Penemue had returned to his former task of monitoring the Ra communications channels while the craft carried out a preliminary scan along the accelerating section of the great weapon. For a long time he found nothing of interest on the communications channels, then suddenly he called out urgently.
“Someone’s getting suspicious about us. I can hear a commander of sorts inquiring about what a provost-craft is doing in a maintenance area. I think we’re about to receive a challenge.”
“Assuming they confirm their suspicions,” Wildheit asked, “what form of action can they take against us?”
“Well, they can’t burn us out of space with a ray or a projectile, for the same reason we can’t use a hellburner against the weapon from outside. But if they could box us in so that we can’t run, they could close-grapple until near-contact and put something like a screw-mine through our hull.”
“And it looks as if they’ve decided to do just that,” said Kasdeya. “Could be we’ve slipped up on protocol somewhere, and given the game away.”
As if to verify Kasdeya’s words, fully a dozen smaller ships of the fleet were diving toward them, slipping into a tight formation as they went. The provost-craft’s excursion along the complex hundred and fifty kilometers of the accelerator body was rendered suddenly hazardous by the close approach of the Ra ships that, matching velocity and direction with great expertise, dropped fore and aft and formed a
close over-cover which allowed the trapped craft very little room in which to maneuver. Jequn pointed out the magnetic grapples which were already being dropped in preparation for close-hauling.
In this uneasy manner the boxed-in ship and its escort continued to travel along the accelerator body until they came to the gap between the accelerator and the great cage which contained the trapped black holes.
It was in this gap that the Ra obviously hoped to complete the encirclement and destruction of the provost-craft. Additional ships had gone to the far side of the accelerator presumably to close-off a potential escape route. Kasdeya’s agonized glance toward Wildheit showed that both men had come to the same fantastic conclusion about the only possible means of evasion still available. Without bothering to obtain verbal confirmation from Wildheit, the Ra renegade put the craft through the tightest possible turn when they came to the gap—and took it back straight up the center axis of the Chaos Weapon’s accelerator tube.
The craft from the Ra fleet made no attempt to follow, and it immediately became apparent why this was so. Despite its giant scale, the way down the interior of the tube was considerably narrowed by great irises inserted at intervals, the apertures of which were scarcely much more than twice the width of the provost-craft itself. Although continuous passage was possible, it required delicate maneuvering and precise positioning which could only be achieved at a very minimal speed. With a hundred and fifty kilometers of tube traversed, the Ra would obviously have plenty of time to prepare a trap at either end.
Nor was this the least of their worries. A bright sparkle of light dead ahead came to life suddenly, and its implications were too obvious and too dreadful to be missed. Shredded star-stuff was being fed across the continuum domain into the great horn of the weapon, and the reactor was being charged up to permit the firing
of the weapon. Trapped in the weapon’s guts and accurately aligned on its primary axis, there seemed no way at all in which they could avoid the full force of the discharge.
In a large cell between two irises, Kasdeya turned the craft around, with the intention of doubling back and trying to escape from the weapon’s mouth before the exit could be closed or the device brought to firing point. In order to undertake this maneuver safely he had switched on all the searchlights affixed to the hull and was desperately straining his eyes to gauge the distance between the craft and the weapon’s vast metal walls. As he was about to complete the maneuver Wildheit let out a sudden cry and pointed upward to where a projection broke the otherwise complete smoothness of the surface. He made Kasdeya stop the ship and carefully close in until they could see quite plainly the presence of a small space-lock leading to some inner compartment in the weapon’s structure. Here was their opportunity to place a hellburner!
There was no space-transfer tube available, and probably very little time to complete the operation before a bolt was projected through the weapon tube. Summing up the situation rapidly, Hover had already started to don a vacuum suit, while the commandoes dragged a hellburner into the ship’s lock in readiness. Kasdeya inched the craft up to close proximity with the door in the weapon’s wall, and they all waited with fearful expectation as the cycling of the lock signaled Cass Hover’s departure from the ship with a hellburner clasped under one arm and a light-line clamp in his other hand.
