by Larry Niven
Sigmund saw no advantage in volunteering information. A partial truth would suffice. “The ship belonged to General Products Corporation, which is owned by Puppeteers, not human beings.”
Carlos turned to his . . . friend? Ally? Coconspirator? “Bey! Shame on you.”
“Damn it! They were trying to blackmail me into a suicide mission! And Ausfaller let them get away with it!”
“Good thing they soundproof these booths,” Carlos said. “Let’s order.”
Shaeffer finally sat, looking flustered.
No one offered to explain why Shaeffer was here. Sigmund wasn’t supposed to know, so he changed the subject. “Well, Carlos, have you changed your mind about coming with me?”
“Yes, if I can take a friend,” Carlos answered.
And so the dance began, Shaeffer professing uncertainty.
Something had brought these two to Jinx. Whatever they planned, Sigmund hoped to disrupt it. Least of all did he want to leave Shaeffer behind. Unsupervised or at risk of encountering Ander—either possibility had risks. A possible third chance encounter with Ander after a second chance encounter with him? What suspicions would that raise? No, it was better that Shaeffer come along so Sigmund could keep an eye on him.
Shaeffer had tried to steal a warship before. Perhaps another warship could serve as bait. It wasn’t hard to steer the conversation to piracy.
“They would not take me so easily,” Sigmund declared. “Hobo Kelly is deceptive. It seems to be a cargo and passenger ship, but it is a warship, armed and capable of thirty-gees acceleration.” At least that was now true, its refitting finally complete. “In normal space we can run from anything we can’t fight. We are assuming pirates, are we not? Pirates would insist on robbing a ship before they destroy it.”
Shaeffer was intrigued. “Why? Why a disguised warship? Are you hoping you’ll be attacked?”
“If there are actually pirates, yes, I hope to be attacked. But not when entering Sol system. We plan a substitution. A quite ordinary cargo craft will land on Earth, take on cargo of some value, and depart for Wunderland on a straight-line course. My ship will replace it before it has passed through the asteroids.”
Carlos hypothesized weird astrophysical phenomena that could precipitate ships from hyperspace. Shaeffer hypothesized more wildly yet, about hyperspace creatures eating the ships. Sigmund let them ramble, before offering, “I would be glad if you would change your mind and come with us, Mr. Shaeffer.”
“Um?” Shaeffer responded in surprise. “Are you sure you want me on the same ship with you?”
“Oh, emphatically! How else may I be sure that you have not hidden a bomb aboard?” Sigmund chuckled at his own joke. “Also, we can use a qualified pilot.”
If Hobo Kelly was bait, there was no benefit to Beowulf knowing Sigmund could fly his own ship. Let them think him dependent. Lying came easily, especially to these two. If he had to, Sigmund felt confident he could take either or both of his passengers—one bookish, the other a We Made It scarecrow—even without the hidden armory he always carried. It was Sigmund’s turn to prattle, flattering Shaeffer for his past exploits.
Shaeffer left the bar claiming he had to sleep on it.
Sigmund wasn’t at all surprised when Shaeffer called later that evening to accept.
31
Shaeffer circled Jinx on the way out. It wasn’t necessary, and Sigmund started to object—
Then Primary rose above the horizon. The sight took Sigmund’s breath away.
Shaeffer broke the silence a moment later. “Despite appearances, Primary is smaller than Jupiter. It looks bigger from here because Jinx orbits so close to it. But Primary is special. It masses more than Jupiter. In fact, Primary masses so much that gravity has compressed its core into degenerate matter.”
From the copilot’s crash couch, Carlos stared out the view port, grinning from ear to ear.
Shaeffer kept up his patter. “A billion years ago, give or take, this moon we call Jinx orbited much closer to Primary. That was before tidal drag moved them apart. Jinx was tidally locked then, too, of course. Primary’s gravity warped Jinx into the shape that will soon become apparent.”
The normal curvature of a receding world became anything but normal.
“From space,” Shaeffer went on, “this world looks like God’s Own Easter Egg. Note the Ends, bone white tinged with yellow, climbing above the atmosphere. Moving in from the poles, we see the brighter glare from rings of glittering ice fields at the limits of the atmosphere. Next come the blues of an Earth-like world, overlaid with more and more cloud as your eyes sweep inward. Finally, we reach the waist, girdled in pure white cloud. Beneath those unbroken clouds, forever hidden, lies the equatorial ocean on whose rocky shores the Bandersnatchi roam.”
