XIX

Once a blue giant sun had burned, 50,000 times more luminous than yet-unborn Sol. It lasted for a bare few million years; then the hydrogen fuel necessary to stay on the main sequence was gone. The star collapsed. In the unimaginable violence of a supernova, momentarily blazing to equal an entire galaxy, it went out.

Such energies did not soon bleed away. For ages the blown-off upper layers formed a nebula of lacy loveliness around the core, which shone less white-hot than X-ray hot. Eventually the gases dissipated, a part of them to make new suns and planets. The globe that remained continued shrinking under its own weight until density reached tons per cubic centimeter and spin was measured in seconds. Feebler and feebler did it shine, white dwarf, black dwarf, neutron star—

Compressed down near the ultimate that nature's law permitted, the atoms (if they could still be called that) went into their final transitions. Photons spurted forth, were pumped through the weirdly distorted space-time within and around the core, at last won freedom to flee at light speed. Strangely regular were those bursts, though slowly their frequencies, amplitudes, and rate declined back toward extinction—dying gasps.

Pulsar breath.

Djana stared as if hypnotized into the forward screen. Tiny but waxing among the stars went that red blink … blink … blink. She did not recall having ever seen a sight more lonely. The cabin's warmth and glow made blacker the emptiness outside; engine throb and ventilator murmur deepened the eternal silence of those infinite spaces.

She laid a hand on Flandry's arm. "Nicky—"

"Quiet." His eyes never left the board before him; his fingers walked back and forth across computer keys.

"Nicky, we can die any minute, and you've said hardly a word to me."

"Stop bothering me or we will for sure die."

She retreated into her chair. Be strong, be strong.

He had bound her in place for most of the hours during which the boat flew. She didn't resent that; he couldn't trust her, and he must clean himself and snatch some sleep. Afterward he brought sandwiches to his captives—she might have slipped a drug into his—and released her. But at once he was nailed to instrument and calculations. He showed no sign of feeling the wishes she thrust at him; his will to liberty overrode them.

Now he crouched above the pilot panel. He'd not been able to cut his hair; the mane denied shaven countenance, prim coverall, machine-controlling hands, and declared him a male animal who hunted.

And was hunted. Four Merseian ships bayed on his heels. He'd told her about them before he went to rest, estimating they would close the gap in 25 light-years. From Siekh to the pulsar was 17.

Blink … blink … blink … once in 1.3275 second.

Numbers emerged on a plate set into the console. Flandry nodded. He took the robotic helm. Stars wheeled with his shift of course.

In time he said, maybe to himself: "Yes. They're decelerating. They don't dare come in this fast."

"What?" Djana whispered.

"The pursuit. They spot us aiming nearly straight on for that lighthouse. Get too close—easy to do at hyper-speed—and the gravity gradient will pluck you apart. Why share the risk we have to take? If we don't make it, Ydwyr will've been more expendable than a whole ship and crew. If we do survive, they can catch us later."

And match phase, and lay alongside, and force a way in to rescue Ydwyr … and her … but Nicky, Nicky they would haul off to burn his brain out.

Should it matter? I'll be sorry, we both will be sorry for you, but Merseia—"

He turned his head. His grin and gray eyes broke across her like morning. "That's what they think," he said.

I only care because you're a man, the one man in all this wasteland, and do I care for any man? Only my body does, my sinful body. She struggled to raise Ydwyr's face.

Flandry leaned over and cupped her chin in his right hand. "I'm sorry to've been rude," he smiled.

"Sorrier to play games with your life. I should have insisted you stay on Talwin. When you wanted to come, with everything else on my mind I sort of assumed you'd decided you preferred freedom."

"I was free," she said frantically. "I followed my master."

"Odd juxtaposition, that." A buzzer sounded. " 'Scuse, I got work. We go primary in half a shake.

I've programmed the autopilot, but in conditions this tricky I want to ride herd on it."

"Primary?" Dismay washed through her. "They'll catch you right away!" That's good. Isn't it?

The engine note changed. Star images vanished till the screens readapted. At true speed, limited by light's, the boat plunged on. Power chanted abaft the cabin; she was changing her kinetic velocity at maximum thrust.

Blink … blink … blink … The blood-colored beacon glowed ever brighter. Yet Djana could look directly into it, and she did not find any disc. Stars frosted the night around. Which way was the Empire?

Flandry had given himself back to the machines. Twice he made a manual adjustment.

After minutes wherein Djana begged God to restore Merseian courage to her, the noise and vibration stopped. Head full of it, she didn't instantly recognize its departure. Then she bit her tongue to keep from imploring a word.

When Flandry gave her one, she started shivering.

He spoke calmly, as if these were the lost days when they two had fared after treasure. "We're in the slot, near's I can determine. Let's relax and give the universe our job for a bit."

"Wh-wh-what are we doing?"

"We're falling free, in a hyperbolic orbit around the pulsar. The Merseians aren't. They're distributing themselves to cover the region. They can't venture as close as us. The potential of so monstrous a mass in so small a volume, you see; differential forces would wreck their ships. The boat's less affected, being of smaller dimensions. With the help of the interior field—the same that gives us artificial gravity and counteracts acceleration pressure—she ought to stay in one piece. The Merseians doubtless figure to wait till we kick in our hyperdrive again, and resume the chivvy."

