by Colin Kapp
“Hold a minute, Marshal!” Wildheit showed no sign of moving out of the way. “If Space Force agrees to send you ships, what instructions do you intend giving them?”
“To blast the seers out of space if they won’t surrender.” Delfan was annoyed by the question. “They’re all guilty of space piracy, and I’ll see the lot executed even if we have to hunt them to the limits of space. The seers are more dangerous even than the Ra. I’m glad to see you brought Roamer back with you. I’ve had charges of treason prepared against her.”
“They won’t stick,” said Wildheit. “She never was a Federation subject. Anyway, we owe her a great debt. She was a component part of the Chaos catalyst which Saraya here devised. That catalyst achieved its objective. Do you fashion a gun and then condemn it because it shoots people?”
“I’ll consider the point sometime,” said Delfan, unconvinced. “Stand out of my way, Jym! That’s an order!”
Wildheit shrugged and moved aside, but Delfan found his way still blocked by Cass Hover standing on the ramp. Behind him were two commandos, equally impassive, and they in turn were backed by the four Ra renegades solidly blocking the inside of the lock.
“What is this?” Delfan turned back to Wildheit, and his brow was a cast of thunder.
“Listen a moment, Marshal,” said Wildheit. “Before we do anything precipitate, let’s decide whose game we’re playing. Before Dabria came to Mayo, the Sensitives were separated but not isolated from the rest of humanity. I suggest the isolation came when Dabria thought to form the seers into a tool powerful enough to protect him in case the Ra ever found out where he was hiding. He was using them in the same way Saraya has used the Federation to save him from his enemies. Don’t be deceived, Marshal Delfan, these two characters are using us.”
Delfan’s anger was swallowed by a wave of questing speculation. His stern eyes searched Wildheit’s face minutely, and he looked to Hover for a rebuttal, but found none. Then he turned to Dabria.
“How much of this is true?”
Dabria shrugged expressively. “I fear space-fungus has eroded the marshal’s brains.”
“Indeed!” Wildheit held his ground. “Then I’ll elaborate on my theme a little. I further think that when the Ra universe had been triggered to destruction, you found the power of the seers a great embarrassment. That’s why you arranged to allow them to escape under circumstances which made it nearly certain they’d be destroyed.”
“I don’t have to listen to this rubbish. The man’s insane.”
“Remember,” said Wildheit, “I’ve seen your guardians at work. The way you spray hypnotics around, I see no way even an army of seers could steal three ships unless you permitted it.”
“You’re on weak ground there, Marshal.”
“Speaking of ground, whose bright idea was it to carry out the refitting on Mayo anyway? Simple logistics suggest the provost-craft could have been more easily handled at a command workshop.”
“Saraya worked that out with Dabria.” Marshal Delfan’s fingers slipped off the safety rings on his weapon’s belt.
“And that fact conceals a remarkable coincidence,” continued Wildheit. “According to my information, neither had any reason to suppose that the other had survived even into this century. Yet when the seers set down a damaged provost-craft on Mayo, Dabria just happened to get in touch with Saraya.”
“What are you trying to prove, Marshal?” Saraya’s black cloak swirled around him angrily.
“The point’s already made. Collusion and manipulation of the human race for your own ends. First you used us to fight your own enemies, now you try to divide us to fight among ourselves. You can’t accept that your precious infant colony might have achieved its own maturity. You’re still back seven thousand years—manipulating, pulling strings, playing God, attempting to cull the stock until it conforms to your specifications.”
“Have you finished?” Saraya was nearly dancing with anger. “There’s a point you’ve forgotten, Marshal. When you’re engaged in selective breeding, you don’t consult the beasts on what they wish to become.”
There was a strong scent of violets in the air, and a few people on the fringes of the crowd had begun to sway uneasily. Even Delfan seemed to be having a hard time following the conversation.
“I think you made a mistake there,” Dabria said to Saraya reproachfully. “I’m afraid that’s the very point Marshal Wildheit was attempting to make.”
