The Voyage of the Star Wolf (2 page)

The backstory here is quite detailed and interesting all by itself, and quite self consistent; and inside that backstory there's a real moral question of just what is human. Let me give you a mild example: suppose a couple genetically engineers their child, choosing genes that make their child a world class Marathon runner. She then goes out and beats the men's world record and wins all her races. What are we to make of that? Is this acceptable? And what is she to think about herself? Now that incident isn't in this book, but it might have happened in the Star Wolf's world's history, and the moral question is very much in the background here. Not that there's a lot of moralizing, because this is, after all, an action adventure novel; but like the best of that genre, the story is informed, to use a modern phrase, by important questions, and that's one of them.

It's also a study in command, and once again, David Gerrold takes the subject seriously. He's not preachy. He just looks at a real problem: How do you turn a jinx ship into a fighting unit? The answer to that question has often made a great story, and it does this time too. David has studied the master story tellers, Heinlein and Forrester and Conrad, and it shows.

So. We have real characters, which is to say they're flawed as all real humans are, afraid when most heroic, as real humans are. We have a believable background. We have a war that makes as much sense as most wars do; and we have the epic voyage of a ship that earns her way into the fleet. Robert Heinlein used to say “We write for Joe's beer money, and Joe likes his beer. It's our obligation to give him at least as much fun from our books as he'd get from a six pack.”
The Voyage of the Star Wolf
more than meets that obligation. I enjoyed reading it again. If you've read this far, you'll like it too.

Jerry Pournelle

Hollywood, June, 2003

Out there.

The
eternal
frontier.

It isn't the darkness that gets to you and it isn't the aloneness. It's the emptiness. It's the incomprehensible endless empty that drives you mad from the inside.

It presses upward from the back of your skull, it is a constant gnawing pressure, until you feel as if you are going to explode. You cannot taste it. You cannot touch it. But you can feel it constantly, so close—just on the other side of the bulkhead.

One day, you know that you're going to open an airlock and step out to meet it face to face. You know that you're going to do it, even though you also know that it will certainly kill you. But you will do it anyway. There is no choice in the matter. There is no whether or not. There is only
when
and
how
. Someday, you will not be able to stand the not-knowing
ness
of it any longer, and you will step naked out of the airlock to meet this inexplicable thing that doesn't exist and can't be seen or smelled or touched: this existence that is the absolute lack of all existence.

This is the kernel where the madness starts, this is how it grows: in the knowledge that the unexplainable incomprehensible unknowable exists. It demands explanation, but the human mind is incapable of explaining this concept of existence without form or substance. It cannot imagine, it cannot
comprehend
, it cannot contain ideas which are larger than itself—and in the face of possibilities that are larger even than the concept of concept, the mind flounders at a perpetual loss; it cannot encompass.

The mind cannot understand emptiness nor can it contain infinity. Total emptiness. Total infinity. Neither can be conceptualized, neither can be held in the human consciousness. And when both of those staggering truths exist together—endless emptiness or empty endlessness—the mind founders on the reefs of confusion and desperation. The human spirit is staggered by the experience; stunned, horrified, entranced and
transformed
. It's beautiful. It's terrifying. It's like looking into the face of God.

Afterward, you are not the same person.

The body, the expression, the total affect of the being is forever enchanted by the experience of
space
. The way you walk, the way you talk, the way you think and feel. No one who has ever stood naked before the jeweled night will ever be free of its terror and its power.

And even this is only an intimation of the magnificent dreadfulness of
hyperstate
.

  —W. Ilma Meier,
Death and Transformation in Space

The Silk Road Convoy was almost three hundred years old.

Its path roughly described a bent and swollen, meandering, broken ellipse along the edge of the rift and then out and across it and back again. A closer examination might reveal that the trail of the convoy was actually a series of lesser arcs tracing through the spiral arm, then turning reluctantly out into the darkness of The Deep Rift, with one scheduled stopover at the forlorn worlds of Marathon, Ghastly, and George, then across The Great Leap and into the lips of the ghostly streamer known as The Purse on the opposite side, then around The Outbeyond, down toward The Silver Horn, and finally turning home again, leaping across at The Narrows and then down through The Valley of Death to The Heart of Darkness, then a sudden dogleg up to a place of desperate joy known as Last Chance, before finally sliding into The Long Ride Home and a golden world called Glory.

