. They’re
disconcerted over there. We’ve spent no more than five
minutes in Climb. Our ability to vanish gives us a slight advantage
in maneuverability. The singleship has lost track of our Hawking
point. We can duck their missiles, appear unexpectedly.
The hunter-killer has quit wasting missiles. It’s now a
beamer duel.
“Hit!” Piniaz cries, in a mix of glee and amazement.
“We hurt her that time.” This is his second victory
cry. Our horsefly game has paid off, viewed strictly as a
one-on-one.
“She’s gone hyper,” Junghaus says. “Not
putting weigh on. Looks like drive anomalies.”
“Coward,” the Commander jeers. He’s won the
round. They’re staying in hyper, where we can’t reach
them without using a missile. A missile they can, no doubt, dodge
or intercept. Climbers make their easy kills because they appear
out of nowhere, making their missile launches before the other team
can react.
The petty triumph feels good. We made monkeys out of them. But
behind the good feeling there’s the worry about the
destroyer’s sisters. They’ll be forming their shell
around our sphere of range.
“Commander, singleship is putting on headway.”
“Ach! Getting too busy around here.”
“She’s launched, Commander.”
“Climb, Westhause! Emergency Climb!”
The Climber shakes as if she’s in the jaws of an angry
giant hound. What a shot! Dead on our Hawking point. Only my safety
harness keeps me in my seat. The ship feels like she’s
spinning. One missile. That’s all a singleship carries. She
won’t be hitting us again. Let’s hope we break away
before she gets a good lock on our point. Don’t want her
dogging us forever.
I catch a glimpse of my face in the dead visual screen.
I’m grinning like a halfwit.
“Take her down, Mr. Westhause. To hyper. Junghaus, check
that destroyer.”
Seconds pass. Fisherman says, “Still no weigh on,
Commander. Drive anomalies are worse.”
“Very well. What do you think, First Watch Officer? Did we
damage her generators?”
“Possibly, Commander.”
“Easy meat, eh? Make a launch pass, Mr.
Westhause.”
We make the run, coming in from behind, but the Old Man
doesn’t give the order to launch. The destroyer wriggles, but
not well enough to get away. She doesn’t shoot back. Out of
missiles. Damaged. Easy meat indeed.
“Take us out of here, Mr. Westhause.”
Victory enough, Commander? Just let them know you could’ve
taken them?
He pauses behind me. “That’s for Haesler.
They’ll understand.”
Piniaz’s comm line is still open. The gunners all grumble
about the lost chance to avenge their Chief. The Old Man scowls but
says nothing. Must be a malfunction in the switch down there.
“Make for that star now, Mr. Westhause.” Throughout
the action, between maneuvers, the Commander and astrogator have
been eyeing a sun with what seems an unhealthy lust. Why get in
there where the mass of a solar system will complicate our escape
plan?
Another case of my not knowing what the hell is going on.
The star is an eleven-hour fly. In Climb. Blind. With internal
temperature rising every minute. It passes in silence, with crew
taking turns sleeping on station. Piniaz and Varese get little
sleep. They wrestle with the agonizing chore of redistributing the
work of the men we lost.
I’ll take in some of Piniaz’s slack, though
I’d rather stay in Ops. That’s where the action is. I
assume a post at the missile board while an energy-rated Missileman
moves over to cover for Holtsnider. Covering Missiles
shouldn’t be difficult with only the one launch bay armed.
The control position for Launches One and Four can be
abandoned.
Varese ameliorates his shortage by using Diekereide and
commandeering Vossbrink from Ship’s Services. Bradley can
cope without Voss.
Westhause again demonstrates what a fine astrogator he is. He
brings us down so near the star that it appears as a vast, fiery
plane with no perceptible horizon curvature. And he manages to
arrive with an inherent velocity requiring only minimal
angular adjustment to put us into stable orbit.
How does he manage so well with a computation system scarcely
more sophisticated than an abacus?
The roar of the star should mask the Climber’s neutrino
emissions and confuse all but the closest and most powerful radars.
I’m told orbiting or slingshotting off a singularity is even
more effective. “Vent heat.”
It’ll be slow going this close to so mighty a nuclear
furnace. Typhoons of energy pound our black hull.
“Fire into the star,” Piniaz tells his gunners.
“We don’t want them seeing beams flashing
around.”
Slow work indeed. After a time, I ask Piniaz, “Will
continuous firing strain the converters?”
“Some. More likely to cause trouble in the weapons
themselves, though.”
Another in an apparently endless string of situations I
don’t like. “How long before the other firm figures
what we’ve done?”
“They’ll be checking stars soon,” Piniaz
admits. “The trick isn’t new. One of the Old
Man’s favorites, in fact. We once star-skipped all the way
home. He’ll bounce us to another one as soon as Westhause has
his numbers.”
“Where’d you serve before you came into
Climbers?” I ask, hoping to profit from a talkative mood.
Piniaz gives me a queer look and dummies up. So much for that.
The man is as self-contained as the Commander, and less interested
in coming out.
