Passage At Arms

9 Pursuit

We keep chipping away at the mission duration record. Yanevich says the longest was around ninety days. He doesn't remember the exact figure.

Memory gets tricky out here. It adapts to the demands of CUmber service. For instance, the men we lost—I can't remember their faces.

I knew none but Chief Holtsnider very well, and he not as well as I'd like. I can make a list of physical characteristics, but his face won't come.

It takes an effort to mourn them.

The lack of feeling seems common enough. We're under pressure.

We've found ourselves an uninhabited star-covert. It has planets and moons and a full complement of asteroidal debris. A fine place to get lost. And just as fine a place for the opposition to have installed a low-profile detection probe, a passive observer as easily detected as our own beacons.

This guilt I have, about not hurting enough for those we lost, isn't an alien feeling. I used to feel the same way at funerals. Maybe it's a result of the socialization process. I just don't hurt.

Our grief and anger didn't last long after Johnson's girls mounted Hecate's Horse, either. Maybe this pocket society has ,o room for them.

Piniaz has shifted me to the gamma radiation laser. The weapon has a beam that can punch through the stoutest shielding when properly target-maintained. It's a notoriously unstable weapon, and this unit is no exception. It's been acting up for weeks.

The first indication came when it produced barely discernible anomalies in the power-pull readings. The draw varied despite a constant output wattage. The tendency of the input curve was upward, which meant we were putting more and more energy into waste wavelengths.

That doesn't cripple the weapon as a device for shedding heat, but it does bode ill for its future as a weapon.

That's bit one of a score of problems plaguing the ship. Mold that can't be beaten. Stench that seems to have penetrated the metal itself. Onev system after another getting crankier and crankier. In most cases we'll have to make do. We carry few spare parts, and not many are available at beacons. Main lighting has begun to decay. The men are spending more and more time on corrective maintenance.

Stores, too, are getting short.

It's scary, watching a ship come apart around you.

It's even spookier, watching a crew disintegrate. This one is definitely headed downhill. We've reached the point where Command's policy of having men bounced from ship to ship is paying negative dividends. They don't have that extra gram of spirit given by devotion to a standing team.

That's critical when you're down to the bitter end and barely hanging on.

I say, "Mr. Piniaz, I have trouble here. Output wattage oscillating."

Piniaz studies the board sourly. "Shit. Guess we're lucky it held up this long." He rings Ops.

"Commander, we've developed a major stress oscillation in our gamma gas cartridges."

"How bad?"

"It won't last more than ten minutes if we keep using it." To me, Piniaz remarks, "I've been saying we should be using crystal cassette lasers since I got here. Will they listen to me?

Absolutely not. They just tell me crystals burn out too fast and they don't want to waste the massroom needed to haul spares."

"Wait one while I get some numbers, Mr. Piniaz."

"Standing by, Commander."

"No replacement cartridges?" I ask. "In the bombards we could change units in five minutes. Like click-click."

Piniaz shakes his head. "Not here. Not in the Climbers. You have to go outside to get at the cartridges. But Command's main argument is that we're never in action long enough to need spares."

"But this star business..."

He shrugs. "What can you do?"

The Commander says, "Mr. Piniaz, go ahead and use it, but only when Mr. Bradley needs it to sustain internal temperature."

Piniaz snorts. "Heavier load on the others."

I listened with one ear while the Old Man talked it over with Yanevich. My bugs steal everybody's privacy. They decided the weapon was wasted, that the ship has to move to a cooler hiding place.

Fine with me. Having all that incandescent fury under my feet is doing nothing for my nerves.

Westhause is calculating a passage to the surface of a small moon. Its gravity shouldn't put undue stress on the ship's structure.

Varese, too, overhears the comm exchange. He reasons out the consequences. "Commander, Engineering Officer. May I remind you that we're low on CT fuel?"

"You may, Lieutenant. You may also rest assured that I'll take it into consideration." There's a touch of sarcasm in his tone. He has no love for Varese.

My guess is we have no more than thirty hours Climb time left. That's a tight margin if we haven't been lucky with our sun-hopping.

Are they still after us? It's been a long time since the raid. A long time since contact. Maybe they've overcome their emotional response and gone back to guarding their convoy.

What's going on out there? We've had no news, made no beacon connections. The biggest operation of the war... Being out of touch leaves me feeling like my last homeline has been cut.

Has the raid given Tannian's wolves the edge they need? Have they panicked the logistic hulls?

Once a convoy scatters, no number of late-showing escorts can protect all the vessels. Climbers can stalk the ponderous freighters with virtual impunity. Some will get through only because our people won't have time to get them all.