"But what're we getting?" Blink … blink … blink … Had his winter exile driven him crazy?

"We'll pass through the fringes of a heavily warped chunk of space. The mass concentration deforms it. If the core got much denser, light itself couldn't break loose. We won't be under any such extreme condition, but I don't expect they can track us around periastron. Our emission will be too scattered; radar beams will curve off at silly angles. The Merseians can compute roughly where and when we'll return to flatter space, but until we do—" Flandry had unharnessed himself while he talked. Rising, he stretched prodigiously, muscle by muscle. " A propos Merseians, let's go check on old Ydwyr."

Djana fumbled with her own buckles. "I, I, I don't track you, Nicky," she stammered. "What do we … you gain more than time? Why did you take us aboard?"

"As to your first question, the answer's a smidge technical. As to the second, well, Ydwyr's the reason we've come this far. Without him, we'd've been in a missile barrage." Flandry walked around behind her chair. "Here, let me assist."

"You! You're not unfastening me!"

"No, I'm not, am I?" he said dreamily. Leaning over, he nuzzled her where throat met shoulder. The kiss that followed brought a breathless giddiness which had not quite faded when he led the way aft.

Ydwyr sat patient on a bunk. Prior to sleeping, Flandry had welded a short length of light cable to the frame, the other end around an ankle, and untied the rope. It wasn't a harsh confinement. In fact, the man would have to keep wits and gun ready when negotiating this passage.

"Have you been listening to our conversation?" he asked. "I left the intercom on."

"You are thanked for your courtesy," Ydwyr replied, "but I could not follow the Anglic."

"Oh!" Djana's hand went to her mouth. "I forgot—"

"And I," Flandry admitted. "We Terrans tend to assume every educated being will know our official language—by definition—and of course it isn't so. Well, I can tell you."

"I believe I have deduced it," Ydwyr said. "You are swinging free, dangerously but concealingly near the pulsar. From the relativistic region you will launch your courier torpedoes, strapped together and hyperdrives operating simultaneously. What with distortion effects, you hope my folk will mistake the impulses for this boat's and give chase. If your decoy lures them as far as a light-year off, you will be outside their hyperwave detection range and can embark on a roundabout homeward voyage. The sheer size of space will make it unlikely that they, backtracking, will pick up your vibrations."

"Right," Flandry said admiringly. "You're a sharp rascal. I look forward to some amusing chit-chat."

"If your scheme succeeds," Ydwyr made a salute of respect. "If not, and if we are taken alive, you are under my protection."

Gladness burst in Djana. My men can be friends!

"You are kind," said Flandry with a bow. He turned to the girl. "How about making us a pot of tea?"

he said in Anglic.

"Tea?" she asked, astonished.

"He likes it. Let's be hospitable. Put the galley intercom on—low—and you can hear us talk."

Flandry spoke lightly, but she felt an underlining of his last sentence and all at once her joy froze.

Though why, why? "Would … the datholch … accept tea?" she asked in Eriau.

"You are thanked." Ydwyr spoke casually, more interested in the man. Djana went forward like an automaton. The voices trailed her:

"I am less kind, Dominic Flandry, than I am concerned to keep an audacious and resourceful entity functional."

"For a servant?"

"Khraich, we cannot well send you home, can we? I—"

Djana made a production of closing the galley door. It cut off the words. Fingers unsteady, she turned the intercom switch.

"—sorry. You mean well by your standards, I suppose, Ydwyr. But I have this archaic prejudice for freedom over even the nicest slavery. Like the sort you fastened on that poor girl."

"A reconditioning. It improved her both physically and mentally."

No! He might be speaking of an animal!

"She does seem more, hm, balanced. It's just a seeming, however, as long as you keep that father-image hood over her eyes."

"Hr-r-r, you have heard of Aycharaych's techniques, then?"

"Aycharaych? Who? N-n-no … I'll check with Captain Abrams … Damn! I should have played along with you, shouldn't I? All right, I fumbled that one, after you dropped it right into my paws. Getting back to Djana, the father fixation is unmistakable to any careful outside observer."

"What else would you have me do? She came, an unwitting agent who had acquired knowledge which must not get back to Terra. She showed potentialities. Instead of killing her out of hand, we could try to develop them. Death is always available. Besides, depth-psychological work on a human intrigued me. Later, when that peculiar gift for sometimes imposing her desires on other minds appeared, we saw what a prize we had. My duty became to make sure of her."

"So to win her trust, you warned her to warn me?"

"Yes. About—in honesty between us, Dominic Flandry—a fictitious danger. No orders had come for your removal; I was welcome to keep you. But the chance to clinch it with her was worth more."

Anglic: "No? I'll—be—especially—damned."

"You are not angry, I hope."

"N-n-no. That'd be unsporting, wouldn't it?" Anglic: "The more so when it caused me to break from my cell with a hell of a yell far sooner than I'd expected to."

