by Paul Preuss
“Catherine speaks flawless French,” Blake said. Then, softly, he added, “And of course she’s an astronomer…”
“Of course?”
Blake leaned forward excitedly. “What I really wanted to tell you—I found out what they were trying to do with you. With all of us in SPARTA. I know what their program is.”
“What’s Catherine/Katrina got to do with it?”
“Lequeu—Laird, I mean—he and the rest of them believe that gods have been among us, watching evolution for a billion years, watching human progress, waiting until the time is ripe. The prophetae have appointed themselves the high priests of the whole human race. They think it’s their task to create the perfect human, the human equivalent of the gods, the perfect emissary. To put it the way they do, they intended to raise up the Emperor of the Last Days, whose role it would be to greet the descending Hosts of Heaven as they ushered in paradise…”
“You’re making me dizzy. Get to the point.”
“This is the point, Ellen: you were supposed to be the Emperor—the Empress, I guess—of the Last Days. That’s what they tried to do to you. Humanity’s envoy.”
She laughed bitterly. “They botched that, all right.”
“All of which might sound very vague and nutty, except they know where these so-called gods came from.”
“Blake,” she said, exasperated, “what possible…?”
“Their home star is in Crux.”
“Crux!”
“Why the surprise?”
“How do you know it’s in Crux?” she demanded.
“They have what they call the Knowledge—original records of visits from these gods of theirs, in historical time! This papyrus, for example—it identifies Crux for anybody who can build a pyramid and recognize a star map.”
The buggy skidded as she turned sharply, throwing Blake against his harness. He found himself staring into Istrati’s dead eyes. “What’s going…?”
“The Farside antennas were aimed at Crux when Leyland’s capsule crashed. They still are.” The moon buggy was walloping across the lunar landscape as fast as its motors would drive it, heading away from the domes of the distant base and the loading shed of the electromagnetic launcher, toward the far end of the launcher track. Sparta was headed on a straight line toward the radiotelescopes. “It’s about to happen again. There’s going to be another launch failure.”
“There is? How do you…”
“Be quiet, Blake. Let me think.”
“Call the launcher, if you’re so certain,” he said. “Make them shut it down!”
“The guy beside you chopped off my antenna. If I’m counting the seconds correctly”—she had no doubt that she was counting the seconds correctly—“the capsule that’s being loaded into the breech of the launcher at this moment is the one that’s slated to hit Farside.”
“Dammit, Ellen, how can you possibly know that?”
“Because I know who’s in it.”
17
The launcher stretched away to both sides in front of them. A dead-load bucket flashed past at a thousand meters per second, still energetically accelerating. It vanished down the track. One second later, another bucket flashed past. A second after that came another bucket—and they kept coming, regular as a clock, a clock that kept time by firing rifle bullets. But the sound of firing was eerily absent.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere!” Blake protested. “Where are you going?”
Sparta was silent, concentrating. The moon buggy whined toward the track for another half a kilometer. “Ten seconds until we’re in range,” she said. “You steer. Keep us going on a straight line.”
Blake slipped his harness and leaned forward over the seat. Sparta let go of the yoke as he grabbed it. “What—uhh—are you doing—aagh—now…?” His stomach repeatedly slammed into the seat back as the bucking moon buggy lurched on across the cratered plain.
“Brace yourself.”
“Oh—ugh—sure…”
Sparta had the dome open. The buggy’s big front tires were spraying moondust straight into the airless vacuum like rooster tails behind a speedboat. “In two seconds I’m going to jump. Try not to flip this thing.”
“Do my…?”
But she was gone. As she’d finished speaking she’d leaped from the buggy. Blake caught a blurred glimpse of her flying away from him, her arms spread in the vacuum as if she were a winged creature, while a manned capsule was flying down the launcher track toward them. Sparta curved her arms and hands into hooks. For a moment she was a levitating goddess…
The bubble of the moon buggy slammed down. Blake reached for the throttle as the mounded dust of the well-used buggy road beside the track caught one wheel. Blake felt the yoke slip from his hand. The buggy skidded and lurched. The back end slipped around and the vehicle bucked to a stop. It slid practically under the launcher track before it came to rest.
Blake leaned back and closed his eyes, gulping suit air.
When his eyes opened he screeched. He’d forgotten he still had company in the buggy: Istrati’s dead red eyes were glaring at him in frozen rage.
Blake slammed open the bubble and staggered out of the moon buggy, his knees shaky from too much adrenalin. Then he saw Sparta. She was lying crumpled in the dust beside the track. He started to run toward her, but his leap was long and he came down off balance, sliding to his knees beside her.
She raised herself halfway. “Settle down before you hurt yourself,” she said hoarsely.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m terrific.” She did a quick push-up and bounded erect. “We’d better head for launch control. Can you stand up by yourself?”
“Yes, I can stand up,” he said petulantly. He demonstrated it, wobbling to his feet. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s get this dust off.” She began beating at the caked and clinging moondust that covered her spacesuit.
She had no intention of telling him everything there was to tell.
When Sparta and Blake arrived in the launch control room, most of the talking seemed to be over. Some controllers were anxiously querying their computers; some were staring vacantly at their screens. Frank Penney sat at the launch director’s console.
