by Larry Niven
THE LITTLE SHIP was how Thssthfok remembered it, only messier.
Some of the mess was of Thssthfok’s doing. He had emptied a large bag—flour, whatever that was—to carry his supplies. White dust covered him. The far more serious disorder was in the cockpit. The command console had been opened and taken half apart! Cable bundles snaked out of the cabinet to tens of instruments and gauges.
Through the canopy, he saw the too-familiar walls of his onetime cell.
Before Thssthfok’s latest escape, Eric had been suited up. Thssthfok doubted a mere spacesuit offered protection against the nothingness of hyperspace. And Sigmund’s mysterious demo must take place in normal space, where the Pak could see it.
The path to freedom was clear.
He flipped over the stepping disc to disable it, then set to work reassembling the little ship’s flight controls.
“THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING.” Sigmund broadcast over the intercom and the ship’s public channel. If Thssthfok was alive and onboard, he would hear. “In one minute, I’ll open the entire ship to vacuum. Tell us where you are.”
No response.
“Kirsten, are you still suited up?”
“Yes. But, Sigmund . . .”
“We don’t know what Thssthfok is doing. I’ll not put either of us at risk again. He’s a lot less dangerous trapped in a rescue bag.”
“Opening the cargo bay means losing Brennan’s old singleship, too.”
“It is far too heavy, Kirsten,” Jeeves said. “I will double gravity in the hold to be sure.”
Sigmund said, “Jeeves, disable the interior emergency hatches. Open the air locks and the cargo-hold doors.” To Kirsten, he added, “I have weapons. I’ll be outside the engine-room door in a few minutes. Once you’re armed, we’ll sweep the ship end to end.” And though he took no pride in it, Sigmund half hoped to find Thssthfok dead.
THSSTHFOK WORKED FEVERISHLY, ignoring Sigmund’s threat. The little ship had an environmental system and its reservoirs were full.
Strobing red light flooded the canopy and an alarm wailed. The large exterior hatch began to rise and Thssthfok’s weight doubled. The little ship’s hull rang like a gong under the hail of loose tools and equipment being sucked out into space.
The hail ended. The audible alarm trailed off to silence.
What the disassembled console did not tell him, the spliced-in human instruments did. The deuterium tanks were two-thirds full. The drive appeared operational. The radio and comm laser passed muster—and at close range, the latter would serve as a weapon. The flight controls were operable, merely exposed for examination. (Well, more than flight controls. Things he did not immediately recognize could be examined later.)
And now Sigmund had opened the cargo hold’s exterior hatch. That saved Thssthfok the time to bypass the controls and loss-of-pressure alarms. A touch of the takeoff-and-landing jets would ease him from the cargo bay.
Stars beckoned.
The humans could have killed him. He had provoked them often enough. Thssthfok felt a pang of remorse, but he would not allow pursuit. His breeders were depending on him.
At least the end would be quick. Thssthfok flipped on the radio. “I’m sorry.”
He ignited the fusion drive and a plasma plume hotter than the surface of a star erupted into Don Quixote.
ACROSS DON QUIXOTE—and throughout the computing complex that housed Jeeves—alarms flared. Short circuits. Open circuits. Electrical fires. Popped, welded, and vanished circuit breakers. Temperature alarms. Equipment malfunctions. Tanks overpressure and burst. Comm fallouts. Faults beyond Jeeves’s ability to categorize.
If only the hull would burst, it would release the plasma. But General Products had built too well. The hull trapped the plasma and everything that the plasma vaporized and ionized. In an instant, the trapped heat and radiation would destroy him. In an instant, he could not begin to calculate the optimal response.
He would do what he could.
He canceled the override that had held open external and emergency hatches. The doors would close on their own—unless they melted or warped from the intense heat. The main cargo-hold hatch jammed immediately.
The main fusion reactor had shut down on its own, but he dumped deuterium and tritium to space, against the remote possibility that ricocheting plasma could somehow fuse any of it. He flushed nitrogen throughout the crew areas for the little cooling that would provide. He vented oxygen to space, where it could not feed fires.
He fired main thrusters, fleeing the searing plasma. One thruster sputtered and quit. The rest quickly followed. The ship tumbled wildly.
