Eubeleus paced agitatedly to and fro across the floor of the main control center deep beneath the surface of Uttan. The latest report from Jevlen was that the Shapieron had lifted out from the planet and was riding in orbit. It was the Shapieron that had slipped in close under the planet's defensive guard during the Pseudowar and intercepted a communications beam to let visar into jevex. All his instincts told him that the Terrans were going to try the same thing again. He should have felt completely confident, he knew, for this time he had foreseen their plan; but he found himself unable to shake off an oppressive nervousness, which he traced back to the knowledge that Hunt and Danchekker were involved. It meant that anything could happen: especially something that nobody else had thought of.
"How close to completion is the final integration sequence?" he asked the operators clustered around the supervisory console.
"It's practically complete now," Iduane answered.
"Good. Run a double check on all communications input channels. I want to be absolutely sure that no illicit accesses are being tried anywhere. Assign it a class-one priority."
"Understood."
"What is the Shapieron doing?" Eubeleus asked another operator, who was monitoring the tracking data being relayed via PAC from the Jevlenese surveillance system.
"Still holding LJO. No new developments."
Eubeleus stopped, stared at the screen showing Langerif and his officers in the PAC communications room, then turned away and started pacing again. "I don't like it," he muttered. "I don't trust that ship."
"It's not doing anything," Iduane pointed out. "And what can it do? Our surveillance will be following it from Jevlen every inch of the way, wherever it goes."
"It's not safe so long as it's anywhere in the vicinity of Jevlen," Eubeleus said. "I'm not proceeding further until we get rid of it."
"Get rid of it?" Iduane looked perplexed. "How? Jevlen doesn't have any strategic defenses."
"There must be some way of—" Eubeleus stopped and looked over at the screen showing Langerif again. "Wait. We've still got their illustrious commander, haven't we?" he said, moving back across. "The leader who brought them back after all those years. They wouldn't want anything to happen to him, now, would they?" He nodded, satisfied. "And you've got some others there that we can use as hostages, isn't that right? Who are they?"
"Two scientists, who work with Hunt and Danchekker," Langerif replied. "Also the Terran who was in charge of security here."
Eubeleus looked gratified. "Perfect! Get a laser link to whoever is in command of the Shapieron and have those three brought up to where you are, right away. We'll have that ship out of harm's way within an hour." He looked across at Iduane. "Suspend all further action concerning the Awakening for the time being," he ordered.
Iduane nodded but didn't look happy about it. "What about the Prophet? He's still there with all the people, waiting for you to take over."
Eubeleus waved a hand impatiently. "Oh . . . go back and tell them to sing a few more hymns or something," he replied.
Duncan and Sandy were sitting together among the group of security guards, Ganymeans, and other captives inside PAC.
"How's that for a bummer?" Duncan said. "We come all this way, to a new city and a totally different culture, and we end up like this."
"We never even got to see the town," Sandy agreed dismally.
Duncan looked idly around at the others sitting around the room, not saying much, waiting. "What do you like to do when you get to go out?" he asked.
"Go out? What's that? I work for Chris Danchekker, remember? A vacation is eating lunch that didn't come out of a paper bag."
"Guys like that ought to get married," Duncan said.
"Maybe he did, years ago, and forgot all about it. I've seen him show up at the lab in odd shoes."
"How about San Francisco?" Duncan said. "Ever get out that way? Fisherman's Wharf, Enrico's Coffee House? Do you know, I reckon that if they handed this city over to the people who run Chinatown in S.F., they'd have the place up and running in a month without ever needing jevex."
Sandy stretched and thought about it. "I think I'll take the south," she said. "New Orleans, some places out along Texas. Maybe I'm just cut out for the slow, lazy life."
"Tell you what," Duncan said. "When we get back after this, we'll go off on a tour and see all of it. Thinking back, I'd say I've spent too much of my time shut up in labs, too. Vic's always saying, Why change your job? It's just more of the same. Change your life. What do you think? Does that sound good?"
Sandy looked at him sideways. "Are your intentions strictly honorable, Mr. Watt?"
"Absolutely not."
"It's a deal."
Some police came into the room and started talking to the ones who had been standing guard. The newcomers seemed excited, with a lot of waving and gesticulating. The captives watched and waited with mixed reactions. While it was going on, Del Cullen moved over to where Sandy and Duncan were sitting. "Looks like the war's not over yet," he murmured.
"Why? What's happening?" Duncan asked.
"I only caught pieces of it, but it sounds like something's just come down through the roof of the city. I think one of them said it was the Shapieron."
Sandy looked aghast. "You mean it crashed?"
"He'll, no. It took off again . . . But there's still something going on out there. The others are up to something."
