by Timothy Zahn
"Okay." She peered at me as she sat down. "You all right?"
"Sure. Why?"
"You seem jumpy." She scanned the printout I'd made for the upcoming maneuver, then activated the computer for her own check. I held my breath... but Pascal had done his job right. Alana watched the numbers come up, compared them carefully to mine, and nodded. "Looks good," she announced.
"Shouldn't you be getting below? There's only about fifteen minutes to go."
"I've got my sleeper right here," I told her, patting a pocket. I did, too, though I didn't intend to take it.
"See you later."
She was already shutting down the ship's systems, protecting everything electronic against the enhanced electron tunneling effects Colloton space created. Feeling uncomfortably like a voyeur, I watched her count down the seconds... and with an abrupt, almost angry gesture, she turned on the field.
My first four cascade images appeared, but I paid no attention to them. Finger ready on the stopwatch button, I kept my eyes on Alana. For a moment she gazed down the line of images, her face unreadable but-I thought-oddly calm. Then, straightening up, she turned on the Dancer's flywheel. Beneath me, I felt the rumble begin as I pushed the stopwatch button. Its ticking was soft, but clearly audible over the flywheel's hum. Mechanical clock devices are like that-all of them, including the one Matope and I had taken from the lethal Autotorque and hidden in the bridge control panel. The big question was, was it loud enough? Holding my breath, I watched Alana.
And it was clear within a handful of seconds that she did, indeed, hear it. Her head turned back and forth, a frown of concentration spreading across her face as she tried to locate the unfamiliar sound. For a moment her eyes paused on the proper section of the panel two meters away-the same distance, according to her layout of the Angelwing's bridge, that the Autotorque mounting socket would be from the duty officer's chair. Her lips compressed to a tight line, she stood up- And nearly fell on her face.
I winced in sympathetic pain, remembering the last time I'd tried to move around with a Colloton field on.
Even while sitting still, vertigo was a normal cascade point side effect; actually trying to go somewhere just about tripled the sensation. Alana pulled herself to her knees, staggered almost to the floor again...
and with a hissed word I was glad I couldn't hear, she grabbed the edge of the control panel, raised herself up again, and slapped at the flywheel switch.
And there it was, the whole explanation: simple, yet so contrary to a captain's normal ingrained preoccupation with staying on schedule that I hadn't really considered it. Aborting a cascade maneuver could add several days to a ship's trip time-a delay that would cause confusion and anger at every stop for at least the rest of its run. But Lenn Grandy had reportedly been a lot like Alana... and unlike me, she had little fear of looking foolish. Grandy had heard an out-of-place sound, had been unable to hunt it down through the Colloton field's effect... and so had simply turned the damned generator off and to hell with the consequences.
And with those facts in hand I knew where to look for the Angelwing.
I almost forgot to key my stopwatch, but I did so without losing more than a second or two. The amount of time Alana had taken to react to the timer's ticking... though I now realized that number was only useful, not absolutely vital. The flywheel hum faded into silence, and Alana waited with hand poised above the generator switch, eyes darting back and forth between the mirrored gyroscope needle and the area where the Autotorque's timer was hidden. Around me, the cascade images' interweaving slowed...
came to a stop...
Alana hit the switch, and our patterns began disappearing. Pulling off the eyepiece, I forced myself to my feet and staggered to the door. By the time the last four images were gone I was halfway down the hallway.
Alana hit the switch, and our patterns began disappearing. Pulling off the eyepiece, I forced myself to my feet and staggered to the door. By the time the last four images were gone I was halfway down the hallway.
I clicked my stopwatch; and with the booby-trap's total time setting, I had the last number I needed. "It's all right," I told Alana, stepping forward and putting my arms awkwardly around her. It's all right. The Dancer's not in danger. I'm sorry, Alana-I'm sorry. But it was the only way I could think of-"
And then our tears began to flow, and we sat down together, letting our tension and emotional pain drain away.
And a half hour later, feeling like the lowest form of vermin on twenty planets, I told her what I'd done.