Next star-stop is an eight-hour fly. The troops again nap on
stations. Westhause slides us into another gem of an orbit. I think
we’ll make it. The Commander has forced the enemy to enlarge
his search sphere. He can no longer adequately monitor it. Visiting
Ops, I suggest something of the sort to Yanevich.
He raises one eyebrow, smiles mockingly. “Shows what you
know. Those people are pros. They know who we are. They know the
Commander. They know our fuel margins.” He nods. “Yeah.
We’ve got a good chance. A damned fine chance, with Rathgeber
gone. We’ve gotten out of tighter places.”
Doesn’t look that tight to me. Been no contact for over
twenty hours.
The crew haven’t used the hours well. To a man
they’re on the edge of exhaustion. They need to rest, to
really relax, in order to bury the ghosts of those we left
behind . . .
Some of the old hands are eyeing me oddly. Hope they’re
not thinking I’m a Jonah . . . Convince yourself,
Lieutenant.
Would those men be alive if you hadn’t elbowed your way
aboard? Would Johnson’s Climber still be part of the
patrol?
A man could go mad worrying about crap like that.
“Five. Four. Three. Two.
One . . . ”
My targeting screen comes to life. The cracking tower lies dead
center amid the aiming rings. Sunlight washes a typical lunar
landscape, all black and white and sharp-edged shadows on the bones
of a world that died young.
“Away One,” Piniaz sings. “Away
Two.”
A missile’s exhaust scars the view on my screen. I hit my
triggering key.
A lance of emerald hell, startling against the monochromatic
background, slices a corner from the screen. It sweeps on
continuous discharge, vaporizing rock and exposed plant.
There’s chatter in Engineering as they compensate for the
surge of power being drained from the accumulator banks.
“Christ!” comes through from Ops at the same
instant. “The bastard is right on top of us!”
“What?”
“Away Three,” Piniaz chants. “Away Four.
Klarich, what the hell is wrong here?”
A sewing machine stitches a line of black holes up the cracking
tower an instant before my screen goes white with the violence of
the first missile. It blanks. The bulkheads ghost.
Four seconds. It seemed much longer. Everything happened so
slowly—
“Twelve minutes,” Nicastro intones. “Commence
target evaluation and selection.”
We’re safe now. Outside, lunar rock is boiling and fusing
into man-made obsidian.
The Commander says, “Mr. Piniaz, reprogram one missile for
above-surface pursuit. Berberian will give you the data. We had an
incoming destroyer at eight o’clock.”
Piniaz has problems of his own. “Commander, we’ve
got a jam in the elevator on Launch Three. Looks like the lead
dolly kicked back and knocked the mid dolly out of line. The Seven
missile is against the well wall. Programming and command circuits
have safety-locked.”
“Can you clear it?”
“Not remote. I’ll have to send some people out.
Which target do you want dropped?”
“Forget the destroyer. We’ll take our
chances.”
I slam my fist against my board. If we survive two more passes,
we’ll still have two missiles aboard.
The screen starts sending up target data. I sigh. Things look a
little better. Indications are we got Rathgeber’s comm
center. They can’t call for help. And the destroyer, which
may have been crippled, was the only warship around.
I’m obsessed with going home. Home? Canaan isn’t
home. My personal universe has shrunk to the hell of the Climber
and the promised land of Canaan. Canaan. What a choice of names.
Whoever selected it must have been prescient. Odd. I consider
myself a rational man. How can I make of the base-world a
near-deity?
Does this happen to all Climber people?
I think so. My shipmates seldom speak of other worlds. They
don’t mention Canaan that much, and then only in a New
Jerusalem context. The quirks of the human mind are
fascinating.
I see why they go crazy planetside. That business at the
Pregnant Dragon wasn’t for tomorrow we die. People
were proving they were alive, that they had survived a brush with
an incredibly hostile environment.
So. I’ll have to adapt my behavioral models. I’ll
have to see where and how each man fits this new scheme. And the
Commander? Is he a man for whom no proofs carry sufficient
conviction? Is he a prisoner in a solipsistic universe?
“Sixty seconds,” the good Chief says. Christ, twelve
minutes go fast. I’m not ready for another plunge into the
hexenkessel.
Alarm! I start, scattering notes.
“Away Five.”
I begin shooting immediately. I can’t see the purpose, but
any action holds the fear at bay. The movement of a finger makes
work for body and brain for a fractional slice of time.
“Away Eight.”
Climb alarm. “Thirty minutes. Commence target evaluation
and selection.”
“Magic numbers,” I murmur. Seven and Eleven are the
missiles that can’t be launched.
“Eh?” My nearest neighbor gives me a puzzled look
and headshake. The men think my brain was pickled by civilian
life.
The bugs don’t give me a thing. Engineering is a graveyard
peopled by specters reciting rosaries to Fusion and Annihilation.
In Ops, Yanevich observes that the destroyer weathered the first
pass and was trying to run. The Commander’s silence says this
is no news to him. Nicastro ticks time in colorless tones.
Tension mounts faster than the temperature. Third time counts
for all.
I amuse myself by nibbling tidbits of target evaluation data.