Then the police who had entered came over and pointed to the three of them. The guards motioned for them to get up and follow. In the background, Koberg and Lebansky started objecting, but held back when other guards lowered their weapons threateningly. Cullen shrugged. "I guess we don't have a lot of choice," he said. The prisoners left, accompanied by the escort that had been sent for them.
They were taken up to the communications room, where Garuth was standing with Langerif and a group of other Jevlenese in front of a screen showing Eubeleus. On another screen they saw Hunt, Danchekker, and a mixed group of others in brightly lit surroundings of display consoles and control stations, which Duncan guessed to be the inside of the Shapieron.
"It's them!" he exclaimed. "They got out! They're—"
"Quiet!" Langerif snapped.
On the other screen, Eubeleus was speaking. "We do indeed have all of them as you can see for yourselves. I'm not in a mood to make long speeches. The implications are too obvious to require spelling out. My instructions are that—"
"Don't listen," Garuth broke in. "Do whatever—"
"Remove him," Langerif ordered. Two armed guards ushered Garuth away, out of range of the screen.
Eubeleus resumed. "You will take your ship away from Jevlen immediately at maximum speed, and out of Athena's planetary system completely. The Thuriens will project a toroid to remove it from this region." He raised a hand, seeing the protest start to form on Torres's face. "There is nothing to negotiate. You will commence at once."
Sandy was ebullient at seeing that the others were safe, and for the moment she wasn't worried about what would happen next. Gina, standing in the forefront of the group behind Torres, was looking especially crestfallen. "Don't worry, Gina," Sandy called, as if she could direct the words only at her. "Things will work out. Maybe it's all just happening in our heads." A private joke. Gina caught it and smiled back.
"Glad you made it, chief," Duncan called out from beside Sandy. Hunt acknowledged with a nod and a faint grin.
Eubeleus paled with anger. "Take them all away!" he shouted. "They've served their purpose. The Ganymeans know we have them." He looked back at the view of Torres. "Don't let their frivolity mislead you, Captain. Take your ship outward immediately. Otherwise, I don't have to tell you what will become of your precious friends there."
Torres could only nod numbly. But behind him, Danchekker's face had taken on the enraptured expression of somebody who had just seen a light, as if he had only just realized something that should have been obvious long before.
Chapter Sixty-One
Hunt raised a restraining hand. "Chris, calm down, stop dancing about like that, and say whatever the hell it is you're trying to say."
Danchekker regained most of his composure, but was still unable to prevent his finger jabbing repeatedly in Keshen's direction. "The activation codes! Don't you see? He entered them into the touchpanel in the club! He still has them, subconsciously, inside his head. visar can get them out again!"
Hunt stared for a full five seconds. "Is that right?" The question was mechanical. He already knew enough to have little doubt of the answer.
"Yes . . . with Keshen's permission, naturally," visar said.
"Of course," Calazar whispered numbly. It was so unheard of that no Thurien would have thought of it—or a Thurien-oriented computer.
Hunt looked at Keshen. "Is it okay with you?"
Keshen shrugged, still taken aback at having suddenly become the center of things. "Well, I guess so . . . Sure."
Hunt turned to Torres. But the Ganymean was shaking his head. "But is there any point? The Jevlenese will be watching our every move. If we so much as take the ship anywhere near a redirector satellite . . ." He made a helpless gesture and left the sentence unfinished.
A silence fell, broken by the humming and pulsating of distant machinery buried in the ship.
Then Caldwell said, "Maybe there is a point. If the Jevlenese are going to have all their attention fixed on the Shapieron, that might make it an ideal decoy while something else tries for the satellite—one of the ship's probes, maybe. Some of those probes are fitted with h-space gear and can talk to visar. If Keshen says he can get into the planetary net from the satellite, you'd just have to bridge a connection across. How many guys would it take to do it?"
Everyone looked at Torres and the Ganymean crew officers. They were the only ones who could answer that.
"It's got a chance," Rodgar Jassilane said at length. "When the stress field breaks down under main-drive acceleration, the entire external electromagnetic environment of the ship is disrupted. If a probe were ejected at the right moment, it might well get away undetected against the background . . . and there's nothing else we can try."
"Who'd need to go?" Hunt snapped. "Keshen for a start, I assume." He turned back to the Jevlenese engineer. "Will you do it?"
Keshen swallowed hard, but nodded.
"I'll go with him," Jassilane offered promptly. "That's all. You won't get more than two of us into one of the h-fitted probes, anyway."
There wasn't time for any more finesse. Eubeleus was probably wondering already why the ship wasn't accelerating. Hunt looked at Torres and indicated Keshen with a jerk of his head. "Let's do it. Get him to a coupler, quick."
Torres confirmed the order with a brief wave to one of the Ganymeans. "zorac, prepare a sounding probe for launch." He waved to two more of the ship's officers. "Have two EV suits made ready at the access lock, one Terran model, one Ganymean."
