which it hid, stirred to life, powered up, checked its systems, and moved out on a vector to meet them. Almost instantly, hundreds of locator beams from the fleet pickets zeroed in on the intruder as well.
“Security code hakah smarsh,” Modra called. “This is a security mission. Please do not interfere.”
Somebody couldn’t accept that. Somebody always hated security. “But we are registering a Mycohl frigate closing on your position!”
“We know,” she informed them calmly. “And if you’ll check your scanners you’ll see that there is no one aboard. It’s taken an awful lot of people a very long time to figure out the codes to activate it without it self-destructing or going into automatic attack mode. Will you kindly not give it any such ideas while we are out here? We are supposed to board it, not be blown to bits by it. This is going to be tricky enough as it is.”
There was a long silence, then, “Oh.”
The sleek, black frigate sped toward them at a rate no shuttle could hope to match, but it slowed to a crawl just beyond visual range and seemed to pull to a stop.
“Wrong shuttle,” Josef explained for the benefit of the three who weren’t linked. “Tobrush can override.”
There was a sudden blast through the ship-to-ship radio of what seemed like static mixed with ear-splitting tones, then silence.
“Shuttle, what is your status?” the perimeter controller asked. “We just received a series the battle computers identify as Mycohl military code.”
“Of course you did,” she responded. “What is your name and rank, anyway? Are you stupid enough to think that a Mycohl ship’s computer would speak Durquist?”
There was a silence from the challenger, but they monitored several snickers from other controllers. It had been the correct response for the situation.
The two ships closed, and the shuttle hovered just beneath the main airlock on the frigate. The two airlock systems were incompatible, of course, and deliberately so, unlike merchant vessels which were standardized no matter what the nationality.
“Helmets on!” Modra called to them. “I’m rotating to match our exit hatch with the Mycohl ship, but we’ll have about three meters to go. Captain Chin, make sure that Grysta’s sealed and on internal, will you? Everyone report when they’re ready and I’ll depressurize.”
“All set.”
“Tobrush will go first,” she told them. “The lock’s only big enough for one of him or two of us at a time.” She paused. “Depressurization in effect. . . . Done. Opening both airlock hatches. Watch yourselves!”
Tobrush managed to get to the hatch, looked at the distance, then gave himself a push and floated out the shuttle’s main door and up into the open hatch of the Mycohl ship. The frigate’s hatch closed.
“I hope he doesn’t just take off and leave us,” Krisha muttered, as much to herself as to anyone else.
“He won’t. He needs us,” the captain responded, sounding more confident than he felt. This was back in the real universe now, the one he knew, and these were not only Mycohl, that was a Mycohlian master up there.
About a minute later, the frigate’s hatch slid silently back open again. This time Jimmy went up, taking Grysta with him. Having never been independently in space before, let alone operating a suit in a vacuum, she needed a lot of help and there was some apprehension to overcome. Still, the part of her that was Molly calmed her and allowed a smooth ascent.
“Captain, you and Krisha next,” Modra instructed. “Josef and I will go last.”
Neither of the Mizlaplanians felt all that confident about leaving Josef alone with Modra, either, but they obeyed. Modra, however, wasn’t the least bit concerned. For one thing, there was precious little anybody could do in two e-suits in a vacuum, and, for another, neither of the others could know what the mind-link was like. Josef still wasn’t all that admirable a human being, but there could be no surprises between at least three of the four, and the fourth would take any attempts at surprise very badly indeed.
The frigate was spartan by Exchange standards, but it was like a luxurious home to all of them after what they’d been through.
“There’s even a shower on the tower deck!” Krisha enthused.
Josef frowned. “Of course there is. Why wouldn’t there be? This ship is designed to be self-sufficient for several months if need be.”
She shrugged. “Somehow, all the views of the Mycohl we were taught didn’t allow for that sort of thing,” she admitted honestly.
“Well, we envision your ships as like prison ships, full of tiny monastic cells,” he countered.
She sighed. “Well, you’re closer there than I was to this.”
