While the compassionate Captain offered comfort to his enemy, his lieutenant sat in the unlovely environs of the canteen frequented by Signe's spacer-fighters. His heart in his eyes, Malcolm gazed across the scratched, worn surface of a battered table at the woman he knew with exquisite clarity that he loved. Pain throbbed along neural pathways simultaneously with ineffable yearning. A cultural imperative that the archetypical Gaean saw as insurmountable effectively prohibited any overt acknowledgment of his passion. Unpremeditatedly, mutely, he conveyed to his companion the depth of his regard, even as hopelessness gripped him.
As rigorously programmed by her society as was the man whose love she reciprocated, Midori experienced equal distress, but she refused to succumb to despair. Twelve Earthyears spent fighting in a savage conflict had matured the lovely woman swiftly and irrevocably. The death of both parents early in the surface war resulted in her paternal uncle's accession as head of her family. His authority, inherently less absolute than that exerted by her father, weakened still further owing to his niece's enlistment in Signe's force. Seldom home, Midori unconsciously grew more self-reliant, and stood less in awe of hallowed ancient custom, in a world she knew to be forever changed.
No impulse to rebel outright against the inflexible social decree that family-heads possessed the sole power to arrange marriages for both sons and daughters ever entered the woman's head. She nonetheless applied an eminently practical mind to the problem, and resolved to share her thoughts with the man she desperately desired to marry.
"Malcolm, it's time we talked of our feelings for each other, don't you agree?" she inquired forthrightly, meeting her comrade's eyes with no hint whatsoever of coquetry.
That appeal crashed into Malcolm's consciousness like a meteoroid striking an airless moon. Rigidly conditioned never to discuss matters even remotely sexual in general conversation, he gave a perceptible start as his heart lurched. His own good sense came to the fore. "I love you," he blurted, stating exact truth.
A golden, delicately chiseled face melted into a smile of transcendent warmth. "I know that," Midori admitted with endearing candor. "As you've realized all along that I love you. Malcolm, this two-phase war has irrevocably changed the lives of people like us. It may go on for decades. You and I know no other life. It makes sense for us to marry, rather than accept a civilian spouse our family-head selects for us. I think I could bring my uncle to see that. Could you persuade your father to consider an overture from my uncle?"
"I've got the right not to accept any wife," Malcolm responded stoutly, even as his heart fibrillated wildly. "I'll tell him it's you or no wife, ever. That won't be any lie, Midori."
"I'll issue a similar ultimatum," the smiling woman promised. "Tactfully, but most firmly. Malcolm, we could die at any time. I'd as soon serve aboard ship with you, so that if we're blown…we go together."
"What about…" Ingrained modesty prevented the utterance of the question trembling on Malcolm's lips.
"I've been rendered reversibly sterile," Midori replied serenely. "In case I get captured and raped. We'll wait until the war's won to found a family."
Now why can't I equal her serene ease in talking of such things? the severely repressed Gaean asked himself in rueful wonder. Our happiness--our whole future--hangs on our settling such questions to our mutual satisfaction. I need to restructure my thinking, damned if I don't. "I sure as hell wouldn't want to start a family until the war's over," he admitted softly. A smile of infinite tenderness touched the man's homely face with irresistible appeal.
Ebullient joy set Midori's inner being aglow, lending her exotic person an ephemeral transfiguring aura. "I'll call my uncle tonight," she promised. Two rapt lovers bemusedly savored their unorthodox agreement. No hand reached for another. No urge to touch, much less to kiss, rose to tempt two sternly temperate souls. True to the code universally followed in their society, each maintained his accustomed rigorous self-control. Radiant faces expressed all that either betrothed partner needed to communicate at this point.
By the time Signe judged her force fully recuperated, Arlen's forts occupied their strategic positions. The Commander enlisted Morgan's aid, inwardly amused that the order to accompany her on a dangerous mission restored her disgruntled captain to better humor. Three subordinates formed her crew: Morgan, Luke, Morgan's lieutenant, and Ian, an original member of the assault force.
The reconnaissance team made the transit in the unsprayed cargo vessel, a ship that normally would lack the fuel capacity of a military ship of either class. Both holds, however, had been remodeled to carry liquid water, and fitted with gear that allowed that reserve to be tapped for fuel.