Uhm. If the convoy has scattered, the other firm might feel obligated to keep after their most responsible foe. They know this ship of old. Her record is long and bloody. She's hurt them. Her survival, after what she's done, might be an intolerable threat.

I'm caught hi the trap of circular thinking that lies waiting for men with time on then' hands and an invisible uncertain enemy on their trail. I want to shriek. I want to demand certain knowledge.

Even bad news would be welcome at this juncture. Just make it certain news.

Varese and the Commander, during the computation of the fly to our new hiding place, have a rousing battle over the level of our CT fuel. Finally, against his better judgment, the Old Man says he'll make the passage without Climbing.

"Goddamn!" Piniaz explodes as an illumination tube above his station fails. "Damned shoddy Outworlds trash..." He excoriates quality-control work on Canaan, insisting nothing like this would happen with an Old Earth product. He's vicious and bitter. The men tuck their heads against their shoulders and weather the storm.

He has a point, though his claim for Old Earth manufactures is specious. The human race seems incapable of overcoming human nature. Just do the minimum to get by.

With one weapon all but out and the others likely to degrade, our ability to shed heat is crippled. We can't rely on radiator vanes alone if the pursuit closes in.

Teeter-totter, teeter-totter. Each time the situation shows promise, something ugly raises its head. Lately, it seems, life is a Jurassic swamp.

Sometimes things go from bad to worse without any intervening cause for optimism.

The Commander was right, Lieutenant Varese wrong. We should have made the transfer fly in Climb, and fuel levels be damned.

We fall foul of the other firm's new tactical intelligence system. They've been seeding tiny, instelled probes near stars to catch sun-skippers. If the unit detects a Climber's tachyon spray, it sends one tiny instel bleep.

The sharks, who have been casting about in confusion, turn their noses toward the scent of blood.

Fisherman gets a trace when the squirt goes out. "Commander, I've got something strange here. A

millisecond trace."

"Play it back." A moment later, "Play it again. Make anything of it, First Watch Officer?"

"Never seen anything like it."

"Junghaus, you're the expert."

"Sorry, sir. I don't know. Never had anything like that in E-school. Maybe it's natural." There are natural tachyon sources. Some Hawking Holes are known to produce them in much the same fashion as a pulsar generates its beam.

"Maybe you should ask the writer," Yanevich suggests.

"No point. Wasn't a ship, was it? That's what matters."

"Maybe a Climber going up? Looks a little like that."

"Shouldn't be anybody in the neighborhood. Keep an eye on it, Junghaus."

In ignorant bliss we settle gently into the soft dust of a lunar crater bottom, cycle down to minimum power, and prepare to possum for a few days. Sooner or later the other firm will go after livelier game. If they haven't already.

The Old Man says, "Old Musgrave used a trick like this when he was in the Eight Ball."

"Uhm?" The coffee is gone. Even the ersatz. We do our fencing over juice glasses now.

For several minutes he doesn't say anything more. Then, "Found himself a little moon with a big hollow spot inside. Don't ask me how. Used to duck in there, go norm, and power down. Drove the other firm crazy for a while."

"What happened?"

"Went to the well too often. One day he showed up and that moon was a gravel cloud with a halfdozen destroyers inside."

"They didn't get him?"

"Not that time. Not in the Eight Ball." He swallows some juice, chews his pipe. "He was a wily old trapdoor spider. He'd sit in there for a week sometimes, then jump out and get himself a red star.

He took out more destroyers than any two men since." Silence again.

"End of story?"

"Yep."

"What's the point?"

He shrugs. "You can't keep doing the same thing?"

They're crafty. They do nothing for hours. They make sure they have plenty of muscle before they move. We have twelve hours to loaf and get fat thinking we have it made.

Fisherman says, "Got something here, Commander." He sounds puzzled.

I've been pestering Rose, trying to unravel a few strands of a misty personality. Without success.

It's Yanevich's watch. He attends Junghaus.

"Playback." We study it. "Same as before?"

"Not quite, sir. Lasted longer."

"Curious." Yanevich looks at me. I shrug. "Same point of origin?"

"Very close, sir."

"Keep watching." We go on about our business.

I go try to get Canzoneri to tell me about Rose.

Five minutes later Fisherman says, "Contact, Mr. Yanevich."

We swarm round. No doubt what this is. An enemy ship. Two minutes of fast calculation extrapolates her course. "No problem," Yanevich says. "She's just checking the star."

She gets in a sudden hurry to go somewhere. I sigh in relief. That was close.

Two hours later there's another one. She hurries to join the first, which is now skipping around crazily the other side of the sun. Yanevich frowns thoughtfully but doesn't sound the alarm.

"They act like they're after somebody," he says. "Junghaus, you sure you haven't had any Climber traces?"