Seven fusion warheads can do a hell of a lot of damage.
Molten rock and metal and people are quickening into concave
black glass lenses. A billion days hence, perhaps, some eldritch
descendant of a creature now wallowing mindlessly in a swamp will
gaze on that lunar acne and wonder what the hell it means.
I wonder myself. What’s the point?
Well, we can honestly say we didn’t start this one.
Right now, with death a-stalk, the only question that matters
is, How do we stay alive? The rest is foam on the beer.
The universe is very narrow, here in Rathgeber’s shadow.
It’s a long, lonely hallway through which even close friends
can do little to ease one another’s passage.
Again the ship lies panting in the embrace of that cold-hearted
mistress of Climber warfare, Waiting. Months of waiting. Climaxed
by what? Eight scattered seconds of action. Damned minuscule flecks
of meat in a huge, hard sandwich of time.
Almost indigestible.
My butt is driving me crazy. I can’t count the times
I’ve stayed seated longer, but those times I had the option
of moving. Getting up could become an obsession. Got to move. Got
to do something. Anything . . .
Nicastro’s countdown grows louder and louder. The
ass-agony vanishes. Death is a bigger pain. I have a sudden,
absolute conviction of my own mortality.
The orbitals will have their guns out. That hunter-killer will
be ready. She’ll be laying back, a big iron bushwacker eager
for a dry-gulching.
Unless we were damned lucky and skragged her instel wave guides,
she’ll have howled for her packmates. They’ll come
whooping to avenge the base. We’ll pull pressure off the
squadrons stalking the convoy. I should be pleased with such
success. But I can’t get excited about the gospel according
to St. Tannian.
The destroyers will be hours getting here. They’ll be way
too late to help Rathgeber. But I know they’ll catch our
trail. The way my life goes, it can’t happen any other
way.
Must be getting old. They say pessimism is a disease of the
aged.
Here we go!
Missiles away. Energy weapons blazing. My little cannon sowing
its seeds. There isn’t much to see. The same old bleached
bones of an aborted worldlet acned by ground zeros. The silhouettes
of startled beings in spacesuits. They’ll remain forever in
my memory, taking one futile step toward cover.
Ghostdom returns with a ship-wide shudder.
“Commander.” Varese is speaking. Softly,
metallically. “A low-intensity beam brushed us on the upper
torus, at plates twenty-four and twenty-five. Damage appears
minimal.”
“Very well. Keep an eye on it.”
Damned well better. Let’s not buy any trouble we could
avoid with a little attention to detail.
I secure the cannon board, then bestow a negative blessing on
our illustrious Admiral. His madman’s game put us in this
predicament. Being a pawn on a galactic chessboard wasn’t
what I had in mind when I asked on. The rewards are too small,
except in pain and doubt.
“Secure from general quarters,” the Commander
orders. “One hour, gentlemen.”
I exchange glances with Piniaz. This is an unprecedented breach
of Climb procedure. The crew is supposed to remain at battle
stations any time the ship is in Climb.
No one argues. We all need to move around, to interrupt tension
with frivolous activity.
Yet work goes on. I’m the one man free to stray far from
my station. I duck into Ops when the hatches open.
Fisherman hasn’t moved, though in Climb he and his station
are useless. Yanevich, more the butterfly than usual, flutters
round the compartment. Westhause and the Commander hug the
astrogation consoles. Already they’re trying to outguess the
hounds.
Rose, Throdahl, and Laramie have a tricorner game of When I
get back to Canaan going. It ignores the fact that we have
missiles aboard. They’re banking on the elevator
damage’s being irreparable. The names, addresses, and special
talents of loose women volley around, often accompanied by the hull
numbers of the ships of the men who have primary claim to them.
Chief Nicastro is staying out of the way, imitating a statue. He
moves just once that I see, to thumb a switch and announce,
“Forty-five minutes.”
I want desperately to badger the Old Man. Will he go norm and
clear the elevator right away? Will he run as far and fast as he
can? I can think of arguments for both courses.
He has no time to waste on me.
Time has turned its coat. It’s gone over to the other
firm. It’s become their standard-bearer, almost. Whatever the
Old Man decides, he has to do it quick. The death hounds are
slavering toward Rathgeber.
No one has time for me. If they’re not on station,
they’re busy scrubbing mold. They’re losing themselves
in ritual. I’ll try Ship’s Services and
Engineering.
Same story. The Commander’s ploy hasn’t worked.
After a moment of release, the men have grown tense again,
retreating into themselves. Even Diekereide is stone-silent.
Trudging back, I note a lump in my hammock. “Where you
been, fat boy?”
Fearless opens his eye, yawns, meows softly. I scratch his head
listlessly. His purr has no heart in it either. “Going to be
hard times,” I tell him. He’s getting lean. He’s
been on short rations lately.
Fearless is in one of his lonely moods. So am I. I’m a
little hurt. They’re shutting me out. We share a silent
commiseration, the cat and I. My thoughts, when not lusting after
hammock, wolf after other worlds, other times, other companions.
I’m very sorry that I’m here.
