Killeen bit his lip in fretted concentration as he loped around the Argo’s stern and rounded back toward midships. His breath came sharply and, as always, he longed to be able to wipe his brow.
He had gambled the Family’s destiny on the hope that ahead lay a world better than weary, vanquished Snowglade. Soon now the dice would fall and he would know.
He puffed heavily as he angled around the bulbous lifezones—huge bubbles extruded from the sleek lines of the Argo, like the immense, bruised bodies of parasites. Inside, their opalescent walls ran with dewdrops, shimmering moist jewels hanging a bare finger’s width away from hard vacuum. Green fronds pressed here and there against the stretched walls—a sight which at first had terrified Killeen, until he understood that somehow the rubbery yet glassy stuff could take the pokes and presses of living matter without splitting. Despite the riot of plant growth inside, there was no threat of a puncture. Argo had attained a balance between life’s incessant demands and the equally powerful commandments of machines—a truce humanity had never managed on Snowglade.
As he slogged around the long, curved walls of the lifezones, here and there a filmy face peered out at him. A crewwoman paused in her harvesting of fruit and waved. Killeen gave her a clipped, reserved salute. She hung upside down, since the life bubbles did not share Argo’s spin.
To her his reflecting suit would look like a mirror-man taking impossibly long, slowmotion strides, wearing leggings of hullmetal, with a shirt that was a mad swirl of wrinkled clouds and stars. His suit came from Argo’s ancient stores and had astonishing ability to resist both the heat and cold of space. He had seen a midshipman carelessly back into a gas torch in one, and feel not a flicker of the blazing heat through its silvery skin.
His Ling Aspect commented:
A reflecting suit is also good camouflage against our mech companion.
This sort of remark meant that the Aspect was feeling its cabin fever again. Killeen decided to go along with its attempt to strike up a conversation; that might help him tickle forth the slippery idea that kept floating nearly into consciousness. “The other day you said it wasn’t interested in me anyway.”
I still believe so. It came upon us as though it would attack, yet over a week has passed as it patiently holds its distance in a parallel path.
“Looks like it’s armed.”
True, but it holds its fire. That is why I advised you to hull-walk as usual. The crew would have noticed any reluctance.
Killeen grumbled, “Extra risk is dumb.”
Not in this case. I know the moods of crew, particularly in danger. Heed me! A commander must imbue his crew with hope in the mortal circumstances of war. So the eternal questions voice themselves again: “Where is our leader? Is he to be seen? What does he say to us? Does he share our dangers?” When you brave the hull your crew watches with respect.
Killeen grimaced at Ling’s stentorian tones. He reminded himself that Ling had led far larger ships than Argo. And crew were peering out the frosted walls of the lifezones to watch their Cap’n.
Still, the magisterial manner of Ling rankled. He had lost several minor Faces when Ling’s chip was added, because there wasn’t enough room in the slots aligned along his upper spine. Ling was embedded in an old, outsized pentagonal chip, and had proved to be both a literal and figurative pain in the neck.
He gazed once more at the streaming radiance that forked fitfully in the roiling sky. There—he saw it. The distant speck held still against a far-passing luminescence. He watched the mote for a long moment and then shook his fist at it in frustration.
Good. Crew like a Captain who expresses what they all feel.
“It’s what I feel, dammit!”
Of course. That is why such gestures work so well.
“You calc’late everything?”
No—but you wished to learn Captaincy. This is the way to do so.
Irritated, Killeen pushed Ling back into his mind’s recesses. Other Aspects and Faces clamored for release, for a freshening moment in his mind’s frontal lobes. Though they caught a thin sliver of what Killeen sensed, the starved interior presences hungered for more. He had no time for that now. The slippery idea still eluded him and, he realized, had provoked some of the irritation he had taken out on Ling.
If crew were already harvesting, then Killeen knew he had been running a bit too long. He deliberately did not use the time display in his suit, since the thing was ageold and its symbols were a confusing scramble of too much data, unreadable to his untutored mind. Instead he checked his inboard system. The timer stuttered out a useless flood of information and then told him he had been running nearly an hour. He did not know very precisely how long an hour was, but as a rule of thumb it was enough.
He wrenched the airlock stays free, prepared to enter, looked up for one last glimpse of the vista—and the idea popped forth, unbidden.
In a heartbeat he turned the notion over and over, inspecting every nuance of it, and knew it was right.
He studied the sky, saw the course Argo would follow in the gradually lifting gloom of the cloud-shadow. If they had to, there was enough in the sky to navigate by eye.
He cycled through the axial lock, passed quickly through the tight zero-g vapor shower, and was back inside the spun-up corridors within a few minutes.
Lieutenant Cermo was waiting for him at the midships gridpoint. He saluted and said nothing about Killeen’s lateness, though his irrepressible grin told Killeen that the point had not slipped by. Killeen did not return the smile and said quietly, “Sound quarters.” The way Cermo’s mouth turned down in utter dismayed surprise brought forth a thin smile from Killeen. But by that time Cermo had hurriedly turned away and tapped a quick signal into his wrist command, and so missed his Cap’n’s amusement entirely.
TWO
He directed the assault from the hull itself—not so much because of Ling’s windbag advice, Killeen told himself, but because he truly did get a better feel of things out there.
So he stood, anchored by magnetic boots, as sunrise came.
Not the coming of sunlight from a rotating horizon, a spreading glory at morning. Instead, this false dawn came as a gradual waxing radiance, seen through billowing, thinning grit.
Killeen had noticed that soon Argo would pass across the last bank of clotted dust that hid Abraham’s Star from them. The swelling sunburst would come as the ship very nearly eclipsed the mech vehicle that was escorting them inward toward the star.
—Still don’t see why the mech won’t adjust for that,—Cermo sent from the control vault.
“It will. Question is, how fast?”
Killeen felt relaxed, almost buoyant. He had committed them, after a week of vexed, fretting worry. If they entered the inner system around Abraham’s Star with an armed mech vessel alongside, a mere quick command from elsewhere could obliterate Argo. Best take it out now. If that proved impossible, this was the time to know it.
He searched the quilted sky for a single figure.
—Approaching on assigned path,—Gianini sent.
This young woman had been chosen by Jocelyn to close with the mech. Killeen recalled that she came from Family Rook and knew her to be an able crewwoman. He followed standard practice in letting his lieutenants choose specific crew for jobs; they knew the intricacies of talent and disposition far better than he. Gianini had fought mechs back on Snowglade, was seasoned and twice wounded.