"Will they land?" Lunzie asked, alarmed.
"I doubt it. If we can see them, they can see us. They know someone is down here, but they don't know who or what," Zebara said.
"Forgive me for pointing out a minor difficulty, sir," Flor said in a remarkably level, even droll tone, "but they can dispose of us from space. The ZD-43 is at least three days behind us," she added, her healthy color beginning to pale. "Once they realize we're alone here, they'll kill us. Is there nothing we can do?"
Zebara smiled, showing all of his teeth.
What was it Bringan had said? When he grins like a shark, watch out?
"We bluff. Flor, send another message to the Zaid-Dayan. Tell them that we've got two pirates circling Ambrosia. Tell them to take any shortcuts they can. Force multiple jumps. If they don't hurry, we'll be just a scorch mark and crater on the landscape. We're going to stall the inevitable just as long as we can."
"How?" Lunzie demanded, wishing she felt as confident as Zebara sounded.
"That, Doctor, is what we must figure out. Flor, have you sent that? Good. Now get on the general communicator channel and get the crew back here for a conference.
"I want your most positive thinking on how we can keep those pirates off planet," Zebara began once the crew had assembled in the messroom.
"Those blips couldn't possibly be anything else, could they?" Bringan asked after clearing his throat.
Zebara gave a short bark of laughter. "They haven't answered hails and their profile doesn't match anything in our records. And it's not good neighborliness they're leaking. Think, my friends. Think hard. How do we stall them?"
"No black box, huh?" asked Vir, a thin human with straight black hair and a bleak expression.
Flor shook her head. "Those would be a long time disconnected." No legitimate ship would put out into space without the black box interface between control systems and engines which transmitted automatic identification signals. To disconnect it disabled the drives. Unscrupulous engineers had been known to jury-rig components, but such a ship would never be allowed in an FSP-sanctioned port.
Zebara smashed his fist into a palm. "Stop denying the problem. Think. We've got to stall them long enough to let the Zaid-Dayan reach Ambrosian space."
No one spoke for a long moment. No one even exchanged glances in the tense atmosphere of the wardroom.
"What if we take off? Can't we outrun them?" Vir demanded to Wendell, the pilot.
"Not a chance," Wendell said sadly. "My engines don't have the kick to push us far enough out of their range to make a warp jump. They'd catch us hallway there."
"So we're stuck on this planet while the predators line us up in their sights," Dondara growled, scrubbing his dusty hair with his hands. He had taken only thirty minutes to run the distance from the pools after he'd received Flor's mayday recall. Lunzie was full of admiration for the heavyworlder's stamina.
Scarran cleared his throat. His perpetually red-shot brown eyes made him look choleric or sleepy and he had a naturally mild personality.
"What about a violent disease of some sort? We're all dead and dying of it. Highly contagious. Can't find an antidote," he suggested in a self-deprecating voice.
"No, that wouldn't work," Pollili scoffed, drawing her brows together. "Even assuming they're of a species with enough in common with ours to catch it, they'd blow our ship off the face of the planet to wipe out the contagion and then land where they pleased."
"What about natural disaster?" asked Elessa, collecting nods from Flor and Scarran. "Unstable tectonics? An earthquake! A volcano about to blow? They'd have sacrificed scanning potential to some sort of weaponry."
"Possibly," Pollili drawled. "Even the simplest telemetry systems warn you if you're going to put down on a shifting surface. And live volcanoes show up as hot spots on infrared."
"What about a hostile life-form?" Lunzie asked, and was generally hooted down by the others.
"What, attack ferrets?" Elessa held up the black-furred kittisnake, which curled around her hands, cooing breathily to show its contentment. "If the pirates are after Ambrosia when FSP has scarcely heard of its existence, they already know what's down here, besides us. Sorry, folks."
"Hold it a moment," Bringan said, raising a hand. "Lunzie has made a positive suggestion that merits discussion. Lunzie . . ."
