Part 16 (1/2)

”I suppose it is.” He took his hand away. ”All right.”

He left her, crossing the small room, and she spoke from behind him with a bitterness that shocked him.

”You shouldn't have come back. Did you think we needed you? Did you think we were dying for lack of you? Why didn't you just leave us alone!”

She was gone then, pus.h.i.+ng with a small s.h.i.+ver of revul-sion past Chai. Kettrick remembered that Seri had never permitted the Tch.e.l.l inside the house when she was there.

Chai snorted gently. She did not say anything. The per-fect lady, Kettrick thought, in spite of her fur.

He poured himself a drink and did not drink it. He sat staring at it and forgot it was there.

After a long while he realized that for almost the first time since leaving Earth he had thought of a girl named Sandra and wished her well.

Some time later they came out of jump.

The White Sun blazed in the sky ahead of them, one of the few hot white stars in the Hyades, a savage young warrior among the middle-aged and mellow suns. The fierce light beat at the cruiser's safety s.h.i.+elds.

The radiation counters showed normal.

”Temporary reprieve,” muttered Kettrick. ”Or were we wrong?”

Sekma did not answer.

They stared from the s.h.i.+elded windows of the bridge at the world of the Krinn swimming through the glare. There was no doubt about which planet might have been chosen as a platform from which to launch the Doomstar. The two small inner worlds were semi-molten, the outer three im-possible because of poisonous atmosphere, gravitation, or cold. The world of the Krinn alone supported life. After its own fas.h.i.+on.

The surface markings of the planet began to show in patchy glimpses between high cloud cover and the much lower clouds of smoke and dust. Kettrick made out the heliograph flash of white deserts, the black lava blotches of volcanic zones, the crinkled desolation of mountain ranges still raw and cruel with youth, the basins of shallow seas drying in the sun. Still closer, and he could see the great winding river courses and the green of the fertile belts.

The radarman said sharply, ”Sir!”

At almost the same instant, while Weapons Control was in the act of starting to range and the ports were sliding open, according to prearranged plan, Communications cried out, ”Sir! A message coming through...”

It came through clearly, in spite of the hiss and crackle of atmospherics.

”Silverwing to cruiser. Watch your counters and consider whether you wish to live. Too bad you came so late.” With a hint of sibilant laughter, the voice added, ”Goodbye.”

In the intense silence that followed, the radarman said, ”She's gone.”

No radar, no killer beam nor missile could follow Silverwing into the limbo of not-s.p.a.ce. The men in the bridge stood still, a little stunned by the swiftness of what had happened. Kettrick saw that Sekma's face was ashen under the golden bronze and he thought that his own must be the same.

The world of the Krinn raced toward them. The White Sun blazed.And the radiation counters gave a small premonitory leap.

22.

Sekma was the first one to break the silence. His voice was low but it was steady, and it had a hard, iron ring to it.

”We will conduct the sweep of the day side, as planned. There is a chance that we can find the launcher and de-activate it before the critical point is reached.”

The acting skipper, a Darvan like Sekma and a good solid man, said, ”How long would that give us?”

”It is estimated,” Sekma said, laying a small stress on the word, ”that the point beyond which the reaction will not reverse itself is reached in approximately twelve hours from the impact of the first missile.

That would have been at sunrise.” He paused briefly. ”Unfortunately we have no way of guessing at the longitude of the launcher emplacement, so it doesn't help us much.”

It did not help at all. And the mocking voice had said, ”Too bad you came so late.”

”After the critical point is reached,” Sekma was saying, ”the progression is more rapid. The radiation becomes lethal in something like six or seven hours. Normal s.h.i.+elding such as we have is no protection.

Therefore...”

”Therefore,” said the skipper, ”we had better make the most of our X-number of hours.”

He did not mention that if the search were called off the cruiser might land, be hastily serviced, and gotten off again in time to clear the planet and jump for safety. Kettrick knew it must be in his mind. It was in his own mind and he knew that every man there was thinking the same thing. Only one force held them silent, and judging by himself it was not courage but shame; no one wanted to be the first to suggest that they turn tail and run.

Sixteen hours? Maybe. Maybe only half that. There wasn't any way of knowing. n.o.body had observed the birth of a Doomstar before, to gather data. They were the lucky first. It was a pity that their observations would be lost to science.

To change the subject in his own mind, he said, ”De-activating the launcher by hand makes it tougher. Is it im-possible just to blast the thing?”

”Not impossible,” Sekma said. ”Impractical, Unless you don't care about the planet.”

”The cobalt warheads,” Kettrick said. ”Yes, of course.”

”Unless,” said Sekma quietly, ”we had no other choice.”

The cruiser thrummed powerfully ahead. The skipper had returned to his seat. He and the copilot were checking off the coordinates of the initial orbit. A great big beautiful coffin, Kettrick thought, all polished steel and pride and enormous, useless strength, carrying a lot of good men to their deaths in the hope of finding one small needle in a planet-sized haystack, while Seri was safely away in Silverwing.

And at Tananaru the League of Cl.u.s.ter Worlds would be faced with an ultimatum.

He wondered if Seri would feel much pain when he learned that the Doomstar had robbed him of Larith.

”Watch your counters,” the voice had said, ”and consider whether you wish to live.” The voice that might have been Seri's. Then it had laughed. The hot blood came up in Kettrick's face.

”We may have more time than we think,” he said. ”He was telling us that we had time to land andservice for jump before the radiation becomes lethal...if we forgot everything else. That's what he hoped we'd do. Why would he say that if he weren't afraid we might find the launcher in time to stop it?”

Sekma said cynically, ”Hold to that thought, Johnny. We only have half a world to search. Just the side that faces the sun. Sunset will be cut-off time, but we don't know when that will be exactly...we don't know where the daylight started, so we can't tell where it should end. We need hope, so if you think of anything more like that, let us know.”

”I'll do better,” Kettrick said. ”I'll go down and enlist the Krinn. After all, it's their sun.” He laughed at Sekma's expression. ”What are you worried about? Afraid I might pick up some heartstones along the way?”

”Just habit, I guess,” said Sekma in an odd tone. ”I wish I had a lifeboat to give you.” He smiled suddenly. ”If you find any heartstones, you can keep them. We're going to drop Number One in exactly eight minutes.”

Kettrick went down the ladder to the wardroom where Boker and Hurth and Glevan had been sweating it out be-cause there was no room for them in the bridge. They had had the intercom open.

”I guess you heard it all.”

”We did.” Boker was busy at the cellaret, stowing bottles in his s.h.i.+rt. ”I figure we'll need these before we're through, either to celebrate or...not.” He tossed one to Kettrick. ”Catch.”