Passage At Arms

6 First Contact

Pushing hell out of two months now. Same old zigzag. One step back, two forward. But...

Our baseline has twisted around. We're headed toward Canaan now. More or less. Westhause figures about twelve years to get there at our present rate of approach. We're not taking it in one big rush.

We're turned around. That's the point. Something has happened. We have hunting orders. At last.

Like everything else about this patrol, they make no sense.

Command has targeted us a vessel crippled more than a year ago. She's been rediscovered, running in norm. Must be a crafty bunch, to have kept their heads down this long.

The Old Man doesn't like it. He keeps mumbling, "Coup de grace," and, "Why waste the time? The poor bastards deserve better." I've never seen him so sour.

None of the others are excited, either.

I'm nervous as hell. It's been a long time.

Yanevich says it could get complicated. The target is running for the hunter-killer base we called Rathgeber before the other firm took it away. She is pushing .4 c. That'll mean some fancy maneuvering when we engage her.

And some trick shooting. That's a lot of inherent velocity. We haven't the time or fuel to match it. "What are they doing for fuel?" I ask.

"Ramscooping, probably," Yanevich says. 'They may have tankers dumping hydrogen ahead of her."

Still, she must have been fat to start. Maybe she's a tanker herself. "Why the hell didn't they abandon her? Or, if she's that important, why didn't a repair ship come fix her generators?"

Yanevich shrugs. "Maybe they got a lot of pressure from our people back then. Maybe running in norm was their only option."

Our first chore will be to relocate the ship. Those aren't dummies running the other team. They'll know she's been spotted. She'll be running a jagged course.

First we'll run a search pattern surrounding a baseline drawn from the target's last known position to her suspected destination. During the search, Piniaz will decide how to tackle a vessel traveling almost too fast to track. Point-four c in norm. That's smoking.

The obvious tactic is to drop hyper ahead and shove a missile flight down her throat. Hitting the tiny, necessary relative motion window would be a trick, though. The target is moving too fast to hit from even a slight angle. Knowing that, she'll be running a constantly changing course.

Shooting down the throat means shooting blind. The target is moving too fast. (That's an endless refrain, like a song with only one-line lyrics.) She'll run over us if we take time to aim. The Fire Control system needs a quarter second, after detection, to lock and fire. In that split second our target will traverse more than thirty thousand kilometers.

"You're right," I say. "They aren't dummies. I don't see how we can stop them. I suppose Command says we can't waste missiles."

Yanevich smiles. "You're thinking Climber now. Damned right. Never waste a missile on a cripple."

More seriously, "We couldn't use one. No time to target and program in norm, not enough computation capacity to compute simultaneity close enough to plop one into their laps from hyper.

Tannian should send minelayers. Seed the target path."

"Why're we bothering?"

"Because Fearless Fred told us to. Why do we bother with any of this shit? Don't ask why. Why doesn't matter in the Climbers."

How sour he is lately. He's saying the things the Commander is thinking. He'll have to learn to control himself if he wants to become a Ship's Commander.

"It doesn't matter anywhere else, either, Steve. You're supposed to do your job and trust your superiors."

"What the hell? Anything beats what we've been doing. It's something to mess with till a convoy shows."

Later, while the First Watch Officer confers with Mr. West-hause, Fisherman says, "I hope they make it, sir."

"Hmm? Why's that?"

"Just seems right. That their efforts be rewarded. Like it says in the Bible... but the Lord's will, will be done."

Curious. Compassion for the enemy...

I find it a widespread attitude, though the men all say they'll do their jobs. Even Carmon shows no hatred or hysteria, just respect and a hint of an anachronistic chivalry.

The gentlemen of the other firm aren't wholly real, of course. Making them real, believable, and sinister, has been a problem for our captains and propaganda kings. The men can't get worked up about someone they have never seen. It's hard to interact emotionally with an electronic shadow in a display tank.

It's like fighting specters who take on flesh only for those inescapably in their clutches. Only on our lost worlds do our people actually see their conquerers.

It's hard to hate them, too, because they practice none of the common excesses of war. We never hear atrocity stories. There have been no pointless massacres. They avoid civilian casualties.

They don't use nuclears inside atmosphere. They simply operate as a vast, efficient, and effective disarmament machine. From the beginning their sole purpose has been to neutralize, not to subjugate or destroy.

We're baffled, naturally.

Confederation won't be as charitable, if ever the tide turns. We play tougher, though we've stuck to the tacit rules so far.

The Commander and Mr. Westhause comp a program that will drop us on the target's last known position. Nicastro keeps nagging the computermen for a search program. Mr. Yanevich flutters hither and yon, mothering everyone.

The First Watch Officer's role is constricted this patrol. Under normal circumstances he plays a prick of the first water, a rigid disciplinarian, a book-thumper, and becomes the focus for the crew's antipathy toward authority. The Commander remains aloof, and when needed goes round with a warm word or unexpectedly friendly gesture. His role is that of father figure without the usual disciplinary unpleasantness. Most Commanders cultivate quirks which make them appear more human than their First Watch Officers. Our Old Man lugs that huge black revolver and chews his pipe.

Occasionally he hauls the weapon out to sight in on targets only he can see.

In private he admits that success as a Ship's Commander reflects success as a character actor.

The men know that, too. This shit has been going on since the Phoenicians. It works anyway. It's a big conspiracy. The Commander tries to make them believe and they work hard at believing. They want to be fooled and comforted.

There are no supporting fictions for the commander. He stands alone. He can't take Admiral Tannian seriously.

