A light blinked red. "Communication from Earth," the ship told them. "It claims absolute priority."
"Make contact," Kenmuir ordered.
No image appeared. The videos weren't compatible. He knew the voice, however. Once Matthias realized what kind of agent was visiting him, he had surreptitiously had a man of his record whatever was feasible. He played the recording for these two as part of their briefing.
"Spaceship Kestrel, null registry, respond at once."
"Hello, Venator," the spaceman said, and heard his companion catch her breath. Himself, he was not very surprised.
"Kenmuir?" The tone was equally cool. "I rather thought so. And greeting, Alice Tam. It's doubtless you who boarded with him."
Kenmuir signed her not to speak. Why give anything away? "I daresay you'd like an explanation."
"More than that, my friend. Considerably more. Do you two have any conception of what you have brought on yourselves?"
"A public inquiry will determine whether we are justified."
"Everyone at Guthrie House will be arrested, you know. You've probably destroyed your beloved Fireball Trothdom. Did you intend that?"
Fireball Enterprises had destroyed itself in bringing down an evil, the spaceman thought. For the first time, he wondered what agonies of soul Matthias was undergoing.
"Something may yet be salvaged," Venator urged. "Cease acceleration, admit boarders when they match velocity, and come back to discourse like reasonable human beings."
"Will the world listen in?" Kenmuir demanded. "What guarantees of that can you give us?"
"None. You would see through any trick we attempted, as suspicious as you are. How can I persuade you that this is not a matter which ought to be public?"
Kenmuir's lips pulled back from his teeth. "That would be difficult, wouldn't it?" Inwardly he thought Matthias's choice had been easy, set beside this that he must make. Were he and Aleka in the right?
"Every minute you let go by, you're in worse trouble," Venator said, "What cause do you imagine you're serving? Lilisaire's? What she intends—we have reason to believe—could cost millions of lives. Do you want them on your conscience?"
"No. If you're telling the truth. Are you?" Now Kenmuir could speak the name. "Your people lied about Proserpina for lifetimes."
"There are good reasons to keep that confidential, till the world is ready. I—no, the cybercosm will be glad to explain them to you, in privacy."
"Will it? Or will we—my partner and I—simply disappear?"
Venator sighed. "You've been watching too many historical dramas." Sternly: "Consider this an ultimatum. If you surrender now, clemency is possible, for you and for Fireball. Later, I fear not."
"What about the Covenant, and our rights under it? I tell you again, we want total disclosure. Otherwise you're in worse violation than we could ever be."
"The Covenant makes provision for emergencies—" Venator broke off. After a half minute, while Earth dwindled and Luna grew: "You are determined."
"We are," Kenmuir said to him and to himself.
"Your record suggests you mean that. I shall not let you talk a delaying action." Venator laughed softly. "Nor shall I wish you luck. But may you survive, I'd like to talk candidly with you, intelligence to intelligence. Ave atque vale."
The light went out. "Transmission ended," the ship said.
Kenmuir glanced once more at Earth, If he could broadcast, rouse those who loved freedom—But the signal must go through satellite relays if it was to have any chance of being heard, and they were under control.
And how many on the planet would especially care?
Matthias had said he felt the walls closing in, all his life. Kenmuir had not, until lately. At least, not in the upper part of his mind. Down below, had he too sensed that he was caged?
Was he?
He shook the questions off, as a dog shakes off the water of a cold river, and began unharnessing. "It should be a steady run," he told Aleka, "but we'd better have spacesuits on, in case." He'd definitely need his.
She nodded. Under two gravities, the dark hair fell straight and thickly past her face. "'Ae."
They went aft. For a few minutes before donning the gear, they kissed.
When they returned, he called for data on pursuit. They were few and the probable errors were high, but instruments did appear to show two or three vessels bound through an intercept cone for his deep-space course. How they proposed to stop Kestrel, short of ramming, he didn't know. But they were of modem design with far more delta v. If necessary, they could hound her till she exhausted her reaction mass, then draw alongside.
He began entering the detailed instructions that would enable Aleka to take command. "I hope I'm not too clumsy with you," he said into his communicator, impulsively, foolishly.
"You haven't Kyra's skill," Kestrel answered, "but your hands feel much like hers."
* * * *
43
T
he ship neared Luna.
By then it was certainly clear to the hunters that they had been deceived and this was in fact her destination. But they could not stop her. All spacecraft capable of interception were now too distant to arrive in time. There were no missiles available that she could not dodge. Those emplaced on the Moon were few and slow, intended for unlikely targets, such as a large meteoroid on a catastrophic orbit. Constabulary and Peace Authority forces were doubtless on full alert, but that was of no immediate help.
The moment came when Aleka looked into the eyes behind Kenmuir’s helmet and said through the radio, "Aloha. Let's hope it's not forever. You've become . . . more than a friend, do you know?" He found no words, could merely smile and touch a glove to her hand before they went their separate ways.
