CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Wernstecki stood in the Aztec‘s cargo hold, absorbed in thought as he stared again at the groups of squat, cylindrical AG exciters, each more than six feet across, mounted in their massive steel supporting frames. For transit they were secured solidly to the ship’s main structural members, stacked crossways to the vessel’s length for symmetrical mass distribution. Capable of generating shaped force-fields to shear blocks weighing hundreds of tons from bedrock, this battery of them could be made to project a region of intense, narrow-focused gravitational potential, like a beam, back from the tail of the ship and across the surrounding space. And sitting out there just a few miles away was the Trojan, its construction flimsy and extended compared to the Aztec‘s ruggedness and compactness. It would be like a ferris wheel caught by a grappling hook thrown from a tank. Exactly what kind of damage, disablement, or other effect might be inflicted in this way, Wernstecki didn’t know; that would be for those who knew something about ship design to say. But here was a hostile vessel dictating terms because the Aztec was unarmed. But maybe, if properly used, some of the cargo it was carrying could be improvised into an armament that no military mind aboard the Trojan had dreamed of.

But how?

He sighed and shook his head. Getting the parameter settings right would need a lot of computing. Then there was the physical problem of running heavy power connections from the ship’s fusion converters. How could anything like that be organized or even talked about with the ship occupied? Two guards from the boarding party were watching him from the open doorway at the end of the hold right now. It was impossible.

Approaching footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. Luthis appeared moments later, ignored the guards, and came over. “We’re gathering in the staff mess—scientific heads and crew chiefs. You need to be there.”

“What’s happening?” Wernstecki asked.

Luthis had an almost bemused look on his face, as if he didn’t quite understand it himself. “Did you know that Vicki’s son is here—one of the officers with the boarding party?”

“Yes, Tanya told me.”

“Apparently, the two of them had a long talk at his request. Now she’s come out and told Reese that what we’ve been hearing about the whole… everything that’s going on, isn’t the whole story. There’s another side to it that we should be aware of. Reese thinks we should all hear it.”

Wernstecki couldn’t believe it. After all the vehement opposition he’d heard Vicki voice to the Pragmatists and what they stood for, she could have turned around so easily? He shook his head, equally mystified. Landen Keene had said on a number of occasions that he refused to discuss politics with scientists because they were totally naive when it came to such matters—even Terran ones. So what was a Kronian scientist like Wernstecki supposed to make of it? But there was nothing to be done except at least listen, he supposed.

“Very well,” he said. Luthis turned, and they headed back toward the forward part of the ship.

Knives of cold found their way through, however Keene tried to pull the foil-backed blanket around himself. The roar of the fans close-up pounded into his skull, and no matter which way he twisted in the rack space, a bar or an edge or a protuberance of some kind seemed to be digging into him somewhere. He thought of Charlie lying on a soft palliasse in a warm, dry hut, being pampered and fussed over by hordes of women.

Receding away to the right, he could see part of the river that they had followed, continuing below the lake before turning away to the west. Below, the land was a desolate succession of humps and ridges, new sedimentary deposits just starting to acquire a covering of vegetation like the coasts he had seen from the probe over New York: the unworked raw material of land, yet to accumulate the effects of time, the elements, and life in action. Then came the steep eastern scarp, formed by the broken edge of the tilted crustal block. Ahead, to the southeast, across a flat wilderness of sandy basins and marshes, the skyline of mountains loomed larger and higher.

“Okay, got ‘em!” Heeland’s voice came suddenly from the handset, which Keene had wedged against the side of his head. Keene moved it to where he could see the tiny screen. It showed an aerial slant view from a distance of four objects on the ground. A zoom-in revealed them to be two small personnel carriers and two larger site buses.

“I see them,” Keene acknowledged, yelling above the din from the fans. “Where are they?”

“A hundred and twenty-five miles ahead of you. The probe that’s sending this is cruising a mile out. I sent the other one farther north before you gave me the coordinates. It’s on its way, but it’ll be a while.”

