For Love and Glory

XV

“Stand by for hyperjump.” The ship’s voice filled her cabins and corridors with melody. Lissa had a moment’s envisionment of her as the stars might see, a golden torpedo soaring amidst their myriads.

“Ten, nine, eight—” sang the countdown. It wasn’t necessary, only a custom followed when time allowed. That sense of oneness with history, clear back to the rockets of old, gave heart on the rim of mystery, “—five, four—” Lissa tensed in her safety harness. The console before her seemed abruptly alien. She, the fire control officer? A jape, a sop. Dagmar alone could direct the weapons she carried. “—two—” Well, but somebody had to decide whether to shoot and at what, and Valen would have plenty else occupying his attention. “—one—” Besides, Valen was a coward.

“—zero.”

And the viewscreens that englobed Lissa showed a sky gone strange.

Inexperienced, she lost a second or two before she saw the differences. Stars in space were so many, unwinking diamond-bright; constellations became hard to trace. Moreover, the distances she had hitherto traveled, to suns near hers, changed them but little. Now she had skipped over—how many light years had Orichalc said? Seven hundred and some.

Acceleration had terminated shortly before transit through hyperspace. The ship fell free, at whatever velocity her kinetic and potential energies determined. It couldn’t be high, for an instrument revealed that she had not generated an exterior force-field to screen off interstellar atoms. Nor did there seem to be any other radiation hazard. Weightless, Lissa revolved her chair three-dimensionally and studied her new heavens.

Odd, she thought, how familiar the Milky Way looks. Some differences, this bend, that bay, yonder silhouette of the Sagittarian dust clouds; but I expected it to be quite altered. And Orichalc didn’t mention red stars. How many? A score at least, strewn all around us—“Damn! I clean forgot.” Sweat prickled her skin. “Any trace of Susaians?”

“None,” replied the ship.

Her muscles eased. “Well,” she said redundantly, “our navigation data aren’t what you’d call precise. We’ll have to cast around a sizeable region till we find what we’re after, close enough to identify it.”

Valen’s command over the intercom was otherwise. “Captain to science team. Start your studies.”

“What?” responded Esker. “We can’t be anywhere near our goal. Commence your search pattern.”

“I’ll give the orders, if you please. We’re not going to hyperjump about at random till we have some idea of what this part of space is like. I want at least a preliminary report within an hour. Get busy.”

Captain Caution, Lissa thought. But it does make sense, I guess. She touched her own intercom switchplate. “Fire control,” she said. “I’m obviously no use here. May I be relieved? I could give a hand elsewhere.”

“Perhaps.” Valen sounded skeptical, as well he might. “Stay aft of the command sector.”

Why, what will you be doing that nobody else should interrupt? “Aye, aye.” Lissa unsecured, shoved with a foot, and arrowed toward the exit. A dim circle of light marked it, for it was part of the simulacrum system. When it retracted for her, she passed as if through the galactic band into a prosaic companionway.

Motion in zero gravity was fun, but now she sped on business—to find Orichalc and put certain questions to him. The Susaian occupied one of the crew cubicles. It was unlocked. Entering, she found it empty, save for the few curious objects that were personal possessions.

Hm. Would the wight scuttle around idly under these conditions? No, he was a cosmonaut and knew better. Just the same, Lissa searched everywhere she was permitted to go. It took a while to establish that the Susaian must be forward with Valen.

Why? Well, he did go reticent after that private talk of theirs. What are they hatching? Let’s try the physics lab, she decided. I barely glanced in earlier.

There Lissa found confusion, Esker’s three assistants struggling with apparatus that wandered perversely from them. The chief was shouting at the intercom: “—weight! These people can’t work in free fall!”

“Then they’d better learn,” Valen’s voice snapped.

“Destruction curse it, do you want a quick report or don’t you? Nobody else is here to detect us, unless you’ve brought along some phantoms of your own.”

After a moment during which the whirr of the ventilators seemed loud: “Very well. One-half gee in five minutes.”

Esker switched off. “Treats us like offal. What’s he think he is, a patron?” He noticed Lissa. “Oh. Milady.”

“I’ll help you get your stuff together before the boost,” she said. “Not to let it crash down helter-skelter.” Skillfully, she moved about, plucking things from the air. “I didn’t know you three lack this training,” she told them angrily. “I took for granted you had it. What possessed you to choose them, Esker?”

The man’s tone went sullen. “I made sure they aren’t subject to spacesickness. That’d have been adequate, if our dear captain showed some common sense. Why should we conduct these studies? Elementary, routine procedures. The ship can perfectly well do them. Bring up one or two robot bodies from the hold, if necessary.”

“This tests how well you’ll perform when we need procedures that are not routine,” Lissa replied. “Well, I’ll give you three some basic drill as soon as may be, and hope for the best. But Esker, I’m very disappointed in you.”

She wondered how much rage he must suppress in order to mumble, “I’m sorry, milady.” The wondering was brief. A thought came to the fore, instead. Test—

Countdown gave warning, power coursed silent through the engine, the deck was once more downward and feet pressed lightly against it. Having nothing better to do, Lissa sat in a corner and watched the physicists work. She confessed to herself that Esker got things organized fast and thereafter efficiency prevailed. Spectroscopes, radio receivers, mass detectors she recognized; others she did not, but they spoke to those who understood.

