Gregor the diplomat was silently shaking his head. He did not dispute the fact that Huveans could be nasty, but it was not at all like them to be this innovative.
No one was asking the diplomat’s opinion. Radigast only grunted. If anyone else was in agreement with the suspicious Captain Charles, no one spoke up in his support. Radigast did not seem ready to put a Huvean label on the apparition, but he took no steps to alter the disposition of his fleet.
Meanwhile, the technical work went on. The first attempts at precisely measuring the object’s surface temperature confirmed that it was very cold. The measurement was difficult, as it was encased in invisible forcefield shielding.
“As our ships are?” Gregor asked.
Charlie looked at him. “As our ships will be, the moment we go on full alert. We haven’t done that yet.”
The thing was simply there, absolutely defying any comfortable explanation.
Instruments showed that for an object of its size, the mysterious trespasser radiated very little at any wavelength. At the moment, by the standards of deep space travel, it was scarcely moving, traveling at only a handful of kilometers per second relative to the Twin Worlds sun that was hundreds of millions of kilometers away.
Careful analysis of its initial movement in normal space showed clearly that the thing was precisely on course to intercept the planet Prairie in its orbit. At the present speeds of the planet and the mystery object, that approach would take days, but the object’s speed in normal space could be multiplied several times while still remaining well below the velocity of light.
Half a standard hour passed, in which the situation did not change materially. At that time the admiral did begin to shift his capital ships, dreadnoughts and cruisers, adjusting positions and velocities, making sure he could get them between the intruder and the world it was making for.
He called for a whole-system presentation on the holostage, and entered the adjustments he wanted to make in the defensive network. Of course it would take hours for the changes to actually be put into effect.
He supposed it was quite possible that, despite the signs of violence with which the thing was marked, its immediate intentions were perfectly peaceful. When dealing with the unknown, almost anything was possible.
One awed onlooker, studying a magnified image on the nearby holostage, still marveled at the thing’s sheer size. “That can’t be a ship. Nobody’s ever made a ship that big.”
The debate among the admiral’s advisers now found a new point of focus. “Well, what is it, then? I say it can’t very well be anything but a ship.”
“Some kind of artifact, certainly. To me its behavior suggests a gigantic robot probe.”
“Must be more than a probe, I’d say. Who would make a simple probe that size, and why? Looks like a whole bloody motherless moving world.”
Decades before Earth-descended humans began serious space exploration, a theory had been developed of sending robots out unaccompanied, to replicate themselves (like so many bacteria, jeered detractors) and push the exploration forward, one early calculation had predicted that by this means the whole Galaxy might be explored in only a few standard centuries.
The tactic of sending out independent robots as explorers had been tested, but, for several reasons, never seriously adopted. On the same or closely related grounds, none of the beautiful new personal robots were routinely part of the hardware in the combat-ready fleet.
Time passed. Five minutes after being called back to the bridge, the admiral made a decision.
“Well, my colleagues, here goes.” He passed on orders. The flagship, with most of the rest of the fleet following and flanking, eased closer to the apparition, on a course that would also establish the battle fleet even more directly between it and the inner system, nesting place of the inhabited worlds.
Whether the stranger took note of this redeployment or not was hard to guess. It did not alter course or speed.
When Radigast ordered a halt, after the passage of an additional half an hour, they had come within a million kilometers of the intruder, putting them only light seconds apart. (On the holostage, the little image of the stranger was still steadily advancing, at a rate that would put it right in the middle of the fleet’s formation, in a matter of only minutes.)
The admiral turned his gaze to the plenipotentiary. “Sir, I’m not sure if I’m conducting motherless diplomacy here or what. Would you like any input on framing the first message?”
Gregor slowly shook his head. “Not this one, thank you. Perhaps the next. If there is to be another.”
The stranger was hailed, in accordance with standard procedures, and asked to identify itself.
There was no response.
One of the admiral’s deputies said: “They don’t want to answer. But someone must be aboard?” It came out as more question than statement.
No one could give a confident answer. “It seems to have a very definite idea about where it wants to go.”
“It seems to me more and more likely that there’s no one on board that ship at all. Surely, anyone who’s breathing and not brain-dead would have thought of something to say to us by this time.”
“If there’s no living crew, then one might argue that it’s not a ship, in the strict sense. Only a machine.”
“A machine, or a bloody artificial planetoid. Whether you call it one thing or the other, it’s the purpose I’m concerned about.”
“What it’s going to do next.”
“Yeah. And after we know what, we can ask why, but probably that particular motherless question can wait a little longer.”
“Why is it here? but I just can’t believe that there’s no living crew.”
“You mean you think there are people aboard, living intelligent motherless beings of some kind, but refusing to answer us? What would they gain by hiding out?”
The admiral’s people were certainly not afraid to argue with the boss. “They could gain anonymity … especially if they’re Huveans.”
But Radigast was not willing to accept that answer yet. “From the look of it, it might have been through a bloody war already, or maybe two or three. Anybody here heard of a motherless war that’s started somewhere else?”
