The Prison in Antares (14 page)

“He
does
seem calm,” said Pretorius. “It could be because of his weakened condition, or all the drugs they probably fed him to loosen his tongue. Or maybe he's just a damned good actor.” He turned to Proto. “What do
you
think?”

“I am not human myself,” answered Proto. “Other than physical features I wouldn't begin to know what to look for.”

“Point taken,” said Pretorius. “Well, we'll just keep an eye on him. And on the goddamned pursuit.”

“Is there any?” asked Snake.

“Not that Pandora or I have been able to pick up,” he answered. “They've got to know by now that he's gone.”

“Then why—?” asked Ortega and let the word hang.

“See what I mean?” replied Pretorius. He turned to Irish. “I hate to say something like the fate of a few hundred million Men is in your hands,” he began, “but the truth of the matter is that the fate of a few hundred million Men
is
in your hands. This is your ball game. Even if he's truly Nmumba, even if he can pass a DNA test, that doesn't mean he's not working, willingly or unknowingly, for the Transkei Coalition.” He shrugged. “It's up to you.”

“I'll do my best,” she said.

“I know you will,” answered Pretorius.

“It just damned well better be good enough,” added Snake.

“And on that happy, supportive note, let's grab some lunch,” said Pretorius. “No one's coming at us. The computer will alert me if I have to get back here in a hurry.” He stared at it. “Damn! I wish Pandora was here now.”

“What is it?” asked Irish tensely.

“I want it to tell me if Nmumba is closer to it than I am, and I don't know how.”

“Why should that matter?”

“It depends on where his loyalties lie at this minute, on any posthypnotic suggestions they may have planted,” replied Pretorius. “If he's been programmed to sabotage anyone who rescued him, I don't want him near the computer.”

“We'll just keep watch,” said Irish.

“Oh, hell, I'll grab my meal and eat it at the controls,” offered Ortega.

“And drool all over them,” said Snake.

“Okay,
you
sit there,” he responded.

“No, you're a lot less approachable for anyone who doesn't know the two of you,” said Pretorius. “You sit there, Felix.”

“What do you mean, ‘for anyone who doesn't know us'?” demanded Ortega.

Pretorius smiled. “She fights dirty.”

Ortega considered the answer for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I'll sit there.”

Irish stared at the oversized Ortega, who was almost fifty percent machine, and the diminutive Snake, who could fold herself to fit into a small overnight bag, and the alien Proto, who could project the most terrifying shapes and images but in truth was barely twenty inches high, and not for the first time she wondered just what kind of crew she'd become part of, or what she would have to do to ever fit into this odd group known as the Dead Enders.

19

The ship was nearing the boundary between the Transkei Coalition and the Neutral Zone. They'd been traveling for almost two days without incident, and Pretorius, who had expected immediate pursuit, was finally beginning to relax.

“The damned train ran without stopping the whole time we tracked it,” he was saying during breakfast in the galley. “They've got to have found the bodies by now, but we've passed maybe forty other Antarean ships since we left the planet with Edgar. They're at least a day behind, and even if they alert the military out near the border, they don't know what kind of ship they're looking for.”

“I think we should change ships once we hit the Neutral Zone,” said Snake.

“I agree,” said Pretorius. “No sense making it all the way to the Democracy only to have some would-be patriot blow us apart.” He turned to Nmumba. “Well, let's have the bad news.”

“Bad news?” repeated Nmumba with a puzzled expression.

“By now they know we've got you. Clearly you didn't tell them everything you know or they'd have killed you. So how long before they build a Q bomb that you
can't
neutralize?”

“Whatever they make next, it won't be a Q bomb,” said Nmumba with certainty. “They'll need an entirely new principle. My method will neutralize any variation of what they've been using.”

“What do you
think
they'll come up with next?” persisted Pretorius.

Nmumba smiled. “Since it will require an entirely new principle, one that hasn't been tested or even theorized yet, I can't even hazard a guess, except that it will be totally different, probably in its effect as well as its detonation.”

“I'm not following this,” said Snake. “Give us an example.”

“The Q bomb can vaporize a continent in a matter of seconds,” answered Nmumba. “It is, in effect, an absolutely huge blast. The next one may be totally silent, but might poison the atmosphere of an entire world, or create an instant ice age, or quickly dry up every drop of water—always assuming the population needs water, and about eighty percent of the inhabited worlds do. Or it may escape detection by coming to the planet in three or four discrete parts, none of which creates any problem or sets off any alarms until they join a day, a week, or even a month later.” He paused. “As I say, different principles.”

“I'd say we got you out of there just in time,” said Ortega. “Who the hell knows how close they are to that shit?”

“It'll take more than me to come up with defenses against all those possibilities,” replied Nmumba. “I was incredibly fortunate to have stumbled on the principles governing the Q bomb at the same time they were developing it.”

“We'll settle for that,” said Pretorius.

“Uh . . . better not relax or celebrate too soon,” said Pandora, studying her instrument panel. “A military vessel's approaching.”

“Can they read Edgar's DNA from beyond the ship?” asked Pretorius.

“I doubt it,” replied Pandora. “They'd have it on record, but they can't read it without taking some kind of sampling, however miniscule.”

“Maybe they're looking for him, maybe they're not,” said Pretorius. “But we're Men in enemy territory, and the goddamned ship isn't armed!”

“So what do I do?” asked Pandora.

“Give me a second to think,” said Pretorius. “How far are we from the Neutral Zone?”

“In a straight line, maybe fifteen hours.”

“Okay, what's our alternative to a straight line?”

“There's a wormhole about half an hour away,” she said. “We can beat them to it, might even outrun their weaponry . . .”

“But?” he said. “There's a ‘but' in there.”

“But it's not mapped on this ship's computer. It's there, but I don't know where it leads.”

