Juggler of Worlds (31 page)

“Here’s a recommendation,” Achilles said. “Destroy Earth.
That
will distract the humans. If we had begun accelerating a stealthed ship when Ausfaller first began snooping—”

“You’re insane,” Nessus screamed. “It would be genocide, and it would solve nothing. Suppose the ARM ship locates us. If harm comes to Earth, or even to every human world, that ship alone can likewise shatter Hearth.”

Achilles shouted back, “They won’t, not if we make it seem Kzinti are behind the attack.”

“Meaning double the genocide.” Nessus trembled in rage.

“What is your alternative?” Vesta challenged.

“Lead them astray.” Nessus’ necks trembled, as he fought not to pluck his mane. “We know approximately where the ARM ship will emerge from hyperspace. Have our ships waiting. When the humans emerge, subtly lure them in a safe direction.”

“There’s no harm in trying,” Vesta commented.

“No!” Achilles stretched to his full height. “If they’re not misled, they can hyperwave back what they see.”

“They might anyway,” Nessus retorted.

Baedeker pawed at the deck in confusion. The tension between the scouts was palpable. Did the fates of worlds turn on their past hatreds? And why did Vesta seem to defer to Achilles, his subordinate?

The Hindmost watched in silence. “Do you have an alternative?” he messaged Baedeker privately.

With that challenge, the pieces fell into place. Baedeker messaged back, “I do. May I join the conference, Hindmost?”

The Hindmost fluted for attention. With a quick wriggle of lip nodes, he expanded the holo conference. “I’ve asked a technical consultant to participate. Baedeker?”

Nessus twitched. In that reaction, Baedeker read the scruffy scout’s thoughts. I gave him that name. Does he use it now to mock me? Let him wonder. Baedeker said, “We destroy the human ship, not their world.”

“Surely ARMs explore with an indestructible General Products hull.” Nessus looked himself in the eyes. “Or have you finally found antimatter?”

“I have finally learned that our hulls can be destroyed without antimatter.” Baedeker straightened, hoping to project more confidence than he felt. “Nessus, your alien scouts learned too much about how we build the hulls.” Because
you
told them. “But let us learn from that fiasco.

“Recall that the hull is a single supermolecule, the normal interatomic bonds reinforced with energy from an embedded power plant. Shut down the power plant and simple air pressure will blow apart the hull.”

“I thought the power plant was sealed,” Achilles said.

Baedeker bobbed heads. “True, the embedded power plant has no external controls. But since the hulls are transparent, laser signaling can turn them off.”

Vesta whistled with confusion. “Surely not. Why embed an off command?”

“Humans are very good with math and computers.” Nessus seemed to be thinking aloud. With a shiver, he returned his attention to the conference. “There is no off switch, but there
are
embedded processors. Optical computers, embedded in transparent hull material. That’s it, Nike. Obviously they found a way to optically hack into the controls and shut them down.”

Hack?
Baedeker guessed that was a wild-human word. Its meaning was clear. “Obviously?”

The Hindmost trumpeted for attention. “Let us return to the current danger. Baedeker, advise us how best to proceed.”

“Do you see anything interesting?” Sigmund asked.

Carlos glanced up from the mission highlights Sigmund had brought him here to discuss. “Other than that all the astronomical data has been scrubbed? That, by the way, doesn’t surprise me. I
was
surprised, after walking from a public transfer booth a quarter kilometer away, to encounter a private transfer booth in your foyer.”

“Mine is out of order.” The ability of Cerberus to tamper with the teleportation system being an undisclosed feature, in a manner of speaking Sigmund had answered truthfully. Any public-booth destination must be safer than his personal booth.

Their attempts at small talk had been painful. Sigmund didn’t want to hear any anecdote that involved Feather. Carlos, in his usual way, wouldn’t say much about his R & D on an advanced autodoc. The approach involved nanotech, Sigmund inferred. Direct questions got him only an enigmatic smile. “I’m making progress,” was all that Carlos was prepared to share.

“About that data scrubbing,” Sigmund began.

Carlos shrugged it off. “Classified. I get that. You’d be surprised, however, to know just how high my security clearance is.”

You wouldn’t be here, Sigmund thought, if I didn’t know that.

Carlos rubbed his hands briskly. “All right then. Let’s dig in. Are the beacons directional, distant, or both?”

“Mildly directional,” Sigmund answered. “Semispherical emissions.” The mysterious beacons broadcast only to the galactic north of their positions. They were distant, well beyond the ill-defined region considered Human Space. He wasn’t about to give clues, however vague, to the location of
Hobo Kelly
. “Why did you ask?”

“It had to be at least one. Otherwise, someone would have discovered them long ago.”

Sigmund stood and stared at his living-room window. He did it only from habit, the view having been set opaque for privacy.

Hobo Kelly
had been prowling farther and farther to galactic north. Andrea’s orders were to remain far from stars, using only passive sensors, the better to observe undetected—and the better to escape on short notice into hyperspace.

No solar system they had surveyed revealed any signs of technology in action. No radio leakage. No obvious atmospheric pollution. No artificial energy sources. As they hid from nothing at all, it had begun to seem to Sigmund that he had his explorers behaving more like Puppeteers than like Puppeteer seekers.

Until Andrea hyperwaved back about the array of beacons.

Sigmund turned abruptly. “You’re right,” he said to Carlos. “I can hardly have the benefit of your insight without sharing information.”

“Thank you.” Carlos smiled, as if to ask: Was that so hard? “So there’s an ARM ship out exploring. It’s in virgin territory—no evidence of intelligence. Suddenly, it gets to a place humming with hyperwave signals. All messages are unintelligible and of the same short length. What else?”

