Between the Stars (21 page)

"Cheer up," said Vladyka. "The war is just starting!"

He left his seat and headed for the bridge to send off his clandestine report. They were still under acceleration, so he had artificial gravity to work against. It always felt much better to him than free-fall. They were passing near Luna, which would give them a gravity-assisted slingshot boost to their next destination, where he would collect more rock and bombs or dispose of his crew, depending upon what orders were waiting for him.

As he went up the ladder, he heard a slight sound from the bridge. There wasn't supposed to be anybody in there. Just as a precaution, he activated his finger-laser. As he entered the bridge, he saw a black-clad back and a mane of blond hair. The woman was doing something with the controls.

"Valeria," he said, "what are you doing?"

She stood and faced him, eyes bright. "I just sent a holo of our mission to Fu's Lunar station, complete with your identity and your secret communications with Shevket's hatchetman."

For an instant he was stupefied. "You—what? Valeria!"

"It's Valentina!" She drew her pistol with incredible swiftness. The beam was already hot as she drew, slashing through the front of her holster, burning a track across the deck, slicing upward through his groin and deep into his viscera.

Vladyka's reaction was almost as swift, and far more precise. The microburst beam shot from beneath his fingernail and burned a hole just below and an inch to the right of her left breast. The blood in her heart flashed to steam and the organ exploded within her chest, flinging her backward, sending her crashing into the ship's controls, her pistol still firing, slicing into computers and backup systems.

Attitude rockets fired in crazy sequence. Before the deadman systems could shut them down, the ship was in an irretrievable end-for-end tumble. Centrifugal G-forces flung the befuddled Avengers toward the tail and front of the ship, helpless to make any move to rescue themselves.

Emergency lights flashing, the ship once called
Ivo the Black
tumbled out of control, arching downward for several minutes, finally impacting the lunar surface, creating yet one more crater in the Sea of Tranquility.

"I'm afraid there's no mistake, Derek," Ulric told him. "The sign off she used was the one we assigned her. We don't know for sure what happened after she made her report, but something hit the moon within a few minutes after her sign off. Fu is certain that it was Vladyka's ship."

Derek couldn't say anything. He studied the backs of his hands as if he had never seen them before. Finally, he swallowed something in his throat and spoke. "Any survivors?"

"Not even a distress signal from the ship. Whatever it was, it happened fast." The older man studied his young kinsman for a minute. "Take the rest of the shift off, Derek. Come back—"

"The hell with that," Derek said, leaning over the emergency procedure charts he had been assigned. If anything went wrong on launch, everybody had to know exactly where to go and what to do. "I have work to do." He began reorganizing the maintenance section manpower more efficiently. Ulric studied his work for a moment, then quietly left the room.

"Three minutes," Sieglinde said. She was in her acceleration chair in Avalon's new flight control room. "So far, no attacks from the Earth fleet." Her image was broadcast into every holo set in the Sigma Pavonis fleet.

Derek was in his quarters in the Ciano section, which was in even greater chaos than usual. Avalon was about to lose the spin-induced gravity produced by rotation. Under acceleration, they would be thrust away from the direction of travel—a new kind of gravity entirely.

Derek wasn't thinking about the necessary reorientation, or about the voyage which he had been anticipating all his conscious life. He was thinking instead about the recording that had arrived from Fu a few days before. Mercifully, Valentina hadn't included her image.

"I suppose," she said, "that it would be terribly trite to say that by the time this reaches you I'll be dead. Actually, I have no idea. It's very likely, but as far as you are concerned, I might as well be. I'm going to kill Vladyka, and expose Shevket if I can, and in any case, I'm staying here.

"Derek, I'm one of the old Earth breed. You and your people are the star-rovers. You are going to have a long life traveling among the stars, and believe me, you'll find somebody who wants to share that kind of life with you. I have to make this brief, Vladyka's coming up to the bridge soon. Leave us dying old people to our dying old world. I—" That was where the transmission cut off. He wondered whether she would have ended with an "I love you," but he doubted it. Ruthless as she was, Valentina was not that cruel.

"Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one." Then he was pressed back against his seat as the island world of Avalon, along with nearly two hundred others, headed for the edge of the solar system on titanic columns of flame.

SIXTEEN

Derek strained against the weights in the gym. All around him, others were going through similar routines. It would be a long time before they reached their destination, but he fully intended to be in shape to explore planets at full gravity when he did. He finished a set and knocked off. After a shower, he dressed and left the gym.

He still had more than an hour before his next class. He was going to have plenty to do on his way to the new star system. There was a whole education to get in. He was studying planetary biology, theoretical xenobiology, first-contact theory and higher physics. The list would, eventually, be endless. He wanted to achieve a full professorship in time. Besides, there was his job in Avalonian administration. There was a lot to do between now and arrival. And he wasn't getting any younger. He was almost twenty-two.

Musing, he walked along the newly carpeted corridors, not truly paying attention to where he was going. Eventually, he stopped and looked up. Somehow, he had walked to the museum. He was about to turn and walk away, but an almost masochistic urge overcame him and he went in.

It looked a little different. There had been some rearrangements because of the new gravitic orientation. The long window was at a different angle, but it now faced in the direction they were traveling. The exhibits were in the same relationship, and he felt a stab of pain, remembering the last time he had been in this place. It was not very long ago, but he felt so much older now.

He made himself walk all the way to the end. There was no one else in the museum. The stars in the window looked subtly different as the ship's velocity increased. He stopped abruptly at the last exhibits. A few paces past the last of them stood a small female figure. For a moment he froze, then she turned and looked at him.

"Hello, Derek," Sieglinde said.

"Aunt Linde. What brings you here?"

"Same as you, I suppose. Just wandering aimlessly. Well have something to put here pretty soon. They're going to install holos of
Nova
's launch, and some of our own. Someday soon, we'll have exhibits of our first planetfall. No stopping us now. For good or ill, everybody can build my drive units." A few seconds before the mass exodus, she had transmitted data to the Island Worlds, both those that were leaving and those remaining behind, explaining how to construct both her antimatter and collapsar drives.

"Then why do you look so sad?" he asked.

She stared out the long window. "Just remembering the past. It seems like I've lost everyone. Thor is gone, and Martin Shaw. Fu stayed behind, and my son Martin. Even Tony Carstairs is gone. I feel like there's nothing left of my life."

"Hell, Aunt Linde, you're barely sixty years old! Statistically, you haven't even reached one-third of your life span. Think of all there is out there, still to see!" It exasperated him that she should be more depressed than he was.

"I know. I've worked for this all my life, but now that I have it, it hardly seems worthwhile." She stared out the window for a long while, then said, "Except for one thing."

"What's that?"

"It's these damned engines. We've been going for a couple of months and we're barely at twenty percent the speed of light. If everything works as I think it will, we'll get up to ninety-nine percent light speed. With a year's turnaround and deceleration time, that still leaves sixteen years to get to a destination just a hundred light-years away. It's too slow, Derek!"

"Well, considering it couldn't have been done at all before—"

"Not good enough. If I'm going to spend my time traveling, I don't want to see just live or six star systems in my lifetime. I want to see a hundred!"

"Everybody says superluminal travel is supposed to be impossible," he pointed out.

"So what? I've been told that before. If anybody can do it, I can!"

"That's the kind of talk I like to hear. Think you can do it before we reach Sigma Pavonis?"

"Hell, yes!" She whirled on her heel and stalked back through the exhibits. "I have to go to my lab. I'll see you later, Derek." She was lost to view among the exhibits, but he could still hear her voice, fading away toward the entrance. "I'll lick this yet. Lifetime, hell! Before I'm finished, we'll hit a hundred new star systems every goddamn year!"

He grinned and turned back to the window. The stars were all out there, waiting. The depression was gone as if it had never been. He felt a tingling and he learned forward, as if urging the great ark to higher speed. He stood there for a long time, savoring the feeling of being a human being standing between the stars.