The computer reply was nearly instantaneous. “Yes. The two recordings are of one individual.”
“They aren’t clones?”
“Cloning is seldom without error. The medical data in the two files is identical in every important respect.”
“Are any of the other records duplicates?”
“Male Number Three in Record One is identical with Male Number One in Record Two. The other four males represented in the data are distinct individuals.”
Pas-Tek considered that information. He had not one match, but two. Curious, indeed. There was a saying among his people, “It is a small universe.” However, it wasn’t
that
small!
Perhaps there was more at stake here than a single shipload of thieves, after all.
#
Chapter Thirty Seven
“It’s simple, really, Captain. They don’t explode. We do!”
As Mark sat back, every face around the wardroom table was turned in his direction. As he scanned the faces, he had a sudden feeling of déjà vu. It was as though he had experienced this situation before. Suddenly, he remembered where and when.
On the retreat from Klys’kra’t, the Gibraltar Earth plan had popped into his head as though it had been lying full formed somewhere in his subconscious, just waiting for the proper moment to show itself. It had been a moment very like this one.
“Care to explain that, Mr. Rykand?” Harris asked, his tone deceptively mild, a sign that the Captain’s temper might be on a short leash this morning.
“I’m not sure I can… intelligibly, Captain.”
“Try, Mister!”
“I was just thinking about our problem here… or rather, our double problem. That Avenger is coming up fast, and will be close to weapons’ range when we reach the gate. At that distance, he won’t need instruments to detect the gravity wave from our jump. He’ll be able to feel it, or rather,
not
feel it. If we appear to go through the gate and the jolt doesn’t come, he’ll notice and begin wondering about this ship’s propulsion capabilities.”
“So we jump through the gate and take our chances in the Gasak System!” the chief engineer reiterated.
Mark shook his head. “Whatever we are going to do will be more likely to succeed here than there. In truth, there is only one way we can pull this off without raising that Broan captain’s suspicions. We enter the gate, power up as though for a jump, and then explode, vaporizing ourselves and the gate in the process.”
“Surely you aren’t suggesting that we use the self destruct,” Harris said.
“No, sir. The situation is far from the suicide stage. Perhaps I should say, ‘We appear to explode, vaporizing ourselves and the gate.’”
From the looks he was getting, Mark realized that what was so shining clear to him was much less so to others. Only his wife’s quizzical look indicated that she was half following his logic.
“Look, our stargate generator must maintain a precise balance of dozens of different parameters. What if the generator gets out of balance and we try to jump?”
“We blow up,” the captain said.
“And what if we enter the gate, jump superlight, drop back to normal space, and let fly with an SM at the gate, all in the space of say a microsecond or two?”
Harris finally grinned. “Then we appear to blow up!”
“Yes, sir. Or at least, the gate blows up and anyone not watching too closely sees our ship disappear in the explosion.”
“Won’t our pursuer find it suspicious?” someone asked.
Mark shrugged. “Who cares? It presents him with a tragedy that has a mundane explanation rather than a mystery to be investigated further.
“Besides, the destruction of the stargate will trap the Avenger here in the Etnarii System for God knows how long. Its captain won’t be able to report anything until someone notices that the Etnarii gate is down.”
“They’ll have their sensors focused on us,” the Exec said. “Once they analyze the recordings, they will see that we disappeared an instant before the explosion.”
“Then we obscure their view. Just as we enter the gate, we power up our jump generators. Their instruments will register that fact. Just as we reach critical power, we vent atmosphere and anything else we can think of to produce an opaque cloud. We momentarily cut off his view, then transition to superlight.”
“Can we go superlight this close to the star?”
“This close? No,” Mark responded. “But out where the gate is, we’re beyond the local critical limit.”
The captain thought about it for a moment, then nodded, “I like it. If we take out the gate, news of our presence doesn’t get out for weeks or even months.”
It took another two hours to flesh out Mark’s idea. When they were through, they had a plan.
#
“The freighter is decelerating, Master.”
“How long until they reach the gate?”
“One rotation.”