Without a further word, Delfan buckled at the knees and slipped to the ground. Another dozen of the assembled crowd did likewise.
Clickety …
The occupants of the provost-craft stood firm and undismayed.
Clickety … Clickety …
“It’s not going to work,” said Wildheit to Dabria. “Not any more.”
The look on Dabria’s face was one of patent disbelief until he noticed the slight ends of the filters in their nostrils which absorbed the pervading scent of violets and the low-frequency attenuating buttons in their ears which stilled the deep subsonics of the horn.
Saraya shook his head sadly. “Looks like we’ve been found out, old friend. Perhaps our job is done and they don’t need us any more. It remains to be seen if they’re tough enough to accept full responsibility for their own development. But for you and me, I suggest a little discrete retirement.”
There was something faintly pathetic about the way Saraya and the ex-guardian walked slowly away, divested suddenly of all the authority they had formerly held. Wildheit watched their departure with sympathetic eyes.
“Aren’t you going to stop them?” Cass Hover came down the ramp to stand at Wildheit’s side.
“We owe them a great deal, Cass. Without them and a few others, Terra would have yet had no civilization, and the Federation wouldn’t even be a dream. I suspect one of them still has an old Ra ship tucked away somewhere. For all their talk of retirement, I’d guess they’ll go into time-dilation and turn up again in a century or two to see if we really did make the grade alone.”
“Do you think we will make the grade?”
“I don’t honestly know, Cass. Kasdeya once told me that our infant culture needed constant culling to prevent backsliding. I wonder if that was a temporary phase, or whether backsliding is an innate tendency in the hybrid species?”
“You’ve got beyond me there, boy.”
“Never mind! I’ll explain it to you sometime.” Wildheit gave the prostrate body of Chief-Marshal Delfan an affectionate prod with his foot. “Saraya’s key phrase was the one about whether we’re tough enough to take the responsibility for our own development. Think about that carefully, Cass. If the human race ever starts to slip into a degenerative decline, who’s going to do the pruning now?”
TWENTY
WELL ahead of its companion vessels, the patrol-ship dropped out of subspace well clear of the galaxy’s edge. From this position it was possible to appreciate the extreme contrast of the starry bounty of the Milky Way behind them and the emptiness of the great void in front. These were the shores of the great space oceans, across which the other island galaxies gleamed as though but humble stars themselves. It was a sight which always seized Cass Hover’s imagination: tantalizing with the thought that no matter how far a man might travel he could never reach the end of a universe whose frontiers expanded at a rate faster than the mind could comprehend.
His companions on the patrol-ship, two young seers from Mayo, were similarly enthralled. Little Shadow, although space-traveled, was having her very first glimpse of the mysteries of extra-galactic space. And the pallid Brin, more experienced but nonetheless impressed, was straining his marvelous ears to catch whispers which were old before Mayo had condensed from a cloud of gas five-thousand-million years before.
It was not the search for wonder, however, that had brought them to this spot. Somewhere out in the void a squadron of ugly, black, block-like alien warcraft were reported to be moving in toward the Hundred Worlds. At this time when the Federa
tion Space Force was stretched beyond its limit by the chore of mopping up the Ra, this whole sector of space was wide open to devastating attacks by the aliens, whose policy was apparently one of annihilation rather than conquest. Hover, studying his screens, breathed more easily when the three space-corvettes dropped out of subspace in close formation behind the patrol-ship. Although woefully outnumbered by the black, implacable foe in front, these three light vessels were all that could be spared to meet the alien threat. The marshal was not dismayed, however, because the arrangement had strengths other than those apparent.
“Hullo, Bogy-finder, are you on-line?” The lead space-corvette was calling.
“Bogy-finder on-line, Captain. Marshal Hover speaking. Welcome to the show!”
“What have you got for us, Marshal?”
