“Don't call me sir, Twenty-two, and watch that temperature. I want the Butcher just as badly as you do, but charging in there with a malfunctioning ship isn't going to help any of us accomplish that. I don't trust those maintenance people to clean their own fingernails. You'd better be telling me the truth, son.”
“Well, sir - Klyn - maybe I'm a little in the red, but I think this hop will burn out the hot spots.”
“All right,” Shanga replied grudgingly. “Twenty-three, what the Core's wrong with your life-support? I've got red lights all over the readout!”
“Just lit my cigar, boss. The atmo-analyzer don't like it much.”
Bern Nuladeg laughed. “Can't get into a dog-fight without I got a stogie in my mouth, I'd bite my danged tongue!”
Shanga grinned inside his helmet, suppressed a chuckle. “Roger, Twenty-three, it's your funeral. All right, men, synch your navi-mods to me. We'll move on the tick. Four, three, two, one - unh!”
As a unit, the entire squadron lurched forward, propelled by the pinnace, began accelerating smoothly, and moved off toward the ThonBoka. Now, before the coming disorientation of the jump, Shanga and his men had time to look around them.
Ahead, the StarCave looked like a huge eyeball seen in profile. They approached the entrance obliquely to maximize the element of surprise. It was a stupid ritual, Shanga realized; they'd be seen coming anyway. But it was something to begin the program with; it didn't really matter. A huge gray eyeball with no iris, a pupil that twinkled with three tiny, blue-white highlights. Down deep inside that thing was the Enemy. Deep down inside that thing was death.
With a joyous shout of violated natural law, the squadron leaped toward it.
W325 was the designation of a very small bathtub-shaped object whose size and power output did not quite earn it the status of an auxiliary vessel. More than anything else, it was a rigid, powered spacesuit, used to inspect and repair the hull of the Wennis while she was in deep space - but most assuredly not under way.
At the moment, W325 was electromagnetically tied in place well aft of the hull to a boxlike addition to the superstructure supporting the cruiser's main drive tubes. While their fires were momentarily quenched to allow the launching of Klyn Shanga's squadron, they still glowed with waste heat energy. Attached to the underside of W325 was a decal in the shape of a human being. More correctly, a human being in the shape of a decal.
The Ottdefa Osuno Whett, anthropologist and master spy knew he was taking a terrible chance. That was always the case when serving two masters. He owed Rokur Gepta his assistance and advice - and stood to benefit by it to the tune of the destruction of his enemies. To one other, he owed everything, including his life, if need be. His immediate assignment was keeping an eye on the perfidious sorcerer. Gepta was not trusted as naively as he may have thought, gift cruiser or no gift cruiser.
Thus, encased in a slim, flexible spacesuit whose color had been adjusted to match that of W325, the anthropologist lay spread, arms and legs stretched wide, as tightly as he could to the undersurface of the little space-faring object while its master was otherwise occupied.
Whett's own attention was elsewhere; he watched the readouts in his helmet closely, his curiosity and excitement mounting. Above, Rokur Gepta cycled out of the small vessel, moved across to the rear surface of the superstructure addition. Whett had already determined, by means of various probes and rays, that the unconventional add-on was composed of hull armor, thicker than most and impenetrable to his devices. He’d suspected something like this and come forearmed. It had not been easy to strew the sorcerer's path with a dozen information-gathering devices, each the size of a single dust mote, but he had done it. Some of them read out in real time. They would be useless in another moment. But some absorbed what they witnessed and would spew it all out in a fraction of a microsecond once Whett was within receiving range again.
Whett waited.
At the rear of the armored compartment, the sorcerer hung. There was no port within sight, no airlock. Whett wondered mightily about that. He did not believe in the reputed powers of the Sorcerers of Tund. He'd seen far too much primitive mumbo jumbo backed up by trickery and hidden technology to be impressed by such claims. He wished that he dared peek out around the hull of W325 to see what was happening. Instead, he relied on his devices.
Oddly, the real-time machinery gave the impression that Gepta hadn't bothered with a spacesuit. Strange, but not totally unaccountable. No one was quite sure what species Gepta belonged to although he deliberately gave the impression he was human. And there were a people or two that could stand hard vacuum for several minutes - and of course there were the Oswaft... There was also the possibility that the sorcerer concealed life-support equipment beneath his robes. It would be like him, and indeed, the lightweight pressure suit the anthropologist wore could be concealed thus.
Whett waited. As expected, the telltales in his helmet winked off abruptly.
Gepta had entered the compartment and was now shielded by what the spy estimated to be at least a meter of incredibly tough state-of-the-art alloy. Slowly he detached himself from the underside of the maintenance vehicle, worked out a few stiff joints, and peered cautiously around the bulge of the craft.
Gepta was gone. There was no sign of him. Nor was there any sign of the means by which he'd entered. One instrument on Whett's helmet panel flickered fitfully in response to radiation leakage. Something hot was going on inside the shielded compartment, but he couldn't tell what. Whatever it was, it was unfamiliar.
