Do you wish to become invisible? Have no thought of yourself for two years and no one will notice you .
“Meat?” Salli cried, her gaze shifting back and forth between the roast on the table and her husband. “How did you get it?”
Bought it.” Vincen Stafford was smiling. For the first time in two years he was feeling some pride in himself.
“But how? You just can't get meat any more, except in-”
He nodded. “Yeah. The black market.”
“But they don't accept Food Vouchers. And we don't have any money.”
“Yes, we do. I signed up as a pilot for Project Perseus today.”
“You mean that probe ship thing? Oh no, Vin! You can't mean it! It's too dangerous!”
“It's the only thing I know how to do, Salli. And it pays thirty thousand marks a year. They gave me half in advance for signing.”
“But you'll be out there all alone…nobody's ever been out there before.”
“That's why I got such a premium for signing. It's nothing to pilot those one-man ships. All the skill's in the navigation. And that's what I do best. It was made for me! I've got to take it.” The light in his face faded slightly. “Please understand. We need the money…but more than that, I need this job.”
Salli looked up at her husband. She knew he needed the job to feel useful again, to feel he had control over something in his life again, even if it was just a tiny probe ship in the uncharted blackness between the galactic arms. And she knew it would be useless to argue with him. He had signed, he had taken the money, he was going. Make the best of it.
She rose and kissed him.
“Let's get this roast cooking.”
“…And once again there's news from Earth about Eric Boedekker, the wealthy asteroid mining magnate. It seems that he has now sold his fabulous skisland estate to a high bidder in one of the most fantastic auctions in memory. As far as anyone can tell, the estate was the last of the Boedekker holdings to be liquidated, and the former owner is now living in seclusion, address unknown.
“Thus, one of the largest fortunes in human history has been completely liquidated. Whether it sits in an account for future use or has been surreptitiously reinvested remains a tantalizing question. Only Eric Boedekker knows, and no one can find him.
“And here on the out-worlds, Project Perseus is proceeding on schedule. A crew for the fleet of ships has been picked from the host of heroic applicants-most of whom were underqualified-and all that is necessary now is completion of the tiny probe ships themselves…”
It was the same old argument, over and over again. Broohnin was sick of it. So was everyone else. LaNague still refused to let them know where it was all heading. He was promising them the full story by the end of the year, but Broohnin wanted it now. So did Sayers and Doc Zack. Even the Flinters looked a little uncertain.
“But what have we done?” Broohnin said. “The Imperium's inflating itself out of business. But Doc says that'll take another ten years. We can't wait that long!”
“The Imperium will be out of business in two,” LaNague said, calmly, adamantly. “There won't be a trace of it left on Throne or on any other out-world.”
“Doc says that's impossible.” Broohnin turned to Zack. “Right, Doc?” Zack nodded reluctantly. “And Doc's the expert. I'll take his word over yours.”
“With all due respect,” LaNague said, “Doc doesn't know certain things that I know, and without that information, he can't make an accurate projection. If he had it, he'd concur with two years or less as a projected time of collapse.”
“Well, give it to me, then,” Zack said. “This is frustrating as hell to sit around and be in the dark all the time.”
“At the end of this year, you'll know. I promise you.”
From the look on Doc Zack's face, that wasn't what he wanted to hear. Broohnin stepped back and surveyed the group, withholding a smile of approval. He saw LaNague's hold on the movement slipping. His rigid rules of conduct, his refusal to let anyone know the exact nature of his plan for revolution, all were causing dissension in the ranks. Which meant that Broohnin had a chance to get back into the front of everything and run this show the way it should be run.
“We fear Earthie involvement, LaNague.” One of the Flinters had spoken. Broohnin had to squint to see whether it was the male or the female. With the bunned hair and red circles on their foreheads, and their robes and weapons belts, they looked like twins. He noticed the swell of the speaker's chest. It had been Kanya.
