He is, probably, following Command directives. Logic never has much to do with security procedure.

Do those clowns think our competitors have an agent aboard?

Not bloody likely. There's a limit to the power of disguise.

Gunnery exercises are little more than gun error trials. Everything but the final firing order is handled by computer. A dull go. No sport. But a break in an otherwise oppressively monotonous routine. The Energy Gunners spear their targets on second shot. I batter mine to shrapnel with my third short burst. The range, however, isn't extreme.

Later, I suppose, there'll be exercises on full manual, or with limited computer assistance, simulating various states of battle damage.

I do find a constant error in gun train or gun train order. I enter a correction constant. So much for another exciting day.

Curious that gunnery exercises weren't scheduled till this late in the patrol. Did the Commander know there would be no action? The man nearest me is an Energy Fire Control Technician named Kuyrath. I ask him, "How come the Old Man put this off so long?"

"Typical crap, probably. Command probably sent us out knowing we wouldn't run into anything. Just for the hell of it. Just to have us jacking around. And you wonder why morale stinks?"

He has a lot more to say. None of it compliments Command. He hasn't a bad word for the Commander.

But now I'm wolfing off along a new spoor.

ITve decided that I've been overlooking an inexplicable undercurrent of confidence among the more experienced men.

As if they knew no action was imminent. If gunnery exercises are a signal, that should change. We shall see.

The changes comes, and sooner than any of us expect. With the possible exception of Climber Command.

The word is waiting at the next beacon, which is the contact-control for our present patrol sector.

There won't be time for manual gunnery exercises.

6 First Contact

Pushing hell out of two months now. Same old zigzag. One step back, two forward. But...

Our baseline has twisted around. We're headed toward Canaan now. More or less. Westhause figures about twelve years to get there at our present rate of approach. We're not taking it in one big rush.

We're turned around. That's the point. Something has happened. We have hunting orders. At last.

Like everything else about this patrol, they make no sense.

Command has targeted us a vessel crippled more than a year ago. She's been rediscovered, running in norm. Must be a crafty bunch, to have kept their heads down this long.

The Old Man doesn't like it. He keeps mumbling, "Coup de grace," and, "Why waste the time? The poor bastards deserve better." I've never seen him so sour.

None of the others are excited, either.

I'm nervous as hell. It's been a long time.

Yanevich says it could get complicated. The target is running for the hunter-killer base we called Rathgeber before the other firm took it away. She is pushing .4 c. That'll mean some fancy maneuvering when we engage her.

And some trick shooting. That's a lot of inherent velocity. We haven't the time or fuel to match it. "What are they doing for fuel?" I ask.

"Ramscooping, probably," Yanevich says. 'They may have tankers dumping hydrogen ahead of her."

Still, she must have been fat to start. Maybe she's a tanker herself. "Why the hell didn't they abandon her? Or, if she's that important, why didn't a repair ship come fix her generators?"

Yanevich shrugs. "Maybe they got a lot of pressure from our people back then. Maybe running in norm was their only option."

Our first chore will be to relocate the ship. Those aren't dummies running the other team. They'll know she's been spotted. She'll be running a jagged course.

First we'll run a search pattern surrounding a baseline drawn from the target's last known position to her suspected destination. During the search, Piniaz will decide how to tackle a vessel traveling almost too fast to track. Point-four c in norm. That's smoking.

The obvious tactic is to drop hyper ahead and shove a missile flight down her throat. Hitting the tiny, necessary relative motion window would be a trick, though. The target is moving too fast to hit from even a slight angle. Knowing that, she'll be running a constantly changing course.

Shooting down the throat means shooting blind. The target is moving too fast. (That's an endless refrain, like a song with only one-line lyrics.) She'll run over us if we take time to aim. The Fire Control system needs a quarter second, after detection, to lock and fire. In that split second our target will traverse more than thirty thousand kilometers.

"You're right," I say. "They aren't dummies. I don't see how we can stop them. I suppose Command says we can't waste missiles."

Yanevich smiles. "You're thinking Climber now. Damned right. Never waste a missile on a cripple."

More seriously, "We couldn't use one. No time to target and program in norm, not enough computation capacity to compute simultaneity close enough to plop one into their laps from hyper.

Tannian should send minelayers. Seed the target path."

"Why're we bothering?"

"Because Fearless Fred told us to. Why do we bother with any of this shit? Don't ask why. Why doesn't matter in the Climbers."

How sour he is lately. He's saying the things the Commander is thinking. He'll have to learn to control himself if he wants to become a Ship's Commander.

"It doesn't matter anywhere else, either, Steve. You're supposed to do your job and trust your superiors."

"What the hell? Anything beats what we've been doing. It's something to mess with till a convoy shows."

Later, while the First Watch Officer confers with Mr. West-hause, Fisherman says, "I hope they make it, sir."

"Hmm? Why's that?"

"Just seems right. That their efforts be rewarded. Like it says in the Bible... but the Lord's will, will be done."

Curious. Compassion for the enemy...

I find it a widespread attitude, though the men all say they'll do their jobs. Even Carmon shows no hatred or hysteria, just respect and a hint of an anachronistic chivalry.

The gentlemen of the other firm aren't wholly real, of course. Making them real, believable, and sinister, has been a problem for our captains and propaganda kings. The men can't get worked up about someone they have never seen. It's hard to interact emotionally with an electronic shadow in a display tank.

It's like fighting specters who take on flesh only for those inescapably in their clutches. Only on our lost worlds do our people actually see their conquerers.

It's hard to hate them, too, because they practice none of the common excesses of war. We never hear atrocity stories. There have been no pointless massacres. They avoid civilian casualties.

They don't use nuclears inside atmosphere. They simply operate as a vast, efficient, and effective disarmament machine. From the beginning their sole purpose has been to neutralize, not to subjugate or destroy.

We're baffled, naturally.

Confederation won't be as charitable, if ever the tide turns. We play tougher, though we've stuck to the tacit rules so far.

The Commander and Mr. Westhause comp a program that will drop us on the target's last known position. Nicastro keeps nagging the computermen for a search program. Mr. Yanevich flutters hither and yon, mothering everyone.

The First Watch Officer's role is constricted this patrol. Under normal circumstances he plays a prick of the first water, a rigid disciplinarian, a book-thumper, and becomes the focus for the crew's antipathy toward authority. The Commander remains aloof, and when needed goes round with a warm word or unexpectedly friendly gesture. His role is that of father figure without the usual disciplinary unpleasantness. Most Commanders cultivate quirks which make them appear more human than their First Watch Officers. Our Old Man lugs that huge black revolver and chews his pipe.