Mr. Yanevich is heir apparent to the loneliness, which is why he has a softened image this patrol.

This is his chrysalis mission. He came aboard remembered as a martinet. He'll emerge remembered as a wacky,,lovable butterfly.

"How many ships are going with us, Steve?"

Yanevich shrugs. "Maybe we'll find out next beacon."

"What I figured. Any reason I can't go see what they're doing below?" I want to see how the prospect of action has affected other departments.

Weapons should be the most altered. It's been the most bored. The triggermen have nothing to do but sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

Everyone else is here simply to give them their moments at their firing keys.

They're excited. Piniaz has undergone a renewal of spirit.

He actually welcomes my visit. "I was going to look you up," he says, wearing a smile he can't control. "We've been running cost-effectiveness programs."

I glance at Chief Holtsnider. The Chief nods pleasantly. Piniaz says, "We may try your cannon." He babbles on about accuracy probabilities, cumulative ion stress in the lasers, and so forth.

There's no tension in Weapons. Every mug brandishes a smile. How simple we've become. Just the prospect of change has us behaving as if we'll be home tomorrow night.

One of the gunnery trainees, Tuchol Manolakos, asks me, "Can you imagine what one of those bearings would do, sir?"

"Ricochetoff their meteor shunt. The velocity they're making, with their ramscoop funneling, they're running with screens up and shunts on all the time. Detection-activation circuitry would be too slow."

"Yeah. Didn't think of that."

"Have to screen against hard radiation, too."

"Yeah."

I wonder if they're moving fast enough to see a starbow. Certainly there'll be gorgeous violet and red shifts fore and aft. Rectification of Doppler will consume most of their enhancement capacity.

The faces round me go grim. "What is it? What did I say?"

"I didn't consider the screens," Piniaz grumbles.

"Better consider the subjective time differential, too," I suggest.

"I thought of that. Ain't much, but it's to our advantage."

"And the Doppler on your energy beams?"

"Considered. Damned toy cannon."

"You could still try. If we're close enough to shoot, they'll shoot back. If they're armed.

They'll have to break screens to doit."

"Put a two-centimeter ball into a ten-centimeter shield gap with a point-four-second endurance on a target moving at point-four cee? From how far away? Shit. Shit and more shit. Why're we chasing these clowns, anyway? They aren't exactly what you'd call a major threat to the universe. Ain't there a goddamned convoy somewhere?"

"Guess the Admiral thinks it would be a propaganda coup."

"Shit." Piniaz's vocabulary is suffering. "It'll just piss them off over there. You don't keep kicking a guy when he's out of it. They'll start kicking back."

"I'll tell old Fred next time we take tea together." I don't know what it is about Piniaz. He can aggravate a stone just by standing beside it.

My antipathy is, in part, prejudice against bis origins. I know it, and probably am overcompensating. Piniaz's dark little features are tight. He can guess my thoughts. "You do that.

And tell him from me... Never mind."

The eido hasn't been fingered.

Piniaz didn't reach his present status by letting Outworlders get his goat. He knows how to play the game.

It's a game in which the Outworlds' elite have rigged the rules, though not quite enough to keep him from beating them on their own terms.

I respect the man despite disliking him. More than I respect my own kind. My people aren't brought up being told they're the dregs of the human race.

Still... Old Earthers have an infuriating habit of blaming the motherworld's problems on the rest of us. And they're disgustingly consistent in their refusal to help themselves. We Outworlders are expected to carry them simply because Old Earth is the motherworld.

We all have prejudices. Piniaz should resent me less than the others. I make an attempt to control mine.

Varese tells Old Earther stories in Piniaz's presence. His favorite goes, "You hear about the Old Earther who comes home from the Social Insurance office and finds his woman in bed with another man?"

Someone will say, "No."

"He runs to the closet, grabs his Teng Hua, points it at his own head. His woman starts laughing at him. He yells, 'What's so funny, bitch? You're next.'"

There are several false assumptions in the story. There are in all Old Earther jokes. Welfare status. Extreme stupidity. Promiscuity. Universal possession of a Teng Hua hand laser. And so on.

Varese makes me ashamed of my breed when he does that.

After touring the ship I evict Fearless from my hammock. It's^become the cat's favorite loafing place. He isn't often disturbed.

I can't sleep. The prospect of action doesn't excite me anymore. All I want is to go home. I'm tired of the Climbers. I'm sorry I had the idea. Please, can I take it back? No? Damn.

Sleep sneaks up on me eventually. I have my best nap since coming aboard, a solid twelve hours that end only because Fearless starts a flamenco on my chest.

"You're getting goddamned bold, cat."

The animal places chin on paws four centimeters from my face. He closes his good eye. The warmth of him, the quick patter of his heart, leak through my grimy shirt.

"You'd better not have fleas."

Fearless twitches disdainfully, resumes his snooze.

I don't know why I've been selected main friend for the patrol. I can put up with cats, but comprehend them no better than women. This one lives like a prince. He has forty-nine lackeys keeping his castle for him.

I scratch his ears. He rewards me with a gravelly purr and a few gentle nips at my finger.

The shrill cry of the general alarm shatters our interlude.

I make Ops with time to spare, wondering how I slept through the alarm when we dropped hyper.

I didn't. The story I get is, Westhause was whipping the ship through complex search loops as he approached the new operational area. Fishermen got something on screen.

I didn't expect such quick results.

Glancing over Junghaus's shoulder, I see that we have not lucked onto our quarry.

Of course not. The target would generate no tachyon disturbances running in norm. "One of ours?" I slide into the First Watch Officer's seat.