The reporter, the observer, ideally, remains neutral and
detached. However, I’ve altered the experiment simply by
being here. I’ve tried to be both remote and intimate, bom
Climber man and reporter. I’ve failed. My shipmates, so
young, came to Navy with near-virgin pasts. Trying to mirror their
innocence, I’ve kept my own past fairly private.
And so I’ve been hiding from myself as well.
There with the cat, waiting and wishing I could sleep, I
rediscover my once-had-beens and should-have-dones, the tortoise
shell of pain and past all men drag with them forever.
A dam cracks. It begins as a leak . . . I
understand why so many mouths are sealed.
This ship is filled with a conviction of imminent death, tainted
with only the slightest uncertainty.
Maybe now . . . Maybe in a few hours. The
condemned man wants to order his life and explain everything. To,
perhaps, make someone understand.
These men are just reaching their conclusions of condemnation.
Maybe, now, I’ll learn more than I ever wanted to know.
The conviction has hold of the Commander, I’m sure, though
he hides it well. His face is more pale, his smile more strained,
his primary expression the one you see before the body goes into
the coffin.
This is a ship manned by zombies, by corpses going through
life-motions while awaiting cremation. We died the moment that
destroyer sent her call.
We know she did. Fisherman caught the leakover of an instel link
during second attack.
Nicastro is listless because his revelation came early.
“Five minutes.”
“Take care, Fearless.” I’m sure we won’t
meet again. “Make yourself a home here.” I ease him
back into the hammock.
A syrupy silence has swamped Weapons. The gunners have had time
to mourn themselves.
They don’t seem afraid. Just resigned or apathetic. I
suppose that’s because they’ve been waiting for so
long. Why panic in the face of the inevitable?
Fear is a function of hope. The bigger the hope, the greater the
fear. There’s no fear where hope doesn’t exist. I park
myself in Ops.
The general alarm sounds briefly.
“This’s the Commander. We’re going norm to
clear a jammed missile elevator. EVA is required. All compartments
will remain prepared for extended Climb. Mr. Piniaz, sustain your
accumulators at minimum charge. Mr. Bradley, maintain internal
temperature at the lowest tolerable level. Scrub atmosphere. Empty
and clean all auxiliary human waste receptacles. Distribute combat
rations for three days. Mr. Varese, Mr. Piniaz, select your working
parties. Suit them and brief them. Mr. Westhause, take us down when
they’re ready.”
We go norm in the depths of an interstellar abyss. The nearest
star flames three light-years distant. The universe is an inkwell
with a handful of light motes populating its walls. It’s a
forceful reminder of the vastness of existence, of just how far
beyond the Climber’s walls other realities lie.
The constraints of concerted activity nibble away at the
pandemic gloom. Embers of hope and fear begin to glow. My belief in
my immortality revives. The big goal, survival, looks more and more
attainable as the little problems come to successful
conclusions.
When you think about it, how would God Himself find us amid all
this nothing?
There isn’t much for me to do. Visual watch is a waste of
time. Fisherman will spot any traffic long before I could. To kill
time I help Buckets with the honeypots. A minor morale builder.
Having finished, I feel a sense of accomplishment. It segues over
into the bigger picture. I get this feeling of having yanked old
Death’s beard with impunity.
The Seven missile is solidly wedged. A riser arm has to be
removed from the lift linkage before the missile can be manhandled
into proper alignment. The riser arm and related hardware then have
to be reinstalled. Only afterward can the missile be elevated into
the firing rack in the launch bay.
Piniaz wants to replace the entire riser assembly with another
taken from the number two elevator. He’s afraid the arm is
warped and will jam again when he tries to elevate the Eleven
missile.
“Negative,” the Commander says to the proposal.
“We’re pushing our luck now. We can’t stay put
long enough. Use the old arm. How long for that?”
“Five hours,” Chief Holtsnider says from Launch
Three. The Chief doesn’t belong out there. That’s
Missileman’s work. Piniaz disagrees. He wants his best man on
the job. He says Chief Missileman Bath doesn’t have enough
EVA experience.
“My ass, five hours. You’ve got two. Get done or
walk home. Mr. Varese, your men just volunteered to help Chief
Holtsnider. Two hours.”
Varese had Gentemann and Kinder out examining the torus plates
touched by the other firm’s beam. They’re in the lock,
coming back. They do colorful things with the language when Varese
tells them to turn around. I use my camera to watch them glide out
the safety lines to Launch Three.
Kinder and Gentemann are Canaanites. They have homes and
families. It doesn’t seem right to risk them. Gentemann is a
sensible choice, though. He’s the ship’s Machinist.
They realign the Seven missile in forty minutes. Eleven
isn’t jammed. It lifts to ready without difficulty.
Holtsnider studies the riser arm. He says it should lift if
it’s properly adjusted.
“Commander!”
Fisherman’s shout rocks the ship.
Junghaus has been distracted by the working party. He
hasn’t been watching his screen.
“Goddamned! That mother’s really coming!”
Throdahl yelps.
“Varese!” the Commander shouts. “CT shift. Mr.
