Destroyer of Worlds (47 page)

“You seem doubtful.” Though no more skeptical than I, or Ol't'ro.

“I can't speak for them. I can tell you New Terra will be your advocates.”

Jm'ho needed allies, not advocates. “Baedeker does not trust us. We assume his opinion will have considerable influence on Hearth.”

“Why do you say that? Why wouldn't Baedeker trust you?”

Er'o was not about to mention sowing
Haven
with listening devices. “He is not very discreet about his opinion.”

“No, I suppose not. Still, why would he distrust you?”

“We know the location of the Fleet. And our talents scare him.”

“Your talents helped defeat the Pak,” Sigmund said, and yet he looked away. Yesterday's triumph only made Ol't'ro and those like him scarier today.

“For now”—without hyperdrives of our own—“we cannot defend ourselves.” Nor threaten Hearth, for deterrence was the best way to defend Jm'ho. Meanwhile planet-busters, both Pak-like kinetic weapons and devices of Baedeker's design, remained a terrible threat. “I fear that our absence would be in the Concordance's . . . interest.”

So would eliminating Ol't'ro. Baedeker had already suggested it, likening Ol't'ro to Thssthfok, even while the Gw'oth had helped to improve Baedeker's prototype drives.

Sigmund frowned. “I'm sure Sabrina will assert forcefully that we consider the Gw'oth our friends.”

“And what beyond words would she do for us?”

Sigmund said nothing.

What could he say? New Terra also had interests, and war with the Fleet would hardly be among them. Ol't'ro was right. New Terra might help, but Ol't'ro dare not depend on it.

They would take a lesson from Sigmund. Paranoia showed great survival value.

Er'o concluded the conversation and scurried back to the habitat. It was time to put to the test research under way since he first encountered humans.

 

.   .   .

 

“
BREAKING OUT OF HYPERSPACE IN FIVE SECONDS
,” Sigmund called. Soon he added, “Nice, rational stars. A sight for sore eyes.”

“For those who have eyes,” Jeeves answered, also over the intercom.

Ol't'ro said nothing. They were deep in thought, in a final assessment of tactics and contingencies, and they had three sensor clusters fully engaged with instruments. Normal space, all right. They took bearings on four familiar pulsars. Easy calculations put their position not quite eighteen light-years from Jm'ho. New Terra and the Fleet of Worlds were marginally closer, on slightly different bearings. They ran a final diagnostic on the mechanism that had long been the focus of the Er'o unit's research efforts. It passed.

“I'm sorry,” Ol't'ro radioed. They activated Er' o's homemade hyperdrive shunt—

Transporting into hyperspace their habitat, the middle of
Sancho Panza
, and a corresponding third of the otherwise all-but-indestructible hull.

 

The next days were a blur, Baedeker slipping in and out of consciousness. Slip in, anyway. The return was never so gentle. Sigmund cajoled, he berated, he threatened. When speech failed to work, the jabbing and kicking began.

How often did the cycle repeat? Baedeker had lost count. Each time that he emerged enough to hear, Sigmund would say the same thing. “Only you can save us.”

And only Baedeker could. Somehow, on the first day, he had suited up and managed to follow Sigmund to a stepping disc in the drifting stern. Its hull, severed from the power plant still embedded in the bow, had become dust blown away by air pressure.

Baedeker found half of a hyperdrive shunt and a thin wedge of a hyperwave transceiver. He saw no way to repair either. The rest had been carried away in the normal-space bubble around the Gw'oth shunt when they left.

The Gw'oth building a hyperdrive from scratch only proved Baedeker had been correct all along about them. And made his inability even to repair a hyperdrive all the more bitter.

With scavenged supplies, he and Sigmund had stepped back to the bridge. Then, in fits and starts, in a fog of confusion and exhaustion and dread, Baedeker had toiled. It had seemed endless. He stabilized what remained of the environmental systems. He extracted tiny fusion reactors from scavenged stepping discs to keep life support running. While Sigmund continued to forage what remained of the ship for water and emergency rations and anything else possibly useful, Baedeker began, fearfully, to disassemble everything nonessential.

