Moyshe stood facing the dark gate with all the unanswerable questions still banging around in his mind. The nature of his want remained the biggest, closely followed by the meaning of the gun thing.
He started worrying about Amy. Where was she? Would she be safe? "Stupid question," he muttered. Of course she was not safe. Nobody was safe today.
Then he saw her standing at the tool crib. What was she doing here? She spotted him, started his way.
"Where's Mouse?" she asked.
He explained quickly.
"Good," she said when he finished. She tried to remain cool, but a tear formed in the corner of one eye. She brushed at it irritably. She had caught some of the groundside uninvolvement disease from him, he thought. Why else would a Seiner hide her emotions? Three men had died. It was a sad affair.
She said, "I'll call Jarl. He may not have sent anyone else down."
Moyshe resumed his seat, stared at the deck tensely, counting rivets and welds. When would the Sangaree missiles arrive?
The attack, when it came, was not Sangaree. The dull-witted sharks, confused and distressed by the sudden appearance of so many more ships, reached emotional critical mass. They attacked in all directions.
Scraps of news filtered in from Operations Sector. Some were good, some bad. The Sangaree were having a hard time. But the sharks attacking the harvestfleet were concentrating on Danion.
In the sea of nothing the service ships were killing, and sometimes being killed by, sharks. The Sangaree vainly fought an enemy invisible to their equipment while, foolishly, continuing to try for a position of vantage against the harvestfleet. There was a wan hope in that, Moyshe thought. The sharks might take care of them. But, then, who would take care of the sharks?
Danion shivered continuously. All her weaponry was in action, firing on Sangaree and sharks alike. BenRabi grimaced as he wondered just what the monster ship mounted.
He waited with his team in the heart of the great mobile, he smelling their fear and they his. Amy quivered like a frightened rabbit in the crook of his arm. Alarms screamed each time the sharks penetrated the defenses, but DC South received no emergency calls.
Courage brewed beneath the fear. There was no tension between landsman and Seiner now. They were united in defiance of an unprejudiced death.
Danion rocked. Sirens raked their wicked nails over a million blackboards. Officers shouted into the confusion. A damage-control team piled aboard an electric truck and hurtled off to aid technicians in the stricken sector. Behind them the mood gradually turned grim as the fear, unable to sustain itself indefinitely, faded into a lower key, an abiding dread. Each technician sat quietly alone with his or her thoughts.
The damage reports began arriving. Nearly ten percent of Danion's population were either dead or cut off from the main life-support systems. More trucks left. Survivors had to be brought out before the emergency systems failed.
And there Moyshe sat, doing nothing, awaiting his dying turn.
Somewhere in the big nothing the Sangaree raidmaster decided he had had enough. His fleet took hyper, bequeathing the Starfishers his share of ghostly foes.
"Suits," said the blank-faced Fisher directing DC ops when the news arrived. He foresaw the end.
They drew spacesuits from the emergency lockers. BenRabi donned his while thinking that this was the first time he had worn one seriously. Always before it had been for training or fun.
He wondered why Mouse had not yet shown. Was he in the sector cut off? He asked Amy.
"No. There's no damage there yet. Jarl probably hasn't had a chance to do anything. Our people should all be manning weapons."
Danion screamed, whirled beneath them. Moyshe fell. His suit servoes hummed and forced him to his feet. The gravity misbehaved. He floated into the air, then came down hard. The lights weakened, died, returned as emergency power entered the lines.
A shark had hit Danion's main power and drives.
Somebody was yelling at him. Amy. "What?" He was too upset to listen closely, heard only that his team was going out. He jumped at the truck as it started rolling. Seiner hands dragged him aboard.
Twenty minutes later, in an odd part of the ship devoted to fusion plant, his team captain set him to securing broken piping systems. Whole passageways had been ripped apart. Gaps opened on the night. Sometimes he saw it, starless, as he worked, but thought nothing of it. He was too busy.
Hours later, when the pipes no longer bled and he had time for sloth, he noticed a vacuum-ruined corpse tangled in a mass of wiring, dark against an outer glow. That gave him pause. Space. It was what he was not supposed to see, so of course he had to look. He walked to the hole, saw nothing. He pushed the corpse aside, leaned out. Still nothing. No stars, no constellations, no Milky Way. Nothing but a tangle of harvestship limned by a sourceless glow.
He stood there, frozen in disbelief, for he knew not how long. No stars. Where were they that there were no stars?
The harvestship rotated slowly. Something gradually appeared beyond tubing, spars, and folded silver sails—the source of the glow. He recognized it, but did not want to believe it. It was the galaxy, edge on, seen from beyond its rim. His premonitions returned to haunt him. What, outside the galaxy, was near enough to be reached by ship?
Far away, another harvestship coruscated under shark attack. Danion had shuddered to several while he worked, but none had been bad. There was an explosion aboard the other vessel. Gases spewed from her broken hull. But his eyes fled her, hurrying on to the coin-sized brightness rising in the direction of rotation.
It was a planet. Self-illuminating, no sun. There was only one such place...
Stars' End.
Certain destruction for all who went near.
What were the Seiners doing? Were they mad? Suicidal?
Something broke, something blossomed across the face of the galaxy, a hundred times brighter, a fire like that of an exploding star. A harvestship was burning in a flame only a multidimensional shark could have ignited. They were growing more cunning, were spraying antimatter gases that totally devoured. In a corner of his mind a little voice asked, as a Fisher would, if that vessel's death had served the fleet. Were sharks dying there too?
His gaze returned to Stars' End. All his myths were hemming him in. He did not doubt that the Sangaree would return. It was not their style to back down when the stakes were high, and there was more on the line now than a source of ambergris.
He knew why the Seiners had come here. As did all who sought Stars' End, they wanted the fortress world's fabulous weapons. For centuries opportunists had tried to master the planet. Whoever possessed its timeless might became dictator to The Arm. No modern defense could withstand the power of Stars' End weaponry. Nor could sharks. The weapons were the salvation for which Payne had dared hope.
What a faint hope! BenRabi knew there was no way to penetrate the planet's defenses. Battle fleets had failed.
A hand touched his shoulder. A helmet met his. A voice came by conduction. "We're pulling out. Danion's been hit inboard of us. We don't want to get trapped here." In those words Moyshe imagined great sadness, but little of the fear he felt himself.
They managed to reach D.C. South again only by trekking several kilometers afoot through regions of ship that looked like they had been mauled by naval weaponry. Moyshe found it hard to believe that the wrecking had been done by a creature he could not see.
A room had been prepared for them to relax in, with snacks and drinks, and secure enough so they dared shed their suits.