"No sir. Just those two bleeps."

"You think somebody heard us come out of the sun and went up from norm?"

Fisherman shrugs. I say, "Those sprays don't look anything like a ship."

"I don't like it," Chief Nicastro says. "There's a crowd gathering. We ought to sneak out before somebody trips over us."

"How?" Wesfhause snaps. For the first time in months he doesn't have more work than he can handle.

The lack has him edgy.

"We'll get you home to momma, Phil," Canzoneri promises.

Laramie calls, "That's what he's afraid of, Chief. He's had time to think it over."

I smile. Someone still has a sense of humor.

"Laramie..." Nicastro starts into the inner circle, thinks better of it, wheels on the first Watch Officer. "At least go standby on annihilation, sir."

The neutrino detector starts stuttering, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, like a typewriter under the ministrations of a cautious two-fingered typist.

"Missiles detonating." Nicastro says it with a force suggesting he's just confirmed a suspicion the rest of us are too dull to comprehend.

"I've got another one," Fisherman announces.

"Picraux, wake the Commander."

Nicastro nods glumly. This one will whip past less than a million kilometers out. The Chief would die happy if she blew us to ions.

More typewriter noise. It dies a little as Brown reduces the neutrino detector's sensitivity.

"They're really putting it on somebody."

"Here comes number four," I say, catching the first ghostly feather before Fisherman does.

"Carmon ^ better activate the tank." Yanevich pokes me with a finger. "Pass the word to Mr. Piniaz to wake everybody up. Picraux. While you're up there, shake everybody out."

When it's no drill and there's time, general quarters can be handled in a civilized manner.

Brown reduces the detector's sensitivity again.

"Another one," Fisherman says.

"Any pattern yet, Carmon?"

"Not warm yet, sir."

"Move it, man. Engineering, stand by to shift to annihilation."

The Commander swings down through the jungle gym. "What have you got, First Watch Officer?" He's so calm that I, lingering near the Weapons hatch, get a flutter in the stomach. The cooler he is, the more grave the situation. He's always been that way.

"Looks like we're camped in the middle of the other firm's company picnic."

The Commander listens impassively while Yanevich brings him up to date. "Junghaus, roll that second sighting at your slowest tape speed. On the First Watch Officer's screen. Loop it."

"What're we looking for?" Yanevich asks.

"Code groupings."

The typist is a fast learner. His clickety-clack has become a fast rattle. Brown cuts the sensitivity again.

"Poor bastards have had it," Rose says. "Their point is taking everything but the sink. Must not be able to move."

Better they than me, I think, the stomach flutters threatening to mature into panic. And, hey, what does the Old Man mean, code groupings?

"We ought to haul ass while we have the chance," Nicastro grumbles, trying his luck with the Commander.

"Two more," Fisherman announces.

"Three," I say, leaning over his shoulder. "Here's a big one over here."

The Commander turns. "Carmon?"

The display tank sparkles to life.

"Damn! Brown. Turn that thing all the way back up."

Clickety-clack nearly deafens us.

Floating red jewels appear where none ought to be, telling a tale none of us want to hear. We've been englobed. The trans-solar show is a distraction.

"Oh, shit!" someone says, almost reverently.

They aren't certain of our whereabouts. The moon is well off center of their globe.

"Commander." Chief Canzoneri beckons. The Old Man goes to look over his shoulder. After a moment, he grunts.

He says, "They're beating the piss out of an asteroid. Must be nice to have missiles to waste." He strolls toward Fisherman, his face almost beatific. "Fooled us, didn't they?" he tells me. "Wasted a few missiles and locked the door while we sat here grinning."

The distant firing ends.

The Old Man stares steadily at the craft Fisherman has in detection.

Yanevich mumbles, "They reckon we've got it figured up now and didn't panic." There's agony in his eyes when he meets Nicastro's gaze.

Varese, you prick. I could choke you.

The swiftest reaction would've done us no good. They've had half a day to tighten the net. What the hell can we do?

I don't like being scared.

The Old Man takes a pen from his pocket. He taps the end against his teeth, then against one of the feathers on Fisherman's screen. "It's him."

Fisherman stares dumbly. He grows more and more pallid. Sweat beads on his upper lip. He murmurs,

"The Executioner."

"Uhm. Back from his holiday with Second Fleet. I'll take the conn, Mr. Yanevich."

"Commander has the conn." Yanevich doesn't conceal his relief.

I want to say something, to ask something. I can't. My gaze is fixed on that tachyon spray. The Executioner. The other firm's big man. Their number one life-taker. They want us bad.