Fisherman smiles. Yanevich grins. The Commander says, "Very good. Which one?"

I shrug. "A Climber, but I've only seen textbook plates. They just show the basics."

"Johnson's. That teensy lump on the arch of the fourth feather."

I glance at Westhause. He's pounding program keys like a mad organist.

Climbers have no instel. Smart operators communicate, in pidgin at close ranges, with behavior and the detection gear.

I give the Old Man a look.

"No hanky-panky, sir. Wouldn't think of it. There's a war on, you know. That's serious business."

Yanevich whispers, "We'll drop hyper and trade search patterns. Two of us working will find where she isn't real quick."

"How can we learn anything without going norm?"

He looks at me oddly. "We're norm now. Hadn't you noticed? We've been norm one minute in five for the last six hours. We're not up to the mark yet, but we thought we'd get the routine pat. Haven't you been paying attention?"

"The alarms..." Better keep my mouth shut. I slept through one of my watches.

"Jesus. You think I'm going to bang that mother all year long? Screw the regulations. People have to sleep. Speaking of which—where were you on the eight to twelve?"

What can I say? There's no excuse.

"Not to worry, Mr. Better-Late-Than-Never. The Recorder hears the alarm. That's good enough for us." Yanevich manages the grin the Commander can't quite produce. "You learn these little tricks.

The Recorder remembers what we want it to remember. They know what's going on at Mission Review.

They've been out here, too. As long as it doesn't endanger the ship, and doesn't leave out anything important, they let it slide. Got to be flexible. That's what they told us in Academy, wasn't it?"

"Maybe. This isn't the Navy I knew."

"Yeah?"

"I thought wartime would get the regs pushed harder."

"You're in the Climbers now." He laughs. "What's it matter? Long as we don't buy you a seat on Hecate's Horse? At least you got some sleep." His smile grows thin. "I'll get that back. Stand watch and stand again till you catch up."

It's not as bad as I expected. Piniaz is the sort of watch officer who stays out of the way. He makes his presence felt only when he joins Chief Nicastro hi making sure Westhause's preprogrammed jumps are putting the ship into the right places hi the search pattern. The astrogator can't be on the job all the tune, though he does sleep less than anyone else.

Yanevich's shipboard title is a misnomer this patrol. The Commander himself has taken the first watch. Yanevich really has the second. Piniaz has the third. In Line ships the Astro-gation Officer normally stands the third watch. In Climbers that usually falls to the Ship's Services Officer. The Commander is kept free.

The Old Man thinks our Ensign too green. In the quiet passages, though, he brings Bradley hi for a watch. He hands it to me at times, too. Sometimes Diekereide takes a turn— "just in case." The Commander has even dragged Varese in on rare occasion. One of an officer's unwritten duties is to learn everything possible. It may save your ship someday.

Watch schedules don't mean much aboard a Climber, except to officers, who assume four-hour chunks of responsibility. The men come and go. In Ops Chiefs Nicastro and Canzoneri just make sure that the critical stations are manned. In Weapons Chiefs Bath and Holtsnider do the same.

In Engineering, where they stand six on and six off and most of the stations must be continuously manned, life is more structured.

Our first program, beginning at the target's last known position, yields nothing. Westhause develops another while we wait for Johnson. It's a waste of time. Johnson got a sniff of neutrino emissions.

The news subtly alters everyone. Within minutes the men are near their combat stations again. The banter fades to an occasional obscene remark, either too loud or too forced.

Boredom is dead. The men have a sharper edge than past appearance would suggest. The Commander has done his job well.

Westhause exchanges professional chatter with his colleague aboard the other Climber. The Old Man and First Watch Officer hover close.

Two hours later. We begin quartering the region where Johnson got her neutrino readings. She dances with us, our two radii of detection barely overlapping.

I'm alert and interested, though not in my screen. I want to catch every nuance in each man's stance, movement, expression. I want to see the subtle alterations in speech patterns that betray emotion.

The Commander demonstrates the most marked change. It's a matter of intensity. Some internal switch has closed. Suddenly, he has a truly commanding presence. The men respond without words being spoken. Their eyes flick to bun, then back to then" work.

The Climber has come ah've. The shark has caught the smell of blood.

This new Commander is the man I came to Canaan to see, the man who was usurped by a bitter, unfathomable stranger sailing without a compass. The doubts and fears and alum-flavored selfdespite have been set aside.

He has his effect on me, too. My nerves settle. He will get us through.

What's happening inside his head? Has he set it all aside and let duty take control? His thinking remains impenetrable even during his most open moments. For all I know, he's scared shitless.

The new search program has both ships covering a tiny chunk of space in one-minute hyper translations, and closing the communications gap each half hour.

During the first half hour we get a dozen neutrino readings.

"Intensity?" the Commander demands after the last.

"High, Commander."

"Direction? Estimated course line?" This is tricky business here. Like cutting the beam of a handflash at a kilometer, at an angle, in a microsecond, and trying to guess where the flash is and where it's heading if it's moving.

Rose and Canzoneri curse and mutter incantations over their thinking devil. The devil puts numbers into the Chief's mouth.

"Put it in the tank," the Old Man orders.

The display tank flickers to a slight adjustment. It gives a skewed view, with the Climber at one boundary. The ship casts a thin cone of red shadow across the tank.

"Got her within twenty degrees of arc," Canzoneri says. A thin black pencil stroke lances down the heart of the red cone. "Baseline within three degrees of Rathgeber."

"Range?"

"Indeterminate." Of course. We'd have to know what kind of ship she is to guess her distance from the intensity of her neutrino output here.