“Yes,” Sayers said. “I'm sure Earth's planning right now when and how to move in and take over.”
“I'm sure it is,” LaNague said, concentrating his reply on the silent, standing forms of Josef and Kanya. “But Earth will also be projecting a ten-to twelve-year period before the Imperium smothers in its own mark notes. When it crumbles two years from now, they'll be caught off guard. By the time they get organized, their chance will be gone.”
Doc Zack was speaking through clenched teeth. “But what can you do that will cause it to crumble so quickly?”
“You'll know at the end of the year.”
The meeting broke up then, with the frustrated participants leaving separately, at intervals, via different exits. All that had been decided was that the next Robin Hood robbery should be put off for a while until a new device the Flinters had ordered from their homeworld could be smuggled in. The Flinters had made their own arrangements for delivery, which was expected any day. It would give the Merry Men a totally new approach to robbery. Conventional methods were out now, due to the heavy guard that had been placed on anything that even looked like a currency shipment. The imperial Guard had been caught looking the other way due to the long interval between the second and third heists. It appeared they did not intend to be caught again.
Broohnin watched the two Flinters as they stood by the front exit, waiting for their turn to depart. For all the fear they inspired in him, Broohnin found the Flinters infinitely fascinating. He saw them not as people but as weapons, beautifully honed and crafted, staggeringly efficient. They were killing machines. He wished he could own one. Pulling his courage together, he sauntered over to where they stood.
“You two have any plans for the evening?” They looked at him but made no reply. “If not, maybe we could get together over a few drinks. I've got some things I'd like to discuss with you both.”
“It was previously agreed,” Josef said, “that we would not allow ourselves to be seen together outside of the warehouse unless we lived together.”
“Oh, that was LaNague's idea. You know what an old woman he is. Why not come down to the-”
“I'm sorry,” Josef said, “but we have other plans for the evening. Sorry.” He touched his belt and activated a holosuit that covered his Flinter garb with the image of a nondescript middle-aged man. Kanya did the same. They turned and left without so much as a “Next time, perhaps.”
Broohnin watched them stroll down the darkening street. There were no other pedestrians about. At night the streets had become the property of the barbarians of Primus City-the hungry, broke, and desperate, who jumped and stole and ran because there was nothing else left to them, were bad enough; but then there were those who had found themselves beaten down, humbled, and debased by life, who had retreated once too often and now needed proof that they were better than somebody-anybody. They needed to force someone to his or her knees and for just a moment or two see another human being cringe in fear and pain before them. To taste power over another life before they snuffed it out was, in some twisted way, proof that they still had control over their own. Which they didn't.
Broohnin shook his head as he watched the two bland, weak-looking figures walk into the darkness, looking like so much fresh meat for anyone hungry for a bite. Pity the jumper who landed on those two.
On an impulse, he decided to follow them. What did Flinters do in their spare time? Where did they live? He was not long in finding out. Kanya and Josef entered a low-rent apartment building not far from the warehouse district. He watched for a while, saw a third floor window on the east wall fill with light before it was opaqued. Fantasizing for a moment, he idly wondered if weaponry and combat were as much a part of their sex play as the rest of their daily life. He cut off further elaboration on the theme when he noticed a standard size flitter lift off from the roof of the apartment building. As it banked to the right, he could see two figures within, neither one identifiable, but definitely a pair. He wondered…
With no flitter at his disposal, Broohnin was forced to stand helplessly and watch them go. They were probably off to pick up that new device for the next Robin Hood heist. He would have liked to have seen how they smuggled things onto Throne so easily. It was a technique that could prove useful to him some time in the future. As it was, he was stuck here on the street. It was all LaNague's fault, as usual. He should have seen to it that they were all provided with their own personal flitters. But no. Broohnin wasn't allowed to have one because Broohnin was on the dole and, as far as the records showed, could not afford a personal flitter. To be seen riding around in one all the time would attract unwanted attention.
