by Janet Morris
South tapped the helmet under his arm and the sound of his gloved fingers on his faceplate was swallowed up by the damping modes Reice had engaged for privacy. BLUE TICK was virtually an anechoic chamber with exterior microwave baffling for good measure.
"Finished?" South said. He barely heard, let alone recognized, his own voice. It was muffled and soft, as if he were wearing earplugs.
Reice said, "Yep. Shoot. What are you doing back here, anyway? Don't you want to go to the party?"
"Immaterial. I need to ask you to cover my behind while I go check something at the embassy site. Secretariat business."
"Christ, why didn't you guys think of this before you set up a no-pass zone?"
"We didn't set it up for us." Reice couldn't tell he was lying. And Reice wouldn't call Threshold for confirmation—not when he was hiding down here in case some shooting did start. "We set it up for them—the Unity. I don't look like a Unity vehicle to you, do I?"
Reice was chewing gum manically. His jaw worked. He said, "South, I know it's above my paygrade, but I'd really like the skinny on what's going on here. How come you're stayin' behind?"
"Going to take the Ball on a little joyride. Want to come?"
Somehow, he had to get to the embassy without getting STARBIRD shot at. And into the Ball without starting a shooting war. Reice was the best chance he had.
"You want to what?"
"Come on, Reice, you a pilot or what? You want to ask questions, or get some answers?"
"You can do that? Get the Ball to open up?"
"You know I can. You've always known/'
That worked. Reice's eyes got real wide. "Yeah. I guess I did. So this means I'm invited to the party, too?"
"Guest of honor. Just handle this unexpected bunch of trigger-happy naval officers, and we're sportin'."
"Ah—yeah. Well, let's see." Reice chewed faster. Every muscle in his jaw seemed involved in the process. His face rippled as if he were about to molt. "How about I put BLUE TICK on autopilot, and we go in your ship?"
"Thought you had doubts about my spacecraft." South was beginning to enjoy himself.
"Just talk, friend. Just talk."
So in the end, they did that. Reice EVA'd over to STARBIRD with South and manned the horn to Spacedock Seven traffic control from South's bunk, while South prayed that he'd done the right thing.
If Reice couldn't pave the way across this minefield. South was going to be a realtime target. So was STARBIRD, But then, so was Reice.
The astronics that Sling had retrofitted into STARBIRD included a surely illicit threat detection module that knew when hostile targeting systems were locking on. There was one hell of a lot of threat out there. But nobody shot at him, so he supposed that Reice was doing a good job.
Parking STARBIRD at the embassy site was a piece of cake, if you didn't worry that any minute the combined forces of ConSpaceCom and ConSec were going to open fire, either because they'd contacted Threshold for verification that this mission was authorized, or because they didn't care and were happy to have a pretext to start shooting.
Reice came forward when South was suiting up—you couldn't exactly slip off STARBIRD without anybody knowing you'd gone. "What's this?" Reice said, between manic chomps of his jaws.
"Told you. I thought." South spoke through a retracted visor, as he checked his glove seals and self-tested the Manned Maneuvering Unit on his back. "1 gotta check something out at the embassy."
"Won't they send a shuttle for you, or something 0 "
"Sort of. Don't worry. I'll be back, soontime—in a few minutes."
"And if you don't come back?" Reice put his hands on his hips.
"Get STARBIRD out of the way before you let your buddies start shooting," South advised, and slapped his helmet down as he backed into the open lock.
The door closed on Reice, still chewing his cud.
For one instant, South wasn't sure he was doing the right thing. But then the lock cycled, and the outer hatch opened. The plasma shuttle was already nosing around the airlock, glittering pulses of welcome rolling over its surface. He stepped toward it, and it enveloped him. His boots, his spacesuit, his life-support system, and his heart all merged with the craft as it bore him happily toward the embassy portal, swooping with joy.
An Interpreter was waiting in the access tube, all color and light. South wasn't sure if he should be here, if he was intruding. But he'd come this far.
The plasma shuttle had no such doubts. It bumped its way into the tube and extended itself. All around the Interstitial Interpreter, the plasma shuttle flowed caressingly.
