Jeff, trying to look everywhere at once to follow the bright kaleidoscope of discharging weapons, felt but did not see the thunderbolt. The floor of Confluence Center shook beneath him, sending all three people sprawling full-length on the floor. Moments later an urgent and unfamiliar voice spoke over the address system: "Sector Four is breached. We have casualties. We need help."
Connie struggled to her feet and moved to the control chair. She had not quite reached it when the second hit came. This one was nearer, so close that the chamber walls buckled. Air screamed out through fractured seams. Connie went spinning away across the room, while Jeff and Lilah skated across the floor and ended underneath a table. He was behind her, and his weight drove her body hard against one of the table legs. He heard her cry in pain.
"Sector One is gone," said a breathless voice. "Adjoining bulkheads have failed to close. This is Sector Two. We have many casualties."
Jeff struggled out from under the table. He saw Connie lying against the far wall. He felt sure that she was dead, until he saw her roll over and crawl doggedly back to the control panel.
"Maintenance Logans to Sectors Two and Four," she said through clenched teeth. "If necessary, seal off Sector One. All others, hold position pending instructions."
Jeff pulled Lilah out from beneath the table. She was still and silent. He was enormously relieved when at last she whimpered, shivered, and put her hand on her right side. He turned again to the displays. They had blanked out when the second impact came, and now they were flickering back, one by one.
The battle continued, but its character had changed. The remaining navy ships had realized that their weapons could not destroy all the sounders. Some tried a late escape, drives flaring at maximum acceleration. A few broke clear. Others, despite the thrust of their drives and the inferno of their discharging weapons, were drawn helplessly toward and into the sounders' dark throats. As the ships were absorbed, the sounders shimmered, called across space, and vanished.
Finally just one vessel remained. It was the flagship of the Central Command fleet, a battle fort of the Thor class. Captain Duval himself commanded the half-kilometer sphere and its bristling array of weapons. According to navy publicity, a vessel of this type was invincible and indestructible.
The fort faced one of the largest sounders. The two approached each other, the fort firing all weapons, the sounder shivering and shuddering under multiple impacts to sides and head but not slowing its advance. The maw opened and opened, a chasm in space. By the time that the orbital fort changed tactics and turned to escape, it was too late. Slowly, weapons firing everywhere, the fort was engulfed. Bolts of random energy lit up the sky. The sounder called, high and loud, shreep-shreep-shreep, and disappeared.
The battle involving Sol's navy was over. But hundreds of sounders remained, undamaged and still heading toward the crippled Confluence Center. Jeff felt Connie Cheever's arm tightening convulsively around him. She had moved back to sit on the floor between him and the wounded Lilah.
"Now we'll find out," she said. "Oh, Simon, Simon, Simon. You'd better be right."
The sounders came on like a black tide. In ten seconds they would reach Confluence Center. Jeff could see beyond the maws the long, dark sides, stretching away into the distance and marked by patterns of lighter dots and swirls. He could see the eight tendrils, their blue-white and green-white whiskers distorting space around them. The nearest sounders were so close, he could look down the open gullets to a region of obsidian blackness, and see within them occasional glints of faint iridescence.
The nearest sounder was another giant. It raced in, all dilating mouth. And then, after a few long seconds, it began to slow. For a while it held steady, tendrils extended as though tasting the space around it. At last, when Jeff felt he had to breathe or burst, the sounder turned. He saw its vast sides, mottled and scaled and marked by strange spirals. And then it was retreating from Confluence Center.
Connie Cheever took a long, deep breath as though she, like Jeff, was learning again how to work her lungs. "Hats off to Simon," she whispered. "He was right, they don't like a low-frequency electromagnetic field. Look at them."
Sounder after sounder was approaching Confluence Center. When they reached a certain distance, one by one they slowed and tasted space with those long, impalpable, whisker-like tendrils. And, one by one, they halted, turned, and made a stately departure. Far from the Center, the backdrop of stars and Cloud around each sounder would shiver and twist. A moment later, the sounder called and vanished. The clarity of space faded; there was soon no sign that a sounder had ever been.
Within Confluence Center it should have been a time for relief. Jeff saw no hint of that. Connie sat again in the control chair, fielding a dozen urgent messages from the damaged sectors. A hole, twenty-five meters wide, had been punched right through Sector Four. Forty people had disappeared without trace, and another hundred were badly injured. Sector One had fared even worse. It was simply gone, together with all its equipment and hundreds of colonists. Five adjoining levels had been badly damaged by the same searing blow, and Sector Two was still trying to discover the extent of its loss.
Jeff watched and listened to the reports that streamed in, but he felt only half there. He was numb and exhausted. Lilah was worse off, it hurt when she breathed and she would not let him touch her ribs. But they were the lucky ones. Were Hooglich and Russo alive? Was Simon Macafee, and Billy Jexter? It might be hours before anyone knew.
Confluence Center had survived the battle with the Space Navy fleet; maybe it had even "won." But at a terrible price.
