Starfarers (51 page)

Sundaram hesitated. “What of the exocommunications room?” he asked.

“He could wreck it out of pure malice. That would be a pity, but we can rebuild it once we’re safe. Move!”

Viewscreens showed
stars, the minute, hazy blaze of the accretion disk, the frosty galactic river. Instruments and controls
filled most other bulkhead space, marshaled like sentinels against the dark. Nansen went immediately to a certain panel.

“The shuttles are still in place, one on either side,” he read from the meters. “Excellent.” His fingers worked. “Now neither of them will go anywhere without new orders from here. We have him in this wheel.”

He took a seat at the observation board. Ruszek joined him on the right, Dayan on the left. They divided the task and began operating interior monitors. Scene after scene flashed before them, passages, rooms, parks and gardens whose flowering was suddenly pathetic.

“Look here!” Dayan cried.

The men leaned over toward her screen. It was as if they saw the Tahirian gymnasium from above. Five figures clustered amidst the exercise equipment. She centered them in the field and magnified.

Ivan and Leo crouched on the turf in the attitude of slumber. Peter lay awake, a miniature sphinx. Emil and Simon were asleep too. Tethers connected a leg of each captive to an immovably heavy machine. Within reach stood an object that must be an improvised sanitary box. Sonics amplified the sound of breath. It was different from human, sucked in below the jaws by the heart-lung pump, noiselessly and odorlessly expelled at the rear. Manes stirred, antennae twitched. Did all sentient beings throughout the universe need recurrent oblivion, broken by dreams?

“So that’s how they treat their prisoners,” Ruszek muttered.

“Gently, kindly,” Dayan said.

“I don’t know. Tying them like that—”

“They aren’t used to being jailers. This was the best they could think of.”

“Search on,” Nansen said.

And at last: “Not a trace.”

“He’s probably in a cabin,” Dayan suggested. Nobody’s living quarters had a scanner.

“Or in a locker,” Ruszek grunted. There had been no obvious reason to make those observable from outside.

“If he stays where he is, we’ll find him by ransacking,” Nansen said. “But I’m afraid he won’t.”

Mokoena and Zeyd came in, burdened with iron objects, which they dumped clattering on the deck. The trio joined them. Mokoena picked up a long pry bar with a sharp edge on the end and hefted it, seeking for the balance point. “Not an assegai,” she murmured, “but it will do.”

Dayan smiled bleakly. “’Tis enough, ’twill serve,’” she said, and bent down to rummage.

“Ha!” Ruszek had carried the ion torch here but set it aside. He grabbed a maul, short-handled, heavy-headed, and swung it. They saw him wince and heard him snatch for air. He straightened and stood firm. Nobody stopped to think how his shoulder, now bashed against that door a second time, must pain him.

Zeyd stuck a pair of screwdrivers under his belt and clutched a wrench. Nansen experimented with a meter-long rod, repair stock; it was blunt, but wielded by a saber man, it could strike or thrust as lethally as a sword. “Are you prepared to hunt Brent down?” he asked rhetorically. “Very well. Mam, I hate to expose a woman to danger—”

She grinned and jerked her weapon. “Up yours.”

For a flick of time he smiled back. “You and Selim search the lower deck. Don’t take chances. If you spy him, don’t attempt a capture; trail at a safe distance, curvature between you and him. Or if you find him denned, keep watch. Lajos and I will join you as fast as we’re able. Similarly for the upper deck, which we will take.”

“What about me?” Dayan demanded. A knife gleamed in her hand.

“You have to hold this point and make it our information center. You are best qualified. Set the intercom system to deliver a message at every speaker, every … five minutes. A short one, asking him to surrender, promising to spare his life if he does. He can go unarmed—nude, to make certain—to the common room and wait for us.”

“Do you really believe that will change his mind for him?” Ruszek scoffed.

“No, but we are obliged to try.”

“Well, it may make him still madder,” Ruszek said indifferently.

Nansen continued instructing Dayan: “Sweep the ship continuously with the monitors. We four will check with you whenever we’re at an intercom, and you will keep us informed.”

“I’m a soldier’s daughter,” she protested. “Let me hunt.”

“Soldiers stay where they are most needed; Brent will know how dependent we are on this post. He may attack, perhaps shooting through the door. If that happens, take cover. If he gets in somehow, use the torch on him. But I hope we’ll already have come to your call.”