"We'll try to avoid coming in contact with any Columbian military ship, whose crew might suspect that we're a renegade's vessel," Signe cautioned her companions. "We'll fly a complex trajectory: one that won't lead any observer to think we're heading from O'Neill to Columbia. We can't answer a peremptory demand that we identify ourselves."
"That bastard Chapell still preys on his countrymen despite their being at war with a foreign enemy," Luke observed scathingly.
"He and a horde of lesser brutes," Morgan agreed. "But his compatriots brought their present problems on themselves."
"So they did," Ian muttered, thinking of his parents, ruined financially by the invasion, and sadly broken in health.
As Morgan and the two crewmen performed the routine work required of those manning the board, Signe studied the slowly enlarging sphere of Columbia on the bright, detailed, but time-delayed multispectral screens: an integrated system utilizing passive sensors, which employed natural radiation over a wide range of wavelengths. That gear, she knew, produced no emissions that might evoke a blast down the beam impinging upon a ship operating with weapon-control systems set to detect such illumination and respond automatically. Frowning, Signe stared intently at the screen. "Morgan, look. That's no ship, orbiting Columbia. Far too big--and the wrong shape--or at least, part of it is. Now what… Shades of the ancients! Two military ships are orbiting farther out than that object, whatever it is."
"Orbiting, hell! They're transferring out of orbit! I'm switching to manual maneuvers. Hold on!"
Reaching for controls, Signe set the automatic fire-control system of the crude beam weapon the vessel carried, on automatic return. Staring into the video screen, she voiced her conclusions. "They haven't tried to lock onto us," she rasped. "They don't dare. A lucky shot could damage equipment external to the ship, even if their hardened hulls are invulnerable to our armament. They're counting on overtaking us--figure we're an ordinary cargo vessel."
No one replied. At that moment, Morgan's maneuver all but blacked out the lot of them. Gritting her teeth, Signe mastered the surging nausea, the ominous faintness, as she heard the harsh, clipped demand that they identify themselves. Morgan accelerated for an eternity, for an eon, during which steadily increasing g-force stressed even lungs assisted by breathing regulators integral to fluid-filled harnesses.
Vision narrowed, dimmed. Pain stabbed laboring chests. Just when Signe determined upon trying to achieve legible speech, although uncertain whether the breathing regulator still conferred the ability, the trauma faded. We're on a trajectory , she exulted as the pain receded. Moving at an inconceivable velocity: one our pursuers can't match. Thank the Powers that we carry so large a quantity of water. We'll need an incredible amount of fuel to decelerate before reentering the Group . "I've got that orbiting whatsit on videodisc," she gasped, her chest heaving, hurting. "We'll get the image enhanced, but I'll wager that's Arlen's defense."
"We've outrun those two ships. I'll bet they're wondering just what in hell they chased," Morgan chortled.
Luke nodded, but dared not speak. Bile seared his throat, and burned his nasal passages, as he sternly willed himself not to vomit. Ian, his face pallid, his chest feeling as if penetrated by a sword-blade, never so much as nodded.
Signe slumped in her harness, her eye on the fuel gauges. That sur
vey cost us, she groused bitterly to her alter ego. Our force is low on fuel. Terence continues to ration water on Main World--diverts all he can from the interconnecting web of life-support systems--but he can't supply what we'll need. We'll have to take time to send this ship on a tour of stations, to collect what we can commandeer from ice-prospectors' caches, and the like. That reserve we discovered in the mine the Columbians evacuated helped, but we've expended a veritable fortune in fuel! And if Arlen has developed a means of detecting us, a raid on the Ice World would be suicidal. We need to test his defenses--soon!
Within an hour of being apprised that the last of the three forts now circled Columbia, complete and battle-ready, Arlen called Amin in from space, where he orbited, far out. "I need Levi's expertise in the next phase of the work," the Commander-in-Chief informed the man responsible for the defense of the perimeter. "You'll be deprived of his assistance for a span of weeks."
