Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (5 page)

 
          
So
our emergency
procedure lurches into
use. Captain K is already on his feet.

 
          
“Bridge
Team to control deck, with me. Blue Team to follow. Other teams next. Bridge
and Blue have priority.”

 
          
“Psychs
there? During a fight?” Jacobik’s joy is dashed. “It’s ridiculous. They’ll get
in the way.”

 
          
“I
am no psych,” snaps Wu. (She is her own team together with Li.)

 
          
“I
may need anyone to interpret what is happening!”

 
          
Quite
a contrast to the crisp, polite co-ordination before we activated the drive and
entered this semi-subjective domain, where our will and wishes play a part in
our very progress! I remember that as a kind of anti-dream, as though the rules
of ordinary life operated in the dream, whereas now id, libido and fantasy rule
the waking world. We all need to be near the drive now. It offers irrational,
magical protection. It will see us on our way.

 
          
Pilgrim Crusader
is a triangular steel
prism with hemispheres that bulge, dome-like, from each rectangular face. These
house in turn the hanger bay with its twin shuttle craft, the reactor, and the
missile bay. The overall design is dictated by the ellipsoid field of influence
of the drive, that strange crystal pyramid set precisely amidships. Aft of it
are this mess room and the cabins, with stores below decks. Bulging from the
aft triangle of the prism are the tanks of JP-20 and the main jets for normal space
flight. Forward, in full view of the pyramid, stretch the combined observatory
and control deck with laboratories beneath them— though only the peak of the
pyramid with its control faces actually rears through the deck, the main mass
being below. Dish aerials and sensors fill in the interstices between the three
projecting domes so that all in all our ship resembles a huge model of a
strange molecule, with bonding sites cupped open to receive other such
molecules ...

 
          
The
long viewports of the control deck are all unmasked. Outside High Space bubbles
palely, with the usual transient brighter spectral whorls welling up and dying
back. We skirt the peak of the alien pyramid—some flying, some stepping
magnetically—to blink at the irreality beyond the windows. We’re in a submarine
deep in some ocean of abstract jelly, with phantom mandala beasts existing for
a moment before dissolving back again into essence: fish of the abyss with
bodies invisible, only their phosphorescence to be seen...

 
          
Two
fish
are
fully visible, though. Two
strange ships hang out there. Near or distant, hard to tell—minnows or whales?
They rush closer and then recede again without really changing their size,
which is indefinable, rather like the walls of a child’s bedroom at dusk, in
those drowsy, hypnagogic moments before sleep when images become hallucinatory.
We
shrink before them, then enlarge
again to dwarf them. Now they’re on Ritchie’s scope- screens too.

 
          
“Range?”
requests Captain K, planted magnetically in the middle of the deck. (Ahab ...
In High Space we’re all archetypes—substructures of persons—just as the space
out there is the substructure of reality ...)

 
          
Ritchie
shakes his head. “Can’t get a reading. They’re in focus visually but the radar
figures are nonsense—hundreds of klicks, then none at all.”

 
          
One
fish is a fat ovoid with crystals girding its waist and rear. The other, a cone
with balloons spilling out in ruptures.

 
          
“We’ve
been
hit,”
reports Natalya, as the
red tell-tales blink before her. “Four times. The hull of the reactor bay,
control links to engine two, aft radar dish. And we’re outgassing Lox from tank
D, feeding engine three.”

 
          
As
we look out, two thin red spears of light reach out towards us now, ever so
slowly from the alien ships.

 
          
“Lasers?”
asks Kendrick. “So slow?”

 
          
“We
can’t guarantee the value of C, out there,” says Heinz.

           
“We still see according to the
normal light speed value inside
Pilgrim
.
Here is an area of relatively normal space, englobed by High Space. But out
there?”

 
          
“How
the hell can we see laser light before it arrives?”

 
          
Still
the red spears grow longer, bending our way.

 
          
Heinz
broods. “We may be seeing a side leakage from those laser beams, if that’s what
they are. Analogous to synchrotron radiation. Only, the lasers are exciting the
medium of High Space and it leaks the light which we see, travelling at
light speed
. But coherent light—the
laser beam—travels much slower. This is essentially an incoherent region.
Lasers are retarded light here. I believe the region we’re travelling through
may actually be rather small. High Space is a short-cut—a shrunk region.” He
shakes his head. “But our thoughts are a factor in the reality. Our perception
is. I seriously suspect this ‘seeing’ of light.” Captain K cuts him off with a
wave. “Maybe laser beams; maybe something else. But we’re
damaged.
Why should they fire at all? Kendrick, open all
frequencies—hail them. Trimble, ignite engines one and four—give us a push. If
light plays such tricks, we’ll be hard to hit again once we’re not a sitting
duck.”

 
          
“Use
rocket engines in High Space?”

 
          
“Use
them! Or we’ll be sliced open.”

 
          
“How
fast do radio waves travel here?” Kendrick is trying to raise the aliens, with
no success.

 
          
“Maybe
they’re hoping to communicate by laser?” suggests Salman. “If one was aimed at
a radar dish—”

 
          
“And
at the engines, and the reactor!” snaps Jacobik. “Don’t be a fool, don’t
meddle. They hit us three ways: communications, manoeuvrability, and power!”

