For the research staff, service at Hel Station had been a deal with the devil. Each scientist had traded physical freedom and talent for unlimited funding and support for a pet line of research. The Station was ultra-secret, but the knowledge it produced was reshaping modern science. The place seethed with new discoveries.
All Navy had asked for its money was a weapon capable of making a sun go nova.
Navy had its weapon now. The scientists had scrounged around and found a few Hawking Holes left over from the Big Bang, had pulled a few mega-trillion quarks out of a linear accelerator which circumscribed Hel itself, had sorted them, had stacked them in orbital shells around the mini-singularities, and had installed these “cores” in a delivery system. The carrier missile would perish in the fires of a star, but the core itself would sink to the star’s heart before the quark shells collapsed, mixing positives and negatives in a tremendous energy yield which would ignite a swift and savage helium fusion process.
Navy had its weapon. And now, apparently, a target for it.
“What have you done, Paul?”
“I don’t know, Ion. God help me if you’re right.”
The passageways were a-crawl with Marines. Marescu swore. “I didn’t realize there were so many of the bastards. They been breeding on us? Where’s everybody else?” The usual back and forth of technical and scientific staffs had ceased. Civilians were scarce.
At Final Process they were told to report to the arsenal instead.
They found three civilians waiting outside the scarlet door. The Director, though, was an R & D admiral in civilian disguise.
“This’s a farce,” Marescu growled at her. “Two hundred comic opera soldiers…”
“Can it, Ion,” Paul whispered.
The Director did not bat an eye. “They’re watching you, Ion. They don’t like your mouth.”
Marescu was startled. Ordinarily, even the Eagle did not bite back.
“What’s going on, Käthe?” Neidermeyer asked.
Marescu grinned. Käthe Adler. Käthe the Eagle. It was one of those nasty little jokes that drift around behind an unpopular superior’s back. Admiral Adler had a thin wedge of a face, an all-time beak of a nose, and a receding hairline. Never had a birthname fit its bearer so well.
“They’re taking delivery on the product, Paul. I want you to work with their science officers. Ion, you’ll prepare a test program for their shipboard computers.”
“They’re going to use it, aren’t they?” Marescu demanded.
“I hope not. We all hope not, Ion.”
“Shit. I believe that like I believe in the Tooth Fairy.” He glanced at Paul. Neidermeyer was trying to believe. He was like all the science staff. Keeping himself fed on lies.
“Ship’s down, Major,” a Marine Lieutenant announced.
“Very well,” Feuchtmayer replied.
“We’d better get lined out,” the Director said. “Paul, pick whomever you want to help. Ion, you’ll have to visit the ship to see what you’ll be working with. I want your preliminary brief as soon as you can write it. Josip, get with their Weapons officers and draw up the preparatory specs for carrying mounts and launch systems. Have the people in the shops drop everything else.”
Josip asked, “We have to build it all here?”
“From scratch. Orders.”
“But…”
“Gentlemen, they’re in a hurry. I suggest you get started.”
“They brought the whole ship down?” Paul asked. Ships seldom made planetary landings.
“That’s right. They don’t want to waste time working from orbit. That would take an extra month.”
“But…” That was dangerous business. The ship’s crew would stay crazy-busy balancing her gravity fields with the planet’s. If they made one mistake the vessel would be torn apart.
“It shouldn’t take more than twelve days this way,” Admiral Adler speculated. “Assuming we hit no snags. Let’s go.” She pushed through the red door.
The completed weapons had a sharkish, deadly look, looking nothing like bombs. The four devices were spaced around the arsenal floor. Each was a lean needle of black a hundred meters long and ten in diameter. They were longer than the shuttle craft intended to lift them to orbit. Antennae and the snouts of nasty defensive weapons sprouted from their dark skins like scrub brush from an old, burned slope.
They were fully automated little warships. The essentials of the nova bomb occupied space that would have been given over to crew in manned vessels. They were fast and shielded heavily enough to punch through a powerful defense.
The weapon remained largely theoretical. But the men who had created it were confident it would function.
Neidemeyer whispered to Marescu as they donned working suits, trying to convince his friend, and himself, that they were just gearing up for a field test. “I’m sure the money people just want to see if they’re getting any return on their investment,” he insisted. “You can’t blame them for wanting to try their new toy.”
“Yeah. Our hero von Drachau is going to take potshots at a couple of insignificant stars. Right?”
“Right.”
“You’re a fool, Paul.”
A band of strangers entered the arsenal. They stared at the four dark needles, clearly awed and a little frightened.
“That’s von Drachau on the right,” Paul whispered. “I recognize him from the holo. Only he looks a lot older.”
“Looks a little grey around the gills, I’d say.”
Von Drachau did look depressed. He spoke with the Major and Käthe Adler. Käthe led his party around one of the missiles. Von Drachau became more impressed.
There was something about the big, terrible ones that excited a resonance in the soul. It was almost a siren call. Marescu felt it himself each time he touched one of the monsters. He was ashamed of himself when he did.
“Little boys play with firecrackers, and big boys play with bombs,” he muttered.
“Ease up. Käthe meant it when she said they’re watching you. Feuchtmayer isn’t one of your big fans, Ion.”
