The Chaos Weapon (23 page)

“We’ll need them to navigate back through the junction. But it’s a pity about Coul. Why did he sacrifice himself just to prevent Roamer from snatching the ship?”

“Talloth explained that. Both he and Coul reckoned the Sensitives could be potentially a greater threat to mankind at large than the Ra and all the aliens put together. Saraya’s been saying much the same thing. Now we have plans to do something about it when the present fracas is over.”

“Will they give me another symbio-deity?”

“I doubt it, Jym. You’ve already the distinction of being the first human ever to survive the breaking of a symbiotic attachment. To take on a second one would be stretching your luck a bit far. But right now I have to get you back into physical shape again, and you’re going to have to work like the devil. The sooner we get a crack at the Chaos Weapon, the sooner we can all get back to our normally chaotic routines.”

“That can’t come a moment too soon for me.”

“By the way, do you think it’s going to catch on, Jym?”

“What catch on?”

“The golden look. It
could be a trendsetter. All the female staff are most intrigued. You’ll find it difficult to live down the title of The Golden Beast.”

“Who wants to? Quality shows, Cass. For a suitable fee I’ll tell you how it’s done.”

OUT on the plains of Mayo even the tall lab-ships were dwarfed by the towering Space-force work-ship. At the center of the activity, however, the squat provost-craft sat dark and smugly on the sands as if watching the technical consternation which her mysterious engines and equipments had caused. Because of the time-dilation effect, the Federation had not even considered the feasibility of building spacecraft with the capacity to challenge the light barrier. Many, their thinking conditioned by the older concepts of relativity, asserted that acceleration to such velocities was impossible—yet here was a vehicle which confounded the theorists and pointed out that the working hypotheses of physics could become serious limitations to progress if they were literally interpreted as natural laws.

The bitterest arguments, however, arose from the fact that, having been given this glimpse of the tantalizing vistas of Ra technology, the engineers and scientists were loath to allow it out of their hands again. They would have preferred to settle for a few blissful years of analysis and investigation, breaking open its powerful secrets and trying to scale the heights of logic which created its design.

Saraya was more practical. His most urgent need was to provide access to the trans-continuum junction
for a determined assault on the Chaos Weapon. He was adamant that servicing and refitting of the provost-craft were the only operations time would permit, and the technical problems created by even this limited project were extremely formidable.

Chief Space-Marshal Delfan was even more down-to-earth. Having interrogated Kasdeya, Penemue, and Wildheit on the size and structure of the Chaos Weapon and its potential vulnerability to sabotage, he had ordered some new weapons to be fitted to the Ra craft in order to increase its destructive capabilities. Among these were four of the most destructive hell-burners that Terran-based science had been able to devise. Each was calculated as being fully capable of destroying a planet. But the apparent overkill inherent in these diabolical devices left Wildheit still less than enthusiastic about their chances in the face of the reactionless features of the junction domain itself.

Wildheit was given charge of the attack team, with Kasdeya and Penemue to handle the craft and the Ra equipment. Cass Hover and two formidable-looking space commandos completed the crew of the craft that leaped into space within minutes of being declared serviceable by the refitting technicians. While Penemue calculated a suitable approach through which to attempt a junction entry, Kasdeya put the craft through a series of space and subspace maneuvers designed to tell him whether the craft had indeed been returned to reasonable working order. He was apparently satisfied with the results, but Penemue’s complaints were loud about the instrument calibrations, for which there were no standards available outside the Ra empire.

Nevertheless, they continued on their way. Penemue’s preferred approach necessitated a long hop across the new universe, and this they achieved mainly in a conventional subspace mode. Then the approach began in earnest, and the incredible rise in velocity frightened and fascinated even such space-hardened travelers as Hover and the two commandos, for whom this was a
first-time experience. When they hit the luxon wall, Wildheit found he could take the sensations no more easily than before and had to crawl into a corner and lay down until the pain-pleasure pulses of the sensation had subsided. It was with a great wave of relief that they finally broke through into the silent infinity of the junction domain itself.

