Alien Bounty (21 page)

And having done so, it was Reba who worked hand-in-hand with Henry to remove the lifeboat's drive and install it in the freighter.

McCade worked hard as well, but his tasks were more routine and left him time to think. And the more he thought, the more he believed that they still had a chance. If so, Henry would be the key.

But there was no point in discussing something like that until the ship was repaired.

Time passed, work went on, and final tests were run. Then as the drive hummed, and the main accumulators built up a charge, he popped the question.

The control room was the only part of the ship that would still hold an atmosphere and the three of them were sitting around with their helmets off. Since none of them had bathed in three days, the stink was terrible, but it felt good to escape the close confinement of their helmets. "Henry . . . I've got a question for you."

Henry had reverted to his smaller control module configuration and popped out of the console like a prairie dog coming out of its hole. He waved his single arm by way of a greeting. "Sure, Sam. What's up?"

"Does Pong have another base?"

"Yes he does," Henry said matter-of-factly. "His main base is in the heart of the Nakasoni Asteroid Belt. As a matter of fact this asteroid is located on the outer fringes of the great Nakasoni, which is why Pong used it. He needed a place where his business associates could come and go without learning the location of his home base."

Both Reba and Neem were suddenly paying attention. Neem was staring at Henry with an intensity that would've made a human somewhat nervous. "And the course to Pong's base . . . do you know it?"

Henry looked from Neem to McCade and back again. "Of course I know it . . . I'm a NAVCOMP IN7808/L, aren't I?"

There was zero G inside the ship and that made the space sled easy to handle. McCade used small squirts of nitrogen to hold it in place as he waited for the hatch to open.

Outside, the Nakasoni Asteroid Belt stretched off for thousands of miles. And somewhere inside that vast drift of tumbling planetoids was Pong's secret base and, with any luck at all, the Vial of Tears.

McCade fought back the fatigue that threatened to roll over him and tongued another stim tab. This was number five, or was it six? It was hard to tell since the last few days had become one long blur of nonstop effort.

Sleep. He'd give anything to sleep, but sleep takes time, and time was slipping away. If they moved now, and if the plan worked, there was still a chance to recover the vial and prevent war.

Pong had done pretty well for himself since deserting the Brotherhood, but he'd made some mistakes too. The first was his decision to junk Henry, the second was his murder of Ceex, the third was his destruction of
Pegasus,
and the fourth was leaving McCade alive after committing the first three.

The hatch was wide open now. It served to frame the nearer asteroids and the starfield beyond. There were thousands of asteroids out there, ranging in size from small ones a mile or so in diameter, to larger specimens, some of which were five hundred times that size. And, just to keep things interesting, the asteroids were in constant motion relative to the sun and each other. So, if you didn't know the right way in, you could have one helluva time finding your way out, and that wasn't all. There could be man-made hazards as well.

And that's why Henry and he were about to undertake a one NAVCOMP, one man scouting mission.

McCade chinned his mike. "Thinks for the lift. Don't bother to see us out, we know the way."

"That's a roger," Reba replied. "Neem sends his best. You two take care of yourselves. We'll meet you here in two standards,
Methuselah
willing."

Every ship should have a name, and since the freighter was old, more than a little crotchety, and very dependent on the goodwill of a supreme being,
Methuselah
had seemed perfect.

They had a plan although the word "plan" implied more order and logic than seemed apparent now. The heady realization that Henry could lead them to Pong's hidden base had been followed by an equally sobering discovery.

Henry knew how to get there, but he didn't remember what sort of defenses they might encounter, how many ships Pong had under his command, or anything else of military value.

As a partially sentient computer Henry was largely self-programming. That meant that while he had a predetermined "purpose" he was free to decide which areas of knowledge might be useful to the fulfillment of his mission and which wouldn't. And although Henry didn't like to admit it, the size of his memory was limited, and that forced him to make choices about what he'd remember and what he wouldn't. And while he'd stored away the long strings of numbers necessary to find his way through the great Nakasoni to Pong's base, he hadn't seen fit to memorize whatever defenses lay along the path. On a large cruiser those matters were the province of other computers and not his concern.