“I’ll stay out of his way.”
The days whipped past. Technicians swarmed over the pair of weapons von Drachau selected. Marescu tested systems and supervised the installation of special shipping aids. Josip brought the missiles’ computation systems into communion with the battle computers aboard von Drachau’s ship. Technicians designed and installed adapters and links that would fit the securing rings and launch vanes going onto the belly of the warship.
Neidermeyer prepared a manual for the science officers responsible for arming the sunkiller and monitoring its gluon pulse in passage, watching for that tiny anomaly that might forecast the expansion of a quark shell into disaster.
Marescu could not believe there was so much to do. His shifts were long and demanding. He felt a lot of sympathy for Paul, whose personal research project seemed threatened with death by inattention.
Neidermeyer watched his friend more closely than he did the gluon pulse, hunting some telltale psychological anomaly. Marescu seemed almost too much in control, and had thrown himself into his work with a near-fanaticism that bespoke a very fragile stability fighting its last stand. Yet there were positive signs. Ion had shed the filthy Archaicist outfit. He had begun devoting more time to his personal appearance…
Then it was over.
Käthe Adler joined them in the lounge. “Let the firewater flow,” she proclaimed. “It’s time to say the hell with it and turn loose of the brass ring for a while.”
Marescu gave her an odd look.
The celebration became a premature New Year’s bash.
The pressure was off. The antagonisms went on the shelf for the day. Guilts got tucked away. Scientists and technicians made shows of comradeship with the Marines. A handful of von Drachau’s officers joined in, drinking lightly, listening to the jokes but seldom laughing.
“For them it’s
just begun,” Ion murmured. He glanced around. No one had heard him.
Von Drachau was a focus of brooding gloom. He seemed to have sunk two-thirds into another universe. Ion watched him glare at Paul as if Neidermeyer were some small, venomous insect when Paul tried to strike up a conversation about the raid in the Hell Stars. Von Drachau disappeared only minutes later.
“Don’t think you made an impression, my friend,” Ion said.
Käthe agreed. “He’s sensitive about it, Paul. He’s a strange one. You should have heard the row he and Ion had.”
Marescu met Paul’s gaze. “It wasn’t any big thing. I came on a little too strong, that’s all.”
“What was it?” Neidermeyer asked.
“About the morality of using the weapon,” Käthe said. “Von Drachau is damned near a pacifist. Ion was pretty shook when he found out the man could adapt his convictions enough to let him use the weapon.”
“Ion’s problem is that he’s an absolutist. He’s got to have everything black or white. And he’s getting worse. Is there any way we can get him into therapy without having him committed?”
“You think there’s a reason to worry? His profiles keep coming up off-center, but they never show any danger.”
“Sometimes. Lately… He’s got a creepy feeling to him. Except for that argument with von Drachau, he’s swung too far away from what he was. I’m nervous about the backswing. Like I can hear the timer clicking. He might break loose going the other way.”
They had begun talking about Marescu as if he were not around for the very good reason that he was not, though neither of them had consciously marked his departure.
Käthe Adler had called von Drachau a crypto-pacifist, and Marescu had seen red. Literally. The dome and people went raggedly, liquid, and red. Then it was all clear. All perfectly clear. He had to go see Melanie and explain.
He was walking down a passageway. Time seemed to have passed. He had the distinct feeling that his head was on sideways. That mercenary von Drachau… The man had kicked the foundations out from under him. A flexible morality? How could there be such a thing? A thing was either right, or it wasn’t. The nova bomb was the most evil thing yet conceived by the military mind. And he had helped midwife that evil into this universe. He had allowed himself to be seduced… He had whored himself…
There had to be a way to show them what they were doing.
He shook his head violently. Things were foggy. A band seemed to be tightening around his temples. There was something wrong. He could not force his thoughts into a straight line.
For an instant he considered finding a Psych officer.
Von Drachau seemed to laugh at him again.
“You fascist bastard!”
Christ! Some Torquemada had taken another turn on the strap. His skull was creaking with the pressure.
“Where am I?” he blurted. His feet had been moving without conscious direction. He tried to concentrate on his surroundings. “What am I doing here?”
He wanted to turn and go back. His feet kept going in the direction he was headed. His hand pushed on Melanie’s door.
He was an alien, a passenger aboard a body under another’s control. He was a slightly panicky observer of actions being carried out by another creature.
The little gasps and grunts lashed that devil, punishing it like a wizard’s curse. He stared at the eight-limbed, twenty-toed beast. It heaved and lunged. Its four blind eyes rolled swiftly. Its three uncontrolled mouths made wet, hungry sounds.
The Ion of him silently screamed and turned inward, refusing to see any more. A darkness closed round it.
A clumsy puppeteer jerked him around, dragged him out the door and down the passageway with jerky, meandering, drunken steps. When next the Ion rider surfaced it found its steed in the arsenal, clad in its Georgian, bent over the computer board in the heavily shielded test control kiosk. The clock claimed that hours had vanished from his life. His hands and fingers were flying, a pair of pale white dancing spiders.