In swift obedience to that order, Amin docked at the fort where Arlen's personal vessel lay moored. He and Levi floated through a series of locks, traversed the corridor, bypassed the entry to the passenger vessel, entered the docking module of Brant's ship, and emerged into the bridge where Arlen and Brant sat harnessed into couches at the board. Amin and Levi settled into the vacant places.
Having warned the crew, Brant touched the switch that initiated the rotation of the ship's inner torus, prompting the mathematician to reflect that the counter-rotation of two solid metallic rings--two dense, massive structures housed in tubes embedded in the outer hull of the protective sheath surrounding the vertical torus--initiated automatically whenever an operator set the huge hollow ring containing the habitable portion of the ship rotating. That second motion provided a compensatory force, thereby assuring that no change would occur in the fort's orbit around Columbia, owing to the spinning. The angular momentum of the solid rings rotating in one sense, and the inner torus rotating in the opposite sense, adds up to zero , the theorist silently noted. Amazing, the quality of the engineering that went into the construction of these durable artifacts built on Old Earth!
When the four men again regained the sense of possessing weight, Arlen threw off his harness, and turned to his senior captain. "You reported an unusual encounter with a cargo vessel, Amin," he observed musingly. "One that refused to identify itself. Turning, it accelerated to an incredible velocity on a trajectory that could take it to Gaea, but not to O'Neill. That vessel showed quite clearly on the vid, did it not?"
"It did. We spotted it on the multispectral screens. I doubt that Signe's black ships appear on those, but we've been using them to study incoming vessels. The outline plainly indicated that one to be a cargo vessel. It had no business being where it was, and didn't answer our demand that it identify itself. At first, we judged it renegade, but it wasn't on a course from--or to--any body in the O'Neill group, including O'Neill itself.
"We discounted the idea that it might be Signe's, until we saw the incredible speed with which it accelerated. That vessel had to have had its holds full of water. It's quite likely that we caught Signe reconnoitering our new defenses. I almost wish I'd locked on, and risked sustaining damage from the crude beam weapon that ship carried, but if we'd dodged successfully--and we were far enough away that I know with certainty that we could have dodged a blast--the pulse could well have hit the fort, and wreaked havoc."
"There'd be no sense in risking that, as long as the ship turned tail and ran. Well, she likely suspects, now, that we've…"
"Sir!" Brant exclaimed, interrupting the speaker in blatant disregard of protocol. "A shadow! On the device!"
While his superiors conferred, the Captain had monitored the board. He had dismissed the three of his spacers on watch with him, so as to facilitate the entry of the two captains meeting with Arlen. Shifting his gaze routinely from the video display to the screens of the new device, he caught sight of an amorphous gray blob in the center of the multicolored, scintillating background he felt wearied to the bone of watching. All eyes now riveted themselves to the screen.
"Brant! Are you getting that blip?" Danner's voice, tense with excitement, boomed from the panel.
"I've got it, too! It's not a ship!" Ford interjected sharply. "But it's growing in size, and it doesn't show up on the vid!"
"I've got it as well! Ford's right!" Brant exclaimed.
Levi breathed softly, "Whatever it is, it's as black as Signe's ships!"
Arlen shifted his eyes from the slowly expanding gray shape to the display giving the location in space and the velocity of the approaching vessel. "Brant, challenge it to identify itself," he ordered. "Signe will have a ship tailing that one advancing."
"Attention, vessel approaching the fort! Identify yourself, or prepare for destruction by Earth-built military weaponry! Come in," Brant ordered, his high voice unmistakably projecting readiness to make good on the threat.
The mysterious visitant changed course. "It's dodging, but still advancing!" Brant hissed. "Shall I test the efficacy of our defense, sir?"
Studying the video screens, Arlen saw no vessel accompanying the intruder. Shifting his glance to the multispectral screens, he pointed. "There's a ship--far out. See that moving glint of reflected sunlight? There's no exhaust--it's in free flight, too far away to show on the vid. If we use our scanner, we'll invite a blast from Earth-armed weaponry--perhaps from more than one vessel." Speaking into the transceiver, he employed a tone charged with menace. "Attention: black ship. You have one minute in which to identify yourself, and surrender! If your advance continues, we'll use you for target practice! Come in!"
