Juggler of Worlds (48 page)

Eric commanded an air lock open. Escaping air tugged the drones, modified buoys, out of the ship. “Thrusters on minimum. I’ll get them dispersed.”

On the radar scope, the blips that represented the drones slowly pulled away. Sigmund armed the weapons console. “That’s far enough. Drone one, evasive maneuvers.”

In the radar display, all the blips continued their stately, and very linear, retreat.

“Tanj,” Eric said affectedly. “Defective. Try another?”

Sigmund nodded.

Eric leaned closer to his console. “Drone two, evasive maneuvers.”

Nothing. “Too bad Kirsten didn’t program the drones,” Sigmund said.

As drone after drone proved unresponsive, Eric reverted to English expletives. They seemed more satisfying. “Maybe it’s no accident they’re like that. Could someone have intentionally introduced a malfunction?”

“Sabotage
. That’s the word you want.” Spy School 101, Sigmund thought. “True, someone could have tampered with the drones. I don’t think that’s how they’d do it.

“Any saboteur presumably knows the purpose of the drones. They would be better served to subvert the evasive-maneuver code, make it less random. The fire controls would be less rigorously tested than we think, and we might get overconfident.”

“I have so much to learn.” Eric hung his head, embarrassed. “I’ll work at it. I promise.”

That reaction made Sigmund feel worse than the bug in the drone software. “Just bring them back aboard. Kirsten can figure out what went wrong.”

STARS AGAIN FILLED the main screen. This time, one shone visibly brighter. “Passive scan, Eric.”

Eric studied his instruments. “Not a thing. Radar?”

“All right,” Sigmund said. “Find us an ice ball.”

They were far outside the star’s singularity. A ping went out. They waited. And waited. Sigmund’s skin crawled, although in a different way than in hyperspace. There’s no danger here, he told himself. Nessus and his friends had explored the system ahead, before independence. It was unoccupied and inhospitable. And while
he
had no idea where Kzinti were likely to be found, the Puppeteers did.
They
had set this course for the Fleet. New Terra was simply a little way out in front, along the same path.

And, by the same token, it was highly unlikely they could encounter an Outsider ship here.

They got a radar return well over an hour later. In the main scope, it looked like just another ice ball. “All yours, Eric. Take us closer.”

Eric dropped into a crash couch and took the thruster controls. They crept closer, until Sigmund called, “That’s close enough.” Sigmund took the other couch and rearmed the new weapons console. He centered his crosshairs on the image. “Three … two … one … fire.”

A geyser of steam erupted from the target, glowing luridly with scattered laser light. He released the trigger. “You take a try.” They took turns, with the three bow lasers and, turning, the two stern lasers, targeting smaller and smaller chunks. “Your wife does excellent work.”

They chased down and destroyed a few more Oort Cloud objects. Eric’s eyes glowed. “We can do this, Sigmund. You’re going to save us.”

It’s easy to blast ice. A Kzinti warship on evasive maneuvers, shooting back …

Sigmund kept his thoughts to himself.

“WE’RE DONE,” Sigmund announced. They had learned what dumb targets could teach them.

“Home then?” Eric said. “We’ll return more secure than we left.”

But only a bit. Lasers penetrated GP hulls, supposedly in every wavelength that was visible to any customer species. Then we paint over them, lest hyperspace drive us mad.

Yes, lasers penetrated the hulls, but the Puppeteers could
destroy
them.
Hobo Kelly
was gone in seconds.

Sigmund said, “You’re sure you don’t know how Puppeteers could remotely destroy a hull? Couldn’t they do what you did to extract the ramscoop? Couldn’t you do it again?”

Eric shook his head.
“Long Pass
was hidden inside a General Products hull, held rigidly in place. We knew exactly where the reinforcing power plant was. That’s why I could fry it with
Long Pass’s
comm laser. The odds of a laser destroying the power plant in a moving target…”

“Right.” Sigmund paced the tiny bridge. The main sensor panel continued to show … nothing. It meant he had failed. Laser-arming New Terra’s few ships would raise spirits; it could do nothing against the overwhelming might of the Fleet.

