The Relativity Bomb

by Arlene F. Marks

  “Of course it does!” snapped Gouryas. “We went through all that—”

  Meanwhile, Beale whipped her compupad out of her pocket and tossed it over for Lydia to catch. “See for yourself.”

  As his communications specialist began to read, Townsend cleared his throat. “What exactly do the specs say about this invisibility field?”

  Prompted by stares from Gouryas and Singh, Oolalong replied, “That it works by altering the refractive index of the molecules forming the station’s outer hull, making light bend around us — which we already knew — and that it’s triggered by the generator’s sensor field, which we apparently activated the second the molecular paintbrush was inserted.”

  “Activated and then reset to factory specs,” Drew repeated thoughtfully. That explained why only Daisy Hub was having this problem. None of the settings had been changed on Zulu’s generator. “So, if we could somehow shrink the sensor field down to the size it was before, the problem should be solved.”

  “Theoretically, yes,” said Singh. “And we’ve no doubt there’s a way to accomplish that. However, Ray and Vera haven’t found it in the manual, so we’re back to trial and error, which means it will take us time to figure it out.”

  Unfortunately, time was in short supply right now. With growing impatience, Townsend persisted, “And there are no instructions in that manual at all, not even mentioned in a footnote, for disabling the invisibility field?”

  “No, that’s what we’ve been telling you,” said Oolalong. “It’s hardwired to generate at the approach of any vessel that enters its sensing range.”

  “Not just any vessel,” Lydia crowed, holding up the compupad and repeatedly poking at the screen with an index finger. “You tech types should read the foreword occasionally. According to this, the generators that have been installed on Daisy Hub and the Zoo are identical to the ones aboard Nandrian deep space vessels. And Nandrian ships engage in tekl’hananni.”

  She paused, eyebrows arching over a self-satisfied grin. A shiver raced down Townsend’s back.

  “Lydia,” he said sharply, “we need Gavin Holchuk up here right now.”

  She turned startled eyes to his face, then jumped to do his bidding.

  Meanwhile, Vera’s expression had brightened considerably. “Of course! In tekl’hananni, you would want to conceal yourself from an opposing vessel.”

  “The Nandrians are fierce warriors,” Gouryas pointed out. “I can’t imagine them hiding from anyone—”

  “—except in a situation where being temporarily invisible could provide a strategic advantage, such as while changing location to get a better angle for a shot,” put in Oolalong.

  “That makes sense,” said Gouryas. “And if every Nandrian ship is using one of these generators in battle, that means there has to be an on-off switch somewhere. On the casing?”

  “It’s more likely to be on the tactical control panel,” declared Vera. “It wouldn’t be practical for the generator not to be integrated into the rest of the ship’s systems.”

  “But Daisy Hub and Zulu were retrofits,” Oolalong reminded them. “Integration might not have been possible.”

  Townsend breathed a silent sigh. They’d come so close to getting the point, then missed it entirely. Again. Pieces were coming together, forming a picture of life-threatening peril. Why couldn’t they see it? And where the hell was Holchuk?

  As if conjured by Drew’s thoughts, the Chief Cargo Inspector emerged from the nearest tube car and waded into their meeting. He’d evidently been interrupted at some crucial moment — his face wore a “this had better be damned important” expression.

  “What’s the big emergency, boss man?” he demanded.

  Before anyone else could utter a word, Townsend replied, counting off on his fingers, “They’ve armed the sensor and invisibility fields and don’t know how to turn either of them off. The next tekl’hananni scoreboard goes up within days. We disappeared before the eyes of the new Ranger commander a couple of hours ago, preventing him from docking and, coincidentally, making our secret defensive strategy not so secret anymore. And it turns out that every Nandrian vessel has one of these field generators aboard, meaning not only will we be invisible to them, but if they should ever decide that we’re the enemy, they’ll also have the ability to be invisible to us.” He turned to Lydia. “Did I miss anything?”

  She just gave him a weak smile.