SUCH was the
restricted size of the provost-craft space-lock that there was no opportunity for anyone to accompany Marshal Hover on his mission. Although Kasdeya held the craft as steady and as near to the door in the weapon’s lock as the dynamics of the situation would allow, they were none of them in any doubt about the difficulty and physical dangers of what Hover was attempting. The light-line was a substantially hazardous method of approaching a space-lock, especially when encumbered by the momentum of a mass such as that of a hellburner. Additionally, the craft was in a precarious dynamic balance, and there was no certainty that the marshal could easily reach the wall with a light-line, or, alternatively, avoid being crushed between the craft’s hull and the door itself.
When to these considerations was added the necessity to escape from their trap before the Ra fleet could close it decisively or the Chaos Weapon could be brought to firing point, the tensions inherent in the situation were obvious. The minutes mounted and began to surpass what they judged to be a reasonable amount of time for Hover to have completed the job. Wildheit had already struggled into another vacuum suit, but was reluctant to cycle the space-lock in case Hover was attempting to enter it from the other side. More minutes passed, and the tension rose to become an agony. Wildheit’s fingers were actually on the lock recycle control when the snarl of air indicated Hover’s return.
The returning marshal shook his head as though in a daze. “Let’s get out of here!”
“What happened?” asked Wildheit.
“Something somebody forgot
to tell me. That isn’t space outside the hull—it’s something else. It may have no temperature, but it won’t accept heat either. You quite literally stew yourself with your own body-heat. Try handling the momentum of a hundred kilos of hellburner under those conditions.”
During the conversation, Kasdeya had brought the craft round smartly and back again into the axis of the weapon’s beam. Looking back toward the reactor, the processed star-stuff now shone literally like a sun, catching the craft in a bright beam as it moved out of the shadow of the great irises. There was no knowing when it might fire, but time was obviously running critically short. Using the shaft of light as his sole guidance, Kasdeya gunned the craft straight down the center of the beam at a speed unwisely fast in view of the narrow clearances available to them. Behind them the angry reactor was glowing continuously brighter. Somewhere in front of them a cluster of Ra ships in the gap doubtlessly awaited their emergence.
Then the hellburner triggered.
Contained by the reluctant physics of the junction domain, the reaction was confined to the limits of the accelerator’s former shape, but the entire length of the accelerator lit up like a tubular star, and the provost-craft’s passage between the suddenly incandescent irises had to be effectively blind because the protective polarizers blacked out all the viewports to protect the occupants from extreme radiation levels. Only seconds later the Chaos Weapon itself must have fired, but this time into an accelerator section, the dynamic function of which had already been destroyed. Instead of forming a coherent beam, the burst of entropic energy spread wide, and the small proportion of its spreading cone which hit the provost-craft smote it onward like the blast-force of a great explosion. But that had little effect other than suddenly to boost its already rapidly increasing velocity.
Like a shell from a supersonic cannon, the provost-craft left the mouth of the accelerator tube and before
any sort of control could be gained, it shot straight across the gap and right through the center of the great rolling cage which had black holes instead of ball bearings in its mammoth housing. Bathed as they were in a low concentration of pure entropic radiation, the sudden focusing of even this low degree of flux caused a considerable shock to the occupants as they passed through some crucial point of convergence. The physiological reactions left them all gasping, but it was Hover who managed to sum the sensation.
“You know,” he said, “that could become quite a habit! I felt things I haven’t felt for twenty years at least.”
The chance for the experience to become habit-forming, however, was immediately lost. Released from the constraints of the now-destroyed accelerator tube, the beam from the weapon’s reactor was spreading wide, and within its span was the spinning cage itself. The diverging beam of energy awoke the catastrophes inherent in holding ten black holes in captivity, and this time it was the reactionless junction domain which had to give way. For one incredible moment the combined gravitational forces of the black holes were exposed to each other, and the entire structure crumbled and was swallowed by one large black hole which formed by the fusion of the others into a singular whole.