“Long range Chaos predictions from Mayo suggest a whole squadron of bogies en route for the Hundred Worlds. We plan a deep-space intercept. I take it you know the procedure?”
“Indeed, and we’re all prepared. We’re acquiring your data transfer at hundred percent level, and our gunnery is on automatic ready for you to take control. But it beats me how you make this thing work. If our own instruments can’t locate bogies beyond weapon range, I’d have thought it a reasonable certainty that you’ve nothing in a patrol-ship which could.”
“Let’s say we put a lot of thought into it,” said Hover. “Keep an instrument fix on us, and keep your data channels clear. We’re searching for the aliens now, and we’ll give you a verbal indication of what weapons to arm and when to do it. All actual weapons firing and guidance will be under our control.”
“Understand, Marshal—and thanks. We’ve heard great things about Bogy-finder. Now we’ve the chance to see it in action.”
Hover left the communications channel open, and looked around the cluttered patrol-ship cabin.
“All yours, Shadow! Any ideas yet?”
The girl pulled herself back out of a light trance, and gravely stroked her dark hair back from her face.
“Chaos predicts sixteen major blasts, all too great to be weapon reactions. I’ve fixed the timing of the events, but the spatial coordinates are still too soft to be of use yet. Hold your present course and have the corvettes arm long-range missiles. There’s something peculiar out there. I’d prefer we struck them from a safe distance.”
“Amen to that, if you think you can get the accuracy.”
“I know I can. Reading a few microseconds before the major blasts I can see twenty-megaton explosions with a nuclear rise-time. Have the corvettes anything else with those characteristics?”
“Not a blessed thing,” said Hover, picking up the handset and relaying the arming instruction. “You know, I’ll never get used to the idea of fighting backwards—designing the battle tactics according to the nature of the results they’re seen to produce. What would happen if we hadn’t any weapons of the caliber you describe, Shadow?”
“Then either I wouldn’t be able to see that particular result, or else some other reaction would have to supply the change in entropy. Honestly, Cass, you don’t know the first thing about Chaos!”
“I’m learning fast,” said Hover humbly, reflecting that the scornful reproach issued from one less than half his age. “Anything in your field, Brin?”
The pallid seer, raw with youth, sat with his elbows propped on a console and his chin resting in his cupped hands, listening as if mere human ears could actually hear sounds transmitted through the vacuum of space.
“I hear them now. There are many.”
Brin’s fingers began to adjust sets of pointers to indicate the position of the focus of his attention, and with cool and precise movements he began to trim their indications to show how the situation was changing. Hover’s computers picked up the adjustments and began to produce figures on position, heading, and velocity, which the marshal both transmitted to the corvettes and used for a scan search right at the limits of the range of his screens.
“Bogies sighted!” The corvette-leader’s tone was jubilant and congratulatory. “Amazing the difference it makes knowing where to look.”
Shadow had slipped from her comfortable seat into the weapons cockpit simulator and was feeling the controls.
“Are weapons armed?” she asked the corvette-leader direct.
“Armed and under your control.” The answer was prompt. “You’re way beyond sensible weapon range, but good luck anyway.”
Scowling with concentration, Shadow worked assiduously at the firing controls, directing sixteen long-range missiles not at the alien craft but to theoretical points of intercept time and position where her Chaos insight told her the events were designed to take place. The space around the patrol-craft became patterned with long ion trials from the projectiles as they leaped on their mission from the tubes of the corvettes slightly to their rear, but over the communications channel came occasional expressions of disbelief in the validity of the courses the weapons were taking.
By this time Hover’s own screens had begun to acquire a scatter of light which was the image of the alien squadron still too distant to be resolved by the scanners. In closer proximity but receding fast, the images of the missiles could also be seen, making for their Chaos-predicted destination that appeared to hold scant chance of becoming the actual point of interception. The corvette-leader had also come to the same conclusion.
“I guess we screwed that one up! The bogies are way off line.”
