Z-Sting

by Ian Wallace

  Fortescue, eyes wide, slowly swung around to Croyd. “You think you can make her—decent again?”

  Herod with a bleak smile: “You think you can make her crack the whip on Ziska again?”

  Croyd: “If now she is old indecent, still her corrupt organization rules Erth, and that is bad for Rab and Vash too; and even as is, Herod, she may well beat you out for the Interplanetary contract. Win or lose, better she should be decent and sharp!”

  Herod, arising: “I’m reflecting that your little problem is to make her decent and sharp before she kills you. And really, I have to excuse myself now, I’m not as young as I was. Fortescue, I leave you with Croyd who isn’t as old as he was.”

  They were warm friends now, Fortescue and Croyd. Herod had assigned her to him full time, professionally speaking. Fortescue was not only an M.D., but also an R.N. with a certificate in physical therapy. During eight hours daily they had been working each other to death, or rather, to life: rejuvenating life for him, illuminating new life for her: what were his inner resources that had brought him down in a few days from mummy senility to the tentative vigor of a remarkably healthy-wispy nono-genarian? Just now, for instance, as they stood barefoot before his photon fire, his reddish-hair-downy skull was level with the top of her high-piled cloud of dark hair, and she was a tall woman; his bony shoulders threatened to burst out his lemon-yellow shirt; and when now she slid a white-satined arm around his waist while he pleasantly reciprocated, the feel of him was skeletal ribs and hip bones, but the ribs were wide apart and the bones were big and he stood as erect as a military youngster . . .

  His photon fire. When Herod had departed, Croyd had tottered to his bar and made new drinks for both of them; whereafter they had kicked off their sandals, and he had touched a wrist-rheostat to lower the room lights to candle-points while the pseudofire had warmed into new life like his new life. Fortescue could have loved him; but she was determined not to do so, for at least two reasons: she thought it might be physically dangerous for him, and she was in no mood to enter into emotional involvement. Let their friendship nourish itself; it was good.

  He said: “I depart tomorrow.”

  “I know.”

  “If I don’t ever see you again, I will be sorry. No, I’ll correct that. If I don’t see you again, it will mean that I am too dead to regret it.”

  “Don’t die on me, Croyd. Come see me. Or send me an address and mention a date, and I will come.”

  “Unless you’re involved?”

  “If I’m involved just then, we’ll work out an alternate date, and I’ll come.”

  “It’s a good thing I didn’t know you before I met my wife T’kotu. I’d have gone for you, and it would have been very good, but I’d have missed fifty years of an incomparable thing.”

  “Marta Evans is your great-granddaughter by T’kotu?”

  “No. By a prior marriage.”

  “Wheels in wheels! And T’kotu is dead now?”

  “Seventy-five years dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. I damn near died too, but not quite.”

  “I repeat, don’t die on me now, Croyd—but don’t go for possession of me, either. I’m a loner.”

  “I know. I respect that. Friends, right?”

  “Exactly. Croyd—”

  “Fortescue?”

  “How old are you, really?”

  “I think, approximately two hundred and three—give or take a couple.”

  She grinned up at him: “Impossible! I’d have said, not a day over ninety-five!” She went sober: “I wish I knew a lot more about your inward powers.”

  “Psychophysical, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “More psycho, or more physical?”

  “Well—”

  “Put down your drink,” he said, discarding his.

  She obeyed, warning with some concern: “Watch yourself, my friend, I don’t want to lose a patient—”

  “I am only going to demonstrate my psychophysical strength by lifting you off the floor.”

  Alarmed: “Croyd, Croyd, I weigh sixty kilograms, you’re still only a weak fifty with an iffy heart—”

  He swung her aloft, cutting it off; she found herself lying back languidly, hammocked in his arms.

  Her hand same up to touch his cheek. “How’d you do that?”

  “Another little goody on my wrist rheostat. I can screen off room gravity, too; intentionally not all the way, though—”

  “So now I weigh maybe twenty?”

  “That’s about right, you know. Any less would be too little.”

  “Croyd—dear Croyd—listen, my friend: only tonight, eh? No long-range ideas?”

