Destroyer of Worlds (26 page)

So, the Pak of Thssthfok's era knew of the attempt to restore tree-of-life to the lost colony. To Earth. Somehow that knowledge was the heart of—

Sigmund still couldn't say what.

Nessus was eyeing Sigmund warily. Expecting him to react crazily?

Pak. The Pak had left behind a cone of destruction. A cone, rather than some more constant cross section, because the clans fought endlessly among themselves. Clan fleets scattering, whether in defeat or for some strategic advantage. Brennan had told Lucas Garner the same things about endless clan conflict.

If the few survivors of Pakhome might encounter a
world
of Pak in their path, a
world
of enemies, would they dare to follow the route Phssthpok had taken?

No.

Sigmund's face flushed and he trembled with rage. Let the Puppeteers
think he reacted to Vesta's news. To Vesta's
lies
. Sigmund somehow resisted taking Vesta by the throats.

Guards watching from the patio burst into the salon. “Excellency?” one of them said.

“He had some bad news,” Nike explained. The guards relaxed a bit. “Will you be all right, Sigmund?”

“I need a minute.” Sigmund settled into a pile of cushions. He curled into a comma, dramatically, his face buried in his arms.

A guard glared at Sigmund. Sitting when the Hindmost stood must be a major breach of decorum. At a gesture from Nike the security detachment returned outside.

A minute. Sigmund needed more than that. Baedeker had twitched at Vesta's announcement, but not Nike or Nessus. They had known what was coming, been in on the lie.

“May I get you some water, Sigmund?” Nessus asked. He looked genuinely concerned.

“Yes, thanks.” While Sigmund waited for water and nursed it along, he was able to think without interruption. Nessus had taken his time returning with the water, and Sigmund began to wonder. Did Nessus
want
to give Sigmund that time to think?

Nike and Nessus hadn't reacted much yesterday, either. They
should
have shaken with fear, torn at their manes, pawed the floor—something. They had already known about the Pak!

It could only mean a source deep within Sabrina's government. Only a mole could have leaked this information. And if Sigmund revealed his suspicions, they would know he knew.

The previous evening, Nessus had come by the “guest suite.” Just a social call, he had explained. Just seeing that you have everything you need. Then Nessus and Baedeker had talked for a long time. They sang in odd cadences and in an eerie, not-quite-minor key, the conversation somehow raising Sigmund's hackles.

He was no expert, but it hadn't sounded like any Puppeteer language he had ever heard.

After Nessus left, Sigmund had asked Baedeker what that had been about. “Personal,” had been the answer. Settling their old scores, Sigmund had hoped at the time. But why now?

Nessus sidled closer. “Sigmund, you do not look well. Perhaps you need some time alone to absorb this information. We can reconvene later.”

“That might be for the best,” Sigmund said. He stumbled for effect while climbing to his feet. Let everyone think him muddled with grief.

Contact with Earth wasn't going to happen—not, anyway, with help from the Puppeteers. Vesta's lie was meant to cut off all debate on that point. But if not Earth, then who?

Nessus had unreasonable confidence in Sigmund—which was how Sigmund had ended up on New Terra. That same misplaced trust, presumably, was why Nessus had offered Sigmund an out just now. The sad truth was, obtaining Earth's help had been his last plan.

But though Sigmund didn't have a plan, neither did he know how to quit. . ..

 

With an inward sigh, Kirsten extended an arm out of the sleeper field and groped in the dark for the touchpoint. She wasn't going to sleep tonight. Eric tossed fitfully, but at least he
was
asleep. She didn't chance disturbing him by whispering to Jeeves to collapse the field. She found the touchpoint, rolled beyond the reach of the force field, and reactivated it before Eric stirred.

A generalized fear kept her up most nights. How could she
not
fear, with the Pak hurtling toward everyone she held dear? Beginning with her and Eric's own precious children.

To that generalized dread, a more immediate problem had been added. Sigmund was overdue checking in.

She dressed in the dark, grabbed her comm unit from the desk, and slipped out the hatch into the nightshift-dim corridor. She whispered, “Jeeves. Any word from Sigmund?”

