Jinx On a Terran Inheritance

by Brian Daley

  "Not too well. It would have been worse, I suspect, except that most of the other racers were saving themselves for the Solar system leg."

  "This old scow was built and rebuilt to take it. And Corva really knows his way around an engine room. Janusz's no tyro either. We got the bottle fields sealed and synched again; they'll hold. But I don't think the normal-space engines can stand that kind of punishment again, at least not without a shipyard overhaul. We were pretty close to a serious malfunction, pushing them like that."

  "Well, Janusz can scarcely be faulted," Floyt commented from the mold-lounger where he slumped. He'd been as busy as the others before the Stray's transition to Hawking. Now he was sipping iced tea. He hadn't much choice, right?"

  Alacrity rubbed his eyes wearily. "Not really, if we're going to have a prayer of pulling this thing off and getting to Earth. We can make the Hawking-Effect leg of the race about as fast as any, I suppose, unless somebody's got something new or experimental under their hull. It's sublight that's liable to yang us up. The thing is, if we fall way behind or even worse, the normal-space engines give out on us, somebody's bound to come after us—maybe board us. If we have to drop out of the race we might as well go back to Hawking and get lost forever; it can't be too long before word gets out about the Repository raid and the Camarilla starts taking extreme action."

  Sintilla, sitting cross-legged on the deck, said, "But what if the sublight engines can't take it? We won't be doing anyone any good by blowing ourselves into the afterlife."

  "What if we pass up this chance to throw light on the Camarilla?" Alacrity riposted. "There'll never be another."

  He reached over and began massaging the Nonpareil's shoulders. "Besides, Janusz doesn't look like he's giving up hope. He's doing a great job." He said that more or less to Victoria, who'd just come aft from the bridge. She did not seem to register it. "Let's see what he's got to say," Alacrity finished.

  "Where is Janusz?" Victoria asked.

  Alacrity kept massaging. "Arguing with Corva in the power section. Funny how those two get along."

  Floyt nodded, grinning. Sintilla snorted. "You two should talk!"

  "Anyway, I think they've got some kind of idea but I'm not sure what. They had their heads together, but they're not ready for outside opinions yet."

  Heart was playing with a memory wafer. Alacrity looked over her shoulder. "What've you got there?"

  "It's from my father's purse. Sintilla and I were going to try to crack it, the way we did Sile's. It can wait."

  Janusz and Corva appeared. "Ship's complement's assembled," Sintilla said.

  Janusz sat; Corva stood by a holoprojector, looking up absently at the frescoes. Janusz said, "We've roughed it out with computer models and calculations, analyzed the tech readouts, material strengths, all of it. There's no way our sublight engines can keep us up with the regatta; the racers are much faster than we foresaw."

  "But we can't give up," Victoria said. "This is our one chance."

  Corva said, "Oh, but no one was talking about giving up. Janusz has a plan and I feel it's feasible."

  "We're listening," Heart said.

  "We're listening hard" Floyt elaborated.

  "Simply put," Janusz began, "it occurred to me that the Stray has two booster engine arrays, quite powerful ones. I propose we use those to augment the main engines long enough to make our approach to Terra."

  "Two boosters … " Alacrity's face blanked with puzzlement, then his eyes bugged. "That's the craziest damn thing I ever heard! If you two mean what I think you do, the air's probably too thin in here, that's what's doing it!"

  "What are we discussing?" Floyt inquired.

  "The missiles, the Annie Vs," Victoria said slowly. "That's what you have in mind, isn't it? Yes, yes! It could work!"

  "Stop the printout! Scram the reactor!" Sintilla squawked. "You're talking about mounting the engine arrays from the Annies on the Stray's hull? It can't be done; there's not enough time and anyway, we're in Hawking."

  "That's true," Janusz admitted. "So we propose to brace the missiles in their tubes—rather like putting engines in a test mount—and to use them where they are. We'll correct course with the Stray's main engines. Our primary problem is that we cannot control speed; we can only buckle in and ride them."