So the decision was made to equip a modified space sled with extra oxygen that would allow McCade to scout the path into the asteroid belt. Henry would come along to guide him in and out again.

In the meantime Reba and Neem would take a short hyperspace jump to the nearest Imperial outpost and request help. Marshaling whatever forces were available, they would return and rendezvous with McCade and Henry. An assault on Pong's base would follow.

That was the plan anyway, and it might even work. If it didn't, McCade would spend eternity circling Cypra II with a few thousand asteroids for company.

Even though his part of the plan was fairly chancy, McCade wondered if Reba and Neem's was even worse. After all, a hyperspace shift involves a certain amount of risk even in a well-maintained ship, and
Methuselah
was anything but "well maintained."

One malfunction and they'd end up in a place that mathematicians were still arguing about. It wasn't a pleasant prospect.

When Reba spoke it seemed as if she were reading his mind. "If we don't show up, feel free to go ahead without us."

"Gee, thanks," McCade replied dryly.

"How's the Geezer?" The voice belonged to Henry. Having resurrected the freighter's moronic NAVCOMP, he'd named it "the Geezer. " All the Geezer had to do was plot a single jump, but Henry still didn't trust him.

"The Geezer's lookin' good," Reba said. "He just cycled his self-diagnostics and says he's in great shape. Says he'll be plotting jumps long after you've been recycled into a coffee pot."

Henry gave a snort of derision but lapsed into silence as McCade squeezed both handgrips and launched the tiny sled into the vastness of space. After putting some distance between himself and the ship, McCade released the left grip for a second and then both grips together. The sled turned left and drifted forward on inertia alone.

Methuselah
was a black shadow against the stars beyond. "I'm clear."

"Roger," Reba replied. "Take care, Sam. We'll see you soon."

McCade watched as Reba fed power to the ship's single drive and
Methuselah
merged with the blackness of space.

A vast loneliness welled up inside McCade as he watched the ship disappear. Without his companions he was smaller somehow, the smallest and least significant microorganism in the vast ocean of space, and almost completely helpless.

It was Henry who snapped him out of it. The NAVCOMP was attired in a modified version of his control console body. He still resembled a round metal ball with a single articulated limb, but he'd added a small solar collector to augment his battery power, and some wiring to access the sled's primitive control system. He was strapped down beneath McCade's seat.

Henry would take the controls from here on out, freeing McCade to observe and watch for trouble. One of five sleds they'd found stored away in a ruined dome, theirs was designed for external ship repairs or ship-to-ship errands. As such it had no hull, no weapons, and no padding for the skeletal seats.

McCade shifted his weight and tried to find a more comfortable position. His skin was raw where the suit had rubbed against it for the last four days, he had a nonstop urge to scratch places he couldn't reach, and even after the stim tab he was still bone-tired.

"Sam, if you'll release the controls, I'll take over."

McCade released the controls. "You've got the con, Henry . . . take it away."

And Henry did. Using the sled's rudimentary sensors to see where he was going, the NAVCOMP brought the sled up to half speed and headed into the asteroid belt.

The ride quickly became one of the most exhilarating and terrifying trips of McCade's life. He'd taken a number of short trips into open space, some on sleds and some in armor alone. But he'd never gone farther than a few miles and help had always been seconds away. Now he was setting off on a journey of hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles, and doing it through a twisting, turning maze of asteroids.

Although miles apart, many of the asteroids were in sight of each other, and that added to the sensation of movement as McCade passed between them. Time lost all its meaning as the hours rolled swiftly by and the readouts for his oxygen tanks steadily unwound.

Distant specks of reflected light grew larger and larger until they blocked the starfield beyond and hurtled by a few hundred feet to one side or the other. Bright sunlight slid across the surface of slowly tumbling asteroids creating an endless dance of light and dark. It was beautiful, so beautiful that McCade became lost in the majesty of it, and almost missed the first sensor station.

