in0 (21 page)

“And by analogy, the Broa would naturally be allergic to new inventions.”

“Of course. In fact, I can think of one invention that would destroy their empire within a few centuries.”

“What’s that?”

“The stardrive!”

Dan thought about it and had to admit that she was probably right. In many respects, the human method for interstellar travel was vastly inferior to star gates. Human ships were forced to crawl across the long, slow light-years, taking days or weeks in transit. The ships of the Sovereignty, on the other hand, leapt effortlessly from star to star. Yet, as inefficient as the human method was, it had the advantage that a starship could go anywhere its captain chose. He was not bound to fixed pathways controlled by all-powerful overlords.

“Interesting,” he mused aloud. Then another thought hit him. “Do you suppose the Broa
did
invent the star drive, then suppressed it as a danger to their empire?”

“Entirely possible,” Laura responded.

#

Commander Scott Heinrich had worked diligently toward a single goal for his entire professional career -

command of a starship. That his ascension to
Magellan
’s command couch was temporary did little to blunt the responsibilities that had fallen on his shoulders. Now that he had them, he was not sure that he liked it.

Magellan
had flown in formation with the
Ruptured Whale
for three days while supplies for the salvage crew had been offloaded. When those aboard the derelict had all they would need to convert it to a functioning starship, Heinrich had taken
Magellan
and set out on the second phase of their mission, to see if the brief appearance of the stargate had left any evidence.

First, of course, there had been the problem of where they should look. They knew precisely where the stargate had originally materialized.
Magellan
’s sensors had caught the alien ships in the moment of their appearance. But where was that point now?

The question had caused the scientists to splinter into two camps (as usual). There were the

“gravitocentrists” who claimed that the entry point could be located with respect to New Eden’s sun, and therefore, they should look at the point in New Eden’s orbit where the planet had been at the time of the battle. Then there were the “universalists,” who thought stargates independent of local gravitational influences. It was their contention that the point was fixed in space and that it could only be found by backtracking the path of the New Eden sun through the firmament.

In the end, the gravitocentrists won the argument and the scientists directed Heinrich to a point halfway around the system primary. Since they were deep in the star’s gravity well, they made the move in normal space, taking a week to reach their survey area. They then spent the next three days quartering the region with instruments so sensitive that they would be knocked out of calibration if the ship closed to within a thousand kilometers of them. That morning they had made their 27th survey of the region.

“Well?” Heinrich demanded of Dr. Pomerance.

“Nothing,” came the reply of the disgusted scientist as he watched a three-dimensional graph come up on the screen. “The local curvature of space is unaffected to within the limits of our instruments. Nor do there appear to be any density variations.”

“Damn!” Heinrich muttered. To his non-scientist mind, the thought that stargates ought to leave variations in the local density seemed the most logical. Even the hardest vacuum was not completely empty of matter. Inside planetary systems, there were tens of thousands of atoms per cubic centimeter, and even in interstellar space, the particle count was in the hundreds. It was logical to think that if points in two widely separated star systems were connected via stargate, then material from the more dense system would pour through into the less dense. Logical or not, there was no evidence that this had happened at New Eden.

“Nor do we see any shock waves in the gas, or roiling due to the passage of the gravity wave,”

Pomerance continued.

“So what do we do now?”

The scientist, who was a small man with closely cropped sandy hair, rubbed at his scalp in frustration.

“Our bag of tricks is fast running low. I can only think of two more things we can try. Perhaps the universalists were right after all.”

“Whether they were or not, we have to get back to the derelict. We have left them helpless too long already.”

“Two more passes, Captain,” Pomerance pleaded. “If we don’t have anything at the end of that time, then we will write off this whole avenue of inquiry.”

Heinrich nodded. “Two passes. After that we collect our instruments and head back.”

#

Dan Landon moved through vacuum toward the airlock that the salvage crew had grafted to the side of the
Ruptured Whale
. This morning, the lock had looked like an oversize garbage can carelessly cast aside by some giant junkman. No longer. As he pulled himself hand over hand along the guideline, he was greeted by a curving surface consisting of hexagonal sections of superconducting mesh anchored to the underlying structure and interconnected with thick cables.

As he reached the airlock, Landon rotated his body to gaze at the bright star that was New Eden. Near the half-moon shape of the planet was the bright star that marked
Magellan
’s position. His ship had ended her sweeps of the late stargate’s position - ended them in failure. Save the gravity wave, now approaching half-a-light-year in diameter, there was no sign that local space had been turned inside out.

Her separate mission completed, the big survey ship had returned to the
Whale
and now hovered some twenty kilometers distant, ready to evacuate the salvage crew should the Broa appear.

He entered the airlock boots first. As soon as he was inside, he anchored himself against the barrel of the pressure wall and levered the outer door closed with his upper body. The airlock was a makeshift affair with none of the power controls that were normal for such installations. Once the hatch was dogged down, he twisted the valve that bled air from the ship’s interior into the lock chamber. He was buffeted by a miniature storm as his suit drooped around him. When the wind had died to inaudibility, he pressed a gloved hand against the inner door that had been held closed by tons of pressure. With air in the lock, the door swung easily inward.

Landon pulled himself out of the lock to find Laura Dresser hovering in front of him. Her mouth was moving, but only the barest hint of sound came through his helmet. He commanded the suit’s computer to activate the outside pickup, something that was almost never done in a vacuum suit. Her voice sounded tinny in his earphones as he caught the end of her sentence.

“-- Speak with you!”

“Can it wait until I get out of my suit?” he asked, his words transmitted by a small speaker mounted flush to his chest.

He noted with professional interest the inner struggle apparent in Laura’s expression. She was like many engineers; expert in her field, but nonetheless missing something that allows people to interact well with others.

