The Prometheus Project Part 29

getting away from us."

"But quite capable of reentering the time stream at whatever point Novak chooses," said Khorat in a voice of gray emptiness. "We can, of course, follow suit. But without a ship-to-ship weapon, we would

have no more ability to thwart her than we possess here and now." His eyes strayed to the viewscreen and Novak's ship, visibly damaged and leaking a mist of air.

I knew in the pit of my stomach what he was thinking. He did, in fact, have a weapon left: our ship itself.

Desperation, not necessity, is the mother of invention. I spoke before even thinking the idea through.

"Wait a minute, Khorat. We can board that ship!""Board?" Khorat repeated blankly."Sure. We've got an access tube, don't we?" The question was rhetorical; s.p.a.cecraft air locks incorporated the device as standard equipment. Normally, it would extend itself to another vessel's air lock, forming a pa.s.sageway through which one could stroll in shirtsleeve comfort. Well, not so much stroll as float, being outside either ship's artificial gravity field. This time, though . . . "You've told me Novak can't maneuver. We'll draw alongside, use the tube to attach ourselves to the side of the ship like a leech."

"And then?" Khorat queried. "Do you expect Novak to let us inside?"

"No, I expect us to blast our way in! Thramoz, I recall seeing a kind of semiportable laser weapon in your goodies locker."

"Yes! And this will allow us to utilize it. It can penetrate the hull of an ordinary civilian craft like that,

allowing us to enter and-"

I shook my head. "Not 'us.' Think about it, Thramoz: that ship is designed for humans. Once inside, you wouldn't be able to squeeze through the pa.s.sageways and hatches."

"That's right." Chloe moved to my side. "It has to be Bob and me."

"Like h.e.l.l!" I exploded. "You're staying here."

"But I've checked out on the hand weapons! And besides, do you really think you can take that ship

single-handed?" She laughed scornfully. "Blackbeard the pirate!"

"Novak only has few people, and after the hit their ship took you can bet some of them are out of action.

And the ones who aren't will be in a state of shock. And I'll have the initiative. And . . . and . . . and you're not coming, that's all!"

"Very well," Khorat said heavily. "You may make this attempt. We can hardly lose anything by it. If you

fail, we can still exercise . . . the other option remaining to us."

Thramoz and I lugged the semiportable laser projector to the ship's service air lock and set it up. Then we pressurized our survival suits as a precaution-whatever else could be said of the medium we were in, it was nothing that could be breathed-and settled in, Thramoz behind the semiportable and me awkwardly cradling something the size of a light machine gun. In the porthole of the air lock's outer door, Novak's ship hung suspended in the middle distance.

Thramoz signaled the control room. Artificial gravity kept the air lock floor steady under our feet as the

ship swung around on an intercept course.

Novak still had maneuvering thrusters, with which she tried feebly to evade us. That game didn't last long. We pulled alongside, and the flank of her ship filled our field of vision. Thramoz touched a control panel, and the access tube began to telescope outward until it met the other ship's hull in a magnetic kiss.

Thramoz opened the air lock's outer door, and we looked down a tunnel with a closed end.

I nodded to Thramoz. He touched the firing stud.

Not even galactic technology could scale an X-ray laser down to the size of our semiportable, and at any rate it would have been useless in atmosphere, which absorbs X-rays. So the beam Thramoz unleashed was in the visible-light wavelengths, and it left a sparkling trail through the air that had flowed outward from our air lock. But that trail was banished from our sight by the minisun that erupted at the far end of

the tunnel, and an instant later a shock wave sent us staggering. These energies were not meant for an enclosed s.p.a.ce.

Thramoz and I exchanged a quick look through out helmets. Then I launched myself into the

weightlessness of the tunnel.

The transition was sickening, and I might have puked had I not had other things on my mind-notably, fighting the outflow of air from the ruptured hull ahead. That was an annoyance, but also a cause for

exultation: we had burned our way through! I floundered forward and grabbed a curling piece of wreckage, pulling myself forward.

Getting through was no problem; there was barely enough intact hull material around the perimeter of

the tunnel for the access tube's magnets to adhere to. Weight descended on me as I entered an artificial gravity field. It was full Earth-normal weight, to which I'd grown unaccustomed, but I was expecting it. I landed on my feet in a ruined pa.s.sageway.

A survival-suited figure loomed ahead of me in the dim emergency lights. There was no one aboard that ship I was concerned with keeping alive; I brought up my laser weapon and used the awkward firing mechanism. The suit's nanoplastic was tough, but not that tough. Superheated body fluids erupted outward in an explosive energy transfer that smashed him (or her) back against a bulkhead as viciously as a large-caliber bullet would have.

I swung my weapon to left and right, alert for fresh targets. There were none in sight. But to the right, the hull was especially damaged, with great rents through which I glimpsed our ship, at the far end of the access tube.

And, out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed something else.

From a little farther forward along the hull, a long jointed rod was unfolding itself and reaching toward our ship. I had no idea what it was or what it was for. But at its tip was something that held the unmistakable look of jury-rigging, as though it had been hastily attached.