“Enough of this!” Modra snapped. “Josef, you and I have to have to get us out of here yet.”
They took their positions on the command bridge. Josef switched off his intercom as soon as pressurization was complete and depressurized his suit, removing the helmet, and put on his familiar captain’s connector helmet. It felt good to be back and in his own ship; he frankly had never even hoped to be here again once they’d lost their suits on the way in.
Modra clicked on the Exchange military frequency. “Control, we have examined the ship and disarmed its self-defense mechanisms. Our expert believes he can fly it. That being the case, we are going to take it where much smarter people than we are can take it apart and really find out what’s lurking under the shell. Please give us clearance to exit system, then arrange to pick up the shuttle.”
“This is Captain Orgho, Fleet Intelligence,” came an unfamiliar and mean-sounding voice in reply. “Why wasn’t I notified of this? Or even that the Mycohl ship had finally been located?”
“Uh-oh,” Jimmy said aloud.
<Tell him he has no need to know,> Krisha sent. Although without talents, she was smart enough to realize that Modra could read her thoughts and she hadn’t forgotten how to send clearly.
“You have no need to know,” Modra repeated.
<Captain? Am I to understand that you are interfering with a top-secret security detail in the performance of its assignment on your own authority?>
Modra couldn’t resist a smile as she repeated the line in an indignant tone. She knew next to nothing about the military except what she’d gleaned from Josef’s mind and memories and she’d discovered nothing she liked about it. As such, she was grateful to have an expert coach. Hierarchies, it seemed, transcended race and nationality.
The captain did not reply immediately, giving them some nervous moments. Finally he said, “No, I am just doing my duty. The Mizlaplanian and Exchange vessels were examined here before being sent back. I must know for my own records why this procedure is not being followed with this ship.”
Again, Krisha was the coach although Modra said the words.
“Captain, those were commercial vessels. This is a military one. We do not know its capabilities and are praying at the moment that we can pilot it without it killing us. Our fleets are massing along the boundary with the Mycohl at many points, as you surely know. This is only a frigate, but it may give vital clues as to the construction, capabilities, and weaknesses of their larger vessels as well. It is important that it be gotten to a point where the best minds and machines can do just that with minimum risk. If we try anything fancy here, we might just break a security barrier and wind up with this thing in automatic attack mode. You know what would happen if we suddenly started an attack run on you.”
“You would be vaporized before you got close enough to fire anything!”
She grinned, although he couldn’t see it. “Exactly my point. Now, we’re both busy enough and nervous enough here as it is. We have no more time for this. Either clear us to attempt to fly, give the counter-signal for aborting our mission, or interfere on your own direct authority, in which case I assure you you will answer to an Admiralty Board.”
Orgho didn’t like letting them go, but he also was enough of a security organization man, with understandable ambition to one day become an admiral, to know that one does not get to be an admiral by countermanding security missions on your own authority unless you have clear and direct evidence of enemy activity.
“Very well. Transmit course and speed.”
“I most certainly will nor!” Modra responded. “I want no Mycohl surprises between us and our destination, and the destination must remain secure. We will clear the fleet. Just give us clearance to jump to subspace.”
“Oh, very well, you’ve got it. But I’m filing a complete report on this to Admiralty, along with a transcript!”
“You do that, Captain. Thank you. Leaving now.” She couldn’t suppress a chuckle, which, fortunately, was with transmitter off. / wonder what rank he’ll be when Admiralty gets that transcript? she wondered.
Josef put the ship into motion, checked the traffic, calculated his best freehand exit, and accelerated to full sublight speed.
<They’ve just locked on all targeting computers!> Josef noted.
<Jump! Now!> Tobrush ordered, and there was a shudder, a feeling of vertigo, and the screens now went blank.
<What happened at the last minute there?> Jimmy wanted to know. <Why did they lock on?>
<Precaution, perhaps,> came Tobrush’s reply. <We did, after all, become melodramatic over the possibility of the ship going wild. Perhaps something else. At any rate, we are now in subspace and far away from them and their fleet. Josef is adept at taking the kind of maneuvers to ensure us not being easily followed. Still, let me check. . . . What the . . . ?>
The subspace monitoring screens showed no signs of a ship within any reasonable tracking range. Although that wasn’t an absolute guarantee that nobody was following, it was as good as you could get. Still, the monitors were not totally blank as they otherwise should have been.