  Holchuk looked around him at six strained faces and said, “You do realize that the Nandrians have been testing your problem-solving ability ever since this technology was installed?”

  “That was more than a standard year ago. When does it end?” said Gouryas, frustration raising the pitch of his voice.

  “More to the point, what happens if we fail?” Vera wanted to know.

  Holchuk shrugged. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?” sniped Singh. “Because you’re a Shield-brother of Nagor son of Nagor, of the House of Trokerk?”

  “No,” Holchuk replied evenly, “it’s because you’ve passed every part of the test so far with flying colors.”

  “You honestly have no idea how this is going to shake out?” said Townsend.

  Holchuk shrugged again. “It’s tekl’hananni, boss man. Anything can happen. I’ve already shown my worthiness as part of the adoption ritual. Now it’s your turn.”

  — «» —

  “They wouldn’t set us up to fail,” said Ruby from her console on AdComm. “It would be dishonorable, like short-changing a trading partner.” Her words were meant to be reassuring, but Townsend couldn’t help noticing that her voice was less than ringing with confidence.

  Staring glumly at his light screen, he slouched behind his desk and thought about the various parts of the Nandrian test that they had already encountered and overcome. The Midnight Muralist, whose identity still remained a secret, had figured out how to decorate the bulkheads using the various settings on the molecular paintbrush. Gouryas and Singh had then discovered how to use the same device to turn metal into transparent acrylic, enabling them to look inside the field generator. That in turn had allowed them to determine that the paintbrush was meant to fit inside the generator, and putting those components together had led them to the invisibility field, which they were now struggling to control before a deadline passed. According to Holchuk, all these occurrences had been meant to happen, as part of a greater test of Daisy Hub’s worthiness. To do what? To be a House? To be an ally?

  To be allowed to remain out in space?

  “They’ll solve the puzzle,” said Lydia’s voice from the end of his filing cabinet partition. “Every member of this crew is Eligible, which means they’re in the top two percent of the Human population for intelligence and perseverance. Just give them a little time.”

  “Unfortunately, a little time is all we’ve got.”

  “Well, Ruby and I have been discussing the Ranger problem, and we think there may be a way for Captain Rodrigues to dock with the Hub when he returns tomorrow. Of course,” she cautioned, “it’s no more than an educated guess. If we’re wrong, or if Rodrigues refuses to go along with it, we’re probably fried.”

  “We need a Plan C,” he decided. “Run your idea past me.”

  Ruby plopped herself down in one of the chairs facing Drew’s desk. “We were both wondering about something. In tekl’hananni, an enemy vessel is defined as one crewed by members of another House. The sensor field has to be able to differentiate between friend and foe. That means identifying which House owns which ship. But how?”

  He thought for a moment. “Each Nandrian vessel must emit a specially coded signal of some kind.”

  “That was our conclusion as well. If we’re correct, the sensor field must be programmed to recognize these coded signals. Our sensor did what it was supposed to do. It activated the invisibility field in response to an approaching sh
ip not of our House, the Endeavor, but ignored our own shuttle, Devil Bug. The thing is, the sensor field wasn’t programmed. Vera and Ray had reset everything to default parameters. So what was the default signal that set off our alarm?”

  “It has to be something that Ranger vessels have but Devil Bug doesn’t,” he reasoned aloud. Then the answer struck him, so blindingly obvious that it made him want to slap himself on the forehead. “Guns.”

  “More specifically, weapons in standby mode,” Lydia elaborated, “emitting a weak charge as they remain in contact with the control console of the ship.”

  “We can test our theory when Captain Rodrigues comes back tomorrow,” said Ruby, adding hopefully, “unless you’d rather get it over with today.”

  They were like kids impatient to spring a practical joke. But Ruby had a point. The sooner they knew whether they’d guessed correctly, the sooner Gouryas and Singh could refocus their efforts and find a real solution to the problem.

  “Lydia, send Rodrigues a message.”

  — «» —

  “You want me to what?” Rodrigues’s voice on the comm rose an octave in indignant disbelief.

