The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales

by John W. Campbell

  On the other side of the chamber, Clonak busied himself with another semi-disassembled piece of hardware, periodically professing himself or any number of other objects, deities, and people damned, stupid, absurd, or useless.

  That she could hear these footnotes to progress clearly proved that the pressure in the ship was slowly rising, in part a result of the action of the layered osmotic membranes that made up much of structure of the Momson Cloak. The finely tuned membranes purposefully released certain amounts of carbon dioxide and hydrogen while retaining some moisture; heavier users might complain of the suit “sloshing” as the moisture reservoirs filled. Far from breathable, the external atmosphere made the Cloaks a little easier to move around in.

  The increased pressure also made Shadia aware of an occasional twittering sound she couldn’t place. Twice she glanced up to Clonak, hard at work but doing nothing that looked to make such a noise.

  The third time she looked up, Clonak had also raised his head. He caught Shadia’s eye and smiled ruefully.

  “Not rodents, Shadia, with little rat feet. More likely we have micro-sand, scrubbing the hull down to a fine polish. This system has a fine collection of unfinished planets to choose from, I’m afraid.”

  “Though actually,” he continued, “that’s not all bad. If the wrong people are looking for us we’re better off here than an hour off Nev’Lorn.”

  “Should we use the monitor to—”

  “I’ve thought of that, but really, the best use of resources is to continue with what we’re doing. I may yet get a computer up and running and you may yet find us a safe harbor.”

  There were several distinct pings and another scrabble of dust on the hull then and Shadia bent back to her charting with a will.

  Daav woke with a start, certain someone had called his name. About him the ship purred a quiet purr of circulators and the twin boards were green at every mark. The Jump-clock showed he had enough time for breakfast and exercise before he arrived back in normal space. No matter what might befall, he’d be better prepared if he kept now to routine.

  He’d been to three systems so far without touching ground at any. Izviet, Natterling, and Chantor were all minor trade ports, ports that usually sported a small training contingent of Scouts making use of the nearby space.

  At Izviet a ship a few years out of mode coming from a port rarely heard from was barely gossip, still he’d had the ship come in as L’il Orbit, maintaining his professorship as well. The cycle was off—there were no Scouts training near the spectacular multi-mooned and multi-ringed gas giant Cruchov. Natterling’s usual band of ecologists-in-training were out of session; the wondrous planet Stall with its surface outcroppings of pure timonioum had no company. By the time he’d hit Chantor he’d had a lot of news to digest, but there were no cadets practicing basic single-ship in that place, as he had.

  Among the news chattered most widely were the rumors attending the Juntavas and their danger-tree broadcast.

  Some felt it was trap, aimed at netting the Juntavas. Others explored news-pits and libraries and invented great empires of intrigue: one of these stated that the missing man now ruled a system as a Juntavas boss; another said the merc hero had bagged herself a rich one; yet another swore the pair of them had turned pirate and were staging raids against the Scouts.

  What was missing in all three places was the back-net chat he would have found in an instant in the old days. In the places he would normally have found Scouts he found nothing but notes, signs, recordings: on temporary assignment, on vacation, will return, in emergency please contact—

  Worse, at Chantor’s orbiting Waystation Number 9, in an otherwise dusty maildrop he’d maintained since his training days, was a triple-sealed note with all the earmarks of a demand for payment from a very testy correspondent. The return address meant nothing to him but the message had chilled him to the very bone.

  “Plan B is Now in Effect,” it said in neat, handwritten, Liaden characters.

  No signature. He recognized the handwriting, familiar to him from his former life, when he had been Delm Korval and this man had taken hand-notes of his orders. dea’Gauss. He felt a relief so intense that tears rose to his eyes. dea’Gauss was alive. Or had been. He blinked and looked again at the note. The date was not as recent as Clonak’s news.

  Plan B: Korval was in grave danger.

  He drew a breath and felt Aelliana stir, take note, and finally murmur in his ear: “Whatever has happened? Surely the Juntavas have not caused this?”