Sigmund considered. “A few occasional hyperdrive traces, ripples of ships entering and leaving hyperspace. Those could be from anywhere, of course.”

“Hyperwave navigational beacons?” Carlos mused. “I mean the signals, not the drive ripples.”

“You mean like global positioning satellites.” Sigmund had used Global Positioning System locators in Alaska. Much of the state remained empty and wild.

“Loosely speaking. With GPS, you calculate your position from the slight differences in arrival time between signals from different orbiting clocks. Hyperwave radio is instantaneous; you hear all transmitters at once. You have to calculate your position from your bearings to a number of transmitters.”

“Beacons. That’s what the crew decided.”

“No signs of settled worlds, but hyperwave signals.” Carlos closed his eyes and leaned his head onto the back of the sofa. He was quiet for a long time.

Something grated on Sigmund’s nerves. It might have been Carlos’s tuneless humming, but Sigmund didn’t think so. “Talk to me. What’s on your mind?”

Carlos opened his eyes and leaned forward. “Why not just use
stars
for beacons?”

“You tell me.”

“I can’t.” Carlos resumed his tuneless humming. “Advanced tech in an apparently unoccupied region. And the signals are directional, so that we don’t normally receive them.”

“Border markers?” Sigmund asked. Maybe
Hobo Kelly
had finally found its way to Puppeteer space.

“Possibly.”

“But you don’t think so,” Sigmund prompted.

“I don’t know.” More humming. “Sigmund, don’t you ever deal with
easy
problems?”

Under other circumstances, knowing about Carlos and Feather, Sigmund might have found some obscure satisfaction in baffling the certified genius. But an ARM military crew and Andrea were in harm’s way. This was the wrong time to stump Carlos.

“An alarm, perhaps,” Carlos finally said. “When someone crosses your border, you want to know about it.”

“Our ship has every type of sensor imaginable. There’s been no contact, Carlos. No radio, laser, maser—nothing on any wavelength. No neutrino pulses. Nothing.”

“Not
nothing,” Carlos rebutted. “Your ship has sensed hyperwaves.”

An unpleasant truth hung just beyond Sigmund’s grasp. “Where are you going with this?”

“Radar,” Carlos said in wonder. “It could be hyperwave futzy radar.”

“There’s no such thing.” But if there were, it would locate things instantaneously, wouldn’t it? “Is there?”

“There could be.” An eerie assurance settled over Carlos. “Well, not radar exactly. Hyperwave pulses travel instantaneously, as do their echoes. You can’t calculate a distance from the round-trip delay time. But if you were to take bearings on a
bunch
of echoes … and if the receivers compared notes instantaneously …”

Then you have hyperspace radar.

Those hyperdrive ripples! Those were the tracks of vessels stalking
Hobo Kelly
, chasing after it as it hyperspace-hopped around! “Medusa,” Sigmund shouted. “Send the recall code immediately.”

But
immediately
could not negate the light-speed crawl out to Southworth Station. It would be hours before the recall got to
Hobo Kelly
.

He could only hope it wasn’t already too late.

ANDREA GIRARD PEERED from the relayed message streaming from Southworth Station, oblivious to the cheering in the ARM war room.

Relief washed over Sigmund. It wasn’t too late.

“We got the recall notice. Sigmund, this ship has a Generals Products hull. We know all about the black-hole trick now. And there aren’t any neutron stars around. If we find one, we’ll stay far away. So I ask you: What can anyone possibly do to us?”

Someone ruddy and blond leaned into the camera’s field of vision. Calvin Dillard, the pilot. Sigmund couldn’t make out what Dillard said, but obviously Andrea did. “I’m getting there, Cal. Sigmund, we’re going to stay a little longer.

“It looks like we all made one seriously bad assumption. We’ve been exclusively scanning systems around G- and K-”—yellow and orange—“class stars because Puppeteers walk around on Earth without sun protection. Now look at—”

“Look at what?” Sigmund shouted helplessly to the receiver. Then proximity alarms shrieked, and he knew why Andrea had paused.

“Company,” Dillard yelled. He suppressed the alarm. “Radar says fifty klicks.”

“Get out!” Sigmund shouted back in vain. No innocent purpose justified emerging from hyperspace so near another ship. “Go to hyperspace now!”

“We’re sensing a laser. The light is highly modulated. Seems like data.”
Dillard spoke to the bridge crew more than to the camera. “Comm can’t parse it yet, but it’s definitely low power. Not a threat.”

Andrea shook off her paralysis. “I’m sending a recon image for you to enjoy later. For now, we need to focus on this contact. We’ll keep transmitting on hyperwave.”

“Get out,” Sigmund repeated helplessly. “They’re too close!”

“Still no luck translating,” Dillard continued. “They’re not using any known signaling protocol. Evidently there’s someone out here we haven’t met.”

New sirens. Sigmund froze. Anyone who set foot on a spaceship was trained to react instantly to
that
ululating sound. Pressure loss.

“Futz!” Dillard yelled, diminuendo. “The hull—”

At least that was how Sigmund read Dillard’s lips. The words weren’t audible over whistling wind and clamoring alarm, all fading toward silence.

And then the message dissolved into static.

A happy throng, dressed and dyed in every color of the rainbow, crowded the theater lobby. The Broadway revival of
The Count of Monte Cristo
was pre-sold-out for weeks after this, its opening night. Light globes and disco balls wafted overhead, bathing the area in shifting illumination.