Babel-17 (19 page)

"Zero," the Butcher whispered. Rydra felt the ship jump. The stars began to move. Ten seconds later she saw the snub-snouted Invader rooting toward them.

"Ugly, isn't it," Rydra said.

"Tarik looks about the same, only smaller. And when we come home, it will be beautiful. There's no way to enlist the Yiribians' help? Jebel will have to attack the Invader directly at her ports and smash as many as he can, which won't be a lot. Then they'll attack, and if they still outnumber Tarik's spider-boats, and surprise doesn't play heavily on Jebel's side, then that's"—she heard fist strike palm in the darkness— "it."

“You can't just lob a gross, uncivilized atom bomb at them?"

"They have deflectors that would explode it in Jebel's hands."

"I'm glad I brought the crew then. We may have to make a quick exit to Administrative Alliance Headquarters."

"If they let us," the Butcher said, grimly. "What strategies then to win?"

"Tell you soon as the attack starts. I have a method, but if I use it too much I pay high." She recalled the illness after the incident with Geoffry Cord.

While Jebel continued to set up formations, the men chatted with Tarik and the spider-boats slipped ahead in the night.

It started so fast she nearly missed it. Five hacksaws had slipped within a hundred yards of the Invader. Simultaneously they blasted at the ejector ports, and red beetles scurried the sides of the black hog. It took four and a half seconds for the remaining twenty-seven ejectors to open and shoot their first barrage of cruisers. But Rydra was already thinking in Babel-17.

Through her distended time sense she saw they did need help. And the articulation of their need was also the answer.

"Break strategy. Butcher. Follow me with ten ships. My crew is taking over."

The maddening feeling that her English words took so long on her tongue! The Butcher's request—“Kippi, put hacksaws on tail and leave them there!".—seemed like a tape played at quarter speed- But her crew was already in control of the spider-boat. She hissed their trajectory into the mike.

Brass flung them at right angles to the tide, and for a moment she saw the hacksaws behind her. Now a hairpin turn and they drove behind the first sheet of Invader cruisers.

"Warm their behinds!"

The Butcher's hand hesitated at a weapon. "'Drive them toward Tarik?"

"The hell I will. Fire, sweetheart!"

He fired, and the hacksaws followed suit.

In ten seconds it was clear she was right. Tarik lay R-ward. Ahead were the poached eggs, the mosquito netting, the flimsy, feathery vessel of Yiribia. Yiribia was Alliance, and at least one of the Invaders knew it because he fired at the weird contraption hung up on the sky. Rydra saw the Invader's gun-port cough green fire, but the fire never reached the Yiribians. The Invader cruiser turned into white-hot smoke that blackened and dispersed. Then another cruiser went, then three more, then three more.

“Out of here. Brass!” and they swung up and away.

"What was—" the Butcher started.

"A Yiribian heat ray. But they won't use it unless they' re attacked. Part of the treaty signed at the Court in '47. So we make the Invaders attack. Want to do it again?"

Brass' voice over the speaker: "We already are, Ca'tain."

She was thinking in English again, waiting for the nausea to hit, but excitement held it back.

"Butcher," came from Jebel now, "what are you doing?"

"It's working, isn't it?"

"Yes, But you've left a hole in our defenses ten miles across."

"Tell him we'll plug it up in a minute as soon as we drive the next batch through."

Jebel must have heard her. "And what do we do for the next sixty seconds, young lady?"

"Fight like hell." And the next batch of herded cruisers disappeared before the Ciribian heat ray. Then from the underspeakers:

Hey, Butcher, they're out for you.

They got the idea you're spearheading this thing.

Butcher, six on your tail. Shake 'em fast.

"I can dodge them easy, Ca'tain," Brass called up. "They're all on remote control. I've got more freedom."

"One more and we can really put the odds on Jebel's side."

"Jebel outnumbers them already," the Butcher said. "This spider-boat has got to shake those burrs." He called into the mike, "Hacksaws disperse and brake up the cruisers behind."

Will do. Hold onto your heads, fellows.

Hey, Butcher, one of them's not giving up.

Jebel said: "I thank you for my hacksaws back, but there's something following you that may be out for a hand-to-hand."

Rydra questioned him with a look.

"Heroes," the Butcher grunted disgustedly. "They'll try to grapple, board, and fight."

"Not with those kids on this ship' Brass, turn around and ram them, or come close enough to make them think we're crazy."

"Maybreakacou'leribs. . ."The ship swung and they were flung hard against the straps of the shock-boards.

A youngster's voice through the intercom. "Wheeeee ..."

On the view-screen the Invader cruiser swerved to the side.

"Good chance if they grapple," the Butcher said.

"They don't know there's a full crew aboard. They

have no more than two—"

"Watch out, Ca'tain'"

The Invader cruiser filled the screen. Clannnggg sang in the bones of the spider-boat.

The Butcher yanked at the straps of the shock-board and grinned. "Now to fighting hand-to-hand. Where are you going?"

"With you."

"You have a vibra-gun?" He tightened the holster on his stomach.

"Sure do." She pushed aside a panel of her loose blouse. "And this, too. Vanadium wire, six inches. Wicked thing."

"Come." He slapped the lever on a gravity inductor down to full field.

"What's that for?"

They were already in the corridor.

"To fight in a space suit out there is no good. False gravity field released around both ships will keep a breathable atmosphere to about twenty feet from surface and keep some heat in . . . more or less."

"What's less?" She swung behind him into the lift.

"It's about ten degrees below zero out there."

He had abandoned even his breeches since the evening they had met in Tarik's graveyard. All he wore was the holster. "I guess we won't be out there long enough to need overcoats."

