Starfishers Volume 3: Stars End (28 page)

Beckhart and the chiefs of the science team stalked in and took seats near the holo globe that had been set up at the compartment’s center.

“Looks smug, don’t he?” McClennon said.

The wardroom fell silent,
Marathon
dropped hyper. In moments a featureless ball filled the holo globe. Surrounding details appeared as the ship’s sensors picked them up. First came the escort vessels, then the harvestfleets, then vistas of lifeless wreckage left by the fighting with Sangaree and McGraws. The planet, though, showed no changes.

McClennon had seen it before. He was not amazed. The builder race had removed any topography Stars’ End may have had. It was a world machined smooth.

“Like a big-ass cue ball,” Mouse murmured.

“It doesn’t look so friendly when it opens up,” Thomas said. He shuddered, remembering. “It gets what looks like a sudden case of acne . . . ”

Someone sat down beside him. At the same moment he saw a Communications messenger whisper to Beckhart and pass a flimsy. What was it? he wondered.

“Commander McClennon?”

He glanced to the side and found himself face to face with the little blonde Weapons officer. “Yes,” he gulped, taken aback.

“Hi, I’m Tanni Lowenthal. Weapons.” She wriggled her diminutive derriere a centimeter closer.

Mouse chuckled. Thomas turned. Storm’s attention seemed inalterably fixed on the holo globe. As was Amy’s, though color was climbing her throat.

“What can I do for you?” Thomas asked.

“Nothing. I just wanted to meet you. Someone said you were you, so I thought I would introduce myself. You’re famous, you know.” She laid a hand on his. It was small and hot and felt strong. He nearly jerked away.

Mouse made a small sound again.

“It’s really strange, isn’t it?” the woman asked. “Stars’ End, I mean.”

“Very. Especially when it’s in a bad mood.”

“Oh. That’s right. You were here before, weren’t you? When you were with the Starfishers.”

The conversation lasted only a few minutes. The woman abruptly said, “That’s my cue. Off to the salt mines. Bye.” She squeezed his hand and looked him directly in the eye for a second.

“Bye.” Baffled, he looked around to see what had happened during his distraction.

Beckhart, apparently, had announced something. He had missed it. “What was that, Mouse?”

“The Seiners have it open already. We can send our people down right away.” Storm was fighting laughter. He nodded toward Tanni’s departing figure. “That’s what you get for asking questions, Tommy. The word gets back.”

Amy glared into the globe. Her jaw was tight. Her face was red. Smoke seemed about to pour from her ears. “How did that half-witted sex machine ever earn a commission?” she demanded.

Still grinning, Mouse said, “She’s probably quite competent at what she does.”

“I don’t doubt it a bit. She looks the type.”

Mouse made a little wave signal to tell McClennon to make himself scarce. Amy was ready for a scene. A scene she had no right to make, inasmuch as she had declared her relationship with McClennon void.

McClennon rose and moved nearer the Admiral. When he had a chance, he asked, “Will I be able to go down? Just to poke around?”

Beckhart looked thoughtful. “I suppose. It seems safe. They’ve been down for a week and nothing’s happened. But wait till the science people are all down. Ask Amy to see me in my office later, will you? I think I’ve got a liaison job for her.”

“Yes sir.” He wandered back to Mouse and Amy. Storm had calmed her down. He was still grinning.

“Tommy, I think I’ll take you up on that game you’ve been talking about. You see a table?” The new was wearing off. Ship’s crew were drifting out.

“Over there, Amy, the boss wants you to come to his office when you get a chance.”

He and Mouse pushed through the crowd and seized a pair of table seats. Mouse produced his portable chess set.

“I wish you’d wipe that smirk off your face. Makes you look like an idiot.”

“I can’t help it, Tommy. It’s really funny, the way she zeroed in. Isn’t she something?”

“No doubt about that. I’m wondering what.”

“I couldn’t decide if you were going to attack her right there or have a stroke. You can find out what, you know. She told you who she was and where to find her. Now it’s your move.”

Science team people began descending to the planet next working day. The afternoon of the same day witnessed the arrival aboard of a company of stone-faced Seiner dignitaries. Mouse and McClennon were assigned to make them welcome. Amy turned out to help.

Mouse asked, “What’s that you’re wearing?”

“My dress uniform.”

“What dress uniform?”

