Through the Reality Warp
Page 16
The back of Stevru’s head literally exploded, splattering blood and brains into Billiard’s face. Unable to see for a moment, he tripped headlong over the falling body, and Merit’s third shot whined over his head, narrowly missing Santha’s slender form.
Meril immediately dropped the muzzle of his recoilless, lining it up for a final shot.
Billiard, his arm twisted partially under him, could only fire from where he lay on the floor. The shot, loosed more by guess than aim, hit Meril’s neck and exploded. It flung the Redhat commander backward as though a giant hand had reached down and slapped him, and when he hit the floor the thin thread of neck that was left broke and his head bounced and rolled away down the aisle between the computer banks, leaving flecks of red on the white floor each time the stump hit bottom.
Billiard’s men belatedly rushed around the line of cabinets, coming to a sudden stop when they saw Stevru’s body. Latham Billiard was kneeling, slumped over the body of his loyal captain, and the whole great fortress seemed suddenly quiet as he whispered, “It’s over.”
A tiredness of death was in his voice. Captain Santha Garth stepped forward, took his arm, lifted him to his feet, and led him away from the gory scene.
V
Under Billiard’s strict instructions and surveillance, the encapsulation-probe—the punch!—was dragged from the fortress and lasered out of existence. Billiard was hopeful that, as Eustace Hall had assured him, the “black holes” in his captive universe had closed; indeed, the white spots had faded as he ripped the probe away from its base in the laboratory.
But it took Billiard’s men, primarily under Santha’s direction, more than an hour to load the universe-handling equipment, and the hazy, gray-black globe of the captive universe itself, into the cargo compartment of Billiard’s combat boat. Billiard saw curiosity on the faces of several of the men, but he volunteered no information and his men knew better than to ask. Even Santha remained silent as he checked the careful loading of the universe, then called for Stevru’s body, locked in a spacesuit, and had it strapped into the gunner’s seat in his own boat.
Leaving a clean-up crew to bury the dead and treat the wounded until a hospital ship could reach V’noon, Billiard and what was left of his squadron took off, their course tapes punched for Lori.
Nine light-years out from V’noon, the course of Billiard’s boat began to diverge from that of the rest of the squadron. Santha, in another ship and acting as squadron commander, immediately began a deep-space curve to rematch. The incoming call signal on Billiard’s hi-wave flashed to life.
“Yes?” Billiard responded, punching the accept button on the set, which glowed to life showing Santha’s face clouded with concern.
“Sir,” she said, “we appear to have a course anomaly. Uh, you don’t seem to be properly computed to reach Lori.”
What Santha was saying was that Billiard had goofed in cutting the course tape for his ship; but she didn’t want to put it quite so bluntly, especially since others were listening on the same frequency.
“No,” Billiard said, “I’m on the right course. I’m not headed for Lori.”
“Then,” Santha replied, “if you’ll give us the coordinates of our destination, I’ll have new tapes cut for the rest of the squadron.”
“No, you and the rest of the squadron are headed for Lori. I have a slight side-trip to make first.”
“Sir! I can’t let you go off on your own like that. Why, there may still be some Redhats around, and some Goromi, and—”
“Can’t?” Billiard looked amused. “Remember who’s in command here, Captain!”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Now, follow your orders. Return to Lori with your squadron. I’ll be about a half-day behind you. I promise you that!”
“Yes, sir.”
She did not look happy, and Billiard was sure she wanted to say something more—something more on a personal plane. But she didn’t dare, over the hi-wave.
Billiard cut the connection between his and Santha’s ships and leaned back to stare through the forward screen, at the star-spotted blackness. But his eyes were unfocused, and his mind was a universe away—on what might have been rather than on what was. The pain of his exile was less that way.
VI
Four hours later, Billiard’s combat boat neared Zemaros, the planet on which he had first joined the forces of the revolution. After ten minutes of searching, the ship’s computer vectored his ship toward a small piece of cosmic junk in the head of a comet that had finished its swing around the Lorian sun and was headed back out into interstellar space.
Taking over manual control of the combat boat, Billiard eased it closer and closer to the piece of meteor-pocked rock, searching for a landmark. A glint of metal caught his eye and he threw power into the side thrusters, bringing his boat up against the rock at that point. Next to him, anchored by cables locked to the rock, was the smooth shape of the space seed Billiard had used to enter this universe.
Keying the seed’s lock, which would have destroyed the tiny ship before opening for any other man, Billiard climbed into the cramped, dusty cockpit and activated the seed’s computer. It was a matter of only a few minutes’ work to cut a course tape instructing the seed to head out into intergalactic space, to avoid entering any galaxy or star cluster, and to steer clear of any physical body for however long the power supply of its computer might last. Billiard’s best estimate placed the inevitable power loss at some six hundred years in the future.
Sweating heavily in his spacesuit, Billiard wrestled the bulky handling equipment—still holding its captive universe—out of his combat boat and attached it to the hull of the space seed with mechanical grapples. Sent on a six-hundred-year voyage, the universe would become submicroscopic to this universe before anyone could again locate it. It would, therefore, be forever out of danger, he hoped, from scientists’ toying hands.
Billiard carried Stevru’s body over to the seed afterward, and locked it into the acceleration couch. Then, just before returning to his ship, he flipped up the shade on his helmet and looked deeply into the milky haze of the captive universe. Thoughts of many things coursed through his mind. Memories of a life now an eternity beyond reach… and the inevitable question, never to be answered: Would the people of Earth—indeed, the men and women and children of his home universe—appreciate the sacrifices of his men, had there been any way they could have known? Or would his and their trials, a gift to the people of his lost universe, have been spoken of and then forgotten, as had so many other warriors’ sacrifices in Earth’s history?
Billiard turned and reentered his combat boat, settling in his shell and activating the signal that sent the seed out into intergalactic space. For a moment he sat, so tired he could not move; then, slowly and with great effort, he reached forward and activated the combat ship’s computer, punching in the program to take him back to Lori and his unfinished work: the changing of Lori’s government into something a free man could be proud of; the expansion of the Lorian Empire to encompass its whole galaxy; and the ending of the petty wars that had plagued that galaxy for so much of its history.
And then there was the more pleasant job of making Santha queen of that empire—to stand at his side. He knew he could—that he could not help changing Lorian tradition to make her wish possible.