"Very well. Mr. Westhause, let's see what the Squadron Leader has."

The net is closing. Johnson's data should pull it tighter.

Time drags. I fidget. Two hunting Climbers leave a lot of tachyon traces. Those people hear us coming. They'll be on their toes. Right now they're filing their teeth and calling their big brothers.

The Commander grins as if reading my thoughts. "Don't worry. Our team is sending in the best we have."

"Waiting gracefully isn't one of my virtues."

The others are more patient. They've been schooled for this. As I should know by now, 99 percent of Climber duty consists of waiting.

Can they keep their edge till contact?

Johnson has enough data. We narrow the hunting zone to the size of a backyard garden. Time to go kick the rabbit out of the lettuce patch.

We jump knowing we'll meet the other firm within hours.

We drop hot on the trail. The neutrino gear sings and pops. We can't be more than a few light hours behind. Westhause and his co-conspirator confer only briefly. The computers commune. We translate again.

We almost bracket her this time. On infrared I can pick out the long, wild rapier of ions blowing behind her. Even on max enhancement I can get no image of the ship. She has her black warpaint on and is moving too damned fast.

"Jesus God in a canoe!" Berberian murmurs. "Commander! Check the size of this blip."

The target is millions of kilometers away already.

"Commander, she's started a turn," Berberian adds.

At her velocity it'll be a vast, lazy arc, and the best evasive maneuver available—especially if she keeps it irregular. There's no way we can keep her in radar range for more than a few seconds.

"Chasing after wind, eh?" The Commander is whispering to Fisherman. I barely catch it. The TD

operator nods. The Old Man notes my interest. "Silly pastime, eh?"

"We'll need luck. Or they'll have to do something stupid."

"They won't. They don't anymore. We've taught them too well."

"Here she comes!"

Startled, I look round wildly, then glare at my screen. Westhause has translated us into the fugitive's path. For an instant I catch a glimmer that must be Johnson firing.

"That the Squadron Leader?"

"It is," the Commander replies. "She'll attack. We'll observe."

"Commander!" Chief Canzoneri shouts. "That's no logistic hull. That's a goddamned Leviathan Main Battle."

Bright spider's silk spins across the black satin backdrop from spinnerets on the black widow that is Johnson's Climber. I stare, enthralled, though it lasts but an instant. We skip again. For a moment I forget to roll my visual tapes.

Skip-fire-skip-fire-skip-fire. How can we do any damage this way? Maybe we're just getting her measure.... Canzoneri says the Squadron Leader is tickling her round her bows. I'll have to take his word for it.

A nova takes life at the lase-fire's source.

The next few minutes get lost. My stomach falls out from under me. My mind goes numb. Somebody is groaning. I don't know if it's me or someone else.

Throdahl is saying, over and over, "Oh, shit. Oh, holy fuck. Brenda." His voice is soft, his words are quick. He speaks without inflection.

Fisherman begins a prayer. "Lord, have mercy on their souls." It fades into an unintelligible mumble. A moment later I realize he means the people aboard the Main Battle.

The huge warship whips off into the big dark while we remain mesmerized by our sister's destruction. How the hell did they manage that?

"Canzoneri. That was on camera. Give me an analysis."

"Aye, Commander." The Chief keys the tape from my screen to his. In a minute, "A missile. Radar transparent. I still have some numbers to run."

He figures it in minutes. The other firm outcalculated us, pure and simple. They knew where we were coming out. Where we had to come out to make the down-the-throat shot. They put missiles out there. Johnson probably never knew what hit her. They didn't take a poke at us because we were running in a trailing position.

"They aren't worried about conserving armaments," Yane-vich growls.

"A Leviathan doesn't have to," I snap back.

Leviathan is Navy's label for the enemy's biggest and meanest warship. We don't know what they call them. We have nothing comparable. They carry crews of twenty thousand, bristle with weapons, and are fleets unto themselves. They can remain in deep space indefinitely.

Our Empire Class Main Battle carries seven thousand people, is eighteen hundred meters long, and masses a fifth as much.

Now it's pretend time. We all make believe our loss doesn't hurt, doesn't make us hungry for blood. We shut one another out and concentrate on our work.

I didn't meet any of Johnson's women. Still, my revenge lust runs deep, startling me. I can't banish the face of Thro-dahl's sepia beauty. All thought of practical difficulties yields to the gale of unreason.

It doesn't matter that we came here looking for trouble. It doesn't matter that the Leviathan outguns us a thousand to one. It doesn't matter that her velocity is so ridiculous. I don't even worry about her being able to call for help while we can't. I want to attack.

"Commander, there's a drop in her neutrino emissions."

"Chief Canzoneri. What's she doing?"

Thirty seconds pass. "Looks like she's putting out a full missile screen. So she can drift along inside."

The Commander leans till his forehead almost touches the astrogator's. "Very well." He doesn't seem surprised. He whispers with Westhause.

What are they planning? We can't get near them now. We can't put a missile in, except from hyper.

Fisherman calls, "Commander, I'm getting a continuous diffuse tachyon response."

Everyone understands. The Leviathan is having a little chat with hunter-killer headquarters at Rathgeber. Help is coming. She'll stay hi contact. Fisherman is catching leakage from an instel link.

Only Nicastro has anything to say. "That tears it. All we can do is haul ass. The bastards are going to get away with it. Command will have to send the heavies."

I seem to be the only one who hears him. The others keep watching the Old Man.

Nicastro has the shakes. He's perspiring heavily. He wants out of this deathtrap.

The Commander thumbs a comm key. "Engineering, this is the Commander. Indefinite Climb alert.