Nobody had, of course. The Twin Worlds-Huvea confrontation was the only interplanetary conflict to have reached the flash point yet, though many other worlds were rearming.
Whatever the intruder’s exact nature and purpose might be, certain humps and projections on the undamaged portions of the hull suggested that it might be heavily armed.
The decision of what to do next was left to the admiral to make.
Again Radigast issued orders. “Send our own robot probe toward it, try for a close orbit first, say at about ten klicks. If that doesn’t wake them up, we’ll go for direct physical contact. Just a gentle tap. But let’s see if we can establish the close orbit first.”
Gregor was nodding his unsolicited agreement.
A few minutes later, the probe was closing on the stranger, closing to a range of twenty kilometers.
Then fifteen.
Evidently the probe did not appear so innocent to whoever or whatever was monitoring its progress from the other end of its trajectory. Someone or something there was certainly aware of it, for the probe was neatly vaporized by some kind of beam weapon before it could quite come within ten kilometers of that monstrous hull.
CHAPTER SIX
There was silence on the flagship’s bridge, and then a muttered obscenity from the admiral.
When none of the other officers came up with anything to add to that comment, Gregor offered: “Well. I suppose we might have done the same, to anything it sent toward us.”
Radigast was still staring at the stage. “Bah. We’d have responded reasonably when hailed, not let things get to this stage. I’d say our motherless visitor displays a definitely unneighborly attitude.”
The captain was persistent. “A Huvean attitude, sir?”
The admiral only gr
unted.
Gregor was thinking: The world has changed, and unexpectedly, the way it always does. Probably he had just witnessed the beginning of a war, though it was not the war that anyone had foreseen, and it had started in a totally unpredictable way.
Around him, on the bridge and elsewhere, a full complement of people in comfortable couches, aided by some vastly greater number of machines, were continually taking readings, studying every scratch and dimple on the visitor’s surface, trying to plot every meter of its predicted course.
Another crew member, one that Gregor had not met, was talking to the admiral. “Sir, we can’t identify anything about the spectrum of that weapon flash, can’t pin it down as resulting from any armament from any known world. In particular, I certainly can’t see this, this thing, as the product of any Huvean shipyard. Of course we haven’t had a good look at its capabilities yet.”
“Well, keep trying. That goes for everyone, people. We have to nail this thing down, what it is, especially as it might connect to Huvea, what it can do. Guessing is not an option.”
“Yes sir, I realize that, we all do. Admiral, our people have been in practically continuous contact with Huvea for many years, ever since both sets of colonies were founded. We know them, their society, their capabilities. I’ll take my oath, they have never built a ship or a machine like that.”
Gregor was keeping silent, letting the military experts talk. Identifying strange ships in space was part of their business, not of his. But in his private thoughts he kept coming back to the point that if this was some Earth-descended artifact, it was way beyond the innovative possibilities of Huvean strategy. Who else was ready to attack Twin Worlds?
Knowing that was part of his business, as a diplomat. And the answer was: no one.
Radigast was moving in the same direction, following his own lights. “If it’s not Huvean, and not some crazy bloody tactical trick some motherless ED psycho on some other world has thought up, the only answer left is that it’s non-ED. It’s truly alien.”
An officer of lesser rank, who until now had been keeping quiet, spoke up. “Carmpan?”
There was a silence, as if no one on the bridge thought the suggestion really deserved a comment. As far as anyone on this ship knew, no one in the Galaxy but Earth-descended humans and their remote Carmpan cousins ever built spacecraft of any kind.
But nobody observing this odd intruder could really believe it was a Carmpan construction. That passive and introspective race built spaceships only on rare occasions, when they deemed it absolutely necessary, and their vessels were always on the modest side. Never anything like this.
The extensive data bank on board the admiral’s flagship was ready to be decisive when asked to find a match for the discovery:
ALIEN, OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN.
Gregor, and several others aboard the Morholt who were well traveled among the stars, agreed with the staff experts that no world colonized from old Earth had ever constructed a thing like this; no one on the flagship had even seen the like. And it was hard to believe that any of the planets colonized from Earth, all of them in frequent contact with one another, had somehow managed the feat in secrecy.
Meanwhile, the object of their curiosity was suddenly accelerating. Remaining in normal space, piling on the gravities swiftly for an object of such bulk, holding steadily to its course that carried it smoothly in the direction of the sun and inner planets. It seemed that whoever or whatever was in control of the visitor felt no uncertainty at all in choosing a destination. Morholt’s own astrogational computers, looking at that course, reported it was fine-tuned to a point of intersection with the planet Prairie in its orbit.
Presently Gregor decided to visit his assigned cabin, the plumbing there was notably less spartan and more private than that offered by an acceleration couch in a crowded room. Besides, he wanted a brief rest.
His assigned quarters turned out to be small but elegant. Luon must have been listening for his arrival, for she promptly put her head in through the door to the adjoining room and began to prod him: “Sir? What’s going to happen to the hostages?”