One thing he could do, though, was go into the apartment building and see if Kanya and Josef were still there. He crossed the street, entered, and took the float-chute up to the third floor. From where he had seen the lighted window earlier, he deduced the location of their apartment. Steeling himself, he approached the door and pressed the entry panel. The indicator remained dark, meaning either that no one was within, or that whoever was in did not want to be disturbed.
With a sigh of relief, he turned away and headed for the float-chute. An unanswered door was hardly evidence that Kanya and Josef had been in that flitter, but at least it didn't negate the possibility. The next thing to do was to go up to the flitter pad on the roof and wait. If they returned tonight, perhaps he could get some idea as to where they had been. What he intended to do with the information, he didn't know. Nothing, most likely. But he had no place to go, no one waiting for him anywhere, no one he wanted to be with, and knew no one who wanted to be with him. He might as well spend the night here on the roof as within the four walls of his room on the other side of town.
The wait was not a long one. He had found himself a comfortable huddling place in the corner of the roof behind the building's own solar batteries, discharging now to light the apartment below, and had just settled in for his vigil when landing lights lit the roof pad from above. It was the flitter he had seen earlier, and after it had locked into its slot, the figures of two familiar middle-aged men emerged.
The first one looked carefully around him. Satisfied that there was no one else on the roof, he nodded to the other and they removed two boxes from their craft, one large and rectangular, the other small and cubical. Carrying the larger box between them with the smaller resting atop it, they pushed through the door to the drop-chute and disappeared.
And that was that. Broohnin sat and bitterly questioned what in the name of the Core he was doing there alone on a roof watching two disguised Flinters unload a couple of boxes from their flitter. He knew no more now about their smuggling procedure than he did before. Bored and disgusted, he waited until he was sure the Flinters were safely behind the door to their apartment, then took the drop-chute directly to street level and headed for the nearest monorail stop.
The wracking total-body parasthesia that enveloped him during the lift into real space as his nervous system was assaulted from all sides was an almost welcome sensation. Vincen Stafford had made the first long jump in his probe ship. The nausea that usually attended entering and leaving subspace passed unnoticed, smothered by a wave of exultation. He was alive again. He was free. He was master of reality itself.
After a few moments of silent revelry, he shook himself and got to work, taking his readings, preparing the beacon to be released and activated. It would send out an oscillating subspace laser pulse in the direction of the radio sources in the Perseus arm; in real space it would send a measured radio beep. Stafford considered the latter mode useless since his subspace jumps would take him far ahead of the radio pulses, but if that was the way the people running the brand-new Imperial Bureau of Interstellar Exploration and Alien Contact wanted it, that's the way they would get it.
The subspace laser beacon was a good idea, however. If the target radio sources really did belong to another interstellar race, and that race was advanced enough to have developed subspace technology, the beacons he and his fellow probe pilots would be dropping off in a predictable zigzag pattern would blaze an unmistakable trail through the heavens for anyone with the equipment to follow. Hopefully, some member of that race would plot out the course of one of the probes and send a welcoming party to wait for it when it lifted into real space at the end of one of the jumps.
Stafford thought about that. If the aliens happened to choose his ship to contact, the responsibility would be awesome. The entire future of the relationship between humankind and the aliens could be marred or permanently estranged by some inadvertent bungle on the part of a hapless probe pilot. He didn't want to be that pilot. He could do without the glory of first contact. All he wanted was to do his job, do it well, and get back to Throne and Salli in one piece.
In one piece. That was the crux of the matter. He would be making a lot of jumps…far more in the following months than he would during years as a navigator on the grain runs. Warping down was always a hazard, even for the most experienced spacer. He was tearing open the very fabric of reality, accentuating the natural curve of space to an acute angle, and leaping across the foreshortened interval, reappearing again light years away from his starting point. Probe ships were small, fragile. Sometimes they didn't come out of subspace; sometimes they became lost under the curve of space, trapped forever in featureless, two-dimensional grayness.