Van Kessel glared starkly at Sparta. He opened his mouth, but seemed unable to think of anything to say. Then he bleated, “Again, Troy! A manned-launch failure.”
Sparta didn’t look at Van Kessel. “Frank Penney”—he turned to face her—“you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, and for the murder of Pontus Istrati, and for illegal traffic in drugs in violation of numerous Council of Worlds statutes. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to retain counsel, who shall be present at any official interview. Meanwhile, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand your rights under the Council of Worlds charter?”
Penney’s tan face flushed deep red. The man who liked attention was aware that all the controllers in the place were staring at him in amazement.
“Or would you rather run, Frank? Like Istrati,” she whispered, unable to contain the malice. “I won’t try to stop you.”
“I want to contact my attorney,” Penney said huskily.
“Do it somewhere out of the way. We have things to take care of here.”
Penney got stiffly out of his chair and walked out of the room. Two security patrollers were standing at the door to meet him. Every eye followed his retreat.
Blake raised an eyebrow. “How did they know?”
“I told them I’d need them here, before I went after Istrati.”
“Inspector Troy!” Van Kessel roared at her.
“Yes, Mr. Van Kessel,” she said mildly. “The launch failure. I’m aware of it. We have a few hours to do something about it, don’t we?”
“You’re aware of it! How can you be aware of it?”
“Because, Mr. Van Kessel, I was sent here to learn why Cliff Leyland’s launch
failed, and I’ve been thinking about little else since I arrived. Had I not been thinking of it, I would not have prearranged the arrest of Mr. Penney.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Van Kessel exploded. “Everybody knows Frank and Istrati were into something together!” He fell suddenly silent. His flushed face paled.
Sparta smiled tiredly. “Well, you might have told me, but you didn’t need to. Now you might tell me this: did you know that Istrati tried to recruit Cliff Leyland into Penney’s operation?”
“If you knew the way things were up here…” Van Kessel said huskily. “We don’t pry.”
“I’m not a judge or a prosecutor,” she said, trying to reassure him. “Istrati worked as a launch loader. It was his idea to recruit Cliff Leyland, because Leyland made frequent trips to L-5 and back. Leyland refused, even after he was beaten up, but he didn’t turn Istrati in—not his only failure of judgment, but almost his last. Istrati thought it would be a cute idea to teach him a lesson, by planting drugs on him where L-1 security was sure to find them.”
She looked around the room; she had a rapt audience. “As you all seem to know,” she said, “Penney was the boss of the ring, and he was the launch controller that day. Istrati must have bragged to him about what he’d done as soon as Leyland’s capsule was on the track. It would have been obvious to Penney that it was more than a stupid mistake, it was a disaster that could blow his whole operation. So, I reasoned, Penney decided to destroy Leyland’s capsule—a capsule that was only halfway down the track. If Penney killed the power right then and sent it short, the launch would abort; the capsule would never leave the track.”
“How could he have killed…?”
“There was no fail-safe on your direct override, Mr. Van Kessel,” she said firmly. “Any person in this control room could have sabotaged the capsule. Penney had the motive. And he had the means to send it long, into deep space, or short, into the moon.” She paused. “Sending it long was no option, of course: Penney didn’t care what happened to Leyland, but he couldn’t let the capsule be recovered, ever. So he waited until the computer told him it was too late to abort; but in the last split second he could still make the capsule crash. That gave it a peculiar orbit, an orbit that would bring the capsule back practically on top of the base. While pretending to try to help Leyland, he made sure to send signals that put the capsule’s maneuvering system out of commission.”
Van Kessel grumbled, “You figured all this out…”
“I hypothesized it before I came to the Moon. I had most of the facts I needed.”
Van Kessel took a deep breath. “I suppose I should congratulate you.”
“Don’t. I was dead wrong,” Sparta said. “Penney had nothing to do with Leyland’s launch failure.”
“He didn’t?” Van Kessel was more confused than ever.
“Penney’s a killer, all right—I don’t think it will be hard to establish that Istrati went crazy and committed suicide because Penney deliberately dosed him with hypersteroids, just before he reported for this shift. He knew I was closing in on him. But he was not responsible for the launch failure.”
“Then who was?” Van Kessel demanded.
“Piet Gress.”
“Gress!” Van Kessel barked. “He’s in the…!”
Sparta nodded. “The man in the capsule right now. He’s an analyst from the antenna facility. Their job is to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but it’s apparent that Piet Gress is willing to give his life to make sure they never find it.”
“You mean he was trying to destroy the antennas?” Blake asked.
“Who are you?” Van Kessel said, glaring at Blake as if noticing him for the first time.
“This is Blake Redfield, my associate,” Sparta said, not bothering to complete the introduction. “Because they were about to begin looking in Crux,” she said to Blake. “Where, according to you, they may find the home star of the ‘gods’—of Culture X.”
“Culture X? Culture X. What in hell does a bunch of scribbling on old plates have to do with this?” Van Kessel demanded, but no one paid him any attention.