"Believe me, I did not wish to sacrifice you. I did not want to be involved in that wretched business at all. Honor compelled me. But I begrudged every minute away from my Talwinian research."

Djana knelt on the deck and wept.

Blink … blink … blink … furnace glare spearing from the screens. The hull groaned and shuddered with stresses. Fighting them, the interior field set air ashake in a wild thin singing. Often, looking down a passage, you thought you saw it ripple; and perhaps it did, sliding through some acute bend in space.

From time to time hideous nauseas twisted you, and your mind grew blurred. Sunward was only the alternation of night and red. Starward were no constellations nor points of light, nothing but rainbow blotches and smears.

Djana helped Flandry put the courier torpedoes, which he had programmed under normal conditions, on the launch rack. When they were outside, he must don a spacesuit and go couple them. He was gone a long while and came back white and shaken. "Done," was everything he would tell her.

They sought the conn. He sat down, she on his lap, and they held each other through the nightmare hours. "You're real," she kept babbling. "You're real."

And the strangeness faded. Quietness, solidity, stars returned one by one. A haggard Flandry pored over instruments whose readings again made sense, about which he could again think clearly.

"Receding hyperwakes," he breathed. "Our stunt worked. Soon's we stop registering them—First, though, we turn our systems off."

"Why?" she asked from her seat to which she had returned, and from her weariness.

"I can't tell how many the ships are. Space is still somewhat kinky and—well, they may have left one posted for insurance. The moment we pass a threshold value of the metric, there'll be no mistaking our radiation, infrared from the hull, neutrinos from the power-plant, that kind of junk. Unless we douse the sources."

"Whatever you want, darling."

Weightlessness was like stepping off a cliff and dropping without end. Cabin dark, the pulsar flash on one side and stars on the other crowded near in dreadful glory. Nothing remained save the faintest accumulator-powered susurrus of forced ventilation; and the cold crept inward.

"Hold me," Djana beseeched into the blindness. "Warm me."

A pencil-thin flashbeam from Flandry's hand slipped along the console. Back-scattered light limned him, a shadow. Silence lengthened and lengthened until:

"Uh-oh. They're smart as I feared. Grav waves. Somebody under primary acceleration. Has to be a ship of theirs."

Son of Man, help us.

At the boat's high kinetic velocity, the pulsar shrank and dimmed while they watched.

"Radar touch," Flandry reported tunelessly.

"Th-they've caught us?"

"M-m-m, they may assume we're a bit of cosmic débris. You can't check out every blip on your scope … Oof! They're applying a new vector. Wish I dared use the computer. It looks to me as if they're maneuvering for an intercept with us, but I'd need math to make sure.

"If they are?" The abstractness of it, that's half the horror. A reading, an equation, and me closed off from touching you, even seeing you. We're not us, we're objects. Like being already dead— no, that's not right, Jesus promised well live. He did.

"They aren't necessarily. No beam's latched onto us. I suspect they've been casting about more or less at random. We registered strong enough to rate a closer look, but they lost and haven't refound us.

Interplanetary space is bigger than most people imagine. So they may as well direct themselves according to the orbit this whatsit seemed to have, in hopes of checking us out at shorter range."

"Will they?"

"I don't know. If we're caught … well, I suppose we should eschew a last-ditch stand. How would one dig a ditch in vacuum? We can surrender, hope Ydwyr can save us and another chance'll come to worm out." His voice in the dark was not as calm as he evidently wished.

"You'd trust Ydwyr?" lashed from her.

His beam stepped across the dials. "Closing in fast," he said. "Radar sweep's bound to pick us up soon. We may show as an interstellar asteroid, but considering the probability of a natural passage at any given time—" She heard and felt his despair. "Sorry, sweetheart. We gave 'em a good try, didn't we?"

The image might have sprung to her physical vision, shark shape across the Milky Way, man's great foes black-clad at the guns. She reached out to the stars of heaven. "God have mercy," she cried with her whole being. "Oh, send them back where they belong!"

Blink … blink … blink.

The light ray danced. Where it touched, meters turned into pools beneath those suns that crowded the screens. "Ho-o-old," Flandry murmured. "One minute … They're receding!" exploded from him. "Judas priest, they, they must've decided the blip didn't mean anything!"

"They're going?" she heard herself blurt. "They are?"

"Yes. They are. Can't've felt too strongly about that stray indication they got … Whoo! They've gone hyper! Already! Aimed back toward Siekh, seems like. And the—here, we can use our circuits again, lemme activate the secondary-wave receivers first—yes, yes, four indications, our couriers, their other three ships, right on the verge of detectability, headed out—Djana, we did it! Judas priest!"

"Not Judas, dear," she said in worship. "Jesus."

"Anybody you like." Flandry turned on the fluoros.

Joy torrented from him. "You yourself—your wonderful, wonderful self—" Weight. Warm hearty gusts of air. Flandry was doing a fandango around the cabin. "We can take off ourselves inside an hour.

Go a long way round for safety's sake—but at the end, home!" He surged to embrace her. "And never mind Ydwyr," he warbled. "We're going to celebrate the whole way back!"