And why.
The bridge door slid open, and I turned as Orlandis stepped inside. "Captain," he nodded, looking a bit woozy still from the after-effects of his sleeper. "You asked to see me?"
"Yes." Leeds was still standing in the doorway; I caught his eye and nodded, and he disappeared.
"We've got just one more cascade maneuver until planetfall," I continued as Orlandis stepped to the other console chair and sank into it. "You'd said you wanted to send a message when we were within range, and I thought this would be a good time to talk about it."
"I understood the next maneuver was several days away," he said.
"Actually, well probably be ready within twenty-four hours or less," I told him. "Though that may put you on a rather tight schedule. Reassembling your little star ship, I mean."
Orlandis was good, all right. No jerking of the head; no widening of mouth or eyes; just a slight hardening of his entire expression to show that all my suspicions about him had indeed been right. "What star ship is that?" he asked gently.
"The one you smuggled aboard under falsified contract papers-papers you apparently made up yourself, and you should have risked hiring an expert to do them for you. The one that's in five boxes below, counting the two Aker-Ming Autotorques in our Ming-metal shield. The one you plan to escape on after killing all of us and then setting up the Dancer to disintegrate itself. That star ship."
He pursed his lips. "You seem to know a great deal about the private cargo in your hold," he said, "which I'm sure various port authorities would be rather upset by. But your accusations are completely ludicrous."
"Are they?" I countered, fighting hard against Orlandis's aura of authority. "Well, perhaps we should leave those for later then, and move onto more technical ground. Do you want to know why your sabotage of the Angelwing failed?"
"I had nothing to do with the Angelwing's sabotage," he said. I remained silent, and after a moment he snorted. "All right. As a matter of intellectual curiosity, go ahead and tell me what happened."
"It's very simple. The captain chose to stay awake through the ship's first cascade point out of Baroja, which left him able to hear the ticking of the timer in their rigged Autotorque. He aborted the maneuver, which meant the ship was no longer rotating when the power surge tried to fry the Colloton generator.
Which in turn left the ship stranded somewhere out in space where no one would think to look."
"It's very simple. The captain chose to stay awake through the ship's first cascade point out of Baroja, which left him able to hear the ticking of the timer in their rigged Autotorque. He aborted the maneuver, which meant the ship was no longer rotating when the power surge tried to fry the Colloton generator.
Which in turn left the ship stranded somewhere out in space where no one would think to look."
I nodded, swallowing. "Except us, yes. Is that why you're planning to kill all of us? Because we know where the Angelwing is and can link it to you?"
"I told you before, I had nothing to do with the Angelwing's sabotage."
"Then how did you know enough to ask about Alana's cascade images?" I shot back.
"Oh, I knew the sabotage was being planned," he said with a slight shrug. "It was set up as an assassination attempt by an underworld group against one of the ship's passengers."
"If you knew-?"
"Why didn't I tell anyone? Why should I? I'm not in charge of Cunard Lines' security. My job is the making
of money-and it occurred to me that there would be a distinct dip in Cunard's stock if and when the Angelwing was indeed lost."
"You knew, did you," I snarled, some of my anger venting itself in heavy sarcasm. "You knew about the attempt, you knew how it was going to be done, you knew where and how to get hold of a killer Autotorque yourself. You didn't just know-you were an accessory before the fact."
Again, he shrugged. "A legal distinction only. Impossible to prove, of course."
I stared at him. The man was even more cold-blooded than I'd imagined. "That's it, then. You'd let an entire shipload of people die for a lousy bit of pocket money."
"It's hardly that," he said coolly. "By selling my stock in Cunard-slowly, of course, over the next couple of months-I'll make enough to buy back a controlling share in the line when prices fall."
"And to get those two months' head start you bought passage on the Dancer."
He smiled. "It was easily the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard in my life, and I nearly fired one of my idea people just for suggesting it. But everyone agreed it would be worth a try, and I began to be intrigued by the possibilities. Besides, with fate having put you and Ms. Keal in my path at the right time, how could I resist? After all, all it would cost would be a few weeks aboard this flying slum."