The Silk Road Convoy was the oldest of all the caravans on the route. It was not the largest fleet on the route, but it was definitely the richest and most prestigious.

The convoy followed the path of an ancient exploration vessel. Colonies had followed the vessel. Traders had followed the colonies. The trade had evolved over the centuries into a trade route called The Silk Road. Eventually, due to the twists and vagaries of luck and history and fate, it became one of the most profitable routes known in the Alliance. At any given moment there might be as many as thirty different caravans scattered along its great curving length—but only the original Silk Road Convoy was entitled to bear the name of the trade route. This was because the partnership which had grown up with the original Silk Road Convoy also owned or controlled most of the directorships of the Silk Road Authority.

The Silk Road Authority was larger than most governments. It held three seats in the Alliance and controlled almost all of the trade, both legal and otherwise, within the ellipse of its influence. The Authority had major offices on every planet within thirty light-years of the primary route. Every merchant ship in the arm paid a license fee for the privilege of traveling the route and booking passengers and cargo through the offices of the Authority.

Some ships, like the notorious freebooter
Eye of Argon
, preferred to travel alone. Others paid for the privilege of traveling with a caravan. The caravans were near-permanent institutions.

Imagine a chain of vessels nearly three light-days long, islands of light strung through the darkness. They carried names like The Emerald Colony Traders (licensed to The Silk Road) and The Great Rift Corporation (licensed to The Silk Road) and Zetex Starlines (licensed to The Silk Road). The caravans provided service and safety—and safety had lately become a primary consideration for star travelers.

Because of its name, because of its age and its prestige, the Silk Road Convoy was considered the safest of all.

The dark world of Marathon had never known life of its own and never would. Lost in eternal night, it circled a dead and cold star. Ghostly starlight limned its bleak horizons. Life here could never be more than a lonely visitor. The planet was hard and barren and ugly.

It had been discovered by accident, settled by necessity. The only good thing about Marathon was its location, a third of the way into The Deep Rift. Hard in the abyss; the ugly world was a welcome way station in the long desperate leap to the other side. Its single settlement was a bright lonely point of life. Despite itself, despite its abysmal desolation, Marathon had become an important stopover. It was a nexus of the lesser trade routes which bordered the abyss; despite its desolate loneliness, the dark world was becoming a trade center in its own right.

Marathon had two neighbors, Ghastly and George, both of which were said to be considerably less attractive than Marathon. Few had gone to see for themselves. There was some ice mining on George, and nothing on Ghastly but a few crashed probes.

Marathon wasn't quite the frontier, but it was an
edge
and that was bad enough. Too many things
lurked
out here.

And too many people had become suddenly afraid.

Despite the patrol vessels, the growing fears of war were making Marathon a place of urgency and need. There was an air of panic here. The sudden flow of refugees from The Outbeyond had created a thriving market for passage on every stopping vessel, regardless of destination, as long as it was deeper away from the frontier. The local offices of The Silk Road Authority had become hard pressed to meet the growing demand for passage.

Adding to the distress of the refugees was the fact that a great number of ships were waiting stubbornly in orbit around Marathon, their captains refusing to continue along the route until they could join The Silk Road Convoy.

If it came.

Rumor had it that war between the Alliance and the Solidarity was imminent. Rumor had it that the Silk Road Authority was so concerned about the inevitability of interstellar conflagration that the great caravan
might not pass this way again for a long long time. Rumor had it that this was the caravan's last circuit, that the route was being shut down for fear of Morthan marauders.

Rumor
also
had it that the Alliance was assembling a great fleet to protect the route . . .

The center of gravity of a liberty ship is the singularity, the pinpoint black hole that powers the ship and also serves as the focus for its hyperstate nodule. The singularity masses as much as a small moon and can be accurately located by even a low-power gravity wave scanner out to a distance of several light hours.

The singularity is held in place by a singularity bottle, a spherical magnetic cage three stories high; this is the ship's engine room. Three hyperstate fluctuators are focused on the singularity; one from above, one from either side. They are spaced 120 degrees apart. The fluctuators extend out through the hull of the ship and into three massive spines that give the starship its characteristic spiky look. The length of the fluctuators is a function of the size of the ship; it is necessary for precise focusing of the projected hyperstate bubble around the vessel. Hyperstate is also known as
irrational space
, producing the oft-quoted cliché, “To go faster than light, first you have to be irrational.”
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