Doomstar. Part 16

"I suppose it is." He took his hand away. "All right."

He left her, crossing the small room, and she spoke from behind him with a bitterness that shocked him.

"You shouldn't have come back. Did you think we needed you? Did you think we were dying for lack of you? Why didn't you just leave us alone!"

She was gone then, pus.h.i.+ng with a small s.h.i.+ver of revul-sion past Chai. Kettrick remembered that Seri had never permitted the Tch.e.l.l inside the house when she was there.

Chai snorted gently. She did not say anything. The per-fect lady, Kettrick thought, in spite of her fur.

He poured himself a drink and did not drink it. He sat staring at it and forgot it was there.

After a long while he realized that for almost the first time since leaving Earth he had thought of a girl named Sandra and wished her well.

Some time later they came out of jump.

The White Sun blazed in the sky ahead of them, one of the few hot white stars in the Hyades, a savage young warrior among the middle-aged and mellow suns. The fierce light beat at the cruiser's safety s.h.i.+elds.

The radiation counters showed normal.

"Temporary reprieve," muttered Kettrick. "Or were we wrong?"

Sekma did not answer.

They stared from the s.h.i.+elded windows of the bridge at the world of the Krinn swimming through the glare. There was no doubt about which planet might have been chosen as a platform from which to launch the Doomstar. The two small inner worlds were semi-molten, the outer three im-possible because of poisonous atmosphere, gravitation, or cold. The world of the Krinn alone supported life. After its own fas.h.i.+on.

The surface markings of the planet began to show in patchy glimpses between high cloud cover and the much lower clouds of smoke and dust. Kettrick made out the heliograph flash of white deserts, the black lava blotches of volcanic zones, the crinkled desolation of mountain ranges still raw and cruel with youth, the basins of shallow seas drying in the sun. Still closer, and he could see the great winding river courses and the green of the fertile belts.

The radarman said sharply, "Sir!"

At almost the same instant, while Weapons Control was in the act of starting to range and the ports were sliding open, according to prearranged plan, Communications cried out, "Sir! A message coming through..."

It came through clearly, in spite of the hiss and crackle of atmospherics.

"Silverwing to cruiser. Watch your counters and consider whether you wish to live. Too bad you came so late." With a hint of sibilant laughter, the voice added, "Goodbye."

In the intense silence that followed, the radarman said, "She's gone."

No radar, no killer beam nor missile could follow Silverwing into the limbo of not-s.p.a.ce. The men in the bridge stood still, a little stunned by the swiftness of what had happened. Kettrick saw that Sekma's face was ashen under the golden bronze and he thought that his own must be the same.

The world of the Krinn raced toward them. The White Sun blazed.And the radiation counters gave a small premonitory leap.

22.

Sekma was the first one to break the silence. His voice was low but it was steady, and it had a hard, iron ring to it.

"We will conduct the sweep of the day side, as planned. There is a chance that we can find the launcher and de-activate it before the critical point is reached."

The acting skipper, a Darvan like Sekma and a good solid man, said, "How long would that give us?"

"It is estimated," Sekma said, laying a small stress on the word, "that the point beyond which the reaction will not reverse itself is reached in approximately twelve hours from the impact of the first missile.

That would have been at sunrise." He paused briefly. "Unfortunately we have no way of guessing at the longitude of the launcher emplacement, so it doesn't help us much."

It did not help at all. And the mocking voice had said, "Too bad you came so late."

"After the critical point is reached," Sekma was saying, "the progression is more rapid. The radiation becomes lethal in something like six or seven hours. Normal s.h.i.+elding such as we have is no protection.

Therefore..."

"Therefore," said the skipper, "we had better make the most of our X-number of hours."

He did not mention that if the search were called off the cruiser might land, be hastily serviced, and gotten off again in time to clear the planet and jump for safety. Kettrick knew it must be in his mind. It was in his own mind and he knew that every man there was thinking the same thing. Only one force held them silent, and judging by himself it was not courage but shame; no one wanted to be the first to suggest that they turn tail and run.

Sixteen hours? Maybe. Maybe only half that. There wasn't any way of knowing. n.o.body had observed the birth of a Doomstar before, to gather data. They were the lucky first. It was a pity that their observations would be lost to science.

To change the subject in his own mind, he said, "De-activating the launcher by hand makes it tougher. Is it im-possible just to blast the thing?"

"Not impossible," Sekma said. "Impractical, Unless you don't care about the planet."

"The cobalt warheads," Kettrick said. "Yes, of course."

"Unless," said Sekma quietly, "we had no other choice."

