Z-Sting Page 21

  Behind Saguni, Marana resonated: “Mr. Croyd, I have tempopattern flakes for Chihattan, Senevendia, and Moskov.” Marana, hypereuphoric with inspiration, was on his feet with two puzzled but ready-to-go women.

  Croyd got it instantly. “Suit-up, Marana! Saguni, you stay here. And lay off hara-kiri until you are totally sure that Erth is gone, and you’ll know that when Erth disappears. Marana, when we get to the Mazurka you are to discharge your crew to guard this base, we’ll use the autocrew, there’s no point in risking lives on a practically hopeless risk. Except yours and mine. I assume that you are with me.”

  “Natch. But I’ll have a problem discharging Pete Mulcahy.”

  “Give him a direct order, he’ll obey; he has to command the protection of this base. We wouldn’t want Ziska and his people to go last-ditch berserk and shoot up Marta and Keri.”

  They were suiting as they talked, and so were Marta and Keri—but they paused as the implication hit them. While Keri whirled on Dana, Marta roared: “Forget that plan, sir, forget it! Where you go, I’m aboard!”

  Croyd, considering her with admiration: “Wrong decision, strong and gutty Marta. You are Chairman of Mare Stellarum, remember? Look, this will be nothing but a desperate final try, basis purely theoretical, chance of success about zilch, probability enormous that the Mazurka will blow. If you were to blow with us—who would take over Erthworld? Ziska?”

  She hardened, meeting his eyes.

  She nodded once.

  He nodded once and reached for his helmet.

  Keri, practically fused with Dana, internalized his last words: “Hang around Moon, kid, and see what to do. But if we don’t—please make a good second marriage, I want a good life for my love, and I value something of ours that you must be incubating.”

  Aboard the Mazurka, Marana wasted no seconds: Lieutenant-Commander Mulcahy received a direct order. Pete began to demur. His commander informed him: “God damn it, that’s an order!” Two seconds Mulcahy hesitated, staring at the turned back of his skipper who was busy with takeoff preparations involving the autocrew; then Mulcahy went to the com and sent the crew to the base double-time. Turning, he told his commander: “I’ll go supervise. I won’t be back. You’re a good skipper and a good Joe; I’d like to go along, but I won’t ask again. Cheers.”

  Marana said, frowning, “You’re a good exec and a good friend. Remember that. Remember also that you’ll be guarding my wife. Cheers.”

  Pete pivoted and bolted.

  When ship-clearance was complete, Croyd ordered: “Batten hatches and take off.”

  “Right, sir.” Marana began punching a series of controls.They felt the vibration of hatches clanging-to.

  Mazurka quit Moon, working her way g-by-g up to a gut-wrenching acceleration well over four thousand g in about twenty minutes; only four g behind the inertial shield, but subjective thrust enough. During acceleration, Marana stayed hard on the controls, with Croyd behind him pumping generalized suggestions. They could operate this ruinous maneuver on autocrew if nothing seriously untoward should arise—seriously untoward meaning anything from a circuitry problem to a random meteor or a space gale.

  By now, the Z-waves from Neptune were approaching Uranus orbit, inbound toward Erth.

  Croyd, leisurely for a moment, glanced behind him, spread hands, and turned back to the commander. “Dana—”

  “Sir?”

  “The girls. They’re back. They’re here.”

  “I figured.”

  “Our ship may blow, Dana. On Erth, Keri would have been safe, and so would Chairman Marta.”

  “I figure they probably figured.”

  Swiveling, Croyd mutely questioned the women. Both nodded. He turned back to Marana: “They figured. Somehow, they’re here anyway.”

  Keri said in a small voice: “It was pretty confused around the ship when the crew was leaving. Some nice men helped us aboard.”

  They crossed Mars orbit and Jupiter orbit in two hours, on a dead line toward Neptune. Marta, stoically in agony from the g-pressure that crept through the shield, worked her head around to look at Keri: the Vendic princess, who normally weighed fifty-six kilo, was thrust back against her hydraulic seat with a force that raised her weight almost insupportably above a quarter-ton. Under these conditions, Marta found it miraculous that Croyd and Marana stayed erect, moving like directionally self-controlled drunken men from instrument to viewpoint. Ship speed, increasing second by second, was about to equal light velocity.