The Old Man grins at me. "Relax. He's not infallible. Beat him patrol before last. And Johnson, she had the hex sign on him."

I feel awfully cold. I'm shivering.

"Engineering, bring CT systems to full readiness."

This is a state of readiness midway between standby and actual shifting. It's seldom used because it's such a strain on personnel. Apparently the Commander does appreciate the fuel problem.

"All hands. Take care of your personals," he says. "General quarters shortly." He sounds like a father calming a three-year-old with nightmares.

I'm so nervous my bladder and bowels won't evacuate. I stand staring at the display tank. A dozen rubies inhabit it now. Flight would be suicidal. Amazing that they'd devote so much strength to one Climber.

We have to stay put and outfox them.

Outfox the Executioner? His reputation is justified. He can't help but find us...

"Mr. Westhause, bring up the data for Tau and Omicron."

"Got it already, Commander."

"Good. Program for Tau with just enough hyper to give it away. Once we're up, zag toward Omicron, then put us back inside this rock."

"It's mostly water ice, Commander, with a little surface dust. There seems to be a real rock surface several thousand meters down, though."

"Whatever. I trust you've resolved its orbitals? Can you hold us deep enough to shield the point?"

"I think so, sir."

"Can you or can't you?"

"I can, sir. I will. Might have to run high Bevs to get the cross section down so we don't take core heat if we go deep."

"This rock isn't that big. But keep gravity in mind. Don't let it upset your calculations."

"Maybe we shouldn't go down more than a couple klicks. Just deep enough to escape their weaponry."

"Can you hold it that fine?"

"I did on Rathgeber. Finer."

"On Rathgeber you had a century's worth of orbital data. Go down twenty-five. Hell. Make it fifty, just to be safe. They might try to blast us out."

They're doing this out loud to let the men know there's a plan. It's an act. I try not listen. It doesn't sound like much. I check the time. Still got a chance to piss before strap-in.

The alarm sounds. "To your stations. They've found us. Missiles incoming. Prepare for Climb. Lift off, Mr. Westhause."

The lighting fades to near extinction as the drives go from minimum to maximum power.

"Vent heat, max," Yanevich orders.

Back in Weapons now, I commence firing. My unit survives, though not without protest. The air gets colder and colder. The hyper alarm howls. I push my bug plugs into my ears.

"Secure the gravity system, Mr. Bradley," the Commander orders. "Secure all visibility lighting."

What? We're going through this in the dark? I feel the caress of panic. Blind panic. That's a joke.

"Climb."

The visibility lights aren't necessary. The glow of Climb, complemented by the luminescence of the idiot lights, provides adequate illumination. So. A little more Climb endurance won.

The Commander shuts down systems till it seems nothing but the Climb system remains on-line.

Internal temperature is so low frost forms on nonradiant surfaces and men exhale fog into their clasped hands.

The first salvo arrives and delivers enough applied cross-sectional kinetic energy to rattle bones and brains. I gasp for breath, fight a lost bug back into my right ear.

Down in the basement Varese is frenetically trying to catch up on a million little tasks he let slide during ready. The last hint of refinement has fled him. His cussing isn't inventive, just strong enough to crisp the paint off every surface within three kilometers.

The Commander continues securing systems. Even all delectors and radios, which, normally, would be maintained at a warm idle.

Piniaz taps my shoulder. "Shut her down," he says. "Then go kill the cannon." His dark face makes him hard to read. As if catching my thoughts, he whispers, "I think he's going a little far. We ought to be ready to slash and bite if we have to do down."

"Yeah." It'll take time to bring everything back to ready. Frightened, I close the systems down.

Up in Ops Yanevich and the Old Man are running and rerunning Fisherman's tapes, assembling the details of a cautionary message to the rest of the Fleet.

Six hours. For every second of them the Climber has whispered and stirred in response to forces acting on her Hawking point. Twice the Commander has ordered us deeper into the moon. We're down nearly three hundred kilometers. We're running a hundred Bev, the most I've ever seen, giving our point a diameter smaller than that of a hydrogen atom. We're gulping CT fuel----- Yet we're being buffeted. Continuously. I don't know what they're doing up there, but... the whole surface has to be boiling, throwing trillions of tons of lunar matter into space.

The buffeting gradually increases. "Take her down another hundred kilometers, Mr. Westhause."

I didn't pay much attention to the moon when I had a chance. Is it big enough to have a molten core? Are we trapped between fires? Does the Executioner have the firepower to tear the moon apart?

Waiting. Thinking. Always the fear. What if they blast away till there's nowhere left to go?

God. They must have brought a Leviathan. Nothing else has so much firepower.

