“You leave any folks behind, Lieutenant?” Terry inquired, waxing familiar in the comradeship of the trail.
“No wife. There was a girl. And my half brother, Tom. A nice kid. He’d be over forty, now.”
The dusky sun was up now, staining the rounded, lumpy flank of Thunderhead a deep scarlet. Carnaby and Sickle crossed the first rock slope, entered the broken ground where the prolific rock lizards eyed them as they approached, then heaved themselves from their perches, scuttled away into the black shadows of the deep crevices opened in the porous rock by the action of ten million years of wind and sand erosion on thermal cracks.
Five hundred feet above the plain, Carnaby looked back at the settlement; only a mile away, it was almost lost against the titanic spread of empty wilderness.
“Terry, why don’t you go on back now,” he said. “Your uncle will have a nice breakfast waiting for you.”
“I’m looking forward to sleeping out,” the boy said confidently. “We better keep pushing, or we won’t make the Roost by dark.”
5
In the Officer’s off-duty bay, Signal Lieutenant Pryor straightened from over the billiard table as the nasal voice of the command deck yeoman broke into the recorded dance music:
“Now hear this. Commodore Broadly will address the ship’s company.”
“Ten to one he says we’ve lost the bandit,” Supply Captain Aaron eyed the annunciator panel.
“Gentlemen,” the sonorous tones of the ship’s commander sounded relaxed, unhurried. “We now have a clear track on the Djann blockade runner, which indicates he will attempt to evade our Inner Line defenses and lose himself in Rim territory. In this, I propose to disappoint him. I have directed Colonel Lancer to launch interceptors to take up station along a conic, subsuming thirty degrees on axis from the presently constructed vector. We may expect contact in approximately three hours’ time.” A recorded bos’n’s whistle shrilled the end-of-message signal.
“So?” Aaron raised his eyebrows. “A three-million-tonner swats a ten-thousand-ton side-boat. Big deal.”
“That boat can punch just as big a hole in the blockade as a Super-D,” Pryor said. “Not that the Djann have any of those left to play with.”
“We kicked the damned spiders back into their home system ten years ago,” Aaron said tiredly. “In my opinion, the whole Containment operation’s a boondoggle to justify a ten-million-man Fleet.”
“As long as there are any of them alive, they’re a threat,” Pryor repeated the slogan.
“Well, Broadly sounds as though he’s got the bogie in the bag,” Aaron yawned.
“Maybe he has,” Pryor addressed the ball carefully, sent the ivory sphere cannoning against the target. “He wouldn’t go on record with it if he didn’t think he was on to a sure thing.”
“He’s a disappointed ‘ceptor jockey. What makes him think that pirate won’t duck back of a blind spot and go dead?”
“It’s worth a try—and if he nails it, it will be a feather in his cap.”
“Another star on his collar, you mean.”
“Uh-huh, that too.”
“We’re wasting our time,” Aaron said. “But that’s his lookout. Six ball in the corner pocket.”
6
As Commodore Broadly turned away from the screen on which he had delivered his position report to the crew of the great war vessel, his eye met that of his executive officer. The latter shifted his gaze uneasily.
“Well, Roy, you expect me to announce to all hands that Cincfleet has committed a major blunder in letting this bandit slip through the picket line?” he demanded with some asperity.
“Certainly not, sir.” The officer looked worried. “But in view of the seriousness of the breakout . . .”
“There are some things better kept in the highest command channels,” the commodore said shortly. “You and I are aware of the grave consequences of a new release of their damned seed in an uncontaminated sector of the Eastern Arm. But I see no need to arouse the parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins of every apprentice technician aboard by an overly candid disclosure of the facts!”
“I thought Containment had done its job by now,” the captain said. “It’s been three years since the last Djann sighting outside the Reservation. It seems we’re not the only ones who’re keeping things under our hats.”
Broadly frowned. “Mmmm. I agree, I’m placed at something of a disadvantage in my tactical planning by the over-secretiveness of the General Staff. However, there can be no two opinions as to the correctness of my present course.”
The exec glanced ceilingward. “I hope so, sir.”