  "The alignment of the missiles and balancing of thrust will have to be very precise," Heart said thoughtfully.

  "We can install simple engine cutoffs," Corva said, "and shut down to correct course if we have to. We've been going through stores and other available materials. It can be done, although we'll have to cannibalize part of the ship's internal structure to do it. We'll make giant braces and collars."

  "Will that kind of jury-rig hold?" Heart pondered.

  "That depends on the material strengths involved."

  Structural dynamics. Sleeplessness. Load tolerances. Stresspoints.

  Floyt almost stumbled over Corva in the main deck midships passageway, grabbing a hatchframe for balance. "Oh! Sorry, I thought you were aft, rerouting the control auxiliaries."

  The humanoid got to his feet tiredly. "Yes, yes; just checking the junctions here."

  "But I thought all that stuff there was life support and utilities."

  Corva toed closed an access panel. "What can I do for you, Hobart?"

  "We're going to try to fit the collar again, if you can give us a hand. Otherwise I think Alacrity and Janusz will rupture themselves, even with the power equipment."

  "I'll be right along." Corva bent to the panel again and Floyt watched curiously. Corva looked up. "I'll be right along, Hobart."

  Floyt shrugged and went off to draft Heart and Sintilla.

  Energy limits. An inflexible deadline. Breaking points.

  "One down, one to go," Victoria toasted with a squeezepak of mango juice. "Here's hoping we have less trouble with Tweedledum than Tweedledee gave us."

  All seven were gathered in the salon again for the first time since Janusz's plan had been put into effect. They'd been working steadily, with only occasional catnaps, for some forty hours.

  "That would be swell," Alacrity said sourly. "Then our only headache would be that the ship's opened up like a dissected frog. What are we going to use for the rest of the buttressing?"

  "We'll take out some of the forward frame members and some shielding," Corva explained matter-of-factly, yawning. "I had the figures around here somewhere."

  "This whole barge could come apart when we light those sparklers," Sintilla said. "And the air's thin on the other side of the skin."

  "We'll all be suited up," Corva said. "And we'll have Harpy as a lifeboat if that becomes necessary. But before transition, everyone should check themselves in the mediscan unit in the main head so we can adjust the environmental suits and insure we've no medical emergencies coming up that can't be treated in a suit. Get a printout and give it to Alacrity; that will be his job."

  Alacrity couldn't keep from laughing. "We are asking one hell of a lot from this old crate."

  "She's already given us one hell of a lot," Victoria reminded him. "It's quite a ship you inherited, Citizen Floyt."

  Floyt nodded; he realized that more with each hour.

  "What's that you've got there?" Alacrity said. Heart had been playing with the memory wafer again. Now she slid it into a reader.

  "I cracked it," she said.

  The reader threw up a holodisplay of info in bewildering columns and sidebars, menus and lists. A lot of it seemed to have to do with stock holdings and diagrams of dummy corporations, controlling interests, voting shareholders, and buyouts.

  One symbol appeared frequently in the material Heart was fast-scanning. To Floyt it looked something like a flowery maltese cross or cross-moline, or perhaps the chemical sign for white lead, in black with a white circle at the center. It was superimposed on an arc, like that of a planet or celestial body in the background. It seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it. Concentration was becoming more and more difficult.r />
  "It's all about the White Ship," Heart said. "My father's trying to take control of the project. But he's not going to; I'm going to see to that. Some day that ship will unlock the Precursors' secrets and that will determine how we evolve and what we become—what the whole purpose of life is."

  "I never heard your old man was involved in the White Ship project," Sintilla said.

  "The takeover's top secret, and it's not too late to stop it. There's a lot of competition, always has been: governments, cartels, religions, secret societies."

  Floyt was absorbing it all. When he looked to check Alacrity's reaction, he saw that his friend was just staring at the displays—and at that odd symbol.

  "If you go up against your father now, you're risking your life," Victoria stated. "Blood will only count now in that it will make him hate you more. He's very powerful, Heart."