“Head for it, full speed.”

“You're sure?” she asked.

“Consider the alternative,” he replied.

The ship sped forward, and they all gathered to watch the viewscreen, even though the wormhole was invisible.

“How are we doing?” asked Pretorius after ten minutes had passed.

“They're just following us, as if they're curious about why we'd head for the wormhole,” answered Pandora. “They're not in hot pursuit.”

“Figures,” he said. She looked at him questioningly. “They don't know we're humans,” he added.

“Of course,” she said.

“Stay on course anyway,” he said. “If we slow down now, they're bound to want to know why we were headed for the damned thing.”

“Right.”

Two minutes later the military ship gave them an order to stop.

“Ignore it,” said Pretorius.

Two minutes after that, the ship began firing.

“We seem to be just beyond their range,” said Pandora. “I think we'll make it to the hole.”

“Will they follow us?” asked Ortega.

“Not likely,” replied Pretorius. “First, if this damned hole isn't on our charts, it might not be on theirs either, and for all they know they'll emerge in the Democracy. More to the point, if we emerge first, and of course we will, we can be waiting to blow them away. They don't know for a fact that we're not armed.”

They reached the wormhole in another four minutes, and the military ship turned away just before they entered it.

“Well, that's that,” said Pretorius.

“Hell, maybe we'll luck out and emerge in the Neutral Zone,” said Snake.

“Or maybe even the Democracy,” added Ortega.

“Let's just hope we can dope out our position when we're finally out of it,” said Pandora. “We're a little low on food, and while I haven't visited the hydroponics section, we're not producing oxygen in the quantities I'd like. We've not about to asphyxiate, but we really should add to the plants. I'd hate to emerge in a totally unpopulated sector.”

“You mean we
might
?” asked Proto.

“If you've got a way to chart a wormhole before you come out the other end, I wish you'd share it with us,” said Pretorius.

“How long might it take to find sources of food?”

“It depends on what's at the other end of the hole,” said Pretorius.

“And plants?” continued Proto.

“Same thing.”

“You don't make it sound very urgent,” commented Nmumba.

“We're safe for the moment,” replied Pretorius. “
That
was urgent.”

“I've got to get back to the Democracy,” said Nmumba.

“You will.”

“Quickly,” he continued. “I learned some things there, things that might be vital.”

“We'll do our best,” said Pretorius. “The main thing is, we're out of Coalition territory.” He paused and frowned. “At least, I hope we are.”

They traveled through the wormhole for six hours, and emerged . . .
somewhere.

“We're sure as hell not in the Democracy,” announced Pandora, studying her instruments. “Not in the Coalition either, as far as I can tell.”

“When should we know?” asked Pretorius.

She shrugged. “Once we get a fix on the major stars, it shouldn't be too long. Ten minutes, I hope. Certainly no more than half an hour.”

After thirty minutes had passed, Pandora looked up from her panel.

“Still no luck,” she announced.

“What the hell is going on?” muttered Pretorius.

They found out what the hell was going on in another fifteen minutes.

“As near as the computer can tell,” said Pandora, “that wormhole chucked us three-quarters of the way across the galaxy. Probably things live here, but we've never contacted them or run into them. Officially this is one hundred percent empty space.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Snake.

“Only one thing we
can
do,” answered Pretorius. “We go back through the wormhole.”

“What?”
demanded Nmumba.

“No choice,” said Pretorius. “No Democracy ship has ever been in this region. We don't have charts on any other wormholes, and if we try to go home through real space, it'll take us about seven hundred and fifty thousand years at light speed to get there.”

“Great minds think alike,” replied Pandora. “I've already reversed course and headed back to the wormhole.”

“But the Antareans will almost certainly be waiting for us!” protested Nmumba. “There
must
be a faster way back to the Democracy.”

“You're the genius,” said Pretorius. “You tell us one, we'll give it a shot. I'm not anxious to go right back into a hole where the enemy might be waiting for us at the other end.”

“Can a neophyte offer a suggestion?” said Irish.

“Sure,” said Pretorius.

“Except for getting home your mission is accomplished,” she said. “You've
got
the man you came to get. Why not find a habitable planet and set down on it for a month before going back? By then they should have giving up waiting for us to reemerge.”

“Makes sense,” said Pretorius. “If he didn't break, and you say it looks like he didn't, no one's going to be exploding any Q bombs.”

“I
like
that idea,” agreed Pandora, and Snake nodded her approval.

“No!”
shouted Nmumba.

All eyes turned to him.

“We can't wait! I
have
to get to Deluros!”

“Irish makes sense,” said Pretorius. “They'll be watching that hole for days, especially if
they've
ever mapped it. They'll know we have to come back out or die of old age in the farthest reaches of the galaxy. This will lower the odds against us.”

Nmumba shook his head. “It's unacceptable. I
have
to get to Deluros!”

“You'll get there,” said Pretorius irritably. “You just won't get there this week.”

Nmumba began pacing around the deck, ranting that he couldn't wait, that his information was vital. He bumped against Ortega, and when he'd resumed his original position he displayed the burner he'd removed from Ortega's holster.

“I'm through arguing,” he said, pointing it at Pretorius. “You—” he nodded his head toward Pandora “—get us to the Democracy.”

“The only way I can do it in our lifetime is through the wormhole,” she answered.

“Then take it. We can't wait.”

She looked at Pretorius, who nodded his consent.

“You!” he said as Snake began reaching for her screecher. “Drop it!”

Snake seemed to consider his order for a moment. Then, with a shrug, she dropped the weapon so close to her that she could reach him if he tried to collect it.

“Speed it up!” Nmumba ordered Pandora. “I'm not going to die on this goddamned ship!”

“Who do you think wants to kill you?” asked Pretorius.