Keshen was already being speeded through a doorway out from the command deck to the couplers. The other Ganymeans saluted and hurried away.
Chained again, and with guards keeping them constantly covered at spearpoint, the prisoners sat morosely in the bumping, sliding cart as it approached the outskirts of Orenash. It was amazing, Hunt thought. Now that he was adjusting to the crazy dynamics of the place, he could see the change between north-south and east-west lengths every time the cart rounded an approximately right-angle bend. The scientist in him, even in a predicament that made anything else seem pointless, noted it as a detectable alteration in the cart's length-breadth proportions. No wonder the people here had never made anything beyond a few primitive tools. And the mountains discernible off to the left in the twilight were noticeably closer than they had been when the procession came out onto the plain, although the route was surely more or less parallel to them.
Beside him, Gina was pressed close, fighting to keep her emotions under control. He reached across her lap to squeeze her arm reassuringly. One of the guards growled something threatening. Hunt drew back.
"Well, here it is," she said. "The world of Earth's mythology, only real, just like we said. But who'd have thought we'd end up in it?" She drew a long, shaky breath, and the brave face she had been struggling to maintain broke down. "Look, I'm not very good at this. I don't know what they've got lined up at the end of this ride, but—"
"Save it," Hunt said. "As you said, it's a mythology become real. Miracles can happen."
"What miracles?"
"Who knows?"
"You know what a fluke it was for us to get that connection. What chance is there of anything else, anywhere in Shiban? If it got cut off, it must mean either that the club was taken over, or Eubeleus shut down all the links. What else can any of them"—she shook her head, unable in her fear and confusion to sort out the philosophical niceties—"us, whoever those people still out there are . . . What can they do? Do you know?"
"Not exactly," Hunt confessed.
"See!" Possibly from the workings of some inner defense mechanism, Gina became almost belligerent. "You don't know. But the you out there is every bit the same person, isn't it? And up to the point where we got detached, he knew as much as you did. So why should he have any better ideas? And the same goes for the rest of us."
Hunt didn't have an answer. He could only look away.
They were coming into the city of Orenash. The architecture was massively imposing, and foreboding. Ahead, trumpets sounded as the leading body of soldiers passed through a large gate set between two square towers in a high wall. Crowds were milling around the vehicles, shouting praises to the priests and jeering at the captives.
It was an odd feeling, trying to project how he would feel about himself, Hunt found. To the originals of themselves that they had been derived from, they were just knots of computer code. He wondered how much those originals out there would really care. Right now, he didn't feel at all like a piece of computer code, and he cared very much. But how much of that was likely to impress itself on other beings in another universe, whatever their superficial resemblances and theoretically coincident identities? They didn't have the same stake in the outcome of all this.
It was not a very reassuring line of thought to find himself being drawn along.
"Data update from Jevlen," an operator sang out suddenly. Eubeleus swung to face him from the middle of the floor, his haste betraying a tenseness that he had been striving not to show. "The Shapieron is accelerating out of free-fall now. Readings indicate profile consistent with maximum ramp up to interstellar speed."
It took Eubeleus a moment or two to register the fact fully. Then, gradually, the realization percolated through that his gamble had paid off. He let his tension dissipate slowly, savoring the feeling of relief flowing over him to take its place.
He had expected some delay, despite the harshness of his ultimatum, for there were bound to be deliberations between those aboard the vessel and whoever else they were in contact with. Their final submission, expressed in the form of the ship's departure, would come only as a last resort. His worry had been that they would call what they thought to be a bluff and so force his hand, thereby necessitating what would have been a regrettably ugly note on which to begin the new regime. But now the danger was past.
"Our congratulations," one of the others offered. "This is exactly the kind of unswerving will that the plan needs."
Eubeleus dismissed the remark offhandedly, as if the fact should have been sufficiently obvious not
to need voicing. "So much for their last, desperate attempt, which as you see, turns out to have been a mere distraction," he said. "And now, back to our main task. Is jevex running now?"
"Fully functional, Excellency," the familiar voice of jevex responded. Reassured looks passed between the others around the control center.
"Before we open the links to Jevlen, I want a final check that we are not registering any attempts at irregular access," Eubeleus said. "I want the system fully secure on all counts."
"Commencing core reintegration prior to connection to Jevlen," jevex confirmed.
"Breakdown of Shapieron's stress field is beginning," the first operator called out. "Ship is decoupling from normal space . . . Delta index is fading . . . Last readings give acceleration as undiminished."
At last Eubeleus felt safe, and he permitted a smile of triumph to play around the corners of his mouth for an instant. "It is time to proceed," he announced. He turned to one of the aides. "I shall guide the Prophet personally, as intended. You watch here until Iduane returns." He allowed his gaze to drift slowly over the company. "When we see each other again, Shiban will be ours." Applause greeted his words. Eubeleus turned and left the room.
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