  "I'm not alone," she answered, looking to Alacrity. If she expected him to second that, she was disappointed. "Other family members are with me, and some of my father's business rivals, competitors. I've had time to gather a lot of information and lay detailed plans these last years. The truth is, I'm relieved that I don't have to pretend any more, no matter what."

  She took Alacrity's hand. He didn't withdraw it, but he didn't respond either.

  Metal fatigue. Human fatigue. Inertia-shedding limits. Breakdowns.

  "That's your last word on it?" Alacrity looked not at Heart, but at the work she'd been doing, patching the improvised controls of the Annie Vs through the board and making sure the manuals were all working properly. Altered and bread-boarded as things were, there could be no trusting voice-activated systems.

  "You're not leaving me much choice," she countered. "I've made promises and commitments I'm simply not free to ignore. You'll have to accept that."

  "I can't." He faced her. "I have my own agenda; I learned the hard way that I can't go along with someone else's. What happened to my parents taught me that."

  The two were more disbelieving than angry. "I'm sorry about what happened to them and to you. I'd take away the pain for you if I could. But some things are beyond my control; you can't have your way in this."

  "Well, I'm sorry too because I'll be keeping you from having yours. I'm doing what I set out to do."

  "I won't let you, Alacrity."

  "You don't have any choice."

  Heart gave a sad half smile. "We're not leaving ourselves very much maneuvering room here, are we?"

  At that point Floyt appeared, rapping on the hatchframe and easing into sight hesitantly. "Pardon me for interrupting, please. Janusz needs you right away, Alacrity. He's in Tweedledum's launch tube."

  "I'll be along directly, Ho. Thanks." When Floyt had left, he asked, "Can we talk about this later?"

  "Talk, yes. Fight, no."

  Hull integrity. Allocation of forces. Failure bias.

  There were more than enough suits to go around. Alacrity picked the strongest and most durable and began to sweat over adjustments. The hardest crewmembers to fit would be Sintilla and Corva.

  He made the rounds, collecting mediscan printouts to calibrate reusable mixtures and tailor suit adjustments to each wearer. When he got to Victoria she struck him as distracted, sitting alone in the bridge, staring. He persisted.

  She turned on him. "Leave me alone, damn you! I can adjust my own damn suit! Go away!"

  He backed off. "Correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't you and me strike a truce?" He started to leave; the data would be in the mediscanner's data bank anyway.

  "Come back; I didn't mean that, Alacrity. Please come back."

  "Forget it. What's the matter?"

  She gave him a searching gaze, then handed him the printout. He scanned, stopped suddenly, then stared at her. "Anybody else know?"

  She shook her head slowly. "But it doesn't change anything. We still go to Terra."

  He sat down in the copilot's poz. "If you're sure that's the way you want it."

  "It is. Just keep mum."

  He sighed. "This is a helluva way to run an interstellar mission of truth and justice."

  Unknowns. Variables not subject to analysis. Insufficient data. Exceeds all safety limits.

  Material strengths.

  The race committee's advance ship had done its job well; with only a few hours' warning, the course had been cleared of regular traffic. That wasn't unprecedented, or even surprising. The chairman of the Interworld Banking Trust was one of the participants, and his organization was thinking of granting the Solar Development Corporation an enormous venture loan for construction on and around the outer planets. Another racer was the ruler of the One Hundred League, who was considering a Solarian bid to provide new guidance systems for his entire fleet. There was also the chief operating officer of Bascomb Amalgamated; the locals very much wanted her company to choose Solarian sites for several gigantic manufacturing facilities.

  The way "up-sun" toward Sol lay clear of interference. The stymied Spican flotilla, now scattered to various locations on its purported goodwill tour, had no choice but to comply with Solarian directions.

  Astraea Imprimatur came out of Hawking surprisingly far up in the pack and immediately began falling back. Praxis' course brought the racers into normal space just inside the orbit of Mars; the starships plunged up-sun to begin the photon sailing leg of the race.

  "I'm picking up Srillan transmissions," Victoria said. "It looks like they've got a fleet detachment here too, but they're also out of the way."

  "Then they make no difference," Janusz decided.