They were doing something dreadful. He did not know what, and they would not stop when he commanded them. He watched them like a baffled child watching slow death.
An image here, an image there, surged into his mind, playing back fragments of the missing hours. Ion Marescu crawled over a long black needle. Ion Marescu crouched beneath the needle, connecting the heavy cables that ran to the test station. Ion Marescu squeezed through the cramped interior of the black ship, removing safety chips…
“Ion?”
Paul’s voice barely penetrated the thick stressglass of the booth’s walls. He was screaming. Ion realized the yelling had been going on for a while. He glanced at Paul puzzledly, barely recognizing him. He did not stop working. This was the most important test he had ever run. For the first time in his life he was doing something of real worth. He had found himself a holy mission.
What was it? He shook his head, tried to clear the mists. They would not go.
His hands danced.
Käthe Adler joined Paul. They pounded the unbreakable glass with their fists. Then the woman fled. Paul grabbed a fire axe and swung away.
When Ion next glanced up, the vast arsenal floor was a-crawl with Marines. Major Feuchtmayer had his pale face pressed against the glass directly in front of him. His lips writhed obscenely. He was screaming something. Ion had no time to listen. He had to hurry.
What the hell was going on out there? the observer part of him wondered.
He finished programming the test sequences.
Each weapon had to be run through a simulated plunge into Hel’s own sun. Ion usually performed the test series on a system-by-system basis, with the drive never operational and the safety chips preventing the weapon from going active. “How do we know the drive will work?” Marescu muttered. “We just take their word for it?”
Paul and the Marines stopped trying to break the glass with hand tools. Ion saw the Major laying a sticky grey rope of something round the door frame.
“Plastic explosives? My God! What are those madmen trying to do?”
His right hand depressed the big black palm switch that opened the arsenal’s huge exit doors. It was through those very doors that that hired assassin von Drachau had moved his two missiles to his ship.
People flung in all directions as the arsenal air burst into Hel’s eternal night. Baffled, Marescu watched their broken doll figures tumble and bloat.
His left hand danced, initiating the test sequences. The arsenal drowned in intense light. The stressglass of the booth polarized, but could not block it all. The sabotaged holding blocks fell away from the number four weapon. It dragged itself forward, off its dolly. It flung off clouds of sparks and gouged its spoor deep into the concrete floor.
“Wait a minute,” Ion said. “Wait a minute. There’s something wrong. It’s not supposed to do that. Paul? Where did you go, Paul?” Paud did not answer.
The black needle, its tail a stinger of white-hot light, lanced into the night, dwindled. The little star of it drifted to one side and downward as its homing systems turned its nose toward the target.
“What’s happening?” Marescu asked plaintively. “Paul? What went wrong?”
The eye of the black needle fixed itself on Hel’s sun. It accelerated at 100 g.
And in the booth, where the atmospheric pressure had begun to fall, Ion Marescu realized the enormity of what he had done. With a shaking hand he took a suggestion form from a drawer and began composing a recommendation that, in future, all test programs be cross-programmed in such a way that the activation of any one would automatically lock out the others.
“We have influence, Commander,” Lieutenant Callaway reported.
“Take hyper,” von Drachau replied. “And destroy that Hel astrogational cassette as soon as you have her in the hyper arc. For the record, gentlemen, we’ve never heard of this place. We don’t know anything about it and we’ve never been here.”
He stared into a viewscreen, slumped, wondering what he was, what he was doing, and whether or not he had been told the whole truth. The screen went kaleidoscopic at the instant of hyper-take, then blanked.
Seventeen minutes and twenty-one seconds later the sun of the world he had just fled felt the first touch of a black needle. The little manmade gamete fertilized the great hydrogen ovum. In a few hours the nova chain would begin.
There would be no survivors. Security allowed no ships to remain on Hel. The Station personnel could do nothing but await their fate.
And nowhere else did there exist one scrap of information on the magnificent, deadly weapon created at Hel Station. That, too, had been a Security-decreed precaution.
Nine: 3049 AD
The Main Sequence
Mouse drove down to the same departure station that had witnessed the Sangaree failsafer’s suicide. A half dozen bewildered former landsmen were there already. He and benRabi were last to arrive. All but one of the others were women.
“They haven’t shown yet, Ellen?” Mouse asked.
“No. Did you hear anything? You know what it’s about?”
“Not really.”
BenRabi tuned them out. He walked through those last few minutes before Kindervoort’s men had come to disarm Mouse and he had walked into the failsafer’s line of fire. He went to the spot where he had been standing, turned slowly.
“Jarl was here. Mouse was there. Bunch of people were there… They brought Marya’s intensive care unit down that way, before Jarl showed, and took her right into the service ship.”
He walked through it three times. He could not recall anything new. He had been distracted at the time. He had believed that Mouse was shanghaiing him, and had not wanted to leave. Then Jarl had distracted him…
“Hey, Mouse. Walk through this with me. Maybe you can think of something.”
A scooter rolled into the bay. A pair of unfamiliar Starfishers dismounted. “You the citizenship class?” the woman asked.
“Hello there,” Mouse said, like a man who had just crossed a ridgeline and spied all seven cities of Cibola.