  ‘Tonight is what it will be tonight, good lovely Fortescue, with nothing long-range except friendship.”

  Way back in 2409—when Thoth Evans was a vegetable on Rab, when Herod’s father was still in utero, and when young Marta Evans had no clipping bureau—Science Digest carried the following as a news filler:

  Crew members of a space freighter forced down for repairs on Neptune have reported encounters with Erthmen who identified themselves as a geodetic expedition. A routine check with Science Coordination at Manhattan’s Mare Stellarum headquarters uncovered a Neptunian survey permit issued in 2400 to a Dr. Hidalgo Matonic by Erthworld Council. Dr. Matonic was operating with funds provided by the University of Senevendia. No further information is presently available.

  Neither the Science Digest nor any other publication seems to have followed up this minor item. Had this item or a follow-up come to the attention of Marta Evans while she was still youthful and news-nosey, there might have been no need for the timely rebirth of Croyd.

  A much later clipping, from page one of Figaro for 10 July 2431, was however in Herod’s knowledge and possession, and Croyd saw it:

  Nereid, smallest satellite of Neptune, is being equipped to house the top executive operations of Erthworld,

  The startling announcement was made today in person by Marta Evans, energetic young Chairman of Mare Stellarum which has, under the Union President, governed Erthworld since 2419. Marta (she prefers this simple styling) is great-granddaughter to Dr. Thoth Evans who originated Mare Stellarum and invented COMCORD; Dr. Evans remains an invalid under Centauri government supervision on Rab.

  Marta discounted the distance from Nereid to Erth, which averages thirty travel hours and more than four radio hours. She asserted that the slight inconveniences would be far outweighed by the facilitation of relationships with other star systems, particularly Centauri. She added that the middle administration of Mare Stellarum will continue to be housed in Manhattan. Nereid is four billion kilometers from Erth, on an average.

  At one point, Marta displayed historical perspective with a wry unsmiling comment that a few hundred years ago she would have insisted on being called Ms. Evans, Chairperson. This remark sent reporters scuttling to libraries . . .

  For some reason, Croyd in his reading missed the significance of the radio-time factor, possibly because, in this early stage of his youthening process, his psychophysical age still exceeded a century. Younger readers may wish to backcheck (not far) for early inferences relative to the location of the lost Z-sting.

  Rehab Action Three

  SPACETIME INVASION OF NEREID

  Sol System, 8-21 May 2475

  The peculiar imbalance of COMCORD, which was always supposed to keep itself in balance as a matter of well-informed laissez-faire, had in fact been engaging part of the attention of Marta’s Internal Security Ministry, prime component of her Mare Stellarum and headed by her chief adviser, Dr. Ziska.

  Marta’s External Security Ministry, a secondary but nevertheless important component which was not headed by Ziska, had simultaneously been interesting itself in a mysterious frigate-fitting on Rab. This event had drawn notice because all events on Rab lately were of interest to Mare Stellarum, its chairman Herod being Marta’s prime competitor for the Interplanetary Union contr
act.

  As yet, Internal and External Securities had not seen point in comparing notes on the two not-evidently-related situations. The leaders of these two ministries resented each other almost to the point of non-communication, despite Marta’s general order to clear everything through Ziska.

  Nor had either ministry seen fit to notify Marta. Ziska felt that the small if significant COMCORD imbalance merited his own watching but would correct itself; External Security wasn’t ready to find that the Rab frigate constituted any sort of threat to anything.

  This frigate named Mazurka departed Rab on 8 May 2475.

  It took a radio message four and a half years to travel from Rab to the Sol System at light velocity. This kind of time the Mazurka, with its enormous translight velocity, was easily able to beat: it made the transit to the outer Sol System orbits in seven days. But intelligence concerning the frigate Mazurka departed Rab six hours after frigate-embarkation in two robot carriers whose speed was not limited by inertial shields potent enough to protect human passengers. These carriers gained on Mazurka, passed her, and arrived at Nereid a day ahead of the frigate.