He sent short laser bursts to the comm satellites deployed above Niflheim, hoping he had retrieved the most important files. So many memory banks had failed, he could not be certain.
All of this was what Jeeves believed Sigmund would have wanted him to do.
Then thought ceased.
IMPOSSIBLE GLARE! Sigmund’s visor turned opaque. Intense heat washed over him. He stumbled through the hatch Kirsten had just unlocked, into the engine room. She slammed the hatch behind him. The ship shuddered and shook beneath them. A sudden hot wind buffeted him. It couldn’t be oxygen; in this heat, something would have gone up in flames.
“I’m sorry.” Regret had not stayed Thssthfok’s hand. What had he done?
Sigmund’s visor cleared enough to show the hatch glowing orange and starting to sag. Gravity vanished, revealing the ship had gone into a wild tumble. He bounced off a bulkhead. Something clanged off his helmet.
Now the hatch blazed cherry red.
Kirsten snagged him from the air. “Boot magnets!” When his feet slapped to the deck, she led him behind some massive hunk of equipment he didn’t recognize. A gale howled in his suit, but the cooling unit was overmatched. The air in his suit grew hotter by the second.
“We’ll make it,” he told Kirsten.
False hope was all that Sigmund had to offer. Things were about to end very badly—again.
59
Activity across the ice came to an abrupt standstill. Cacophony overwhelmed the public comm channel. Then Eric burst from within the cluster of drive modules. He bounced in flat arcs toward the nearest stepping disc, cursing Sigmund and bargaining with the universe.
All from “I’m sorry.” Er’o was still grappling with the implications when Haven’s transmitter overpowered the rest.
“Quiet!” Minerva shouted. “I have urgent news. Immediately after Thssthfok spoke, there was a data dump from Don Quixote. Comm dropped mid-transfer, and we can’t reestablish the link. I have crew studying the data. Almost simultaneously with all this, a neutrino source began accelerating away from the planet. A ship, I assume, but it does not respond to hails.”
“A relay problem?” Er’o asked.
“The comm buoys are nominal,” Minerva said. “We’ve relayed test messages all the way around Niflheim.”
Eric called out, huffing as he ran. “Is the neutrino source Don Quixote?”
“Unknown,” Minerva said. “It will be out of Niflheim’s shadow in a few minutes.”
If not Don Quixote, then who? Another ramscoop, perhaps, waiting in ambush to surprise the ramscoop sneaking up to this planet. Instead, it ambushed Don Quixote before Sigmund, Kirsten, or Jeeves could get out a coherent message.
Possible, but Er’o did not believe it. “Based on its last known course, when will Don Quixote come over the horizon?”
“Two minutes, ten seconds,” Minerva said.
Eric skidded to a stop on the disc. It was powered up and in transmit-only mode, to keep Thssthfok from coming down. Eric stood there, screaming.
The transport should not have worked, whether Don Quixote remained in orbit or was racing away. The velocity mismatch was far too high. Er’o was not supposed to understand that, and kept the observation to himself. Had Er’ o’s mate been aboard, he would have tried, too.
A timer ticked down in one sensor cluster’s augmented vision. As the count approached zero,
Er’o netted to a telescope that Minerva had aimed.
A bit late, more than a bit off course, a tumbling cylinder appeared. It was eerily mottled, and random patches glowed fiery hot in far red. Don Quixote, everything and everyone aboard surely destroyed.
With a whimper, Baedeker fell to the ice and rolled himself into a tight ball. He had seen the image, too.
A second virtual counter approached zero, and a blue-white streak climbed over the horizon. A fusion flame. “No widespread magnetic field,” Minerva noted. “Not a ramscoop.”
“The singleship!” Eric howled. “I killed her!”
ON COMM, CHAOS REASSERTED ITSELF. They should fly to Don Quixote and search for survivors. They should pursue whoever streaked away on that searing blue-white exhaust. And most of the voices: They should run for home—immediately.
Eric raged with dread and anger. Baedeker was lost to fear. Minerva, like all the rest, waited for someone else to make a decision.
Craning a tubacle, Er’o looked about the frozen waste. That left . . . him.
“Quiet, please!” With only a suit radio for amplification, Er’o had to keep calling. “Everyone, quiet! Calm down!” As the din ebbed, he added, “Hurry. We have to finish our work here.”