  The intership chatter had been tense with other rumors; civil wars, Yxtrang invasions, missing spaceships, Juntavas walking openly in midports in daylight.

  Daav had debated destinations. Lytaxin—world of a solid ally. Liad itself was surely to be avoided with Plan B in effect!

  He sat to board, finally, and, having thought Lytaxin, his fingers unhesitatingly tapped in another code. This was a destination only for Scouts and the adventuresome curious; there was no trade there, nor ever had been. Well.

  “Well,” Aelliana affirmed, and he gave the ship its office.

  Now, with an hour yet to Jump-end, Daav hesitated before switching his call signals. No need to give away all his secrets, even to Scouts. He set the timer and moved back to begin his exercises. Ride the Luck would call him before they arrived at Nev’Lorn.

  Shadia reached to the canister overhead, pulling the red knob that was both handle and face mask. Obligingly the canister gave up its package, the plate descending to shoulder height. Grasping the disk carefully she twisted the red handle. It turned properly in her hand and the initial three minutes of air began flowing from the mask as the Cloak began taking shape. She pushed it toward the floor, stepped into the tube, and as it inflated by her head, she grabbed the blue handle and pulled. That closed the Cloak over her head and with a twist of vapor from the heat seal she was now inside the new Cloak while wearing the old.

  Now she reached for the blade on her belt and carefully pierced the diminished Cloak, and writhing awkwardly, stepped out of it, perhaps spicing her language a bit to help, and then a bit more as the old Cloak tangled on her ankle and left her sitting in mid-air. With exasperation she used a few more choice words, asked a couple of pungent questions of the universe at large and cut a bit more with the knife. In another moment, the old Cloak was a mere wrinkle of plastic and a disk, which she handed it through the pockets of the new Cloak with relief.

  She stuffed it into the waste bin, which was filling rapidly, and surveyed the work area, realizing as she did that she hardly registered the more minor sounds of the space dust on the hull.

  Over in the corner, Clonak ter’Meulen, supervisor of Pilots, was tampering with a Scout issue spacesuit, breaking thereby a truly impressive number of regulations. He had replaced his Cloak nearly a Standard hour before and now sat immersed in carefully deconstructing the suit, with an eye toward keeping the electronics intact.

  More or less conversationally—the atmosphere in the ship having gotten up to near 20 percent of normal—he bellowed inside his Cloak.

  “Shadia, I hadn’t realized you’d spent so much time around Low Port…”

  She almost laughed and did manage to snort.

  “Doubtless, I hurt your ears…”

  “Well, at least you’ve hurt my feelings.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  Clonak glanced away from his work, moving his hand inside the Cloak to pull out a bit of paper towel and mop his brow before continuing.

  “I clearly heard you ask whose, ahhh…whose idea the Cloaks were. Very nearly they are mine!”

  Shadia blinked.

  “Are you Momson, then?”

  “Me, Momson? Not a bit of that, at all.” Clonak continued, still busily taking the suit apart. “Momson is some legendary Terran inventor, I gather. No, but the Cloaks—they’ve only been on Scout ships for about 25 years. But then, I guess you could blame Daav yos’Phelium, too, for having the bad judgement to need a Cloak when
he didn’t have one…”

  “But I thought the nameplate says that some Terran foundation gave us the money to start installation.…”

  “Right you are. The Richard A. Davis Portmaster Aid Foundation. But I’m afraid that’s my fault. They have a wonderful archive—at least equal to the open Scout collections!—and I was looking for quick solutions. Headquarters was already moving me into this pilot support track I’ve ended up in, you see, and dea’Cort himself set me on them.”

  “When it turned out that we didn’t need anything all that esoteric, really, the research librarian was pleased to hand me over to the so-called Implementation Office and they had me walking around in one of these things inside a day. I brought a dozen dozen back for testing and barely a relumma after I had posted off my thank-you note, Headquarters sent me off on a secret mission—to pick up a shipload of these things, complete with dispenser canisters.”