“The ramscoop is still a potent weapon,” Eric said. Tone of voice added, “Isn’t it?”

“Not anymore, I think.” Sigmund ceased his pacing to squeeze Eric’s shoulder. “It worked the first time because
Long Pass
was kept right in the Fleet for convenient study. When you broke it loose, the Puppeteers had no time to react. Now it’s orbiting New Terra. Its fusion drive would make it visible from billions of miles away. Lasers or collision by a remote-controlled ship would demolish it before it got close enough to be a threat.”

Only the Outsiders had the power to save New Terra.
That
was the reason
Explorer
was out here. Sigmund had revealed his purpose to no one, not even Eric. Eric might tell Kirsten; Kirsten might tell Nessus—and Nessus, surely, would have a different opinion than Sigmund, whose new home world was, in the final extreme, sacrificial to the wrath of the Outsiders.

Sigmund circled the bridge again, checking the sensor panel as he passed. Nothing.

His spirits drooping, Sigmund told himself that random exploration for the galaxy-roaming Outsiders was slightly less pathetic than randomly looking for Earth.

“SURPRISE!”

Sigmund sat up with a start. He was napping in a crash couch on the bridge, not in his cabin. Close to home meant close to Puppeteers. “We’re back to New Terra?”

“Just slightly past.” Eric pressed a button and the main view port de-opaqued.

Five worlds, the size of quarter-sol coins!

“You brought us to the Fleet?” Sigmund screamed. “Why?”

“Relax, Sigmund. We’re stealthed and zipping past at almost two percent cee, relative. Kirsten, Omar, and I sneaked back into the Fleet on this very ship, when we were supposed to be away scouting. It’s how we found
Long Pass
. I thought you’d like to see it up close.”

The worlds ballooned as Sigmund watched. In one aux display, hundreds of ships made themselves known by their traffic-control beacons. Another display showed Hearth in close-up, a world seemingly paved in monstrous buildings.

From many billion miles away, it was frightening. Now, Sigmund could almost reach out and touch it. His heart pounded. And Eric grinned ear to ear, delighted with himself.

I
never asked for hero worship. Now it’s going to get me killed.

“Lots of hyperwave chatter,” Eric commented.

In the mass pointer, five lines aimed themselves at Sigmund.
Explorer
was only seconds away from their singularities. Sigmund slammed his palm against the control console—

Do
not
look up!

Staring grimly at his feet, Sigmund groped around until he found the view-port control. Eric gazed straight forward, unfocused. “Eric,” he called. “Eric!”

With a shudder, Eric came out of his trance. “What happened?”

Carlos Wu happened. A genius like
Carlos
was what New Terra needed.

“I dropped us back into hyperspace. You were staring right into the blind spot. That hyperwave chatter … was probably hyperwave radar.” As had betrayed
Hobo Kelly
to its doom.

Eric turned white. He volunteered nothing, and responded only in monosyllables, for the short flight back to New Terra.

They delayed landing for a few extra loops around New Terra. Sigmund hoped the opportunity to play tour guide would do something for Eric’s shattered confidence.

Beowulf Shaeffer would have given a better tour.

From low orbit, Arcadia was even more utopian than Sigmund’s stepping-disc forays had suggested. Vast stretches of farmland, alternating with lush forest. Great river systems. Natural harbors on three coasts. A long mountainous backbone, gentled by the eons into rolling hills. Scattered cities—towns, really, by Earth standards. None of the ugliness of long-abandoned highways and railroads, the colony having been built from the start around a stepping-disc system.

Arcadia was the smallest of three continents.

Life thrived as well on the larger continents, Elysium and Atlantis, but it was
wrong
. The dominant red Sigmund could almost handle, pretending it was fall foliage. But the purple, the magenta, the dusky yellow, the blends … all Hearthian life.

