in0 (47 page)

For the first time, Lisa Arden knew what it felt like to contemplate suicide. Her black mood was not unique. The despair was apparent on all of their faces. Finally, Raoul Bendagar cleared his throat and said:

“Cheeky little bastard, isn’t he?”

The juxtaposition between Sar-Say’s threats, their own depression, and Bendagar’s irreverence, struck everyone as somehow funny. What began as a nervous chuckle quickly escalated into a full-throated roar. Within seconds, people were holding their sides and had tears rolling down their cheeks. Had Sar-Say heard them, he might have been offended. He might also have detected an underlying tone of desperation in the mirth. For the pseudo-simian was right about one thing. Their situation was nothing to laugh about. Somehow, that made it even funnier.

Finally, when they had gotten control of themselves again, Dan Landon signaled for silence. When he had it, he asked, “Is there anyone here who wants to accept his offer and deliver him to the Voldar’ik? How about you, Mikhail?”

“Damn it, just because I have always disagreed with you Expansionists doesn’t make me a traitor to humanity!”

“Sorry,” Landon replied. “No such implication was intended. I merely thought you might have a different reaction to Sar-Say’s ultimatum than the rest of us.”

“I would like to shove it up his skinny little ass!”

The captain smiled. “Anyone else?” When no one spoke, he continued. “Good. For the record, there is no way in hell this ship is turning around while I am in command.”

There was a general murmur of agreement. Only Laura Dresser refrained from nodding. Landon noticed and turned to his chief engineer. “Laura, you have a better idea?”

“About getting away from here as quickly as possible? No. That is the best-damned idea I have heard since coming on this expedition. I was just thinking about the Voldar’ik.”

“What about them?”

“We left rather quickly, with no real explanation, and without paying our fees. It occurs to me that they may be curious as to why, curious enough to track us all the way to the stargate and to take notice when we don’t go through it.”

“You have an alternative?”

“I was thinking that perhaps we ought to go through the stargate.”

Landon frowned. “Head deeper into the Sovereignty? Haven’t you been listening to what Sar-Say said?”

“Mark obtained a great deal of astronomical data during his two weeks of database diving. One of the stars he identified was Nanda, which is an M-Class red giant a dozen light-years from here. Right, Mark?”

Mark was not listening. He was trying to isolate a stray thought that had been eluding him ever since Sar-Say left the compartment. Laura Dresser’s question jolted him back to reality. “What?”

“We were talking about the adjoining star system. You identified it in the astronomical data. Correct?”

“Yeah, Nanda. M3 class red giant. It has three stargates. The one from Klys’kra’t is at about Jupiter’s distance from the star. Why?”

“I am proposing that we use the Nanda gate to make our getaway.”

He thought about it, and then nodded. “Not a bad idea. That way, the Voldar’ik see us leave in a conventional fashion and then hopefully forget about us.”

Dan Landon looked pensive. “What are the risks?”

“From the technical side, none that I am aware of, Captain,” Laura Dresser replied. “Our Broan jump generator is operational. No telling who or what we might run into on the other side, but considering how far out the Nanda gate is, we can probably slip away without anyone noticing that we even arrived. By the time the gravity wave gets to somewhere else in the system, we will be long gone.”

“Any other suggestions?” When there were none. He thought about it, and then shook his head. “It’s a good idea, but too risky. We do not really know what we would find there. The information we carry is too valuable to take even a small chance. No, we continue as before.”

The mercurial chief engineer’s expression showed what she thought about the decision. She said nothing, however. She had had a year to learn the futility of arguing with the captain once he had made a decision.

Landon noted her expression and said, “Look people, the cargo of knowledge we carry is perhaps the most valuable in the history of the human race. We must get what we know back to Earth as quickly as possible. To ensure that it gets there, as soon as we have put a little more distance between Klys’kra’t and ourselves, I want everything we have put on a tight beam to
Columbus
and
Magellan
. Anything else before we get back to work?”

“What about Sar-Say?” Lisa asked, broaching a subject that everyone had been avoiding.