To Jeff's relief, Hooglich entered the control room. She had removed her suit, and her black face and arms were streaked with grey powder and what looked like drying blood. She came forward, slumped into a chair, and shook her head. "Hundreds or thousands of people lost here, and on them ships. Some of my best jinner buddies."
"I know." Connie Cheever broke off from rapping out streams of terse instructions. "It's an appalling tragedy. There were good officers and people in the Sol fleet, good as our people here. Most of them were just doing their jobs. Any feedback?"
"Not yet. Too soon. Lures may be working, but we won't know for a day or two. Macafee says—"
"He's alive? You're sure of that?"
"Sure am. I saw him, cool as liquid helium. Takes more than a battle to rattle him. He says the lure we set here would only have had time to call locally. If the sounders go back where they came from, or to one of our other lures, they'll be near a Cloud reef. But if a sounder made an interstellar hop, or decided to go extragalactic . . ." Hooglich blew out her fat cheeks and wriggled her shoulders against the chair back as though they were paining her. "The only hope would be to pump up Confluence Center again to high energy, and see if we can call 'em back."
Jeff had an awful thought. "Myron. My cousin. He was on Captain Duval's ship . . . ."
"We don't know that," Connie said. "He came here on the Dreadnought with Duval, but then Duval switched to the orbital fort. Maybe your cousin switched, too. He could be on one of the ships that escaped. I'll try to find out for you. We have to open communication with them anyway, see which of the survivors need help. Most of them took off at accelerations enough to burn out the drive. They'll be hanging helpless."
"Like we were, on the Aurora." Hooglich stood up. "Seems like years ago. I ought to say, let 'em rot. But I can't. I'd like to help them. Maybe we can jury-rig something, enough to let them crawl back to the node."
"No." Connie Cheever stood up also. "I know how you feel, you want to help your friends. But we are still at war with the Sol government. They did terrible damage to us, while we didn't want to hurt them in any way. Until that's resolved, I am going to blockade the node. Nothing comes through from Sol without our permission. No ship of the fleet will go back."
"But people on those ships may be badly hurt. They may be dying."
"I didn't say we wouldn't help them. We will. As soon as we've done what
we can for our own, we'll provide humanitarian and medical aid to them. Nannies, too, if they'll agree to it. But their drives stay dead. The node will be guarded with a sounders' lure. So far as Sol is concerned, the Central Command fleet was routed, demoralized, and captured. If we choose to do so, it can be annihilated. I'll take a couple of navy eyewitnesses with me, who can vouch for all of this."
"Take them?" Lilah asked. She spoke in a weak, pained voice, but at least she spoke. Jeff felt his spirits rise. Maybe she had nothing worse than bruises.
"To Sol." Connie met her daughter's gaze. "That's where I have to go."
"But it's dangerous."
"I don't think so. Not when we have half their fleet as hostages."
"Why can't you negotiate here, with Duval or whoever will take over if he's gone?"
"Because Duval isn't the key. He was only following orders, and I'm sure those came from Sol-side. That's where we must do our talking. And as soon as possible. I can't hold a Central Command fleet—what's left of it—forever. We have to reach an agreement with the Sol government. And since I won't let them through the node to come here, someone must go there. Someone who can speak for the Cloud."
"Mother—" Lilah began. But Jeff cut her off.
"You have to go." He moved to stand between Lilah and Connie. "I have to go, too. Back home I've been branded a renegade and a traitor, guilty of negligence on the Aurora and of desertion from the navy."
"Certainly." Connie nodded. "After the negotiation is completed, when it's safe for you—"
"No." Jeff interrupted the general administrator of the Messina Dust Cloud without hesitation. "I must go as soon as possible. My mother is on Earth, alone and maybe desperately ill. The reports accusing me of treason could be killing her. I have to see her and explain what really happened."
"It won't work, Jeff. Suppose you did go with the negotiation party. You can't just arrive in the Sol system and demand transportation to Earth."
"Yes, I can." Jeff gave Connie and Lilah a grim and humorless smile. "Though I agree that you and Hooglich couldn't." He turned to the jinner. "Could you?"
"No way. Try it, and I'd be straight in the can."
"But I can. Remember who I am. I'm Jefferson Kopal, one of the almighty Kopals who run Kopal Transportation and half the Space Navy. Maybe I'll be court-martialed when I reach Earth; for all I know they'll want to execute me. But until I'm tried, and until I'm found guilty, I'll be treated like royalty. I can make things easier for you when you get Sol-side. I'll make sure you are talking to the right people. I can tell you who you can't trust, who the snakes are—I'm afraid it's mostly my own family."
Connie's eyes locked onto his, and he did not flinch. "I see," she said at last. "We'll have to discuss this. But not now. There are more urgent items on my agenda. Go with Lilah, and we'll talk later."
Jeff nodded. He held his arm out, so that Lilah could hold on to it and limp alongside him. He would settle for Connie's promise of future discussion. She was going to give him an argument, he was sure of it. No matter when that began or how long it took, he would be ready.
