Star's End

  Beckhart was tricked out full dress. He stood at a stiff parade rest as they entered. His face was corpse-like. Only an almost undetectable tightness of the eyes betrayed the anger pent within him. “Lock the women up,” he said tonelessly, staring through McClennon.

  Amy broke down. She exploded, mixing pleading, weeping, and outrage. Marya considered her with obvious disdain. Thomas wanted to hold her, to comfort her. He did not. Trying would only make things worse.

  A bit of the true Beckhart slipped through the glacial shell. He took Amy’s hands. “Be calm, Mrs. McClennon. You’ll be headed home in a few days. Unless you’d rather stay with Thomas.”

  “Stay?” She laughed hysterically. She got hold of herself, sniffled, “I’ll go home.” Embarrassed by her outburst, she stared at the raggedly carpeted floor.

  Past her, to Marya, Beckhart added, “I think we’ll release you, too, madam.” He smiled. It was that killer smile Thomas had come to know with Mouse. He saw it only when Marya’s people had been done some special injury.

  How we can be cruel, he thought. We’re always willing to play petty torturers with our dull little knives.

  Mouse understood that smile too. Von Drachau had scored! He seemed to glow. He assumed the mantle of Torquemada. He laughed. The sound of it was a little mad.

  “He really did it? He broke through?” Storm spun toward Marya. “Let her live. By all means, let her live.” He put on a big, cruel grin. Life for her would be crueler than death. She could look forward to nothing but flight and fear and utter lack of hope till a relentless, pitiless enemy finally ran her to ground.

  Mouse told her, “Jupp von Drachau, our old friend from our younger days here, visited your Homeworld, dear.”

  Marya understood. Mouse had taunted her with his chance discovery during their captivity. He had mentioned the nova bomb.

  She did not break. She did not give him an instant of pleasure. She simply smiled that hard, gunmetal smile, and promised with her eyes.

  Nothing, ever, could more than lightly scar her outer defenses. Not after she had had to watch Mouse inject her children with the deadly drug that formed one of the foundation stones of Sangaree wealth.

  The police removed the women. There was a long silence. Mouse and McClennon faced their commander. Thomas felt Mouse drawing away, closing up, becoming a Bureau man once again.

  “Sit down, gentlemen,” Beckhart said. “You’ll have to bear with me. I’m a little edgy. The Broken Wings has been rough on me. Mouse, you go first. I want a detailed report.”

  McClennon’s eyebrows rose. Beckhart was not going to press? What was he up to?

  Mouse talked. McClennon retreated into introspection. He wrestled all the doubts he had held at bay since making his decision. The unanswerable want began insinuating sinister tentacles into his soul. He became increasingly confused.

  “Thomas!” It was the third or fourth time his name had been called.

  “What?”

  “Your report on the last two weeks. I have to develop a position. You’d better think about what you’ll say in your written statement, too. I tried to cover, but I couldn’t. Not all the way. You’ll have to stand a Board of Inquiry.”

  He began with Pagliacci’s, lingered over the encounters with the Alyce-faces. He tried to make Beckhart understand that that deception had instigated his determination to scuttle Navy’s plans for the Seiners.

  “That was a mistake,” Beckhart admitted. “I’ve made several classics during this operation. The intent wasn’t malign, Thomas. I meant it as a hypnotic trigger. Way back when, before you were supposed to return to Carson’s, Mouse showed you a Chinese coin. That was supposed to be your cue. You didn’t respond.”

  “That failsafer.”

  “He was ours. Yes. Another of my grand mistakes.” Beckhart did not apologize for the murder attempt. They were professionals. They were supposed to understand. They were living chessmen playing a giant board. “Luckily, Mouse outguessed me on that one.”

  McClennon wandered through his tale, trying and failing to elucidate his behavior.

  “Intellectually, I know what you’re saying,” Beckhart interjected. “Emotionally, I can’t connect. Thomas, I’m one of those fools who actually believe in their work. It may be because that’s all I have. Or maybe I never outgrew my idealism about Confederation. But that’s neither here nor there. You haven’t given me those coordinates.”

