"What is Uttan?" Hunt asked from the screen.
Eesyan turned away from Garuth and answered in a faraway voice as he tried to think. "An airless, waterless ball of rock on the fringe of Jevlenese space, but very rich in metals. The Jevlenese were granted it long ago as a source of raw materials to build up their industries. It's obviously where their weapons came from. But if what we suspect is right, they've turned the whole planet into a fortified armaments factory. We've got to prevent Broghuilio's getting there."
While Eesyan was speaking to Hunt, Garuth quickly reviewed what he could recollect of the Thurien h-transfer system. visar or jevex could jam h-beams projected into their respective regions of space by virtue of the dense networks of sensors they possessed, which enabled them to monitor the field parameters of a transfer toroid just beginning to form, and disrupt the energy flow through from h-space. Without the sensors, jamming wouldn't work. But the only sensors that existed in the vicinity of Jevlen were jevex's and visar would not be able to use them since it could only do so through jevex, and jevex was dead. Hence a beam from Uttan couldn't be disrupted by visar. So
that
was why the Jevlenese had shut down the system.
"There's nothing we can do," Calazar was saying from the other screen. "We haven't got anything near there. Our ships are still eight hours away at least."
An agonized silence fell on the Command Deck. Calazar was looking helplessly from one side to another about him, while to one side of him Hunt and the Terrans on Earth had frozen into immobility. On the main screen the five Jevlenese vessels had cleared the edge of the planet's disk.
A feeling of composure and confidence that he had not known for a long time flowed slowly into Garuth's veins as the situation unfolded in sudden crystal clarity. There was no doubt about what he had to do. He was himself again, in control of himself and in command of his ship. "We are right here."
Eesyan stared for a second, then turned his head to gaze uncertainly at the five dots on the main screen, now diminishing rapidly into the starry background of space. "Could we catch them?" he asked dubiously.
Garuth smiled grimly. "Those are just Jevlenese planetary transports," he said. "Have you forgotten? The
Shapieron
was built as a starship." Without waiting for a response from Calazar, he raised his head and called in a louder voice, "zorac, dispatch Probe Four in pursuit immediately, recover deployed probes, lift the ship into high orbit, charge all onboard probes for maximum range, and bring the main drives up to full-power readiness. We're going after them."
"And what will you do then?" Calazar asked.
"Worry about that later," Garuth replied. "The first thing is not to lose them."
"Tally ho!" zorac cried, mimicking a flawless English accent.
Hunt sat up and blinked in astonishment on one of the screens. "Where the hell did it pick that up?" he asked.
"Documentaries of World War II British fighter pilots," zorac announced. "That was for your benefit, Vic. I thought you'd appreciate it."
Broghuilio stood on the bridge of the Jevlenese flagship and scowled while the technicians and scientists clustered around a battery of datascreens in front of him took in the details of the report coming through from the long-range scanning computers. Gasps of disbelief sounded among the rising murmur of voices. "Well?" he demanded as his patience finally exhausted itself.
Estordu turned from the group. His eyes were wide with shock. "It can't be possible," he whispered. He made a vague gesture behind him. "But it's true . . . there's no doubt about it."
"What is it?" Broghuilio fumed.
Estordu swallowed. "It's . . . the
Shapieron.
It's pulling away from Jevlen and turning this way."
Broghuilio stared at him as if he had just gone insane, then snorted and pulled two of the technicians out of the way to see the screens for himself. For a second his mouth clamped tight, and his beard quivered as his mind refused to accept what his eyes were seeing. Then another screen came to life to show a magnified view from the long-range optical imagers that left no room for dissent. Broghuilio spun around to glare at Wylott, who was watching numbly from a few feet back. "HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THIS?" he shouted.
Wylott shook his head in protest. "It can't be. It was destroyed. I
know
it was destroyed."
"THEN WHAT IS THAT COMING AT US RIGHT NOW?" Broghuilio whirled to the scientists. "How long has it been at Jevlen? What is it doing here? Why didn't any of you know about it?"