The bloated blob on the screen grew larger. Again, it veered, but it continued its advance. Silence as deep as that pervading the vacuum of the void enshrouded the four men sitting with eyes glued to the screens, their ears straining for input.
Exactly sixty seconds after uttering his warning, Arlen issued a terse command. "Brant, Danner, Ford, Yukio--fire manually! Blast that thing!"
"Levi, call out the coordinates to me!" Hand poised on the control of the weapon, eyes on the displays integrated with the Earth-built armament, Brant listened, and made the adjustments that swiveled the external extensions of the complex unit mounted within the hull, until it aimed at the point in space that coincided with the position Levi at that moment called out. With pressure of a finger, the Captain fired. The oddly shaped, swollen object vanished in a blinding burst of visible and invisible light.
His eyes riveted to the video screen, Arlen saw four intense beams converge on a single point, generating the awesome brilliance denoting annihilation of the black object. Where the target had been, a four-pronged light-shape--one that paled as it enlarged--slowly faded.
Levi handed his superior the datapad he had carried aboard. "I drew the outline, sir," he explained. "From the gray pattern on the screen."
Arlen tore his eyes from the multispectral screens, where the speck had vanished. Having perused the drawing, he handed the device to Brant. "Do you know what that might be?"
Brant and Amin studied the sketch. "Levi, I'm saving this drawing," the latter announced as he entered the data into his terminal. "Brant, raise Dahl. I've an idea."
A swarthy, chagrined face rose on the vid. "We missed the action," Dahl growled. "The planetoid interposed between us and the attacking vessel."
"We destroyed the incoming object," Amin informed his subordinate. "Dahl, look at the drawing I'm transmitting. Does that shape mean anything to you?"
"Hmmm. Odd…" Silently, the former Third Corpsman pondered the question. Obsidian eyes glowed, suddenly, as a concept lanced out of the black . Not a ship . Could that have been what … "Amin, I've never seen a Gaean drone, but that thing has a shape that would fit in the slip at that mine Norman operated."
"Drone." Frowning, Arlen scrawled some calculations on the datapad. "Huge, that vehicle we just blasted. Whatever landed in Lock Three at Chemen lit right on the deck of the inner lock. This craft wouldn't have fit through the open
ing to which the docking module of a military ship seals."
Amin nodded in assent. "No--nor was that outfit that exploded in Lock Three a lifeboat. The engineers studying the wreckage reported that the composition of what few shards of shrapnel imbedded themselves in the walls and pressure-proof doors differed from the metal used in lifeboats."
"If we just blasted a drone, we likely didn't kill anyone," Arlen conjectured, "but I tend to assume that a man on a suicide mission operated whatever landed in Lock Three. That assault was perfectly coordinated, and that object crammed full of blasting gel descended right next to the prize, dangerously close to a ship carrying Signe and her fighters. A slight miscalculation would have resulted in her dying with her whole assault force."
"Our experts couldn't tell whether they'd examined the fragments of three bodies or four," Amin pointed out dourly.
"A human operator seems most probable," Arlen replied. "And ditto for this intruding vehicle today. It would take some highly ingenious engineering to remodel a remote-controlled drone into a ship able to dodge the way that one just did. If Signe had simply wished to test our defenses, she could have sent it hurtling straight at us."
"Dahl, can you conceive of Signe's ordering a suicide mission?" Levi queried, his tone betraying his expectation of a negative answer.
The ex-Third Corpsman pondered that question for a time. "Not of ordering one," he at length conjectured. "No. Nor of asking for volunteers for one. I'd judge it possible, however, that some fanatical follower could persuade her to let him sacrifice himself. Gaeans don't think the way we do, and they're fighting for a cause in which countless numbers of patriots have died already. Rear guards battled Norman's corpsmen until the last man or woman fell."
"Mm. But Signe generally fights in the rear guard actions she mounts, herself," Arlen reminded his colleagues.
"When she lifted that lifeboat off my ship, I considered her action insane enough to rank with suicide," Dahl offered evenly. "It could be that if a Gaean perceives the slimmest chance of living through a mission, he doesn't regard dying while carrying it out, as suicide. Maybe the operator hoped he could dodge in close enough to blow a fort on which two first-class ships lay moored."
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