Elysium was the youngest of the continents. Its mountains soared, sharp edged and peaked. A major fault line, with active volcanoes anchoring both ends, snaked across one corner of the triangular landmass. An immense basin, one end drifted with gypsum sands, had collapsed deep into a high arid plain. Most of the continent was forest and prairie, a tame version of primeval Hearth. Before independence, Puppeteer tourists had frequented its parks.

Atlantis had the shape of a mitten. The side with the thumb rose far above the ocean. Four great rivers, each with many tributaries, ran downward from that mountainous edge. The jungle they watered was vibrant with every color but green.

This was not one world ranged against the Fleet. One small, scarcely settled continent! Whatever this detour may have done for Eric’s confidence, it further shook Sigmund’s own.

PENELOPE AND SIGMUND strolled to the restful sounds of waves lapping the nearby shore. Sigmund’s jumpsuit remained its customary black, but (after consultation with Eric) he had set the placket and cuffs to a pale blue. Solid black, it seemed, sent a message of “not looking” far more emphatic than Penelope’s standard gray.

It pleased him that she seemed pleased.

They shared the boardwalk with many couples and families. He caught Penelope smiling at a pair of boisterous little boys randomly zooming around the adults.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he said. It always was, when you could simply step to the nicest weather.

“It is.” She smiled shyly. “Thanks for inviting me on a walk.”

“You’re quite welcome. Woman cannot live by crop pest alone.”

She patted his elbow. “Tell me about crop pests on Earth.”

They touched a lot here. It was strictly companionable. He was accustomed to reproduction being ruthlessly controlled, with free sex as the outlet. On New Terra, they took things slow; when something finally happened, they bred like rabbits.

Penny remained in just-friends mode.

Sigmund said, “I’m partial to corn on the cob. Does that make me a corn pest?”

“Seriously, Sigmund.”

He looked again at happy couples. He tracked a little girl ramming around the boardwalk, shrieking with innocent glee. He could marry here. He could, for the first time in his life, truly imagine starting a family, despite everything that was happening.

Sigmund froze. I’m out of whack.

Concentrating, he felt an unfamiliar serenity. An ARM autodoc would be dosing him up right now. It made no sense. He was paranoid naturally.

He had been wandering in a fog of unwonted feelings and unexpected behavior. He had blamed it all on the near-death experience, the shock of his abduction, and flatlander phobia. None of those could have helped.

And none was the real problem. Carlos’s autodoc
treated
paranoia. It wasn’t an ARM model. Sigmund had emerged on this world with his biochemistry reset. After years with his paranoia fixated on the safety of Earth, brainwashing had left old habits without an immediate focus.

No
wonder
he’d felt off his game.

“Sigmund? You’ve gotten very quiet.”

“Sorry.” He took Penny’s hand. “It’ll pass.”

What would pass was this unfamiliar tranquility. Old habits were belatedly reasserting themselves. He could sense that, too. A ghost of Old Sigmund had gotten
Explorer
away from the Fleet in time. Stress and reflexes were pulling him back down the labyrinthine pathways of paranoia.

ARMs dated ARMs because usually no one else would have them.

He spotted a refreshment stand a short distance up the boardwalk. “How about some ice cream, faithful Penelope?”

“That would be nice.”

It would be so simple. Make excuses to keep using the autodocs. Woo Penelope. Have a family. New habits would eventually replace old.

Except…

If nothing changed, everyone on New Terra was doomed. Obliteration of the planet? Futile resistance and mass slaughter? Surrender and reenslavement? He didn’t know.

One thing Sigmund
did
know: He was the only one on this world who could possibly stop it. And he could only do that as … himself.

He squeezed Penelope’s hand. “Let’s get you that ice cream.”

Actually, Sigmund knew a second thing. After today, his clothes would go without any trace of color for a long time.

DIEGO SKIPPED ONTO the patio holding a toy spaceship over his head, vrooming although ships were equally silent on thrusters and hyperdrive. Jaime dashed after, leaping in vain for the toy. “
I
want to be Sigmund,” she shouted as both children pelted back into the house.