The Great Race

by Tom Clancy

  Leif waited in his virtual office until David called him, giving the okay. ‘Nothing disturbed that I could see,’ his friend reported. ‘I’ve checked all the telltales and run the file of the ship against our backup. Everything matches. I think we’re okay.’

  It only took Leif a moment to pick up the Constellation icon and appear on the bridge on the Onrust, Each of the crew members began checking their displays. Thanks to the magic of computers, several days of hyper-voyaging had been condensed into little more than an hour’s sim time, the sim based on each racer’s entrance into hyper-space and the placement of the force-field sails as they caught onto the hyperspace current.

  Now the ships stood frozen in time at the beginning of the breakout envelope - the target zone where the ships would return to normal space, drive deeper into the star system^ check in with the racing buoy, and depart for their next destination.

  They all knew the hazards of this particular area. The current they were riding continued past the star and perilously close to a black hole on the far side of the system. Ships that held on in hyperspace too long could find themselves on a one-way voyage to oblivion.

  ‘That Corteguayan cadet I saw hanging around Ludmila was shooting off his mouth about how well his buddy had fine-timed the breakout programming,’ Leif said. ‘He claimed they could hang on to the last nanosecond.’

  ‘Our own programming lets us slice the balcony - or the space/time continuum - mighty fine,’ David assured him. He glanced at his watch. ‘I guess we’ll find out who has the best system pretty soon now.’

  As if on cue, the lights dimmed and Hal Fosdyke’s voice came on, checking that all crews were ready. As soon as the last racer reported in, the special-effects people began counting down.

  The scene on the viewscreen abruptly came to life.

  Four racers rode the current ahead of them - the Thurien sword-ship, a Vakerain scout, the Corteguayan vessel, and the converted Setangi raider. Behind them were the rest of the vessels still in the race, strung out along the current like the world’s largest charm bracelet.

  As Leif watched, some of those trailing vessels - the ones who didn’t trust their programming or their engineers - lost the fairy flow of their force-field sails and then vanished, breaking out of hyperspace and back to the dull, everyday universe.

  If they were trailing before, they’ll be trailing farther now, Leif thought.

  He rehearsed in his mind what would happen when the time came. First a few tiny changes to the alignment of the force-sails, to turn the ship slightly and throw it free of the hyperspace current they were riding. Then, sails down, and all possible energy drains minimized, leaving full power for the engines to drop out of hyperspace.

  Each action sequence was already programmed, ready to happen quickly, one-two-three, when they hit the spot David had determined was optimal for breakout. They’d left the possibility of a manual override in place, in case something unexpected occurred, but the timing was so crucial it made more sense to leave the actual implementation up to the computer as long as things were going well. Hesitation or failure would mean disaster - they wouldn’t be able to escape hyperspace in time, and would be flung along at near light speed into the maw of the black hole.

  Sort of like the last spot along the river where you can park your canoe before the waterfall, Leif thought.

  More of the vessels behind them winked out of hyperspace.

  The 6rear Race

  Maybe ifs not a fear of their people or their machines, Leif thought. Maybe they’re playing it safe around the black hole. Maybe that kind of caution is why they’re behind us, instead of ahead of us.

  Then it was down to five ships. David told Matt to kill the rearview, and to focus in on the ships they trailed.

  The Thurien sword-ship looked like a beautiful but lethal weapon. The Setangi raider had the clean, aerodynamic lines of a ship built to cut through atmosphere. That was its purpose, to land on a planet and establish a trading connection - or to flash down with a swarm of its fellows and plunder.

  Leif’s eyes went to the Vakerain racer. It too had been adapted from a military vessel. On the show, the Vakerain were a contentious race living in a loose federation, member planets often squabbling and even fighting with one another. Their weapon of choice: their fighters - small, fast, and deadly ships that could operate for weeks at a time once separated from their carriers.