  “Secret mission?” Shadia snorted. “They didn’t want other Scouts to know you were getting all the plush flights?”

  Clonak chuckled briefly at his work.

  “Actually, it was far more sinister than that. There’s always a faction in the Council of Clans that wants to shut funding for the Scouts off, or reduce it. Some of them don’t want us doing anything that might benefit Terrans, or they want us to charge for our work, or be turned into pet courier pilots for the High Houses. The idea that we might somehow be in debt to a Terran foundation had to be kept super mum.”

  Shadia heard the crinkle of the Momson Cloak about her as she shook her head Terran-style and then flipped the hand signal roughly translating as “Stupidly assessing the situation, them, as dogs might.”

  One-handed Clonak replied with “Affirm that twice.”

  Before Shadia could turn back to her work Clonak stretched himself, permitting his legs to float higher than his head, and held up a series of electronic modules linked by tiny flat cables. At the end of the cables were several tiny power units.

  “Shadia, what you see here is the work of a genius,”

  “Of course,” she said politely.

  Clonak ignored her. “It’s too bad that I nearly destroyed it getting it out of the suit. I can see several more modifications I’ll need to make, and then a box-lot of paperwork once we are joyfully returned to Headquarters.…”

  Shadia sighed. “What is it?”

  “A working transceiver set, of course! What else could it be? Now all we need to do is decide what we might safely say, on what frequency, and how often, for the right people to hear and fetch us away from this lovely idyll of shared pleasure.” He moved a shoulder and his feet sank deckward. “I believe we will need your location report by the end of the shift, and since I’m essentailly done with this I’m available to act as your clerk.”

  Ride the Luck broke into normal space and reported that all was well. Three breaths after, the position report center screen was replaced by a tile of alarms and warnings as the meteor shields went up a notch and the Scout’s private hailing frequency was crowded by messages and fragments:

  “…ard Jumped out before I could crosshair him; he definitely took out dea’Ladd!”

  “…was destroyed. Have adequate munitions to continue search pattern…”

  Daav’s hands touched the switches which armed Ride The Luck, brought the scans online…

  “…have returned fire and am hit. Breath’s duty—notify my clan of our enemy—I have three hours of air, heavy pursuit and no Jump left. Tell Grenada I forgive the counterchance debts. Notify my clan of Balance due these…”

  Scans showed debris in orbits that should have been clean, and warnaways at Nev’Lorn itself.

  Into a battle had come Ride the Luck, Tree-and Dragon broadcasting on all ID ports. No way to tell immediately how old some of the incoming messages might be—

  Daav thumbed a switch. “Daav yos’Phelium, Scout Reserve Captain, co-pilot of packet boat Ride the Luck, requesting berthing information or assignment. Repeat…”

  Before he was finished the second iteration he heard a cry of “Korval!” over the open line, and, fainter, “The Caylon’s ship!”

  The chatter built and by then Ride the Luck had cataloged a dozen objects of note, including two closing tangentially.

  On commercial frequency—responding to the ID no doubt—came:

  “Freighter Luck you are to stand by for boarding by the Department of the Interior; you are under our weapons! Repeat—”

  On the Scout frequency: “Luck, Courier 12 here, I have you on my scans. I’m at breath’s duty, pilot! I have one salvo left before I’m gone. Get away and tell Clan Kia the name of their enemy…”

  Kia was a Korval trading partner.

  Ride the Luck’s ranging computer showed the two potential targets and attendant radio frequencies; Daav touched the guidestick and clicked the red circle over one of them. The circle faded to yellow.

  Still nothing from Nev’Lorn base.

  “Give me my commission, dammit! Are you asleep?” Daav’s finger danced over the board: now he had the ship that had broadcast the duty message identified, and the one that had ordered him to stand by for boarding.

  Again the commercial frequency—“Freighter Luck, you are under arrest by the Department of The Interior. You are to agree to boarding or we will open fire.”