  “I haven’t seen any guarantees.”

  “Thomas, I’ll promise you anything. High Command has cleared it. They’ve published it. We’ll make it stick. Even if it costs us a Senatorial Review. We can get around those. But that’s something to worry about next month. Right now we need to get a hammerlock on Stars’ End.”

  “And then what?”

  “You just lost me, son.”

  “What happens to me?” Does it really matter? he wondered. Who cares?

  “Technically, you’re under arrest till you receive a Board ruling. You put yourself in a spot. You could end up the hero or the goat of this mess. Which one probably depends on how the first battle goes. I’d just as soon forget the whole thing myself. But it’s too late. They know about you back at Luna Command.”

  “Look on the bright side, Tommy,” Mouse said. “They can’t legally make you work while you’re under arrest. You’ll get a vacation in spite of the Bureau.”

  Beckhart flashed Storm a daggers look. “Can the space-lawyer crap, son. The arrest will be strictly a paper technicality, Thomas. In practice you’ll be part of my staff till we sort out the Seiners and Stars’ End. Mouse, you’ll drag around with Thomas and me. As of now, you’re his keeper.”

  McClennon caught a faint taste of life as he had known it before joining the Starfishers. He looked forward to the change. It might keep him too preoccupied to whine about his losses.

  Poor Amy…

  “First order of business, those coordinates. Then we get Thomas to a Psych team…”

  A policeman came in. “Marathon’s stabilized orbit, Admiral. Her shuttle will be down shortly.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Marathon?” Mouse asked. “I thought she was in mothballs.”

  “She was when you left. Nothing is anymore. They’re crewing the older ships with Reserves. They’re replacing regular Fleet patrols. The initial battle will involve every first line ship we have.”

  “They sent one old cruiser to replace three heavy squadrons?” McClennon asked.

  “Not exactly, Marathon is mine. Intelligence Admirals don’t rate. Thomas, are you going to spill?” Beckhart turned to the policeman, who had remained near the door. “Officer, start moving our gear. Sergeant Bortle was supposed to scrounge up transport.”

  McClennon’s immediate concern was that he had not had a bath. Sixteen days of grime, and he had to board a Navy ship?

  “What’s the program?” Mouse asked.

  “First we bluff the Fishers. Then we move to Stars’ End and ride herd on the scientists Marathon brought out. They’ll supervise the Seiner teams. When I’m satisfied with progress, we space for Luna Command. After debriefing, you loaf till Thomas’ Board is over. I imagine Thomas will get hung with a desk. He might even move back to the Line.”

  “How hard will they be on him?”

  “The Board will clear him. On psychological grounds. There’s precedent. But they’ll want him off operations. Which makes sense, I guess. He could be burned out. He might still do commercial or diplomatic work. That wouldn’t waste his training. You I don’t know about yet, Mouse.”

  McClennon looked inside himself and could find no remorse over his potential loss of job. He did not like his profession much.

  “I might retire,” Mouse mused. “Captain draws a good pension.” Though he smiled, the coals of lost dreams lay banked behind his eyes. He had fulfilled his goals too early in life.

  “Not till after the war, you won’t,” Beckhart said. “Nobody retire
s till then. Thomas? Are you going to give me what I need? Do I have to rub your nose in our intelligence tapes first?”

  “All right. It’s Three Sky Nebula. Inside the wedge and pointing toward galactic center, beginning about one a.u. inside. Give me a pen.” He wrote a series of numbers on a memo sheet. “There’re your jump-in coordinates. From there you go ahead in normspace. I can’t give you the route through the junk. People who know it aren’t allowed to leave.”

  “Three Sky? Really? I thought it would be way outside our usual sphere.” Beckhart’s stiffness began to fade. He became the Admiral of old. Smiles and friendship. And willingness to spend a man’s life. “The purloined letter thing. That’s why ships disappear there.” After a pause, “I have things to do before we leave. Meet me in the lobby in half an hour. Ready for space.”

