The Tar-aiym Krang (16 page)

“You mean you’ve got a
gun
on this tub?” shouted Tse-Mallory. “What kind? Where? Speak up, mercantilist! Implosion weapons, particle guns, missile tubes, explosive projectiles, rocks . . . Tru and I will handle it!”

“
Je?
I hope so. Listen to me. Behind your cabins,
naam,
storage compartment. There’s a walkway, it opens into the cargo balloon. Then a pullway. Go to the end of the main pullway, you can’t get lost. You’ll find branches there. Be careful, there’s no gravity in that part of the ship. Take the one that goes ninety degrees north of your horizontal. At the top you’ll find a medium charge interstice laser, mounted on a universal belt encircling the ship. I’m powering it now.” He paused momentarily while his hands did things below the range of the camera’s pickup.

“It is a single-person mounting. Sorry, philosoph. But you could help him with the computer. If he doesn’t have to watch the imageouts and battlescreen at the same time . . .”

The two men of peace were already on their way.

Malaika uttered a silent prayer in the hopes that the two scientists wouldn’t cut up the ship and turned back to his tables.

“How are we doing, Wolf?”

“They’re still closing, sir. Not as rapidly now that we’ve picked up our own speed, but still closing. You want to go on maximum?”

“No. No, not yet. That’s strictly our last gasp, if we need it. Let them continue to think the
Glory’
s just another freighter for awhile. First I want to see what our braincases can do with the popgun.”

The braincases in question were making their way along the pullway at breakneck speed. Fortunately, there was no drifting cargo to impede their progress. The great metal-fabric enclosure was almost completely empty. A few cases drifted lazily in their spiderweb enclosures, giving the pale green cavern and its ghostly atmosphere a tinge of perspective. The feeling was enhanced by the lighting, or lack of it. Since this area of the ship, although by far the largest, was rarely visited except upon arriving or departing a cargo stop, the lighting was kept to a minimum. Even so it would have been lost in the cargo compartment of one of the great “Soaring Sun” class freighters.

They had no trouble locating the correct branch-way at the end nexus of the main one. It was the only strand headed remotely in the required direction. Tse-Mallory launched himself upward and began to float up to the rope. He reached out and began to pull himself rapidly upward, hand over hand. Truzenzuzex, he knew, would be right behind him. With its four hands the insect could go faster than he, but there was no reason for him to pass Bran since he couldn’t operate the human-contoured gun nearly as well.

They reached the gun housing, a sphere of thick metal like a blister in the skin of the ship. It had its own emergency power and air supply. Far off to both sides he could see where the mounting’s powered belt encircled the skin of the vessel. Moving along that belt the gun could cover an approaching threat from any angle. He had only a second to wonder what it was doing on a private yacht before he was inside the shell and buckling himself into the gunseat. Truzenzuzex secured the hatch behind them, moving to the computer imageouts to Bran’s left. A more modern weapon would have had both combined in a single helmet-set that would fit down over the gunner’s head. The insect began to cannibalize braces, locks, and belts from the emergency compartments, until he had built himself a reasonably solid harness opposite the ‘puter.

Bran wrapped his right hand around the pressure trigger with all the fondness of a proud father caressing his newborn. His left went into the battlescreen sensory pickup. He let go of the trigger for a moment, reluctantly, to tighten the nerve sensors around his spread left hand. He flexed it once to make sure the pickups didn’t pinch and then returned the right to the trigger grip. Next began a careful examination of the screen and dial scopes. It was definitely an early model, but then laser weapons hadn’t changed much in their basic design for several centuries, and probably wouldn’t in several more. The base design was too cheap and efficient. He had no doubt that he could operate this one effectively on the first try. Come to that, he’d damn well have to! Their pursuers weren’t likely to give them a practice shot.

Under impulses from his left hand the battlescreen lit. He was gratified to see that his combat reflexes, at least, were still operative. On the screens were two dots the size of his thumbnail. For a moment he almost panicked, thinking he was back on the old Twenty-Five. If an opposing ship had managed to approach this close in a war situation they’d have been vaporized by now. But then, this wasn’t a war situation. At least not yet. He put that unpleasant line of thought out of his mind. Something for the diplomats to sharpen their tongues on. Obviously neither of the approaching ships had expectations of meeting even token resistance. It was simply a game of catch-up. They came on openly and without caution. Possibly, hopefully, they also had their screens down or at least underpowered.