“What about him?”

“Do you really think the Broa can do what he threatened?”

“I am afraid this expedition has dispelled whatever doubts we had,” Raoul Bendagar replied. “We must now place all of our efforts into ensuring that the Broa never learn of our existence.”

“How do we do that?”

“We follow the
Terra Nostra
program,” Mikhail Vasloff said. “We abandon our interstellar colonies and pull back to our home star system. We control our electromagnetic emissions and pray they do not stumble across the radio noise we have already pumped skyward. If we don’t make ourselves conspicuous, then we should be safe for quite a long time.”

“We can’t just hide!” Lisa exclaimed.

“We can and we must,” Vasloff replied. “Sar-Say was right about one thing. My fears have always been low key and generalized. I had no idea that something like the Broan Sovereignty existed. If I had, I probably would have awakened every night screaming … just as I will from now on.”

“But…”

Dan Landon raised his hand in a restraining gesture. “Enough, you two. What to do about the Broa is a decision made above our pay grade. Our job is to get the news back to Earth, and to do that, we have to get out of this system. Raoul, get everything we have on what we have learned and get it off to our consorts. Lisa, do you think you can still stand being with that little bastard?”

She nodded. Her eyes glistened with incipient tears, but her features showed a new determination.

“Good. I want you to pump Sar-Say mercilessly for information. We will interrogate him the whole way home if we have to. I want to know everything there is to know about the Broan Sovereignty, the truth this time. Check his quarters for anything he might use to injure himself. We do not want a suicidal monkey on our hands when he discovers that we have rejected his kind offer to allow us to be his personal slaves.

“What about me?” Mark asked.

“I want you to collate all of the astronomical data you have. Too bad we did not have time to complete our purchase of the Voldar’ik database. Still, we will go with what we have. Everyone know what he or she is supposed to do? Good, then let’s do it. We still have a mission to complete and not all of the bogeymen in creation are going to stop us from warning Earth.

#

The compartment was dark save for the ever-present blue night-light. In space, no one ever sleeps in the dark. Fumbling in the dark for one’s pants might well prove fatal in the event of a hull breach or any number of other emergencies. Mark woke and stared at the dimly perceived overhead. Something had awakened him, something far off, but infinitely disturbing.

Then he heard the quiet sobs and felt Lisa’s body shaking beside him. He rotated his body in the sleeping net and folded her into his arms.”

“What’s the matter?” he asked quietly, nuzzling her cheek with his lips. They were again in microgravity, having achieved all the velocity they thought prudent en route to the stargate. They would decelerate again, as though they planned to pass through, and then when they had swept past, would undergo a full eight hours of acceleration at 2.5 gravities. The plan was to get away from the stargate as quickly as possible, and disappear from the screen of any Voldar’ik who might be making periodic checks of their position. Lisa’s cheeks were wet with large, globular tears. He tasted the salt in them.

“I can’t get over how close we came to losing everything,” she sobbed. “And I was the one who argued that we let him join us aboard the station!”

He kissed her gently. “You didn’t know.”

“But I should have known. I have studied Sar-Say for more than a year and he fooled me completely. I even felt sorry for him when I realized the authorities would never let him return home. What a dolt I’ve been!”

That last had been more of a quiet scream than a statement. Into those few words, she had packed all of her doubts and her fury.

“Look, stop kicking yourself. You could not have known. No one could have. Sar-Say was clever. He was honest with you as far as he went. He told us everything we wanted to know and he told us the truth in a way that was not flattering to the Broa. It was damned clever of him. He gave us so much true information that it never occurred to us to wonder if he were holding something back.”

“But the future, Mark. Mikhail Vasloff is right. We are going to have to hide in our one little system, quaking in fear lest some Broan listening post pick up a centuries-old game show.”

“Mikhail is not right,” he said. “I refuse to believe that the human race is going to quake in its collective boots merely because of the bullies next door.”