  Why two robot carriers? When Marta’s intelligence agent on Rab had learned about the frigate, he had restrained an impulse to send a dispatch to Nereid immediately: Herod legally monitored all such carriers, and it wasn’t worth offending Herod since the frigate’s mission might be legitimate. He therefore called on his opposite number in Herod’s organization; and Herod’s woman, Herod-coached, agreed that simultaneous independent reports might be politic. So the two parallel dispatches arrived at Nereid separately together.

  The dispatch-duality in itself aroused interest, and Nereid’s External Security put a special watch on the already visible pip of the Mazurka via teleradar pending analysis of the messages. By now, Mazurka had traversed the four and a half light years and was passing the thirteenth planet of Sol (Nereid-sized Maya), braked way down to 2 C.

  Three hours later, a deputy minister of Mare Stellarum External Security was considering the dispatches with accompanying vector analysis. The messages agreed in every significant detail on crew, cargo, and equipment. The dispatch from Mare Stellarum Intelligence on Rab added: “Mission unknown. Also unknown is a very old man who was frequently with Chairman Herod during the ship’s outfitting and who embarked with the ship; his identity was given as Croyd, a superannuated fourth-class custodian, but this appears to be a pseudonym; we are checking.”

  The dispatch from Galactic specified the mission as: “Studies of megalopolitan tempopatterns and their disturbance effects on hyper-laser interplanetary communication, Erth and Moon being obviously the best bases for this type of research. We will conduct a side study on translight communication.” A flight plan within the Sol System was included, with provision for “flights of opportunity whose plans and purposes will always be communicated immediately to Manhattan, to Moonbase, or to Nereid.”

  License for such interstellar scientific surveys was provided under the loose linkage of Rab and Erth within the Sol/Centauri League. This registration appeared in order, though a bit abrupt. The deputy minister of Nereid decided that it all looked reasonably kosher except on two counts: there had been these two simultaneous reports; and the estimated costs of ship, equipment, and cruise were exceptionally high. He shot a hyper-laser communique to Moonbase (about four hours two minutes en route, Nereid being a satellite of Sol-peripheral Neptune). He ordered triple-duty monitoring with twice-daily reports to himself. And he notified his chief, the Minister of External Security, with recommendation that Chairman Marta be informed.

  No communication went to Ziska, who was growing restive over the COMCORD imbalance which now teetered on 1•2 against Senevendia. The omission was a great pity: Ziska, with his COMCORD interest, could hardly have overlooked the Mazurka's tempopattern research. But Ziska, who chronically overplayed his hand with External Security, had brought his Coventry upon himself.

  By then the Mazurka had reached the orbit of Pluto, still braking, now at sub-light velocity.

  Entry into Sol System was almost a cut-and-dried procedure: the executive officer, Lieutenant-Commander Pete Mulcahy, could bring it off with precision unaided. The skipper of the Mazurka, Commander Dana Marana (tall, dark, sober, young-mature) took occasion to prowl his frigate, inventorying, musing.

  Some aspects of the equipment were unusual. For instance:

  I-ray equipment. It wouldn’t work aboard the frigate, it was cargo, they were going to use it in an experimental installation on Moon. It was supposed (fantasy!) to transmit messages faster than light.

  The megalopolitan tempopattern sampler. It would work aboard the frigate, indeed it was billed as the central equipment for their scientific mission. But still . . .

  The autocrew. Within limits, it would fly the ship without human crew help. Marana well understood the principles and procedures, he could even repair malfunctions; nevertheless, the autocrew device was strictly experimental for anything much larger than a robot dispatch carrier; and so far as he knew, this was its maiden presence aboard a seriously operational starship. He grinned grimly: the unions would be annoyed. He sobered: nobody had briefed him as to when and under what conditions he should use this autocrew . . .

  . . . Except that he carried a superannuated fourth-class custodian, stores, who somehow seemed to enjoy the special confidence of Chairman Herod. This custodian, it appeared, had required the presence of all three pieces of special equipment, along with some others; and in due course, this custodian would be telling Commander Marana how to deploy this equipment.