  Marana, voice blurred: “What’s your estimated interruption range?”

  “Five million kilometers maximum. But I don’t get optimum scramble before three million.”

  “Three million would give us ten seconds. That’s just enough margin. If it fails, is the screwball backstop ready?”

  “The tempopatterns? Yessir.”

  Croyd turned to the women. “Out of your seats—you may have to jump ship in spitting time.”

  Keri, articulating with trouble: “I stay while Dana stays.”

  Marta studied her equally young great-grandfather, wanting to echo Keri by saying: “I stay while Croyd stays.” For her it was definite now: he was her redemption, far more to her than Dana to Keri: it had come to the point where Croyd was her meaning, all other meanings having drifted away with her arterial cholesterol. But there was no way for Marta to express this. And so she merely stated, “I stay.”

  Croyd nodded. “That’s their decision, Dana. Good, then. But things are getting tough. Distance now?”

  “Nine million kilometers.”

  “Activate the interrupter at six million. It will meet the waves at three million. Einstein was wrong about that.”

  Dana pressed the activator.

  Five, four, three, two, one—

  Whssshh!

  Silence.

  Croyd said dully: “We missed.” The Z-waves were already far past them en route to Erth.

  Dana asked tersely: “Operation Backstop?”

  “Affirmative.”

  Dana put his frigate into an 180° turn that used up millions of kilometers of space and maximized the apparent g’s on the bridge. Marta and Keri closed eyes and suffered forever. Eleven minutes later, the ship came out of the turn and drove radially toward Erth, and there was some relief but not much because Dana had pushed acceleration up to maximum.

  Croyd told them in a conversational tone that was just a bit edgy: “The Z-waves at this instant are forty-one minutes out from Erth, and we are far behind them. We are pursuing the waves, trying to catch them. We will hold acceleration at 4227 g during forty minutes; the waves will then be only eighteen million kilometers from Erth, about sixty seconds away, while we will have made up most of the space differential at a peak velocity of 1.1 C and will be less than five million kilometers behind the waves.”

  He was bending over Dana at the controls: “That is really as long as I dare wait—”

  Although the vital eyes of forty-five-young Marta blue-burned into the hard back of forty-five-young Croyd, the hard will of eighty-six-sagacious Marta restrained her from distracting Croyd. Within her a tumultuous melange of new realizations yelled at her to launch her self-fulfillment bid now, disrupting Croyd’s concentration on his last-ditch roulette-defense of her planetary responsibility . . .

  She suppressed her own urgency. She agreed with him on what counted.

  Watching his cutichron, Croyd announced: “Contact minus four minutes. We are overtaking the waves. We will use three more minutes to close the gap, and then we will activate a backstop which coincidentally is a small replication of the three dead failsafes Velos, Miros, and Heros. Our ship will emit a laser-directed amplification of the tempopatterns of Chihattan and Senevendia and Moskov—and, Dana, never ask me why I went for tempopatterns or why I gave top priority to those three. And if the 4.7 million kilometer distance between us and the waves then is enough smaller than their 18 million kilometer distance from Erth, the intensity of our feeble transmissions will overcome t
he relative intensities of the actual live tempopatterns from Erth, and the waves will think we are their targets and will turn around and hit us instead of Erth.”

  He was busy loading flakes into the transmitter. Absently he added: “If."

  Both women were grasping both horns. The tragedy for Erth of an if that would fail. The finality for themselves of an if that would succeed.

  Keri said thickly: “Dana—”

  Dana turned. “Keri?”

  “Kisses.”

  “Kisses.”

  “Okay, Dana my love, that’s it forever. Go back to work.”

  Dana returned to his controls, Marta to her self-flagellation.

  In a moment, Dana queried: “Croyd, if the waves do come back and hit us, won’t it take them about fourteen seconds from button-push at 4.7 million kilometers?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then, for higher success-probability—can we shave it even closer?”