  As if to punctuate their demand, the Department’s ship fired a beam at Courier 12, raking the little vessel from stem to stern. And, finally:

  “Ride the Luck, this is Nev’Lorn headquarters. Captain yos’Phelium, you are on roster for berth 56A. You are authorized to aid and assist in transit…”

  “I have conflicting orders,” Daav spoke into the mike, both channels open.

  The circle on the ranging computer showed orange now.

  “This system is under direct supervision of the Department of the Interior,” came back the message rather quickly—they were closing fast. “Nev’Lorn Headquarters has been disbanded and is outlawed. Your decision, or we fire, pilot!”

  Nev’Lorn, five light seconds more distant, sent again; “Captain you have a berth waiting…”

  “Department, “ Daav said quietly into the mike, “I am taking your orders under advisement. You have the range on me, I’m afraid.”

  The image of Courier 12 seemed to blossom then, as the pilot launched his remaining missiles at the oncoming Department ship. Eight or ten scattered, began maneuvering.

  The target circle went dull red.

  “Department, please advise best course?” Daav demanded.

  That ship, busily lashing out with particle beams at the oncoming missiles, did not reply. The static of those blasts would have torn the transmission out the ether in any case.

  The target circle grew a flashing green ring around a bright red center.

  With a sigh, Scout Captain Daav yos’Phelium clutched the guidestick and punched the fire button. And again. And again. And again and again until Ride the Luck complained about overload and the expanding gases were far too thin to contain survivors.

  Clonak’s genial optimism wasn’t sufficient to approve of the ration situation by the time end of shift had come and gone six times, postponed by the simple fact that they still had been unable to achieve complete orbital elements.Between observations and calculations they’d managed to get the test circuit live to the in-system engines and they’d determined that at least a dozen thruster pairs were operable. They might actually be able to go somewhere—if only they knew where to point.

  Thanks to the cloaks the air supply was good for another thirty days. Food was another matter, since most of it was in storage lockers—if they still existed—in the sealed portion of the ship. They were stretching the interval between meals a little longer each time. At full rations they had food for six days; at their current rate they had fourteen.

  “You happened by at a fortunate time, Captain,” Acting Scout Commander sig’Radia was saying to him. “Not only did you rid us of the last of that infestation
, but improved morale merely by appearing, Tree-and-Dragon shouting from your name-points, hard on the heels of rumors that Korval is…vanished.”

  Daav gave her a grave smile. “Korval’s luck. May we all walk wary.”

  She was a woman of about his own age, he estimated, though he did not know her. Obviously, though, she had heard tales of Korval’s luck, for she inclined her head formally and murmured, “May it rest peaceful.”

  “How did this come to pass? An open attack on a Scout base by Liadens?”

  Scout Commander turned in her chair and pulled a stack of hard-copy messages from under a jar full of firegems.

  “Some of it is here,” she said, handing him the stack. She seemed about to speak further, but the comm buzzed then; a Healer had been found for the Kia pilot Daav had rescued from the courier boat.

  He gave his attention to the messages in his hand. Slowly, a picture built of suspicious activity, followed by conflicting orders and commands from Scout Headquarters and the Council of Clans, muddied by people going missing and a strange epidemic of Scouts being requisitioned—with the assistance of some faction or another within the Council itself—for the mysterious Department of the Interior. Amid it all, a familiar name surfaced.

  The commander finished her call and Daav held out the page.

  “You may blame Clonak ter’Meulen on my fortuitous arrival—he having sent for me. May I see him? His business was urgent, I gather.”

  She looked away from his face, then handed him another, much smaller, stack of pages. He took them and began leafing through, listening as she murmured, “The Department of the Interior had him targeted. He went down to meet a Scout just in from the garbage run—Shadia Ne’Zame. That’s when the battle began. They fired on her ship and…”

  Daav looked up, face bland. Commander sig’Radia shrugged, Terran-style.

  “The Department had a warship in-system—say destroyer class. They claimed it was a training vessel. They went after Ne’Zame’s ship, fired on her. By then, we were fighting here as well—open firefights and hand-to-hand between us and the Department people here for training.”