The cruiser thrummed powerfully ahead. The skipper had returned to his seat. He and the copilot were checking off the coordinates of the initial orbit. A great big beautiful coffin, Kettrick thought, all polished steel and pride and enormous, useless strength, carrying a lot of good men to their deaths in the hope of finding one small needle in a planet-sized haystack, while Seri was safely away in Silverwing.

And at Tananaru the League of Cl.u.s.ter Worlds would be faced with an ultimatum.

He wondered if Seri would feel much pain when he learned that the Doomstar had robbed him of Larith.

"Watch your counters," the voice had said, "and consider whether you wish to live." The voice that might have been Seri's. Then it had laughed. The hot blood came up in Kettrick's face.

"We may have more time than we think," he said. "He was telling us that we had time to land andservice for jump before the radiation becomes lethal...if we forgot everything else. That's what he hoped we'd do. Why would he say that if he weren't afraid we might find the launcher in time to stop it?"

Sekma said cynically, "Hold to that thought, Johnny. We only have half a world to search. Just the side that faces the sun. Sunset will be cut-off time, but we don't know when that will be exactly...we don't know where the daylight started, so we can't tell where it should end. We need hope, so if you think of anything more like that, let us know."

"I'll do better," Kettrick said. "I'll go down and enlist the Krinn. After all, it's their sun." He laughed at Sekma's expression. "What are you worried about? Afraid I might pick up some heartstones along the way?"

"Just habit, I guess," said Sekma in an odd tone. "I wish I had a lifeboat to give you." He smiled suddenly. "If you find any heartstones, you can keep them. We're going to drop Number One in exactly eight minutes."

Kettrick went down the ladder to the wardroom where Boker and Hurth and Glevan had been sweating it out be-cause there was no room for them in the bridge. They had had the intercom open.

"I guess you heard it all."

"We did." Boker was busy at the cellaret, stowing bottles in his s.h.i.+rt. "I figure we'll need these before we're through, either to celebrate or...not." He tossed one to Kettrick. "Catch."

Kettrick stowed it, cold against his skin. "I thought maybe you'd want to go down with me."

"Anywhere out of this hole. We've all had enough of sit-ting."

"Let's go then. Chai?"

She too had been excluded from the bridge. And she too was tired of sitting.

"Go outside, John-nee?"

"Yes. And run hard, for a little while." He walked with her down the corridor, his hand on her strong gray shoulder.

They pa.s.sed the door of Larith's cabin. Kettrick stopped. "We'll wait for you," Boker muttered. He and the others went on to the lifeboat lock hatch.

Kettrick tried the door. It was locked, and he called through it. "Larith! You were a little bit wrong about Seri. Don't you want to hear?"

The latch was drawn back. The door opened. She had put on her dress and fixed her hair and put the little touches of color in her face that brought out the beauty of it more clearly. Only her eyes were huge and still and there was no light in them.

"I tried to save you," she said. "If you had gone to Trace, you would have lived." She paused. "How long, Johnny?"

"As long as we used to spend on the island," he said, "when we found it pleasant to make love."

She nodded. "I did love you, Johnny, the best I knew how. Not enough to follow you when you went away. I weighed what I would lose and what I would keep, and I stayed. I'm sorry if it wasn't good enough, but I never promised more. I always knew you might have to leave me."

"We could still live, Larith."

He thought there was a brief flicker deep in those dark still eyes. "How?"

"If we find the launcher in time, we can stop the Doomstar before it grows too big."

"I would tell you if I knew," she said. "I don't want to die. I would tell you this minute if I knew, but Idon't. They never said more to me than that this time the Doomstar would be the White Sun."

This time he did not doubt her.

"I'm going down," he said. "Goodbye, Larith."

She stared blankly, as though she were thinking of some-thing far off.

"Seri is safe," he said, "if that helps."

"Seri? Oh." She shook her head. "Yes, I weighed, Johnny. I've always been good at that, very good. Only this time I lost. Everything. Because of you."

And now at last there, was light in her eyes, deep and smoldering.

"I will hate you, Johnny, as long as I can think. And the only thing that helps is that I will know you're dying too."

"Very true," said Kettrick. "Only I won't die alone." He cupped her cheek in his hand and it was cold as alabaster. He felt an odd remote twinge of pity for all that wasted love-liness. "But," he said, "you've always been alone, haven't you?"

She drew away from him, back into the cabin, and shut the door, and he went with Chai to the lifeboat bay and through the hatch, and heard it seal behind him.

23.

