Destroyer of Worlds Part 28

"Makes sense," Alice said. "Roy and Brennan wanted the Paks' attention drawn away from Sol system. That's why they headed for Wunderland. Anyone spotting Kobold-intact, I mean-would have known it was an advanced artifact. It had to be destroyed."

"Something else was going on," Sigmund said. Hundreds of starship pilots a year entered Sol system-wherever that was. A deep-radar ping cost nothing, and finding an overlooked stasis box would bring a fortune. Someone would have found a neutronium ma.s.s like Kobold's long ago. "There isn't an object like that around Sol, at least not in my lifetime."

The simplest explanation was that Twenty-three had taken the neutronium. The problem was, the Outsiders paid, usually handsomely, for resources. Sigmund remembered that they leased a moon of an outer planet in Sol system, and none of the details, of course. Had they stolen neutronium? It would be the first theft ever suspected of the Outsiders. So probably not.

What if Julian had found the remains of Kobold and tossed it down his black hole? That wouldn't explain why no one had found the neutronium in the centuries before him. And if Kobold-in a black hole or any other way-remained in Sol system, then how in Finagle's name did the singleship end up orbiting yet another neutronium ma.s.s?

48.

Haven's bridge had a round view port. A year ago, Baedeker would have taken no notice of the shape. A year ago, he had not spent months aboard a New Terran starship. Humans favored rectangular views, oddly indifferent to the sharp corners.

He thought often about humans these days.

This display held a spiral of overlapped round images, reminiscent of an insect's compound eye. The much-repeated lump of rock and ice was unexceptional. Nor did any star nearby shine especially brightly. Without lengthy observations, he could not judge with any certainty which of three nearby suns could properly claim this proto-comet. But one thing about the utterly ordinary object was was unusual: the cl.u.s.ter of black monoliths now clinging to it. unusual: the cl.u.s.ter of black monoliths now clinging to it.

The most recent in his series of scale-model prototype planetary drives.

From the center of the holo out, each sphere showed the image of the proto-comet from a progressively more distant instrument cl.u.s.ter. His probes were powered, each maneuvering to maintain a stationary view despite the proto-comet's tumbling. Telemetry far too small to read scrolled across the bottom of each inset holo, captured for later a.n.a.lysis.

"An impressive setup," Nessus sang. He had arrived, unannounced, to witness the upcoming experiment. His ship, Aegis Aegis, was toylike beside Haven Haven's #4 hull.

"Thank you," Baedeker answered. The courtesy was human, because it was mostly New Terrans with whom he dealt. His experiments could only be done safely far from the Fleet, where few Citizens dared to roam. Even with Nessus' intervention, Baedeker had obtained only eight senior scientists-volunteers, they were not-from General Products Laboratories. The balance of Haven Haven's crew, another forty-two, was human. To obtain that that a.s.sistance Nessus had had to involve the New Terran government. "Without your influence and a.s.sistance, Nessus, I could never have pulled this together." a.s.sistance Nessus had had to involve the New Terran government. "Without your influence and a.s.sistance, Nessus, I could never have pulled this together."

For the Hindmost's consort had considerable influence. There was a time that fact would have evoked bitterness, even fury-conflict with Nessus had once gotten Baedeker banished. But without Nessus' trust in humans, the Concordance would still be ignorant of the Pak threat. The scruffy scout had been proven correct-no matter the consequences for Baedeker.

My misjudgment was not Nessus' fault. The admission eased a burden that Baedeker had not acknowledged-not even to himself. The admission eased a burden that Baedeker had not acknowledged-not even to himself.

Nessus bobbed heads in acknowledgment. "How distant are we?"

"Twenty million miles." Baedeker now even thought in English units: another artifact of his time among the humans.

Nessus whistled approval. "That seems safe enough."

"We try." Baedeker extended a neck to the display controls; with a wriggle of lip nodes he fine-tuned the image contrast. He straightened up again. "Because the Outsider drives move worlds through normal s.p.a.ce, it seemed logical that all manifestations of operation are localized to normal s.p.a.ce. That suggests the propagation of any side effects of our experiment will be light-speed limited.

"So, the string of probes between our homemade drive and this ship uses hyperwave comm. Whatever happens, we'll know it long before any normal-s.p.a.ce phenomenon can get to us." And we'll jump into hypers.p.a.ce if anything looks amiss.