Throughout his travelogue, Shaeffer’s eyes darted from instrument to instrument. His hands never left the controls.
As Jinx shrank into the distance, Sigmund had an epiphany. With a great deal of computer assistance, he thought, I can get a ship from Point A to Point B. I’m competent.
Shaeffer was a pilot.
FOR FIVE DAYS, allowing himself only occasional breaks, Shaeffer guided Hobo Kelly through the clutter that was Sirius system. The autopilot could have accomplished the same task. It had, inbound. Shaeffer preferred to fly manually and get a feel for the controls.
They still had long periods of time with nothing nearby and no piloting to be done. After they had passed the main asteroid belt, Sigmund took his shipmates for a tour. More than once their eyes widened in surprise.
Hobo Kelly was a belly-lander, a hundred meters long and triangular in cross section. Beneath its uptilted nose were big clamshell doors for cargo. It had adequate belly jets, a big fusion motor at the tail, and a line of windows indicating cabins. It looked harmless—and that was the point. The passenger area was large enough for 40 or 50, but it held cabins for only 4. The cabin windows they’d seen outside before boarding were holograms. Weapons take room.
Hobo Kelly was Sigmund’s personal Trojan Horse.
The ship was richly strewn with tiny ARM sensors. Soon enough, when Sigmund was off-shift and in his cabin, Shaeffer went exploring. Medusa woke Sigmund when a hidden camera revealed Shaeffer popping the access panel that covered the controls for the concealed weapons array. Sigmund hurried back to the bridge.
Shaeffer looked up. “I thought you were asleep.”
I’m sure you did, Sigmund thought. “I couldn’t sleep.” He pointed at the open panel. “Let me walk you through what we’ve got.”
They had a lot. A big X-ray laser. Smaller laser cannon set for different frequencies. Four self-guided fusion bombs. A hidden telescope, so powerful that the ostensible ship’s telescope was only a finder for it. None of it showed from outside.
Shaeffer lit a cigarette. “I don’t know whether to be comforted or terrified. What do you expect to fight?”
Sigmund smiled. “Whatever is there, Shaeffer. Whatever is there.”
THEY TALKED ABOUT art and literature, places they’d seen, and countless other topics. They speculated endlessly about what might make ships disappear. That was unproductive; they knew no more than before the trip started. Sigmund mentioned Carlos’s spectacular undersea home, which made Carlos ask about Feather. That wound remained raw; Sigmund changed the subject.
When Carlos and Bey thought themselves in private, they talked about Sharrol Janss, and the little boy and girl Bey was so eager to get home to adopt. Sigmund had glimpsed holos through his surveillance network. Louis and Tanya were cute kids.
Bey, not Shaeffer. Alone in his cabin, Sigmund acknowledged the truth. He was losing his detachment. And they had another two weeks together before Sol system.
Bey could have children anywhere but Earth—but the woman he loved was purebred flat phobe. Sharrol couldn’t leave Earth. Although Bey seemed not to realize it, his friend Carlos loved her, too.
Familiarity cut both ways. Bey alluded once to the one time General
Products had paid the warranty on a GP hull, then rushed to change the subject. “Did I ever tell you about the time on Gummidgy that—?”
“Right. That was on your outing in ’forty-five with Elephant,” Sigmund interrupted. Interrogation 101: Pretend you know more than you do. “The time your hull dissolved.”
“His friends call him Elephant,” Bey said coldly. “I don’t think you’re in that category.” Then he’d gone on with his Gummidgy story.
Truth be told, that was an interesting tale.
No one mentioned the riots, and for that Sigmund was grateful. The topic was too painful, for each of them in a different way. I’m as much a victim of the Fertility Laws as Bey. Sigmund thought of Feather, and his own problems. Sometimes the universe sucks.
Especially when his new friends remained his chief suspects, at least of collaborating in secret with Puppeteers.
It wasn’t long to his next shift. He gave up on sleep and headed for the bridge, where Carlos and Bey were again talking about the children. They fell silent at his appearance.
