“Yes?”
“Whether or not we were locked out or locked in,” Maslovic told him.
“I—I shall have to think on this somewhat,” Macouri said after a pause. “There may be the basis of an arrangement here.”
“Take your time. We’re not going anywhere off the schedule right now and, as for me, I’m home.”
With that, Maslovic walked out through the security doors and back down the hall to get a drink and wait for the others to reassemble. Still, unlike before, he felt quite good at this point.
Maybe someday soon he would gaze into one of those damned crystals and that thing, whatever it was, would eventually show up to peer back at him as before. Only this time, that creature would discover that Maslovic would be standing right behind him…
* * *
“So, Sergeant, what do you plan to do if he does give you the key to the front door?” Captain Murphy asked.
“I plan to go through it, kicking it down if I have to, and see what this is all about.”
“Might be a real letdown,” Darch put in. “The remnants of some machine doing its automated thing, or maybe even just some kind of broadcast into areas of the brain common to most organic life-forms. You might wind up standing there, freezing or boiling, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.”
Maslovic grinned and looked around at them. “Well, I might have some company. Or would you prefer to break up this happy group?”
“And who else would be with us?”
Maslovic grinned. “The biggest damned ship in the fleet that the Admiralty will allow us to take, of course, with all hands. I want power behind me when I go in if possible. I want to know that, if we can’t take control of the planet, well, then at least we can blow it up.”
“But you’re talking a wild hole!” Murphy noted. “Hell, man, that’s tricky enough under the best of conditions with a small ship designed for the task. The records don’t show any ship comin’ back that’s of any size. Biggest is that yacht his grandpa had. We know from the record that some pretty large ships went in, but none of ’em ever came back, and the biggest not even in pieces!”
“Nevertheless, if they allow me to risk such a ship I’m going to take it. What about it, Lieutenant? Think you could run a wild hole with something the size of, oh, the Agrippa?”
She nodded. “I do not see anything against it. The principles of physics are quite different inside a hole, wild or not, than here, but they are still pretty well predictable and their characteristics known. A wild hole is incredibly dangerous, but a competent pilot should be able to get even a large ship through. That is why I believe that some agency interfered with the return of some of the ones on record as having vanished after going. Nothing comes back intact larger than that yacht, which is no larger than one of our shuttles. That is the only danger I would feel threatened by. A good pilot can do that job, but we do not know what we will be up against once there.”
“Well, Murphy here and I have been looking over the archives,” Broz told them, “and we can’t find any military ship on the list. Mostly research and exploration ships, freighters, and similar craft. Even one interstellar small city devoted to Christian evangelism, of all things. I feel confident that if we can keep them out of our control computers, we can handle the rest.”
“Then as soon as I get the coordinates I will put the proposal to the Admiralty directly,” Maslovic told them. “We will probably be approved with the limitation that we take only volunteers and then only the minimum human crew to do the job.”
“And the girls? What of them?” Murphy asked him.
“That’s up to the Admiralty. I know that if I had my own choice I’d bring them along. They may be the best, perhaps the only way of getting into direct one-on-one contact with this alien presence, and they have nowhere else to go. Of course, the Admiralty may feel that it would not be just to take them along at their age and experience. We’ll see. You, Captain, will be allowed to depart with our thanks.”
“The devil I will!” Patrick Murphy snapped. “I ain’t come this far to turn and run now, maybe never knowin’ what the hell it’s all about. No, no. You’re stuck with me, Maslovic. Nobody but nobody is gonna keep Patrick Xavier Aloysius Murphy from settin’ his old eyes on the Three Kings themselves!”
“Then it’s a done deal. I’ll go run it past the higher-ups and see what they’ll give us.”
It took almost a day to get everyone on board. The main points of disagreement were whether or not to try it with the full task force or to send just one element. Maslovic argued for real power, which meant one of the destroyers at the least, but after the Admiralty became concerned that, if everyone wasn’t going, there was the likelihood of a one-way trip judging from the evidence, it was decided that the force should be as minimal as possible while still sufficient to get the job done.
Maslovic would get his destroyer, with full weapons, but minimal crew. It would be stripped of all but one fighter squadron, put on as full automation as possible, and full discretion would be handed to the special captain appointed for the mission and to the ground force under Maslovic.
Both would also have the code strings for autodestruct.
By the time the group assembled again, Maslovic had the full set of details.
“Lieutenant Chung, you will take command of Agrippa,” he told her, watching her face light up. She was suddenly now, at least with a brevet promotion, about twenty years advanced beyond where she would expect to be. “I am mission commander, and, yes, you can call me Sarge, Chief, Commander, or Hey you! Makes no difference. Captain Murphy, I’m going to put you in charge of your three girls.”
“You’re takin’ ’em along, then?”
“Got nowhere else to put them, and in a pinch they may be our avenue of communication with whatever’s out there. We’re pretty sure we understand now how whatever it is hacked into the system and that avenue’s forestalled. That doesn’t mean they might not surprise us, but the captain and I will have personal control of weapons and similar systems outside the primary. No matter what, I feel certain we can blow them to hell if need be. Darch and Broz will handle our involuntary guests. Feel free to call on the rest of the team if need be.”