Suppose they destabilize the moon's orbit? The Commander and Westhause are betting on its stability. What if the moon can't take it and breaks up? What if? What if? Will there be any warning when it sours? Or will internal temperature just shoot up too fast for us to react?

Maybe they're punching their missiles deep by throwing them in in hyper. Their sudden materialization and explosion would crack the mantle to gravel—except that that massed energy weapon fire will have turned it to a sea of lava. The water ice, surely, has boiled off into space by now.

Why are they so damned determined to skin this particular cat? I never did anything to them.

It's stopped. Suddenly, like a light switch being thrown. What the hell? God. I thought it would drive me insane. Alewel did lose his cool for a minute, holding his head and screaming, "Make it stop! Make it stop!" Piniaz had to sedate him.

Silence. Stretching out. Getting spooky. Stretching, stretching. Becoming worse than the bombardment.

Have they gone away? Are they laying back, waiting for us to come down?

The Executioner, they say, is a master of psychological warfare.

I unbuckle and venture to the honeypot. Sacrifice made, I prowl the confines of the compartment, trying to calm myself. Piniaz endures my footsteps for five minutes before snapping, "Sit down.

You're generating heat."

"Shit, man. That seat's getting hard. And wet." "Tough. Sit. You're in the Climbers now, Lieutenant." My restlessness isn't unique. This silence is a rich growth medium for the jitters.

Nobody looks anybody else in the eye.

Ten hours. Somebody in Ops is whimpering. Curious. We've been up this long before. Why is this time harder to endure? Because the Executioner is out there? They use a sedative to quiet the whimperer.

The Commander's methodical madness has proven effective. Internal temperature increase is lagging well behind the normal curve despite the fact that we haven't much fuel to use as a heat sink.

Soon after the whimperer goes quiet, the Old Man orders the atmosphere completely recycled. Then,

"Corps^ man, I want the Group One sleepers given."

It's warm now but I shiver anyway. Sleepers. Knockouts. The last ditch effort to extend Climb endurance by reducing metabolic rates and making the least critical men insensitive to their environment. A desperation measure. Usually applied much later than this.

"Voss, why don't you just hand out capsules?" I ask the Pharmacist's Mate as he comes through Weapons with his injection gun. It looks like a heavy laser with a shower-head snout.

"Some guys would palm them."

I roll up a tattered sleeve. Vossbrink ignores me. He turns to Chief Bath, whom I consider more important to the ship's survival. The Chief looks like a man expecting never to waken.

"Why not me? How do you choose, anyway?"

"Psych profile, endurance profile, Commander's direction, critical ratings. You can almost always find somebody to do a job. Can't always find somebody who can take the heat and pressure."

"What about when we go down?"

He shrugs. "They'll be gone. Or they won't. If not, it won't matter."

I lean his way, offering my arm. The sleeper looks like an easy out. No more worries. If I wake up, I'll know we made it.

"No. Not you, sir."

"There's nobody more useless than me."

"Commander's directive, sir."

"Damn!" Right now I want nothing more than total absolution of any responsibility for my own fate.

Fourteen hours. Feeling feverish. Unable to sit still. Soaked with perspiration. Breathing quick and shallow because of heat, stench, and the low oxygen content of the air. Pure oxygen. It's supposed to be pure oxygen.

What the hell is the Climb endurance record? I can't remember. How close are we? Looks like the Old Man means to break it. And stretch it with every trick ever tried, including predicting his heat curves with the discounts of the men we lost.

Don't look at the bulkheads. Mold blankets them now. I can almost see it spreading, sporulating, filling the air with its dry, stale smell. Jesus! There's a patch of it on Chief Bath's shirt. I'm coughing almost continuously. The spores irritate my throat. Thank heaven they don't give me an allergic reaction.

The last of our juice is gone. We're down to water and bouillon and pills. Yo-ho-ho. Famine in the Climbers.

Where's that fearless old spacedog who jollied the boys on the beacon? Ho! The life-takers have whisked away his disguise.

Vossbrink came round an hour ago. He bypassed me again. I cursed him mercilessly. He gave me a tablet I'm to swallow only on the Old Man's orders.

Those of us still conscious are a little insane. I want out, but... I don't have enough residual defiance to take the tablet. Been thinking about it, but can't get my hand to my mouth.

Christ, it's gloomy in here!

Maintaining a tenuous touch with reality by hating the Old Man. My old friend. My old classmate.

Doing this to me. I could cut his throat and smile.

And those bastards out there. Why the hell don't they go away? Enough is enough.

Westhause and the Commander are the only watchstanders left in Ops. I can't hear anything from Engineering, but somebody is holding out. Only Bradley is active in Ship's Services. The Ensign is stubborn. Here in Weapons I have two open-eyed companions, Kuyrath and Piniaz.