He jetted up smoothly to the rear of the compartment and inspected it closely. As he had guessed, there was no airlock, no door of any kind. He rounded the corner and inspected a side, then another and another and another. No sign. He applied sophisticated instruments, highly developed skills. It was a solid box of metal, approximately ten meters on a side, featureless, except...
But that was ridiculous. Precisely in the center of the aft-most surface was a service petcock, opening on a pipeway no more than four centimeters in diameter. He didn't dare lift the cover, but he hung there in free-fall for a dangerously long while pondering, running through a catalog in his head of species and their capabilities.
The Sorcerers of Tund. No investigator - spy or anthropologist - had ever gotten a crack at those mysterious old prunes. He'd regretted Gepta's decision to pick him up in transit, he'd wanted to see Tund, be the first. His employer would have liked that, too. The Sorcerers of Tund were reputed to have some mighty powers - if you believed in that nonsense - but he couldn't recall any legends about dematerialization or the ability to squeeze through tiny apertures.
Magic? Perhaps there was something, after all, to the idea that...
But that was ridiculous.
XV
ABOARD THE WENNIS, Rokur Gepta prepared himself for battle.
There were mental exercises peculiar to Tund, disciplines on ancient ancestry; weapons to inspect, both personal and aboard the cruiser; personnel to instruct and threaten. Communications had begun flowing from the fleet. Gepta occupied the bridge, watching, listening, replying. A steady traffic of messengers rushed back and forth between the sorcerer and a hundred points within the ship.
“No,” Gepta hissed at the monitor before him, “you will not deviate from your designated position, my dear Captain, even to pursue escaping vessels - especially not to defend yourself, is my meaning clear, sir? You are a ship of the line. You are expected to perform your duty as specified, never to question orders, to consider yourself and your command expendable in the service of society.
“We have now spoken for two minutes too long on this subject. Out.”
He waved a hand; the disappointed features of the captain of the Intractable faded from the screen. It was the third such conversation he'd conducted within the hour, and he was growing weary of it. Only the thought of what lay aft in its armored compartment, the lovely green death, enabled him to remain calm.
“General Order!”
“To resolve these uncertainties, and as an example for future individualists, the commanding officers of the Intractable, the Upright, and the Vainglorious are hereby stripped of rank, along with their seconds in command. Said command will revert to the third officer in succession, and the six abovementioned personnel will be placed unprotected in an airlock, which shall be evacuated into empty space.
“By the authority of Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of Tund. Did you get all of that, young man?”
The stenographer, his face grown white, nodded dazedly. “Y-Yes, sir.”
“Good. Send it out and make sure it's understood that the order is to be carried out immediately. Now run along.”
Beneath his headdress windings, Gepta smiled. Aside from his two sessions in the armored compartment aft, this was the best he'd felt all day.
Vuffi Raa sat in the left-hand seat of the control room of the Millennium Falcon, setting up problems on the navigational console and cross-playing them through his master's game computer. He had to admit, Lando had been right. His scheme wouldn't win a war, and it might cost a great many lives on both sides, but it would wear the fleet down and encourage Gepta's political opponents to step in and end the blockade.
Had he been capable of shaking his head ironically, he would have done so.
He looked out through the segmented viewport forward, where he saw Lehesu hanging peacefully - at least to all appearances. He keyed the corn. “I have completed the modeling exercise, friend Lehesu. I believe we have a good chance. Will you not join the others with their preparations?”
The giant creature swam closer to the Falcon and peered in at his little robot friend. “No, Vuffi Raa. I am aware of what I must do, and I am ready. I was curious as to the projections you are undertaking. Will the fleet truly destroy itself if Lando's plan works?”
The droid raised a tentacle to indicate certainty since he couldn't nod. “Yes, as unbelievable as it may seem. You are an amazing people, my friend, and that's what makes it possible. The Falcon is as ready as she'll ever be, although I-”
“You are troubled, Vuffi Raa?” Lehesu could interpret tones of voice even with a mechanical being. “Please speak to me about it; perhaps that will help.” Glancing mentally at the timepiece he carried in his circuitry, the robot gave his equivalent of a shrug. “It is like this, Lehesu...” He told the Oswaft of the conflicts he felt in his programming and that he was beginning to disapprove of those who had imposed it on him. It didn't seem right that he should be compelled to stand by idly - at least what he considered to be idly - while the Navy exterminated a gentle, admirable people.
“I see,” the alien replied at last. “You know, we are in much the same position. I do not know whether I can take a life in my own defense, either. We are not a fighting people, as you so rightly have observed. Perhaps it is time for us to abandon life to make room for a more successful product of evolution.”
The robot, not knowing what to say, said nothing.
“Then again, Vuffi Raa, we should go away only if we cannot change. If we can, we are a successful species, are we not?”
Momentarily, Vuffi Raa wished he could smoke a cigar like his master. It seemed to help the human think, and it lent a certain dignity to whatever answer he might give the Oswaft. “I do not know, my friend. It seems wrong somehow that the success of a race be measured by its ability to do violence. There are other things in the universe.”
The Oswaft was no more capable of nodding than the robot.
“Still, one must consider that none of these things are any good to one if one is dead.”
