“My orders say, either see you off to Phoebus or kill you. If you don’t return at once, you’ll not get an hour of those years you mention.”
“We’re armed too, Captain. We can block your missiles for a bit.
Meanwhile we’ll broadcast – in Spanish, visual, at full power. Can you be certain they won’t tune in aboard Copernicus? Or chance to catch it on a different spacecraft? We’ve wattage aplenty to be received ten million kilometers off. It’s a story which will bring down some big people. In cases like that, little people get carried along… I wish you would let me talk to you, Lawes.”
“No.” Torment. “Have you anything further to say before we start shooting?”
“Why, yes. I have this suggestion.” Brodersen thrust his whole personality forward.
“Call Earth and ask what to do. We’ll be zigzagging on, sure, but you’re aware of how long a proper transit pattern takes, and we’d much rather come out in a planetary system, at a T machine, than in the middle of interstellar space.
The best guess is, this means we have to pass from beacon to beacon – the more, the likelier – and swing straight inward from the last. You’ve time for a call.
Meanwhile, unless you shoot, we’ll stay quiet.”
“Well- You have no right to bargain!”
“I am bargaining, though. Hear me. What I wish you’d do is direct your message not to the office you’re supposed to, but to your own high command. Lay the matter before them. You’ll find them astonished at what’s been going on.”
“We’re under security.”
Brodersen sighed. He’d expected nothing else. “Okay, as you choose.”
Louder: “But call!”
After more argument he won his point. The screen blinked and he collapsed, breathing hard. It would take about three-quarters of an hour for an interchange, via the relay satellite, between here and Earth. By then, at her headlong pace, Chinook should be deep into the transport field.
Stars exulted. He stirred and said through the intercom: “You heard that, boys and girls? We’re this far along. Rejoice.”
A few small cheers replied. Caitlin struck a ringing chord from her sonador and declared, “You carried us, Daniel.”
“No, you all did,” he answered. “Hey, Pegeen, I love you.”
“Wait till I get you to myself again,” she said.
Joelle is listening- By tacit agreement, conversation died away.
Occasional words went around, most of them functional. Tastes in music varied too widely for a shared concert. Folk at their posts remained in their lonelinesses. Brodersen relived his latest passages with Caitlin; the first had rated twelve on the Beaufort scale, the second had been as gentle as that final union, close to dawn, in the cave beneath Mount Lorn… He even dozed for a spell. The ship roused him, changing direction, squandering chemical auxiliaries as well as expending nuclear fuel in order to keep hard on her way.
He was bobcat-alert before the response from Earth came due.
Dozsa’s voice delivered it, a shout: “Missiles!”
The decision was, “Kill,” Brodersen realized. Quick, or whoever is at the other end, is afraid we may have a plan.
He must sit with nothing but fingernails in his fists. Survival had ceased to be any affair of his.
At high accelerations, crossing the gap in a couple of minutes, though they changed vectors at varying intervals to confuse counterfire, the torpedoes homed on Chinook. Nobody aboard was spacesuited. If a nuclear warhead exploded near the hull, that was that.
Brodersen spied the exhaust streaks, silver and narrow. Sensors locked onto the tubes. A computer extrapolated. Zarubayev had fine-tuned the system.
Side 109
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The Fire sprayed across darkness as energygorged laser beams found their targets. An
“All clear” jubilated, telling humans they would not die in the next few seconds.
The ship trembled. Von Moltke had launched missiles of her own. This was her ultimate job, to outguess a living opponent.
Chinook was not only much bigger than Alhazen, she carried throw weight out of proportion. Watchships weren’t really intended for battle. Their weapons were partly a relic of the Troubles, partly a concession to vague fears… which Quick’s faction strove to entrench.