This stump of a ship would wander forever. It had no use for force-field generators for crash-couch protection. It was in the middle of nowhere,
and that made radar useless. The comm laser, too: Any signal they transmitted would be too attenuated to matter when, creeping along at light speed, it finally reached anyone who might help them. By then, in any event, they would long since have starved. Gravity control circuits, distributed processing nodes, power distribution—it was
all
expendable to build the thing they needed most: a hyperwave radio.

He had the wrong parts, hardly any instrumentation with which to test what he cobbled together, and only a pocket computer on which to simulate designs. Time and again he zoned out, lost himself in his thoughts, faded away, until Sigmund, with escalating levels of alarm and abuse, roused Baedeker to refocus on his task.

Throughout, fear plagued him. Had the Concordance traded the Pak for—even created—an even worse threat?

At last the hyperwave radio was complete. They powered it with a cascade of three stepping-disc fusion reactors. They reached one of the comm buoys in orbit around New Terra. Sigmund had scarcely spoken more than their coordinates when, with an earsplitting pop, the jury-rigged hyperwave set burst into flame.

Baedeker slipped away once more.

 

SIGMUND BEGAN
making tick marks on the bridge bulkhead: dark/light cycles since their call for help. Call each cycle a day.

On day one, he told himself he was optimistic. The coordinates were the most important part of his message. He had sent those. Help would come.

Nothing could rouse Baedeker again. Sigmund tucked Baedeker, comatose, out of the way behind the copilot couch and activated the only emergency stasis-field generator he had found.

On day three, Sigmund spent hours experimenting with his jumpsuit controls. Patterns, colors, textures, and combinations—he studied them all. For years he had promised Penny he would, “When he could spare the time.” He had the time now. He still failed to see the point.

On day five, he began resenting Baedeker, oblivious within the stasis field. Never mind that the Puppeteer had been all but comatose. Never mind that only one of them eating, drinking, and breathing effectively doubled Sigmund's rations.

By day ten, he
really
resented Baedeker.

On day fifteen, Sigmund began screaming and throwing stuff against the walls to hear something other than his own thoughts.

“I'm sorry,” Ol't'ro had said. Only that message had been just to Sigmund; Baedeker's comp had no such message. Sorry to kill you, Sigmund. Not so sorry about Baedeker.

Apology not accepted.

On day twenty-two, Sigmund found his thoughts stuck in a loop, obsessing over Er' o's final visit. Gw'oth fears. Feelers for New Terran support. Sigmund's noncommittal response. Never mind that he could not commit New Terra.

By the time Baedeker and he were rescued—if they were rescued—Ol't'ro would have reached their home solar system. Could they land the habitat? Sigmund had his doubts, but it didn't matter. A Gw'oth interplanetary ship could rendezvous with the habitat.

Knowing the Fleet's location and building hyperdrives of their own, the Gw'oth had become untouchable.

On day twenty-five, Sigmund made the mistake of powering up the view port. Nothing but stars and a blobby nebula in sight. Suddenly he was clawing at the bridge hatch he had had the foresight to spot-weld shut. Blood streamed from torn fingers. A massive flat-phobia attack. He was starving when he returned to his senses, and never quite believed his day count after that.

On day thirty (if it was), he fixated on the Gw'oth coming on
Reap the Whirlwind
when he had offered to send them home. They had insisted on seeing the job through, without regard for their safety. Only then—their task complete, the Pak deterred—had Er'o come to Sigmund for reassurance.

And then, after realpolitik and Sigmund's evasive answers had left them no choice, Ol't'ro saved themselves. He wished them well.

“I'm sorry, too,” Sigmund whispered.

 

ON DAY THIRTY-FOUR
, choking down another sawdust-flavored energy bar, Sigmund found himself fantasizing how Puppeteer meat would taste.

On day thirty-seven, he thought about the Gw'oth stringing along Baedeker. Pulling a Puppeteer's strings. That was hilarious, and even funnier when he used his hands as Puppeteer heads looking each other in the eyes. He spent the rest of the day composing limericks about it.