Waiting, enclosed in an airlock chamber, the drive unit and its mass tank so heavy under the acceleration that he must sit against them, he felt a slight shock, and after a minute or two another. Aleka had dispatched their decoys. He imagined the carrier modules, braking down toward widespread points on the surface—points not far from Selenarchic strongholds. He pictured Aleka, hastening back to the command cabin, transmitting to Zamok Vysoki: Lilisaire, have someone retrieve those cylinders before the opposition does. No telling if the Lunarian, or any Lunarian, got that message, or was able to act on it, or willing to try. But it should distract the government's forces. With reasonable luck, his departure should escape their attention.
Of course, they'd keep their radars and other detectors constantly on this vessel. However, she'd oriented her hull so that he probably wouldn't register as he left. If a beam did happen to sweep across him afterward, he could hope the program would note him as a piece of cosmic debris and continue following the ship.
The plan might not work. No matter how carefully he and Kestrel had calculated the odds on the basis of accessible data, it was a gamble.
Life always was.
Weight vanished. Engine turned off, the ship swung around Luna at scarcely more than low orbital speed. He felt the throb of the air pump emptying the chamber. Light from the overhead fixture shrank to a puddle, with vague reflections off the sides, as diffusion ceased. He braced his muscles. Time to go. An uncanny calm was upon him.
The outer valve opened. Starful darkness welled in the portal. By the handhold he grasped, he pulled himself to the flange and pushed his soles down against the little platform of the personnel springer. His free hand sought its touchoff. The platform tilted, jerked, and tossed him out.
Slowly tumbling, he saw the universe whirl, Milky Way, Earth, Luna. The sun crossed his vision and his helmet dusked to save it, turning the disc to dull gold, a coin on which the spots were a mintage he could not read. At first Kestrel stretched gigantic. She receded from him at the several meters per second he had gained relative to her. She was still large across the stars when he guessed it was safe for him to boost, but now he saw her whole, slim and beautiful.
Aleka, though, was locked inside, Aleka who would have wish
ed to die on the sea with the wind caressing her hair.
Kenmuir got busy.
The frame of the drive unit curved a member around in front to support the control board before his chest, an incongruously cheerful array of colored lights. He keyed for despin. A short thrust stabilized the sky around him. The unit's computer was comparatively simple, but adequate for the tasks ahead. Earth steadied to a thick, broken piece of blue-and-white glass. Luna reached across a quarter of the heavens, its night part like a hole down to infinity, its day part mercilessly lighted, wrinkled, pocked, and blotched. Without opticals, he saw no trace of manwork. Memory could have given him cities, huge flowers, birds and soarflyers above a lake, Lilisaire; but he lacked time for remembering.
He deployed navigation gear, peered and measured, identified three landmarks and put their bearings into the computer. After a bit he repeated, thus getting the information for it to figure his location, altitude, and vector function. Radar would have been better, more direct, but he dared not risk it. He had already entered the coordinates at which he wanted to land. Now he keyed for thrust.
The drive unit swung him around to the proper orientation. Accumulators commenced discharging their energy in earnest. From a mass tank as broad as he was and half as long, three jets sprang. Condensation made a cloud some distance beyond the nozzles—this system was not as efficient as a nuclear-driven plasma jet, nor remotely as powerful—but the cloud was thin, barely visible at close range, and rapidly dissipated. Weight tugged again at Kenmuir. Ever faster, Kestrel went from him, became a toy, a jewel, a star, and was gone.
For the next half hour he had little to do but take further sightings and let the unit correct his flight parameters accordingly. Acceleration mounted until it settled at approximately one g; thereafter the rate of exhaust diminished together with mass. He would have preferred to go more speedily, whatever the stress on his body, but the strength of the frame was limited. At that, he'd arrive with tank almost empty and accumulators nearly dead.
His thoughts wandered. Aleka—Presently she'd take lunosynchronous orbit. It would not be straight above him, but she would be in his sky. When he landed, perhaps ninety minutes would be left until the first of the Authority ships, returning at full blast, could reach her. She must be gone well before then.
Lilisaire—It would be strange if some strands of her web did not extend into the police and the Authority, even now, even now. Unless they had seized her—and he felt sure she had made arrangements for trumpeting that to the Solar System—she knew where Kestrel was and that somehow this concerned her. What she might do about it, he couldn't tell. If she could keep them busy for an hour or two, that would be helpful. True, it would add to the score against him and her and Fireball. . . He expelled foreboding.
Annie—A wistful ghost. He glanced at Earth and hoped life was being kind to her.
Time passed. Slowly, descending, he flew from one night toward another.
His approach had been planned more for concealment than fuel economy. Landsats doubtless spotted him, as they spotted virtually everything when turned to maximum gain, but he should be inconspicuous, insignificant, nothing to trigger an alarm report from those robots, especially when they were focused on events elsewhere. Tycho Crater hove above the horizon.