 
          
“Something
is wrong,” says Heinz.

 
          
“Right!
” snarls the Czech. Snarls: I have never seen anybody with teeth bared before.
Like a rabid dog. Abruptly Jacobik punches at his laser board, till Captain K
shouts him to heel. Incredible indiscipline. But our own thin red lances are
already reaching out. Slowly, so slowly.

 
          
“You
see, those
are
lasers! That proves
it.” Rabid.

 
          
I’m
scared; yet it’s a dreamlike fear, as though I’m running from something awful
yet I know that the awful thing is only the beast of my dreams. Does one really
die in High Space as one would in normal space? Perhaps we become part of that
amorphous flux out there, still alive in some way. The two alien ships are the
watchdogs over this dimension. Now commences a dogfight—a battle of dogs with
beaming red eyes . . .

 
          
We
brace ourselves.

 
          
“We
have ignition,” reports Trimble. Acceleration pushes us back as though
retarding us, making matters worse. We waver at an angle, reeds in a streambed.
Using skiers’ muscles we strain forward to compensate.
Pilgrim
thrusts forward at last, carrying us away from those red
lances that are almost upon us. Not lances, now—thin scimitars bending through
space as though we’re a huge knot of gravity pulling them. But we avoid them.

 
          
“Cut
engines! ” Acceleration pressure peaks, then fades away slowly some while after
the switch-off. We slump forward in the air, gradually correcting our posture.
Nothing is normal. Those alien fish seem more distant now.

 
          
“Cone
ship has laid an egg,” calls Jacobik. “It’s coming at us.”

 
          
On
Ritchie’s screen, enlarged, we can see the missile drifting lazily towards us:
a tiny sprat darting flame from its tail. We can even see it through the
viewports, much smaller—a speck of light.

 
          
“Let’s
hope it’s travelling slower than local light,” wishes Kendrick.

 
          
“I
have a firm range,” Ritchie calls out. “Eighteen klicks for the bandit ship,
seventeen-point-five for the missile. Our High Space field must be acting as a
kind of magnifying lens. It’s making their ships seem closer than they are.
That’s a missile, right enough. Not unlike our own. No doubt about their
intentions now! Missile range sixteen-point-five, and closing.”

 
          
Jacobik
licks his lips. “Permission to destroy, Sir?”

 
          
“The
radiation, man! ” cries Heinz. “We’ll be drenched in X and gamma.”

 
          
“Permission
granted. Do not use lasers. You must use a missile. Programme and fire.”

 
          
“Captain!”

 
          
“Trimble,
max thrust. Vasilenko, close the shutters. Easy, Anders. Light radiation seems
to be propagating at a very slow rate here. We must assume the same of all
radiation.”

 
          
“Missile
one gone.”

           
“Wait,” says Heinz. “Shouldn’t our
missile drop down into normal space as it leaves the field? Shouldn’t theirs?”

 
          
“Missile
one on intercept. I shan’t let it fail! ”

 
          
“Shan’t,
Jacobik? Can you reach out there with your will?” Acceleration pushes us again,
waxing and waning in surges like pseudo-gravity. It isn’t true thrust at all,
but a reflection of our fear, our desperation to escape.

           
“We have to match their weapons with
the same kind of weapon, Anders,” says Captain K, “otherwise we cannot
guarantee stopping them. We don’t know the rules here. I suspect we’re safe
unless we get caught in the fireball itself ...”

 
          
So
we wait.

 
          
“Bandit
missile, seven point five klicks. Countermissile, five point five. On target.
Cutting scopescreens.”

 
          
When
the screens blank out, we’re inside a solid shell with only Jacobik’s and
Ritchie’s green ray tubes keeping watch. Sweat laves Jacobik’s forehead and
sharp cheeks.

 
          
“Fireball!
Radar has a double fireball! ”

 
          
“We
stopped it! ” We laugh, we cry.

 
          
“We’re
picking up a trivial dosage of X-rays,” reports Natalya presently. “Now some
gamma. A trifle.”

           
“The radar image comes first, then
X, then gamma,” says Heinz. “So EM radiation at shorter wavelengths is
travelling more slowly than the longer wavelengths—and losing intensity, I
suspect! C isn’t even constant for all types of radiant energy.” “They’ve laid
another egg. Two eggs,” calls Jacobik.

           
“I have them,” from Ritchie.

 
          
“Missile
two, three gone.”

 
          
“And
missiles use radar guidance! What frequency are the missiles searching on?”
Heinz huddles with Jacobik, talking urgently about very long frequencies.

 
          
Rene
draws back beside Peter and myself. He rubs his nose quizzically. “This fight
has all the logic of a dream, Amy. Maybe we should merely shout at them and
they’ll go away? Look at Sachiko.”

 
          
Sachiko
is caught up in the abstract yet deadly battle as surely as Heinz has now been
by the problem of frequencies. Her slim hands make inchoate warding gestures as
though she could deflect those alien missiles with her own palms in an aikido
defence.

 
          
As
a good endomorph, Rene remains stoutly himself despite the threat. It isn’t
fleshed out enough to convince him. He’s a sensitive but he’s also something of
a sensualist, and his senses aren’t being sufficiently wooed. The recipe for
disaster is there before him but he can’t yet taste the savour nor breathe the
bouquet.