Kuyrath suddenly throws himself toward the Ops hatch. Muttering, he tries to claw his way through.

What the hell?

Aha. Another reason for the sedations. This could be contagious. The madness howls along the frontiers of my mind. I force myself to rise, to stalk Kuyrath with a hypo Vossbrink left for this contingency.

Kuyrath sees me coming. He leaps at me. His eyes are wild, his teeth bare. I punch the hypo into his stomach, yank its trigger.

For a dozen seconds I shield my testicles and eyes, writhe away from champing teeth, evade clawing fingers, and wonder what went wrong. Why doesn't he fold?

He collapses.

"What's going on back there?"

I stagger to a comm, mumble. Somehow, the Commander understands. I stare at Piniaz. Why didn't he help me?

His eyes are open but he isn't seeing anything. He's out. The bastard. What the hell did he do?

"All right." The Commander sounds like he's talking from the next galaxy. 'Take Alewel's board."

"Huh?" I'm getting foggy. Want to give up. The exertion drained me. I can't get the drift.

"Take over on Alewel's board. I've got to have somebody on Missiles. Where's Piniaz?"

"On Missiles. Somebody on Missiles." I stagger to Alewel's seat. The Missileman is curled on the deck grates. His breathing is strained and ragged. He's in bad trouble. 'Tired. Going to take capsule now. Sleep."

"No. No. Come on. Hang in there. We're almost home. All you have to do is activate the missile board."

"Activate missile board." My fingers act of their own accord. My hands look like thin brown spiders as they dance over the slimy, mold-green board, caressing a wakening galaxy of key-lights.

I giggle incessantly.

"Where's Piniaz?"

This time the message gets through. "Sleeping. Gone to sleep." Alewel is making a thin, whining sound.

"Damn. Be ready to launch when we go norm."

"Ready... Launch missiles." One spider starts dancing the arming sequence. The other explores the mysteries of the safeties.

"Negative. Negative. Get your hands away from that board. Waldo, I'm going to have to go back there."

A semblance of reason returns. I draw my hands back slowly, stare at them. Finally, I say,

"Missiles prepared for launch. Launch Control standing by."

"Good. Good. I knew I could count on you. It'll be a while yet. Just hang on."

Hang on. Hang on. Only five men conscious in the whole damned ship and one of them is hollering hang on. Till when?

Till the Commander and I are the only ones left? Suppose the party is still going on when we go down? It won't matter to the others, but what am I supposed to do? Bend over and kiss my ass goodbye?

Alewel has stopped making noises. He's even stopped breathing. Mostly I feel puzzled when I look at him.

I don't think he's the only one. It's that bad in here.

I drive myself back into rituals of hatred and anger, thinking up tortures to inflict on the Old Man. Curses and threats rip themselves from my throat in an evil imitation of a Gregorian chant.

It passes the time. It keeps me going.

Skulking on the borderlands of lunacy, I find myself victimized by one of time's relativistic pranks. Before it seems possible, another two hours have fled.

"Hey down there. Stand by. Going down in five." West-hause. He sounds choky.

I glance at the time. A new endurance record, no doubt about it. Hurray.

"Uhn." The Commander. "Damn it, Waldo. Not now. Wake up. We're almost there. Shit." He sounds as if speech is pure torment.

Reluctance to leave the ghost world inundates me. Even hell gives one a sense of security, I suppose.

What happens if the whole crew passes out before a Climber goes down? I guess she'd keep heating till her superconductors failed, her magnetics went, and she destroyed herself in a sudden annihilation.

Why do I feel less uncomfortable now than I did two hours ago? Internal temperature is higher than ever before. Literally, we're cooking.

Haltingly, the Commander says, "All I want is for you to be faster on the trigger than anybody waiting for us. Quick enough to keep them from getting out an instel."

"I'll try."

"Ten seconds. Nine... Eight..."

It's a savage plunge to zero Bev. The concretization of my surroundings stuns my conscious mind.

The frightened old tree ape in the back of my mind is on survival watch. I finish the launch sequence'before the venting machinery begins humming. In fact, I start before the ship is all the way down, and launch before any instrument has anything to say about targets.

The way Tannian fusses about wasting missiles, this could earn me a Board of Inquiry...

Except there is a target. The Old Man and Mr. Westhause made an astute guess.

We break cover less than ten thousand kilometers from the bones of the murdered moon. Fate does us a favor. She puts the watcher in the gap, not a hundred kilometers from our drop point. I can see her on gun camera. So. They thought we were gone, but left somebody just in case. They always do.

"About damned time it went our way," I mutter.

The missile is on its way. The Fire Control system barely has time to lock it on target.