From his left Truzenzuzex began rattling off a stream of figures and coordinates. One of the destroyers was slightly nearer than the other. The sloppy formation was the inevitable result of overconfidence on the enemy’s part. Bran began lining up a center shot. His finger hesitated over the trigger, and he spoke into the intership mike.

“Look, Malaika. These people are here after something, and since we’ve only got one something worth risking an interstellar incident over, they’re going to want us in one piece. I don’t expect them to start any reckless shooting. They’re coming in as if all they expect to have to do is net us like a clipped
Geech
bird. I’ve played with the AAnn before. They’re not overimaginative, but they think damn fast. That means one good shot and one only, and then we’d better run like hell. How close can you let them get while still giving us an outside chance to break their detection? Assuming they’ll be sufficiently confused to let us.”

Malaika calculated rapidly in his head. “Um . . . um . . .
mara kwa mara .
. . that Riidi fellow will have to decide whether to blow us to atoms or make another try . . . the latter, I don’t doubt . . .
has
to take us alive, or not at all . . . I can give you another two mils distance. La, one and a half, now.”

“Good enough,” said Tse-Mallory concentrating on the screen. It would have to be, he thought. “We’ll know it back here when the ‘puter hits it.” Malaika didn’t reply.

“That will bring us down almost to . . . to three,” said Truzenzuzex.

“I supposed. Let me know when we reach three point one.”

“Time enough?”

Tse-Mallory grinned. “Ole bug-wug, me friend, my reflexes have slowed down through the years, but dead yet they ain’t! It’ll be enough. Up the universe!”

“Up the universe!” came the even reply.

In Control, Malaika turned to Wolf, his face thoughtful.

“You heard?”

The shadow-man nodded.

“All right then. Start slowing down. Yes, slowing down! If he says he’s going to get only one shot, he’s probably going to get only one shot, and I want him to have as good a line as possible. So let’s make it look nearly as we can as though we’re giving up the chase.”

Obediently, Wolf began cutting their speed. Slowly, but the AAnn computers would notice it.

“Three point seven . . . three point six . . .” Truzenzuzex’s voice recited the figures with machinelike precision and clarity.

Bran’s body was steady, but he was trembling ever so slightly inside. He
was
older.

“Tru, uh, did you spot any HIP drugs in that emergency locker?”

“Heightened IP? Three point five . . . you know that stuff’s almost as carefully watched as the SCCAM circuitry. Oh, there’s some of the bastard stuff back there, the kind that’s available on any black market. All that will do, my friend, to borrow a saying, is ‘screw up your bod’ . . . three point four . . . not to mention your reflexes . . . screw it down, more likely. Relax.”

“I know, I know!” His eyes never left the screen. “But, vertebrae, I wish I had some now!”

“Obscenity is better . . . three point three . . . pretend you’re back at the University working over old man Novy’s thesis. That ought to generate enough anger for you to take those ships apart with your bare hands . . .”

Bran smiled, and the tenseness left him. Back at the University old professor Novy had been one of their pet animosities.

“. . . three point two. . . .”

He could see the bastard’s ugly face now. He wondered what had finally happened to the old boy after. . . . His finger tightened on the trigger.

“. . . three poi. . . .”

Already the pressure-stud was being depressed.

In the nothingness of nowhere a lancet of emerald green brighter than a sun leaped from the
Gloryhole
across a second of infinity. A milli-instant later it impinged on the drive fan of the nearest AAnn warship, which happened to be the
Unn.
There was a soundless flash of impossible scintillating gold flame, like the waves of tortured hydrogen that march across the skin of stars. It was followed by an explosion of vaporized solids and an expanding, rapidly diffusing cloud of ionized gas.

The battlescreen showed one white dot and one tiny nebula.

In the gun housing, Bran was frantically trying to reline the laser for a shot at the second ship, but he never got a real chance.