Westhause, all departments, stand by for Emergency
Climb.”
“Commander . . . ” Varese
protests. Five men are outside. Their chances are grim if they slip
out of the field or the ship stays up long.
“Now, Lieutenant.” I can’t tell if he’s
growling at Varese or Westhause. The astrogator is the sick color
of old ivory piano keys.
Fisherman’s screen looks bad.
“Right down our throats. Couldn’t miss us if they
were blind.” The Old Man has done his sums. He’s
balancing five lives against forty-four. The men won’t like
it but they’ll live long enough to bitch. “Shitty
fucking luck.”
That damned ship is going to land in our pocket. Fisherman,
where the hell was your mind? Why the shit didn’t you have
your buzzer on?
The frightened questions from the working party end abruptly
when we hit hyper. Radio is useless here. Nor is there anything
when we flash into the ghost abode. The men remain silent. They
exchange guarded glances.
Holtsnider comes through on the intercom links used by
inspection personnel in wetdock. A quick thinker, the Chief. His
voice is calm. It has a relaxing effect.
“Operations, working party. Commander, how long will we
stay in Climb?” Fear underlies Holtsnider’s words, but
he’s in control. He’s a good soldier. He sticks to his
job and lets a narrow focus see him through the tight places.
“Give me that,” the Commander says softly.
“I’ll cut it as short as I can, Chief. We’ve been
jumped by a singleship. We’ll drop back when we have her
going into her turn. Be ready to come in. How’re you doing
out there?”
“I think we lost Haesler, Commander. He was clowning on
tether. The rest of us are in the launch bay.”
Poor Haesler. Floating free nine lights from nowhere. The ship
gone. Must be scared shitless right now.
“How’s your oxygen, Chief?”
“Manolakos is down to a half hour. We can share if we have
to. Say an hour.”
“Good enough. Hang on.” Mutedly, “Mr.
Westhause, go norm as soon as your numbers show her going
away.”
“Fourteen minutes, Commander.”
“We go norm in mikes fourteen, Chief,” the Old Man
repeats for Holtsnider’s benefit. “We won’t have
a big window. Start Manolakos in now. Safety line him with the man
next shortest on oxygen. The rest of you double-check that Eleven
bird. Then start in too. Don’t waste time. We’re
borrowing it now. We’ll have to do some fancy dancing to pick
up Haesler and dodge this singleship, too.”
“Understood, Commander. I’ll keep this line
open.”
“Balls!” Picraux growls, punching a cross-member. I
can’t tell if he’s cursing the situation or commending
Chief Holtsnider.
I’ve never heard of anyone’s going outside in Climb.
“Anyone tried this before?” I ask Yanevich.
“Never heard of it.”
No one knows how far beyond the ship’s skin the effect
extends. It might slice the universe off a millimeter away. Anyone
who leaves that launch bay stands a chance of joining Haesler.
Manolakos and Kinder are convinced that will happen.
Everyone overhears Holtsnider’s half of the argument. The
protests of his men are too muted to make out. They’re
communicating by touching helmets.
The discussion is bitter, embarrassing; and, I suspect, each of
my shipmates is wondering if he’d have the guts to try
it.
One of them breaks down. We hear him crying, begging.
“Holtsnider,” the Commander snaps, “tell those
men to move out. Tell them they have to do it this way or they
don’t have a chance at all.”
“Aye, Commander.” The Chief’s tone makes it
clear he doesn’t like this any better than his men do.
Moments later, “They’re off, sir. Gentemann, get up
there and make sure the bird’s nose stays level when I start
the lift cycle. Commander, looks like Seven jammed because the
riser arm hydraulics didn’t equalize. If it looks like the
nose won’t stay with the tail, we’ll balance with the
hand crank.”
“Very well.”
Once the handful of novels have been read, the drama tapes have
been run to death in the display tank, the music tapes have been
played to boredom, once the lies have all been told and the card
games have faded for lack of a playable deck, Climber people turn
to studying their vessels. To what we call cross-rate training, the
study of specialties other than their own. Gentemann is an old
hand. He can help the Chief without complicated instructions.
I’ve browsed a few Missileman’s manuals myself.
(Like most writers, I spend a lot of time avoiding anything that
smacks of writing.) I could manage Gentemann’s task myself.
Not that I’d want to.
The mechanical drama continues. Concern for Kinder and Manolakos
overshadows the inexorable march of time.
“One minute.” Nicastro’s voice shows some
life. This is waking him up.
“Eleven’s ready, Commander. She tests go all the
way. We’re coming in.”
“Good, Chief. Hang on where you are. We’re going
norm. Scramble when we do.”
“Aye, Commander.”
The alarms play their cacophonous symphony strictly by the
book.
“Mr. Varese, stand by the airlock.” That has to be
the most needless instruction I’ve heard all mission. Half
the engineering gang will be there waiting. “Throdahl, you
ready to fix on Haesler’s beeper?”
“Ready, Commander.”
We drop.
Holtsnider comes through on radio. “Commander, I
don’t see any suit lights. Have they reached the lock?”