I bristled. "Plus the chance of having your whole scheme unraveled."
His smile remained as he locked eyes with me. "It was for that possibility," he said softly, "that I brought my own ship."
A shiver went up my back. In his own, quietly confident way, Orlandis had just sentenced the Dancer to death. "Well, I hope you enjoy the trip," I said as casually as I could. "Going to be a rather long haul for you, though. Unless you just want to hop down to Baroja and start the whole trip over."
His smile vanished. "What are you talking about?"
His lip curled. "So you didn't find anyone in Shlomo Pass to send a message with. I suspected as much when Ms. Keal began avoiding me right after the last cascade point. I'd hoped you weren't actually foolish enough to leap on your white horse and come out looking for the Angelwing."
"Not looking, Orlandis," I corrected. "Finding."
He stared at me in disbelief, and in the momentary silence I leaned forward and flipped on the radio speaker. Clearly audible over the background static came the zhuUUP zhuUUP zhuUUP of a distress buoy. "We picked up the first signal right after we turned off the Colloton field an hour ago," I told him quietly. "Our estimate of their position turns out to have been no more than a light-hour or two off, and we hit our target position pretty accurately, too. Another fifteen minutes or so and we'll be close enough to raise them with our comm laser."
He glanced quickly at the bridge viewport, as if he thought he'd actually be able to see the liner. "But...
how-?"
"How did we know? Simple. There was really only one place they could be." I reached over and turned off the radio, then hit the switches that put the control systems and computer into neutral/standby. "You see," I continued, "we had your duplicate of the rigged Autotorque to study and we knew quite a lot about the Angelwing. And we had Alana."
Orlandis's eyes swung back to me, and I could see by their expression that he'd suddenly realized what our being in communication with the Angelwing would mean. His right hand dipped into his tunic pocket, emerging with a tiny summoner. "I'm afraid I can't allow you to talk with them," he said softly. "You understand."
"Of course," I nodded. "You're welcome to try and stop me." And with that, I flipped open the Colloton generator safety cover and twisted the Knob.
Orlandis actually gasped as the first cascade images appeared around us. "What the hell-?"
"Oh, we're not going anywhere," I assured him. "As long as the Dancer doesn't rotate we'll come back out in more or less the same position we left. But I was telling you how we found the Angelwing. Your assassin friends didn't reckon on Captain Grandy's being awake during the maneuver-and they certainly didn't expect him to shut down the flywheel before the Autotorque had time to blow the generator. We knew Alana would have been killed if she'd been there instead of Grandy, so we set up a similar test last cascade point to see how she'd react, and she did so exactly as I've just said. QED."
"Pretty far-fetched assumption," Orlandis said with some difficulty. He threw a quick glance at the bridge door, then resumed his apprehensive gaze at his cascade pattern.
"Perhaps," I admitted. "But he had to have brought the ship to a halt before the timer wound down, else all of Alana's Angelwing cascade images would have vanished. You following all this?"
He nodded, a short jerk of his head. Again, his eyes darted to the door.
"And finally, the really critical factor: we found out how the Autotorque was supposed to destroy the Colloton generator and how long its timer was set for. Once we knew the ship itself was safe, there were only two possibilities: one, that Grandy had gotten the Autotorque out of the circuit in time to protect the generator-possibly being electrocuted himself in the process, as Alana would have been-or two, that he'd started to take it out, got electrocuted, and still lost the generator. Only in the second case would the Angelwing be stranded. So all we had to do then was figure out how far the ship would have rotated in the time available, remembering that Grandy had to rev the flywheel up, rev it back down, and get the Colloton field shut off just before the time ran out. That's a pretty tight scenario, and with the relatively small distances you get with small rotation angles it let us calculate precisely how far the Angelwing had gotten. Turns out we were right."
