Death Sentence (47 page)

"Wait a second!" Hannah said. "I think I can make the
next
part make absolute sense. 'Ungreen leeks hate this conic section.' More puns and misspelling. The kind of leek that isn't green is a leak, l-e-a-k. And if I were an ambitious leak that wanted to accomplish something, what I would hate would be the thing that stops me--a patch."

"And we found out the hard way that the leak patches used aboard the
Sherlock
-class are round--they're circles."

"Perfectly valid conic section there. Good! And let's not forget one of the patches was missing."

"I think we're getting warm," said Jamie enthusiastically.

"What have you found?" said Taranarak in Lesser Trade. "Your voices and faces seem to show happiness and excitement. What have you found?"

Jamie opened his mouth to tell her, then shut it again. "I regret to say that, when you look at it all together, we haven't found much at all. Translated to Lesser Trade Speech, what we have so far would be something like 'Show the results of this riddle to Hallaben if you want long life. If a female person who lives alone is seen by her pet, she is no longer alone. Leaks do not like round patches.'"

Taranarak was silent for a moment. "I am starting to wonder if perhaps you are all insane," she said.

"In a way, that's the idea, Taranarak," said Hannah with a weary smile. "Trevor's ship, this ship, had just been searched by xenos, and he was very much afraid that it would be boarded again after he died. He wanted
us
to be able to find the decrypt key, but not
you,
if you see what I mean. So he worked out a way of setting down clues that would be impossible for an outsider to understand--and just barely possible for one of us."

"I'm going to take a break from crosswords and check on the deranged alien who's trying to kill us all," said Jamie. "The
Stability
should have dropped into her search pattern by now."

Jamie climbed the ladder once again and sat in the pilot's chair. He was more worried than he let on. He was starting to wonder if maybe Taranarak was right. Maybe Trevor
had
gone crazy. Maybe Hannah and he weren't too far behind. Playing word games seemed an insane way to spend their time when Bulwark of Constancy was out there, trying to track them down.

He rubbed his eyes and studied the plot, expecting to see that not much had changed.

That was not what he saw. What he saw instead was not good. Not good at all. "Hannah!" he cried out. "I need you!
Now.
"

She was up the ladder and at his side almost at once. "What's happened?"

"My mistake. My big, fat mistake that might get us all killed. I assumed that the
Stability
was going to drop into her search pattern in a nice, efficient logical way, by boxing in the forward end of the volume first. I forgot Constancy's new to all this. It's doing what looks like a helical outward leg that doesn't make any sense at all. Except--"

"Yeah," said Hannah. "I can see it."

"It's pretty hard to miss," said Jamie. "And we will be too. Beginner's luck for Constancy, I guess." The pattern Bulwark of Constancy was flying was more or less parallel to the triangle defined by the positions of the
Sholto
, the
Adler
, and the booster. And in about half an hour, the
Adler
would sweep directly through its path.

"It's time to create a diversion," said Hannah. "I think we have to give her the booster. Squirt a signal and command it to light its engine and run. Do it so it's at least plausible that the booster was running away to avoid being spotted before the search pattern can catch it."

"Suppose Constancy doesn't take the bait?" asked Jamie.

"Then
we
light our engine and run before
we
get spotted."

"I'll do my best, but the pattern's not going to get anywhere near the booster."

"Yeah, but the
Sholto
's even farther out of position. We
might
be able to make the booster's run look like it was being flushed out--but not the
Sholto
," said Hannah. "If the
Sholto
ran, it would look like what it was--a diversion."

"Okay then. We fire the booster--and try to make it convincing. I'll have to use a low-power tight-beam radio signal. I'll do as tight and short a squirt as I can and wait until Constancy's ship is as far off-angle as it's going to get. I doubt her ship is even equipped to detect radio--but Constancy still
might
pick it up."

"Understood," said Hannah. "Make the risk as small as you can, but send the commands. And hurry. We've got other work to do."

"Huh?"

Hannah sighed. "The odds of our not living through this just went way up," she said. "We've got to solve that damned fool puzzle fast and hope it actually leads us to the decrypt key. If Constancy is going to kill us all, I'd just as soon we send the message first."

"It'll take me a little while to get this set up," he said. "I'll see you down there."

Hannah allowed herself a moment on the ladder. She stopped, rested her head on a rung, and let out her breath with a long and weary sigh. How had they come to this? Trying to wade through a morass of puns and riddles in order to save not just a way of making a whole species of beings live longer, but also to suppress a weapon that might be able to wipe out humanity. And
that
was the vital work! Dodging the homicidal Xenoatric who was trying to get another crack at them had to be treated as no more than a distraction.

Never mind. Press on. Keep going. She moved the step or two back to the table and slumped down in her chair.

"Is everything all right?" Taranarak asked.

Hannah laughed sadly. "No," she said. "Do you want the details?"

"I am not sure that I do."

"You don't." Hannah picked up Trevor's message from the other side of death and read the next line or two out loud in English. "Blank the town Red. Good sunset vision might mean a being gets the blanks with other end of Newton's glass."