As if deliberately to confound his statement, the whole alien squadron turned sharply to a new heading which curved them with unique precision exactly to the points to which the missiles had been heading. Even without the screens, the beautiful rosettes of the great explosions could be seen framed clearly against the dark wastes of the void. Shadow’s slight smile of triumph was a wonderful thing to see.
“I’ll be damned!” The corvette-leader’s amazement came clearly over the communicator. “You know, I’d swear you knew they were going to make that turn even before they’d decided it themselves.”
“That’s the way the system runs,” said Hover. “Unnerving, isn’t it. But keep on-line, Captain, because I don’t think this run is finished yet.”
Shadow had been making a slow wave with her hand, which was the shipboard gesture of uncertainty.
“What’s on your mind, Shadow?”
“I still sense something peculiar out there. I was reading Chaos reactions, and they’ve all been accounted for. But what if there were more than sixteen ships in that squadron—some designed not to betray themselves through release of entropy?”
Hover consulted his screens, but the spreading patches of ion contamination from the previous explosions effectively swamped the meager resolution of the instrument working at the extreme end of its range.
“Brin—any ideas on this?”
“I thought more ships than sixteen. I thought about twenty. I can still hear something there. Not creatures but ship noises. Ships without power.”
“Yet no more entropic reactions, Shadow?”
“None I can find.” Her serious frown betrayed the intensity with which she was scanning the patterns for any trace of future energy liberation.
“Captain,” Hover was back talking to the corvettes, “we think there’s still another four bogies out there. They seem to be ghost ships—not under power and with no Chaos evidence that they’re likely to employ weaponry.”
“I think we have them on the edge of our screens. Do you want us to take them out of space?”
“Negative! There has to be a reason for their being out there, and I’d like to know what that reason is. Can you run a close reconnaissance and see if you can transmit some pictures back to me? But don’t take any chances. It could be a trick.”
“Understood, Marshal. We’re going in right away. Prepare to record the scan, because it’s going to be a fast run.”
Hover switched on his recorders, and they watched with stilled breath as all three corvettes made a fast s
ortie toward the strange and alien space-hulks. The first corvette made a pass at a distance and reported no antagonistic reaction. The second approached closer, and some detailed imagery was obtained on the screens. Again there was no response from the aliens. The third ship’s pass was daringly close; the images on the screens swooped large and stark; and then all three corvettes were safely away out into the reaches of deep-space beyond. Immediately, the facsimile printer began to issue a ream of permanent copies into the marshal’s hands.
“What do you find?” asked Shadow.
He handed her a picture. “Notice anything strange about that vessel?”
She wrinkled her nose at its dark ugliness. “It all looks strange to me.”
“There’s one aspect stranger than all the others. Even alien spacemen have one thing in common with us—they don’t take to space with the space-locks open.”
The communicator broke back into life. “Hullo, Bogy-finder, did you get what you were looking for?”
“More than I was looking for, thanks, Captain. I think we’ve got something really exciting out there. I’ve got to get some specialists to look it over. I suggest you resume patrol, but keep an occasional fix on the ghost ships ready to guide a lab-ship in as soon as I can get one here.”
“Understood, Marshal. It’ll be done. And thanks for your assistance. Sixteen bogies in one night is a new sort of record for us.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Jym Wildheit. It was he who persuaded the Sensitive seers to join us with their talents, and it’s he and his wife who train the Bogy-finder teams. If you ever get near Mayo, call in and see them. They’re always glad of feedback from the operating end.”
“What did the survey tell us, Jym?” asked Hover.
“The damnedest thing. There’s only one way we can interpret those ghost ships—and that’s to assume they were deliberately set up as a sort of museum.”
“I don’t figure it.”
“Neither did we at first. There were no aliens aboard, but from the exhibits and the layout inside, I’d say the vessels were designed to give us a fair insight into what type of creatures they are, their habits and customs, and their sciences and arts. It was a thumbnail sketch of several non-human races we’ve often fought but never actually met.”