The elevator delivered them. They sped down a hail that was sharply rounded. There was the platform. There stood Pegeen, Dozsa, Pegeen, Pegeen. She cheered. Brodersen did not see Zarubayev, who must have been carried inboard.
She could have done that in this scant weight. Did he live? That question must wait its turn. Troxell would soon find a course of action. They’d better be gone before then.
Brodersen’s company scrambled up the ladder and into the ship, followed by him. He made for the nearest intercom unit. “Su, get us the hell on our way,”
he rasped.
Valves closed. The engine awoke. At low acceleration, Chinook withdrew from the machinery around her and regained open space.
Fingers plucked Brodersen’s sleeve. He looked about and saw von Moltke.
“If you please, Mr. Captain,” she said with a hoarse accent, “I hear your gunner is a casualty. I hear too your armament is like on Emissary.”
“Yes,” he said, stupid in his exhaustion, “yes, it is.”
“I was a gunner in Emissary,” she reminded him. “I can check details by your engineers. Let me shoot out the transmission dishes on the Wheel and the ship too. Then they cannot tell Earth about us.” As he hesitated: “I doubt they hail called, but they will soon unless we prevent it. If we present, no harm to them. They must sit quiet till somebody worries and sends a speedster to check.
Meanwhile, however, you are carrying out what plan you hail. Correct?”
Side 82
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
“All right,” he said, “I authorize. Coordinate it with Phil, Chief Engineer Weisenberg, that is, and with our linker, Granville,” while he longed for nothing but Caitlin.
Minutes later, a slicing energy beam made the San Geronimo Wheel mute.
It did no further damage; but a missile left Emissary a whirl of fragments. That hurt.
Two more felonies, Brodersen thought. We’d better build us a damn good case for deserving an executive pardon.
Never mind now. The immediate objective is just to survive.
No. Above and before that, sleep. He barely managed to put affairs temporarily in order and start the ship on a course deemed proper before he stumbled to bed.
Sergei had died. Caitlin held Brodersen close.
XX
Again at an earth gravity, Chinook made for the T machine. On the route prescribed, the trip would take six Earth days.
“Our best bet is to conform for the time being, while we try to work out a strategy,” Brodersen had explained. “Else they’ll come after us, and watchship has more legs than we do. We for sure can’t outrun a tracker missile.”
Von Moltke had probably saved him and his following from that, his mind added. News of his assualt would have provided the perfect excuse to order his vessel blow out of existence. That would not by itself relieve Quick and company of the embarrassment created by the Emissary travelers left behind, not to mention whatever questions were occurring to Troxell’s outfit; but presumably they could cope. They would certainly try to cope, and even failure on their part might prove lethal.
As was, while Chinook remained at large, bearing the possibility of exposing the whole affair, Langendijk’s faction should be safe from everything worse than continued imprisonment. Indeed, from a tactical viewpoint it was good that Brodersen had not succeeded in releasing them. Now the cause of-liberty-did not have all its eggs in one highly breakable basket. Half by chance, his operation had worked well.
No. It didn’t. Men are hurt, men are dead. The agents among them are bad enough. I can live with that-their fighting us was almost criminally reckless; maybe being penned up for weeks drove them a little crazy-but Sergei is dead, my own man, my friend.
He had awakened beside Caitlin, for a moment conscious only of her. Then the memory rolled over him. His shuddering breath roused her, to embrace and murmur to him for a long while. “It’s a war we’re in, Daniel, my darling, and men have ever fallen in war. Yours is just, a strife like what they waged against tyrants and foreign overlords again and again on Earth, and us today the happier for it. I knew Sergei too, aye, better than I’ve told you. He joyed in the universe; but if he must leave it, proud would he be that this was why.”