"Excellent, Baedeker. What is the prognosis?"

"We learn a little more each time." A nonanswer worthy of Sigmund, Baedeker thought. The best he could hope for was an anticlimactic result.

"What will we see?" Nessus persisted.

"Probably nothing." Baedeker twisted a neck, scanning the controlled chaos around the bridge. Minerva seemed to have everything under control. His research a.s.sistant still wore General Products violet-and-blue mane ribbons, as though the fortunes of a business mattered anymore. "Nessus, expect this test to be brief."

"How brief?"

"Ready for final countdown," Minerva announced over the intercom, speaking English for the benefit of the humans. "Thirty seconds, on my mark." He released the intercom b.u.t.ton. "Baedeker?"

"Proceed."

"Mark. Twenty-nine ... twenty-eight ..."

Everyone here carried comps, synched to the shipboard network. The verbal countdown was unnecessary, a peculiarly human custom to which Baedeker still struggled to adapt. Despite everything, he could not resist looking himself in the eyes.

"Nineteen... eighteen..."

"How brief," Nessus repeated.

"You'll see soon enough." Or we'll unleash energies so vast that they swallow us even here, and the discussion becomes moot.

Nessus bobbed agreement.

"Three ... two... one... done. Commencing a.n.a.lysis."

On the main display, the lump of icy rock appeared unchanged. "How long?" Baedeker sang out.

Minerva looked up from his station. "Twelve point two seven nanoseconds."

"Nanoseconds?" Nessus' undertunes trilled with dismay.

"It's our best yet," Baedeker reb.u.t.ted, staccato and impatient. He might have come to terms with Nessus' unherdlike methods, but that tolerance hardly extended to uninformed criticism. "Have you read read my progress reports?" my progress reports?"

"I err on the side of other priorities. Like keeping your project funded and staffed."

And if any of the herd were to survive the Pak onslaught that was was the higher priority. Baedeker fluted apologetically. "Walk with me, and I'll explain." the higher priority. Baedeker fluted apologetically. "Walk with me, and I'll explain."

They cantered off the bridge together, Baedeker leading the way. They began a long, slow trip around the ship's rotund waist. (Humans had waists, although Citizens did not. A bigger difference between the species: where they chose to locate a ship's bridge. Only a human would think to expose a hindmost's duty station at the bow of the ship. The rational choice, surely, was at the center, as far as possible from any hull impacts.) The circuit was more than a half mile.

"You're familiar with the zero-point energy of vacuum," Baedeker began. "The Outsider drive taps the zero-point energy. Doing so asymmetrically is inherently propulsive."

"For nanoseconds," Nessus chided.

Without missing a step, Baedeker plucked at his mane. If Nessus truly understood the risks, he he would be tearing apart his mane. "The process evokes matter-antimatter particle pairs from the quantum foam, myriads of pairs, scattered across a volume larger than the body to be moved. Every infinitesimal region requires a subtly different treatment to achieve net thrust. Every particle requires tracking. It all takes ma.s.sive amounts of computing power-more than any technology customarily used on Hearth. You'll wonder what kind of computing power the Outsiders employed, and that is the scary part. We do not exactly know." would be tearing apart his mane. "The process evokes matter-antimatter particle pairs from the quantum foam, myriads of pairs, scattered across a volume larger than the body to be moved. Every infinitesimal region requires a subtly different treatment to achieve net thrust. Every particle requires tracking. It all takes ma.s.sive amounts of computing power-more than any technology customarily used on Hearth. You'll wonder what kind of computing power the Outsiders employed, and that is the scary part. We do not exactly know."

Scary was the ultimate expletive. Nessus twitched but made no comment. was the ultimate expletive. Nessus twitched but made no comment.

"We do not dare to unseal an Outsider drive, or even to scan one invasively, yet somehow we had to determine how these tremendous forces are manipulated." Baedeker fell silent as a human scurried past in the opposite direction, her errand unknown. He had accepted human help, but the nuances of the project must remain Concordance secrets. "An endless stream of neutrinos is constantly pa.s.sing through everything, and deep-radar technology uses neutrino pulses. So, we modified a deep-radar unit to emit very weak pulses, at neutrino intensities Hearth last saw before our sun began to swell. Our ancestors' activation then of their planetary drive did not cause a disaster. It stood to reason another neutrino source emitting at the same level would not induce problems in a drive."