Emergency Climb at any time. Mr. Varese, prepare an analysis of your drive synch. Send me the graphs when you're ready. Understood?"

"Understood, Commander."

Nicastro wilts. The others sit a little straighter. Carmon grins. The Old Man hasn't quit. He's got an angle. He's going to have a try.

Fisherman mumbles something incantatory, probably to benefit the souls of the gentlemen of the other firm. He has a faith in the Old Man almost equaling his faith in Christ.

Westhause makes a merry chase of it, stuttering in and out of hyper in little flicks almost too quick to sense. His chase baffles me. Hours pass. Still he dances round the Leviathan and her deadly brood. Not once does he hold norm long enough for a missile to target.

The quarry's tactics compel her simply to coast, watch, and wait for help.

"How far is Rathgeber?" I ask Fisherman. He shrugs. I look for someone who can tell me. The Commander, First Watch Officer, and astrogator are all busy. So are the computer and radar people.

I become more baffled. It's obvious that we can do nothing. Nothing is what we're doing. Loathsome as it seems, Nicastro's suggestion is the only viable course.

So why is everyone busy? Will the Commander get even by ambushing the first destroyer?

That wouldn't please Command. Engaging escorts is considered a waste of kill capability. That's supposed to be employed against the logistic hulls moving men and materiel toward the Inner Worlds, or against the big warships making it difficult for Navy to stand its ground.

The computer keeps humming. Rose and Canzoneri push hard, though they seem unsure what the Commander wants. Every sensor strains to accumulate more data on the Leviathan.

The Commander breaks his conference long enough to tell Carmon, "Erase the tank display."

Wide-eyed, Carmon does as he's told. This is a big departure from procedure. It leaves us flying blind. There's no other way to bring all the information in a single accessible picture.

"What the hell are they doing?"

Fisherman shrugs.

The Old Man tells Cannon, "Ready for a computer feed."

"Aye, sir."

Rose and Canzoneri pound out silent rhythms on their keyboards. The tank begins to build us a composite of the Leviathan, first using the data from the identification files, then modifying from the current harvest. If reinforcements give us time, the portrayal will reveal every wound, every hull scratch, every potential blind spot.

It looks something like a moth with folded wings and grasshopper eyes. Those wings are two hundred meters thick. Their backs provide a landing platform where smaller warships can be tended by the Leviathan's regiments of technicians. A few hulks are piggybacking now. Presumably, more casualties from the same action.

Twelve long, quiet, maddening hours pass. I wonder what they're thinking over there, watching us stick like we're hooked on a short rod, maybe looking confident, maybe like we're just waiting for the rest of the gang to show. They have to be running their computers ragged trying to figure our angle, trying to find the soft spot we noticed, trying to dream up a way to pry us out of our safe spot.

The men lean into it for the first few hours, figuring the Old Man does have an angle. They slacken with time. Soon they're squabbling and grumbling. They're tired and beginning to think the Commander's effort is just for show.

Eventually the display tank contains an exact replica of our target, hitchhikers and all.

I have no inkling of the insane scheme hatching from the half-rotten egg in the mare's nest of the Commander's mind. Only a pale Westhause and shaky Yanevich are privy to The Plan.

The Old Man breaks away from the astrogator and climbs to his cabin.

His departure is a signal for discontent to be voiced. Only Fisherman, Yanevich, Westhause, and I have nothing to say. And Nicastro, who's too unpopular to hazard an opinion. Tempers have frayed to a point where neither the eido, Recorder, nor Commander himself constitutes a force sufficient to keep the lid on.

Too much momentum developed all that time screwing around? Just pent-up frustration building since we lost Johnson? I get a fat ration of fighting stares simply because I'm a friend of the Old Man, In a less disciplined service this moment would be the first step toward mutiny.

The Commander returns, resumes his post beside Westhause. With studied casualness he produces the infamous pipe and loads it. Little dragon's tongues of blue smoke soon curl between his teeth, drift through his beard.

The old hands fall silent. They apply themselves to then-work. He's given a signal.

"All hands listen up. This's the Ship's Commander. We're about to engage. Weapons, discharge your power accumulators. Ship's Services, vent heat and stand by on converters. I want internal temperature down to ten degrees. Engineering, I remind you that you're on standby for Emergency Climb."

He puffs his pipe and surveys the Operations crew. They avoid his gaze.

He's going up. Why? The hunter-killers haven't shown. They shouldn't for a while yet. Rathgeber is a long fly.

"Initiate your program, Mr. Westhause."

The ship ceases its endless hop, skip, and jump. A flurry of orders and their echoes fly. Weapons discharges accumulators. Ship's Services lowers internal temperature till I wish I'd brought a sweater. We make a brief hyper fly.

"Right down our throat!" Berberian shrieks. "Missiles..."

"Radar! Compose yourself."

"Aye, sir. Commander, missiles bearing..."

The collision alarm shrieks. Those missiles are close! That alarm is never heard except during drills.

"Emergency Climb," the Old Man orders, immune to the near-panic around him. "Take her to twentyfive Bev. All hands, be prepared for sudden maneuvers."

I haven't the slightest idea what's happening. I don the safety harness I'm supposed to wear whenever I'm on station. It seems a wise course.

The Commander gets a firm grip on a frame and thwartships brace. His pipe is clenched in his teeth, belching a noxious fog.

The Climber trembles as a missile detonates near her Hawking point. Internal temperature rises a degree.

"That was close," Fisherman murmurs. "Very close." He's pale. His hands are shaking. Moisture covers his face.