The lock, at the bottom of the Can, can’t be seen from the
torus.
“Over there, Chief,” Gentemann says.
“Shit. Commander, they fell loose. They’re drifting
pretty fast. Okay. They’ve spotted us.”
“Lights on,” the Commander snaps.
Kinder’s voice whispers, “There she is, Tuchol. Yo!
I see you! I’m bringing us in on my jets.”
Manolakos is babbling.
“Kinder, this’s the Commander. What’s the
matter with Manolakos?”
“Just panic, sir. He’s calming down.”
“You see Haesler’s lights? Anybody?”
“Not . . . ”
Fisherman interjects an “Oh, goddamn!” startling
everyone. “Commander, I’ve got another one. Coming in
from two seven zero relative at forty degrees high.
Destroyer.”
“Berberian?”
“Singleship in norm, Commander. Tracking.”
“She’s coming in, Commander,” Fisherman says.
“We’re fixed.”
“Time?”
“Five or six minutes to red zone, Commander. In the yellow
now.” Red zone: optimum firing configuration. Yellow zone:
acceptable firing configuration.
“Damned instel link with the singleship,” Yanevich
growls.
The Old man thunders, “Holtsnider, get your ass in here
now!”
“Commander, I’ve fixed Haesler’s
beeper,” Throdahl says. “Nineteen klicks out, straight
past Manolakos and Kinder.”
“Commander, the destroyer is launching missiles,”
Fisherman says. “Double pairs. Multiple track.”
“Time. Canzoneri.”
Weapons has the missiles boarded but can do nothing to stop
them. They’re coming in hyper, will drop at the last second.
The way a Climber beats that is maneuver. We can’t maneuver.
We’re no Main Battle. We carry no interceptors. All the
Commander can do now is Climb.
Piniaz orders the accumulators discharged again. He does so on
his own authority. The Commander doesn’t rebuke him.
“Throdahl, get on the twenty-one band and put a tight beam
on that singleship,” the Commander says. “Stand by for
Climb, Mr. Westhause. Mr. Varese, do you have anyone up to the lock
yet?”
“Negative, Commander.”
A murmur runs through the ship. Men releasing held breath. The
situation is tighter than I suspected. Looks like the Old Man is
going to tell the other firm he has to leave people behind.
There’s no policy, no agreement, but in those rare
instances where something like this happens the other team usually
honors the lifesaving signals—if they’re heard over the
tactical chatter. They’re even kind enough to relay the names
of prisoners taken.
Our side isn’t always that polite.
“Holtsnider, where are you?”
“Coming up on the lock, Commander. Five meters more. I
have Kinder and Manolakos with me.”
“Damn it, man . . . ”
“What’s happening?” Kinder demands. He’s
been holding up. Panic now edges his voice. Manolakos is babbling
again.
Chief Canzoneri says, “Commander, we’re running out
of time. We won’t clear the fireballs if we don’t go
soon.”
“Mr. Varese, get those men in here!”
Westhause has more guts than seems credible. He holds Climb till
the last millisecond. A schoolteacher!
And still we go up without the Chief or Machinist, without
Kinder or Manolakos or Haesler.
The walls mist. And Varese sighs, “Oh, shit. I can see
Holtsnider . . . He’s trying to turn
the wheel . . . He’s gone.
Just seemed to fall off.”
He falls, with Gentemann, Kinder, and Manolakos, into multiple
fireballs. The ship bucks, rattles, and warms appreciably.
They’re shooting straight over there.
Pale faces surround me. Four men have reached the end of the
line. Maybe Haesler was lucky.
“Think they’ll count us out?” Westhause
asks.
“Organics in the spectrum?” Yanevich counters.
“I doubt it. Not enough metals.”
“Evasive program, Mr. Westhause,” the Commander
snaps. “Take her up to fifty Bev.” His voice is tightly
controlled. He’s become a survival computer dedicated to
bringing the rest of us through.
His face is waxy. His hands are shaking. He won’t meet my
eye. This is the first he’s ever lost a man.
“Too old a trick, waiting till the last second,”
Yanevich says. His voice sounds hollow. He’s talking just to
be doing something. “They won’t buy it
anymore.”
“I wasn’t trying to sell anything, Steve. I was
trying to save four men.” Westhause too is shaken.
The Climber bucks again. And again. The plug-ups skitter around.
Odds and ends fall. Gravity acts crazy for a second.
“Damn!” somebody says. “She’s got us
figured close. Damned close.”
“See what I mean?” That’s Yanevich. I
can’t tell who he’s talking to. Maybe the
Commander.
The Old Man isn’t one to abandon a tactic because
it’s familiar. Nor will he not take advantage of the
inevitable loss of men. He’ll try anything once, because it
might work, and do his crying later. In this situation his
inclination is to sit tight and hope the destroyer thinks she got
us.
First move in a larger strategy.
The Climber rocks again. The lights wink. So much for fakery.
Someone snarls, “It’s that damned singleship. She has a
fix on our point.”
So it begins. The run after the Main Battle was never this
hairy.
I have a feeling it’ll get hairier.