And the uncertainties of that probing had still still reduced Baedeker to a ball of tightly coiled flesh. He saw nothing to be gained by admitting it. reduced Baedeker to a ball of tightly coiled flesh. He saw nothing to be gained by admitting it.

"And what did you find?" Nessus asked.

"All we got was a shadowy image, indistinct, the circuitry suggestive of quantum computing." That, and a days-long retreat to catatonia. Any perturbation, even an unexpected neutrino flux, risked decohering the quantum superpositions on which the control algorithms must rely. If the probe's pulses had altered the quantum states-the potential damage was incalculable and unknowable.

And beyond the ability of a dilettante like Nessus to comprehend. "That revealed a great deal regarding the complexity of the control process and nothing about the algorithms."

"But a mere twelve nanoseconds," Nessus intoned. "The control processes seem rather sensitive."

Sensitive? That seriously understated it. Baedeker had been left to determine-in theory, by a.n.a.lysis; in practice, by trial and error-how to shape and channel energy eruptions coaxed from the vacuum. And each iteration risked unleashing unknowably vast energies... .

"Our first three tries, Nessus, we failed to attain one one nanosecond. That's how fast the process can destabilize." nanosecond. That's how fast the process can destabilize."

"What about net thrust?"

Two humans and a Citizen loped out of a cross corridor, comps in hands and mouth, talking excitedly about gravitational lobes, particle densities, and flux vortices. This was the stuff of progress-nanosecond by nanosecond-and the type of detail to which Baedeker should should be attending. He waited for the technicians to disappear around the curve of the corridor. "Thrust? Certainly. Net thrust? Unclear. We may be seeing only a bit of random effect, beyond our control. And there may be longer-duration feedback effects we have yet to encounter." be attending. He waited for the technicians to disappear around the curve of the corridor. "Thrust? Certainly. Net thrust? Unclear. We may be seeing only a bit of random effect, beyond our control. And there may be longer-duration feedback effects we have yet to encounter."

"A twelvefold increase is progress, but nanoseconds will be a hard sell." Nessus came to a halt and fixed Baedeker with a bold, two-headed stare. "I'll have to embellish to the Hindmost. Your task is to make sure that by the time Nike looks closely at this project, I am not too much of a liar."

49.

Thssthfok sat on the floor of his cell, knees drawn against his chest, back against an unyielding bulkhead. Except for occasional fleeting moments of freedom, he had been in this prison for-with a jolt, he recognized he did not know how long.

He searched his memories and surroundings for clues. The faint clatter and clank of shipboard maintenance, become all but constant. Sigmund's appearances, less and less frequent. A tray of fruit, scarcely touched. Images of his long-lost breeders and friends, memories of long-ago conversations, more real to him than anything in the room.

Dispa.s.sionately, he studied the tray. The food looked tired but not yet spoiled. He forced himself to take a bite, and then another, and then a third, despite his lack of appet.i.te. Without noticing, he had abandoned his hope of escape, had lost himself in the past.

Three times he had broken out of this cell; three times, his captors had retaken him with ease. Had failure reduced him to apathy? Yes, he decided. That, and the ceaseless activity outside the hatch. That, and the metallic stomping of armored workers, the corridors ever alive with a many-limbed gait. To wrest this ship from its crew demanded more than superior intellect and strength. He needed the element of surprise-and did not see how to achieve surprise when armored work parties constantly plied the vessel's corridors. And so, imperceptibly, he had stopped scheming, stopped a.n.a.lyzing, stopped watching....

This way waited death.

Did he choose that path? He had seen so so much, learned so much, since leaving Mala. If he died here, that knowledge died with him. The good that knowledge could do Pakhome's evacuees would die with him. much, learned so much, since leaving Mala. If he died here, that knowledge died with him. The good that knowledge could do Pakhome's evacuees would die with him.

He could summon no emotion at the thought of death, but neither did the prospect bring indifference. He picked up a piece of fruit and managed to swallow another nibble. He took a few more bites and felt a small stirring of energy.

It was not yet his time, apparently, to fade away.