  “Ready for space?” McClennon asked.

  “That was a subtle hint, son. Get cleaned up. I’ll have a man bring you a uniform. And try to make peace with your woman.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He set a record for bathing, shaving, and shifting to the clean uniform. He had ten minutes left when he finished.

  One minute later he entered the room Beckhart was using as a brig. It was just a hotel room without windows, with two guards posted outside its only door. Amy and Marya sat against opposite walls, ignoring one another.

  “Amy?”

  She refused to acknowledge his presence.

  He grabbed her chin, forced her to face him. “Look at me, dammit!” For two weeks he had been trying to make her understand. She had refused. He wanted to beat it into her stubborn head. It took an effort to speak calmly. “We’re leaving in a few minutes. If you want, you can come with us.”

  She glared.

  “We’ll end up at Stars’ End. I thought you might want to join your research team there. Instead of being sent straight home.”

  Still she glared.

  “If you go back with the internees, you’ll end up at the Yards. With your mother. I thought maybe you’d want to go where you had a friend.”

  She would not say anything.

  “All right. Be stubborn.” He turned to the door. “Officer? I’m ready.”

  “Moyshe, wait. I… Yes. I’ll go.”

  He sighed. Finally. The first yielding. “I’ll clear it with the Admiral.” A wan smile teased his lips as he left the room.

  It would be a long journey. Maybe long enough for him to win his case.

  Beckhart did not like his idea at first.

  “Sir,” McClennon explained, “she’s best friends with one of the senior Fisher scientists. If we can tame her, she can help sell cooperation. You keep talking about Ulantonid intelligence tapes. Use them to persuade her. We don’t really have to turn her, just to open her mind.”

  “Thomas… I can see right through you. You don’t give a shit about… All right. It’s another trade-off. Bring her. But you’re responsible for her.”

  “Tell the guards to turn her over to me.”

  “Go get her, will you? You’re wasting time.”

  An hour later, they were aboard the shuttle to Marathon. Mouse was shaking. Beckhart was lost in dispatches that had come out aboard the cruiser. Amy had her eyes closed. She was pale and grim.

  McClennon stared at her and mentally roamed fields of might-have-beens and should-have-dones. He had gotten her to admit an intellectual understanding of his actions. And her inability to differentiate between personal and social allegiances.

  She could not see his betrayal of her people as impersonal. She wanted his feelings for her to have been an agent’s play-acting. Somehow, that would absolve her of complicity.

  She was a self-torturer.

  Could he criticize her? Or anyone else? He lived his life in a self-inflicted Iron Maiden.

  He and Amy had been doomed from the beginning. His program’s instability had made him a natural victim for her inadequacies. They had been too much alike. And she too much like the Alyce creature programmed as one of his triggers. Maybe his ideal woman was a Marya, a cold, gunmetal woman armored at the pain points. A woman with whom it was unnecessary to exchange emotional hostages.

  Had he changed during this mission? People did, but usually too slowly to notice. He did not trust the changes he saw. Too many might be artificial.

  The Psychs would sort him out. A small team had come out aboard Marathon. Maybe when they finished he would know who he really was. He was not sure he wanted to know.

  Book Three

  STARS’ END

  Twenty-One: 3050 AD

  The Main Sequence

  The lights came on. McClennon, Mouse, and Amy sat in silence. The tapes had been grotesque. Storm finally squeaked, “Admiral… That’s really what we’re up against?”

  McClennon peered at Amy. She met his gaze for an instant. “Moyshe,” she whispered, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “It is,” Beckhart promised Mouse. “It’s tough to swallow. Even when you’re there yourself. All that ruthlessness, for no discernible purpose, only makes it more frightening”

  McClennon took Amy’s hand. It was cool. She was shaking. “You need something?”

  “I’ll be all right. Just give me a minute.”

  McClennon turned, “Admiral. I’ve seen that kind of ship before.”

  “What? Where? How?” Beckhart came toward McClennon like a tiger stalking game. He seemed to have caught a sudden fever. A haze appeared on his upper lip. “Where?” he breathed.