My expression must be grim. Seeing it, Yanevich smiles weakly.
“Wait till his family comes to the feast. That’s when
we separate the men from the boys.” He chuckles evilly, but
forcedly. He’s as scared as I am.
This kind of action is part of every Climber mission.
You’d think the old hands would get used to it. They
don’t. Even the Old Man shows the strain.
The hammering continues.
The Ship’s Commander aboard the hunter-killer will have
tactical control now. He’ll be nudging countless brethren
into position throughout the spatial globe defined by our estimated
range in Climb. Their strategy will be to jump us when we try to
vent heat, forcing us to Climb before we can shed it. Thus, the
globe they have to patrol can be reduced, densifying their
operation. And reducing our chance of venting much heat next time
we go down.
And round and round and round again, till the Commander is faced
with a choice of abandoning Climb or broiling.
When they can’t pull the noose that tight, they try to
force a climber to exhaust her CT fuel. That takes patience.
Unfortunately, they have patience to spare.
“Looks like the fun is over,” I tell Yanevich.
“Yeah. Damned Tannian. Just had to go after
Rathgeber.”
“Stand by, Weapons,” the Commander orders.
“Get your accumulators on the line.”
“What the hell?” Even the first Watch Officer seems
puzzled. “We’re barely getting warm.”
“Junghaus, Berberian, I want a course, range, and velocity
on that destroyer instantly. Take her down, Mr.
Westhause.”
The walls solidify.
We shed our heat in seconds, amid probing beams.
“Take hyper.” The destroyer is closing fast.
Mr. Piniaz discharged his weapons in her direction just to be
doing something.
“Four missiles, Commander,” Berberian says. He adds
the data the Old Man ordered before going down.
“The singleship?”
“Dead in space in norm, Commander.”
“Good. Maybe he’s collecting Haesler. He’ll be
out of it awhile. Junghaus. Anything else in detection?”
“Negative, Commander.”
“All right, Mr. Westhause. Take her up. Twenty-five
Bev.
Weapons, Ship’s Services, I want all heat shunted to the
accumulators. Chief Canzoneri, see if you have enough data to
predict that destroyer.”
“Course and speed, Commander. Want to guess which way and
how tight she’ll turn?”
The Old Man stares into the distance for a moment. “Take
it as standard. Looks like he’s following standard procedure,
doesn’t it? Mr. Westhause, when you have the data, put us
down on her tail. As soon as Mr. Piniaz has a charge on the
accumulators.”
“Sir?”
“Baiting her. She’s gotten off twelve missiles
already.” The Climber shakes. Fearless states a yowling
opinion from somewhere round the far side of the compartment.
“She only carries twenty.”
Is the man abetting Tannian’s mad strategies? If he keeps
kicking up dust he’s going to draw a crowd. We’ve got
to get hiking.
Piniaz murmurs, into an open comm, “Or twenty-four, or
twenty-eight, depending on her weapons system. What the hell is he
doing? She’ll still outgun us when her missiles are
gone.”
“Mr. Piniaz.” Icicles dangle from the
Commander’s words.
Let’s not count missiles before they’re hatched.
Whatever they have, they’ll use them intelligently. I
don’t like this. My stomach is surging up round my
Adam’s apple. We should be running, not dancing.
But the Commander is in command. His job—and curse,
perhaps—is to make decisions.
“Ready, Commander,” Westhause says.
“Take her down.”
We drop almost too close for the destroyer to see, in a perfect
trailing position, which presents her with an impossible fire
configuration.
“No imagination,” the Commander mutters.
“Fire!”
The Energy Gunners drain the accumulators.
The opposing Commander skips into hyper before we more than
tickle his tail. He sends return greetings by way of another
missile spread.
Through the chatter of Fisherman, Rose, Berberian, Westhause,
and others, comes the Commander’s, “That’ll give
him something to think about.”
Ah. I see his strategy. Little dog turning on big dog. Maybe
we’ll startle them into a mistake that’ll give us a
chance to break completely free.
An hour dancing with the hunter-killer. They’re
disconcerted over there. We’ve spent no more than five
minutes in Climb. Our ability to vanish gives us a slight advantage
in maneuverability. The singleship has lost track of our Hawking
point. We can duck their missiles, appear unexpectedly.
The hunter-killer has quit wasting missiles. It’s now a
beamer duel.
“Hit!” Piniaz cries, in a mix of glee and amazement.
“We hurt her that time.” This is his second victory
cry. Our horsefly game has paid off, viewed strictly as a
one-on-one.
“She’s gone hyper,” Junghaus says. “Not
putting weigh on. Looks like drive anomalies.”
“Coward,” the Commander jeers. He’s won the
round. They’re staying in hyper, where we can’t reach
them without using a missile. A missile they can, no doubt, dodge
or intercept. Climbers make their easy kills because they appear
out of nowhere, making their missile launches before the other team
can react.
The petty triumph feels good. We made monkeys out of them. But
behind the good feeling there’s the worry about the
destroyer’s sisters. They’ll be forming their shell
around our sphere of range.