  There were some highly oddball associated considerations. For instance, it appeared that this custodian had invented the i-ray equipment years ago, along with some spin-offs like iradio and ivisiradio, and had stashed the prototypes in a cave on Rab. The custodian and the Chairman had tested it somehow with respect to Sol, making use of precalculated star positions . . .

  It was a weird mission, a weird one. But it was Chairman Herod who had personally dispatched it. Under the circumstances, Marana was prepared even to take orders from the superannuated fourth-class custodian, stores.

  Up to a point . . .

  Erth was the richest planet among the thirty-nine trading planets of thirty-one stars in Sol’s quadrant of the galaxy. Many of these planets had been colonized by Erth since the primitive fusion-drive beginnings of star travel in the late twenty-first century. Moonbase had been essential to these beginnings, because Moon’s enormously reduced escape velocity economized on inefficient fusion fuel while her lack of atmosphere obviated streamlining and the extra weight of heat-resistant hulls. These values of Moon were almost eliminated by the modern repulsor-drive which required no initial blast off and could blimp-nose a starship leisurely upward from a high-grav planet through dense atmosphere into space freedom for high accelerations; nevertheless, for swift economical comings and goings, Moon’s value had not disappeared entirely, and she was the most thoroughly established of all space bases. Moonbase was now the prime astronaval base for Erthworld’s fleet and, by cooperative charter arrangements, also for Sol/ Centauri Cooperative Task Forces.

  Astronaval HQ was located near the dry periphery of the Sea of Tranquillity, a convenient yet safe hundred kilometers from the jagged rim of the Julius Caesar Crater. (On the moon of Erth, the mountains were jagged.) At a reconnaissance point atop the Caesar rim, a lieutenant-commander identified the approaching Mazurka and immediately notified his commanding officer (who was only a captain, a low-Joe at brass-bristling Moonbase). The captain notified a commodore at HQ, who notified a rear admiral, who felt authoritative enough to issue personnel and equipment disposition orders before notifying an admiral, whose lofty rank permitted him to activate predetermined cruising fleet dispositions before informing his fleet admiral, who scrutinized all the dispositions and approved them officially before reporting to his chief of staff, who felt secure enough (he would soon retire) merely to shrug and send word to Manhattan and to
Nereid.

  When first identified from the mountaintop, the Mazurka had been crossing Mars orbit (then and there about 225,000,000 kilometers out), still featherbraking. Even at such medium-close range, while observation and positioning within a thousand-kilometer probability-sphere were possible, positive identification of a silent object was not, because even a laser spreads a little; however, at this time Mazurka began to send out self-identifying signals.

  Only four hours later (because her incoming interstellar velocity had been greater than you could attain within the Sol System from a standing start), Mazurka snarled into Moonbase and nosed like a zeppelin into position at a mooring tower. (Her contours were teardrop-conventional: she was a Rab ship and had to take off from Rab’s gravity and atmosphere; she was three hundred meters long with a forty-meter beam.) Her skipper signaled from within: “Mazurka of Rabfleet, Commander Marana commanding, Marana speaking. Request scansion and subsequent permission to report to Headquarters.”

  “Request granted; stand by for scansion,” responded a base captain; and he proceeded to flood the hull of the Mazurka with the most magnificent battery of rekamatic internal scanners that Marana had experienced in twelve years of commissioned service. In precisely fourteen seconds it was done; and Marana had an uneasy feeling that every trifling detail from the file marks on the hansel bolts to the contents of his own libido were molecularly immortalized on scanflakes.

  The base captain stood now at mast-end of a flyway to the main hatch, flanked by a commander and a lieutenant-commander. In a fine simple old traditional ceremony dating back to the twenty-second century, he bawled: “Commander Marana, pray emerge!” His flanking officers snapped to salute while the captain stood at attention.

  Marana—a big flashing-handsome thirty-three-year-old Senevendian darkling—stepped onto the flyway and saluted the captain, who countersaluted. The captain and his flanking officers and Marana then snapped to; and Marana gravely traversed the spiderskein flyway (moon-surface two hundred meters below) and shook hands with the captain and the two officers in descending order of rank. (In cases where both flanking officers happened to enjoy the same rank, a visiting skipper had to make a snap date-of-rank judgment.)