“My police uniform. Your Admiral had it flown over during the night.”

McClennon observed, “I didn’t know you had one. I’ve known you a year and a half and never saw you wear it.”

“That’s where we went wrong, Moyshe. We spent all that time hiding.”

He expected a difficult, delicate afternoon. He did not argue. “You may be right.” He scanned a list on a clipboard. “How many of these people do you know?”

She scanned it too. “Only a few, by reputation. Gruber. Payne. They’re all Fleet and Ship’s Commanders.”

Over a hundred names were on the list. “Mouse, we can’t give them all honors.” He glanced at the sideboys waiting to pipe the visitors aboard.

“No shit. It’d be tomorrow before we finished.”

Amy had seen enough of the back and forth of senior Navy officers to know what they were talking about. “Don’t bother,” she suggested. “We don’t do that kind of thing. They wouldn’t know what it was. Just be polite.”

Mouse went to talk it over with the chief petty officer in charge of the sideboys. McClennon stood with Amy, studying his list in order to avoid eye contact.

“You look good in that uniform,” she said softly. “All those medals . . . ”

“Beckhart likes to hand them out.”

“You’ll get another for this business?”

“Probably.”

“Moyshe . . . Something I should tell you. When I said we were hiding from each other . . . I was hiding from you. And fooling myself. The reason I was so eager to throw a net on you . . . ”

He glanced at her. She was showing a lot of color. “Yes?”

“It’s embarrassing. I don’t like myself very much when I think about it.”

“Well? I don’t like the things I’ve done, either.”

“I was the Ship’s Commander’s special agent. I was supposed to keep an eye on you and report to him. Because he wanted to make you into the head of a Starfisher secret service. That meant you were going to be important. I wasn’t important. I wasn’t ever going to be. The only way I could have gone any higher was if Jarl died or left
Danion
.”

McClennon saw what she was trying to say. “It’s all right. I understand. And now I know why you did so many things I thought were strange.”

“Moyshe . . . ”

“Forget it. We’ve got pain enough. Don’t drag up any old stuff.”

A red light came on over the lock housing. The ship-wide address system announced the arrival of the visitors’ shuttle. It admonished all hands to remain courteous and helpful in every circumstance. The lock cycled. A great burly bear of a man stepped inside. He looked around as if expecting to be assaulted by the legions of the damned.

“Gruber,” Amy whispered.

“Get him, Mouse,” Thomas said.

“Me?”

“You got more balls and more suave than me.” Mouse introduced himself as Captain Storm of Admiral Beckhart’s staff. He introduced Thomas and Amy, then asked the Fishers to follow them.

The sideboys stood at superb, perfectly matched attention while the Seiners disembarked.

The Marine sentries at the wardroom door were military perfectionists too. They snapped to present arms. Admiral Beckhart was waiting inside. He wasted little time introducing himself, or excusing himself for having assembled them virtually at gunpoint. He presented the Ulantonid tapes. While they ran, Mouse and McClennon passed out copies of the known data on the centerward threat. Amy distributed copies of the tapes. The lights came up. Beckhart said, “Gentlemen, you’ve just seen the reason for our unfriendly behavior. I’ll now answer any questions. Doctor Chancellor, Captain McClennon, Captain Storm, and your own Lieutenant Coleridge will also speak with anyone who likes.”

McClennon was amazed by the reserve of the Seiner leaders. Even the worst tape scenes cause no stir. They remained obstinately uncommunicative.

Danion’s
Ship Commander isolated Amy. They fell into heated discussion. The others asked only a few questions while Amy’s interrogator worked, then conferred with Payne and Gruber.

The Fishers ignored Storm and McClennon completely.

Replying to a Gruber query, Beckhart said, “We’ll be completely open with the available data. In accordance with High Command directives, you’ve received copies of almost everything. The centerward race threatens all of us.”

McClennon told Mouse, “Ever notice the Old Man’s split personality? He’s three different people, depending on who he’s talking to.”

Mouse smiled. “We all are. More than three, usually. He’s just obvious.”

“Think they’re buying it?”

“Payne’s people are. Most of the others aren’t, Gruber looks like he’ll give us the benefit of the doubt.” He picked lint off his dress black tunic. “We’re victims of our reputation. They can’t believe we’re being straight.”