“Hi, Sigmund,” Carlos said.
“Gentlemen.” From habit, Sigmund checked the mass pointer. Nothing anywhere nearby. “What’s our topic this shift?”
“Bey’s stories,” Carlos said. “He’s got a million of them.”
Certainly Bey told the most stories. A funny thing, though: Sigmund felt no need to strangle the man. By this point outbound from Earth, Sigmund had been ready to throttle Ander.
A few of Sigmund’s stories had actually happened; two had even happened to him. An only slightly censored version of how he’d become an ARM kept their attention. He also told them almost everything about the still-unsolved theft of the Elgin Marbles, omitting only speculations about Cerberus and Puppeteers. The latter incident was a test. That neither of his passengers reacted, Sigmund decided, constituted an inconclusive pass.
Carlos told stories, too—only they mostly involved cosmological arcana or too many dimensions for anyone but Carlos to follow. Sometimes both. Carlos assured them his stories were funny.
So Carlos’s answer meant only that Bey was the glib one of the pair.
Bey stalled by lighting a cigarette—which he held between two toes. Maybe everyone from We Made It was that limber, Sigmund didn’t know, but never before this trip had he seen anyone smoke using his feet. It bugged the hell out of Sigmund. He guessed Bey enjoyed that more than the cigarette.
Sigmund played along. “Neutron star? Core explosion? Outsiders?”
Bey shot Carlos an annoyed glance.
“Don’t give me that, Bey,” Carlos said. “Sigmund and I talked about the Outsiders before you and I ever met.”
“True,” Sigmund agreed. “When you and Gregory Pelton went barreling into Sirius system six years ago, it seemed pretty obvious you’d gotten a lift from the Outsiders. I’d like to hear that story.”
“I was crew on that trip. That makes it Elephant’s story, not mine.” Bey loved to tell stories, but his tone of voice made it clear this story was an exception. He brought a foot up to his face and took a long drag. “That’s not to admit or deny we encountered Outsiders.” Puff, puff. “Speaking of the Outsiders, a few months ago I saw a starseed open. That was truly amazing.”
And Beowulf was off, spinning tales of the galaxy’s elder race.
The Outsiders were immensely fragile, looking something like large cat-o’-nine-tails, with a metabolism based on liquid helium. They roamed the galaxy in city-sized ships, shunning the inner solar systems. (“Those amazing ships of theirs have the galaxy’s least imaginative names. I had business with one once. It was called Ship Fourteen.”) Their civilization was billions of years old, moving to a less-than-glacial tempo impossible for the warm-world races to imagine.
It had been an Outsider, native to regions outside of solar singularities, in the dawn of time, who discovered hyperspace and perfected the hyperdrive shunt. By selling that technology to the human colony of We Made It (“Not to a relative, though”), the Outsiders indirectly saved humanity from enslavement by the Kzinti. For reasons of their own, Outsiders themselves traveled only in normal space.
Sigmund thought, not for the first time: If Bey wrote half as well as he spoke, Ander would never have gotten his foot in the door.
“Bey?” Carlos interrupted. “Starseeds?”
“I’m getting there. We don’t know much about the Outsiders. One of those few things we know is this: They spend their time in pursuit of starseeds.” A great smile lit Beowulf’s face. “Giant creatures, about two kilometers across. They follow slow migratory patterns from the rim of the galaxy to and from the core.
“That’s two klicks across furled. Inbound to Gummidgy, our ship passed a starseed. A starseed is mostly gossamer-thin sail, tightly rolled. Imagine that sail, thousands of kilometers across, slowly unfurling. Four muscular shrouds connect the sail to its tiny central kernel. Now picture that great, silvery mirrored sail catching the sun. . . .”
In his mind’s eye, Sigmund did see the starseed. It was beautiful.
Yes, if Bey could write half as well as he spoke, he’d never have needed Ander.
CARLOS AND BEY had met by accident. Bey had been bound for Earth; the captain of the passenger ship had diverted to Jinx rather than face whatever was eating ships in Sol system.
One “coincidence” explained—it was a start.
Then again, Gregory Pelton could certainly bribe a cruise-line captain. Pelton would scarcely notice the expense.