"I guarantee you, whoever is out there more than a minute will be dead, and not from overexposure." His voice suddenly deepened as they ducked into the hatchway. "If you don't know what you're doing, stay back." Then he bent to brush her cheek with amber hair. "But you know, and I know. We must do it well."

In the same motion that he raised his head, he released the hatch. Cold came in for them. She didn't feel it. The increased metabolic rate that accompanied Babel-17 wrapped her in a shield of physical indifference. Something went flying overhead. They knew what to do and both did it; they ducked. Whatever it was exploded—the explosion identifying it as grenade that had just missed coming into the hatch—and light bleached the Butcher's face. He leaped and the fading glow slid down his body.

She followed him, reassured by the slow motion effect of Babel-17. She spun as she jumped. Someone ducked behind the ten foot bulge of an outrigger. She fired at him, the slow motion giving her time to take careful aim. She didn't wait to see if she hit, but kept turning. The Butcher was making for the ten foot wide column of the Invader's grapple.

Like a triple clawed crab, the enemy boat angled away into the night. K-ward rose the flattened spiral of the home galaxy. Shadows were carbon-paper black on the smooth hulls. From the K-ward side nobody could see her, unless her movement blotted a fugitive star or passed into the direct light of Specelli arm itself.

She jumped again—at the surface of the Invader cruiser now. For a moment it got much colder. Then she struck, near the grappler base, and rolled to her knees as, below, someone heaved another grenade at the hatch. They hadn't realized she and the Butcher were out yet. Good. She fired. And another hiss sounded from where the Butcher must be.

In the darkness below, figures moved. Then a vibra-blast stung the metal beneath her hand. It came from her own ship's hatch and she wasted a quarter of a sound analyzing and discarding the idea that the spy she had been afraid of from her crew had joined the Invaders. Rather, the Invader's first tactic had been to keep them from leaving their ship and blow them up in the hatch. It had failed, so now they had taken cover in the hatch itself for safety and were firing from there. She fired, fired again. From his hiding place behind the other grapple, the Butcher was doing the same.

A section of the hatch rim began to glow from the repeated blasts. Then a familiar voice was calling, “All right, all right already. Butcher! You got them, Ca'tain!"

Rydra monkeyed down the grapple, as Brass turned the hatch light on and stood up in the light that fanned across the bulkhead. The Butcher, gun down, came from his hiding place.

The underlighting distorted Brass' demon features still further. He held a limp figure in each claw.

"Actually this one's mine." He shook the right one. "He was trying to crawl back into the ship, so I ste “ed on his head.'' The pilot heaved the limp bodies onto the hull plates. "I don't know about you folks, but I'm cold. Reason I came up here in the first 'lace was Diavalo told me to tell you when you were ready for a coffee break, he'd fixed u' some Irish whiskey. Or maybe you'd 'refer hot buttered rum? Come on, come on! You're blue!"

At the lift her mind got back to English and she began to shiver. The frost on the Butcher's hair had started to melt to shiny droplets along his hairline. Her hand stung where she had just missed a burning.

"Hey," she said, as they stepped into the corridor, "if you're up here. Brass, who's watching the store?"

"Kippi. We went back on remote control."

"Rum," the Butcher said. "No butter and not hot. Just rum."

"Man after my own heart," nodded Brass. He dropped one arm around Rydra's shoulder, the other around the Butcher's. Friendly, but also, she realized, he was half-carrying both of them.

Something went clang through the ship.

The pilot glanced at the ceiling. "Maintenance just cut those grapples loose." He edged them into the captain's cabin. As they collapsed on the shock-boards, he called into the intercom; "Hey, Diavalo, come u’ here and get these 'eo'te drunk, huh? They deserve it."

"Brass!" She caught his arms as he started back out. “Can you get us from here to Administrative Alliance Headquarters?"

He scratched his ear. "We're right at the ti' of the Tongue. I only know the inside of the Sna' by chart. But Sensory tells me we're right in something that must be the beginning of Natal-beta Current. I know it flows out of the Sna' and we can take it down to Atlas-run and then into Administrative Alliance's front door. We're about eighteen, twenty hours away."

"Let's go." She looked at the Butcher. He made no objection.

"Good idea," Brass said. "About half of Tarik is . . .eh, discor'orate."

"The Invaders won?"

“Nope. The Yiribians finally got the idea, roasted that big 'ig, and took off. But only after Tarik got a hole in its side large enough to 'ut three s'ider-boats through, sideways. Ki “i tells me everyone who's still alive is sealed off in one quarter of the shi', but they have no running 'ower."

"What about Jebel?" the Butcher asked.

"Dead," Brass said.

Diavalo poked his white head down the entrance hatch. "Here you go."

Brass took the bottle and the glasses.

Then static on the speaker: "Butcher, we just saw you cast off the Invaders' cruiser. So, you got out alive."

Butcher leaned forward and picked up the mike. "Butcher alive, chief."

"Some people have all the luck. Captain Wong, I expect you to write me an elegy."

"Jebel?" She sat down next to the Butcher. "We're going to Administrative Alliance Headquarters now. We'll come back with help."

"At your convenience. Captain. We're just a trifle crowded, though."

"We're leaving now."

Brass was already out the door.

"Slug, are the kids all right?"

"Present and accounted for. Captain, you didn't give anyone permission to bring firecrackers aboard, did you?"

"Not that I remember."

"That's all I wanted to know. Ratt, come back here ..."

Rydra laughed. "Navigation?"

"Ready when you are," Ron said. In the background she heard Mollya's voice: "Nilitaka kulala, nilale milele—"

"You can't go to sleep forever," Rydra said. "We're taking off!"

"Mollya's teaching us a poem in Swahili," Ron explained.

"Oh. Sensory?"

"Kac/zywM/ I always said, Captain, keep your graveyard clean. You might need it some day. Jebel's a case in point. We're ready."