The Commander holds norm for just four seconds. Hardly long enough to make a microdegree's difference in internal temperature. We run.

The missile, accelerating at one hundred gravities, strikes home before the gentlemen of the other firm get their thumbs out of their ears.

In essence, a classic Climber strike. With a lot of luck thrown in.

The Commander goes down again five light-seconds away. He vents heat and watches.

The destroyer dies. And neither the radio nor tachyon detectors react with anything but blast noise. No messages out. The Commander played the right card. He outwaited the hunt. The Executioner has gone looking elsewhere.

The glare of the fireball fades. I check the temperature. It's falling slowly. Maybe a degree a minute. The minutes tramp away on the feet of snails.

The destroyer got no message out, but that treacherous probe remains.

The first hunter hypers in an hour later.

A dozen men have recovered sufficiently to resume work.

Several more are gone forever.... The Commander commences a new ploy. He calls me, says, "Program the Eleven bird for maximum straight-line hyper fly." Piniaz hasn't recovered. For the moment I'm in charge.

The new arrival is moving away from us, into the nether reaches of the system. Westhause hits hyper and runs.

Five minutes pass. Fisherman reports, "She's turning, Commander."

"Very well. Weapons, stand by to launch. Mr. Westhause, stand by to Climb."

The minutes roll away. The hunter gains slowly. "She's close enough, Commander," Canzoneri says.

"Thank you. Weapons? Ready?"

"Aye, Commander." I quickly hammer orders to the missile. The destroyer will recognize the fake if the weapon tears away too fast.

"Ready, Mr. Westhause? Go, then."

I launch. My surroundings ghost. The Commander directs Westhause onto a new course. This should work. It's a new trick.

The missiles can run for hours in hyper. I programmed its translation ratio high. Hopefully, we'll get a good start before the destroyer gets close enough to unravel the deception.

Fearless Fred will roar like a wounded bull when he hears about this.

The Commander no longer gives a damn what Command thinks. He wants to bring his people home alive.

We drop back to norm as soon as the destroyer has time to pass the limits of detection. We drift for hours, on minimum power, still venting heat. That's a laborious process. We can't use the energy weapons for fear of giving ourselves away. The hunt should be gathering again.

Normal cruising temperature feels incredibly cold. I'm in pain when it hits a pre-Climb level.

We have twenty-three men effective when, after three hours, the Commander takes us up again.

We leave three men behind, buried in space, eulogized and mourned only after the vessel is safely in Climb. Picraux and Brown from Ops, and Alewel. They were luckier down below.

"It's criminal," Fisherman mutters. "Out the garbage lock. It's criminal."

"You maybe want to keep them aboard?" Yanevich demands.

Fisherman doesn't answer. Heat and bacteria would work horrors during an extended Climb. The bodies got a gross enough start as it was.

I remember that story about the Commander who insisted on coming home with his dead.

Funny. My threshold for smell seems to adjust as the ship grows more fetid. Our atmosphere is only mildly annoying, though it would gag somebody plucked off a ranch on Canaan.

Lieutenant Diekereide has been running Engineering while his boss is indisposed. Varese recovers suddenly. With a howl. "Get out of the fucking way, Diekereide. Goddamnit, Commander, what the fuck did you do to my CT stores? You jackass..."

"Shut your mouth, Varese. Thank me for the chance to bitch."

Varese succumbed early. The more thoughtful Diekereide kept himself in action by donning our one remaining suit and using its cooling capability.

The squabble goes on. Pure stress talking. Will the Old Man press it? He'll have the evidence on the Mission Recorder. Varese is insubordinate. I take no notes, wanting nothing on paper that might be subpoenaed.

"We're down to a cunt hair over four hours of Climb time," Varese rages. "With that and some luck, we'll only get our asses blown off, not baked."

Yanevich takes over for the Old Man. "Be glad you're alive. Now tend to your knitting. Don't give me any of your shit. Understood, mister?" - Varese has sense enough to shut his mouth. He sulks instead.

Time to get some sleep.

I waken with a heightened sense of fatalism. I'm not alone. The CT is practically gone. The missiles have flown. The graser could be one shot from failing. The other energy weapons are unreliable. Only the magnetic cannon can be used for any length of time. We won't show much in a fight.

I paid my dues. I hung in there. I did my job while the others fell. I can be proud of myself.

Maybe they'll give me a medal.

We're still a long way from home. It'll be a tough, hungry trip. Then we'll have to run the steel curtain around Canaan. Do we have enough CT?

In Weapons everyone is at war with the mold. "Looks like a victory for mold," I say to a slightly shy Kuyrath.