“Certainly it can wait that long,” she finally muttered, signaling that her rough social graces had won the struggle.

“Very good,” he replied. He pulled himself to the suiting cubicle, hooked into one of the waiting frames, then spoke the code word that would release the hinged backpack and swing it out of the way. He extracted his arms from the sleeves, pushed off the rigid chest structure, and slid backwards through the open rear hatch, nearly doubling over in the process.

Like most people, Landon wore a waste control and telemetry belt under his suit, and nothing else. He noted the distracted interest Laura showed in his nearly nude form as he slipped into a one-piece shipsuit.

Another thing he noted was the smell, much of which was coming from him. Among the
Whale
’s other shortcomings, it lacked washing facilities. No one aboard had had a bath in three weeks. He wondered what they would all smell like by the time they got to Earth.

Finally, he turned to her and asked, “What can I do for you?”

Two hours later, he was still listening.

Laura Dresser was suspended like a spider in its web as she watched the readouts that detailed the health of the stardrive and its fusion generator. There were five members of the salvage crew in the compartment they had chosen for a control room. Each was encased in a vacuum suit and suspended like Laura, facing outward, with the back of their helmets nearly touching. The arrangement meant that none of them could see the others. She did not need to see her fellows. She could follow their progress by the comments on the command circuit.

They were in suits despite the fact that the compartment was pressurized. The
Whale
was about to be subjected to a number of stresses for which it had not been designed. It was possible that one or more of their 200 patches might give way when the stardrive was activated, returning the interior to vacuum.

“Engineer, how is it going?” Dan Landon’s voice asked abruptly as she worked her way through the pre-start checklist on one of her auxiliary screens. In addition to the captain’s voice, the command circuit carried the breathing of ten other people. The sound was like that of a subdued hurricane.

“Ready for power in a few minutes, Captain.”

“Give me some warning before you bring the generator on line.”

“Yes, sir.”

Landon went on to question Ensign Grimes, who was in communication with
Magellan
. The survey ship would trail them at a safe distance as they moved toward their jump point, ready to render assistance if needed. After they jumped superlight, the
Whale
would be on her own for the six days to Sol. If the stardrive failed after that, they would likely never be found in the trackless vacuum between the stars.

“Ready now, Captain,” Laura said a few minutes later as she stared at the screen and wished that someone would invent a way that old-fashioned eyeglasses could be worn in a vacuum suit. In truth, someone probably had once upon a time. That solution had been lost in the passage of years.

“Bring the fusion generators to power.”

Laura did so, watching her screens for any sign of instability in the generator’s output. “We have minimum drive power, Captain.”

“Very good, Engineer. Stand by.” Landon switched to the general suit circuit and announced,
“Attention
All Hands. We will begin maneuvering in two minutes. Make sure you are strapped down securely.

Two minute warning and counting. Stand by!
”

“Commander Heinrich reports that he is ready for chase duty,” Grimes reported.

“Acknowledge the report, Ensign. Tell him we will be bringing our field to power in ninety seconds.

Suggest that he do likewise.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

Laura watched the chronometer that seemed to be hanging a meter in front of her faceplate. The glowing apparition was part of the head-up display of her helmet. It slowly counted down toward zero.

“All right, thirty seconds,” Landon reported. “Begin the automated countdown.”

A computer generated voice echoed through Laura’s helmet. When the display reached zero, she released the
Whale
’s computer to follow its preprogrammed flight plan. The effect was immediate. Her external speaker picked up a woeful moan from the ship as the beams took the stress of the building drive field. The empty space in front of the ship suddenly curved more steeply while that behind flattened by the same minuscule amount. Smoothly, silently, the
Ruptured Whale
fell in the direction of curvature.

In effect, the ship slid down the slope of the small invisible hill that its drive generator had created. As the ship moved, so did the localized curvature of space, and like a dog chasing its own tail, the ship followed.

Laura did not need to watch her instruments to know that they were accelerating. Her body gave her the necessary clues. For the first time in weeks, her stomach settled down against her backbone as her toes slid deeper into her armored boots. As weight swept over her, she felt a momentary bliss as the interior fabric of the suit scratched several irritating itches. The relief was short lived, however. The new arrangement of forces conspired to set off a completely new rash of prickling.

“So far we are nominal for flight plan,” Technician Gonzalvo reported after a few seconds of powered flight.

“Accelerate to one gravity!” Landon ordered.

“Yes, Captain,” Laura replied as she keyed in the change. She suddenly felt very heavy as the
Whale
curved space around it sufficient to drive it forward at a velocity that grew by 10 meters per second each second.

She smiled inside her helmet. Score one for the engineers! The old derelict flew ... after a fashion. She felt pleased with herself for having won a small victory, but tried to control the emotion. After all, the real test of her skill and that of her team would come in two days. It would take that long for the two starships to pull away from the New Eden sun to a distance where they could attempt the transition to superlight.

#

Dan Landon was out of his suit for the first time in a week, sponging himself off with a damp cloth and wishing it were a shower bag with jet spray controls. He was in a compartment that had once been devoted to quarters for the ship’s alien crew. The damage here was surprisingly light. In fact, had it not been for the misfortune of having one of the maintenance hatches blown away, coupled with the unexplained opening of virtually every pressure door throughout the ship, Harlan Frees might have found dozens of survivors aboard the
Whale
when first he boarded. As it was, those members of the crew who had survived the Broan attack had all been killed by explosive decompression just moments before Landon had won his battle with their tormentor. When the technicians first reported that fact, Dan had felt a momentary twinge of conscience for not having acted sooner. So many deaths coming so near salvation was the stuff of Greek tragedy.