"It's—it's—" He couldn't find a suitable word. Colossal? Sensational? Awe-inspiring?
"It's great," he finished weakly.
"When you first see it, you think that." There was a gloomier note in Mercy Hooglich's voice. "But then you look at the whole fleet, and you realize that there's been little change in the design of the Omnivores for over half a century. Oh, they're more compact and a bit more powerful. And now we have the catalyzed drive, too—you know what that is?"
Jeff didn't, but he was willing to try a guess. "Something to make the fusion reaction take place at a lower temperature? Like the catalysts you get in chemical reactions."
"You'll make a real jinner yet. When I first came into the navy, used to be that heavy element reactions wouldn't start in until the Omnivore internal temperature hit a billion degrees. Billion and a half, for fusing oxygen to silicon and iron. Now, nothing in there goes above ten million."
Jeff tried to visualize ten million degrees. He failed.
"Catalyzed fusion is nice to have," she went on. "But it hasn't made a fundamental change to space travel, the way the nodes changed it. Free-fall and high-G travel is just as uncomfortable now as it was when people first went to space. What we need is—" She stopped dead, and her face lost all its expression. "Oh my sainted Santa. The Anadem field, and the Messina Dust Cloud. I wonder. Could it be that?"
"What?"
"Nothing worth talking about." But Hooglich had been transformed from a focused and enthusiastic explainer of the Aurora's engines and control systems to a woman whose mind was clearly far away.
"Nothin' for talking about," she repeated. "Not yet, at leas'. Come on. I gotta fin' Russo 'n' talk. Mebbe he know."
It was as though her speech, ahead of her body, was already moving toward Aurora's forward section. As they approached amidships, she turned her attention for a moment back to Jeff.
"Never did tell me one thing, did you? An' I ask it right out, I 'member. So again: How come you on the Aurora?"
This time there was no escaping. Jeff started to tell the whole sorry story, about the Kopal and Lazenby families, and how Myron and Myra fitted the model for bravery and competence, while he didn't. He was getting to the final disastrous riding event when she interrupted.
"Uncle Giles—that be Giles Lazenby?"
"That's right. He's my uncle, my father's cousin."
"Not your uncle, then. Second cousin."
"I know. But I've always called him uncle."
"You close to him?"
Jeff hesitated. He saw a good deal of his uncle, but emotionally he felt as far away as you could get. He never had any idea what Uncle Giles was thinking.
Hooglich read his face and cut in before he could answer. "Let me tell you somethin' 'bout Uncle Giles." Her Pool speech style disappeared again as she went on, "Everybody in the Space Navy knows of Giles Lazenby. He was never an admiral, and he's not a Kopal—though maybe he'd like to be—but he pulls terrific weight. When he was in the service, he was the head of security forces. That's a mighty powerful position. Word has it he kept—and still keeps—the dirt on everybody in the navy. They're afraid of him. What he wants, he gets. Is there any reason why he might want you in BorCom?"
"I can't think of one. Maybe to get me out of the way, so his own son, Myron, can shine?"
Mercy Hooglich shook her frazzle-mop head. "That bird won't fly. If he wants his Myron to look good, and you always do worse than Myron, Giles Lazenby would make sure you two stayed together so people could make comparisons."
"Then I don't know. Maybe Uncle Giles had nothing to do with my assignment here." But Jeff felt convinced that that was not true. He had been pretty much out of it on the night of the riding meet, but he did remember one thing: Uncle Giles in the conference room, saying, "We are proposing, and they will approve, assignment to Border Command." It seemed an odd way to put it. Surely, the navy proposed, not civilians—not even influential retired officers.
"Let it set." Hooglich waved one brawny arm, dismissing the subject and Jeff in one sweep. "We fin' out sometime. You git on forrard. I gotta gabble Russo."
He spiraled on higher in the ship, up the long narrow corridor that would take him to his own cabin. Since he had not been offered a single assignment, or a suggestion of one, after his arrival on the Aurora, he had no thought that his absence might be missed. It was a shock to enter his cabin and see a message blinking urgently on his communications panel: Report at once to the bridge.
He still had no thought of trouble as he headed forward, to where Captain Dufferin was pacing his raised dais in the middle of the control room. The captain halted as Jeff entered, and advanced to the edge of the platform so that he was high enough to peer down on his visitor.
"Ensign Kopal. What have you been doing?"
"Looking around the ship, sir. I thought I ought to know as much about it as possible, and there were parts I hadn't seen. Engineer Hooglich took me aft and showed me the engine room and drive."
"She invited you to see them?"
Jeff sensed some kind of trap, though not perhaps for him. "No, sir. I asked her to show me."
"I see." Captain Dufferin went back to pacing the raised dais, his hands clasped behind his back. "You realize, do you, that I could charge you with a failure to discharge your duties?"
His duties? He didn't know he had any duties. That was clearly the wrong thing to say. "I'm sorry, sir. I thought that I was off duty after the general meeting ended."