By then he was so low that he saw it not as a bowl but as a mountain, black and monstrous against the stars. Though the sun was at early morning, the west side remained in darkness. Shadow went down it and across the land like a sluggishly ebbing tide. At first, far to his right and his left, Kenmuir glimpsed the shores of day. Nearing, he lost that sight, he had just the stars and waning Earth. In its last quarter, the planet yet stood radiant, halfway up the northern sky. Blue-white light washed over vast terraced slopes. Ray-splash brightened the ruggedness below them. He found his goal and came down on manual.
Dust stormed briefly, blindingly around him. It fell, unhindered by air; the material of suit and helmet repelled it; he looked out over a ledge partway down the ringwall, a pitted levelness long and broad, with nighted rock athwart the east and everywhere else the heavens.
The aftermath rustling of the jets faded out of his ears. Silence took him into itself. When he had uncoupled from the drive unit and tank, under Moonweight he felt feathery, as if half disembodied. His suit, aircycler, and other outfitting were of small mass and close fit, homeostatic, power-jointed, tactile-amplifying, well-nigh a second skin. He unbound his pack of equipment. It should not have seemed heavy either; but he saw the sledgehammer strapped across it, cold touched him, and for a moment he could not lift the load.
Needs must. He shouldered it and started across the ground. Dust puffed from footsteps until he came to the road the builders had carved down the ringwall from within the crater. It was hardly more than a trail of hard-packed regolith, and the pilgrims upon it had become few, but the cosmos would take a while longer to bury it.
Ahead of him rested the tomb. Some said that download she who lay here had ordered that it be simple. Seven meters in width, four walls of white stone rose sheer to a low-pitched roof of such height that each side was seen as enclosable in a golden rectangle. A double bronze door in front bore the same proportions. Above it was chiseled the name DAGNY EBBESEN BEYNAC. That was enough.
Kenmuir stopped at the entrance. Through a minute outside of time, he forgot haste, forgot his need, and was only there. Walls and metal glimmered dimly below Earth and the stars.
It was as if stillness deepened. With a shiver, he took forth the key that Lars Rydberg had secretly made and brought back with him. He laid it against the lock. The program remembered the code. A pointer turned downward. At his pull, the leaves of the door swung ponderously away from an inner night. He stiffened his heart and trod past them.
At first he was blind, alone with his pulse. Then his eyes adapted. Light drifted in, barely touching an altar block at the middle. His right hand rose to his helmet, a Fireball salute.
But hurry, now, hurry. He unslung his pack, set it down, fetched a lamp, turned it on and left it at his feet. Luminance leaped, cut by sharp-edged shadows. Two objects stood on the block. One was a funerary urn, slim and graceful; he thought again of Kestrel. The other was a download in its case.
Hurry, hurry. Observe, work by helmet light, carry out the necessary violation and crush the guilt beneath your heel; later it shall arise unbruised.
A meter showed that the downlead's energy pack was drained but intact, a relief to Kenmuir although he had a replacement. He attached an accumulator to recharge it, by a jack handmade to fit the obsolete socket. While that went on, he set about reactivating the neural network. Disguising what he had not done, Lars Rydberg had slipped in a bypass program. At Guthrie House, a counteractive module had been prepared, which Kenmuir applied. Thereafter he laid a radio communicator on the altar, found the appropriate spot on the case, and made linkage. Now he and she could speak through the hollowness around them.
He touched the final switch, stepped back, and shuddered.
Light glared from below, off the face of the block, throwing urn and download into murk. Out of this, centimeter by centimeter, the eyestalks wavered upward. Lenses gleamed, searching about and about the tomb.
After an endlessness Kenmuir heard the voice, a woman's voice, faint, as if it reached him across an abyss, dragging and stumbling. “'Mond . . . No, Lars, oh, Lars . . ."
He had not forseen how pain would cramp him together. "Forgive me," he croaked.
"Uncans!" Dagny screamed.
"Wh-what?"
"Dark, dark, and dark—“ Despair swept away before tenderness. "Don't cry, darling. Mother's here."
Kenmuir gripped his will to him. "My lady Beynac, forgive me," he got out, as best he could utter her language. "I've had to call you back."
"Where are my arms?" she moaned, while the eyes talks threshed to and fro. "I'll pick you up and cuddle you, baby, baby mine, but where are my arms? My lips, 'Mond?"
"I've called you
back for your people's sake," Kenmuir said, "your blood and his," and wondered whether he lied.
"The blood ran out. When they got my spacesuit off. It was all over everything."
"That happened—long ago—"
"Little Juliana, she was all blood . . . No, not Juliana. She'd never be, would she? Not now." The download wailed.
She was remembering something old, Kenmuir knew. But what? Could she remember more? "My lady Beynac, please listen. Please."
"It roars," Dagny mumbled.
The Stars are also Fire - [Harvest the Stars 02] Page 55