The thought ripped through me in a silent scream: limpet mine!

As I watched, helpless, the tip reached our ship's flank and drew away, leaving the improvised object clinging there.

At that instant, as I stood paralyzed by horror, a weight at least equal to my own landed on my back,

smashing me down to the deck and twisting my left arm behind me and upward.

Even as I struggled, I had a full view of the shattering explosion that sent our ship reeling away, clearly wrecked beyond hope of repair, leaving the access tube still attached to this ship, flopping obscenely

about like a cut umbilical cord. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I could see the survival-suited figure of Thramoz tumbling away from the open air lock into the depths of this lunatic s.p.a.ce.But I hardly noticed, for at that moment my entire soul was one vast, silent shriek of Chloe!Something hard crashed against the flexible nanoplastic of my helmet. The pressurization cushioned the blow, and I didn't lose consciousness. But my head spun, and I lost my grip on the laser weapon I couldn't use anyway at such close quarters. Whoever it was who was grasping me from behind heaved my unsteady form upright.

I stared into the face of Renata Novak, silhouetted against a crescendo of secondary explosions that completed the destruction of the ship that had contained Chloe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

"Do you have any idea why you're still alive?" Novak's question didn't seem to call for a reply, so I kept quiet as she answered herself. "Two reasons: first of all, I want to know just exactly who the h.e.l.l you are, and what you were doing aboard what was obviously a Medjavar ship."

Realization brought me out of my sinkhole of despairing horror, and stilled my tongue before I could stupidly blurt something out. She didn't recognize me. Not having looked in a mirror lately, I'd forgotten that, thanks to Nafayum, I still had one card left to play.

"Don't you also want to know where Chloe Bryant and Robert Devaney are?" I asked, meeting her hate-

filled eyes.

"Not particularly. If, as I suspect, they were aboard that ship, you're not likely to admit it. And even if they are still alive, somewhere and somewhen, there's nothing they can do to stop me now."

"Stop you? Lady, you're already stopped! You may still be able to drop out of temporal displacement whenever you want to, but do you really think you'll be able to land this piece of wreckage you're flying?" I gestured at the ruined pa.s.sageway around us and the rents in the hull. "If you try to reenter the atmosphere, all you'll do is burn up from friction and give the people on early nineteenth century Earth an extra shooting star to make wishes on. Why don't you just pack it in?"

For the barest instant, Novak blinked with puzzled annoyance, as though there was something vaguely familiar about her mysterious prisoner's voice, something she couldn't quite place. But then the look was gone, expunged by one of vicious gloating.

"You're mistaken. And that brings me to the second reason I haven't let Evan here kill you. I want you to

live long enough to know you've failed. Bring him!"

The last two words were addressed to Evan, who jerked my arm even further up behind me, sending pain tearing through the shoulder, and shoved me forward. We followed Novak through pa.s.sageways into areas that looked like they still had structural integrity, ending up in the control room, where Novak slapped a switch. I heard the rumble of closing airtight hatches behind us. Novak depressurized her survival suit and removed the helmet. Evan did the same for himself and me with his free hand. Then we continued forward into an open air lock whose most conspicuous feature was a round hatch in the middle of the deck.

Novak pointed at the hatch in the deck. "Do you know what's down there?" I did, but saw no reason to deprive her of the pleasure of answering her own question. "The lifeboat. It is undamaged, being recessed into the underside of the ship, as you probably know is standard."

I did, in fact, know that. The so-called lifeboat that all s.p.a.ceships carried was, in fact, a very small lifting body with rudimentary impellers that could bring it to a landing on a planetary surface-in the ocean, if necessary, for it had flotation capacity though no aquatic propulsion. A human-designed one could hold four people in cramped quarters. It also had a limited cargo capacity. I had a sick feeling that I knew what Novak was going to say next.

"We took all possible precautions. The database containing all the Project's data about galactic technology, and all the necessary interfacing equipment-including media for presenting it in readily understandable format, rather like what the Delkasu use for teaching aids-are in the lifeboat."

It didn't occur to me to doubt it. I knew galactic data-storage capabilities-far beyond what you know, operating on the molecular level-well enough to know the staggering amounts of information that could be crammed into a database of ridiculously small physical size.

"So," Novak went on, "we don't need to land this ship. We'll take the lifeboat down and let the ship continue on course, burning up in atmosphere as you've correctly said it will. So you see, you and friends-your late friends-have accomplished nothing. Nothing! Do you hear me?" She got her breathing under control, and gestured to Evan. We returned to the control room.

Evan released me and gave me a shove that sent me sprawling. I looked up at Novak, aiming a small hand weapon at me. I recognized it as a needler, shooting tiny flchettes by electromagnetic pulse. It wasn't a serious combat weapon, being useless against the body armor that galactic technology could produce, but in the present circ.u.mstances it got the point across. Evan, clearly a traditionalist, was fondling a knife. I recognized him from the raid on the Sanctuary.