"I had in mind a free bacterium that gets into your breathing apparatus and caulks it up with goo," Lunzie said, warming to her topic. "Five of our officers are down with it already. Nothing, not even breather masks, seems to keep it out. I feel that it's only a matter of time before they die of oxygen deprivation. The organism didn't appear in our initial reports because it's inert, sluggish during the winter months. It dies off in the cold. Now that the climate's warmed up for summer, the bug reproduces like mad. We're all infected. I've just discovered that it's gotten into the ventilation system, housed in the filters. I doubt we'd ever be able to lift off again, with the ship's air-recycling system fouled. I'm putting Ambrosia on indefinite quarantine. Only moral, ethical action possible to a medic or any professionality. Contact between ships is likely to doom them both. In fact, it's my professional opinion that the ARCT-10 is in real danger since Zebara and Wendell were on board to report to Admin. Their lungs were already contaminated and the air they exhaled from their lungs would now be in the ARCT's air-recirculation system. Lungs are always warm—until the host is dead."
"What? What are you talking about?" demanded Vir, paling.
"What's this bacterium?" Elessa demanded. "I never observed one here and I prepared all the initial slides!"
"It's called Pseudococcus pneumonosis." Lunzie smiled slyly. She was rather pleased with the astonished reaction to her little fable. "I've just discovered it, you see. A nicely non-existent but highly contagious condition, inevitably and painfully fatal. It might just stall them. It will certainly make them pause a while. If we can be convincing enough." Then she chuckled. "If we get out of this alive, someone better check with the old ARCT and see just who scrambled to the infirmary, requiring treatment for a fatal lung disease."
Zebara and Bringan chortled and, when the rest of the crew realized she'd been acting out a scenario, they gave Lunzie a round of applause. Laughter eased the tension and indicated renewed hope.
"That just might work," Bringan agreed after several moments of hard thinking. He gave Lunzie a warm smile. "Would we have trouble with them understanding medical lingo?"
Lunzie shrugged. "If I could fool you for a few minutes, I maybe can fool them. You see, Bringan only's a xeno-medic. He diagnosed it as vacation fever: personnel pretending to be sick so they could lounge in the sun. Once we got back here, with me, a human-medically trained person, I began to suspect a serious medical problem. By then it was too late to contain the bacterium. It was widespread. And, for all I know, loose on the ARCT-10 as well.
"Sorry about this, folks, but I'll make it extremely personal: heavyworlders get it worst." She warded off the violent protests until Zebara bellowed for silence.
"She's got a valid reason to pick on us."
"I said I was sorry, heavyworlders. I'm not disparaging you but it's a fact, piracy has attracted many heavyworlders. Look, I'm not starting an argument . . ."
"And I'm ending it," Zebara said, showing his shark teeth. The muttering subsided immediately. "Lunzie's reasoning is sound. We take the lumps."
"How do you know so much about the planet pirates?" Dondara wanted to know, his eyes narrowed and unfriendly.
"Not my choice, but I do. Sorry about this."
"I'll forgive you if it works," Dondara said, but he gave her a wry twist of a smile.
"I think she's come up with the best chance we've got," the xenobiologist said approvingly. "Unless someone has thought up a better one just recently? Who delivers this deathless message to the pirates?" He looked at Zebara.
"I think I'd better," Zebara replied. "Not to decry Lunzie's dramatic abilities, but because the report of a heavyweig
ht will be more acceptable to them than anything a lightweight could say."
"I hate such an expedient." With a fierce expression, Dondara exploded to his feet. "Do we have to compound the insult to all honorable heavyworlders who abhor the practice of piracy?"
With a sad expression on his face, Zebara shook his head at the geologist. "Don, we both know that some of Diplo's children have been weak enough to go into the service of unscrupulous beings in order to ease the crowding of our homeworlds." Dondara started to protest but Zebara cut him off. "Enough! Such weaklings shame us all and the good carry the disgrace along with them until the real culprits can be exposed. I intend to be part of that exposure. And this is one step in the right direction." He turned to Lunzie. "Brief me, Doctor Mespil!"