Being born a Kopal was a nuisance, a burden, and a torment that no one in his right mind would ever choose; but sometimes, just when you felt ready to curse your name and household and all that they stood for, the name might prove a blessing and a boon.
Chapter Twenty-Three
JEFF was in the study center when Lilah brought him the news. Told to stay out of the way while the cleanup and repair work were going on, he had been sweating over the design of Logan empathy circuits. Somehow they used a combination of quantum effects and probabilities to produce classical logic. He had been going crazy trying to understand how they did it, and the interruption was welcome.
"Yes!" He smacked his fist onto the desk when he heard Lilah's news. "I'm going! I wonder what I said that persuaded her? In our last meeting she was like a stone wall."
"Sorry, superman, but you had nothing to do with it. In fact, an hour ago Muv still seemed determined that you wouldn't go."
"Why? She knows I could be useful."
"Useful? Neither useful nor ornamental." Lilah stuck her tongue out at him. She was hyper, a side effect of the nannies that were still doing repair work on her ribs. "It would be too dangerous, Muv said. Too dangerous to you. That's your own fault. You were the one who told us that you were supposed to die when the fleet came."
"That was Hooglich's theory, not mine. I think I was more like bait, to persuade people on Earth that a fleet had to be sent to the Cloud to bring me back. But that's all over, since they surrendered."
"Some people Sol-side may not agree. The story you have to tell could still hurt them."
"It could. And it will. But if your mother insisted that I couldn't go, and now I can . . . ."
"Don't thank her, or me. Thank Simon Macafee."
"You've seen him?"
"I sure have. He wandered in when Mother and I were eating breakfast, and announced that he ought to head Sol-side, and you should go with him."
"But he's the one they were after in the first place. He's the key to the Anadem field, and he's halfway to understanding the sounders."
"Exactly what Muv said. If he goes, how do we know they won't keep him and pick his brains forever? Simon didn't turn a hair. He said he'd be perfectly safe, and so will you. But when Muv asked him how he could be so sure, he just gave her that patented blank look. You know the one."
Jeff, recalling those distant, pensive eyes, nodded. "Why does he want to go?"
"He didn't say. But when Muv told him, no, definitely no, he shouldn't go and couldn't go, he looked at me in a pointed sort of way and asked for a private two minutes. Then they threw me out—halfway through my meal. Two minutes, it took more like half an hour, and when I was finally allowed back in my food was cold and everything had changed. Muv still seemed doubtful, but she agreed that if Cloud technology becomes part of a negotiation—and they think it will—she won't be able to handle it. Nobody can but Simon. Nobody else comes close with that scientific gobbledygook you two love so much."
Jeff felt sure that the last comment came from Lilah, rather than her mother. But he was feeling too pleased to protest, or to worry much about the reasons for Connie Cheever's change of mind. "I'm going," he said again.
"I know you are. Lucky beast, you don't have to rub it in. But you have to make me a promise—two promises."
"Sure. Anything." In his present mood, he meant it.
"First, promise that you'll come back."
"Of course I will."
"Good." Lilah grabbed his arm and started to swing herself around him, then grabbed at her rib cage. "Oof. Can't do that yet. And promise that when you do come back, next time you go to Earth you'll take me with you."
"It's a promise."
The pledge came out easily, and Lilah's answering smile was like the sun; but as Jeff spoke, he felt the chill of doubt. In a day or two he would be shipping back to the solar system and to Earth, to clear his name. He was certainly innocent. But suppose that he was not believed—that it came down to his word, alone, against the combined accusations of Eliot Dufferin and Cousin Myron and Uncle Giles?
Then he would face, at best, a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge from the navy. He would not be going to the Messina Dust Cloud—or anywhere else—for a long time.
That had been eight days ago. On the flight from Confluence Center to Node 23, Jeff's worries about what lay ahead strengthened. Once, his biggest worry in life had been acceptance into the Space Navy. The idea of dishonorable discharge—to a Kopal, the ultimate disgrace—had never occurred to him.
Now he had to fight to prevent it.
Again and again, he went over in his mind the statement that he would make at his hearing. He did not propose to offer one word more or less than the truth. But how would his accusers testify? Captain Dufferin would certainly present his own actions in the best possible way. That meant he would blame Jeff for what had happened
to The Aurora, while the only people who could refute that and support Jeff's version of events were Russo and Hooglich—neither of whom would be present.
It did not help that Jeff was left to himself for most of the journey. Connie Cheever and Simon Macafee were on board, but they barely acknowledged his presence. They huddled aft in private meetings, only emerging for food and sleep. On the one occasion when Jeff caught Simon alone, he held out the card left with Billy Jexter and tried to ask what it meant.
Macafee was clearly in a hurry. He cut Jeff off in midsentence and grabbed the little oblong of plastic from his hand. "I wanted you to have this in case I didn't come back. I did come back. So now you don't need it. I'll take it."
"But what was I supposed to do with it? And what does the card mean?"
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