"An officer on my ship, Ensign, is never off duty. Even a junior officer such as yourself. Also"—the captain swung to face Jeff—"it is not appropriate that an officer socialize with the engineers. They are of a different social class. I am astonished that I need to remind you, above all, of that fact. You are, are you not, a Kopal?"
Dufferin spat out the last word.
"Yes, sir."
"Then behave accordingly."
"Yes, sir." Jeff stood at attention. The captain seemed to have lost interest. He wandered over to stare at the controls, and then up through the hemispherical bubble above the bridge.
At last Jeff cleared his throat. Dufferin swung around. "Yes, what is it?"
"I didn't know if I had been dismissed, sir."
"You have not." Dufferin gestured upward. "Since you have this burning desire to explore parts of the Aurora unknown to you, I will allow you to indulge that curiosity to the full. Proceed at once to the observation nacelle and familiarize yourself with its functions."
"Yes, sir. Should I then return here?"
"No." Dufferin again turned his back on Jeff. "We will soon be approaching the region of the Lizard Reef. You will remain in the observation nacelle and cool your heels, at least until such time as the reef has been passed."
"Yes, sir. Should I make observations?"
"That is entirely up to you. We will be at our point of closest approach to the reef in approximately seven hours. Do you have questions?"
Yes. Why are you doing this to me? "No sir."
"Then proceed. I will inform you as to when you may return. Until then, I do not want to see you or hear from you under any circumstances."
Chapter Seven
THE spike leading to the observation chamber was even narrower than it looked from the outside. Jeff, squirming up the ladder of a narrow chimney barely two feet wide, thought of the stories he had read as a child. Growing up in a Kopal household, many of those tales had been of old Earth navy days; of voyages to unknown lands, of cannibals and mutinies and floggings and keelhaulings, of pirates and treasure troves and hanging in chains.
Those times were long gone; but what he was doing now must surely be little different in spirit from the old crewman punished for some trifling offense. This was the equivalent of being sent to the crow's nest or crosstrees at the top of a mast, to hang and hover there as long as the captain chose to leave him.
At least there would be no gale-force winds to tear at him, no days of pitiless sun glare or of snow and
hail to freeze his body.
The little observation room, when he finally inched his way out to it, was not designed for comfort. He gulped and shivered as he poked his head through the entry hatch. Maybe wind and driving rain would not be so bad. Seen from inside, the wall of the nacelle that he was entering was perfectly transparent. He seemed to be facing open space, with nothing between him and the great luminous shroud of the Messina Dust Cloud. Below him as he scrambled through the hatch lay the rounded front of the Aurora, the expanding eldritch glow of its drive barely visible behind the curved bulk of the hull.
He had to stand up and grope with his fingers to find the bubble of the nacelle's wall. He learned that he was in a spherical chamber only five feet high, so he could never fully stand up. When he closed the hatch through which he had entered, a fold-out chair on top of it allowed him to sit down. The chair could be rotated, to give a view in any direction. He could also pull up a rudimentary control panel, with access to the ship's knowledge bank and communications system. And that was all. There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink. If he needed to use a bathroom, he was out of luck.
Jeff sat down and turned the chair so that he was staring straight up, in the Aurora's direction of travel. Nothing was supposed to happen for the next few hours, and he could certainly use some time to think. He was accustomed to the idea that a member of the Kopal family was regarded as someone special, from whom a superior level of performance was expected. That, to someone incapable of outstanding performance, was bad enough. It was even worse to learn that many people were going to hate him, not for anything he had done, but simply because he was a member of those privileged Kopals.
Why had he been sent out to the Messina Dust Cloud, working for Border Command? It had seemed straightforward enough when it first happened, a technique to make sure that he was far from home where his mediocre performance and lack of courage could not embarrass the rest of the family.
Mercy Hooglich had put her fat finger on an obvious problem with that explanation. He had to agree with her; Uncle Giles would do anything he could to show Myron's superiority to Jeff. That should have meant assignment to Central Command for both of them. So there had to be some other explanation of why he was here—and also, according to Hooglich, a reason why the Aurora, lightly armed and with a minimum crew, had been set the impossible task of persuading the people of the Cyborg Territory to surrender. Were the two things related? He couldn't see how. And what did Hooglich mean, when she spoke of the Anadem field? Although he had spent endless hours browsing the science banks—"Utter wa-a-aste of time," Aunt Willow had sniffed—he had never come across it.
He keyed a query into the science knowledge bank and listened to the quiet reply. "No direct entry. Cross-reference to speculation bank?"
"Yes."
"Level?"
Jeff wasn't quite sure what that meant. "Elementary?"
"Cross-reference performed. From the speculation bank, elementary level: the existence of the Anadem field has never been confirmed. The possibility of such a field was proposed in a series of theoretical papers by S. Macafee. According to Macafee's calculations, the Anadem field would permit a modification of space-time, of such a nature that local inertial nullification would be achieved in the vicinity."
So much for the elementary level.