On day forty, he caught his reflection in the stasis field. Someone wild-eyed, heavily bearded, and gaunt stared back at him. He huddled between crash couches for the rest of the day.

On day forty-two, flatland phobia seized him again. He came out of it chanting to himself, “No more spaceships. No more spaceships. No more spaceships . . .” and overwhelmed by déjà vu. He was croaking like a frog, his throat raw, before he forced himself to stop.

Then came the day he could not remember when he had last put a mark on the wall. His comp would tell him, he suddenly remembered. He wondered where he had left it. He spent hours tearing apart the bridge before finding the comp in his pocket. That reduced him to helpless laughter, tears running down his face. He laughed, or cried, himself to sleep.

The next day, he checked the comp. It was day fifty-two.

On day fifty-four, he could not remember why he was counting.

On day fifty-five, he wondered if he could survive much longer.

On day fifty-six, Sigmund struggled to recall why he should care.

On day fifty-seven, figures materialized on the bridge stepping disc. Eric. Then Kirsten. When Penelope appeared, he remembered.

 

 

 

 

Thssthfok's eyes darted from instrument to instrument. Nothing made sense.

A moment ago, space-time itself was coming apart. Close behind, the debris of a shattered world spewed at him. Failure was still bitter in his mouth.

Now his instruments showed only peaceful void.

He shivered. The cockpit was
cold
. How could the temperature drop instantaneously? And when he dared to glance up from his console, stars rolled past.

The canopy was gone! An almost subliminal shimmer marked the force field that logic insisted must be holding in his air. When he looked around, the ship was pocked with holes.

The console clock still kept time. Thssthfok understood human units of time, but not their dating system. Time had passed for the universe-gone-mad to heal itself, but how much? He had no idea.

Only a few of his attitude jets still held compressed air—more holes?—but he managed to kill his spin. Star configurations seemed both familiar and warped. Instruments confirmed what he had been loath to admit: He was light-years removed from the last view he remembered.

And light-years distant from the Pak fleets. The leading edge of the advance again receded from him. Nor was it only Thssthfok whose location had shifted: The ramscoops had moved, too.

Somehow, years had passed.

 

HIS MAIN FUEL TANKS WERE PUNCTURED
, their deuterium long vanished. Only a small reserve tank, all but drained, held deuterium. Once he used that—that was it. The force field would disappear, his air would spurt out, and he would die.

Maybe that was why the ship had ended his oblivion. It needed his help.

Somehow this ship had kept him alive for years. What other unsuspected capabilities did it have? Whatever the universe thought, in Thssthfok's mind he had hurriedly reassembled the control console just a few day-tenths earlier. He remembered the unfamiliar subsystems inside.

He opened the console, slid out drawers and racks, spread apart wiring harnesses. He remembered where gauges and instruments had been clipped. The humans had studied the very subsystems that interested Thssthfok.

Whatever those circuits did, their design was Pak-inspired. He was second-guessing a mutant protector.

 

AS COLD AS THE CABIN WAS
, Thssthfok left the temperature alone. He had no deuterium to spare for mere comfort. He took a nibble of tree-of-life root and continued his studies.

The self-repair capability was a brilliant blend of Pak and human technology. So was the pressure-retaining force field, only that was also an enigma. To judge from the position of the Pak fleets, Thssthfok's ship had been adrift for years. The force-field generator would have drained his reserve tank in a fraction of the time. And that led him to the most astonishing discovery—

The stasis generator. Within the field it created around the pilot's couch, time would stand still. Nothing inside would change—and that included any consumption of energy.

Time itself had frozen for him while this ship drifted, slowly repairing itself, until its energy reserves dipped dangerously low. So the ship had activated the pressure-retaining force field, put air into the cabin, and released him from stasis.

How to survive was
his
problem now.

Instruments showed a world on which he could survive, scarcely a light-year away. That could not be a coincidence—the ship had brought him here. Whether it had sought a planet to support Pak or human, the result was the same.

Smog tainted the planet's atmosphere. Radio emissions spewed forth. The natives were advanced well beyond the point to which, after long years of effort, he had pushed the Drar. He could put to-be-conquered slaves to good use, and quickly.