For some reason, continued irradiation of the black hole by the beam from the reactor negated the reactionless characteristics of the junction domain, and a great gravitational tide from the black hole rushed out to seize the provost-craft, the Ra fleet around the weapon, and even the Chaos Weapon itself. Kasdeya strained at the craft’s controls, desperately urging the last ounce of propulsion from its engines, but it was evident that they were losing ground and being drawn back toward the hole. Most of the Ra ships were even less fortunate, and not being under rower they immediately began to “fall” into the immense gravitational well which had opened up nearby. No amount of late
maneuvering could hope to save them from the gravitational pull of twenty solar masses at such close range.
The most fantastic effect, however, was its attraction for the remains of the Chaos Weapon. Slowly at first, then with increasing rapidity, the great weapon was drawn inexorably into the black hole and was completely consumed by it. As the reactor entered the event-horizon, it ceased to emit the beam of entropy which had caused the black hole to forget it was sited in the reactionless junction domain. With the disappearance of the Chaos Weapon, the domain returned to its own brand of normality, the intense gravity died, and Kasdeya was thankfully able to throttle back the screaming engines and ask Penemue to design a more leisurely course back to the new universe.
Soon they broke through the continuum septum and Cass Hover took over the chore of communications, using FTL equipment which had been added to the craft during refit. He was attempting to send a message to Saraya and Chief-Marshal Delfan, still on Mayo, about the progress of the raid on the Chaos Weapon. Finding it impossible to raise a reply from the lab-ships or the work-ship, he invoked the aid of an FTL relay station, from which he learned that all communications with Mayo appeared to have suffered a blackout.
As a last resort he contacted the Space Force communications chain, only to be told that they were too committed in containing the still-advancing Ra invasion fleets to be able to investigate an isolated instance of communications failure way out on the Rim. The provost-craft’s destination had originally been Chaos-Center on Terra, but on hearing Hover’s concern, Wildheit asked Penemue to calculate a subspace course for Mayo instead, but to hold it in readiness rather than running it.
On the lower deck, Wildheit then called Roamer to him. “I think it’s about time we had some understandings.”
“We do have
understandings, Marshal Jym. But we never get around to putting them into words.”
“Then let’s begin. You knew Mayo didn’t need any liberating from the Federation. And you also knew that if the Ra had won they had no intention of letting the Sensitives continue to exist. So what persuaded you to cooperate with them?”
“Why should I not do so? I also cooperated with you, but you didn’t have anything but destruction to offer the Sensitives either.”
“That’s a peculiar thing to say.”
“It’s the truth, Jym. You can’t see it yet, but the plans to destroy the seers are already laid. Dabria and Saraya have seen to that. With their persuasion, the Federation won’t tolerate the seers any more than would the Ra. Such was the choice presented to me. You are both our enemies, so for us to survive, one must be played off against the other.”
“Played off to what end, Roamer?”
“The liberation of the seers from Mayo—the very liberation Dabria denied us. We need space, Jym, to allow us to develop our special talents. It was toward that end that I agreed to leave Mayo with you, and it’s an aim I’ve held to consistently. The Federation never did have any special claims to my loyalty. In point of fact, I’ve managed to weaken both yourselves and the Ra. That’s the climate the Sensitives need if they’re to develop and build.”
“Build what, Roamer?”
“The universe belongs to the Sensitives, Jym. They’re tomorrow’s people.”
“A fallacy, I’m afraid. The universe belongs only to those strong enough to seize and hold it. All schemes of ambition fail if they ignore this simple fact.”
“It hasn’t been ignored. You knew what you were doing when you set me up against three men of the Ra. You knew as well as I that ten men would have been a fairer match. The Sensitives have the strength to take and hold whatever they need—once they are
free of Mayo. But since you already know this, why pretend you don’t?”
“You’re the one who’s pretending. You’re the one who hopes to lead her people out of captivity to a great bright future in the sky. But you’re a false prophet, little chicken. All you can offer them is struggle and hardship—and the ultimate defeat of their ideals.”