“We will begin our own deceleration on schedule, Sailing Master.”
“We could catch them if we continue accelerating,” Saton reminded him.
“And fly past so fast that we would have a single opportunity for a shot? No, our mission is to capture these thieves and deliver them to the Council.”
“We might disable them before they reach the gate.”
“And we could as easily vaporize them with a misplaced bolt. No, we will capture them as intact as we can manage. If they beat us to Gasak, it will save us the trouble of transporting them there. We will hold to our flight plan.”
“Command acknowledged, Master.”
Pas-Tek watched passively as the weight on his chest continued at five-twelfths above what he was used to. The acceleration made it difficult to breathe, but was not yet debilitating.
The range fell more quickly now that their quarry was slowing its headlong flight for the gate. However, the gods of speed and distance were against them. The freighter would reach the gate before they closed to weapons range.
Let them think they have escaped
, Pas-Tek thought with grim humor. They would soon discover their respite a brief one.
Blood Oath
would materialize in the Gasak gate before the Trojan ship could flee.
“Engineer!”
“Yes, Master.”
“How are my jump engines?”
“The engines are calibrated and ready for use, Master.”
“Very good. My compliments to your crew.”
“I will tell them, Master.”
#
“How are we doing, Astrogator?” Captain Harris asked 26 hours after turnover.
“Fifteen minutes, Captain,” Mark replied, watching his displays carefully.
“And the Avenger?”
“Closing fast, sir. Even so, he’s going to be late to the party.”
“Thank God! Propulsion!”
“Yes, sir,” the Chief Engineer responded from deep in the bowels of the ship.
“Everything ready on your end?”
“Ready, sir. I’m afraid there is going to be a jolt. Luckily, it will come and go so quickly that we probably won’t be affected much. Still, I would have everyone strap down, just in case.”
“Communicator, make the announcement.”
“ALL HANDS. SECURE YOURSELVES FOR TRANSITION TO SUPERLIGHT! WARNING, IT MAY BE ROUGH. FOURTEEN MINUTES, AND COUNTING!”
Mark tightened his acceleration harness and keyed his communicator for the Alien Technology Section. Within seconds, Lisa’s worried features were on one of his auxiliary screens.
“All secure there?”
“Secure.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay.”
“It won’t be long now.”
“I hope not,” she said with a wan smile.
“I love you.”
An indefinable emotion flashed across her features. Then she replied, “I love you, too.”
“See you after we jump.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
With that, he cut the connection and concentrated on his screens.
Ten minutes later, as the wedding-band shape of the stargate filled the main viewscreen, and continued to get larger by the second, Captain Harris ordered, “Astrogator. Activate the stargate jump generators. Bring them up slowly. Give him a good chance to see our field building.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Engineering. Prepare to vent plasma!”
Mark switched on the generators that, when in the embrace of a stargate’s matching field, would send them to a distant system. He watched as the generator power bars grew apace, flashing from red to yellow to green.
“Generators online, Captain.”
The next step involved considerable cross-talk between the ship’s ersatz Broan computer and that of the stargate. The synchronization process took several seconds, and would end with a green
READY TO JUMP
message on Mark’s screen.
Instead of the expected message, however, he found himself looking at a red, flashing
HOLD
warning.
“Captain, we aren’t synchronizing. The gate just rejected our request to jump.”
“What’s the matter?” Harris demanded. “Something wrong with the gate?”
“Doesn’t appear to be,” Mark said, scanning his instruments.
“We need to look like we are about to jump, Astrogator,” Harris said quietly. “And we need to look like it now!”
“Working on it, Captain,” Mark replied as he resent the jump commands to the gate. Once again, he received a
HOLD
warning in response.
“Combat Systems! Where is that Avenger?”
“Coming on fast, Captain,” Spacer Rodriguez, the offensive weapons systems tech, reported. “Two minutes to weapons range.”
“Stand by to fire superlight missile on my command.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“
Damn!
”
“Was that an official report, Astrogator?”
“Sorry, sir. I just figured out the problem.”
“Don’t keep us in suspense.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the gate, Captain. It is working perfectly.”