  Fully expecting his reaction, Townsend didn’t even blink. “Shut down your weapons systems entirely. This isn’t a trick, Paul. We believe that the field generator is responding to a standby signal emitted by your guns. Shut them down and let’s see what happens. What could be the harm? It isn’t as though we have the ability to attack you.”

  The Ranger let out a noisy breath. Drew and Lydia held theirs and shared a long look as they waited tautly for something — anything — to change outside the Hub.

  “Son of a bitch,” murmured Rodrigues. “It worked.”

  “Endeavor, you are cleared to dock at portal 3,” said Lydia with audible relief.

  “Will do,” came the reply. “Tell your boss we have a lot to discuss and it’s mealtime on Zulu right now, so I’m expecting to be fed.”

  “I hear you. We’ll have our meeting in the caf,” Drew agreed.

  “I want real food, Townsend. None of that leftover pasta Jensen keeps putting in front of my men when they visit.”

  Her cheeks dimpling, Lydia said, “How about ratatouille?”

  “And rats to you too, sweetheart,” he grumped. “Rodrigues out.”

  — «» —

  Townsend met Rodrigues on A Deck, noting as the newly-promoted captain walked through the portal that the responsibilities of command were apparently already beginning to weigh on him. As Bonelli’s second, he’d looked like a recruitment ad for the Rangers — neat and tidy uniform, firm jaw, glint of determination in his eyes. Very appealing. But Ruby’s earlier description of Zulu’s crew as a bunch of animals had been spot on, and zookeepers didn’t stay neat and tidy for long. Rumpled and harassed — those were the words that came to Drew’s mind as he stepped forward to greet his guest.

  “Let me get this straight. You have a sensor field and an invisibility field?” demanded the Ranger.

  And impatient, Townsend added. The old Rodrigues would at least have said hello before jumping down his throat.

  “Not by choice, believe me, Paul,” he said, leading the way to the waiting tube car. “This alien technology is making us all crazy right now. My techs are poring through the manual, but—”

  Rodrigues halted in mid-step. “You’re serious? There’s a manual?”

  “It’s a poor translation into Gally, but, yes, there’s a manual, courtesy of one of the Nandrian Chief Officers.” Townsend waved him into the car, then followed him in and pressed the button for D Deck. “So far, it hasn’t been much help. My people are sharp, though. They’ll figure it out.”

  “They’d better do it soon,” remarked Rodrigues. “I wasn’t happy about taking my weapons offline, but I cooperated. If you get a Nandrian ship on approach and make a request like that, I hate to think how they might respond. You need to remember just how vulnerable we are out here. Daisy Hub and Zulu may be constantly in motion, but we’re also in orbit. That means a predictable trajectory at a constant speed, making both installations easy to find and target. So, unless you’ve also got a powerful deflection field up your sleeve, a proximity-triggered invisibility cloak isn’t going to be much of a defense, for either of us.”

  He was right. Briefly, Drew wondered how the EIS would reply if he asked them to arm the station. Because he knew where Rodrigues was heading with this, and the last thing Townsend wanted to do was give the Zulu detachment free access to the Hub. It wasn’t even an idea he felt safe about expressing aloud within earshot of any crew members. They would mutiny, and he wouldn’t blame them.

  Entering the caf, Townsend made eye contact with Jensen, who waved at him and then disappeared into the kitchen. Meanwhile, Rodrigues had selected a table in the far corner, away from the handful of crew who sat conversing over an end-of-shift meal. Three dockworkers and a couple of the general maintenance staff. Drew acknowledged them as he passed by. Then he eased himself into a chair across from the Ranger’s and prompted him, “You said you had an important message for me?”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Rodrigues’s mouth as he reached into a pocket and pulled out a small black device, tube-shaped, with a connector plug at one end and ringed with ridges along half its length. It was an EIS encrypter, keyed to its owner’s DNA, useless to anyone else. “Do you recognize this?”

  Sternly reminding himself not to jump to any conclusions, Drew replied carefully, “It looks like Bonelli’s. Where did you find it?”