Broz had a wicked smile on her face. “They been told yet?”
“I rather think we’ll let old Georgi know just before we jump, in case he’s fed us the wrong coordinates or is setting a trap. Until then, both he and his alter ego Joshua are to be given the impression that they are being taken back to a colonial world as part of the bargain. Clear?”
Murphy looked Maslovic straight in the eyes. “It’s not much for this kind of thing.”
“It’s what we’ve got. Now, let’s go do it!”
X: THE THREE KINGS
“You can’t do this to me! You gave me your word!”
Maslovic grinned at the little man, who had been going back and forth about this for most of the trip.
“What’s the matter, Macouri? You know we made a deal. I thought you were the agent of the devil here. Isn’t that the devil’s trademark? Finding the loopholes and sneaking in the fine print? You’re not so good at it on the receiving end, are you?”
“But you said—”
“I promised you that you would be off the Thermopylae for good if you gave me what I wanted to know, and you are. This is Agrippa, and it’s a much smaller ship, comparatively speaking. And while you are under ship’s security, you are no longer a prisoner and are free to mix with the others, walk the decks, you name it. Just be aware that if you or anyone else without the proper security codes tries to, oh, disengage a lifeboat or raid a weapons locker or something of that sort they will get a nasty and very painful experience and will, from that point, be locked away in a padded cell in the brig wearing nothing but a smile.”
“But I could have gone at any time! I don’t wish to go!”
“Nevertheless, you are going. We are lining up on your coordinates even as we speak. And if we don’t come
out the other end at the Three Kings, you will have more than a little explaining to do. It is one of the major reasons you’re here. If you have anything to tell me that we don’t know about what’s on the other end and what might be expected or not, you’d better tell us soon, because whatever happens to us from this point on also happens to you.”
“This is beyond even your powers! I demand to be returned at once!”
“Remember our weighty conversation? Power is everything, isn’t it? Your money means nothing here, nothing to me anyway, or the others. You might be able to buy Murphy, but he can’t drive this ship.”
They had kept it from him until just now, when they lay off the region of wild holes waiting for the correct mathematical match to pop in. That could be any time, and at that point Chung would have to instantly commit or abort. Wild holes were unstable; they popped in and out like soap bubbles and lasted in most cases only fractions of a second before “bursting,” closing up and ceasing to exist once more. Only by putting a ship and its energy field into that hole at precisely the moment it was open could they stabilize it. Once inside, they could ride through it to the other end even as it closed itself back down. Not only space, but time itself, would be bent and twisted. It was why the route to the Three Kings had been so difficult to find even if you knew in what region to look for the entrance on the human end, and why it was as hard or harder to find your way back if you made it.
“I—I don’t know if the numbers work! They’re the right numbers!” Macouri insisted. “They’re the ones everybody else used. Who knows where they actually go? I—I—Oh, god! Don’t make me go in one of those!”
Maslovic grinned, feeling no sympathy for the murdering little fart. “Did I hear you just call on God? That might not be the best way to go there, I wouldn’t think. Not if you meet your old master on the other side.”
It was too much for the little man. He stood up and tried to look his captor straight in the eyes while getting his blood pressure down enough so he wasn’t totally beet red. It didn’t happen.
“I am Georgi Macouri!” he thundered, as authoritative as anyone could sound. “You can’t do this to me!”
“You’re the same mix of a few cheap chemicals and water, born little different than anyone else and destined to die like all of us and go back to those components,” Maslovic shot back. “You have the same value to me as those girls you slaughtered had to you. How’s it feel now, Georgi? What the hell ever gave you the idea that you were somehow immune?”
There was dead silence for a moment as the reality of that seeped into Macouri’s brain. While it was still percolating, Chung’s voice came over the public address.
“Attention! Please be seated at a secure station. Strap yourselves in if possible or hold on. The mathematical progression of hole formations is following the correct formula we were given. I will sound the alarm. At any point after that, we may have to go in fast and hard.”
Macouri’s mind suddenly shifted to the imminent. “How many times has she jumped through a wild hole in a ship this size?” he asked nervously.
“Never, as far as I know, except in simulation the past few days. Relax. Size doesn’t matter as much on this one, I’m told, and the ship’s own systems know what to do. I’m belting in. You should do the same.”
Almost at the end of his sentence the warning klaxon sounded throughout the ship. Almost everyone else was already lying down and secured or belted in a proper jump chair.
“NEVER???” Georgi Macouri’s voice sounded even as the ship suddenly accelerated from a near coast to fantastic speeds and headed for what the Macouri formula said would be the wild hole to the Three Kings.
* * *
“Definitely not what I expected,” Darch commented. Although his primary job was security on this mission, he was also the de facto head of the entire science department aboard the ship. In fact, except for the computerized labs and research programs, he was the entire science department. “In fact, what I am seeing not only I but all our science computers say is damned near impossible.”