“Then why can’t we synchronize?”
“Because there is another ship coming through from the other side. What we are seeing is an anti-collision lockout!”
#
“Master. The gate has been activated from Gasak!”
“Say again, Sailing Master.”
“There is a ship in the gate in the Gasak System, readying to jump. The freighter cannot get a lock.”
“Then we have them!”
#
“Combat, where is that Avenger?”
“Just coming into weapons range now, Captain,” Rodriguez reported. “He hasn’t powered weapons yet.”
“Then hold your fire until he does. At the first indication, take him out.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Astrogator, report!”
“The gate is powering up, sir. The jump field is almost at critical! I think…”
Before Mark could tell Harris what he thought, a shudder went through the ship, rattling every storage compartment door on the bridge.
“That was a big one!” someone exclaimed as the clatter caused by the gravity wave died away.
“And so is that!” Vivian Domedan responded, pointing to the viewscreen. Where before there had only been blackness at the center of the stargate, now there lay a massive spherical ship.
“Bulk hauler,” Rodriguez reported. “Must be here for the annual harvest. She’s starting to move out of the gate.”
“Take us in!” Harris ordered.
New Hope
was jolted again, this time by her own normal space engines. When he had been unable to gain a synchronization lock, Mark halted the ship a few kilometers short of their goal. Now that they were once again under power,
New Hope
responded like a race horse, sliding forward with ever increasing speed. Both the stargate and the newly arrived bulk hauler expanded alarmingly.
The bulk hauler dodged sideways to get out of the way of the suicidal fools rushing straight for them.
New Hope
slid past within naked-eye range. Entering the circle of the stargate, Mark brought the ship to a halt. They hovered for a dozen seconds while he checked his alignment.
He punched for synchronization. Power bars grew on his screen and flashing Broan script followed the lightning-like conversation between ship and gate. This time, almost to his surprise, the screen flashed
READY TO JUMP.
Only when he exhaled loudly did Mark realize that he had been holding his breath. “Ready for jump, Captain,” he reported.
“Engineering! Begin your toxic dump.”
The starfield on the main viewscreen dimmed as glowing incandescent fog enshrouded the ship. Harris let the dump continue for five seconds until they could no longer see the glowing spark that was Etnarii. Hopefully, they were also obscured to the Avenger’s sensors. As soon as the star disappeared, he gave the command.
“Superlight drive generators to power…NOW!”
#
Chapter Thirty Eight
“What’s happening?” Pas-Tek demanded as his ship continued to slow in its headlong rush for the gate. A gravity wave strong enough to be felt without instruments had just passed through his ship, causing the usual clatter.
“A cargo carrier has appeared in the gate, Commander,” his sailing master reported. “It is powering up to vacate the ring. The freighter is starting to move toward it… those fools are likely to collide with the larger ship if they aren’t careful!”
As Pas-Tek watched, the freighter barely missed the big cargo ship and took its place within the stargate while the other craft moved visibly on the screen.
“They are powering generators, Commander,” his sensor operator reported before issuing forth with an oath in his native tongue.
Such a breach of protocol would normally have brought punishment down on the head of the hapless crewman. As it was, Pas-Tek barely noticed. For the scene on the screen held his full attention.
Their hull camera was at full magnification. The small Type Seven freighter could be seen surrounded by the silvery ring of the gate. Suddenly, the outline of the toy ship softened as several plumes of vapor began issuing from vents all over its surface.
The vapor quickly built in thickness until they lost sight of the craft.
Then the universe exploded!
#
At Captain Harris’s command, Mark Rykand tapped the ‘execute’ key. From that moment on, the ship’s computer took over as it stepped through a preprogrammed series of maneuvers.
The first was a crash engagement of the stardrive generators. The jump engines were at full power when several high power switches shunted the coils that would have sent the ship to the Gasak System directly across the coils of the stardrive generator. The result was a short circuit that generated an overload in the stardrive, throwing
New Hope
out of normal space. To an outside observer, the ship simply disappeared, without producing a gravity wave.