“Commander, singleship is putting on headway.”
“Ach! Getting too busy around here.”
“She’s launched, Commander.”
“Climb, Westhause! Emergency Climb!”
The Climber shakes as if she’s in the jaws of an angry
giant hound. What a shot! Dead on our Hawking point. Only my safety
harness keeps me in my seat. The ship feels like she’s
spinning. One missile. That’s all a singleship carries. She
won’t be hitting us again. Let’s hope we break away
before she gets a good lock on our point. Don’t want her
dogging us forever.
I catch a glimpse of my face in the dead visual screen.
I’m grinning like a halfwit.
“Take her down, Mr. Westhause. To hyper. Junghaus, check
that destroyer.”
Seconds pass. Fisherman says, “Still no weigh on,
Commander. Drive anomalies are worse.”
“Very well. What do you think, First Watch Officer? Did we
damage her generators?”
“Possibly, Commander.”
“Easy meat, eh? Make a launch pass, Mr.
Westhause.”
We make the run, coming in from behind, but the Old Man
doesn’t give the order to launch. The destroyer wriggles, but
not well enough to get away. She doesn’t shoot back. Out of
missiles. Damaged. Easy meat indeed.
“Take us out of here, Mr. Westhause.”
Victory enough, Commander? Just let them know you could’ve
taken them?
He pauses behind me. “That’s for Haesler.
They’ll understand.”
Piniaz’s comm line is still open. The gunners all grumble
about the lost chance to avenge their Chief. The Old Man scowls but
says nothing. Must be a malfunction in the switch down there.
“Make for that star now, Mr. Westhause.” Throughout
the action, between maneuvers, the Commander and astrogator have
been eyeing a sun with what seems an unhealthy lust. Why get in
there where the mass of a solar system will complicate our escape
plan?
Another case of my not knowing what the hell is going on.
The star is an eleven-hour fly. In Climb. Blind. With internal
temperature rising every minute. It passes in silence, with crew
taking turns sleeping on station. Piniaz and Varese get little
sleep. They wrestle with the agonizing chore of redistributing the
work of the men we lost.
I’ll take in some of Piniaz’s slack, though
I’d rather stay in Ops. That’s where the action is. I
assume a post at the missile board while an energy-rated Missileman
moves over to cover for Holtsnider. Covering Missiles
shouldn’t be difficult with only the one launch bay armed.
The control position for Launches One and Four can be
abandoned.
Varese ameliorates his shortage by using Diekereide and
commandeering Vossbrink from Ship’s Services. Bradley can
cope without Voss.
Westhause again demonstrates what a fine astrogator he is. He
brings us down so near the star that it appears as a vast, fiery
plane with no perceptible horizon curvature. And he manages to
arrive with an inherent velocity requiring only minimal
angular adjustment to put us into stable orbit.
How does he manage so well with a computation system scarcely
more sophisticated than an abacus?
The roar of the star should mask the Climber’s neutrino
emissions and confuse all but the closest and most powerful radars.
I’m told orbiting or slingshotting off a singularity is even
more effective. “Vent heat.”
It’ll be slow going this close to so mighty a nuclear
furnace. Typhoons of energy pound our black hull.
“Fire into the star,” Piniaz tells his gunners.
“We don’t want them seeing beams flashing
around.”
Slow work indeed. After a time, I ask Piniaz, “Will
continuous firing strain the converters?”
“Some. More likely to cause trouble in the weapons
themselves, though.”
Another in an apparently endless string of situations I
don’t like. “How long before the other firm figures
what we’ve done?”
“They’ll be checking stars soon,” Piniaz
admits. “The trick isn’t new. One of the Old
Man’s favorites, in fact. We once star-skipped all the way
home. He’ll bounce us to another one as soon as Westhause has
his numbers.”
“Where’d you serve before you came into
Climbers?” I ask, hoping to profit from a talkative mood.
Piniaz gives me a queer look and dummies up. So much for that.
The man is as self-contained as the Commander, and less interested
in coming out.
Next star-stop is an eight-hour fly. The troops again nap on
stations. Westhause slides us into another gem of an orbit. I think
we’ll make it. The Commander has forced the enemy to enlarge
his search sphere. He can no longer adequately monitor it. Visiting
Ops, I suggest something of the sort to Yanevich.
He raises one eyebrow, smiles mockingly. “Shows what you
know. Those people are pros. They know who we are. They know the
Commander. They know our fuel margins.” He nods. “Yeah.
We’ve got a good chance. A damned fine chance, with Rathgeber
gone. We’ve gotten out of tighter places.”
Doesn’t look that tight to me. Been no contact for over
twenty hours.
The crew haven’t used the hours well. To a man
they’re on the edge of exhaustion. They need to rest, to
really relax, in order to bury the ghosts of those we left
behind . . .
Some of the old hands are eyeing me oddly. Hope they’re
not thinking I’m a Jonah . . . Convince yourself,
Lieutenant.
Would those men be alive if you hadn’t elbowed your way
aboard? Would Johnson’s Climber still be part of the
patrol?
A man could go mad worrying about crap like that.