Stafford shuddered. That wouldn't happen to him. Other probes had traveled out here between the arms and not come back. But he would. He had to. Salli was waiting.
“The old ‘little black box’ ploy, ay?” Doc Zack said from the corner seat that had become unofficially his whenever they met in the warehouse office.
“Yes,” said LaNague, smiling, “but like no little black box you've ever seen.”
“What's it do?” Sayers asked.
“It's a time machine.”
“Now just a minute,” Zack said. “The Barsky experiments proved time travel impossible!”
“Not impossible-impractical. Barsky and his associates found they could send things back in time, but they couldn't correct for planetary motion in the cosmos. Therefore, the object displaced past-ward invariably wound up somewhere else in space.”
Sayers shook his head as if to clear it. “I remember reporting on that at one time or another, but I can't say I ever fully understood it.”
Broohnin was paying little attention to the conversation. He was more interested in the whereabouts of the larger box the Flinters had unloaded from their flitter last night. They had brought the small one in with them, and that was what had triggered this meaningless discussion of time travel. But where was the big one?
“Let me put it this way,” LaNague was saying. “Everything occupies a locus in time and space, correct? I think we can take that as given. What the Barsky apparatus does is change only the temporal locus; the spatial locus remains fixed.”
Sayers’ eyebrows lifted. “Ah! I see. That's why it ends up in interstellar space.”
“Well, I don't see,” Broohnin snapped, annoyed that his wandering thoughts had left him out. “Why should sending something back in time send it off the planet?”
LaNague spoke as patiently as he could. “Because at any given instant, you occupy a ‘here’ and a ‘now’ along the space/time continuum. The Barsky device changes only the ‘now.’ If we used it to send you back ten years into the past, your ‘now’ would be altered to ‘then,’ but you'd still be ‘here’ in space. And ten years ago, Throne was billions of kilometers away from here. Ten years ago, it hadn't reached this point in space. That's why they could never bring any of the temporally displaced objects back. Barsky theorized that this was what was happening, but it wasn't until the Slippery Miller escape that he could finally prove it.”
Broohnin vaguely remembered the name Slippery Miller, but could not recall any of the details. Everyone else in the room apparently could, however, by the way they were nodding and smiling. He decided not to look like an idiot by asking about it.
“Well, if you've got any ideas of sending me or anyone else back into time with that thing, you can just forget it.” He consciously tried to make it sound as if he were standing up for the group against LaNague. “We're not taking any chances like that for you or anybody.”
LaNague laughed in his face, and there was genuine amusement in the sound rather than derision, but that didn't blunt its sting. “No, we're not planning to send any people back in time. Just some of the Imperium's money.”
It was strictly understood that after Broohnin had completed his little mission, he was to return the flitter to LaNague. No joy-riding. If he broke one of the air regs, he'd be hauled in, and not only would he have to answer a lot of questions about how a dolee came to be in possession of a nice new sporty flitter, but he might also be linked with LaNague. That was something to be avoided at all costs.
But Broohnin didn't consider this a joy ride. And even if he had, the displeasure of Peter LaNague was hardly a deterrent. He had delivered the Barsky temporal displacer in the tiny black box to Erv Singh on the west coast, and had passed on LaNague's instructions. Erv's next currency run wasn't until the following week; he'd have to wait until that time before he could place the box according to plan. He'd contact Broohnin as soon as everything was set. That done, the rest of the night lay free ahead of Broohnin. He had been approaching the Angus Black imports warehouse when the idea struck him that now was a perfect time to check up on the Flinters. The nature of the other box they had unloaded that night on the roof of their apartment still nagged at him. Something about the way they had handled it pestered him, like an itchy patch of skin out of reach in the middle of his back.
He had a little trouble finding their apartment building from the air, but after following the streets as he had walked them, he reached a familiar-looking roof. And yes, the Flinters’ flitter was still there. Broohnin circled around in the darkness until he found a resting place for his craft on a neighboring roof. He'd give it an hour. If there was no sign of the Flinters by then, he'd call it a night. No use making LaNague wait too long.