As Tobrush watched them, the other three linked with him saw them too. Saw them and recognized them. Amorphous, almost liquid shapes that changed and writhed in a slow and evil dance as they watched.
“Sweet Jesus! They’re all over the place!” Jimmy cried.
Gun Roh Chin released his restraints and went forward to see the screens. What he saw startled him as well. “I’ve seen that phenomenon before,” he told them, “although never so many or so large.”
“That’s no phenomenon!” Modra responded anxiously. “That’s just what we saw in the other plane, minus the grids. The evil . . . those horrid things that live in the muck and cling to the sides!”
“They appear to be growing,” Chin noted.
“Yeah, they are,” Josef agreed. “I can avoid them, unless there’s some kind of attack, but I never saw them here before, and they didn’t teach me anything about those in pilot’s training.”
Krisha, who’d seen them once, stared at the screens and was appalled. “Don’t you see? That’s how it’s done!” she exclaimed. “Subspace—parallel universe, other-dimensional plane, whatever you call it. It’s the someplace!. They move, they float within, they attach to a wall and somehow ooze their slime into our universe!”
The captain frowned. “What? How?”
“I don’t know. Through idols, perhaps, and other icons of evil. By being called by those who worship them. Hundreds of ways, I suspect. It’s the physical realization of pure, unadorned evil!”
Jimmy stared at the slowly pulsing, plastic shapes. “He said they did experiments. That’s the mechanism, I’d wager. Program one of those things the way we program computers and send it to a specific point on the grid, small enough for a local area or huge enough to envelop whole worlds. Responsive now only to the Engineer. They said that he alone refused to give up playing with us like toys. Now he’s moving them, concentrating them, perhaps making and programming more. My God! He could cover the Three Empires! And with the Quintara active and free, and all those who’ve always followed evil and the ancient evil ways on world after world, race after race. . . . It’s monstrous! It’s the ancient Enemy setting up his pieces to strike at will and without warning! And with ninety trillion Fausts out there being propped for seduction and damnation.”
“Jeez,” Grysta said under her breath, listening to the conversation, sounding more amazed than contrite. “/ helped do all that ?”
Gun Rob Chin stared at Jimmy. “Who’s this ‘Faust’?”
“An ancient tale of a scholar who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for twenty years of anything he wanted,” Jimmy told him. “It was fun—until the end of the twentieth year. The message is that everybody has a price, but selling out has its own price as well. This Engineer, he’s a god for all intents and purposes, just as the others are as well. But, unlike them, he lacks compassion, or any sense of ethics over lower races. Any at all. He probably ran their experiments in the early days. Perhaps there were even bets.” He thought of Job but decided not to have to explain the Bible to the Mizlaplanians in one easy lesson. “Then something happened. Either they went too far, and everyone but the Engineer was appalled, or they were caught playing by the Captain, who ordered a stop to it. The rest did, but not the Engineer. He was having too much fun. It was probably like a drug to him. He couldn’t give it up, couldn’t halt playing God. In a sense, he was the first Faustus, the model. He traded being a god as long as it lasted to thinking about the consequences of mutiny in some far-off time.”
“He’ll fight if he has to, or when it amuses him to do so,” Krisha agreed, “but he’d much prefer to corrupt and have us march willingly into his horrible slavery. That is consistent with our Scripture.”
“But we—all three empires—are but a slice, and not even a third of a slice, of a single galaxy!” the captain noted. “Why us? We still can’t even count the galaxies out there!”
“Oh, it’s probably nor just us,” Jimmy answered. “We saw the countless galaxies like grains of sand from within that plane. But we’re special. It was while they were playing with us, in our little corner of the universe, that they got caught. Trapped. The demons sealed up, the Engineer forced to work remotely through the other plane, the ship’s