“Having the admiral aboard makes you nervous, does it, Roy?” Broadly said in a tone of heartiness. “Well, I regard it merely as an opportunity better to display Malthusa’s capabilities.”
“Commodore, you don’t think it would be wise to coordinate with the admiral on this—”
“I’m in command of this vessel,” Broadly said sharply. “I’m carrying the vice admiral as supercargo, nothing more!”
“He’s still Task Group CINC . . .”
“I’m comming this ship, Roy, not Old Carbuncle!” Broadly rocked on his heels, watching the screen where a quadrangle of bright points representing his interceptor squadron fanned out, on an intersecting course with the fleeing Djann vessel. “I’ll pinch off this breakthrough single-handed; and all of us will share in the favorable attention the operation will bring us!”
7
In his quarters on the VIP deck, the vice admiral studied the Operational Utter Top Secret dispatch which had been handed to him five minutes earlier by his staff signal major.
“It looks as though this is no ordinary boatload of privateers.” He looked soberly at the elderly communicator. “They’re reported to be carrying a new weapon of unassessed power, and a cargo of spore racks that will knock Containment into the next continuum.”
“It doesn’t look good, sir,” the major wagged his head.
“I note that the commodore has taken action according to the manual.” The admiral’s voice was noncommittal.
The major frowned. “Let’s hope that’s sufficient, Admiral.”
“It should be. The bogie’s only a converted tender. She couldn’t be packing much in the way of firepower in that space, secret weapon or no secret weapon.”
“Have you mentioned this aspect to the commodore, sir?”
“Would it change anything, Ben?”
“Nooo. I suppose not.”
“Then we’ll let him carry on without any more cause for jumpiness than the presence of a vice admiral on board is already providing.”
8
Crouched in his fitted acceleration cradle aboard the Djann vessel, the One-Who-Commands studied the motion of the charged molecules in the sensory tank before him.
“Now the death-watcher dispatches his messengers,” he communed with the three link brothers who formed the Chosen Crew. “Now is the hour of the testing of Djann.”
“Profound is the rhythm of our epic,” the One-Who-Records sang out. “We are the chosen-to-be-heroic, and in our tiny cargo, Djann lives still, his future glory inherent in the convoluted spores!”
“It was a grave risk to put the destiny of Djann at hazard in this wild gamble,” the One-Who-Refutes reminded his link brothers. “If we fail, the generations yet unborn will slumber on in darkness or perish in ice or fire.”
“Yet if we succeed—if the New Thing we have learned serves well its function—then will Djann live anew!”
“Now the death messengers of the water beings approach,” the One-Who-Commands pointed out. “Link well, brothers! The energy aggregate waits for our directing impulse! Now we burn away the dross of illusion from the hypotheses of the theorists in the harsh crucible of reality!”
“In such a fire, the flame of Djann coruscates in unparalleled glory!” the One-Who-Records exulted. “Time has ordained this conjunction to try the timbre of our souls!”
“Then channel your trained faculties, brothers.” The One-Who-Commands gathered his forces, feeling out delicately to the ravening nexus of latent energy contained in the thought shell poised at the center of the stressed-space field enclosing the fleeing vessel. “Hold the sacred fire, sucked from the living bodies of a million of our fellows,” he exhorted. “Shape it, and hurl it in well-directed bolts at the death-bringers, for the future and glory of Djann!”
9
At noon, Carnaby and Sickle rested on a nearly horizontal slope of rock that curved to meet the vertical wall that swelled up and away overhead. Their faces and clothes were gray with the impalpable dust whipped up by the brisk wind. Terry spat grit from his mouth, passed a can of hot stew and a plastic water flask to Carnaby.
“Getting cool already,” he said. “Must not be more’n ten above freezing.”
“We might get a little more snow before morning.” Carnaby eyed the milky sky. “You’d better head back now, Terry. No point in you getting caught in a storm.”
“I’m in for the play,” the boy said shortly. “Say, Lieutenant, you got another transmitter up there at the beacon station you might could get through on?”
Carnaby shook his head. “Just the beacon tube, the lens generators, and a power pack. It’s a stripped-down installation. There’s a code receiver, but it’s only designed to receive classified instruction input.”