  “The Seiners have one at their xeno-archaeological research facility. You remember, Amy? I asked if it had been built by an intelligent slug? The one nobody wanted to work.”

  “That’s right. You’re right, Moyshe, It was exactly like the ships in the tape.”

  “Tell me about it,” Beckhart said.

  “There isn’t much to tell,” McClennon replied. “The Seiners found it in the Nebula. They considered it comparatively modern. They found it surrounded by ships left behind by the people they think built Stars’ End. The same people who, I think, built the base Darkside. They assumed the ship had been attacked by accident during the Ulantonid War. I said its crew might have been studying the ships belonging to the Stars’ End race. That’s all.”

  Beckhart became thoughtful. “That isn’t all, Thomas. There’s always more. You just don’t know it. Is there a connection? Think about it. Stars’ End might be more than just a handy arsenal.”

  Beckhart was talking to himself, not his audience. McClennon smiled. The Admiral was making the sort of random connections that, when they paid off, caused him to be so effective.

  “Thomas, I want you and Amy to talk to Doctor Chancellor’s people. They came off the Lunar digs. There might be an angle.”

  “They should get together with Amy’s friend, Consuela el-Sanga. She’s more knowledgeable than we are.”

  “Fine. Fine. We’ll arrange that. Meantime, get your brains boiling. Open them up to unexpected possibilities… Tell you what. We’ll have another little get-together after dinner. With them included. Marathon brought me some new material. I’ll lay it out then.”

  McClennon caught a bleak note. “Bad, eh?”

  “Worse than you’ve seen.”

  Beckhart used the evening session to present the report from the Ulantonid deep probe. Afterward, he asked, “Any speculations, people?”

  The science people were guarded. They wanted more data. McClennon asked, “Did Luna Command run that through the big brain?”

  “Yes. And it asked for more data too. I think it has a human bias built in. It wouldn’t accept the numbers. It suggested that Commander Russell be replaced by somebody less inclined to exaggerate.”

  “Looks to me like there’s enough data to draw some first approximation inferences. Like, the Globular and war fleets represent an effort to destroy any present and potential sentience. It looks like an effort to eliminate competition and remodel the
galaxy for the comfort of one race.”

  A scientist protested, “You can’t draw those inferences. They’re anthropocentric. It could just as well be a religious crusade.”

  “What?” Mouse snarled. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Easy, Mouse,” Beckhart said, “No idea is too bizarre right now. The truth is going to be something off the wall. Brainstorm, people. Come up with as many ideas as possible, then winnow them as we accumulate more data. We shouldn’t use the facts to build something acceptable. The truth may not be.”

  The scientists were becoming restive. Beckhart continued, “One unpalatable fact that jumps right out is that they’re going to try to destroy us. Add to that their incredible numbers. Add to that the fact that the Globular is forty thousand years away. People, I think we’ve found us a war that will last forever.”

  McClennon could not handle the numbers. Forty thousand years? Eight times as long as recorded history? That was one long-term operation.

  The other side had been involved for the gods only knew how long already. Millions of years?

  The oddities of the alien base on the moon’s dark side, the abandoned ships in Three Sky, and Stars’ End itself, seemed a little less strange when seen in that light. Presuming the mysterious builders had been enemies of the centerward race, their works might constitute a counter-operation of equally cosmic scale. He tried to tote up a picture based on known factors. It did not scan. There were too many questions. What was the role of the Sangaree? What had become of the builders?

  Mouse leaned his way. “This is a little much for me, Tommy. I’m just a simple-minded soldier.”

  McClennon grinned. “I’ll go along with the simple-minded.” He had spent the afternoon with a Psych team. They had performed wonders. He felt content and optimistic.

  Mouse was out of sorts. He had come off The Broken Wings moody and uncommunicative. The definitive proof was that the science team boasted several attractive women. None had yet been honored by the swoop of the eagle. Amy had mentioned it in one of her friendlier moments. McClennon had not noticed it himself.