He waited the full hour, and then a little bit longer. The extra time spent in watch had not been a conscious decision. He had popped a torportal under his tongue to ease his restlessness in the cramped flitter seat and had nodded off. Only the stimulus of flickering light seeping through the slits between his eyelids roused him to full consciousness. A flitter was rising off the neighboring roof. It was the same one the Flinters had used last night. As it moved away into the darkness, its running lights winked off. Now Broohnin was really interested.
Leaving his own running lights off, he lifted his craft into the air and climbed quickly to a higher altitude than he thought the Flinters would be using. Without their running lights to follow, Broohnin would lose them before they had traveled a few kilometers. His only hope was to get above and keep them silhouetted against the illumination given off by Primus City's ubiquitous gloglobes. As long as they stayed over the urban areas, he could follow above and behind them without being seen. If they moved over open country, he would have to think of something else.
They stayed over the city, however, and headed directly for Imperium Park at its center. Broohnin began to have some trouble over the park since its level of illumination was drastically less than the dwelling areas. It was only by chance that he noticed them setting down in a particularly dense stand of trees. Broohnin chose a less challenging landing site perhaps two hundred meters east of them and sat quietly after grounding his craft, unsure of what to do next.
He desperately wanted to see what two Flinters could be up to in the middle of Imperium Park in the dead of night, but he didn't want to leave the safety of the flitter. If the streets of Primus City were on their way to becoming nighttime hunting grounds, Imperium Park was already far into the jungle stage. Once he stepped out onto the ground, he was fair game for whoever was walking about. Not that Broohnin couldn't handle himself in a fight with one or even two assailants. He carried a vibe-knife and knew how to use it to damaging effect. It was just that nowadays the jumpers hunted in packs in the park, and he had no illusions about his fate should he stumble onto one of those.
He only hesitated briefly, then he was out in the night air, locking the flitter entry behind him. All things considered, the odds were probably in his favor for coming through the jaunt unscathed. The section of the park in which he had landed was on high ground where the underbrush was the thickest. There were no natural paths through here and it would not be considered prime hunting area for any of the packs.
He pushed his way carefully through the brush until he felt he had traveled half the distance to the Flinters, then he got down on his belly and crawled. And crawled. His chest and abdomen were bruised and scratched, and he was about to turn back, thinking he had wandered off course, when his right hand reached out and came in contact with nothing but air. Further tactile exploration brought his surroundings into clearer focus; he was on the edge of a low rocky bluff. Below him and to the right he heard grunting and groaning. Craning his head over the edge, he spied the Flinters’ craft.
A hooded lamp provided faint illumination for the scene, but enough for Broohnin to discern two figures pushing and pulling at a huge slab of rock. With a prolonged agonized chorus of guttural noises from two bodies straining to the limits of their strength, the rock began to move. Intensifying their efforts, the Flinters rolled it up on its edge in one final heave, revealing a rectangular hole. After a panting, laughing pause as they leaned against the up-ended stone, they returned to the flitter and the large box that lay on the ground beside it…the same box Broohnin had seen them unload on the roof the other night.
Each of them removed a small white disk from his or her belt-even with their holosuits deactivated, Broohnin could not tell Kanya from Josef at this distance-and pressed it into a slotted opening in the side of the crate in turn. Then the white disks went back into the weapons belts. Carefully, almost gingerly, they carried the crate to the hole under the rock, placed it within and covered it with a thin layer of dirt. With less effort and fewer sound effects, they toppled the stone back over the hole.
Then the two Flinters did something very strange-glancing once at each other, they stepped away from the rock and stood staring at it. From their postures, Broohnin could not be sure whether he was reading guilt or grief or both. He almost slipped from the bluff in a vain attempt to get a glimpse of their faces. What was going on down there anyway? What was in that crate and why was it being buried in Imperium Park? If security was all they were looking for, there were certainly better places to hide it out on the moors. And why was LaNague having all this done without telling the group?