“You’re crazy!” Eric yelled. “We have to rescue Kirsten and Sigmund.”
The wreckage remained far-red hot. Could anyone aboard still live? Er’o said gently, “I’m sorry, Eric. The ship must cool before we can try.” If it even cools enough for the attempt before the oncoming ramscoop makes us evacuate. “Kl’o, Ng’o, please complete checkout—”
Eric turned and ran toward Haven. “Checkout? Everything has changed! Thssthfok is getting away! He’s running for the Pak fleet with everything he’s learned about us and our technology. And in a few hours, the light from Thssthfok’s fusion drive will reach the incoming ramscoop. That’ll be the end of stealth and magnetic braking. They’ll start their drive and be down our throats all the faster.”
Eric’s frantic words had collapsed two more pressure-suited Citizens into unresponsive balls.
Er’o said, “All the more reason to finish here. The planet-buster is one technology Thssthfok has not seen. We cannot possibly remove everything before the ramscoop arrives. Instead we finish up and set off the weapon. And eliminate Thssthfok in the process.”
New murmurs, with some of the earlier certainty gone.
Er’o tried to bring order. “Kl’o, Ng’o, please complete checkout of the device. Omar, get the Citizens who need help back to Haven. If you are up to it, Eric, review the data dump from Don Quixote. It may offer some clues.”
For a moment, no one moved. Then Omar said, “You heard the starfish. Let’s all get back to work.”
EARNEST ENTREATIES FAILED to coax Baedeker out of a tightly curled ball. Kneading mouths made little impression through the sturdy material of his pressure suit. His heads-up displays reported warm air; his body sensed normal gravity. In his catatonia, unaware, he had been carted aboard Haven. He emptied his mind, seeking to return to oblivion.
Danger! Piercing ululations jerked him back to reality. He whipped out a head and looked around wildly. He was in his cabin. Eric and Minerva stood over him. The warning shout trailed off from Minerva’s mouths.
“I need your help,” Eric said. He remained suited except for the helmet in his hands. “You can go to pieces later.”
“Wh-what can I do?” Baedeker stammered. What could anyone do against the Pak? Even Sigmund could not control a single naked Pak prisoner.
“Don Quixote isn’t in a proper orbit,” Eric said. “Within thirty minutes it impacts Niflheim. We’re going to rescue Kirsten and Sigmund first.”
What did it matter? Why did they bother him? Baedeker felt himself drifting back to oblivion, but he managed to ask, “Why me?”
“When we blow the planet-buster, it will destroy everything. Niflheim. The ramscoop that’s a few hours away. Thssthfok and the ship he escaped in. Everything except . . .”
“Except what? Oh. The hull of Don Quixote.” Even in Baedeker’s near stupor, any possibility the Pak would recover a nearly impregnable hull seemed like a bad idea. “Surely it cannot still fly.”
“Enough.” Eric kicked Baedeker in the flank, and Minerva whistled in surprise. “Get up. Your task is to destroy the hull once we get Kirsten and Sigmund off.”
“I cannot—”
The next kick hurt. Minerva shifted his weight nervously between his hooves, wanting to intervene but at a loss what to do.
Eric said, “New Terra has very few ships with General Products hulls. Most were turned to powder at the outset of the last war. Sigmund thought—he thinks—you know the code to shut down the embedded power plant that reinforces the hull super-molecule.”
Sigmund was almost right, but a built-in code suggested premeditation. Who would make a ship that an errant data-entry error could turn to dust? There was no self-destruct code.
What Baedeker had recognized was an unintended back door to the microprocessors embedded in the hull to control the reinforcing power plant. Target a ship with a comm laser tuned to the right frequency; some of the light penetrated the photonic components. After that, it was a matter of simple programming to shut down the power plant. Eliminating the vulnerability would take replacing all the ships built over millennia.
Of a trillion Citizens of the Concordance, perhaps five knew that secret. But why did Eric even need to be told? His people’s ancestral ramscoop had been kept for study inside a General Products #4 hull just like Haven’s—until Eric and Kirsten broke it out. “You already know how.”