No answer. An audio sensor gone bad, she thought. She repeated herself into her comm unit.

Jeeves answered the same way. “Sorry, Kirsten. No word. It may not mean anything.”

Sigmund had guessed the Citizens would keep him incommunicado throughout discussions. The absence of contact might mean nothing. Her gut said otherwise.

Hearth and New Terra maintained an open network channel, more for the interplanetary grain trade than the occasional official dealings between governments. If Sigmund had a comm unit, Kirsten felt certain, he would have contacted
Don Quixote
by now via a relay through New Terra.

Her gut also growled for a snack. She rounded a corner, toward the relax room—

And jerked to a halt. She raised the comm to her lips. “Jeeves! Why is the emergency hatch closed? Deck three, just beyond my cabin.”

“You're mistaken, Kirsten,” Jeeves answered imperturbably.

What? “I'm looking right at it, Jeeves. It's down. Sealed.”

“Take the corridor around the other way. What do you see on the other side?”

Why didn't Jeeves use a security camera? She didn't ask. She could do as he suggested just as quickly.

Only she
couldn't
cross. “The emergency hatch outside Sigmund's cabin is also down.”

“Then it's not an isolated glitch, Kirsten. The security system shows those hatches open. Cameras and proximity sensors both.”

Together with all the sound pickups. The nonfunctioning audio sensor outside her cabin would not be the only one.

Kirsten's heart pounded. She almost asked, where is Thssthfok? Where are the Gw'oth? Either question was pointless. With the security system compromised, Jeeves could not know.

She
had
to protect the ship from capture. “Eric's in our cabin. Wake him. Then raise gravity to six gees everywhere but our cabin and this segment of this corridor.”

A moment later, a faint but grating alarm seeped from her cabin door. And a moment after that, the deck fell out from under her.

Gravity was gone.

 

THSSTHFOK PROCEEDED TO THE BRIDGE
, systematically softening emergency hatches and hardening them behind him. In any event, he headed opposite shipboard gravity. Pak ships always placed bridges forward. Absent knowledge of human design practices, he reasoned that his distant relatives would, also.

Hardening the hatches slowed him down, but overriding emergency hatch controls would slow any pursuers much longer. On the remote chance something kept him from capturing the ship, he meant to keep secret his ability to pass through doors and walls. Because he would not stop until this ship was his.

The glow panels overhead were dimmed for sleep. He expected to reach the bridge undetected. From there he would depressurize the
middle decks, trapping the humans in their cabins until he wanted them.

And then the gravity vanished.

 

AGAINST THE WEARYING PULL OF SHIP'S GRAVITY
, in the discomfort of his protective suit, Er'o labored at the compact fabrication bench in the habitat water lock. Ship's air presently filled the work space. Another few shifts and the newest sensors would be complete. Ol't'ro felt confident these instruments would yield important new data on the operation of hyperdrive.

With that trace of meld memory, Er' o's aches faded to mere annoyances. He extended a tubacle, adjusting the fine-motion calipers. Motors in his exoskeleton hummed as it moved.

And then gravity disappeared.

A surprised twitch sent Er'o drifting upward in the water lock. His dorsal side rebounded gently off the water-lock roof.

He engaged suit magnets and stretched tubacles toward the water-lock deck. In rapid succession, as each limb tip struck, clangs rang through the water in his suit. “What is happening?” he radioed into the habitat.

Th'o answered first. “Happening? What do you mean?”

Because floating in water was indistinguishable from microgravity. No one in the habitat, unless they happened to be checking sensors, would have noticed the change.

“Jeeves,” Er'o called over the suit's audio output, “why is gravity off?” No answer. Er'o switched radio frequencies to the intercom channel. “This is Er'o. Anyone, why is gravity off?”

 

UNSEEN AROUND THE CORNER
, a cabin door crashed open. “Over here, Eric,” Kirsten called.

He came into view a moment later, walking on the stripe down the center of the deck. He wore sticky slippers. He handed her a pair. “What the tanj is happening?”