Vuffi Raa chuckled. “You have a point, there, Lehesu, you have a point.”
“We are going to be too late!” the Other complained. “I know it!”
“Peace, my old friend,” the One replied. “That is not yet a foregone conclusion. There are no foregone conclusions anymore. And even so, it is an experiment. It would not be valid, did we interfere. Any result is a desired result, am I not correct in this?”
They bored through the endless night at a velocity that seemed a crawl to them, although a good many physicists would have been interested to know such a velocity was possible. Behind them stretched an endless line, the Rest who had come to witness the results of the One's experiment.
“However,” the Other replied, hesitating in his thought if not in his headlong flight, “I have had a disturbing new thought which-”
“That was the purpose of the experiment, was it not?”
“Yes, yes. But I do not believe you are going to be particularly happy with it. You see, it has occurred to me that, despite the unconventional methods by which you created our experimental subject, and despite the obvious anatomical differences...” Here, the Other made a gesture emphasizing the smooth, rounded shape of their kind.
“Yes? Please continue.”
“Do not be impatient; this is difficult. I have come to believe we have certain responsibilities toward this entity - specifically that you do - beyond simple scientific inquiry.”
There was a long pause as another several parsecs whisked behind them. Nor did the One reply at all. For once his friend had pursued a line of reasoning where he could not easily follow.
“You are its parent.”
“What?”
“You brought it into existence. You sent it out into the universe. We – you - cannot blandly let it be destroyed. Such would be reprehensible.”
Again the One failed to respond. The light-years rushed by as he plunged himself deep into thought, pondering not only the question of his responsibility, but the more disturbing thought that he had overlooked the issue entirely. Their experimental subject was a thinking being, not to be trifled with as if it were an inanimate object. Apparently complacency had cost him more than progress and the flavor of life, it had interferred badly with his ethical sensibilities.
At last: “I am afraid you are right, my old friend. Congratulate me, I am a father. And by all means, let us hurry, lest we be too late!”
“It's simple, really,” Lando explained for the fifth time with as little hope of success as he'd enjoyed the first four. “You jump into the middle of a pair of ships, do the little trick we've discussed, and jump out. The Navy'll do the rest.”
The gambler floated in the lotus position in the center of the Cave of the Elders, Sen and Fey on either side of him. Each of the gigantic beings was at least five hundred times larger than he was. He felt like a virus having polite tea with a pair of bacteria.
“But Captainlandocalrissiansir, it is disgusting!” Fey complained. “It is demeaning, beneath the dignity of any-”
“How do you feel about losing your transparency?”
“What do you mean?”
Lando drew on the cigar he'd gotten Vuffi Raa to build a holder for in his suit helmet. There was a slight bulge now in the faceplate, and the air filters had needed overhauling, but at long last he could sit and think properly in hard vacuum.
“Isn't death demeaning, beneath your dignity, disgusting?”
There was the distinct sensation that the younger of the two Elders had blinked with surprise. “Why, I had never thought of it that way before.”
Sen had remained silent through this argument. Now he spoke up.
“Tell me, Lando, could you perform the physiological equivalent of this act? To excrete bodily wastes in order to-”
“You bet your biffy I could! Look: all that this requires is that you concentrate a certain mix of heavy metals in your systems, hop to the right coordinates, let your pores do their work, and hop out, leaving a sensor-det
ectable Oswaft-shaped outline behind for the boys in gray to shoot at. Play your cards right and, human reaction-time being what it is, they'll shoot each other, instead.”
Sen and Fey thought about that. For rather too long a time, Lando thought.
“Listen, you two, you didn't hesitate to offer me all kinds of precious jewels, and you manufacture them in the same-”
“It's not the same at all!” Fey wailed. “Don't you understand that it's different when one-”
“Not from my cultural standpoint. On the other hand, Navy humans I know see a big ethical difference between killing animals for food and killing vegetables - although I've met a photosynthetic sentient or two who might give them an argument. Let's leave it that cultures often have blindnesses about themselves where other cultures see more clearly. Can you do this thing?”
The soft twinkling of precious stones gleamed through the transparent Elders. “Those of us who can will rendezvous with you at your signal.”
The gambler shrugged. “Guess I can't ask for more than that, can I?”
He sensed that Sen was smiling. “No, I suppose you cannot, unless one wishes to emulate the enemy we are about to fight.”
As his fighter squadron passed through the mouth of the ThonBoka, Klyn Shanga was fighting a nagging thought. Like a tune that circles through your consciousness all day (whether you like the tune or not - and, more often than not, you don't), he was wondering about the Ottdefa Osuno Whett. Why did that son-of-a-mynock seem so familiar? Where had he seen him before?
“Seventeen, square up a little on the mark. You're lagging, and it's putting a strain on the pinnace.”
“Roger Zero Leader. Executing.” He gave a quick glance at the other computer-generated indicators on his boards and settled back in his acceleration couch again. Where had he met the tall, skinny, white-haired anthropologist before, and why did he have trouble thinking of him as an academic. What should he be? A flunky of some kind. Whett was born to be a subordinate.
Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian 03 - The StarCave of ThonBoka Page 13