All he had was the momentary impression of light glinting off a metal surface and then it was gone. "Slow down, Henry, and make a note that we just passed some sort of sensor emplacement. Chances are there's more up ahead."

And there were. Moving more cautiously now, Henry eased his way between the asteroids, giving McCade a chance to spot the sensors. They came at regular intervals and each installation looked the same. They consisted of a metal box crammed with electronics, a flowerlike solar collector, and a thicket of shiny antennas.

Thanks to the sensors Pong would receive a running progress report on any ships approaching or leaving his base. When the attack came he'd have lots of warning. It couldn't be helped though. There were way too many emplacements for McCade to destroy by himself, and even if he found a way to do it, the act itself would be a warning.

There was also the possibility that the sensors had picked up the sled and were tracking it all the way. But the sled had very little mass, no radio signature, and its nitrogen-gas propulsion system didn't put out any heat.

So, unless he began a series of loops and barrel rolls, the sensors would probably ignore him. Since this was an asteroid belt, pieces of flying junk were a centime a dozen.

Suddenly the asteroid belt began to close in on itself. Now the rocks were only miles apart, and even though Henry had slowed the sled to a virtual crawl, they seemed to flash by at incredible speed.

Then McCade saw them, one, two, three weapons emplacements up ahead, all positioned to place ships in a cross fire as they came through the narrow passage.

Speaking in a quiet monotone, McCade began to feed Henry information. The NAVCOMP would put it together with the relevant navigational coordinates and produce a detailed report on Pong's defenses.

"The outer ring of weapons emplacements appear to be automated," McCade noted, "since there's no sign of associated living quarters. There could be concealed living quarters somewhere underground of course, but I don't think so. There's none of the junk that seems to pile up when sentients are about.

"Now we're passing through the narrowest part of the passageway. I don't see any fortifications here. That makes sense because opposing emplacements would end up firing on each other.

"Now things are loosening up a bit, wait a minute there's something shiny up ahead; uh-oh, I see emplacements on all the surrounding asteroids. Some are controlled by automatics but some appear to be manned.

"The passageway is wider now and opens up a few miles ahead. There's a large sphere-shaped open space with densely packed asteroids forming the outer surface. In toward the center I see a few free-floating asteroids, and there, right in the middle, I see a reflective surface. It's big, not as big as the larger asteroids, but damned big just the same.

"We're getting closer now . . . I'll be damned . . . it's a ship! Not just
any
ship but a liner. And not just any liner but the
Earth Star
!
I'd recognize that H-shaped hull anywhere. It seems she wasn't lost in hyperspace like everyone thought. Pong got her instead. God knows what happened to her passengers and crew.

"This is good enough, Henry . . . put us alongside that chunk of rock over there. This close in they'll be watching the smaller stuff too. Good. Now, starting with the
Earth Star
and working my way around to the right, I see all sorts of ships. I see a DE, three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, another DE, six, make that seven destroyers, two armed freighters, an ore barge, two hulks, and a tug.

"Based on visible running lights and jet flares I'd say there's plenty of small craft running around and some of them are probably armed. There's no way to tell if he's got any interceptors loaded aboard the
Earth Star
or the cruisers but chances are that he does. In addition, I see that one of the nearby island type asteroids has been equipped as a Class C dockyard. I think there's a ship in the yard but I can't tell what kind. Got all that, Henry?"

"I've got it, Sam. What now?"

"Now we turn around and get while the getting's good."

Henry obediently turned the sled away from the free-floating chunk of rock and headed back toward the passageway. They hadn't gone more than half a mile before a bored-sounding voice boomed in through McCade's speakers.

"Hey, buddy, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

McCade felt his heart jump into his throat as he tried to see where the voice was coming from. There it was about a hundred feet away, a sleek, little four-place gig, complete with an ugly-looking energy projector mounted in its bow. Its approach had been hidden by the same rock he and Henry had used. He swallowed hard.