"Got a good hold this time, sir. The paint's ruined. Some of the plastic, too." He tears the protective wrapping off a roll of electrician's tape. Two empty cores lie beside him already. "Had to let it ride, though."

"Yeah. What can you do?"

"Wouldn't it be the shits if this crap did us in? I mean, they gave it their best shot. The Executioner. But the Old Man pulled us through. So we got mold. What do you do about fucking mold?

You can't outthink it."

"It would be an ironic end," I agree. And don't count the other team out. They're still looking, my friend.

Piniaz drifts over. "Understand you did some first class shooting, Lieutenant."

"Uhm." His attitude has mellowed. "It really happened? Seems like a dream."

"You took notes the whole time. Interesting. I put them in Bath's hammock for now."

"Don't remember any notes. Be like reading somebody else's report." I snort. "Gunners. No respect for anybody but the fastest draw."

Piniaz frowns, perplexed. "I was offering the olive branch, Lieutenant. I didn't figure you'd bite my hand."

"Sorry. Thanks. Just lucky, I guess. What's happening?"

"We lost them. Or they let go. Something funny about it, if you ask me. Shouldn't have been this easy."

"Maybe it wasn't."

"They had to know our CT was about gone. That gets them excited." He shrugs. "The Old Man will take what they give him."

"For instance?"

"First we make an instelled beacon. Let Command know we're alive."

"Uhm. Think Tannian will be disappointed?" Sometimes I think he wants us dead.

Piniaz is capable of his own paranoid reasoning. "I'd guess the Old Man is gambling. People will hear we're alive before the news reaches the top."

Could it be true?... No. Not even Tannian... Crazy thinking. I've been out too long. "You figure Fred will have to pull all the stops to bring his heroes in?"

"Exactly."

Ito's strained, dark little face reveals a truth. He believes there's a plot. The upcoming leave best be long. These men are all out of their minds. I wouldn't want to space with them again.

I won't have to. I smile to myself. One patrol is all I have to survive.

Get me home, Commander. Get me home.

We've made our beacon. The Commander reported yesterday. After putzing around for hours, Command told us to come on home, following normal patrol routine, beacon to beacon. They showed no inclination to gossip.

We've scrounged a little water and food. Pity we can't get any CT. Going to be rough if we hit unfriendly territory.

Lunch with the Commander; He's near the end of his tether, yet remains as inaccessible as ever.

How do I reach the man? How do I reassure him? I don't think it can be done now.

He speaks of the pursuit as though it were normal patrol routine.

Six days gone. Six days closer to home. The Old Man is avoiding routine, rather than pursuing it.

He doesn't want to give potential watchers anything they can use. We're proceeding in short hyper flies separated by extended periods in norm. We do a lot of listening. Paranoia has become a norm.

The computer people winnow every bit of information gathered from the beacons, hunting a clue, believing Command an enemy more deadly than the other firm. I can unearth no rational reason for the attitude. I occasionally succumb myself.

This is dangerous. Too much time wasted on speculation. We could get so spooky we turn into our own worst enemies. This could create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

More time gone. I've lost track of the days. We're close. I'm not sure how close, but near enough that Canaan seems real again. Here, there, men are talking like there's a human universe outside the Climber.

Space here is crowded. We have frequent contacts. Hardly a watch slides by without Fisherman's being startled into a croaking panic. Curiously, none of the contacts are interested in us.

We've been lucky, maybe. Every contact has been remote, while we were in norm. Chances are we've just not been spotted. A ship in norm is harder to detect from hyper than vice versa.

A tongue-in-cheek theory goes the rounds. It says we're dead already. We're really a ghost ship.

We're going on because the gods haven't given us the message yet.

Lieutenant Diekereide half-seriously postulates that our record Climb rendered us permanently invisible. We'd all like to believe that.

I have my own thoughts on why we're having no trouble.

They terrify me.

"Contact, Commander," Fisherman says. He's said it so often, now, that he no longer gets upset. He gives bearing and range and elevation, and, "Unfriendly."

This one's coming right at us. Fast. A destroyer. What the hell can we do? Where the hell can we run?

The Old Man powers down, plays possum.

The terror is over. She's gone. She passed within a few hundred thousand kilometers of us. Is it possible she didn't see us? What the hell is happening?

The Commander knows. I can see that now. He becomes shifty and evasive when I try to talk to him.

All the men have their suspicions. The other firm just doesn't ignore crippled Climbers. Not without a damned good reason. Somehow, our importance has declined dramatically.

As I say, I have my thoughts. I don't want to think them. Sufficient unto each watch that I waken and find myself alive. Later, maybe, I'll want more.

Later, we all will. We'll want Tannian as guest of honor at a cannibal feast.