That part was almost too easy.
Paint
the town red, and a being gets the
blues.
But this thing had layers to it. Good sunset vision? Red. Hannah thought of the strong red cast to all the lights on Metran. And Newton's glass? A telescope, maybe?

Jamie came back down and sat on his box. He set his datapad down on the folding table. "As the angles shift around and so forth, we'll get our lowest chance of Constancy detecting our squirt signal in about fifteen minutes," he said. "I've programmed things to send the message then. I can monitor well enough from here until then. I don't
think
Constancy's ship will be able to detect the squirt signal--but I've got to tell you--if she does, it's all over. The
Stability
's going to be on us
fast.
You're going to have to be in the pilot's station, ready for action."

"Thanks for the cheery thought," Hannah replied. "Meanwhile, back in the message--any idea what Newton's glass might be?"

"What classes did
you
sleep through? A prism, of course. He used a prism to split white light into the colors of the spectrum."

"That makes more sense here than telescope."

"You're thinking of Galileo."

"Whatever. I think I have the next part of the message. 'Paint the town red.'"

"Gee, I thought I would have to use my secret decoder ring to crack that part."

"So there was one easy section. The next bit is something like 'the ability to see well in red light might mean a being gets the blues with--has trouble with--the other end of the spectrum.'"

"Not much of a shocker there, either," said Jamie. "A species able to see well in the red end of the spectrum generally can't see well in the blue end of the spectrum." He turned to Taranarak and spoke in Lesser Trade Speech. "There is something in the puzzle-message that seems to be about differences in how your people and mine see color. The lighting in this ship. Is it comfortable for you?" As he spoke, he worked his datapad, holding it so neither Hannah or Taranarak could see what he was doing.

"Not particularly. It is a bit harsh, and bright. It makes things seem cold and washed-out."

"If we live through this, I will see what I can do to adjust it," Jamie said. He turned the datapad over and showed the display to Hannah and Taranarak. "What color or colors do you see? Taranarak, you go first," he asked. To Hannah's eye, the display showed five thick stripes in varying shades of blue.

Taranarak peered carefully at the screen. "There are two--no, three variations of blue," she said.

"I see five different shades," said Hannah.

"Actually, according to my datapad's painting program, there are eight--but I can only distinguish six myself," said Jamie. "Thank you, Taranarak. That was extremely useful." He switched back to English. "So we've got a lot about red and blue, and something about paint," he said.

"There were cans of touch-up paint in that locker behind you. One of them was slightly used."

Jamie jumped up and opened the locker and pulled out the cans of paint. He set them on the table. "Red. Black. And blue-grey. The blue-grey is the one that's been opened. And it's the one that matches the ship's general interior."

He looked at Hannah, and she looked at him. "I think we're getting close," she said quietly.

"So do I," said Jamie. He checked the time. "But right now we need you in the pilot's seat again. This is where we blow our cover."

"Grab the message and some notepaper," said Hannah. "We're going to work the rest of this from the flight deck. Taranarak--wish us luck."

TWENTY-NINE

ALL FOR ONE

Hannah buckled herself into the pilot's chair as Jamie watched the countdown on his datapad. "Okay," he said. "The
Adler
's sending her command signal to the booster in five, four, three, two, one--now."

Hannah's throat was dry, and the palms of her hands were sweaty. She stared at the nav display, eyes locked on the dot that represented Constancy's ship. Any change there, any sudden movement, meant the signal had leaked and Constancy had seen it--and gotten a lock on the
Adler
. If that happened, they wouldn't have a prayer of outrunning the bigger ship--but they would have to try.

Nothing. No response. Not that it meant anything. Constancy could be a little slow off the mark or just taking its time getting the
Stability
's weapons hot.

"How long until the booster makes its move?" Hannah asked. "And for that matter, what is it going to do, exactly?"

"The engines should light three minutes from
now
. It'll boost directly away from Constancy's ship at maximum thrust until it runs out of power," said Jamie, watching the display as intently as Hannah. "Not subtle, but I didn't have much time for finesse. And I really wish we weren't throwing away one of the only two cards we have to play."

Hannah chose not to remind him they had
three
cards to play,
three
ships to sacrifice. "'Climbing Jacob's leads to heavens door held open,'" she quoted. "Gotten anywhere with that?"

"Jacob's ladder, obviously," said Jamie.

"Ah, but it wasn't a ladder," said Hannah. "There's a fun fact for you. That's a mistranslation. It was a staircase, or a stile, or something."

"Thanks for clearing that up. I'm sure Trevor was working from the original Greek."

"Aramaic, I think."

"Whatever. I don't think Constancy detected our message to the booster. It would have responded by now."

"Let's hope the booster gets its attention."

"Bible trivia to one side," said Jamie, still watching the displays, "if we assume that all the mistakes in Trevor's message were deliberate, it might mean something that Jacob's whatever doesn't lead to Heaven's door--capitalized singular possessive. It leads to the lowercase-plural heavens door. It leads to the heavens--the sky and stars, not to paradise."