“Was Hamster in the collar at the time?” Farragut spoke so quietly Calli scarcely heard him.
“Can’t know, John. Not without the LD confirmation.” Except that no one ever took his collar off while on a planetside mission. It violated procedure.
The LEN had attempted retrieval knowing they had a very poor chance of transporting a human completely intact. And they had failed.
It was a hideous image. Did not help that it had probably been painless.
“Realign Star Sparrows. Arm shipkillers.”
“Positioning missiles, aye.”
“Tag
Woodland Serenity
.”
Calli relayed the order to fire control. The tags would give
Merrimack
’s missiles a homing signal. No matter how the target attempted evasion, the missiles would follow the tags. And there was no outrunning Star Sparrows. Star Sparrows were faster than any manned ship and good for light-years.
“Tags away.”
Tactical announced, “
Woodland Serenity
opening gunports.”
What
Woodland Serenity
showed was a total of four of the most basic low-bid lances, useful for clearing debris from its path. The LEN had been better shielded in defenselessness. Nothing could save it, should
Merrimack
fire in anger.
Closed gunports would at least have insured a murder conviction when it was done.
“Target acquired. We have tag lock.”
The com tech: “Sir. The LEN is demanding to know our intentions.”
“Transmit tag signature to Star Sparrows.”
“Fire Control, load firing solution.”
“Firing solution loaded. Fire Control standing by.”
All the officers in the control room looked to Captain Farragut, as the civilian vessel of five hundred souls sat under
Merrimack
’s guns. Only Calli dared speak.
“Sir? What
are
our intentions?”
The captain’s blue eyes were white all round, his thoughts loud enough to hear. He raised his hand—like wielding a gavel—and the officers on deck feared what order would come down when the hand should drop.
A nervous pronouncement from the com tech: “I have a com sig.” And to the captain’s white-hot glare, he clarified, “Com signature from planetside.”
Farragut’s voice came out strangled, “Glenn’s?”
The tech answered carefully, “It’s Lieutenant Commander Hamilton’s
com
.
Someone
just switched it on.”
And immediately followed a hail on the captain’s direct link. Farragut yelled into the back of his hand, “Glenn!”
For a moment the world stood still. Waiting for whom he would hear on the other end of this link.
Glenn Hamilton’s clear soprano, “Captain! Lieutenant Commander Hamilton. Beta twelve. Repeat, beta twelve.” Hostage code.
“Beta twelve secured here. I have both Spits,” Farragut assured her quickly, still shouting. “Do
you
have beta twelve?”
Are you a hostage?
“No, sir. Not me. The Spit boats are beta twelve.”
“We’ve secured them. Are you in danger?”
“No, sir. I’m fine, sir.
Hungry
. I can’t eat the food.”
At last Farragut remembered to breathe. “Is there an LD near you?”
“Yes. I’m in Donner’s shack.” The Archon’s palace. “But I don’t have a collar. I took mine off so the LEN couldn’t trace me. Now I can’t find it anywhere. . . .”
The Star Sparrows were recalled, the tags extinguished.
John Farragut logged out a displacement collar for himself and one with which to retrieve Glenn Hamilton from the planet surface. He issued orders for his LEN detainees to be restored to
Woodland Serenity
without standing trial for piracy, though he still insisted on a full physical examination, unable to believe that such insanity could be naturally occurring.
He gave orders to the chief to resupply
Merrimack
’s oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere, and to bring the ship’s pressure back up to Arran sea level.
As he collected food from the ruins of the galley, the blue-white planet Arra hung overhead in the starry space that showed through the chewed-out hull. The bright image twinkled through the force field.
And to his shadow, Augustus, Farragut asked, “Why aren’t you debriefing my Spit crews with Colonel Steele?”
Augustus snapped a displacement collar around his own neck. “I will review the flattop’s inquiry when he is done.”