Here, Penemue’s point about instrument calibration began to apply. Faced with the whole of infinity in which to lose themselves, even a minute navigational error would deny them the opportunity of ever finding the Chaos Weapon, even if they searched for an infinite period of time. The possibility of locating the weapon by chance after a millionth-of-a-degree error in any one of the three-dimensional axes was less than one part in ten raised to the googolplexed power of eighty-one—and even this would still involve an element of luck. With no certainty that his instruments did not contain errors up to ten percent in all three axes, Penemue pronounced the job impossible.

After duly noting the objection, Wildheit decided that they should proceed in any case, using the best information available. Many, many hours of hopeless scanning of the junction domain, however, failed to reveal any suggestion that they had come remotely near the Chaos Weapon, and a truer appreciation of the size of infinity was beginning to come upon all of them. The vast but chartable wastes of real-space began to seem small and homely by comparison, and it was truly a mind-wrenching thought that they could travel forever at speeds approaching that of light through the trans-continuum junction and never find anything at all but absolute vacuum and eternal darkness.

Their only consolation was the velocity limitation of the junction, which, if exceeded, would precipitate them through the junction septum into one of the two external universes. This was their potential route home; but it was also a move which signified failure and the continued existence of the Chaos Weapon, and was
therefore an alternative which Wildheit found impossible to accept.

Thus they were caught in a bind: to continue, held an almost negative chance of success; and to return to the new universe meant certain failure. They all searched desperately for a third route which could break the dilemma, and it was Kasdeya who finally found one. Like all Ra service-craft, basic Chaos detection equipment had been included in the instrumentation. Since there was no entropic activity at all native to the junction domain, it followed that any response to a Chaos scan could only originate from a ship or installation located within the junction itself. On the Chaos scanner, Kasdeya could obtain a definite Chaos response.

There followed a critical period of triangulation and alignment, in which the craft was turned through every conceivable combination of angles, and the Chaos responses tabulated. Soon a pattern began to emerge which hardened to a set of coordinates giving the location of the entropic activity if not of the weapon itself. Overjoyed to at last have a definite object to find and a positive direction in which to go, they trimmed their trajectory to head for the new position and, metaphorically, held their breaths until the scanners began to return an advance indication of powerful activity within the inert realms of the domain.

Finally, the faint yet distinct outlines of the Chaos Weapon began to be resolved upon the screens; but, significantly, a great cluster of Ra warcraft were also shown to be in the same vicinity. Wildheit was about to draw-off to consider their tactics when he realized that they were occupying a genuine Ra craft, and it was doubtful if the Ra fleet would suspect their mission. He instructed Penemue to man the communication equipment and to give suitably evasive replies to any queries, and told Kasdeya to take the ship straight through to the weapon-guidance station on which Roamer was probably still located.

The bluff worked. The presence of the provost-craft
evoked a minimum of challenges, which Penemue quickly countered. Their purposeful approach to the guidance station apparently negated any remaining doubts. Using the standard Ra docking procedure, they had attached a space-transfer tube and passed through the station’s own space-lock before anyone at all had gained an idea that this was not a regular provost call.

On the station, the first of the Ra to realize the mistake were shot down before they had a chance to impart news of their discovery to any of their comrades. Now, the patient groundwork of Penemue, Kasdeya, and Wildheit prior to their escape from the previous station again came to be of use. The communications room was swiftly located and destroyed. In the course of this action, Wildheit was greatly impressed by the deadly expertise of the two space-commandos Cass Hover had chosen to bring, who formed with Hover himself a team which could be deployed rapidly and with devastating effect. He gave them various assignments, not the least of which was to keep an escape route open, and then went with Kasdeya and Penemue to search for Roamer.