The captain's voice came from the raised section of the bridge above them. "I've never seen acceleration like it! It's vectoring straight after us. We'll never outrun it."
"They can't do anything," Wylott said in a choking voice. "It's not armed."
"Fool!" Broghuilio snapped. "If it wasn't destroyed, it must have been transferred to Thurien. And Terrans could have been transferred to Thurien. So it could have Terrans on board it with Terran weapons. They could blow us apart, and after your bungling, the
Shapieron
's crew won't lift a finger to stop them." Wylott licked his lips and said nothing.
"Stressfield around the
Shapieron
building up rapidly," the long-range surveillance operator called from one of the stations above. "We're losing radar and optical contact. H-scan shows it's maintaining course and acceleration."
Estordu was thinking furiously. "We may have a chance, Excellency," he said suddenly. Broghuilio jerked his head around and thrust his chin out demandingly. Estordu went on, "The Ganymean ships from that period did not possess stressfield transmission correction, and h-scan equipment was unknown. In other words they have no means of tracking us while they're under main drive. They'll have to aim blind to intercept our predicted course and slow down at intervals to correct. We might be able to lose them by changing course during their blind periods."
At that instant another operator called out, "Gravitational anomaly building up astern and starboard, range nine eighty miles, strength seven, increasing. Readings indicate a Class Five exit port. H-scan shows conformal entry-port mapping to vicinity of
Shapieron.
" The tension on the bridge rocketed. It meant that visar was projecting two beams to create a linked pair of transfer ports—a "tunnel" through h-space from the
Shapieron
to the Jevlenese vessels. A Class Five port would admit something relatively small. The operator's voice came again, rising with alarm. "An object has emerged at this end. It's coming this way, fast!"
"
A bomb!
" somebody screamed. "
They've exited a bomb!
" Consternation broke out around the bridge. Broghuilio was wide-eyed and sweating profusely. Wylott had collapsed onto a chair.
The operator's voice came again. "Object identified. It's one of the
Shapieron
's robot probes . . . matching us in course and speed. The exit port has dissolved."
And the long-range surveillance operator: "
Shapieron
closing and still accelerating. Range two-twenty thousand miles."
"Get rid of it," Broghuilio barked up at the level above. "Captain, shake that thing off."
The captain gave a set of course-correction instructions, which the computers acknowledged and executed.
"Probe matching," came the report. "Evasion ineffective.
Shapieron
has corrected to a new vector and is still closing."
Broghuilio turned a furious face toward Estordu. "You said they'd be blind! They're not even slowing down." Estordu spread his hands and shook his head helplessly. Broghuilio looked at the rest of the group of scientists. "Well, how are they doing it? Can't any of you work it out?" He waited for a few seconds, then pointed a finger angrily at the screens showing the tracking data of the
Shapieron.
"Some genius on
that
ship has thought of something." He began pacing back and forth across the bridge. "How does this happen? They have all the geniuses, and I have all the imbeciles. Give me—"
"The probe!" Estordu groaned suddenly. "They must have fitted the probe and the
Shapieron
with h-links. The probe will be able to monitor every move we make and update the
Shapieron
's flight-control system through visar. We'll never lose it now."
Broghuilio glared at him for a second, then looked across at the communications officer. "We have to make the jump to Uttan now," he declared. "What's the status there?"
"The generators are up to power and standing by," the officer told him. "Their director is locked onto our beacon, and they can throw a port here immediately."
"But what if that probe transfers through with us?" Estordu said. "visar would locate it when it reenters at Uttan. It would reveal our destination."
"Those geniuses will have guessed our destination already," Broghuilio retorted. "So what could they do? We can blow anything that comes near Uttan to atoms."
"But we're still too close to Jevlen," Estordu objected, looking alarmed. "It would disrupt the whole planet . . . chaos everywhere."
"So would you rather stay here?" Broghuilio sneered. "Hasn't it occurred to you yet that the probe was just a warning? The next thing they tunnel through at us
will
be a bomb." He sent a stare around the bridge that defied anybody to argue with him. Nobody did. He raised his head. "Captain. Transfer now, to Uttan."