The patterner could plug into the data bank and take in the whole session in the blink of an eye. “Sitting through a Q and A in real time is like sucking a frozen milkshake through a coffee stirrer. And it was vastly more interesting watching you skewer your dignity over another man’s wife.”
No pretending not to understand. The captain looked chagrined. His big shoulders hunched a bit. “Wouldn’t be the first man to do that.”
“First one to threaten to blow up a civilian vessel with five hundred live bodies on board.”
Farragut offered no comment.
“A question for the captain.”
As if refusal would shut Augustus up. Farragut waved him to go ahead.
“Were you bluffing?”
“You tell me, Augustus.”
“Either you are a much better poker player than I ever imagined, or else you’re psychotic.”
When Augustus did not continue that thought to a final conclusion, Farragut demanded,
“Well?”
“I don’t want to play poker with you,” said Augustus.
Farragut frowned. Confessed, “I wanted them dead.”
Augustus dismissed that lightly. “Of course you did. But fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality. You would not have killed five hundred people to avenge one. You won’t even break honor and orders to sleep with your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“But it was embarrassingly obvious to all hands in the control room that
that
detail had nothing to do with the wanting of it.”
Till now, John Farragut naively thought he had kept that card close to his chest.
Once upon a time he had talked to Glenn a lot. Back when she was a lieutenant on his watch. She and he had bounced ideas off each other, argued, laughed. Hamster had a sneaky sense of humor and she could rope you in before you knew you’d been had. Because little Glenn Hamilton was married, Captain Farragut had not felt that primitive need to impress her, and she was not his type anyway. She was just a guy.
Then one day he’d been out here in the Deep End too long and he had to remind himself that she was just a guy. A really pretty, good-smelling guy.
And that day Hamster came into command of the middle watch.
“You did manage to make a complete idiot of yourself over a married woman,” said Augustus. “A subordinate, no less. A Mrs. Hamilton, no less.”
Farragut gave a kind of pout. Lifted blue eyes in appeal, “A
complete
idiot?”
“Absolute.”
The grin was boyish. “No use doing anything halfway, hey?”
They were in the displacement chamber by now. They took places over two disks. The tech coordinated signals among collar and displacement disk and landing disk. Green lights.
Farragut gave the nod to the technician. “Let’s do this.” And the ship vanished before his eyes.
A wilted Hamster greeted her captain with a smart salute, giving way to a wilted smile when he bid her stand down and presented her with two fragrant bags of food.
“Mo said you should eat this.” The first bag held a carton of nutrient broth with harmless crackers on the side. “
I
brought you this.”
Hamster melted around the smell of the second warm bag. Trembling hands unwrapped a big sloppy burger. “Marry me,” said Glenn and bit into the burger. Groaned in ecstacy.
“Um . . . aren’t you married?”
“Actually, here, I’m not.” She talked with her mouth full. “I learned a couple of Myriadian customs. I am ‘committed’ but not ‘married’ because I haven’t consummated the pairing.”
“This is probably not information I ought to have,” said Farragut.
Hamster covered her mouth and laughed. “It’s not a consummated Myriadian marriage without offspring.”
“Ah.”
They were outside, under the clouded stars, in a park-like area planted with flowering trees and laced with flat stone walkways that meandered around ornamental ponds and little oases of stone carvings—votives or gravestones or art, who could tell?
Though they need not fear Myriadian surveillance—the Myriadians did not know English—Augustus made a quick sweep of the garden for LEN devices.
When he pronounced the area clear, Hamster lost her smile. “I’m sorry, John. I lost it. I never saw it coming. I—Break me.” She pulled off her lieutanant commander’s pips and offered them.
Farragut would not take her insignia. “Save it till after the inquiry. I don’t think anyone will sanction you for being taken in by insane allies. Just tell me—if I hadn’t showed up when I did, what were you going to do?”
She shrugged. “I was putting one foot in front of the other. I only got as far as step one—escape. I
was
going to be back in control of the Spit boats by the time you returned. And it was going to be brilliant. Really.”
