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in for a bad fall?
He clambered into his trailer like a man carrying an extra fifty kilos,
dropped into his swivel chair. His heart hammered. His ears pounded. He was
scared. He closed his eyes and searched his mind for a clue to what was
happening. He found nothing.
It had to be this contact with his past. The benRabi personality was not
really him. It could not withstand the strain of the milieu of Thomas
McClennon.
Then he noticed the envelope lying on his desk. The envelope that had been
attached to the magazineLiterati.
He stared as if it were poisonous. He tried to back away. One hand stole
forward.
It was from Greta Helsung, the girl he had sponsored in Academy. His
pseudo-daughter. It was a grateful, anxious, friendly missive, seven pages of
tight script reviewing her progress in Academy, and her continual fears for
his safety. She knew that he had been captured by enemies of Confederation.
His friends had promised they would rescue him. They would get her letter to
him. And this, and that, and she loved him, and all his friends in Luna
Command were well and happy and pulling for him, and she hoped she would see
him soon. There were several photographs of an attractive young blond in Navy
blacks. She looked happy.
There was also a note from an old girlfriend. Max expressed the same
sentiments with more reserve.
What were they trying to do? Why couldn t yesterday let him be?
Greta had such a cute, winsome smile . . .
He sealed his eyes and fought to escape the conflicting emotions.
He began to feel very cold, then to shake. Then to be terribly afraid.
Fifteen: 3050 AD
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The Contemporary Scene
There were fifty ships in the exploratory fleet. They had not seen a friend
in two years. It was a big galaxy. They were 10,000 light-years from home,
moving toward the galactic core, backtracking old destruction.
There had been eighty-one ships at the beginning. A few had been lost. Others
had been left at regular intervals, to catch and relay instelled reports from
the probe. Most of the ships were small and fast, equipped for survey and
intelligence scanning.
The fleet was near its operational limit. Three months more, and the ships
would have to swing around, the great questions still unanswered.
The advance coreward had been slow and methodical. Still, space was vast and
only a fragmentary vision of enemy territory had been assembled.
The stars were densely packed here. The night around the fleet was jeweled
far more heavily than farther out The Arm. The skies were alien and strange.
The worlds were silent and barren.
Where were the centerward people building all their ships? Where did the
killing hordes spring from?
The Ulantonid explorers had detected convoys heading rimward. They had seen a
parade of dead worlds. But they had located nothing resembling a base,
occupied world, or industrial operation. They had learned only that the enemy
came from still farther toward the galaxy s heart.
Then, too, there had been the tagged asteroids in the dead solar systems.
Huge metallic bodies three to five hundred kilometers long, all similar in
composition. Eleven such rocks, marked with transponders, had been located.
The Ulantonid specialists had been unable to conjecture the meaning of the
tagging.
The probe fleet had established five tracks along which enemy ships advanced
out The Arm. Each was a river of charged particles, ions, and free radicals.
Contact was carefully avoided. The mission was one of observation.
Remote surveillance of the charged paths showed not only the occasional
outward passage of a fleet but the regular back and forth of courier vessels.
That suggested the enemy had no instel capability. Which was an important
deduction. The allies would obtain a tactical advantage by being able to
coordinate their forces over far vaster distances.
The centerpiece of the Ulantonid fleet was its only true ship of war, a
vessel which beggared the human Empire Class. It bore the nameDance in Ruby
Dawn.
Humans named their warships for warriors, battles, cities, old provinces,
lost empires, and fighting ships of the past. Ulant used the titles of poems
and novels, symphonies and works of art. Each race found the other s naming
system quaint.
Ruby Dawncarried the liaison team provided by Confederation s Bureau of Naval
Intelligence. Those people had been away from home even longer than their
Ulantonid shipmates.
Theirs was a grueling task. They had to survey all incoming data and isolate
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those bits which justified transmission to Luna Command. They had to be
diplomatic with their hosts. It was too much for twelve people eleven thousand
light-years from the nearest of their own kind.
An Ulantonid officer stepped into their working compartment. Commander
Russell? We re getting something that might interest you.
Russell was a short black man built like a tombstone. He almost responded,
We ll get it in a while, won t we? Where s the damned hurry? He did not. The
Blues were so courteous it made him ashamed to think of giving them a hard
time.
Important? he asked. The Blues were showing strain too, though they were
more accustomed to extended missions.
Song of Myrionreported a strong neutrino source. It didn t look natural. On
the other hand, it was two-thirds of a parsec from the nearest star. Control
is moving probe ships in from several directions. It was felt that you would
want to see the scans we re getting.
Of course. Of course. Doris, you can get in touch through Group Voice
Nomahradine. Lead on, Group Voice.
Russell did not expect anything. The Blues came up with something new twice a
week. There was always a natural explanation. But someone always went along.
It was part of the get-along policy. Never give the Blues offense. The
squabbling and snarling had to be confined to liaison team quarters.
A communications officer greeted them with, We might have something this
time, Group Voice. He gestured. Russell surveyed the elaborate and only
slightly alien equipment. One huge display pinpointed the probeships involved
in the current exercise. They had taken positions on an arc one Ulantonid
light-year from the neutrino source. Lines and arrows of colored light
flickered in and out of existence.
Russell was astounded. The neutrino source was not a point. The lines
indicated that it subtended a half second of arc, vertically and horizontally,
from the point of view of each observer. He did some quick mental arithmetic.
Jesus, he murmured. That s a globe . . . almost six times ten to the
twelfth kilometers in diameter. That s five hundred tunes the diameter of the
old Solar System.
The Group Voice was equally impressed. Commander, that s one hell of an
artifact.
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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