  The Corteguayan cadets had chosen the best of the Vakerain long-distance fighters as the basis for their design. Leif had always thought the Vakerain ships graceful, but the Corteguayan racer seemed to have lost something when all the weapons pods were eliminated. Stripped down, it had hull lines that conveyed a sense of speed -and raw, brutal power. Not a flying fish, Leif thought, but a flying fist,

  ‘We’re almost there,’ David announced, checking the readouts built into the arms of his chair. ‘Ready, Leif?’

  Leif snapped out of his musings and turned his attention to his own controls. ‘Ready, Captain.’

  A flicker showed on the screen ahead. ‘The Thuriens have just let go,’ Matt reported. Even as he spoke, the sword-ship blinked out of existence - at least in hyper-space.

  ‘And then there were three,’ Andy said.

  ‘I thought the Setangi would drop out first,’ Matt said. Setangi technology was not as advanced as that of other star-faring races. They made up for it through the skilled ship handling of their pilot-captains.

  ‘Either their captain has lots of nerve - or nothing to lose,’ David said.

  With a deft twist of its force-field sails, the Setangi raider flung itself loose from the current. Then the sails collapsed and the raider was gone.

  ‘Captain,’ Andy was looking at his console. ‘Aren’t we cutting it awfully close?’

  ‘I calculated this very carefully. Not quite yet,’ David replied imperturbably.

  They hurled through hyperspace, every second bringing them farther and farther ahead of the pack.

  Of course, the Vakerain vessel was still ahead of them.

  Leif began to feel uneasy.

  It’s like a game of chicken, he thought. Who’ll be the first to jump off?

  ‘David, we’re almost out of the envelope,’ Andy said, taking the words right out of Leif’s mouth.

  David sat watching the other racer and his instruments, his eyes narrowed. They’d reached the exact spot David had chosen for their re-entry. ‘Now!’ he said.

  The computer initiated the sequences, one after another.

  If any of these goes a little too slowly, we’re stuck, Leif thought.

  Trying to take his mind off that consideration, he stared at the viewscreen. The Vakerain vessel seemed to have cast off at the exact same moment as the Onrust, at least, it was trying to.

  Something seemed wrong with the fighter’s force-field sails. Instead of snapping round smartly to throw the vessel free, the sails moved sluggishly. The ship was still being pulled along in the current.

  ‘Kill the sails and get out of there!’ David muttered.

  But the sails remained caught in the current for a few fatal milliseconds.

  ‘They’re out of the envelope!’ Matt cried. ‘I don’t think they’re going to make it!’

  The Onrust made its translation out of hyperspace. On the scanners, the ghostly fog of hyperspace was replaced with the midnight black of deep space, spangled with stars. There was no sign of the Vakerain ship.

  ‘They didn’t break out!’ Andy said. ‘Next stop, the black hole!’

  David, however, didn’t have any time to waste on their competitor. ‘Matt, we were supposed to break out on top of where the race specs put the buoy. Where is it?’

  ‘Scanning,’ Matt said, applying a search pattern.

  His voice sounded embarrassed as he reported. ‘It’s not where it’s supposed to be. Captain.’

  ‘What?’ A lot of different emotions were squeezed into David’s single word.

  ‘It - it’s moved.’
>
  David slammed a hand down on the armrest of his chair. ‘A trick setup! I should have thought of that. They told us where the buoy would be when the race started! But that black hole messed things up! The buoy drifted!’

  Matt confirmed David’s words. ‘It’s several million miles behind us - exactly where the Thuriens broke out.’

  David turned to Andy. ‘Plot me a course to take us past the buoy and out of this system. I’ll bet we’ll still beat nearly everybody else.’

  Most everybody - though it appears that caution had an unexpected bonus in this round, Leif thought. But how far behind the Thuriens will we find ourselves? And how did the Thuriens anticipate that little trick with the buoy and the black hole?

  They swung around at maximum sublight maneuvering speed. Leif didn’t even see the buoy as they flashed by. He was busy setting up the next insertion into hyperspace. They wouldn’t be catching the hyperspace current out of here at the same angle as originally planned. Leif had to trim the sails into a new configuration to catch hold.

  Something loomed in the viewscreen, then shot past.

