“You did a fine job, Colonel,” Benson acknowledged. He turned to the others. “Well, time’s precious. Let’s get on with it.”
They stood aside while Verikoff led the way into the passage toward the office wing, and followed a few paces behind. At the end of the passage he came to a large, solid-looking, wooden door. “I am not sure how far JEVEX’S visual field extends,” he called to them. “It would be better if you kept well back.” The others fell back into a small dense huddle with Hunt, Sobroskin, Lyn, Benson, and Pacey together at the front. “I need a minute to compose myself,” Verikoff told them. They waited while he brushed a few specks of soot from his clothes, smoothed his hair, and wiped his face with a handkerchief. “Do I look as if all is normal?” he asked them.
“Fine,” Hunt called back.
Verikoff nodded, turned to face the door, and unlocked it. Then he drew a deep breath, grasped the handle, and pushed the door open. The others caught a glimpse of elaborate instrumentation panels and banks of gleaming equipment, and then Verikoff stepped inside.
chapter thirty-four
The strain on the Command Deck of the Shapieron had been hovering around breaking point for days. Eesyan was standing in the center of the floor gazing up at the main display screen, where an enormous web of interconnected shapes and boxes annotated with symbols showed the road map into JEVEX that zoi~c had laboriously pieced together from statistical analyses and pattern correlations of the responses it had obtained to its probe signals. But zoi~.&c was not getting through to the nucleus of the system, which it would have to penetrate if it was going to disrupt JEVEX’S h-jamming capability. Its attempts had been repeatedly detected by JEVEX’S constantly running self-checking routines and thwarted by automatically initiated correction procedures. The big problem now was trying to decide how much longer they could allow zoL&c to try before the tables of fault-diagnostic data accumulating in-side JEVEX alerted its supervisory functions that something very abnormal was happening. Opinions were more or less evenly divided between Eesyan’s scientists from Thurien, who already wanted to call the whole thing off, and Garuth and his crew, who seemed willing to risk almost anything to pursue what was beginning to look, the more Eesyan saw of it, like some kind of death wish.
“Probe Three’s function directive has been queried for the third time,” one of the scientists announced from a nearby station. “Header response analysis indicates we’ve triggered a veto override again.” He looked across at Eesyan and shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll have to suspend probing on this channel and resume regular traffic only.”
“Activity pattern correlates with a new set of executive diagnostic indexes,” another scientist called. “We’ve initiated a high-level malfunction check.”
“We have to shut down on Three,” another, standing by Ecsyan, pleaded. “We’re too exposed as it is.”
Eesyan stared grimly up at the main screen as a set of mnemonics unrolled down one side to confirm the warning.
“What’s your verdict, zoRAc?” he asked.
“I’ve reduced interrogation priority, but the fault flags are still set. It’s tight, but it’s the nearest we’ve come so far. I can try it one more time and risk it, or back off and let the chance go. It’s up to you.”
Eesyan glanced across to where Garuth was watching tensely with Monchar and Shilohin. Garuth clamped his mouth tight and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Eesyan drew a long breath. “Give it a try, zouAc,” he instructed. A hush fell across the Command Deck, and all eyes turned upward toward the large screen.
In the next second or two a billion bits of information flew back and forth between zoit.&c and a Jevienese communications relay hanging distantly in space. Then, suddenly, a new set of boxes appeared in the array. The symbols inside them were etched against bright red backgrounds that flashed rapidly. One of the scientists groaned in dismay.
“Alarm condition,” zoit&c reported. “General supervisor alert triggered. I think we just blew it.” It meant that JEVEX knew they were there.
Eesyan looked down at the floor. There was nothing to say. Garuth was shaking his head dazedly in mute protest as if refusing to accept that this could be happening. Shilohin moved a step nearer and rested a hand on his shoulder. “You tried,” she said quietly. “You had to try. It was the only chance.”