"Stand by," the Commander says.

The ship lurches as if punted by some footballer god. Metal squeals against metal. Plug-ups skitter like maddened butterflies. A barrage of loose articles slams around the compartment. A

plastic telltale crystal pops off my board, smacks me over the eye, then whistles off to dance with the rest of the debris.

Internal temperature screams up forty degrees in a matter of seconds. The change is so sudden and severe that several men collapse. The converters groan under the load and begin bringing it down.

Coolly, Westhause keeps moving ship.

"Take us down!" the Commander bellows. "Take us the hell down."

Five men are unconscious in Ops. Another dozen have collapsed elsewhere. The ship is in danger.

The Commander shuffles men to the critical stations.

A thermometer near me shows mercury well into the red zone. The converters alone won't get it down in time to prevent shock to the supercold systems. Venting heat externally is our only option.

The Climber goes down with sickening swiftness.

"Vent heat!" the Commander thunders. "Goddamnit, Bradley! Anybody down there. Move!"

Red lights on every board are howling because the super-conducters are warming.

Fuck the superconductors. Cool me off.... I never thought of heat as physically painful. But this... My head throbs. My body feels greasy. I've sweat so much I have a calf cramp. It takes all my concentration to keep my eyes on my screen.

Stars appear. "Oh!" A comet of fire spills across them, splashing the track of the Main Battle with blinding death. Glowing fragments pinwheel around the main glory, obscuring and overshadowing the background lights. She's millions of kilometers away and still the brightest object in the heavens.

The fire begins to fade.

I check my cameras. Hurrah! I turned them on.

A thought wanders through the aches and pains. That has to be the aftermath of a fusion chamber eruption. How did the Commander manage it?

The compartment cools quickly. As it does I come out of my universe of agony. My horizons expand.

I discover the Commander snapping an endless series of questions into the inboard comm. The first I register is, "How long till you get it stabilized?"

I prod Fisherman. "What's happening?" The kid seems not to have noticed the heat.

"Sounds like we've got an oscillation in our CT magnetics," he croaks. His body took it well, but his soul is in bad shape. He's got the morning-after shudders. His face is the color of a snake's belly. He and I and the Commander seem to be the only Ops people able to do any useful work. I drag out of my seat and try to lend a hand at something more important than visual scan.

It occurs to me that Fisherman is scared not because of the Climb, nor because of the danger of a CT leak. He's locked into his own mad dread of another entombment aboard a crippled ship. This1 one the other firm would find first.

He's of little use on the tachyon board, so I point him toward Rose's station and tell him to get a gradient on the supercoolers for the superconductor system. That'll keep him too busy to think.

The temperature is dropping faster. The scrubbers and blowers are throbbing, pulling the moisture out and moving the air around. Most of my discomfort is gone.

Worry about Fisherman diverts my own impulse to panic. Having put him on the compute board, and having started Westhause's board on automatic recall, I make the rounds of the men. That's the most important job left. The Commander is handling everything else.

They say my behavior is common to Climber people. They worry about their shipmates before themselves. I've heard it called the unit/family response.

Yanevich is first to revive. I divert him with questions. He answers one, "We're the legion of the damned. All we've got is each other. And a universal contempt for Command types who sentence us to death by putting us in Climbers. I'm all right now. Let me go. Got work to do."

I still don't know what happened. They don't want to bother explaining...It hits me. The Commander spent all that time refining his calculations so he could run our Hawking point through the Leviathan's fusor. Sure. No wonder we got rattled around. Our full mass hit their magnetic bottle at .4 c.

Amazing. And we hit it first try.

And came near killing ourselves, too.

The Commander's was a superb move. As a surprise tactic. On any other grounds it was sheer idiocy.

Would he have tried it again had he missed first shot?

Probably not. Even the old hands don't have the nerve to go into that with their eyes open.

Later, over an emergency cup of coffee, I ask the Commander, "Would you have taken a second crack?"

He slides off the subject. "You took it pretty good. Didn't think you were that tough."

"Maybe I'm used to more heat."

He slugs his coffee back and leaves without saying another word.

New tension grips the ship. She can't Climb till Varese gets his magnetic containment systems stabilized. The hunter-killers are closing in.

Fisherman is the center of attention. His board remains pleasingly silent.

Dead in space. Seven hours. Varese hasn't reestablished the balance among several hundred minuscule current loads in the CT containment fields. The field control superconductor circuitry suffered localized overheating.

Time drags—except when I calculate how long it's been since the Leviathan yelled for help. Then it seems time is screaming past.

We're still at general quarters. The friends of our retired friends could turn up any minute.

They've had long enough to get a fast attack destroyer from Rathgeber here and back again.

The honeybuckets are getting the best of the atmosphere systems.

I'm scared. Goddamned scared. It's bloody murder, sitting here unable to do a thing.

The Commander keeps growling at Varese. How long? I can't hear the reply, but it's noncommittal.

The Old Man tells Piniaz to charge accumulators. He's getting ready for a shoot-out in norm.

Damn! If I weren't keeping notes, keeping somewhat occupied, I'd scream. Or do like Nicastro. The Chief runs around like an antsy old lady, driving everyone crazy with his fussing.

I'm continually amazed by how these men take their cue from the Commander's slightest action or remark. Already they're steeling themselves for hard times to come. You can see it in the way they stand or sit. I'm getting a little better feel for the Old Man.

While the screws are tightening he doesn't dare scratch at the wrong instant.

A lot of pressure would come down on a man who became too conscious of that.

It's easier for a Ship's Commander aboard a normal ship. He has his quarters. He isn't on display all the time.