At the instant of silent destruction, Malaika had permitted himself one violent cry of “
Oseee-yeee!”

Then, “Wolf; Atha, get us
moving, watu!”
Atha slammed over a connection and the
Gloryhole
leaped forward at her maximum acceleration.

On the still existing AAnn ship, the
Arr,
panic reigned only in those areas of the vessel where Baron Riidi WW’s control was peripheral. Around him the crew only reflected fatal resignation. The one pleasant thought in all their minds was what they would do to the people on their quarry once the commander and the techs had extracted whatever it was they wanted from them. None glanced at the Baron’s face for fear of meeting his eyes.

The Baron’s polished claws scraped idly at the scales on his left arm. There was a voipickup set by the right one.

“Enginemaster,” he said calmly into the grid, “full power, please. Everything you can spare from the screens.” He did not bother to inquire if they were now up.

He turned back to the huge battlescreen which dominated the bridge. On it a white dot had shrunk rapidly but had not succeeded in disappearing completely. Now, it could not. Without taking his eyes from the screen he addressed the crew over the comm-system.

“No one is to blame for the loss of the
Unn.
Not expecting interspace weaponry on a private craft of that type, only debris screens were up. That error has since been rectified. The enemy is faster than originally estimated. It apparently hoped to pass out of detector range in the confusion engendered by the loss of our sister-ship. This has not occured. It
will
not occur. We are through playing polite. Bend your tails to it, gentlemen, we have a ship to catch! And when we have done I can promise you at least some interesting entertainment!”

Inspired, the crew of the
Arr
dipped to their tasks with a will.

Bran cursed once, briefly, as the surviving AAnn ship shrank out of range.

Truzenzuzex was busily disengaging himself from his makeshift harness. “Relax, brother. You did as well as we’d hoped. Better. They had their screens down, all right, or they wouldn’t have gone up like that. We must have hit their generator dead on. Metamorphosis, what a show!”

Tse-Mallory took the advice and relaxed as well as he could. “Yes. Yes, you’re perfectly correct, Tru. A second time we wouldn’t have been so lucky. If we’d had a second time.”

“Quite so. I suggest now a return to our cabins. This toy will be of no further use. If we had a
real
gun, now . . . oh, well. After you, Bran.”

Truzenzuzex had reopened the hatch and they dived down the pullway. Heading back through the murky green hollows they missed Malaika’s congratulations as they poured over the now untended mike in the gunshell.

“Ships and novas, ships and novas! By the tail of the Black Horse nebula! They
did
it! Those effete, simple, peace-loving
nduguzuri did
it! Taking out a warship with one shot from that antique!” He shook his head. “We may not get out of this but, by
mitume,
the prophets, those lizards’ll know they’ve been in a fight!”

Wolf brought the merchant back to reality. Not that his mind had ever really left it, but his spirit had—momentarily. It had been refreshing, anyway.

“They’re beginning to pick up on us again, sir. Slower than before. Much slower. But we’re running on everything we have and they’re still making up distance on us.”

Atha nodded concurrence. “The screen may not show it yet, but it’s here in the readouts. At this rate we’ve got maybe three—no, four hours before they’re within paralysisbeam range.”

“
Je!
That’s it, then.
Pepongapi?
How many evil spirits?”

He sat down in his seat. Once they got that close they’d make mummies out of everyone on board and then unwrap their minds at their leisure. The methods might vary, but they would undoubtedly be unique in their unpleasantness. That could not be permitted to happen. As soon as the AAnn got that close he’d see to it that everyone had a sufficiently lethal dose of something from med supply to insure that questioning would remain an impossibility. Or possibly a laser would be better. Burned down to ashes, the AAnn technicians, good as they might be, couldn’t reconstruct. Yes, that was a better choice. After he finished with everyone else he’d have to make certain not to miss the brain. He’d have only the one shot. Better start looking for a mirror, Maxim!

If there were only some way they could pick up enough speed to swing out of detector range! Even if only for a few microseconds, it might be enough. Space was vast. Given that one precious interval the
Gloryhole
should easily shake her pursuers. Unconsciously, he put his hand over Atha’s.