“But what else can we do?” she sobbed. “If we allow our ships to leave the Solar System, sooner or later one of them is going to stumble across the Sovereignty. Worse, some people will convince themselves that they can do business with the Broa and will probably seek them out.”

“I can’t believe that people would be that stupid.”

“Believe it. When it comes to being venal, corrupt, and just plain idiotic, you can’t beat the human race.”

“I wonder.”

“Wonder about what?” Lisa asked, snuggling closer.

“I wonder if we truly hold the galaxy’s title for venality, corruption, and idiocy.”

“Huh?”

“You heard Sar-Say this morning. The Broa have internal arguments sufficient that his rivals sent a ship to kill him. That was a lucky shot that bounced the
Ruptured Whale
into the New Eden system.”

“
Hraal
.”

“What?”

“The ship’s name was
Hraal
then.”

“Whatever they called it. I submit that the day those two ships popped out of that wormhole and into the New Eden system was the luckiest day for the human race since the asteroid killed the dinosaurs.” He felt a sharp tug from his conscience even before the sound of his words had died away. There had been at least one human being for whom that day had been far from lucky. He remembered her smiling face framed in a wild tangle of copper-red hair. Even after two years, it still hurt him to think of poor, dead Jani.

“Lucky? How do you figure?”

“Because we now know about the menace and have time to plan for it. Think of what it would have been like to merely stumble across one of the systems of the Sovereignty. We would have been so fascinated by finding other intelligent beings in the universe that we would have fallen all over ourselves like anxious puppies to make friends. The first the Earth would have known of the danger would have been when a hundred wormholes formed in the Solar System and whole fleets of Broan Avengers came boiling out.”

Lisa moved close and kissed him tenderly on the lips.

He gazed at her in the blue gloom. Her eyes peered deeply into his. He continued his thought. “As it is, we have time to do something about the menace. Maybe Mikhail Vasloff has the right approach. Maybe we hide out and pray they do not find us. Frankly, that thought does not sit well with me either, but that may be what the authorities decide to do when we get home. Somehow, I cannot see us doing that. It is not our style. But maybe, just this once, we will let discretion be the greater part of valor.”

She kissed him again, this time making it abundantly clear that she was tired of talking about the Broa. “I love you. No matter how dark things seem, you always cheer me up.”

“I wasn’t trying to cheer you up. I was explaining…” His words were smothered by her kisses. He abandoned himself to her embrace, and soon, their sleeping net took on the look of a pupa from which the butterfly is struggling to emerge. Their lovemaking was quick and urgent. Later, he held Lisa until her breathing had turned from ragged gasps to a smooth, steady susurration.

He closed his own eyes, but sleep would not return. Too much had happened today and his mind refused to give up its hold on the memories. There was also that same nagging feeling that had come over him in the wardroom as Sar-Say had left. He was missing something important. If only he could think of what it was.

He was still wrestling with the thought when he drifted into a fitful sleep an hour later.

#

Breakfast the next morning was a somber affair. During the yearlong flight from Earth, it had become the custom for the morning watch to gather in the mess compartment and talk about the coming day.

Mealtime gatherings had become important events in the life of the crew. It was a natural human reaction to being so far from home.

When Mark and Lisa arrived a few minutes after 07:00, they found the compartment half empty. Among those present were three others who had been present for the interview with Sar-Say. Mark noticed that Laura Dresser was in earnest conversation with Raoul Bendagar, with Mikhail Vasloff looking on. Of Captain Landon, there was no sign. He had not expected the captain to be at breakfast. Because of the

“majesty” of command, the Landon usually ate alone.

“Good morning,” he said as he floated to his customary seat, slipped the covered tray into its microgravity restraints, and then belted himself to the bench. Beside him, Lisa did the same.

“Morning,” Bendagar replied. “How did you two sleep last night?”

“Not very well,” Mark replied. He thought the dark bags beneath his eyes that had appeared in the mirror this morning would have made that obvious.

“I slept fine,” Lisa said beside him. Perhaps it was his imagination, but Mark thought her tone carried with it a subtext that ought to have his ears turning red in a minute.