Gruber proved willing to listen. That willingness extended the session for hours. Stewards came in, set up tables, served a meal.

Gruber finally seemed satisfied. His sub-chieftains began filing out, following Mouse to the lock.

Amy walked with McClennon. Starting at the desk, she said, “I’m going back to
Danion
now.”

“Okay.”

“Moyshe . . . I’m sorry.”

“I am too, Amy. About everything. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Stay happy, Moyshe.”

“You too.”

She was the last Seiner into the lock. Mouse turned to McClennon. Thomas nodded.

Mouse ordered the lock cycled.

“Think it went over?” McClennon asked.

“I don’t know, Tommy. I don’t . . . Tommy? What’s the matter? Chief, help me here. Stretcher. Somebody get a stretcher.”

The episode was McClennon’s worst yet. It took the Psych team three days to bring him out.

It had surprised him completely.

Twenty-three: 3050 AD
The Main Sequence

“I don’t think you should go, Thomas,” the Admiral said. “Let Mouse handle it. Suppose you had one of your attacks?”

“I’ll be all right. Look. Ask Lieutenant Corley. She says it’ll take a week to reach another crisis point.”

“Mouse?”

“Somebody has to look over their shoulders, right? Otherwise we won’t know if they’re getting anywhere. That’s just the way those people are. They’re not going to say anything till they’re sure nobody can shoot them down. Scientists would rather be dragged through the streets naked than be wrong. If Tommy goes, we’ll have twice as many eyes.”

“All right. Thomas, you know the woman who heads the Seiner team. Talk to her. Take a recorder. I want to hear what she says.”

Twelve hours later McClennon and Storm, accompanied by a pair of Marine sergeants, entered the cold metal halls of Stars’ End. The dock ring of their landing bay was a good twenty kilometers below the featureless planetary surface. The plunge down the long, dark shaft had been harrowing. Mouse had lost his supper.

The Marines began horsing an electric truck off the shuttle.

Mouse walked along a steel passageway, away from the dock ring. He peered into what had to have been Ground Control in an age gone by. “Tommy, come take a look in here.”

McClennon had to stoop beneath the passageway ceiling. He joined Storm. “What?” He saw nothing but a Marine sentry.

“By that console thing.”

“Oh. A skeleton.”

The reports said bones could be found throughout the fortress. Thousands of skeletons had been encountered.

“We’re ready, sir,” one of the Marines said.

McClennon snapped a picture of the bones. “All right. Mouse, let’s hit Research Central first.”

“Right. We’ll probably get everything there anyway.”

“Be charming. Consuela el-Sanga looks vulnerable.”

“Am I ever anything else?”

The little truck streaked through the endless halls, down ramps, around perilous turns, ever deeper into the metal world. The Marine driver fled on as if being pursued by the shades of the builders. He shuddered visibly each time they encountered one of the skeletons. They passed through one chamber where a score of the builder folk had died.

“The bones that have touched and shaped our lives,” Thomas said. “From afar, like virgin princesses.”

“You getting poetic again?”

“I do when I’m depressed.” He glanced at the Marines. They stared forward impassively. “And this place is depressing.” The soldiers seemed to have come out of a robot factory. They had shown no reaction to the Admiral’s tapes.

The driver’s suicidal rush was the only evidence that either man was disturbed.

The truck swooped into a level with ceilings vaulting a hundred meters high. Brobdingnagian machines crowded it, rising like the buildings of an alien city. There was life here, and light, but it was all machine.

“I wonder what they are.”

“Accumulators for the energy weapons,” Mouse guessed.

“Some of them. Some of them must be doing something with the air.”

“Look!” Mouse squealed. “Sergeant, stop. Back up. Back up. A little more. Look up there, Tommy. On the fourth catwalk up.”

McClennon spotted the androgynous little machine. It was busy working on the flank of one of the towering structures. “A maintenance robot.”

“Yeah. All right, Sergeant. Go ahead.”

They descended more levels, some as high-ceilinged as that of the robot. They saw more of the mobile machines, built in a dozen different designs.

Obviously, only the builders had perished. Their fortress was very much alive and healthy. Storm and McClennon saw no evidence of breakdown.

“It’s like walking through a graveyard,” Mouse said, after their driver had had to wend his way across a vast, open floor where hundreds of skeletons lay in neat rows. “Chilling.”