The Interpreter never would have come aboard if South was out of line. South said, "I'm afraid for them. For all of this activity. They don't have the wisdom to know when they're trying to do too much. I need to do something to help. Or you do."
The words were difficult to enunciate. They filled his helmet. He retracted his faceplate, and the Interpreter touched his face.
A soft touch. A swift, retreating touch. All of his answers were in his mind, now. He knew what he needed to know.
"Sorry to bring you such a long way, but it's time to take the Ball out of play," he muttered, but the face of the Interpreter, its head glittering with a crown of stars, twinkled at him as it slowly disappeared from nowtime.
The eyes were the last to leave. They were curiously concerned and full of mild warnings.
He understood, or hoped he did. This meeting of eleven-space and four-space bodies was difficult at best. No wonder Croft had gotten confused. No wonder South had been frightened, when first he'd had such an encounter.
The shuttle nuzzled him, rubbed against him, and reminded him to put down his faceplate once the Interpreter had gone away.
The trip back to STARBIRD was full of South's questions and the shuttlecraft's quiet confidence. He was glad the craft was well, and that it remembered him. He'd see it again, his stroking hand told it, once this mission was done.
The shuttlecraft wanted to take him wherever he needed to go, but he was committed to his decision. The plasma shuttle slipped along STARBIRD's hull and let him stick his gloved hand out to push the exterior lockplate that Sling had installed. Then it squeezed its way inside to give him a gentle entry.
He watched it go before he let the lock cycle, suddenly afraid that the fools from ConSpaceCom would see it and shoot it, without knowing what they were shooting at.
But he needn't have worried. It wafted back to the embassy portal without emitting a signature that human equipment could read, except a winking colored farewell to South just before it disappeared.
He slapped the lockplate, stepped resolutely into STARBIRD and blustered, "Reice, let's get a move on. We're go."
Reice scrambled into the secondary astrogation couch at South's bunk.
South moved forward, telling Birdy, "Let's go. You've got your Ball coordinates. Execute," before he'd strapped in or taken off his helmet.
This was one of those missions when you leave your helmet on—just in case.
The Ball had tortured him, lured him, fooled him, and obsessed him. This time, he was going to have his turn.
"Reice, you want to watch, ask for full scans back there," he called out. The Ball was going to put on quite a display this time, now that South knew what he was doing.
He watched it split apart in his own forward scanners. The silver sphere coruscated, rippled, and began to iris open. Silver turned to sunrise, and a leading edge of shock-wave ran from west to east as the Ball manifested completely in nowtime for him.
He saw the lions at the portal, and he heard Reice whoop aloud. He saw the dragons in their splendor, weaving spacetime, one atop the other, throughout eternity.
And then they were in. STARBIRD was inside the Ball. He slapped the rear viewscreens manually, afraid he'd see ConSpaceCom open fire before the Ball closed.
But no torpedoes followed him. No missiles were locked on his tail. He said, "Nice job running interference, Reice."
Reice just grunted.
"You okay, Reice?"
Silence. Then, from South's bunk. "You did that? You saw that? You understand this?"
Reice must still be looking forward. "Dump your forward scans. Pull up an aft scan. Don't look forward again. You j want to look at time that's formed, not forming. Got me?"
A sick-sounding voice said, "Yup. Roger."
STARBIRD glided flawlessly into the Ball's slip bay, beside the resting plasma shuttles. South kept looking out his aft scanners, until the whorls and vistas calmed, and the great eleven-space ship around him began to settle down.
Then he said, "Okay, Reice, want to fly this sucker with me?"
"This thing's a spacecraft? You're shittin' me."
"Nope. Spacetime craft. Interdimensional craft. Call it what you want. You'll get the ride of a lifetime, either way. You can stay here and monitor what's going down, or you can come along and play copilot."
"I think ..." Reice's voice was very small. "I'll just stay where I am, right here in STARBIRD. But you'd better not leave me here too long."
"Not a problem," South said, slipping out of STARBIRD’s cockpit. "You'll be able to see me the whole time."