The questions plagued Broohnin as he returned through the brush to his flitter, and left the front of his mind only long enough for him to make the dash from cover to the flitter and to get into the air as quickly as possible. As he rose into the night, a thought occurred to him: what if LaNague didn't know about that box either?
LaNague stopped at the door to his apartment and rubbed his temples with both hands. Another headache, but a mild one this time. As the plan reached the ignition point, they seemed to be bothering him less frequently, and were less severe when they struck. And the dream…months had passed since it had troubled his sleep. Everything seemed to be falling into line as predicted, everything coming under control.
There were still variables, however. Boedekker was the biggest. What if he balked? LaNague grimaced in annoyance at the thought as he placed his palm against the entry plate which was keyed to him, Kanya, and Josef. The door slid open and he stepped through. Boedekker so far had followed his instructions to the letter, at least as far as LaNague could tell. He had liquidated anything of value that he owned, and other indicators showed that he was following through with the secondary aspects of his part in the play. Boedekker could still go his own way, and that bothered LaNague. The man was out of reach. He didn't want to trust him, but he had no choice.
He let the door slide closed behind him but did not move into the room just yet. He felt good, despite the headache. This buoyancy of mood was a fairly recent development, a slow process over the past year. At first the knowledge that the fate of the out-worlds was falling more and more completely into his hands had weighed on him like half a dozen G's. Billions of people were going to be affected to varying degrees across the light years of Occupied Space. Even Earth would not escape unscathed. The agrarian out-worlds were already on their way into a deep depression, and by the time the Imperium came apart, they'd be back to a barter economy and would hardly notice its demise. But the people on Throne…their entire social structure would be destroyed almost overnight.
Mora's angry words came back to him-what right did he have to do this? The question used to trouble him fiercely, despite his standard answer: self-preservation. But it troubled him no more. It was all a moot point now, anyway. The plan was virtually to the point of no return. Even if Mora could show up and convince him that he had been in error all along, it would be too late. The juggernaut had begun to roll and could not be stopped. Its course could be altered, modified to a degree, its moment of impact adjusted-that was the purpose of LaNague's continued presence on Throne-but no one, not even LaNague, could stop it now. The realization had a strangely exhilarating effect on him.
Odd he should think of Mora now. He had been managing to keep her at the far end of his mind except when making a holo for her or viewing one from her. The communications were too brief, too few, and too long in coming. He missed her. Not as much as he had at first, though. Perhaps he was getting used to life without her…something he had once considered impossible.
Walking over to where Pierrot sat on the window sill, he touched the moss at the tree's base and noted that it felt dry. Due for some water soon, probably a root-pruning, too. Soon…he'd get to it soon. The trunk was halfway between chokkan and bankan, which was neutral, but the leaves seemed duller than usual. Closer inspection revealed a few bare inner branches with peeling bark-a sure sign of localized death.
Was something wrong with Pierrot? Or was the tree reflecting some sort of inner rot afflicting LaNague himself? That was one of the drawbacks of having an imprinted misho-there was always a tendency to read too much into its configuration, its color, its state of health. It did prompt introspection, though, and a little of that was never bad. But not now. There were too many other things on his mind.
He broke off the dead wood and threw it into the molecular dissociator that stood in the corner. The appliance was not the extravagance it seemed. LaNague made a point of disintegrating everything that was not part of a normal household's garbage. There was another dissociator at the warehouse in which all debris from production of The Robin Hood Reader and other sundry subversive activities was eventually destroyed. He would not have the revolution tripped up by a wayward piece of refuse.
He turned toward the sink for Pierrot's water and froze as he caught a glimpse of movement in the doorway that led to the bedroom.
“Peter, it's me.”