"And finally, the really critical factor: we found out how the Autotorque was supposed to destroy the Colloton generator and how long its timer was set for. Once we knew the ship itself was safe, there were only two possibilities: one, that Grandy had gotten the Autotorque out of the circuit in time to protect the generator-possibly being electrocuted himself in the process, as Alana would have been-or two, that he'd started to take it out, got electrocuted, and still lost the generator. Only in the second case would the Angelwing be stranded. So all we had to do then was figure out how far the ship would have rotated in the time available, remembering that Grandy had to rev the flywheel up, rev it back down, and get the Colloton field shut off just before the time ran out. That's a pretty tight scenario, and with the relatively small distances you get with small rotation angles it let us calculate precisely how far the Angelwing had gotten. Turns out we were right."
"True, but there'll be enough time for that later." I waved toward the door. "And incidentally, I wouldn't expect your two bodyguards to show up any time soon. They'll be lucky if they don't break their necks falling down the stairs. If they manage to get that far."
Orlandis stared at me, the uneasiness on his face giving way rapidly to fury. "What-?"
"Eiser and Trent, of course. Once we realized how rich you were, we noticed that one or the other of them always seemed to be hanging around you somewhere in the background. No, cascade point vertigo will have them well out of the game by now. If you want to stop me, you'll have to do it yourself."
"Damn you-" Orlandis thrust himself out of his seat toward me, hands outstretched like killing weapons even as he piled headfirst into the floor. He staggered to his knees, lunged another half meter before falling again. I stayed where I was as he gathered himself for another try... and as he rose up and crawled forward I let my anger boil up within me; my anger at what he'd done to the Angelwing and planned to do to the Dancer. He reached out an unsteady hand, clutched at my left knee... and with my right foot I kicked him as hard as I could. He flipped over backwards, hitting his head on the padded seat he'd just left, and lay still.
Fifteen minutes later, when I judged it was safe enough, I turned off the Colloton generator and went out hunting. Eiser and Trent were easy to find, lying unconscious on the floor halfway from the stairs to the bridge. Close, but not too bad: their tiny guns were still at the bottom of the stairs, where they'd apparently been dropped.
> And a half hour later I was talking to an extremely relieved duty officer on the Angelwing.
What with all the electronic equipment that got singed by my unscheduled cascade point, the Dancer was in pretty poor shape by the time we rendezvoused with the Angelwing. But Matope and Tobbar were able to make running repairs, and with the computer intact none of us was especially worried about making the short trip back to Baroja. If worse came to worst, we still had that little backup in our hold.
The passengers were somewhat more troubled. They started out furious at having had to actually experience a cascade point; shifted to astonished and only slightly less angry to find we were nowhere near Earth; and finally turned to shock at finding out the truth about Orlandis and company. I decided not to strain them further with pessimistic reports of the Dancer's spaceworthiness, but dropped our three prisoners off with the Angelwing for safekeeping and headed to Baroja to whistle up the cavalry.
Through all of it Alana was very professional, never bringing up her feelings about the whole incident and my handling of it, but doing her part to ensure that the Dancer made it through in one piece. But her underlying tension was plain; and I therefore wasn't really surprised when she came to my cabin two hours after we were safely down on Baroja to discuss her resignation.
Through all of it Alana was very professional, never bringing up her feelings about the whole incident and my handling of it, but doing her part to ensure that the Dancer made it through in one piece. But her underlying tension was plain; and I therefore wasn't really surprised when she came to my cabin two hours after we were safely down on Baroja to discuss her resignation.
"That's a... a nice compliment," she said, no better than I'd been at hiding her emotions on this. "I've enjoyed working with you, Pall-with all of you. But it seems to be time to move on."
I sighed, wondering what I should do. Offer her some inducement-any inducement-to stay? Get down on my knees and beg? Or should I simply acknowledge that she was capable of making her own decisions and let her walk out with our individual dignities intact? "You'll be badly missed," I said at last. Even now, I realized, with such a loss staring me in the face, I couldn't take the risk of losing my dignity in front of her. Of looking foolish. "You know more about dealing with people than I ever will. I don't suppose...