  “Bonelli still has his. He’s recovering nicely, by the way. This one was recently given to me,” Rodrigues told him, adding as he tucked it away, “I’ve known for some time that you’ve got one as well, and that not everything that happens out here gets reported to the Authorities on Earth, and what is reported may not be entirely truthful. Bonelli made me his second because I’m good at keeping secrets. That was partly why I requested this posting. When the command position came open, I presented a case to Security for having a known quantity in charge, someone who was already respected on Zulu and had proven that he could work with the manager of the Hub. The EIS heard I was interested, took me into the fold, and made it happen. And here we are.”

  “And here we are,” Drew echoed, adding, “And here’s our dinner,” as Jensen delivered two bowls of steaming hot food to their table.

  “Smells good. What is it?” said Rodrigues.

  “Ratatouille,” said Jensen. The Ranger’s expression hardened. Before he could say anything, however, the chef explained, “It’s an old French word for vegetable stew. In this case, it means carrots, parsnip, celery, diced tomato, pepper squash and zucchini, all locally grown, with appropriate seasoning of the Earth variety. Bon appétit.” And with that, Jensen spun and bustled off.

  Rodrigues was silent for a moment. “So she wasn’t cussing at me?”

  Grinning, Townsend replied, “I’m afraid not, Paul.”

  The Ranger gave a philosophical shrug. “I’ll apologize to her before I leave.” Then he picked up his fork and dived into his meal.

  He was hungry. Townsend took a few mouthfuls, then sat and watched him eat, delaying as long as he could before reminding him, “You said we had a lot to discuss. Was there something else?”

  “Yes, two things.” Rodrigues stopped chewing and laid down his fork. Visibly choosing his words, he said, “First of all, I know that you and Bonelli have a history, and I watched his attitude to Daisy Hub do an about-face once you’d arrived. I don’t know what you had on him, or what you threatened him with, and frankly, I don’t care. I just want you to know that the tactics you used to deal with him won’t be necessary with me. I’ve been briefed on your mission here and I know how important the Hub is to Earth Intelligence. As a courtesy, I’ll order my men to steer clear so you can continue to do your job. However, I have a job to do as well. Zulu will be monito
ring everything that happens in this system. If I see or even hear about anything that jeopardizes Daisy Hub or the mission, I’m authorized by the EIS to take whatever countermeasures I deem necessary, with or without your cooperation. Simply put, if there’s a threat, I take charge and you take a back seat. That’s non-negotiable.”

  Townsend had been afraid of this. Repressing a shudder, he managed to comment evenly, “I see. And if I’m aware, and you’re not, that having a Ranger presence will only escalate the danger, what then?”

  “Then it will mean that you withheld critical data from me, preventing me from making an accurate threat assessment. Look,” Rodrigues added after a beat, “I’m not trying to be confrontational here. We’re on the same side. Bonelli ran the detachment as though it was a street gang, and you’re in charge of a bunch of rebels and dissidents, so I understand that things may get a little hairy from time to time. But we’re both trained Security officers, and that should count for something. At the very least, we ought to be able to fulfil our respective duties without stepping on each other’s toes.”

  Right, until the day a perceived threat gives you an excuse to board the station in force, bringing a Nandrian fleet into Earth space and triggering an interstellar war.

  For now, the Ranger captain was making an effort to be reasonable. Drew decided he could do the same. “We can certainly try,” he responded pleasantly. “And you said there was a second thing to discuss?”

  “Yes, a personal message. It’s from the same friend who sent you your newest crew member, whatever the hell that means. I was told to deliver this word for word, so here goes: The one-eyed man is not what he seems. He’s a player looking for a rat.” Rodrigues paused and stared quizzically into Drew’s face. “Does that make any sense to you?”

  Unfortunately, it did. However, the safest answer right now was a puzzled shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe it will later. Earth Intelligence likes to be cryptic.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Rodrigues, unconvinced. He resumed eating. So did Townsend, even though the ratatouille now left a burnt aftertaste in his mouth.