For just a moment Gregor, his mind filled with new developments, had no idea what she was talking about, then memory rushed back. He made an impatient gesture. “I don’t see that their situation is changed at all. If this peculiar, thing, is not Huvean, then it should not affect their status one way or the other.”
“And it’s not Huvean. It can’t be!” Luon was emphatic.
Struck by her vehemence, the old man looked at her more closely. “That’s how the admiral’s coming to see it, and I agree. So do most of his advisers.” He paused. “I take it your certainty is not born of some special insight into the matter?”
The girl ignored the question. She appeared relieved, but not entirely. “But it’s really up to the people down on Timber, isn’t it? The president, the high military command? If they become convinced that this is some Huvean weapon?”
True enough, if the president is even paying attention to any of this. If he and his robot counselor are not off in some world of their own. “Luon, all we can do is tell our people on the ground what’s happening up here. Now I’m going to rest for a few minutes, and I suggest you do the same.”
Half an hour later, having grabbed a few minutes’ rest, Gregor returned to the bridge. Before leaving his cabin, he advised Luon that she had better stay in hers for the time being.
As soon as he came in sight of the central holostage again, he saw that the admiral had got his whole fleet in motion, though not all of it was following the stranger. If the bulky mystery was not a Huvean super dreadnought, it might be a special creation intended simply as a distraction.
When Gregor returned to the bridge, the admiral looked up blankly at him for a moment, as if wondering how this intrusive civilian had got in here. Meanwhile, Captain Charles was saying: “I don’t like the look of this.”
Radigast snorted. “You’re developing bloody understatement into an art form, Charlie.”
The couch Gregor had previously occupied was still available, as if it might have been reserved for him, and he got into it. When the admiral looked at him, Gregor said: “I’d say every human in the system will be getting nervous, and I would imagine the people on Prairie especially so. I presume that by now they’ve had some word of what’s been going on. And that a full alert has already been called, at least on Prairie, perhaps on Timber.”
“I’m presuming it too, because I just don’t know. They’re all getting the same information we are, as fast as we can send it, so that’s their motherless problem. Our problems are out here.” Radigast paused. “Except we also have one big difficulty down there on the ground.” He abruptly lowered his voice, so that it seemed only Gregor could hear him. “Just where in bloody hell’s the president?”
A young spacer was standing in front of him, saluting, holding a message capsule. “Incoming message, sir. From Timber.”
The admiral brightened slightly. “Looks like this might be something. Right on cue.”
It turned out to be from presidential headquarters on Timber, a direct and very simple order:
STOP IT.
(signed) belgola
Radigast seemed relieved. He chortled. “There’s a sign, my colleagues, dear motherless friends. Not a great strategic insight, true, but it may be our glorious leader’s waking up at last.”
The bulk of the Twin Worlds fleet, deployed in space long days ago in the expectation of a move by the Huvean fleet, now moved to intercept the intruder.
“No, I’m not calling in my whole force, by any means.” Radigast was all professional calm. “Can’t afford to leave the far side of the system empty. Homasubi just might decide to come at us from that direction.”
Against the possibility that this bizarre display was only a diversion, Radigast left a substantial force on station on the opposite side of the solar system, a billion or two kilometers from the current action, some of his suspicious mi
litary planners were still expecting the real attack to come from that direction.
Showing respect for the stranger’s impressive size and unknown capabilities, and keeping in mind the itchy trigger finger it had already demonstrated, the admiral ordered an approach to be made, in force and in accordance with historic military theory.
His general order set out rules of engagement. “Deal with anything you get incoming. Otherwise, no one, repeat, no one in our fleet is to fire the first shot.”
The small fast craft were spreading into a broad formation, ready to close with the unknown intruder as soon as their heavier support had come up: cruisers and intermediate, specialized vessels, then the battleships.
Minute after minute, the thing maintained its deliberate course, ignoring what it must be able to see of the deployment it faced. It also continued to ignore a steady barrage of human messages coming at it over all communication channels. That an object of its size might actually intend to land on Prairie was preposterous, of course; but in a couple of standard hours it would be in a position to do soor, more rationally, to go into a low orbit around the planet.
What its actual intent might be was as great a mystery as ever, except that it was still on the same heading, methodically taking the most mathematically efficient curve to get to Prairie.
The fleet was really moving now, demonstrating some of the speed of which it was capable in normal space. The flagship and several other craft of comparable size were adjusting their positions incrementally, so they remained directly in the advancing behemoth’s path.
Ignoring peaceful requests in twelve of the most common Earth-descended languages, followed by demands and verbal warnings, the invader responded only when a warning missile was detonated in its path. The response was a missile of its own, full normal space drive, nothing so crude as rocketry. And nothing so indirect as a warning shot, but fired directly at the ship that had launched the final warning. There was no doubt it was intended as a direct attack, burned out of space at the last moment by a defensive counter from the Twin Worlds ship.
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