He was finally going to do it. Fly the Ball! South stepped out of STARBIRD's open lock into the control room of the great multidimensional craft, where plasma navigators waited impatiently for their pilot, and a skein of starways could take him, and STARBIRD, anywhere they pleased.
CHAPTER 28
Nowtime
Mickey Croft was trying to get some long-delayed sleep when Remson phoned to tell him that the Ball was gone.
"What do you mean, Vince, by 'gone'?" Had the destroy-on-warning orders that Mickey had left behind with ConSpaceCom been executed? If so, why? What aggression had precipitated the shoot? Was it successful? Had the Unity returned fire?
Unasked questions tumbled through Croft's brain as he levered himself up on one elbow in his bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes and blinking at the vidphone image of Remson on his nightstand.
"By 'gone,' I mean disappeared without a trace, and without any warning," Remson said carefully in that clipped, precise diction of his which signaled that Croft's Chief of Staff was at pains to make sure he was not misunderstood.
"Oh, I see," Croft said, not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed. So it hadn't been a shoot. No warning issued from ConSpaceCom had precipitated a volley of ConSec fire. "And the Unity Embassy? Any word from them on this phenomenon?" Croft's mouth was so dry his lips were sticking together and his tongue clicked when he spoke. He reached for the cut-crystal decanter by his bedside, filled a tumbler of water, and sipped it. "Surely we've requested an explanation?"
"Ah, well—that's what I'm calling about. The Unity hasn't made a peep about this. They're closed up tight in their embassy and it's the middle of the night there. ConSpaceCom cedes responsibility for any official enquiry to the Secretariat. They're not prepared—or chartered—to initiate contact on the diplomatic front."
Croft swung his striped pajama legs over the edge of the bed. He felt better with his feet on the floor, even if the floor was moving through space at an ungodly speed. "It's the middle of the night here, too, Vince," Croft said sourly. He dug his toes into his bedside Aubusson rug. The tactile pleasure of skin against soft, carved wool was somehow calming. He had to think. But events were moving too fast. Worse, he was moving too fast, headed toward a jump into n-space, a custom-built rift in spacetime that felt no less threatening because the old pros called it spongespace, an allegorical reference to the actual shape of the universe as early theoreticians had envisioned it. "Can't those generals and admirals keep their pants on until morning?"
"Ah ... look, Mickey, when we upped the alert status, we put everybody back there on tenterhooks. We left them without a diplomatic attaché and with minimum guidance. Now something has happened, but not what the ConSpaceCom and ConSec brass expected. I think they basically want to know if the Secretariat considers the disappearance of the Ball a sufficient provocation to fire on the Unity Embassy."
"What?" Croft slapped on the lights and leaned forward until his long nose nearly touched the miniature Remson on his bedside vidscreen. "Of course it's not a reason to start shooting," he snapped. "The Ball is theirs, isn't it? If the Unity wants to recall it, that's their business. I'm not sure it's our job to wake them up in the middle of the night to ask why they removed an object that's clearly their property." Well, almost clearly their property. The Ball had been towed to Threshold by a white-hole scavenger named Keebler, and the old reprobate had claimed it as his personal property. But Keebler was now a "Valued Friend" of the Unity, off somewhere in Unity space. For all Croft knew, the Unity had reclaimed the Ball for Keebler's personal uses—whatever those might be.
"Mickey, look here. It's me, Vince, not some hostile player. I didn't say anything when you issued those destruct-on-warning orders, but I was worried then that something like this might happen. You can't leave a bunch of military officers in unilateral control of the home system, with their civilian control mechanism increasingly far away and difficult to contact."
"The famous Remson hindsight?" Croft accused bitterly.
"Mickey, this is our last chance to give those soldiers. sailors, and cops back there some policy guidance before we're too far away for a quick response. They can't contact us during the jump. After the jump, we've got a limited scalar communications capability until we're established at the new orbit. Conventional communications lag-time is significant over billions of miles."
"Don't you think I know that, Vince? Just what, exactly, are you trying to get me to suggest that we do?"