“Mora!” Conflicting emotions rooted him to the spot. He should have been overjoyed to see her, should have leaped across the room to embrace her. But he wasn't and he didn't. Instead, he felt resentment at her presence. She had no right showing up like this…she was going to interfere…
“But how?” he said when he found his voice.
“I came on a student visa. I'm supposedly going to do research at the U. of O. library. Kanya let me in this morning.” Her brow furrowed. “Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“I was watching you with Pierrot. He's your only friend here, isn't he?”
“Not really.”
“You look older, Peter.”
“I am.”
“Much older.” Her frown turned into a smile that failed to mask her hurt and concern at his remoteness. “You almost look your age.”
“Where's Laina?”
She drifted toward him, cautiously, as if fearing he'd bolt from her. “With your mother. She's too young to join the Merry Men.”
It took a while for the implications of what she had said to filter through to LaNague's befuddled brain. But when it did: “Oh no! Don't even consider it!”
“I've been considering it since you left.” She moved closer, gently touching his arms with her hands, sending shock waves through him, cracking the paralysis that held him immobile. “I was wrong…this is the only way out for Tolive…for Laina…for our way of life…and the minting's done…the coins are ready to be shipped…”
“No! There's chaos coming to Throne. I don't want you here when everything comes apart. Too dangerous!” He wouldn't want her here even if it were safe.
Mora kissed him gently, tentatively, on the lips. “I'm staying. Now, are we going to stand here and argue, or are we going to catch up on two and a half years of deprivation?”
LaNague replied by lifting her up and carrying her into the adjoining room. He could no longer deny his hunger for her. He'd send her home later.
Vincen Stafford prepared to eject another beacon into the starry void. How many was this, now? He'd have to check his records to be exactly sure. It was all becoming so mechanical and routinized-jump, release a beacon, jump, release a beacon, jump…even the jumps themselves seemed to be less traumatic. Was there such a thing as acclimation? He shrugged. He'd never heard of it, but maybe it happened. And if it did or didn't, so what? He was more than halfway to the Perseus arm. If he reached it without being contacted, he could turn back and go home. So far, so good.
There was a buzz behind him. He turned and saw his communicator light flashing. Someone-or something-was trying to contact him. Opening the circuit gave rise to no audio or visual signal. That meant the incoming message was not on the standard frequency. Stafford was liking this less and less every second. Reluctantly, he activated the search mechanism. It would lock in on the frequency of the incoming signal when it located it.
It didn't take long. The vidscreen suddenly lit with a face like nothing Stafford had ever seen. No, wait…there was something vaguely familiar there…the snout, the sharp yellow teeth, the bristly patches of fur around the ears…canine. Yes, that was it. The creature was definitely dogfaced. But not like any dog he ever wanted in the same room with him. He was glad the probe ship was equipped with only flat-screen reception. A holograph of that thing would be downright frightening. No torso features were visible but that was okay.
“Greetings,” the image said in interstellar that was garbled and gutturalized far beyond the capability of a human throat.
“Who-who are you?” Stafford blurted inanely. “Where are you?”
“I am an emissary of the Tark nation”-at least it sounded like “Tark,” a barking sound with a harsh initial consonant-“and my craft is approximately two of your kilometers aft of you.”
“You speak our language.” Stafford was reaching for the aft monitor. He wanted to see what kind of welcoming party had been sent to intercept him. An intensified image of a bulky ovoid filled the screen. At first he thought the emissary had understated the distance, but the readout showed a large mass two kilometers aft. Stafford took another look. That was no peaceful envoy ship. He had no idea what alien weaponry might look like, but he saw all sorts of tubes pointed in his direction and there was a definite feeling about the ship that said it wasn't built for mere information-gathering duties. It reminded him of a Sol-System dreadnought. But then, maybe they were just being careful. In their position, he'd probably come armed to the teeth, too.
“Of course,” the Tark replied. “We've been keeping watch on your race for quite some time. We are not so timid as you: as soon as we had sufficient evidence of an interstellar race in your arm of the galaxy, we investigated.”