The mutinous look fell from her. “God be with you,” she said, not altogether steadily.

Against emergencies,
the captain had a master key that could override any lock program aboard. He slipped aside as a door retracted. Cautiously, he peered around the edge. Sundaram’s cabin lay vacant. Dayan’s latest futile plea lost itself in silence.

“This is no good,” Ruszek complained. “He wouldn’t trap himself in any such box. He’s on the lower deck, in that maze of storerooms and park and everything, dodging around like a rat. Hanny will only spot him by accident. We should be there, too.”

“I’m not so sure,” Nansen answered. “What could he hope to accomplish on that level? Not that he’s likely to be very rational anymore.”

“If he ever was, the murdering bastard.”

“Intercom check.” Nansen entered the cabin and touched the plate. “Hanny?”

“I have him!” Dayan’s voice shrilled. “Number Two spacegear locker. He’s just coming out of it, suited.”

“What?
¿Es él totalmente loco?”

“Come on!” roared Ruszek, and dashed off.

“Send Mam and Selim there when next they call in. We two are on our way.”

The locker
stood open. Again Nansen activated an intercom.

“He went into Spoke Two,” Dayan told him. “Bound for that exit, I’d guess.”

“What the devil? No shuttle at it. He’d remember that, whether or not he’s realized that we’ll have stalled them both. Is he wearing a jetpack?”

“No.”

“It takes time to fasten one on,” Ruszek said. “He hasn’t got time. Nor have we. Help me on with a suit. I’ll go after him.”

“Are you crazy, too?” Nansen snapped.

“Listen,” the mate retorted, “a good spaceman can make the jump across. He’s good. I’m better. Even if you free the shuttle, it’ll take too long. I think he’s counting on that. We did fight the robots together. I know him a little.” He stepped into the locker and unracked an outfit.

“The weapons. He must be making for them. I will go.”

Ruszek came out dragging the suit. He put his free hand behind his back. “No time to fight about that. Match me, odd or even.”

Nansen choked down a command and imitated the gesture. “Now,” he said. Both hands leaped around. Three fingers were outspread on his, two on the other man’s.

Ruszek laughed. “Ha, first fun I’ve had in daycycles.”

Nansen scowled but went after the additional hardware. Ruszek shed his pajamas and slipped on a skinsuit. He spread the opened outfit and put feet in the legs, right after left. He drew the fabric up and put his arms in. It slithered, molecules aligning as embedded sensors directed. When he brought the front edges together, they fused. He stood as if in a second skin, white and tough, moisture-absorbent, powered for sensitivity and flexibility.

Nansen inserted earplugs and lowered a fishbowl helmet.
Its collar made the same kind of seamless juncture. Harness secured a biostat case on Ruszek’s back—air tank, composition regulator, temperature control, radio. Kneeling, Nansen guided feet into gripboots. Circuitry completed itself everywhere, unseen, like nerves healing; suit and man became an integrated system.

It was not meant for hard or prolonged service. It would keep the wearer alive and functional for several hours under ordinary conditions of vacuum and radiation, no more. But in its simplicity it could be donned by a man alone—faster if he had help.

Nansen rose. “Mam and Selim should join me soon,” he said. The helmet included an audio amplifier. “He and I will come after you. Don’t risk yourself needlessly. Keep track of Brent if you can. The three of us will take him.”

Ruszek shook his head. Light gleamed on the bald pate and on drops of sweat caught in the big mustache. “No good. The worst chance is that he’ll reach the arsenal, wherever it’s hidden, before we catch him. He could mow us down, or cripple the engines, the whole ship. Hanny—He could make Hanny the in the cold and dark.”

He set off down the passage, Nansen alongside. The maul swung to and fro in his grasp.

At the exit room Nansen offered his hand. When Ruszek took it the fabric felt cool and rubbery, like a snake. Ruszek nodded, swung around, and swarmed up the ladder into the spoke, out of sight.

Ordinarily he
enjoyed the 180-meter climb, dizzying perspectives, aliveness in muscles, a sense of heightened Strength as weight lessened. But it was too slow. He left the rungs at the bottom landing and hastened over the catwalk to the platform opposite. The railcar waited. He boarded and set it whizzing through the tube.