  Croyd squeezed his shoulder. “Good boy. Girls?”

  Marta’s “You are in command” and Keri’s “Erth has top priority?” intermerged.

  “Well done,” Croyd commented. “All right, I will push it to six seconds closer in. And it is now Contact minus two minutes twelve seconds, for us.”

  Marta: “It is probably an excellent time for this abysmal old woman to die. Thank you for letting me die young.”

  Croyd, turning, surprised: “But our death is no more than highly probable—”

  She didn’t really hear him. Her bitterness was mordant.

  What Marta had been watching was youth in action. Dana was young, Keri was young; Croyd was not chronologically young, but his insistent imaginative thrust constituted the youth which ultimately cannot age.

  And how was it with Marta’s new youth? Perhaps she had never been young, really. No man had ever aroused her, except one who had abandoned her, and Ziska whom she had abandoned, and now Croyd. Even in that long-ago time when she had thrust her way up into command of Mare Stellarum—had that been youth, or had it been the driving obstinacy which is not necessarily young? Somewhat less long ago, there had been a time when she had catapulted herself into Neptune space in order to pioneer the Nereid outpost of government: had that been delayed youth—or had it been an unsuccessful leap at recapturing gone youth? What had Marta ever meant, except power for expediency?

  And now, o god, she was young again, and in love more than ever but this time intelligently in love with an altogether human demigod who with humility kept refusing to recognize his own demidivinity but who with insistently responsible sympathy kept operating like the demigod that he was—but she was his great-granddaughter—and a bitch.

  And so now it was all done. This Croyd had youthened her sincerely: her youthening was an irony, because in her there was no potential for soul-youth, only a potential for hollow physical vigor. If at this instant Croyd should approach her sexually, Marta was capable of matching him thrust-for-thrust, they would weary each other sweetly; but that would be mere mare-stallion physicality, he could get as much joy from a well-turned android. Should he depth-probe more than her body, all he would find in her when he would look for her soul would be a galaxy-dominating she-computer who had connived and browbeaten herself into total power, denying men and herself, and had eventuated in the hollowness of selfish bitchery . . .

  There is an ultimate depressive mood in which one will brave all obstacles in order to drive oneself to cliff-edge and leap into suicide, hoping all the way down that one will be mourned.

  O Keri and Dana! O Marta and Croyd!

  Monotonously Marta announced: “I perfectly well understand that all four of us go when the waves hit us. Their intensity on our small target will simply evaporate us. Four people and one frigate are worth a good deal less than Erth, and it is a shrewd bargain that you are striking.”

  Croyd, his finger near the activator button, replied sharply, “It is not a certainty that we die with the ship. Listen now, all of you. When I press this button, we will have only a whisker more than five seconds to save ourselves.

  “Now get these directions, they are simple but vital. Dana, leave the controls now, and sit there between the women. All three of you cling together like the Laocoön: Dana, hold their waists tight; Marta and Keri, link arms behind his back.” Dana moved while Croyd talked. “It’s easy for me to move back fast with the g-wind pushing me back. The instant I press the button, I will whip back and sit on Dana’s lap, and I will hold out my arms, and you women use your free hands to lock wrists with me. Good, Dana: your position is just right. And then I—”

  “Will uptime?” demanded Marta, whose eyes were wide and smarting-dry.

  “If I can. Minus twenty-seven seconds, twenty-six, twenty-five—Marta, sit still!”

  With all her Croyd-conferred young strength, Marta flung herself away from Dana, fell off the chair to the floor of the bridge, and began to crawl away, gasping: “I failed my Erth, I die with the ship, let me go—” Dana started after her. Croyd yelled: “Commander, halt! Hang on to Keri!” Dana obeyed, staring at Marta whose floor-distance was increasing. Croyd shouted: “Marta! Erth needs you! Crawl back fast, and when I come, grab my foot—” He broke off, stared at ship’s chronometer, called: “Four-three-two-one-ACTIVATE!” Pressing the button, he stumbled back toward them, driven by g-wind; fell prone; tried to reach Marta with one hand and Dana’s foot with the other; failed; lurched erect, spun, fell back on Dana’s lap, extended one arm, felt a hand engage his wrist, clutched her wrist, uptimed five minutes.