She popped a cover plate to get at the emergency-hatch control circuits. If the hatch held back vacuum, the pressure differential would keep it sealed whatever she tried. “Jeeves didn't see the hatches come down.”

“So someone has compromised security,” he completed her thought, and then raised his voice. “Jeeves, did you kill gravity?”

“Use your comm,” she told Eric. “Audio pickups are off, too. So we can't hear whoever is behind this.”

Eric repeated his question over a comm link.

“Indirectly,” Jeeves answered. “I tried to raise gravity, and the circuits blew.”

“This is Er'o,” she heard over the intercom. “Anyone, why is the gravity off?”

Gw'oth or Pak? Kirsten looked helplessly at Eric. “We're losing the ship, Eric, and we don't even know to whom.”

At her insistent probing, a status light flickered from red to green. The emergency hatch began to rise. She caught a glimpse of—what?

A naked heel disappearing around a corner. Toward the stairs to the bridge level.

Gw'oth didn't have heels.

“Thssthfok is loose and almost to the bridge,” she shouted into her comm unit. “Stay put, Er'o.” That left open the question what she and Eric could do.

If Thssthfok shut himself into the bridge, they were doomed.

 

THE DAY OF THSSTHFOK'S CAPTURE
, humans had coerced him out of his battle armor with painfully intense artificial gravity. During his first reconnaissance, his captors had immobilized him with gravity. If they detected him now, they would attempt the same.

That was unacceptable.

He would have preferred to hold ship's gravity constant, but explorations near his cell had not uncovered any gravity-control circuitry. Logically, those controls were on the bridge. He had had to settle for a simpler intervention, only requiring access to nearby circuit breakers. Once he modified the breakers, any significant increase in power drain would open them.

Accidental discovery of his escape was always an unavoidable risk. Thssthfok wasted no time regretting that accident when it happened. And so the loss of artificial gravity was unfortunate but, under the circumstances, necessary and of his own doing

Above all else, he meant to keep the structural modulator secret—for his next escape, if it came to that. Manually hardening every partition after he passed through was taking too much time. He opened the modulator handle and slightly altered the internal wiring. The projected field now wobbled
microscopically. Softened material would, in the course of enough random thermal motions, regress to a chaotic, more rigid state. Reversion would be a matter of a few day-thousandths.

Reacting as anticipated, the humans had set Thssthfok—and themselves—adrift. In the time it took to modify his tool, air currents returned him halfway down the hallway he had just crossed on foot.

His captors would have magnetic boots and sticky footwear to anchor themselves. He had neither. That, too, Thssthfok had anticipated.

The brief touch of a structural modulator merely made a surface sticky. He began a swimming motion, stretching out one hand for a new spot to tweak even as his other hand, sticking to a treated surface, pulled him forward. The method worked as well as he had hoped: faster and with better control than simply bouncing off walls. He had been unable to test the technique while the gravity remained on.

Thssthfok had heard voices, unintelligible through closed emergency hatches but recognizable as Eric and Kirsten. Now the intercom came on. “This is Er'o. Anyone, why is the gravity off?”

Who was Er'o? An artificial entity, like Jeeves? Another human? Or one of the two-headed beasts? And if one unsuspected individual was aboard, there could be more.

Thssthfok half swam, half pulled himself to a stairwell. Its hatch also functioned as an emergency partition. He softened it, pulled himself through the temporarily viscous partition—
pop!
—and resumed his journey.

Toward—he hoped—the bridge.

 

IN OR OUT
? Er'o stood in the water lock, pondering his choices.

The choice was made for him.

“Hyperdrive startup in five seconds,” Jeeves announced in his confirming-an-order intonation. “Commencing countdown. Five . . .”

Neither Eric nor Kirsten nor Jeeves could have expected the Gw'oth to understand the implications. No one had explained
anything
about hyperdrive to them. But Ol't'ro, working from subtle measurements and unintentional hints, had made significant progress.

And
Don Quixote
was within a singularity, deep inside a gravity well.

Thssthfok must have escaped. Rather than let him capture
Don Quixote
, the humans meant to destroy the ship!