Part 9 (2/2)

Chris spent the next morning helping Zatopek work on the sensor array. The young academic monitored the links from a palmtop while Chris and the Ogrons unpacked huge antennae and scanner dishes from their plastic crates.

After lunch, Chris crawled out through the airlock and spent an hour welding things together on the hull. Zatopek watched through Chris's suit camera, giving him terse instructions.

Back inside, he'd showered off the sweat, his elbows knocking against the walls of the tiny cubicle in his cabin. Feeling pleasantly scrubbed, he wandered up to the bridge. The smart systems were quite capable of handling the entire trip from one Clytemnestran moon to the other, a.s.suming it was all routine; they needed a human pilot only to handle the last stages of the journey, where there'd be no automatic beacons to guide the s.h.i.+p in.

But it didn't hurt to run your eyes over the controls every so often. Chris had heard of a s.h.i.+p on the Eartht.i.tan run which had got so nervous about one of its retros that it changed course for the nearest repair station, and the crew didn't even realize until they were halfway to Mars.

The door behind him slid open and Iaomnet came on to the bridge. Maybe she'd heard the same story. 'What is that noise?'

she asked, and sat down in the co-pilot's position.

'The Communards,' said Chris.

'Who are they when they're not strangling cats?'

Chris pa.s.sed her the ca.s.sette case. She turned it over in her hands. He noticed her frown when she pressed her thumb against the list of artists on the back and nothing happened.

84.'Old technology,' he said. 'There's no display encoded into the plastic.'

'Twenty-first century?' she asked.

'Close,' said Chris. 'Twentieth. I'm impressed.'

'I know you've heard different,' said Iaomnet. 'But us students do occasionally learn things. Albeit during brief gaps between hangovers. I did pre-Diaspora history as an elective. It was that or Earth Reptile aesthetics.' She looked around the c.o.c.kpit. 'So where have you hidden your ”tape deck”?'

Chris showed her where he'd used a universal connector to plug his Walkman into the navigation console. She asked him if it was really safe to do that.

'Sure,' he said. 'I've done it thousands of times.' He made sure he was looking straight into her eyes when he said it. She had deep black eyes.

She looked away first, glancing down at the artist list on the back of the ca.s.sette case.

'You like this stuff?' she asked.

'It reminds me of someone I used to know,' said Chris. 'They used to play this at the clubs we went to.'

'Way back when in your wild and frivolous youth, right?'

'Right.'

'How old are you?'

'How old do you think I am?'

'Older than you look.'

Chris couldn't help himself he had to laugh. 'You are absolutely the first first person who has ever said that to me.' person who has ever said that to me.'

'There has to be a first time for everything,' said Iaomnet.

'Funny, that's what he said.'

'Your friend?'

'Right,' said Chris, remembering steamy windows.

'Hey,' she said, holding up the ca.s.sette case. 'I know this one Sting. Didn't he go on to found a religion?'

'That was Prince,' said Chris. 'Sting went into politics. I think he was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the early twenty-first.'

An alarm sounded and every proximity alert on the navigation display lit up simultaneously. Chris checked: the sensors were registering two unidentified emission sources within forty 85 thousand kilometres on a possible interception vector. He tapped his throat mike. 'Doctor, I think you'd better get in here.'

He flicked the navigation computer over to antic.i.p.ate antic.i.p.ate, relieved to see that it was at least smart enough to realize he meant the fast-moving bogies and not a moon or other fixed navigation point. The display showed the possible course of the bogies as a series of nested cones a rough estimate of where they could could be in the near future. be in the near future.

Chris wasn't surprised to see that the Hopper was right on the centre line of the innermost cone definitely an interception course. He glanced at Iaomnet, who was frowning at the screen.

When she realized he was looking she asked him what was going on.

'I think we're going to be buzzed,' said Chris.

The Doctor arrived on the bridge with Martinique and Emil close behind. 'What have you got?' he asked.

'Two unidentified bogies on an intercept course,' said Chris.

'They're decelerating at irregular intervals, the maximum deceleration being thirty gees.'

'What do you think they are?' asked the Doctor.

'Well,' said Chris, 'they're small enough not to occlude any stars and they've got very shallow emission signatures. The random deceleration is a typical military-style approach. At a guess I'd say they were a pair of Whirlwinds.'

'Fighters?' asked Zatopek.

Chris punched up another tactical display. 'From the Victoria Victoria,'

he said, 'a carrier in orbit around Orestes.'

Emil said, 'What do they want with us?'

'Let's hope it isn't target practice,' said the Doctor. 'What kind of weapons package will they have?'

Chris tried to remember his model-building days. 'a.s.suming they're loaded for s.p.a.ce intercept, four ASDAC missiles for high delta V, two Roscoes for low V and a proton cannon for knife work.'

'Which means?' asked the Doctor patiently.

'If they drop within a delta-V range of about twenty kps we're probably all right.'

'Unless they use their cannons,' said Iaomnet.

<script>