They were lying several million kilometers back from the mini system, far enough outsystem that they could see both the strange dense star and the close-in massive gas giant as well. The visible-light screen view was impressive; it was almost as if they were looking at two suns, one on fire, the other not.
“Science is not my strong point,” Maslovic told him. “In fact, I believe it because the folks who know it tell me about it.”
“This kind of system is unprecedented, and for good reason,” Darch explained, not just to his boss but to all of them. “The kind of gravitational forces I’m reading show that there is simply no way this system can be in this kind of stable formation. This is a system that should be at war, pulling things apart, pulling others in for incineration. That kind of star shouldn’t even have planets. The turbulence on the big gas giant is an indicator of just how nasty things should be. These kinds of forces are why that wild hole field is where it is.” He exhaled and shook his head. “No, I don’t even envy the captain keeping us in any kind of stable orbit anywhere around here. No wonder almost nobody came back. Anybody who came along here who wasn’t the best would have been sucked in or flung down and crashed. This kind of system makes no sense. It can’t exist like this if physics is to be believed. There has to be a third force here, something not showing up on our instruments, that acts as the stabilizing constant between the warring sides. Otherwise it’s voodoo, Chief. It’s magic.”
“I knew it! I knew it!” Macouri muttered. “This is Hell! The seat of the Powers of Darkness! Oh, my! Oh, my!”
Maslovic totally ignored him. “Any idea of the force?”
“Well, in one sense our quaking friend here is right. In a good simulator I might well be able to build this thing. Sure, this is the universe. Anything’s possible out here, or so it seems, but it would be a lot easier to build it than to wait to find it, maybe, naturally, including some mysterious third force we haven’t seen anywhere else.”
Maslovic turned and looked at him. “And you could create a third force?”
“Maybe. It wouldn’t probably work here, or be much like here, but I could kludge it. This, now—this is no kludge. This was designed. This was engineered. I’d bet anything I had that this whole damned place was built.”
“Well, we sure couldn’t build it,” Broz noted.
“Irrelevant,” Maslovic told her.
“Huh?”
“If it was built, and I defer to the experts on that, then the question isn’t how, not unless you want to build another and I have no desire to do that. The question is why.”
“Beg your pardon,” he heard Murphy’s voice behind him. “Sure’n it’s obvious, I would think.”
“More of your wheelbarrows, Captain?”
“No, not exactly. But the same analogy. On at least twenty worlds that I know of there exist plants, or what serves for plants, that don’t eat sunlight and minerals or the usual. They got confused somewhere after creation, poor things, and decided to eat meat instead. There’s a ton of them types back on Barnum’s World. They keep the insect population down to that dull roar, or help to.”
“Yes? So?”
“That’s what that is, don’t you see? It’s a giant flycatcher. And we’re the flies.”
“He might be right,” Darch commented. “Hold on. Let me do a hypothetical here.” His tone changed and he adjusted something on his control panel, then said, “Computer, assume for problem that the data read in represents an intelligent construct.”
“Postulating,” the computer responded.
“Now, give me a visible representation of the missing energy force X that would be required by a builder to maintain the system at stasis.”
On the screen, superimposed on the actual view, was a series of translucent spidery webs connecting the various parts of the inner solar system and particularly the secondary system around the gas giant. Primary energy flowed not from the moons o
r sun as expected but from the gas giant.
“Interesting. They’re using the very instability of the system that’s causing the tremendous storms and volatility on the planet to give them the power they need to stabilize the inner system,” Darch noted. “There’s no perfect stability, however. Eventually sufficient energy will be lost in the exchange to weaken the planet. Not much, but the tolerances here are very slight. It will slow, begin falling inward taking everything with it, and collide with the sun. The result will be a monstrous explosion and possibly the formation of a small singularity. We don’t want to be anywhere around when that happens.”
“How far away would be safe?” Maslovic asked him.
“Um, how about a hundred and fifty or so light-years minimum? No, when this goes, it’s going to take the evidence with it.”
“How long until that happens?”
“Hard to say. Remember, what you’re seeing is presupposing an artificial construct with forces we can’t measure or understand and which, if they exist, have been fairly stable for centuries, maybe longer. However, there is very small slippage, measurable slippage, of the big guy in system. Whatever process is going on, it’s begun. Still, I don’t think we’re talking tomorrow or next week or even next year, but when it goes, it’s going to go really quick.”
“Which of those three big moons in the life tolerances zone around the big boy would be most likely to harbor the builders?”
Darch chuckled. “Oh, none of ’em. Whoever did this, assuming somebody did, wasn’t from around here any more than we are. But, boy! Is that technology impressive!”
Maslovic thought a moment, then asked, “So, Darch, if they have that kind of power, could we blow it up if we have to?”
“All else being even, I’d say yes,” the tech chief replied. “Depends on whether or not they deployed defenses at the same level as their building projects. I’d walk real careful on this one, Chief. If we could blow it, we’d almost certainly be killed in the same attempt, since it would destabilize everything. Wouldn’t be much of an escape route.”
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