"Does that mean that if you were on a ship using an Anadem field, you would not feel any acceleration?"
"If you were in the correct location, that would be true. The Anadem field, if one existed, would be a displacement field. Some parts of the ship, close to the field, would feel the effects of acceleration much diminished. Other parts, however, would experience an augmented acceleration."
Jeff could sort of visualize what was being said. It was as though you had the power to move the acceleration forces, so that instead of feeling them where people were located, they would be effective only in places where machines and equipment were found.
"Why is this only considered speculation? Do other people question the results?"
"Sol system experts claim that the analysis by S. Macafee is obscure, and some of the base assumptions are questionable. However, others claim that devices employing the Anadem field already are in use."
That answer was oddly stated. Sol system experts. Why not just "experts"?
"Who and where is Macafee?"
"No information is available on the background and training of S. Macafee. A possible location is currently listed as the Confluence Center."
"I never heard of that. Where is it?"
"The Confluence Center is located within the Messina Dust Cloud. Coordinates are as follows . . . ."
Jeff ignored the long strings of digits that came over the communication link. He had at least a partial answer to the sudden change in Mercy Hooglich. The navy grapevine must associate the rumored Anadem field with the Messina Dust Cloud. That meant Cyborg Territory, the target of the current mission. In Hooglich's mind the Aurora's mission, and even Jeff's own presence, were linked in some way with the Anadem field.
How?
Jeff stared at the lilac and purple nimbus of the cloud. Somewhere, somewhere out there within the unknown depths, lay a place known as the Confluence Center. Somewhere within that Confluence Center sat S. Macafee—man or woman, or even cyborg. Nothing had been said about that.
And somehow, in a way that Jeff could not begin to imagine, Mercy Hooglich thought that their mission, Macafee, and the Anadem field might be linked.
Jeff realized that he was no longer staring vaguely at the expanse of the cloud. His eye was drawn, again and again, to a single pinwheel of darkness.
"Directly ahead. Is that the Lizard Reef?"
"The Lizard Reef is not directly ahead. Our trajectory will actually take us clear of it. However, the object that you refer to is the Lizard Reef."
"Why does it look that way? It's like a whirlpool."
"In the middle of every reef lies a ring vortex. That is a dense ring of dust and gas, rotating in on itself. The vortex stability is maintained by an electromagnetic field. What is observed is not the field itself, but the cloud of dust around it. The middle of the vortex forms a hole in the middle of the ring."
Jeff could see it, now that he knew what to look for. A hole of utter darkness lay like the pupil of an eye at the exact center of the swirl.
"If a ship passes through the exact center, there will be a big change in speed but no ill effects. The danger of a reef comes in an inaccurate passage through the eye. A ship that goes through even slightly off-center is torn apart."
The pinwheel seemed remote, decorative, and harmless against its background of the great dust currents of the Messina Cloud. It would be easy, in ignorance, to stray too close. Jeff checked the Aurora's course vector from the ship's database and confirmed that they would pass comfortably clear of the heading listed for the Lizard Reef.
He glanced up again, reassured—and saw not one but two swirls of darkness in the sky ahead. The second one had appeared in the minute or so while he had been checking the ship's course vector. And the new one seemed to be moving.
Could a reef do that? Or was it some illusion, an effect of the Aurora's own motion?
He looked more closely at the second dark patch. It no longer matched the Lizard Reef in appearance. Now it was surrounded by a silver glitter, tiny sparkles that dotted the near vacuum of the Messina Dust Cloud with a million flecks of light. As he watched, those dots of light dwindled and faded, to leave behind emptiness of a curious clarity.
An octagonal shape appeared where the sparks had been. Around its perimeter sat eight ragged blue-white tendrils, pointing outward and thinning gradually to invisibility. Next to the tendrils the pattern of background stars was compressed and distorted, as though the object was imposing its own eightfold symmetry on space itself. As he watched, the shape increased its size. It was moving to lie directly ahead of the Aurora.
Jeff caught his breath. He switched the communications link
to connect him with the bridge of the Aurora.
"Captain Dufferin." He hardly recognized his own voice, it was so hoarse and nervous. "This is Ensign Kopal."
"Kopal! Didn't I give you direct orders not to—"
"Captain, we are about to suffer a space sounder encounter." Jeff's voice cracked on the last word, and he had to swallow before he could go on. "It's almost directly ahead of us. And it's getting closer—fast."
Myron would have done it exactly right: Observe with a clear eye and a calm head, while at the same time comparing what he saw with what he had learned about space sounders.
Jeff knew all that, but it made no difference. He was not Myron. Nervousness mixed with enormous excitement was turning his head into a gigantic stew pot where facts and fancies clashed in a bubbling maelstrom of ideas. It didn't help that he could hear Captain Dufferin shouting orders over the communication channel, his voice so high in pitch that Squeaky was the only possible nickname. The captain must have picked up the image of the sounder on his observation screens, and obviously he didn't like what he saw.
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