He began an exercise routine, taking the opportunity to recover his scanner from its hiding place in a recessed handhold. Later, his exercises complete, the tool hidden under a blanket, he turned his attention, working through the tactile interface, to his cell's curved wall. With every probe he learned something new about the hull material. With every sc.r.a.p of knowledge he extended the scanner capabilities to discern yet more.

The hull hummed with resonant energies. It explained how this material could be harder than twing twing: by dynamically reinforcing the interatomic bonds. Ways to produce similar stuff blossomed in his thoughts, and he filed away the ideas.

The hull itself had just become a resource. He could alter his modulator to tap the hull's own energy....

The possibility caught his attention, and suddenly he was ravenous.

WITH A FINAL PRECISE ADJUSTMENT, Thssthfok finished rebuilding the scanner into a structural modulator.

He stood close to the curved wall, blocking with his body the device in his hands. He swiped it over a small area, and the handle pulsed with energy. A patch of the curved bulkhead (or of an outside coating, he thought) turned clear- Another ship clung just outside!

Sounds in the corridor. Thssthfok hurriedly swiped the modulator over the wall and restored its opacity. His thumb twitched to disable the device. He wrapped his fist around it, sliding his arms and hands behind his back as he pivoted to face the inside hatch.

The door swung open. "Something interesting there?" Sigmund asked.

His need for life restored, Thssthfok resented Sigmund's interruptions. Sigmund had made no mention of a new crewwoman, yet traces of her scent clung to Sigmund's armor. When had she come aboard? Her presence, like the heavy pace of unexplained maintenance, went unexplained. She had come from the docked ship, of course.

"No more than usual," Thssthfok lied.

Sigmund launched into another round of questions. With some difficulty Thssthfok answered, or disdained to answer, with the boredom the questions deserved. With the boredom with which, surely, he had answered while sinking deeper and deeper into apathy. He dared not reveal excitement now.

Finally, Sigmund tired of the conversation and left.

When next the sounds of shipboard maintenance receded into the background noise, Thssthfok risked a glance into the corridor. He saw no one. He strode briskly to the curved bulkhead, softened a swath of the hull, and the much more malleable second hull just beyond- And pressed through both walls into the c.o.c.kpit of another vessel.

THE LITTLE SHIP WAS A CURIOUS amalgam of human and Pak influences. The pilot console bore labels in the same symbol set as the ship Thssthfok had just left. Some words seemed changed from the English he had learned, but they were close enough. He saw at a glance that the ship's systems were functioning properly and the deuterium tank was nearly full.

A pressure suit and helmet waited in a small locker. They were large, but he could make do. He might need to make a quick trip into the vacuum to detach or undock this little ship.

One of the teleportation discs lay on the deck. He had speculated for so long about those. He lifted it, marveling at its low ma.s.s. He turned it, spotting a keypad in a recess along its edge and a long bank of tiny switches. An identification code, no doubt.

Leaving the disk operational risked someone coming aboard-but only one, for the little ship was crowded with just Thssthfok here. He would easily overpower one unsuspecting visitor, if it came to that. Deactivating the disc, if he spent the time to find the key code, risked triggering a maintenance alert and prematurely revealing his presence here. So did reprogramming the disc address. So did stowing the disc upside down, or somewhere too small for a person to rematerialize-any competent system design would check for open s.p.a.ce before transmitting.

Disabling the disc must wait until he escaped.

He put the disc back where he had found it, then looked around and under the pilot's couch for hidden restraints. The chair was not rigged, and he settled into it. He surveyed the console. Life-support controls. Ship's power. Fusion drive. Artificial gravity. Sensor array. Radio and comm laser. There were other systems, some not immediately familiar. Those, like the teleportation device, could wait later study.

Curious. Magnets secured a cloth to the canopy rim, hiding the view port. Thssthfok yearned to see stars again. He ripped away the cloth- The edges of the canopy came together. That made no sense, and he concentrated on the expanse that until moments ago the cloth had covered. And saw- Nothing. Less than nothing. The denial, even, of the concept of anything. The less than nothing drew him in, deeper, deeper ...

He tried to look away and failed, unable to recover the concept of direction.

Deeper, deeper...

THSSTHFOK WOKE, utterly disoriented. He was flat on his back. He had the vague sensation of someone repeatedly calling his name. A booted foot, none too gently, prodded his side. Sigmund's boot. Eric, also in armor, stood nearby.

"What happened?" Thssthfok managed.