Part 33 (1/2)

1.

Lightning tore at the dark-bellied clouds with yellow talons, ripping rain from them in s.h.i.+mmering veils. Kingsley watched out the narrow windows, still feeling in his English soul that rain should properly be accompanied by cold. Here, sheets of it swept through cloyingly warm air.

Great crashes rattled the prefab walls of the Center. The crowd of people around the big screens flinched as the hammering booms rolled unceasingly over them.

”Bit dicey, I'd say.” Kingsley turned away from the static-filled screens. ”There's no hope of reaching her using the high frequency bands?”

Amy shook her head. ”The techs say it's got an ionized blanket over the island now.”

”Even in the 96 gigaHertz band?”

”As soon as they start at that frequency, it runs up the plasma density in a spot above the transmitters.”

Benjamin said shakily, ”A huge current discharge, right down a funnel from the ionosphere. How in the world can it do that from so far out?”

”'How in the world' is precisely it.” Kingsley sized up the disarray he saw in the faces around them. ”It has had practice on other worlds. It knows planetary atmospheres the way we know our backyards.”

Amy said, ”Or better, the way birds know air.”

”It cut her off so fast fast,” Benjamin said.

”It knows she's there. Senses what we plan, probably,” Amy said somberly.

Kingsley ground his teeth. ”It's seen a lot of tricks, I'll wager.”

”We're checkmated,” Amy said. ”Those Searchers, they're like p.a.w.ns, cut off without even a knight to-”

”Ah, that's the point, isn't it?” Kingsley thought rapidly. A fleeting idea had scurried by.

While he gazed into the distance, Benjamin said flatly, ”It's got to be worried. Why bother to cut us off from her and the Searchers? It's concerned.”

Kingsley nodded. ”A compliment, I suppose.”

Amy roused from her depression slightly. ”So it knows that we can do it real damage this way?”

Benjamin visibly rallied himself. ”It moves to cut her off from Operations, right? Which implies that it works kinda the same way? With a managing center.”

Kingsley liked to frame ideas as he thought them through, and so said out loud, ”It's searching for our command center. We never said we had one. It a.s.sumes we do because it does. because it does.!”

Amy brightened. ”Those interceptions Channing got-they were magnetic wave transmissions inside the Eater's magnetosphere. If we could trace their routes-”

”-we'd get a clue to its central command, right,” Benjamin finished.

”Quite a job,” Amy said. ”We'd have to-”

”Never mind how tough it is,” Arno broke in. ”Get on it.”

Kingsley had concentrated upon the exchange so intently that he had completely missed Arno's eavesdropping. He was pleased that Amy and Benjamin had pulled the same idea out of their gray matter that he had been vainly pursuing. Somewhat rea.s.suring, when others believe a pa.s.sing notion has substance. What had his examiner muttered, long ago at Oxford? The universe is under no obligation to make sense, though a doctoral thesis is The universe is under no obligation to make sense, though a doctoral thesis is. People craved order, meaning, some certainty in the face of immense mystery. No matter the price.

The others chattered on, plainly glad to have something to do. There was perhaps shelter in numbers. In primate talk-a form of grooming, hadn't the Eater said?

As yet another rattling hammer blow fell upon the Center, he felt the need of whatever shelter-even intellectual-he could find.

2.

Benjamin wasn't having any. ”Come on, it makes no sense.”

Arno gave him the full glowering treatment. Heavy on the eyebrows, stentorian voice, rigid at-attention gaze. ”It's the only way we can get this information to her.”

”But I've got no no experience at any of this-” experience at any of this-”

”Neither does anyone here. Not anybody who can understand the material.”

”I've never been in s.p.a.ce and-”

”It's easy. I've done it.”

Arno did look like the type who would sh.e.l.l out big bucks for a suborbital shot, an hour or two of zero-g, and great views. Probably some high-level government gig had taken him up. Benjamin shook his head adamantly. ”I'll be a lot higher up in orbit. I'm not used to zero-g.”

”So maybe you'll throw up some. So what?”

He gritted his teeth. ”I won't be worth a d.a.m.n.”

A heavy pause. ”It's your duty.”

To punctuate this, a rolling series of crashes and thunder rolls swept through the center. They were so common now, n.o.body even cringed.

An aide ran in and said, ”We got everybody out of the E wing. It's totalled.”

”How many casualties?”

”Plenty of injured. We're setting up Medical in G wing. Got three known dead.”

Arno nodded, waved him away, looked blankly at Benjamin. ”Well?”

”Okay, I'll go. I don't even see how I can-”

”We'll get you to the airstrip. I've got a first-stage carrier coming in from Oahu.”

”You knew I would.”

Arno grinned, an unusual expression for him. ”Sure, you're an all right guy.”

This locker room style did not bother Benjamin, though he recognized the method. ”She's in there. Close to it.”