The plan, as plans do, underwent considerable revision until a creditable script was finally reached. With the help of the garment synthesizer and Flor's copious history diskfiles, Zebara was tricked out in the uniform of an attaché of Diplo, the heavyworlders' home planet. On a simple disk blue tunic, Flor attached silver shoulder braid and a tight upright collar of silver that fastened with a chain suspended between two buttons. As Zebara was dressed, Lunzie rehearsed him on details.
Meanwhile, Flor and Wendell were tinkering with the scout's black box, trying to mask, shield, electronically alter or scramble its identification signal. Neither wanted to tamper with the box because that could lead to other problems.
With a prosthetic putty, Bringan sculpted a new nose for Zebara and broadened his cheekbones to enhance his appearance to a more typical heavyworlder cast. Lunzie was stunned by the result. It changed him completely into one of the dull-faced hulks that she remembered from the Mining Platform.
"Zebara, they've achieved parking orbit," Flor called. "The lead ship will be directly overhead in six minutes."
The last touches of his costume in place, the heavyworld captain swaggered into the communications booth and took his place before the video pickup. Out of sight, Lunzie sat next to Flor in the control room and watched as a hail was sent to the two strange ships.
"Attention to orbiting ships," Zebara announced in a rasping monotone. "Arabesk speaking, attaché for His Excellency Lutpostig the Third, the Governor of Diplo. This planet is proscribed by order of His Excellency. Landing is forbidden. Identify yourselves."
On the screen before them, Lunzie and Flor saw a pattern shimmer into coherency. It was not a face but rather an abstract computer-generated graphic.
"So, they can see us, but we can't see them," Flor muttered to Lunzie. "I don't like this," the communications officer added miserably.
An electronically altered voice shivered through the audio pickup. Lunzie tried to guess the species of the speaker but it spoke a pure form of Basic with no telltale characteristics. Possibly computer-generated, like the graphic, she guessed.
"We know of no interdiction on this planet. We are landing in accordance with our orders."
Zebara gave a rasping cough which he only half covered with one hand. "The crew of this ship have contracted an airborne bacteria. Pseudococcus pneumonosis. This life-form was not, I repeat, NOT, mentioned in the initial landing report."
"Tell me another one, attaché. That report has been circulated."
Zebara's second cough lasted longer and seemed to rake his toes. Lunzie was impressed.
"Of course, but you should also know that the reports were made during the cold season in this hemisphere. Since the weather has warmed, the bacteria has awoken and multiplied explosively, infiltrating every portion of our ship." For good measure he managed a rasping gagging cough of gigantic proportion.
The voice became slightly less suspicious. "The effect of this warm season bacteria?"
"It infests the bronchial tubes, in a condition similar to pneumonia. The alveoli become clogged almost immediately. The first symptom is a pernicious cough." Zebara demonstrated, gagging dramatically. "The condition results in painful suffocation leading to death. Five of my crew have died already.
"We heavyworlders appear to be particularly susceptible due to our increased lung capacity," Zebara continued, injecting a note of panic into his voice. "First we tried to filter the bacterium out by using breather masks, but it is smaller than a virus. Nothing keeps it out. It can live anywhere that is warm. It flourished in the ventilation system and the filters are so caulked up that I doubt we will be able to cleanse them sufficiently to take off again. Ironic, for cold slows and kills it. Unfortunately, living pulmonary tissue never becomes cold enough. It even lingers in the lungs of the deceased until the boby itself has chilled."
There was murmuring behind the whirling pattern of colors on the screen, then the audio ceased completely.
"Zebara." Pollili's voice came over the private channel. "I now have readings on their ships. They're big ones. One of them is a fully loaded transport lugger, full of cold bodies. There must be five hundred deepsleepers aboard. It's the smaller one that's leaking energy. An escort, carrying enough firepower to split this planet in two."
"Can you identify the life-forms?" Lunzie asked.
"Negative. They're shielded. I get heat traces of about a hundred bodies, but my equipment's not sensitive enough to identify type, only heat emanations." Pollili's voice trailed off as the pirate spoke again.
"We will consider this information."