The pilot of the lifeboat, a grim-faced and joyless man in a vicious hurry, landed them at the place Kettrick had desig-nated and barely gave them time to scramble clear of his jets before he was away again. Kettrick did not blame him. The small personal counter he had taken from the lifeboat's supplies showed radiation still well within limits. Yet the sunlight seemed to sting and burn on his skin, and he re-membered his dreams, and was afraid.

They stood at the very knife edge of a vast desert, blind-ing white in the fierce glare. It was only about three hours after sunrise here, and already the air was parched and hot. Far off in the sand was the upside down reflection of a bitter lake, rimmed with white bands of alkali.

In the other direction, beyond the knife edge, was a deep and fertile sink many miles in breadth that wound with the windings of a river across half a continent. Beyond the sink was another knife edge and more desert, with a loft of mountains at the end of it. To the west, downstream, the sink curved out of sight around the base of a series of b.u.t.tes like ancient battles.h.i.+ps sailing in line ahead. To the east, up-stream, it curved the other way around the broken cone of a small volcano, long dead, and the land there was stained black with lava. Smoke and dust darkened much of the horizon, "Well," said Boker, "and here we are, exactly where we planned to be. And how easy it was, after all."

Hurth gave him an answer that made the air seem cool. And Glevan said, "Our lifetimes are short enough. Let us not waste the minutes."

They gathered up the things they had brought from the lifeboat, chiefly anything that would serve as gifts, along with sidearms, rations, capsules for purifying water...hope-ful precaution!...and the contents of Boker's bottles trans-ferred to canteens. They had also brought a minipak field radio, which Kettrick carried on his back; a slender link with the feverish activity going on far up in the sky.

They began the descent of the escarpment, along a steep path treacherous with loose rock and sliding sand, that led to the green floor of the sink something more than a thou-sand feet below. And ashe went, Kettrick thought to himself that they...all of them, below and aloft...were going to need more than mere good luck. They were going to need a miracle.

Given time, there would be no problem. Reconnaissance techniques were so good that practically nothing escaped them. Given time. But there was no time.

The cruiser and the lifeboat between them would sweep the globe from daybreak to the edge of night, covering every mile of every lat.i.tude where human life might survive, with special attention to the high probability areas. They would use every aid possible for visual sighting and instrument detection. Yet their chances of spotting the launcher were very slight.

The powerful sunlight would drown the flare of a rising missile, unless it were very close. Vast clouds of sand, vol-canic dust, and smoke made any kind of sightings difficult over large areas, and there were always the random distractions present everywhere to make things tough for the radarman. The small, ultra-high-velocity missiles would be difficult to detect unless they were ejected in a sufficiently steady stream to form a recognizable pattern, and the best guess was that they were not. Interval of delivery for the seeding warheads was estimated at slightly over an hour.

Given time, all these obstacles could be overcome. Careful scanning, endless streams of data running through the com-puters, endless comparisons, endless study of photographs...But there was no time for all this technical proficiency. They had, like savages or children, to do it the simple way.

There was one bright hope, and that was that Seri and his friends might have been sufficiently careless, sufficiently sure that they were safe, to neglect to camouflage the launcher. The glint of metal carries a long way, and on this metalless world would be an instant revelation.

Once or twice on the blistering descent Kettrick switched on the radio. The cruiser was out of his range now, away south over the bulge of the equator, but the lifeboat was still receiving her and Kettrick could hear the lifeboat. The talk was brief and negative. He switched it off quickly.

They pa.s.sed into the heavier, moister air of the sink and there began to be vines and creepers along the path. Kettrick was watching for the Krinn, but it was Chai who saw them first, or smelled them. She growled and pointed.

There were trees below, tall things with s.h.i.+ny trunks and limber branches weighed down by leaves as big as carpets, all glossy green. There was movement underneath them, in the dim aisles that ran through a sweating undergrowth of ferns and saw-toothed gra.s.ses. A second later a wooden spear stuck quivering in the middle of the path ahead of them.

Kettrick went ahead of his companions. He stood by the spear and called out, in the grunts and clicks of a speech al-most as primitive as Chai's, "Djunn will make talk with Ghnak. He will give presents to Ghnak, and to the People of the River."

He held up both hands, palms out, and waited. It was a long time since he had been here, and the Krinn had short memories. Ghnak might be dead and eaten long since. Or he might just be in a bad mood today and give the sign to spear them all.

He waited. And the sun appeared to race toward the zenith. The needle of his small counter had inched closer to the red. His skin p.r.i.c.kled. He yearned, childishly, for the illusory shelter of the trees.

Ghnak stepped out into the path and retrieved the spear.

"We make talk," he said.

They followed him into the shade of the forest.