The Eternal Enemy (35 page)

The shock and horror of finding the geltanks was Straka's, and then Markos felt Wilhelm's reaction. He lived their numbing terror as Wilhelm climbed through the opening and plunged his hand into the nearest geltank. The smooth, cold exoskeleton of the Hydran beneath the surface was unmistakable.

Experiencing it through both of them made it difficult for Markos to detach himself emotionally. Numbed by their discovery, Straka and Wilhelm had explored the rest of the ship. Cabin after cabin was filled with geltanks. They poured the vial containing the serum into the gel's recirculating system. They found the ship's bridge at last, unattended, running on automatic. Wilhelm glanced at the small unit mounted in a bulkhead and Markos shared his shock of recognition. Wilhelm immediately recognized it as a NASA 2 navigational computer. He walked toward it slowly, as if afraid it might leap off the bulkhead and make for his throat. He touched it with his hand and probed beneath its surface to investigate its circuits, just to be sure.

Straka found the autopilot, a direct copy of the autopilot developed by NASA 2.

They turned to each other and saw the shock of their discoveries mirrored in each other's eyes.

With a sudden jolt of disorientation, Markos found himself back on the
Paladin,
standing in the rec room, the linkup broken by Straka and Wilhelm.

The metallic taste was overpowering, making him gag, weakening his knees with the shock of understanding and realization.

The others were shouting; blinding colors whipped through the rec room; arms waved and someone grabbed him. He felt himself being lowered to the cool, hard deck, heard someone shouting, “Earth! It's Earth!” over and over. He looked up and saw the calming eyes of the Old One staring down at him, pulsating with colors and patterns that soothed.

Self-control returned a few moments later and he sat up. The panicky argument continued.

“What else could it be?” Jackson screamed.

“It doesn't make any sense,” McGowen shouted. “It doesn't.”

“Earth!” Kominski screamed.

“We were fools! We're finished!” De Sola said.

“It just doesn't make any sense,” McGowen repeated.

They shouted at each other, wanting and needing to express their fears, too wrapped up in yelling and shouting to listen. Markos understood now why Straka and Wilhelm had demanded a linkup.

Dammit! McGowen was right. It didn't make any sense. Earth wouldn't side with the Hydrans. Even if given the opportunity, which is something the Hydrans would never do.

He struggled to his feet and surveyed the room. Martinez was sitting in a chair, hands covering his face, head shaking from side to side as he tried to deal with the truth.

“I was there! It really happened, idiot!” Wilhelm was shouting at McGowen.

This is insane, Markos thought.

“I'm not fighting anymore. That's it. No more,” De Sola said. “No way. We're finished!”

He had to stop them. There had to be another answer. “Quiet!” Markos shouted, unleashing a blast of powerful white light from his eyes.

The crew was silent.

“Earth,” Kominski whimpered.

“Quiet!”

Kominski was silent and took a step away from Markos.

“We don't know that Earth is involved,” Markos said.

“What? You're crazy,” Jackson said.

“Are you serious?” Wilhelm asked.

All at once, Markos thought. They all have to talk at once.

“Will you listen? For once?”

“I've listened to enough of your lies,” Jackson said.

“Jackson!” Markos shouted in warning.

“You know all the answers, don't you?” Jackson said.

Markos swallowed the strong metallic taste.

“Earth,” Kominski said.

Markos wheeled around and emitted a powerful blast of multicolored light from his eyes, which froze Kominski to the spot. All signs of awareness and intelligence vanished from his face.

Everyone froze in fear.

“He'll be all right in a while,” Markos said.

“I'm not fighting Terra,” Martinez said. “I don't care
what
you do to me.”

“No one's asking you to!” Markos shouted. “McGowen's right. It doesn't make any sense. That should be easy enough for all of you to see. Earth would never side with the Hydrans, no matter what. They're not blind. They'd be signing their own death warrant.”

“Then where'd they get the geltanks? And the navigational computer?” Wilhelm asked.