“Should I go away and come back?”
Glenn gave an abashed smile, “If you don’t mind.”
“How
did
you escape?” Farragut asked.
Glenn started, stopped, a conspiratorial gleam in her eyes. She asked, “John, do you know how to get a ferret into a bag?”
“Is this a joke?”
“It’s kind of funny, but no, it’s God’s truth.”
“Okay. How do you get a ferret into a bag.”
“You open the bag and the ferret climbs right in.”
“And that works?”
“Ninety-nine times out of ninety-nine,” said Glenn, hand over her heart.
“You opened a bag and the LEN walked in?” Farragut asked, not quite following.
“Just about. And it’s pretty much how they caught me first, actually. They had a cell rigged with hologram projectors so the cell looked like a corridor. They opened the hatch for me, and I walked right in. Hit the wall. They turned off the projectors and locked me in.
“But here’s the ferret-brained part. They left the projectors in there. I rerouted the power from the overhead light to the projectors and turned them back on.”
“And the hologram corridor was narrower than the real cell,” Farragut guessed.
“Yes it was. About this much narrower.” Glenn set down her burger to hold one palm flat against her back, the other palm flat across her breasts. “Now, John,” she quickly retrieved her food. “If you were holding someone prisoner and you opened her cell and saw an empty holographic corridor instead of a cell, what would you think?”
“I’d look for a Hamster in the wall.”
“And you wouldn’t walk right in with a stunner in your thigh holster! Zap. Zap. I’m free. I ran back to the displacement chamber—not locked, not guarded, didn’t have to zap anyone else. Displaced here. That’s about as far as I got. But I was working on it.” She took a big bite.
The ground murmured. The ponds rippled. Fish jumped from the water. Birds took flight.
Farragut started like an alert dog, but Glenn kept eating. “That happens all the time here.” She caught tomato juice dripping down her chin. “Most people sleep outdoors.”
Even with the tremors, it was pleasant here. Warm. Sitting in the alien grass with a pretty woman under the brilliant, starry sky.
But sense of urgency nagged like a bad tooth. Farragut asked, “What about Donner? Did you deliver my warning about using the
kzachin
?”
“Yes, sir. I did accomplish that much of my mission.”
“How did he receive it?”
“Badly.” She put down half of her burger. Heaved a sigh, stuffed. “I believe Donner fully understood everything I told him. Too fully, really. He did
not
agree to withhold information from Origin.”
“Then he’s risking paradox.”
“Yes, sir. He is.”
“Did you explain that to him? He’s a reasonable being.”
“How reasonable can anyone be when he learns his home world—the cradle of his kind—is a dead ball of dust and he must never go back to see it alive again? He made all the connections, John. He figured out that a billions-year-old civilization ought to have lots of starfaring descendants by now—especially the way his people breed. And he cares. He’s a dictator—he’s a good one. How do you tell him he must not change the complete death of his homeland?”
Farragut rose. “
I
’ll tell him. Now. You feeling up to it, Lieutenant Commander?”
“Yes, sir.” She cleaned off her hands, stood up. She cautioned, “It’s not going to turn him, sir.”
“Probably not.” He could not ignore the human element in human history—and Donner was human enough. Whether on a personal level or on the species level, everyone wanted to live. Your name, your children, your world, your self, your love. And hates and jealousies and sorrows were all human and all part of history, the drops of water that wear the canyon into the mountain. Human tears counted.
Into his link Farragut sent shore to ship, “Colonel Steele.”
Augustus muttered, “We need the flattop for this?”
Farragut paused to answer Augustus. “Say a super-race comes along and tells us we must not use the Fort Ike shotgun ever again, so it’s going to take us a year to get back to Earth—or to Palatine—with only FTL normal. What is the proper response to an edict like that?”
“A one-digit salute?” Hamster suggested.
“I would expect something with more lead content,” said Farragut. And into his link, “Mr. Steele, a Marine guard if you will.”