“But then he’s already tried once and failed,” Blake protested to Sparta. “You told me Leyland’s capsule hit the mountains. The antennas are protected by the ringwall.”
“Not any more.”
Blake saw it then.
So, even though he was at a loss for the meaning of it all, did Van Kessel.
“Crater Leyland,” Van Kessel moaned.
Gress had somehow used Leyland’s capsule to blast a hole in the ring of mountains that protected the Farside Base antennas. A second capsule on the same trajectory would fly through the gap—and make a direct hit.
“What’s the orbit on Gress’s capsule?” Sparta asked Van Kessel.
“Too early to be precise. Failure occurred in exactly the same section of launch track as Leyland’s. First approximation is that Gress is following the same trajectory.”
“Have you contacted him?”
“He doesn’t respond. His radio must be dead.”
“Let me try.”
She sat at the launch director’s console and keyed the commlink. “Piet Gress, this is Ellen Troy of the Board of Space Control. You think you are about to die. I know why. But you won’t die and you won’t accomplish your mission.”
The speakers gave back nothing but the hiss of the aether.
“Dr. Gress, you think your orbit is the same as Leyland’s was, or close enough. But your capsule will not pass through the gap in the ringwall. You cannot make course corrections without our cooperation. You will not hit the antennas. You can save yourself, or you can die for nothing.”
For several seconds the speakers were silent except for the sound of the cosmos. Then a sad, dry voice issued from them: “You’re bluffing.”
Sparta caught Van Kessel’s eye. His face sagged. “Mr. Van Kessel,” she said quietly, “just so you’ll know what we’re up against: according to my colleague, Mr. Redfield, Piet Gress is a representative of a fanatic sect that believes our solar system has been invaded by aliens in the distant past and is about to be invaded again. The wrinkle is, Gress and his friends are actually looking forward to the invasion. But they’re eager to keep this all a deep, dark secret from the rest of the inhabited worlds. They are so eager, in fact, that some of them like Gress are willing to kill themselves and a lot of other people, just to keep us unwashed masses in the dark.”
Van Kessel’s eyes were bulging in his florid face. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Sparta said fervently. “But it’s not the first time a gang of maniacs has sacrificed themselves and any number of innocent bystanders to their beliefs, and I doubt it will be the last.”
She turned back to the microphone. “No, Gress, I’m not bluffing,” she said to the invisible inhabitant of the capsule. “I knew about your plans before you were launched”—about two minutes before you were launched, thanks to Blake—“and steps were taken to alter your trajectory”—steps, leaps, desperate measures: I jumped from a speeding moon buggy and I read the acceleration of your capsule and read the phase reversal and my belly burned and I gushed a burst of telemetry at the trackside power-control receiver in the code I’d memorized and I did my best to override the signals your capsule was sending too, all before I hit ground again, and I pray that I succeeded but who knows?—“and you will not hit Farside Base. You may hit the moon, but not where you want. You may sail on into space forever. But you will not destroy the antennas. Save yourself, Gress. Use your maneuvering rockets.”
Gress’s voice scratched from the speakers. “I say you are bluffing.”
Blake leaned close to her and touched the filament mike. He raised his eyebrows: let me talk?
She nodded.
Blake said, “Piet, this is Guy. I bring you a message from the sanctuary of the Initiates.” He paused. “All will be well.”
“Who a
re you?” Gress’s angry demand came instantly.
Blake said, “One of us. A friend of Katrina’s. Of Catherine’s”—he glanced at Sparta: forgive me, but how wrong can I be?—“but it’s too late. They interfered with the launch. Whatever happens to you, you’re not going to hit the antennas. And Gress, they know where to look now. They could find the home star with one thirty-meter dish on Earth.” Blake let that sink in. On the speakers there was nothing but the hiss of empty space.
Gress’s voice, suddenly louder, filled the room. “You are an impostor, a traitor.” He could have been on the edge of tears.
Blake said, “Save yourself!”
There was no sound from the speakers, no image on the flatscreens, which sparkled only with noise.
Blake stood away from the mike. “Sorry. Guess he wants to die.”
The watch went on. Piet Gress’s capsule, like Leyland’s, rose and at last began to fall slowly back toward Farside.
In the control room the shift changed, but Sparta and Blake and Van Kessel stayed. They sipped bitter coffee and talked in desultory tones about Istrati and Penney and Leyland and Gress and Balakian. Penney was in custody, exercising his right to keep quiet, and Istrati was in cold storage, but base security reported that other members of the smuggling ring they’d picked up on suspicion had begun talking freely.
Katrina had been taken into protective custody. Nobody had read her her rights. Nobody had explained anything to her.
Exactly what Gress—with Balakian’s help?—had done to cause Leyland’s near-death was a still-unsolved puzzle. Sparta ordered base security to reconstruct the movements of the two during the twenty-four hours before Leyland’s capsule was launched. The security people reported back almost too quickly: it seemed that neither of them had ever left the radiotelescope operations area.
“If they didn’t have access to the capsule, how could they have interfered with the launch?” Van Kessel asked.
Sparta was silent, lost in thought. Dark circles had formed under her staring eyes. She was hunched over, clutching her belly.