“Not from Earth,” Markos said with some certainty. And with the statement came a sudden realization. “But they could have gotten them from an Earth-based ship.…”

“The missing pod,” Straka said.

“What?” Jackson asked.

“That's it!” Markos said. “That has to be it. It's the only thing that makes any sense.”

“That's crazy,” Katawba said. “The only pod that wasn't accounted for was the one near Tau Ceti. Tau
Ceti
!”

“Yeah. That's way across from this sector of space! It might as well be on the other side of the Galaxy,” Wilhelm said. “No way could it have traveled—what, fifty? Maybe sixty light-years?”

“What was its velocity?” Katawba asked.

“Don't buy this!” Jackson shouted. “What's the matter with you fools? Can't you see what he's trying to do? Those pods had a maximum speed of maybe a quarter light. Wilhelm, am I right?”

Wilhelm nodded.

“There's no way
any
pod could have made it to this sector of space by now.”

“Yeah,” Wilhelm said.

“All right, it may not be exact,” Markos said, “but it makes a lot more sense than Earth being involved, doesn't it? We still don't know what happened to the pod after it telemetered information from Tau Ceti. It found the Habers, and we were sent out to investigate.…”

And then Markos had another realization as everything fell into place. He turned to the Old One.

“Well? What about it, old friend? What did you do with NASA 2's pod?”

“We, we sent the pod to Pi Hydra,” the old Haber said.

“Pi Hydra?” Straka asked. “Why?”

“I, I will explain.” The Old One explained how they had sent the wedge up to intercept the pod, how they had captured it in their bay, and how damaged the Terran inside it had been.

“It had been a long and lonely flight for him,” the Old One said. “At first we, we thought he was a Hydran, a different mutation, but we, we quickly realized he was from another place. He was so badly damaged in his thought processes, it was difficult to make much sense out of what was real and what was not.

“He talked to others who did not exist. When we, we probed his mind we, we found that the people existed inside himself only. It was from him that we, we learned something about Terrans and Terra. There was no question in our, our minds that this Terran was not a Hydran. And yet there were similarities that could not be ignored—aggression, an understanding of the change we, we could not survive—and so we, we decided it would be best to increase his life span, repair what damage we, we could to him and his pod, and send him to the Hydrans.

“We, we hoped his appearance near the Hydrans' home planet would confuse them. We, we hoped they might have concentrated their efforts and expanded in another sector of space. They might have thought that this Terran was a Haber. They might have seen his aggression and thought better of taking our, our planets.

“We, we needed time to develop the mutant strain and we, we hoped that by sending this pod to Pi Hydra we, we could gain valuable time.”

“That's it?” Markos asked. “An attempt to gain time?”

“No,” the Old One said. “There is something else. We, we feared the Terrans too. Aggression is such a strange concept. It was so totally beyond our, our comprehension then. We, we feared what might happen if we, we returned him to his home planet. There were so many confusing and violent images in his mind of that place. We, we just could not afford to let him go back, and we, we could not just leave him there to die.”

Markos was shocked. How could they have been so naive? But even as he thought that question, he realized they were Habers, without any understanding of the change in which they were involved.

Straka shook her head slowly from side to side. “You didn't help, Old One. Your interference has only made it more difficult for us now.”

Increased his life span? Markos thought.

“I, I am sorry for that, but you must understand that we, we were alone against these creatures—”

“Even so,” Jackson said. “Sending him out there in hopes he could lure the Hydrans to Earth.” There was no mistaking the disgust in his voice.

“No,” the Old One said. “That is not what we, we meant to do. And that is not what I, I said.”

“This man you examined,” Markos said. “You mentioned something about increasing his lifespan?”

The Old One flashed red.

“By how many years?”

“What's the difference?” Straka asked.

“Two thousand,” the Old One said.

The shock showed on Markos's face as a chill ran up his spine. Two thousand meant that there was a chance, no matter how slim it seemed, that the man on board NASA 2's first-wave exploratory pod was still alive.