Excitement waxed. “Yes, got to be masered— Three hundred twenty kiloherz— This’n’s nearly twice that— And another— Minute by minute, suspicion gathered in her.

Valen: “You’ve had your hour. What can you tell me?”

Esker muttered an oath and raised his shock head from the instrument over which he had stood crouched. “We don’t need interruptions!” he called.

“I didn’t say you must stop work. I only want to know what you’ve found out so far. You can keep on as long as needful.”

Esker straightened. “That may be some while.” His tone gentled, with a tinge of awe. This is certainly… a very peculiar region. Radio emissions from—a number of sources, we haven’t established how many but they’re in every direction. Mostly coherent waves. Frequencies and intensities vary by several orders of magnitude. We’ve only checked two Doppler shifts as yet, but they show motions of kilometers per second, which I suspect are orbital. Many graviton sources are also present. I can’t state positively that they are invisible accelerated masses.… Oh, we’ll be busy here. Is this a natural phenomenon, or could there be artifacts of the Forerunners, still operating after how many millions of years—?”

“What do you propose to do?”

“Keep studying of course. Examine everything. We haven’t even begun to search for matter particles, for instance. Neutrino spectra, perhaps? Captain, I don’t want to make any hypotheses before we know a muckload more.”

“Very well. Carry on.” Valen laughed. “Don’t forget to fix yourselves a bite to eat now and then.” He switched off.

He wouldn’t crack a joke here, would he? Unless—

It shivered through Lissa. She rose. “Esker,” she said, “would you analyze one or two of those red stars?”

The physicist blinked. “Huh? Why, they’re just dim red dwarfs, late M types, milady. You’d need amplification to see any that are more than three or four light-years off.”

“Please. I have a notion about them.”

“But—”

Lissa put command in her voice. “I have a notion. You can do it quickly, can’t you?”

“Well, yes. Automated spectroscopy.” With visible resentment, Esker squinted into a finder and operated controls on a box.

“Hasn’t it struck you odd that we’ve got this many around us?” Lissa asked. “Not that I’ve seen any except the closest, as you said, but they imply plenty more.”

“Red dwarfs are much the commonest kind of star, milady,” Tessa ventured. “They often occur together.”

“I know,” Lissa answered. “These, though, aren’t enough to be a proper cluster, are they?” Of the usual sort, that is.

She saw how Esker stiffened where he stood. Did he see what she was driving at? He stuck to his task regardless, until he could look up and announce: “This specimen is extremely metal-poor. As much so as any I’ve ever seen described. Ancient—” His features congealed. “Shall we survey the rest?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” Lissa touched the intercom. “Captain Valen, I can tell you what we have found.”

An astonished-sounding hiss bespoke Orichalc’s presence at the other end. “Then do,” the man said slowly.

Victory responded. “This is the remains of a globular cluster. Old, old, formed almost at the beginning, first-generation stars, when hardly any atoms heavier than lithium existed. Probably drifted in here from the galactic halo. All the big suns in it went supernova ages ago. The lesser ones evolved into red giants, sank down to white dwarfs, radiated away that energy too. Only the smallest and feeblest are still on the main sequence. Everything else is clinkers, cold and black, or at most emitting so little it’s well-nigh lost in the cosmic background. Maybe a few neutron stars give off pulsar beams yet, but weak, and none happen to be pointed at us. More likely, I’d guess, they’re also dead. Cinders, embers, ashes; let’s get out of here.”

Air whispered.

“The radio waves?” Valen asked. She heard the strain.

“Beacons,” she said. “What else? You’d need them to find your way around in this gloom. The debris may not be closely packed by planetside standards, but the risk of collision would be appreciable, especially when you hyperjump, if you didn’t know where objects are. A higher risk would be coming out of a jump too deep in a gravity well, and blowing your engine.

“Somebody finds it worthwhile to mine the cluster. The ancient supernovae must have plated certain smaller bodies with a rich layer of rare isotopes. I daresay it’s a Skleron enterprise. This sort of thing fits what I’ve read about them.”

Lissa glanced around. The three assistants had retreated toward the bulkheads. They looked alarmed. Esker stood his ground, legs wide apart, shoulders forward, hands flexing at his sides. Lips had drawn away from teeth. Word by word, he spat, “You knew about this. You did not take us to our goal.”

“I will, when your team is ready to cope,” Valen replied coldly. “Congratulations, Milady Windholm. I didn’t expect my little puzzle would be solved this fast. Maybe I should arrange another practice session. Though it won’t be as informative when you’ve been forewarned, will it?”

“You swinesucker,” Esker said. “You smug, white-bellied snotfink. If you think you and your lizard bedmate are fit to command men—”

“Enough. Silence, or I’ll order up the robots and put you in confinement. Go back to your duties.”

Her exultation had vanished from Lissa. It was as if the frozen darkness outboard reached in to touch her. “Captain,” she said, “you and I had better hold a conference.”

He hesitated. “Immediately,” she said.

The response came flat. “Very well. The ship has things under control.” Aside from the people, she thought.

She turned the intercom off. “That’s right, milady,” Esker snarled. “Give him his bucketful right back in his mouth. You’ve got the rank to do it.”

“Have a care,” she said into the smoldering eyes. “Without discipline, we’re done for.”

Striding the corridors, she worked off some tension and arranged some words. At the back of awareness, she was glad of the acceleration. Weightlessness made faces go puffy and unattractive.