  One of the incoming vessels, Leif thought. At least nearly everybody else is in the same situation as we are.

  They passed several other ships, reached the insertion point, and transitioned to hyperspace. Then it was a case of waiting for the lagging ships to tag the buoy and get out of the system.

  Matt spent the time maxing out the scanners, trying to see who was ahead of them. ‘We held our position. Most of the ships dropped out early because of the black hole, so they had even more space to cover than we did to get to the buoy. We’ve got four ships up in front of us,’ he reported. ‘The Thuriens, Setangi, Laragants, and Karbiges.’

  That last was a real insult. The Karbiges were a race of living crystals. Their spaceships looked like pockmarked asteroids. At least the other leaders had cool vessels. But to be beaten out by a flying rock!

  ‘We’ll do better in the next system,’ David promised. ‘But this time we make sure we anticipate any hidden surprises. I want any possible drift of the buoys calculated when we set up our breakouts,’ he added with a significant look at Andy and Matt.

  Leif concentrated on his systems readings. Glad it’s not my faulty he thought.

  The lights flickered, and Hal Fosdyke’s voice filled the room. ‘That’s a wrap. Thanks, everybody.’

  Leif and the others cut their connections and found themselves back in their dingy little office space.

  ‘I wonder what went wrong with the Vakerain ship?’ David said. ‘They were still in the envelope when they started breaking out, even if they were slicing it sort of fine. Why did they move so slowly?’

  ‘We could ask them,’ Andy said. ‘They’re only three doors down.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Matt asked.

  Andy shrugged. ‘What can I say? I like to peek into half-open doors. I’m nosy.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Leif said. He made sure he was last, tucking a scrap of paper into the door frame as he left.

  Andy jerked a thumb at a door down the hallway. ‘That’s where the boy commandos were stuck, if you want to talk to them.’

  That door opened just as he was pointing. A small, excitable-looking boy stepped out into the hall, looking back. He was lambasting somebody in pretty savage Spanish. The next person out was Jorge. The big, handsome boy looked as if he’d taken a hammer blow right between the eyes.

  The smaller boy - the team’s captain, from the way he was talking to Jorge - stomped over to the Net Force Explorers.

  ‘Tell me!’ he said abruptly. ‘Is unauthorized computer communication allowed in this country?’

  ‘Unauthorized?’ Matt said.

  The Corteguayan captain made a wordless, furious gesture. ‘Announcements. Solicitations. Advertisements for obviously useless products and services.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Andy. ‘You mean spam.’

  ‘Spam’ was the nickname given to electronic junk mail over thirty years ago. Just as catalogs, begging letters, and contest promotions had jammed real-world mailboxes back in those days, there were companies who targeted possible customers and converts with electronic mail lists. Spam was a definite nuisance -

  Uh-oh, Leif thought.

  ‘How could you allow this?’ the Corteguayan boy demanded, horrified at the Americans’ apparent acceptance of spam. ‘Anyone using our networks for such trash would be punished.’

  ‘A land without spam,’ Andy said, almost dreamily.

  Yeah, Leif thought. A lot of things stop at the Corteguayan border. Like freedom. The government there doesn’t want its people to know what the rest of the world is like.

  ‘Did you have some trouble with this, ah, unauthorized mail?’ Leif asked.

  ‘Trouble?’ The Corteguayan captain quivered with rage. ‘Trouble! You might say that. It appears that zonzo here gave away his supposedly private network address.’ If looks could kill, poor Jorge would have been writhing on the floor. ‘He began getting messages as we pulled out. Many, many messages. And Jorge, here, thinking that they were love letters from a pretty girl, just had to download them. Somehow, our computer’s processing was affected. We could not pull free in time.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Andy muttered.

  Leif ignored his friend’s attempt at humor. ‘Would it be possible to see this mail traffic?’ he asked.

  The Corteguayan captain gave a dramatic shrug. ‘Why not?’ Give the gendeman your address, Jorge. After all, it is no secret now.’

  Cringing, Jorge recited the address Pinnacle Studios had assigned to him.