  "We won't get any more speed out of the Stray's sublight engines," Alacrity reported from the copilot's poz. "Time to pull the ring."

  From the pilot's poz, Janusz agreed, then instructed them all to make a last check of their suits and the safety cocoons that enfolded them. He and Alacrity checked the remotes that lay under their braced hands on the armrests; the most important of these were the cutoffs for the engine arrays of Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

  Floyt, immobilized in suit and cocoon in the weather bridge alongside the encapsulated forms of Sintilla and Heart, acknowledged Janusz, then switched his intercom to Sintilla's line. "What I mind is this is my one and only chance to see the rest of the Solar system and we won't even come close to anything until we get to Earth—not even an asteroid, for Finnagle's sake!"

  "Why not worry about the simple things?" Sintilla suggested. "Like surviving?"

  "Well, if the inertia-shedding field gives out we'll probably never know the difference anyway—isn't that what Alacrity said? Right. So why not be a bit more ambitious in my carping?"

  "Corva, are you okay?" Janusz called over the main net.

  "Yes, quite, thank you," Corva answered from the nestled Harpy. He was in several ways their only safety precaution: if there was time to abandon ship in case of mishap, Corva could have all Harpy's systems ready and could even make a pickup in the unlikely event that the vessel broke up without killing them all instantly. If the ship veered off course and there was the opportunity, the Srillan might do some good by using Harpy for steering.

  "We're falling farther and farther behind," Victoria said. "We've got to go before we draw attention to ourselves."

  "You think we're not about to draw attention to ourselves?" Sintilla marveled.

  Janusz checked all around once more, got an all-ready from everyone. He touched a switch under his braced hand.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried it again two or three more times, searching his board laboriously through his cocoon viewslit, ignoring the heads-up display in his helmet. "It's not working." He moved the switch back to the off position.

  "I'm picking up something," Alacrity said. "Ship coming out of Hawking."

  "I'll check the hookups," Corva said.

  "Stay where you are; there isn't time," Janusz said curtly, shutting down the ship's engines. The Harpy's protective gear was more cumbersome than Astraea Imprimatur's; it would take the Srillan much longer to extric
ate himself, then resecure.

  "I'll go," Janusz said. "Alacrity, you stay ready." Alacrity, Janusz, and Corva were the only ones who really knew how the modifications on the Annies worked; Alacrity didn't argue.

  "I think this other ship's a racer," Alacrity said.

  "Good, good," Janusz muttered, making his way aft.

  "God, she's fast! She'll be on us in a minute!" Alacrity added, feeling that that wasn't so good. He could only bring to mind one possible late starter.

  Janusz reported on his progress as he rapidly made his way to the aft control linkages. In the meantime the racer overtook the Stray, and a new problem appeared.

  "Janusz, I got a big blip, here. I think it's Spican military."

  "How far off, Alacrity?"

  "We have a few minutes, but she's closing."

  "I have the controls disengaged; I think there's time," Janusz said.

  "I have that racer on close detectors," Heart said. "Aw, di buttana! It's the Celeste Aida!"

  Alacrity made a face in the stillness of his helmet. "Chances are he'll know it's us."

  "Fire control, ready," Victoria reported.

  For all the good it'll do us with our engines down, Alacrity thought. Most of the racers were fairly well armed in case of trouble along the way; it might take him some time, but Dincrist could finish them.

  That was not what happened. Celeste Aida kept meticulously to her most economical course along the regatta's route, passing no closer to the Astraea Imprimatur than several thousand kilometers.

  "Wha-aat?" Alacrity breathed.

  "My father's waited years for the chance to compete in a regatta," Heart's voice said in the resonant closeness of his helmet. "You know how much it took for him to do it, and how much it represents to him. He hates to lose; he simply doesn't give up."

  "Well; put my pizzle in the pencil sharpener," Alacrity said.

  "Our other problem's still with us," Victoria said. "Spican cruiser, looks like, closing fast on an intercept course. They're asking if we're in distress and requesting permission to board. Janusz, how much longer!"