"Talk to the Unity Embassy. Now."
Croft reached for his water tumbler and took one sip. then a second. He was afraid of that. He didn't want to talk to the Unity aliens about their missing Ball. To be truthful, he wasn't sure that he wanted to talk to them again, ever. His glass began to quaver in his hand. The surface of the water sloshed against the crystal. A fine fix he'd gotten himself into: here he was, on the way out to a new orbit, having uprooted the entire Threshold community just so that his Secretariat could interact with the Unity, and he didn't want to interact with the Unity. Not anymore. Not ever.
He was experiencing a failure of nerve, and he might as well face it. Remson knew. Vince had probably known since the moment Mickey had issued the destroy-on-warning order. If the damned ConSpaceCom and ConSec brass hadn't been so infernally competent and disciplined, Mickey's troubles would all now be over: they would have fired on the Unity constructs, before Threshold made the leap into another continuum. End of budding relationship with a superior confederacy of races. End of Mickey's doubts and fears. End of threat.
But, no. ConSpaceCom had to behave perfectly. ConSec had to prove itself to be more than a bunch of trigger-happy cops. And now Remson was calling Croft on the deliberate oversight of failing to leave a diplomatic liaison at the Spacedock necklace.
"Very well, Vince. Let's do something about this situation until, that is, before it degenerates into a real problem." Mickey sighed. "Since you're so damned prescient where UNE/Unity relations are concerned, why don't you take a fast cruiser and go on back to the Spacedock necklace? Set up a meeting with the Unity representatives, and sort out this bit of confusion personally. After all, I can't leave Threshold now, and you're the next most experienced Secretariat staffer where direct contact with the Unity Council is concerned." His voice betrayed him: he'd been hoping to sound professional and dispassionate. Instead, he sounded spiteful and mean.
The tiny Remson face regarded him critically from his vidphone monitor. "Sir, I'd be glad to do that if I didn't think you needed all the support you can get right now. Of course, if you order me, I'll go. But my recommendation is that neither of us go. That we simply contact the Unity while we're enroute."
"What makes you think we can do that?"
"Ambassador Lowe makes me think we can do that, sir. I've
debriefed her thoroughly, and I'm convinced we can do what she suggests. Meanwhile, I'm sending up the text of a message designed to give ConSpaceCom and ConSec some comfort. I'd like you to consider ordering them to stand down for a while, from the destroy-on-warning order, at any rate. Just until we sort things out enough to appoint a military attaché from among the personnel at the Spacedock necklace. I have a short list of candidates that both services have put forward for your approval. I'll send that up, too. If you'll choose the appointees, we can suggest to the Unity when we contact them that they give us a point of contact of parallel rank. Then we've got a safety valve in place."
Remson was going too fast for Croft. He vaguely realized that Vince must have been planning this mediation of Croft's hardline stance for some time. Not even Vince Remson could pull a stop-gap mediation plan out of his ass on a moment's notice.
"You son of a bitch," Mickey said nearly inaudibly, shaking his head back and forth at the image bedeviling him.
"What's that, sir?"
"I said, don't send your recommendations up here. Bring them up, personally. And bring Riva Lowe with you." Croft slapped at the vid to end the conversation, and sent the unit tumbling to the floor.
He wasn't going to accuse Remson of staging a quiet coup d'état, but only because Remson wasn't expendable, not because Remson wasn't trying to grab the reins. Vince was just one hair short of insubordination, of unilateral actions taken with insupportable hubris, of posting a guard outside Croft's door.
Thinking the unthinkable, that real treachery was upon him, Croft padded across his bedroom, then through his bed sitting room, through the library beyond, and down the darkened reception hall to the front door to his suite.
Croft touched the lockplate gingerly. What if the door wouldn't open? When if Remson really had decided to claim that Mickey was temporarily indisposed or taking a short but well-needed rest? As Chief of Staff, Remson could then administrate Threshold in Mickey's stead, without precipitating a Secretariat Security Council meeting, an interim appointment of one of the Secretariat deputies, or any other changes in personnel.