"I warn you, in the name of Diplo," Zebara insisted, "do not land on this planet. The bacterium is present throughout the atmosphere. Do not land."
Zebara slumped back into the padded seat and wiped his forehead. Flor hastily cut the connection.
"Bravo! Well done," Lunzie congratulated him, handing him a restorative pepper.
The rest of the crew crowded into the communication station.
"What will they do?" Vir asked nervously.
"What they said. Consider the information." Zebara took a long swig of the pepper. "One thing sure. They're not likely to go away."
"First of all, they'll check their source files to see if there's any mention of the bacterium," Bringan enumerated, ticking off his fingers. "That alone should make it hot for the people who sold them the information and forgot to mention a potentially fatal airborne parasite here. Second, they'll try to get a sample of the bacterium. I think we'll see an unmanned probe scooping the air, looking for samples to analyze."
"Third, they might try to put a volunteer crew down to test the effects of living beings," Elessa offered, bleakly.
"A distinct possibility," Flor said. "I'll just rig a repeater signal to broadcast the Interdict warning over and over again on their frequency. Might make them just a teensy bit more nervous."
Her fingers flew over her console, and then clicked on a button at the far left side. "There. It'll be loud, too."
Lunzie grinned. She was becoming more impressed with the imagination and ingenuity of this EEC Team. "I can't imagine that 'volunteers' will be thick in the corridors. But they will figure out all too soon that there isn't anything. Shouldn't we grab some rest while we can?"
"Well, I can't," Bringan said. "When they don't find what they're expecting, they'll ask us to identify it, so I better design an organism. Vir, you're a good hack, you can help me."
"I'll help, too," Elessa volunteered. "I wouldn't be able to rest with those vultures circling, just waiting to land on top of us."
"I'll authorize sedatives to anyone who doesn't think he or she can sleep," Lunzie offered, with a look toward Zebara for permission. The captain nodded.
Those who weren't involved in designing the pseudobacteria scattered to their sleeping cubicles and left the others wrangling over mouse-controlled Tri-D graphics program.
Lunzie lay down on her bunk and initiated Discipline technique to soothe herself to sleep. She got a restful few hours before tension roused her. There had been bets as to when another transmission from the pirate vessel would arrive.
After a twenty-four-hour respite, tempers began to fray. The design team had an argument, endi
ng with Elessa storming out of the scout to sit in tears behind a tree, agitatedly soothing her pet kittisnake.
Wendell took a nap, but he was so tense when he awoke that he asked Lunzie for a sedative. "I can't just sit around and wait," the pilot begged, twisting his hands together, "but if there's any chance of us lifting, I also can't be frazzled or fuzzy-minded."
Lunzie gave him a large dose of a mild relaxant, and left him with a complicated construction puzzle to keep his hands busy. Most of the others bore with the tension more stoically. Zebara alternated between popping mineral tablets and drumming on a table with an air of distraction and running the ships' profiles through the computer records. He badgered Flor with frequent updates on the Zaid-Dayan's eta.
The outer two heavyworlders paced the common area for all the world like caged exotics; then Dondara irritably excused himself. He left the ship and headed downslope in the sled.
"Where's he going?" Lunzie asked.
"To break rocks," Pollili explained, turning her palms to the sky. "He'll come back when he can hold the frustration in check."
Dondara had been gone for nearly two hours when Flor appeared at the door of the common area. Zebara raised his head. "Well?"
She grimaced. "They've launched an unmanned probe. It's doing the usual loops." Then she really grinned. "I got good news, though." Everyone in the room snapped to. "I just stripped the beacon of a reply from the Zaid-Dayan. They say to hold tight. They ought to be here within three hours."
Ragged cheers rose from the crew when suddenly a low-pitched beeping came from the forward section.
"Uh-oh," Flor said. "The upstairs neighbors ahead of schedule!" She turned and run forward, followed by the rest of the crew. The filtered voice came through the audio monitors.
"Diplomat Arabesk. I wish to speak with Diplomat Arabesk."
Zebara reached for the silver-collared tunic but Lunzie grabbed his sleeve.
The Death of Sleep Page 29