“Why didn't you contact us?”
“We saw no need. Your race is obviously no threat to the Tark nation, and you are much too far away to be of any practical use to us.”
“What about trade?”
“Trade? I am not familiar with the term.” He looked down and seemed to be keying a reference into a console to his right.
Stafford couldn't resist prompting him. “An exchange of goods…and knowledge.”
“Yes, I see now.” He-for no good reason, Stafford had automatically ascribed a male gender to the creature-looked up. “Once again, we do not see any purpose in that. Your race does not appear to have anything that interests us sufficiently at this point.” The subject of trade apparently bored the Tark and he turned to another. “Why do you invade Tarkan space? You made certain that we would intercept you. Why?”
“To offer trade with us.”
The Tark gave a sharp, high-pitched yelp. Laughter? Annoyance?” You must understand-we do not trade with anyone. That would involve an exchange, requiring Tarks to give up one thing in order to gain another.”
“Of course. That's what trade is all about.”
“But Tarks are not weak. We do not surrender what we have. If you had something we truly desired, we would take it.”
“You don't understand…” Stafford began to say, but heard his voice trail off into silence. Perspiration had been collecting in his axillae since the comm indicator had buzzed; it was now running down over his ribs. They didn't understand, not at all. And to think that he had dreaded being in the contact ship for fear of unintentionally offending the aliens. This was worse. These creatures seemed devoid of anything approaching a concept of give and take. They were beyond offending.
The face on the screen had apparently come to a decision. “You will shut down your drive mechanism and prepare to be boarded.”
“Boarded! Why?”
“We must be assured that you are not armed and that you pose no threat to the Tark nation.”
“How could I threaten that monstrosity you're riding?” Stafford said, glancing at the aft monitor. “You could swallow me whole!”
“Shut down your drive and prepare for boarding! We will-”
Stafford switched off the volume. He was frightened now and needed to think, something he couldn't do with that growling voice filling the cabin. He felt a sharp tug on the ship and knew that a tractor beam or something very similar had been focused on him. He was being drawn toward the Tark dreadnought. In a brief moment of panic, he stood frozen in the middle of his tiny cabin, unable to act, unable to decide what to do next.
He was trapped. His real space propulsion system was the standard proton-proton drive through a Leason crystal tube, but small. Too small to break free of the tractor beam. Activating it now would only serve to move him through space pulling the dreadnought behind him, and that futile gesture would last only as long as his fuel or the Tark commander's patience. If the latter ran out first, his probe ship might become a target for those banks of weapons which could easily reduce it to motes of spiraling rubble.
There was the warp capacity, of course. It could be used for escape, but not now…not when he was in the thrall of a tractor beam and in such close proximity to a mass as large as the Tark ship. The thought of attempting a subspace drop under those circumstances was almost as frightening as the thought of placing himself at the mercy of the Tarks.
No, it wasn't. A quick look at the canine face that still filled his comm screen convinced him of that. Better to die trying to escape than to place his life in that creature's hands.
He threw himself into the control seat and reached for the warp activator. If the tractor beam and the dreadnought's mass sufficiently disturbed the integrity of the probe ship's warp field, it would be caught between real space and subspace. The experts were still arguing over just what happened then, but the prevailing theory held that the atomic structure of that part of the ship impinging on subspace would reverse polarity. And that, of course, would result in a cataclysmic explosion. It was a fact of life for every spacer. That was why the capacity of the warp unit had to be carefully matched to the mass of the ship; that was why no one ever tried to initiate a subspace jump within the critical point in a star system's gravity well.
He released the safety lock and placed his finger on the activator switch. A cascade of thoughts washed across his mind as he closed his eyes and held his breath…Salli…if the ship blew, at least he'd take the Tarks with him…Salli…was this what had happened to the few probe ships that had been sent this way in the past and were never heard from again?…Salli…
He threw the switch.