Still alive.

“We at least have to look for the poor son of a bitch,” Straka said, saying it for all of them.

27

Translation from tau to real occurred one billion kilometers from Pi Hydra, close enough to be well inside the star's gravitational field, far enough out to be safe from detection by any inhabited planets closer in. The drop in speed was undetectable, and as they sat at their battle stations, all systems on board were fully operational.

McGowen sat in the weapons chair, its converted headpiece covering his multifaceted multiple eyes. Jackson was keyed up, ready to accelerate the mother ship at a moment's notice. Martinez had five alternate courses laid into the navigational computer in case they were needed for offensive or defensive maneuvers. De Sola stared intently at the panel of lights before him as he monitored the ship's operating and detection systems. Markos sat in the command chair, tuned to each of his crew, to the ship's status, to the space they had just translated into.

Straka and Wilhelm occupied H-l, ready to launch. Kominski and Markatens occupied H-2, facing the other direction, ready to serve as rear guard or backup. Katawba sat alone in H-3, serving as second backup should anything happen to H-l.

The Old One was attached to the deck on the bridge by Markos's side, prepared for possible acceleration in case maneuvering was required. They had known what to expect immediately after translation to real—their sensors showed they would enter unoccupied space, with no solid bodies within 100,000 kilometers, the range of their intermediate sensors.

A good enough safety margin, Markos thought as he stared into the space that filled the screens around him.

Pi Hydra was visible as a bright, tiny disk directly before them.

“Let's start the planet search,” Markos said.

“Right,” De Sola said.

De Sola pressed a touchplate on his panel and three computer-generated circles appeared on the screen.

“Magnify the one on the left,” Markos said.

The circle expanded until it filled the forward screen. Within it was a disk, a planet covered in clouds.

“Doesn't look like much. Try the one closer in.”

De Sola returned the screens to their original mode, then zeroed in on the next planet. Under full magnification it didn't seem to have an atmosphere—no clouds, no bodies of water. It was distinctly smaller than the first one they'd observed.

“Where's the third?” Markos asked.

De Sola shook his head. “Too close to Pi Hydra. Even with a K-type star, odds are against it supporting life.”

“Then what about the first one we viewed? Any orbital data on it?”

“Some. It's about one hundred and twenty million kilometers from Pi Hydra.”

“Pretty far,” Markos said.

“Right on the borderline for a biosphere,” De Sola said.

“Period of rotation?”

“Not enough data for an extrapolation yet.”

“Anything more at this point?”

“Not really,” De Sola said. “Bring us in closer and I'll see what I can do.”

“Course?” Markos asked Martinez.

“Laid in.”

“Okay, Jackson. Bring us within short-range sensor probes.”

“Right,” Jackson said.

They felt the slight push of acceleration.

Markos glanced back at his monitor panel and saw that everything was fine. “Screens back to normal mode,” he said.

The screens returned to normal. They watched as the small speck of light slowly increased in size until it became a disk.

“Starting deceleration now,” Jackson said. “Unless you want us in closer.”

“We within range?” Markos asked.

“Yes,” De Sola said.

“All right, Jackson. Decelerate.”

Jackson touched the control plate, and the mother ship came to a relative stop.

“Well, De Sola? Anything yet?”

“Yes. Sidereal period, estimated at two hundred and twenty-seven days. Diameter estimated at eleven thousand two hundred kilometers. No visible satellites. Need more?”

“No. It sounds close enough for a habitable planet circling a K-type star.”

Markos was certain they'd found the Hydrans' home. “Bring us into a close orbit, De Sola and Jackson.”

They both acknowledged Markos's command and after De Sola calculated the proper approach with the navigational computer and laid in the course, Jackson activated the engines. Markos sat calmly, watching the planet grow in the screens as they made their approach.

“Keep a close watch, McGowen,” Markos said.

“No problem.”