As toed as we are, we won't make much of a showing if the other firm catches up.

Varese still reports unsatisfactory stabilization after twelve hours. That's a lot of getaway time lost. Suddenly, Fisherman shouts, "Commander, I have a tachyon pattern."

I lean and check his screen before the crowd thickens. The pattern is alien. Definitely alien.

I've seen nothing like it before. The Commander orders, "Power down to minimum, Mr. Varese."

The Climber drifts in the track of the destroyed warship. Her neutrino emissions are a candle in the conflagration of the wake.

Running is pointless. The other firm can detect us if we can detect them. The hyper translation ratios of their hunter-killers exceed those of our Climbers. Swiftness is the critical element in destroyer design.

We can't run. The Commander won't go up till the magnetics are stable. So we'll pretend we're not here.

The odor hi Ops grows thicker. Tempers grow shorter. Only Fisherman, preoccupied with his board and prayers, maintains his equanimity.

He is, I suspect, secretly delighted at the prospect of a quick out. Here's a chance for an early encounter with his God. Hey! Big guy in the sky! How about disappointing the silly sack of shit?

The hunters skip here and there, watching and listening. Sometimes they charge right past us, keeping Fisherman's detector chirping like a cricket's convention.

"At least eight of them," he says, after they've been rooting around for three hours. "They look hungry."

"That's a lot of firepower just to keep a second-rate writer from getting a story."

The joke falls flat. He says, "Not much else for them to do, sir. No convoys to watch."

The hunters are stubborn and crafty. One destroyer, doing mini-jumps along the course of the Main Battle, skips right over us. Pure luck saves us being detected. Another, creeping round hi norm, gives herself away only because she hasn't powered down enough to conceal her neutrino emissions adequately. Like us, she's running with sensors passive. Active radar would nail us in an instant.

The hours roll on. Men fall asleep at their posts. Neither the Commander nor the First Watch Officer protests.

Each time I begin to relax, thinking they've moved on, another of their ships whips into detection. I can't sleep through that.

"How come they keep on?" I wonder out loud. "You'd think they knew we're here. That they want to spook us."

"Could be," Yanevich says. "The Leviathan might have gotten some boats away, too. They could be looking for survivors."

Not bloody likely. Not at those velocities.

Yanevich and the Commander are spending more and more time with Westhause. Their faces reflect a deepening concern. The Leviathan's wake is dispersing. It won't mask us much longer. Canzoneri keeps coming and going. The computers must've noticed something else.

I stop the First Watch Officer during one of his forays into my part of the compartment. "What's up? Why the long faces?"

"They're going to get a fix pretty quick. They've been taking readings on our neutrino emissions from before we went silent. Their computers will figure it out. We'll have them in our pockets."

"Damn. Should have known. The ripples never settle in this pond, do they?"

"Nope. They just keep going till they get mixed in with other ripples."

"So what's to do?"

"We run first time it looks good. They know we're around. There's no way we're going to bluff them, even if they can't computer-fix us. They'll keep quartering till they get a radar contact."

"Stubborn bastards. How'd they catch on?"

"Who knows? Maybe the Leviathan had an observation drone in her missile screen. Or an escort we didn't spot. Anything. How doesn't matter."

Fifteen minutes later we have one of those rare moments when there's nothing in detection.

"Power up," the Commander orders. "Engineering, stand by for hyper and Climb." Varese has the magnetics close to stable. Looks like the Old Man is willing to take a chance.

"Case like this," Fisherman says, "it's better to Climb first, then run. Unless they've got somebody doggo right on top of us, they won't get a track on our Hawking point."

"We'll make a hell of a racket getting started. And draw a hell of a crowd of mourners if Mr.

Varese doesn't have the magnetics right."

"Yes sir." He isn't especially worried.

There's a rush to the honeypots. We may stay strapped in for hours.

How much longer can I stand their stink?

"Discharge accumulators. Vent heat. Secure all Class Two systems," the Commander orders.

Acknowledgments and action-completed reports come back as quickly. People are anxious to leave.

"Mr. Varese. How do your magnetics look?"

I don't hear the response. That's not reassuring.

"Commander, I have a tachyon pattern," Fisherman says.

"Very well. Engineering, shift to annihilation."

The feathers on Fisherman's screen are faint but nearly vertical. Their foreshortening is extreme.

The dorsal and ventral lines are almost invisible. The hunter is coming right at us.

The Commander says, "Take hyper. Max acceleration. Mr. Westhause, make a course of two seven zero at thirty degrees declination." His voice is calm, as if this is just another drill.

The Climber stutters, moves out. The compartment lights dim momentarily. The hasty shift in power is touchy but successful. The Climb alarm tramples the Commander's line. Afterward, he adds, "Mr.

Westhause, make your course two four zero at twenty-five degrees declination."

'Type two fool 'em, sir," Fisherman explains. "Show them a course they can fix and hope they think you'll swing way off it in Climb. We'll make a little change instead, and stay up a long time.

They're supposed to look everywhere but where we're at."

"Supposed to?"

"We hope. They're not stupid, sir. They've been at it as long as we have."

My companions grow hazy. The screens and display tank die. The nothing of null peers in through the hull.

We've pulled our hole in after us. We're safe. For the moment.

For the moment. The destroyer has yelled "Contact!" Her friends are closing in. Their combined computation capacity is producing predictions of our behavior already.

Despite Fisherman's prophecy, I'm startled when the Commander doesn't go down after the customary hour. All those drills... wake up, monkey! This is for real. There're people out there who want to kill you.