  Three space-suited human figures clung together in free space. There was no Mazurka.

  Croyd spoke through their intercom: “Activate your suit drives full acceleration and follow my lead.” Letting go of Keri’s wrist, shaking off her hand, he shifted position so that his arm was around her waist on the other side from Dana whose waist he now clasped; and the three surged forward silently during a period of three minutes, moving tangentially to distant Erth.

  “Cut thrust,” ordered Croyd. His voice was subdued.

  In freefall, they turned back to watch in the Mazurka direction. All was blackness and bright stars: no sign of a ship, although glaring Sol would surely have revealed any ship.

  Moody Dana and Keri heard the nearby expressionless Croyd-voice. “If Erth or Moon survives, we may; it is merely a question of broadcast and pickup. Forget our survival, I am concerned with the main thing. By an interesting spacetime paradox, when we uptimed without changing spatial position, our position in space was the place where our ship was going to be five minutes from the time we then inhabited: in our uptime plane, the ship hasn’t got there yet. We are now in uptime freefall, going away, a safe hundred kilometers from the space locus where the Z-waves will hit the ship—if they do turn around and hit the ship instead of Erth. But of course, whatever is going to happen has already happened, and shortly we will see it happen. Keri, Dana—do you enjoy being present spectators of past history?”

  Dana mused: “Then from the past, some pasts are future. It is a fine irony.”

  Keri said quietly: “Marta is aboard?”

  “She is, or was. I think you understand irony, Keri.”

  “Dana mentioned an irony. Also, my father is or was an irony.”

  “Here is another one. If the waves did hit the ship, which we wanted, then their intensity on a small target has driven all thrust out of every reon in every atom of the ship, and the Mazurka has disintegrated in a photon flare. In less than a minute we will see this flare, if that has happened; and we will know that Marta Evans, hours after becoming young again, has flared with the ship. But if the ship does not flare, we will know that Man on Erth has been eternally sepulchered—but that Marta Evans, with all her political meaning gone, with all her long-cultivated life-meaning gone, will live a little while vigorous and free. Keri, do you appreciate this irony?”

  Keri said low: “Watch.”

  They watched.

  Stars were glared ou
t by the seeming of a nova.

  Rehab Action Ten

  HEROD THE GREAT

  2 June 2475

  The reasoning behind the Neptunian location of the Z-sting may be reconstructed as follows. First, that location was practically unfindable and thoroughly unsuspectable: prior to the Marta Evans Nereid adventure, Neptune was regarded as an economically useless gravity hazard to be avoided by interstellar travelers. Second, the eight-hour round trip for triggering impulses and Z-waves, coupled with the strategic locations of the failsafe satellites Velos, Miros, and Heros, gave a targeted constellation last-ditch time to realize the reality of its peril and avoid it by making significant grievance reparations along with enforceable guarantees for the future. The problem of the four billion kilometer distance, with associated wave-spread and reduced target intensity, was sufficiently overcome by laser refinements; and should a meteor or a planet or even the Sol star eclipse Erth from Neptune, the Z-waves would merely detour the obstacle and return to their programmed course.

  As a sort of footnote, it is added that Dr. Thoth Evans, in developing COMCORD, had not envisioned associated use of a Z-sting, but only occupation and economic sanctions. The Z-refinement was added by others . . .

  —Encyclopedia Galactica, 2476

  There is no evident reason why the good offices of the Interplanetary Union may not end by wiping out war as a primitively sporting but technologically hideous method of exploiting the territorial imperative and other sorts of ambitions and jealousies. For example, as a result of COMCORD and other aspects of good and insistent planning, the last full-scale war on the planet Erth ended in 2321; although we must qualify that Erth’s excellent antiwar measures do not necessarily exclude some other sort of man-made disaster . . .