Deceleration at the end tugged harder than the pseudo-gravity there. He jumped out and approached the airlock. A red light warned that no shuttle was docked here. “I know,
you idiot,” he said. His fingers stabbed at the manual board. The inner valve drew aside. He entered the chamber. The valve closed.

“Do you wish to cycle through?” he heard in his earplugs.

“Yes, and fast!” he told the machine, pointlessly except for the fury fuming in him.

Air pumps brawled diminuendo. He felt their throb in his feet and shins until they had evacuated the chamber. The two or three minutes it took stretched themselves. The outer valve opened and he saw, across ten meters, the cliff that was the flat end of the cylindrical hull.

This near the hub, it was only dimly starlit. Wan flickers pulsed across it as the wheel rotated. He had no other immediate sensation of spin. However, when he reached the exit, he discerned vague shapes: ports, bays, the second shuttle. Seemingly it was they that whirled past. He did not look beyond them to the stars. That way lay vertigo.

Instead he poised on the rim, gauged with a precision that was mostly subconscious, and sprang. The impetus tore his soles loose from the weak centrifugal acceleration and he soared. Here he could not escape seeing the heavens stream around him. He set his teeth and ignored them.

Tangential velocity bore him outward. As strongly as he had jumped, it should not carry him past the edge in the less than two seconds of his crossing—not quite. But it would land him at a speed that could break bones and whatever hold his boots laid on the hull. He twisted about, readying.

Impact slammed. His upper body, relaxed in cat fashion, swung freely. Tissue absorbed shock. As he skidded and lost contact, he brought a foot down. It also flew off, but it had dissipated energy. His other foot touched and dragged. On the fourth stamp, he rocked to a halt. All the while he had gripped his hammer.

For a moment he hung slack, weightless. Pain seared through his injured shoulder. At the end of the sleeve that housed its magnetic bearings, the wheel turned, enormous, a
mill athwart stars that now gleamed as if they were eternally fixed upon the sky.

“Hoo-oo,” Ruszek muttered. “Did you get flung clear, Al, boy? That would simplify things.”

He was nearly at the verge of the cylinder. Recovered, one sole always touching metal but the stride long and quick, he stepped across the right angle onto the vast curve.

His sight swept down the length of it—turrets, bays, webs, masts, murky against the constellations. He swore and started around the circumference. Of course he wouldn’t see Brent from here. If Brent made the passage, he’d seek the midships entry lock, which happened to be some eighty degrees off.

Ruszek rounded the horizon.

He jarred to a stop, swayed forward, peered. A radio detector cobwebbed the querning after wheel, but a lesser motion caught his eyes. Distance-dwindled, a shape went slowly, black, across the Milky Way.

Brent, almost at the entry lock. Lacking a safety line, he walked very carefully. Ruszek had more skill. He half ran. Having turned off his transmitter before he left, he could call in his mother tongue, into the infinite silence, All right, I’m coming to kill you.” And, after a moment, a whisper: “For Hanny.”

Vision was a blur of dusk and shadow. He could hope to draw close unnoticed. But he had said Brent was a good spaceman, too. Wary, constantly glancing about, the fugitive saw the pursuer. Ruszek saw the pistol rise.

He swung the hammer thrice and hurled it.

The bullets ripped into him, through him. Air gushed from holes too big for self-seal, a ghost-white fog spattered with black. In starlight humans cannot see red.

The maul hit Brent in the belly. It knocked him off the hull. He drifted away. His limbs flailed. He screamed. Nobody answered. He reached the after wheel. A spoke smote. The fragments of him exploded into the emptiness around.

Ruszek’s boots clung. His body straightened and waited for his shipmates. They found a grin still on his face.

Nansen and
Zeyd approached the Tahirians. Dayan stood in the background, a sidearm at her hip, but nobody supposed it would be wanted.

Ivan advanced, parleur in hand, to meet the humans.

“(You will release these two you hold,)” the captain ordered.

“(Is the conflict over?)” Ivan asked.

“(Yes. Brent is dead. So are Ruszek and your friend Cle-land.)”

Anticipating a visit, the captors had given parleurs to their captives. Simon signaled from ens tether, “(We believed all of you were our friends.)”

“(We three did not do this willingly,)” Ivan said. “(There seemed to be no alternative.)”

“(There is,)” Nansen replied. “(You must accept it.)”

“(We shall.)”

“(You will give no further trouble?)”