The command was relayed to Uttan, and within seconds huge generators were pouring energy into a tiny volume of space ahead of the five Jevlenese ships. The fabric of space-time wrinkled, then buckled, heaved, and fell in upon itself to plummet out of the Universe. A spinning vortex began growing to open up the gateway to another realm, first as a faint circle of curdled starlight against the void, then getting stronger, thicker, and sharper, and expanding slowly to reveal a core of featureless, infinite blackness.
And then a counterspinning pattern of refractions materialized inside the first. The resultant composite of vortices shimmered and pulsated as filaments of space and time writhed in a tangle of knotted geodesies. Something was wrong. The port was going unstable. "What's happening?" Broghuilio demanded.
Estordu was turning his head frantically from side to side to take in the displays and data reports. "Something is deforming the configuration . . . breaking up the field manifolds. I've never seen anything like this. It can only be visar."
"That's impossible," one of the other scientists shouted. "visar can't jam. It has no sensors. jevex is shut down."
"That's not jamming," Estordu muttered. "The port began to form. It's doing something else. . . ." His eye caught the view of the
Shapieron
again. "The probe! visar is using the probe to monitor the entry-port configuration. It couldn't jam the beam, so it's trying to project a complementary pattern from Gistar to cancel out the toroid from Uttan. It's trying to neutralize it."
"It couldn't," the other scientist protested. "It couldn't get enough resolution through a single probe. It would be aiming virtually blind from Gistar."
"The Gistar and Uttan beams would interact constructively in the same volume," another pointed out. "If an unstable resonance developed, anything could happen."
"That
is
an unstable resonance," Estordu shouted, pointing at the display. "I tell you, that's what visar's doing."
"visar would never risk it."
Ahead of the ships, a maelstrom of twisting, convulsing, multiple-connected relativity was boiling under the clash of titanic bolts of energy materializing and superposing from two points, each light-years away. The core shrank, grew again, fragmented, then reassembled itself. And still they were heading directly for its center.
Broghuilio had listened enough. He turned his head up to where the captain was watching him, waiting. Then at the last second, something about Estordu pulled his attention away.
Estordu was standing absolutely still with a strange look on his face as he stared at the view of the
Shapieron.
He was mumbling to himself, and seemed to have forgotten everything going on around him. "H-links through the probes," he whispered. "That was how visar got into jevex." His eyes opened wider, and his face became ashen as the full realization hit him. "That was how . . .
everything
got into jevex! It never existed, any of it. They were doing it through the
Shapieron
all the time. . . . We're running away from a single unarmed ship."
"What is it?" Broghuilio snapped. "Why are you looking like that?"
Estordu looked at him with a bleak stare. "It doesn't exist. . . . The Terran strike force doesn't exist. It never did. visar wrote it into jevex through the
Shapieron.
The whole thing was a fabrication. There was nothing there but the
Shapieron
all the time."
The captain leaned over from above. "Excellency, we have to . . ." He stopped as he saw that Broghuilio was not listening, hesitated for a second, then turned away to call to somewhere behind him. "Disengage forward compensators. Cut in emergency boost and reverse at full power. Compute evasion function and execute immediately."
"
What?—What did you say?
" Broghuilio turned to face the semicircle of cowering figures behind him. "Are you telling me the Terrans have been making fools out of all of you?"
From above the synthetic voice of a computer came tonelessly: "Negative function. Negative function. All measures ineffective. Ship accelerating on irreversible gradient. Corrective action now impossible. Repeat: Corrective action now impossible."
But Broghuilio didn't hear, even as the craft plunged into the knot of insanely tangled space-time looming around them. "You imbeciles!" he breathed. His voice rose and began shaking uncontrollably as he lifted his fists high above his head. "
Imbeciles!
IMBECILES! You
IM-BE-CILES!!
"
"My God, they're going straight into it!" Hunt gasped from a screen on the Command Deck of the
Shapieron.
The view on the main screen was being sent back from the probe two hundred thousand miles away, still clinging doggedly to the heels of the Jevlenese ships. A horrified silence had fallen all around.