Figures were standing in line at one of the buses, moving forward and boarding. They were in regular tunics—Zeigler’s force from Serengeti, not Rakki’s warriors, who must have been already inside the other craft. “Looks like they’re leaving,” Keene said. “We must have just caught them.”

“Looks like it,” Heeland agreed.

Even as they watched, the last of the figures entered, the door in the side of the bus closed, and the craft began lifting off. Heeland put the probe into a wide circuit, tracking them as they rose. The four vessels formed up and settled onto a southeast heading, continuing the way both they and Keene had been going, which put him in the position of trailing them. The airmobile was built for endurance not speed, and would fall behind the faster flyers. But the probe would be able to shadow them. He would just have to follow where they led and catch up later, after they arrived.

The mountains ahead grew blacker and more foreboding, opening up into huge walls and jagged towers, with sheer faces plunging into daunting chasms. This was not dead terrain formed from sediment dropped by retreating floods, but violent, untamed storms of rock torn out of the living Earth. Far away to the left, huge palls of smoke unfolded and stood heaped up into the sky, reflecting red glows off their undersides. Heeland kept the craft as low as possible, following the gorges between shoulders and peaks now showing white at the summits and down the gullies. Even so, the airmobile was forced to climb into freezing air and mist. Keene’s feet were already numb. He tried to flex his fingers and arms continually, all the time striving to keep his grip through layers of metal foil and blanket wrapped around his hands. He could feel ice forming in his eyebrows and his beard. Heeland came through again to say he only wished he could be down there as well, and get involved directly himself. It was as if he had his own personal score to settle.

In the Command Module of the Trojan, Captain Walsh approached Valcroix and Grasse, who were conferring with General Nyrom and several aides. Valcroix turned from the group and nodded for him to go ahead. “We have a communication from Commander Reese of the Aztec,” Walsh advised.

“Well?”

Walsh raised his eyebrows in the manner of someone pleasantly surprised. “It seems that Ms. Delucey has made an impression on them. Reese agrees that there might be more common ground between us than he had appreciated. Others there feel the same way. They’re not committing to anything at this stage, but they agree that any basis for a better understanding should be explored. They’re willing to hear us out.”

Everyone looked pleased. “Easier than I expected,” someone murmured.

“Very encouraging,” Grasse said.

“When the lieutenant proposed it, I wrote it off as too much of a long shot,” Nyrom confessed. “But worth a try. It just shows, you never know.”

Valcroix treated them to one of his rare smiles—thin, but real nevertheless. “Presumably, Reese has realized that if there’s a choice, he will find life more amenable as a partner than as a captive,” he said to the company. Then, addressing Walsh, “Splendid news, Captain. We will treat this in a civilized manner, accordingly. Tell Reese that we will receive him and a selected deputation of their senior people here, aboard the Trojan. Make appropriate arrangements to host them. Cuisine in the Officers’ Dining Room would be suitable—but not VIP standard. Limit the number to ten and get a list of the names they intend sending, which I want to see before it’s confirmed. Does anyone have anything to add?” Nobody did. Since they were in the superior bargaining position and setting the terms, protocol required that the representatives from the Aztec come to them.

“I’ll get onto it right away,” Walsh said.

“One more thing,” Ludwig Grasse put in. Valcroix turned to him. “Zeigler has been holding out against difficult odds there on Earth. To boost his morale, I think we should let him know that interception of the Aztec has been accomplished successfully. I doubt if he’ll learn of it from elsewhere for some time.”

Trojan had maintained communications silence since its takeover en route for Jupiter. Kronia would have been informed of its appearance as soon as it was identified by Aztec, but there was nothing anybody could have done to prevent that. Even if those at Kronia had had their suspicions previously, there was no reason why they would communicate them to Earth, more so in view of the uncertain situation that they would have discerned there too. Now that they knew for sure of Trojan‘s part in the scheme, they would be under no further delusions as to what had happened on Earth. Hence, they wouldn’t be sending news there of the success of the Trojan‘s mission.

“A good point,” Valcroix agreed. “Yes, by all means, let’s keep Zeigler in the picture. I’m sure he could use all the good news he can get. Can you take care of that too, Captain Walsh?”

“Right away,” Walsh promised.