“Long Pass was stationary, held in place by massive struts. The power plant was a fixed target, only a few hundred feet away. I used Long Pass’s comm laser to overload or overheat the power plant until it shut down. We’ll never be able to hold focus on the power plant with Don Quixote tumbling like that.” Eric pulled back his boot again. “So it’s up to you.”
Baedeker’s method also worked at a distance, but tumbling would defeat him, too. Could Haven swoop around the tumbling hulk, matching the motion? What pilot would be insane enough to attempt that maneuver? With a will of its own, Baedeker’s exposed head inched closer to his belly.
Someone rapped on the closed cabin door. “Four minutes,” she called.
It took two more kicks to get Baedeker moving. By then he had figured out that Haven was almost at its rendezvous with the wreck. That the only way to destroy its hull was to carry a laser aboard. And that boarding meant a spacewalk to the tumbling, still-glowing ship. And yet—
The doomed rescue seemed like a faster demise than being kicked to death by a madman.
WITH A WHISPERED PLEA TO FINAGLE, Eric dove from the gaping mouth of the cargo hold. He vanished into the darkness on invisible wings of compressed air.
Niflheim filled much of the sky, more as an absence of stars than from the feeble glitter of its icy surface. A mile away, what remained of Don Quixote tumbled and rolled. Here and there, within its tortured hull, blotches glowed in angry reds. Moments when the wreck pointed directly at Baedeker, it was as big as NP1 or NP5 seen from Hearth. When he could see the wreck’s full length, it loomed three times larger than Hearth’s closest planetary neighbors.
Baedeker lectured himself, scolded himself, and whimpered. He reminded himself what was at stake: everything. He swung his necks and stomped his hooves. He tried everything that might stampede himself deeper into a fit of mania, and still the wait was all but unbearable.
He remained on Haven with the rest of the rescue team. Eric carried a stepping disc on his back. Everyone else would step across. Assuming Eric made it aboard the wreck.
With his visor turned active, Baedeker zoomed in on the distant speck that was Eric. He had nearly reached the ruined ship. Baedeker’s stomach lurched at the magnified tumbling and rolling.
After a false start, Eric began spiraling toward the wreck, zigzagging to match the ship’s bucking motions. “The m
ain hold reads too hot. I’m entering through the primary air lock.”
Twice Eric rebounded from the hull, cursing. On his third try, with a clang, one magnetized boot grabbed a bulkhead within the air lock. His body went one way while the ship continued another. He spun around his leg as he slammed face-first into the hull. “I’m down,” he gasped.
A minute later, Baedeker stepped across into the wreck. A massive sack slapped his side. Most of the load was two stepping discs. No matter what, he would have a way off this derelict.
Gravity was off. Blue light flickered and flashed from innumerable shorts. Between sparks a sullen red glow seeped down the corridor. Behind the hatch of a nearby storeroom, things thumped and crashed with every wobble of the ship.
Had even Nessus ever attempted anything this crazy?
“Are you all right?” Baedeker asked Eric.
“Broken leg, almost certainly. The armor immobilizes it.”
Baedeker blinked. “Now that a working disc is aboard, others can finish the search. Go back and let an autodoc fix it.”
“When I find Kirsten and Sigmund. Not before. Now get off the disc so that the others can board.”
Baedeker gingerly took two steps down the corridor, boot magnets holding him down. In quick succession, three humans stepped through behind him. “Withdrawing to a safe distance,” Minerva radioed. “We will resume velocity match there.”
The rolling, yawing, pitching, tumbling. . . tried to move Baedeker every direction at once. Steadying himself on three legs was hard. How anyone managed on two was a mystery.
He took two devices from a pressure-suit pocket. “Eric, these are personal stasis-field generators. We use them for medical emergencies.” It was a futile gesture, but all Baedeker had to offer. No one could have survived this catastrophe.
Eric stowed the generators in pockets of his own. “Thanks. Now you have a job to do.”
The embedded power plant was just two decks forward and half a hull circumference away, but at every turn something blocked Baedeker’s path. A buckled bulkhead. Emergency hatches heat-warped in place. Pockets of intolerable heat. Thickets of sparking wires. When no course led where he needed to go, he carved detours with his flashlight laser, its beam focused all the way down to lethal intensity. Over comm, he tracked the similarly slow progress of the searchers, fanning out across the ship.