  I guess he hasn’t done his military career too much good tonight, Leif thought.

  Leif thanked the steaming captain and his hapless subordinate. He barely got a response. Gathering his crew around him, the Corteguayan leader stomped off down the hallway.

  Andy watched them go, his eyes bright with repressed laughter.

  ‘Spammed,’ he muttered. ‘He thinks they got spammed to death?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Leif sat in the living room of the Net Force Explorers’ suite, looking at the display on the room’s computer. Using poor old Jorge’s corporate Net address and the remote access code he’d been given, Leif was checking through the communications that the Corteguayan cadet had gotten while his ship was trying to break out of hyperspace.

  His friends were still laughing at what they considered wild accusations. ‘Come on, Leif,’ Andy said. ‘You don’t really believe those Corteguayan rubes, do you? All the spam in the world couldn’t have slowed the processing for their ship. These ships have memory to burn, and there are filters - I think the communications lines would have burned out before enough spam could have gotten into the system to do something like that.’

  Even so, it seemed that Jorge had become incredibly popular in that short amount of time. There were literally hundreds of hits during the minutes the racing scene was being recorded. Press releases, announcements, introductory letters with files attached, and a few free-form harangues - all had been routed through the Net to Jorge’s Pinnacle address during the crucial moments of the race.

  Somewhere in this mess of tetrabytes, Leif was convinced. somebody had hidden a batch of very nasty surprises. On his way to the mini-refrigerator to get a soda. Matt stopped beside Leif, peering in disbelief at the display.

  ‘What is that stuff?’ he demanded, pointing at a scrolling document. ‘I’ve got a couple of years of Spanish, so I know that’s not it. Unless the people in Corteguay use an entirely different alphabet.’

  ‘You’re right about the alphabet,’ Leif said. ‘It’s Cyrillic, devised for use in Russian and other Slavic languages.’

  Andy peered over, giving his friend a sidelong glance. ‘Don’t tell me you’re reading that.’

  Leif gave him a quick head-shake. ‘Not much,’ he admitted. ‘But I can pick up a word or a phrase here or there. Like that. Freeze display.’

  The computer immediately
stopped the crawling letters on its display as Leif stepped forward to point. ‘See these words? Savez Karpaty? That’s the local version of Carpathian Alliance. As far as I can tell, these are position papers and press releases giving the C.A. position on world events.’

  ‘Just what any young Corteguayan military cadet would want to receive,’ David chuckled, glancing over at the frozen gobbledygook.

  ‘It’s what a Corteguayan cadet might get if he gave his computer address to a pretty girl from the Carpathian Alliance team,’ Leif answered. ‘I saw him do that, so how she got it’s not much of a mystery. What baffles me is this.’

  He gave more orders to the computer, and a new document appeared in the display:

  A call to all free men and women!

  Show your true spirit by joining the struggle! Protect your individuality by joining with those of like mind! Join together to exercise the power of the will through mass action!

  The struggle is unremitting - the enemy ever resourceful Yet the dynamic is never stable. The deniers of the soul may attempt to impose a status quo, but the triumph of the will is forever imminent. Revolution, like earthquake or floods is always possible.

  It lies within the power of every individual’s soul to emulate the avatars of old, to dare , , , to do. Authorities attempt to monopolize power through a monopoly on rules. But the will to deny such trammeling of the human spirit, when conjoined with the energy of kindred spirits, becomes irresistible. The only danger then is false prophets, would-be avatars who seek to proclaim their own gospel.

  This time David ordered the computer to stop the crawl. ‘It seems to be in English,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But it makes about as much sense as that stuff in Cyrillic’

  Leif ordered the computer to back up one menu. ‘The source is listed as “The Wisdom of Al.” ‘

  ‘I can’t tell you if Al is wise, but he’s certainly out there.’ Andy looked at Leif, his face a picture of confusion. ‘What is this, some sort of wacko religion?’

  ‘You’d think that from the language,’ Leif conceded. ‘But believe it or not, this is part of a political debate.’