“Yes. After the voyage.”
“If the captain shows … dangerous incompetence, the crew may relieve him of his duties. The board of inquiry will decide whether or not they were justified.”
[149] “How do you propose to do it? This ship is programmed to me.” Valen raised his voice, though it remained as cold as before. “Dagmar, would you remove me from command of you?”
“No,” came the level answer. “What you attempt is exceedingly difficult and may fail, but success is possible, and it is not for me to make value judgments.”
“Values,” Valen murmured. “Everybody always told me what value sentient life has. The old, old saying, ‘Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.’ Don’t you agree any longer? Have your beliefs suddenly changed? We are seven. There must be ten or twenty times that many aboard those ships. Civilized spacefarers go to the aid of the distressed. We shall.”
Sharply: “My judgment is that we can do it, provided we keep our heads and work together. Otherwise we doubtless are doomed. I assume you are all able, self-controlled people when you choose to be. Very well, we’ll now develop a basic plan of action. As we approach, I’ll contact Moonhorn again, learn in detail what the situation is as of that time, and assign tasks.”
“No, please, sir,” Esker stammered.
Lissa unclenched her jaws. “You heard the captain,” she said. “Let’s get cracking.”
XXVIII
THE sky burned.
A fireball glared lightning-colored. It would have been blinding to behold, were it not shrouded in a vast nimbus that glowed blue, yellow, red with its own heat. Smoke streaked the vapors, ragged, hasty as the thing whirled. Currents twisted themselves into maelstroms. The limb of the flattened disc faded toward darkness. Tongues of flame leaped from it, arced over, streamed sparks behind their deluge. At the equator, many broke off and sprang free, cometary incandesences. Those that were aimed forward ran ahead of the mass that birthed them. Right, left, above, below, they passed blazing around the ships. They would not gutter out for thousands of kilometers more.
If any of those thunderbolts hits us, we’re done, Lissa knew.
Spacesuited, she clung to a handhold near the portside forward airlock and waited. A viewscreen showed a pale ghost of what lay ahead. Dagmar maneuvered now at fractions of a gravity. Magnetic fields must be crazily twisting her plasma jets as they left the ejectors. Shifts in direction brought momentary dizziness, as if chaos reached in to grab at her. The Susaian craft were outlined black across the oncoming lightstorm. Their impact had driven plates and ribs together, formed a single grotesque mass, two boughs reaching from a stump. It wobbled and tumbled. Shards danced around.
A fire-tongue streaked, swelled, was gone. It had missed Dagmar by a few hundred meters. At Lissa’s side, Valen caught a breath, half a cry. In her audio receiver it sounded almost like the scream of a bullet. Through their helmets she saw sweat runnel [151] down the creases in his face. “You shouldn’t be here,” she told him. “You belong in the command globe.”
He shook his head. “The ship c-can cope. We need … every hand.”
At least, she thought, he has enough sense left to refrain from boasting he won’t send crew into any danger he won’t meet himself. The hazards are much the same wherever we may be, with that ogre booming down on us. But if he stayed behind, he wouldn’t be out among the meteors. And he’d have an overall view; he might make the snap decision a robot brain wouldn’t, that saves us.
No use. I’ve tried. He’s determined. And, true, we’re ghastly undermanned as is.
Lissa swallowed fear, anger, bitterness, and braced herself. They were about to make contact.
Weight ended. She floated free. Silence pressed inward, save for noises of breath and her slugging heart. Voices went back and forth, she knew, Dagmar’s and Moonhorn’s or Ironbright’s or whoever was in charge over there; but she wasn’t in that circuit. The screen showed her the silhouette of an extruded gang tube, groping for an airlock. Wormlike, obscene, amidst the terrible beauty of the flames. To hang here passive was to lie in nightmare. How long? Seconds, minutes, years? It had better be less than half an hour. That was about as much time as they had before death became inescapable. Could she choke down her shriek that long?