It was almost time to drop out of hyperspace. Their wide-ranging conversations abruptly focused. Pirates, ship eaters, wandering uncharted planets—theories suddenly ceased to be mere intellectual exercise.
“It boils down to three possibilities,” Bey decided abruptly. “Kzinti, Puppeteers, and humans.”
Carlos guffawed. “Puppeteers? Puppeteers wouldn’t have the guts!”
“I threw them in because they might have some interest in manipulating the interstellar stock market. Look, our hypothetical pirates have set up an embargo, cutting Sol system off from the outside world. The Puppeteers have the capital to take advantage of what that does to the market. And they need money. For their migration.”
It was the first theory Sigmund heard that made any sense. He’d had similar thoughts about the Crash when the Puppeteers vanished. Bey—and Carlos?—had been involved then. . . .
Carlos wasn’t buying it. “The Puppeteers are philosophical cowards.”
“That’s right,” Bey agreed. “They wouldn’t risk robbing the ships or coming anywhere near them. Suppose they can make them disappear from a distance?”
Carlos wasn’t laughing now. “That’s easier than dropping them out of hyperspace to rob them. It wouldn’t take more than a great big gravity generator . . . and we’ve never known the limits of Puppeteer technology.”
So Shaeffer suddenly had a plausible explanation, without any new information. Had he been holding back for the whole trip? Sigmund asked, “You think this is possible?”
Bey nodded. “Just barely. The same goes for the Kzinti. The Kzinti are ferocious enough. Trouble is, if we ever learned they were preying on our ships, we’d raise pluperfect hell. The Kzinti know that, and they know we can beat them. Took them long enough, but they learned.”
“So you think it’s humans,” Carlos said.
Bey looked unhappy. “Yeah. If it’s pirates.”
IN THE MASS pointer, the narrow line that marked Sol grew longer. Bey claimed the controls as his own. As tense as he looked, he found the energy to chain-smoke with his feet.
The three of them shared the bridge as Hobo Kelly penetrated the Oort Cloud. Only twelve hours remained until they returned to normal space. Then it was ten. Five. One.
Bey asked suddenly, “Carlos, just how large a mass would it take to make us disappear?”
Their resident genius didn’t hesitate. “Planet size, Mars and up. Beyond that, it depends on how close you get and how dense it is. If it’s dense
enough, it can be less massive and still flip you out of the universe. But you’d see it in the mass sensor.”
“Only for an instant . . . and not then if it’s turned off. What if someone turned on a giant gravity generator as we went past?”
“For what? They couldn’t rob the ship. Where’s their profit?”
“Stocks.”
Sigmund shook his head. They’d talked all through this. Was Shaeffer trying to divert them at a critical moment? “The expense of such an operation would be enormous. No group of pirates would have enough additional capital on hand to make it worthwhile. Of the Puppeteers I might believe it.”
The long line marking Sol was almost touching the surface of the mass sensor. Bey said, “Breakout in ten minutes.”
And the ship lurched savagely.
32
“Strap down!” Bey yelled. He stared wide-eyed at the hyperdrive controls.
Sigmund stared just as incredulously. The hyperdrive motor was drawing no power. None of the instrument readings made any sense. Unless . . .
Bey had the same thought. He activated the view ports, kept inert in hyperspace. The displays came on, revealing stars.
Somehow, they were in normal space.
“Futz! They got us anyway.” Carlos sounded neither frightened nor angry but awed.
The hidden access panel. Why was Bey reaching for it? Sigmund shouted, “Wait!”
Bey threw the red switch anyway. The ship shuddered as explosive bolts blew. A monstrous blip appeared on the radar screen, slowly receding.
That blip was most of the ship: the false hull, their disguise. Now anyone watching would see a GP #2 hull, ringed with weapons. Sigmund cursed in every language he knew.
Shaeffer didn’t know the old words, or he didn’t care. He lit the main fusion drive and ran it up to full power.
Sigmund squeezed the padded arms of his crash couch, his knuckles white. “Shaeffer, you idiot, you coward!” Or traitor? That was a possibility, too. How could he have considered trusting this man? “We run without knowing what we run from. Now they know exactly what we are. What chance that they will follow us now? This ship was built for a specific purpose, and you have ruined it!”