The air is raunchy. Interior temperature has climbed a half-dozen degrees. The Old Man's only response is to have Bradley release a little fresh oxygen, then blow the atmosphere through the outer fuel tanks. They've been allowed to freeze. Supercold ice makes a nice sink for waste heat.

It isn't a ploy which Command approves. Climbers aren't engineered for it. Our air is rich with human effluvia. It'll contaminate the water as it melts.

Operational people don't care. Heat is the bigger problem. They willingly strain the filters with contaminants.

It takes only five hours for that water to match interior temperature. The ship is generating too much heat.

The Commander lets temperature approach the red line. We're sweltering. The superconductors flash warnings, but they do so long before any actual danger.

The air feels thick enough to slice.

The Commander orders heat converters and atmosphere scrubbers activated at hour nine in Climb.

From then on, in my humble opinion, it's all downhill.

The machines which hold temperatures down and keep the air breathable are efficient and effective, but are powerful heat generators themselves.

This heat isn't the sudden, shocking heat we experienced when the Main Battle died. This is a creeping heat. It comes on as inexorably as old age. Weariness doesn't help when one is battling its debilitating effect.

The Climb endurance record is fourteen hours thirty-one minutes and some-odd seconds, established by Talmidge's Climber. Talmidge commanded one of the early craft. It carried less equipment, fewer personnel, and entered Climb under ideal pre-Climb conditions.

Sitting here in stinking wet clothing, sucking a squeezie, unable to leave my station, I wonder if the Old Man is shooting for the record.

By hour eleven I'm toying with the notion of a one-man mutiny. The Commander's voice breaks through the mist clouding my mind. What's this? Hey! He's counting down to an emergency heat drop—

We'll plunge into norm, vent heat briefly, then get back up and see what our detection systems have to say about the habitability of this neck of the night.

"Isn't he a little too cautious?" I croak at Fisherman. The TD operator is barely sweating. "They can't have stayed with us this long."

"We'll see."

From the corner of my eye, while I'm watching the lances of the energy weapons discharging the accumulators, I see the weak V on Fisherman's screen.

"Contact, Commander. Fading."

"Very well. He'll be back. Mr. Westhause, we're making for Beacon One Nine One. Get out of here before he fixes our course. Drop us again as soon as we're beyond detection."

The emergency venting procedure lasted forty seconds. Each second bought about one more minute of Climb time.

Two hours roll past sluggishly. The Commander takes us down again. He's kept the ship up on pure guts. Throdahl, Berberian, and Laramie have gone slack in their harnesses. Salt tabs and juice only help so much.

This can't be doing our health much good.

It seems the more experienced men should handle the hardships easier. Not necessarily true.

Nicastro is the next to go. Is it the cumulative effect of ten missions? Tension? The physical wear of hustling round seeing to everyone else?

Nicastro isn't quiet about going, either. He screams as sudden cramps tear at his legs and stomach. My nerves won't stand much of this.

I suspect the Commander wanted to stay up longer. Losing both his quartermasters changes his mind.

"Mr. Yanevich, work on Laramie and the Chief. Use stimulants if you have to. Junghaus, keep a wary eye."

"Aye, Commander." This time five minutes pass before he announces a contact.

"We're gaining on them," Yanevich tells me as he massages Nicastro's calves. There's barely room to lay the Chief out on the deck grating. The First Watch Officer grins like a fool. "Better get some salt into him." He shouts into the inner circle, "We have any calcium pills in the medkit?"

"Sorry, sir."

"Shit."

Westhause whips the Climber off at a wild angle. He asks, "Commander, you want to change beacons?

They could get a baseline—"

"No. Keep heading for One Nine One."

Despite a temperature fit for making raisins, I'm shivering. Internal is down twenty degrees and falling. Humidity is a sudden ten percent.

"What are you fucking smirking about?" I snarl at Yanevich. And, "Shit! I'm getting as foulmouthed as the rest of you. Anyway, seems to me that if the bastards can hang on this good, they'll run us down. How the hell do they do it, anyhow?"

Nicastro groans, tries to throw Yanevich off. The Commander helps hold him down.

"They've got a giant think-box at Rathgeber. Instel linked to all their hunters. Human brains cyborged in for subjectives. And nothing else for it to do. By now they know what ship this is, who's commanding, and how long we've been out. They've made an art of it. The head honcho at Rathgeber is sharp. And he gets better all the time."

"So why didn't we stay put and let them chase their computer projections?"

"Because that's the oldest trick of all. We would've come down in somebody's lap. See, our main problem is, we're outnumbered. They can follow up a lot of projections. They're probably working the top forty from that last contact."

"And we're not going to do anything about it?" Why is he so cheerful? That irritates me more than the other firm's stubbornness.

"Of course not. We don't get paid to slug it out with destroyers. We beat up on transports."

Next tune down we vent heat completely, dispose of accumulated wastes, and take hyper before the opposition shows. We've shaken them. The Old Man says it was an easy routine. I find the assertion dubious.

I race for my hammock the instant he lets us off battle stations. The men who had difficulty getting through Climb are supposed to have first shot, but this time I'm taking advantage of my supernumerary status and my commission. I've had it. I can be a candy ass once in a while.

More than one man curses me for having my ass in the sink. I tell them what they can do with their personal hygiene.

No one has gone out of his way for me.

The last I see of the Commander, he's standing at a stitt parade rest, staring into the empty display tank.

Our destination proves to be an instel-equipped beacon. The Recorder busies itself reporting the Leviathan affair. It's a time of relaxation, a time of realization.

We still have our missiles.