Although built on the same segmented principle as the station on which they had been confined, this one had a vastly different interior layout; and the vast halls which had characterized the targeting station had here been split into several additional levels each again subdivided into numerous corridors and rooms. Thus the task of locating Roamer was complicated by the degree of searching involved and by the necessity to silence any of the Ra they encountered lest a message should somehow be passed to the fleet outside, warning of the attack. Making extensive use of shock-pellet projectors, the trio cleared each room as they went through. They only used longer-range fire when surprised in a corridor or in a more open space. Thus they progressed with only minor skirmishes toward a segment that occupied an entire circular section of the station.

Here they found
Roamer, amid groups of low consoles of equipment, watching lively colored traces crawl across the room-high central screens. Around her were grouped Ra technicians at long, curved instrument benches, listening attentively to Asbeel and Jequn as they translated Roamer’s directions for some complex operation. Roamer did not see the trio enter the room, being too intent on reading the living graphs on the great screens and turning their messages into instructions. Then she stopped in sudden horror as one baseline trace rose suddenly from its stable low position and climbed vertically up the wall screen to the ceiling. Wildheit glanced at his watch and knew that Cass Hover had just armed a hellburner in the center segment of the station and that what Roamer had just read was a Chaos prediction of the destruction of the station itself. She was looking around wildly for the cause of the unexplained event, when she suddenly became aware of the trio just inside the door.

“Jym!”
Her exclamation was nearly a shout, and her complexion became ashen gray.

On Kasdeya’s instructions, the Ra technicians remained seated and absolutely still, while Jequn and Asbeel, their faces shining with relief, shepherded the shocked Roamer toward the door. Once they were all clear of the segment, Wildheit’s narcotic pellet stifled any opposition from those remaining in the room. One of the commandos was covering the corridor, and soon they were all running for the docking space-lock.

“Jym, I …” Roamer was trying to make some explanation as she ran.

“Keep running, Roamer! Time for talking later.” Wildheit was right behind her, a projector aimed above her head. If she faltered he was prepared to stun her and carry her to the provost-craft. However, the message she had read on the screen predicting the imminent end of the station was enough to ensure her swift cooperation.

Cass Hover was still attending to the hellburner. He made a brief count of the number of figures running
toward the space-lock, then depressed the final switch to ensure that the device could not be disarmed in the minutes remaining before it exploded.

Kasdeya had the provost-craft under way even before Wildheit had jettisoned the space-transfer tube; but the coupling broke cleanly, and the sudden departure would not attract undue attention from any observer in the Ra fleet grouped around them. Kasdeya brought the craft round immediately in a tight turn so as to place the great dish of the reactor between them and the weapon-guidance station, a move designed not for reasons of their own safety when the hellburner exploded, but to lessen the possibility of anyone making a direct connection between them and the coming mishap.

In point of fact they had nearly made a complete circuit of the reactor when the hellburner finally exploded. At one instant the guidance station was a seamed metal ball, and the next, it was a sun. Yet it was a sun curiously contained within itself by the refusal of the junction domain to allow energy transfer between separate bodies. The exception to this rule was light. The explosion powerful enough to pulverize a planet was confined within the sphere which had been the station’s hull, yet the blaze of sheer energy turned-back upon itself must have formed one of the most powerful sources of illumination the junction had ever known.

As Wildheit had hoped, this created a large enough diversion which began to bring many of the Ra ships to the vicinity for an investigation. From the lack of any offensive action it seemed a reasonable certainty that nobody had yet connected the little Ra provost-craft with the incident, so they were able to proceed along the central accelerating section of the weapon without exciting any apparent interest.

The destruction of the weapon-guidance station had, however, brought home a lesson to them all: and this lesson was that although they still had three hellburners capable of destroying portions of the Chaos Weapon,
it would be remarkably difficult to use them. Because of the domain’s prohibition of the transfer of energy between objects, a hellburner placed on the surface would destroy nothing but the hellburner itself and would leave the Chaos Weapon untouched. Only by placing one of the devices inside the topological surface, could the reaction become effective. Penemue considered that even the great axial space through which the weapon’s beam was projected must be considered part of domain space, since it was not geometrically enclosed by the weapon’s structure.