The Ophiuchi Hotline

" 'The Cavorite is headed for the Hotline sending station.' Here you can insert the explanation I just gave you. He's bright; he should understand. 'Expenses for this trip will be about four hundred times the figure originally discussed. A drone tanker is now departing the catapult head on Pluto, and will soon start to accelerate at nine gees. As you know, these ships are not recoverable; hence the drastic increase in expenses. It will rendezvous with us in about twenty million seconds. Without it, of course, we would have fuel to reach the station, but not to return.

" 'If you, Tweed, wish to be represented on this expedition, you will cause to be deposited in my account in the Bank of Lowell a sum which my bankers have already communicated to you. Should you not desire to pay, your interest in this expedition will be considered terminated. The ship will go on as pla

"You can't do that!" The veins were standing out on Vaffa's neck. Her clenched fists were bleeding. Cathay seemed delighted, and Lilo wanted to allow herself the euphoria she felt, but knew she wasn't home free yet. Carefully, gently, she stroked Vaffa's shoulder. If the woman exploded now, it could be fatal.

"Listen to me, Vaffa," she whispered. "You've got to do what's best for the Boss, don't you? Don't do that! Let go of me!" The grip on her arm loosened for a moment. Cathay had come over and put his head close to theirs.

"She's right," he said. "Don't lose your temper. Think it out. Sure, she's got the Boss over a barrel, but she's offering him a good deal. She'll kill you if you can't learn to live with this, and then the Boss is never going to get out to the Ophiuchites and find out what he wants to—"

"She couldn't kill me! That freakish, puny little—"

"Think about what you're saying, Vaffa. This is her ship. You can't even get into her room. You don't have a weapon, and there's no telling what she might have. She even beat you bare-handed. You're going to have to swallow your pride and admit it. You've got to do this for Tweed, remember, for the Boss."

Slowly, painfully, Vaffa released her grip on Lilo's arm. Her shoulders slumped, and she sank slowly to the deck with her head on her hands. Lilo glanced up at the screen and the impassive face. She went out into the corridor, up the ladder, and into the solarium. A screen came to life, close to her feet. She looked down at Javelin's face.

"I want to thank you," she said, and felt tears coming to her eyes. She didn't bother wiping them away.

"It's okay. The situation had to be resolved."

"It isn't, not yet. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I... it occurs to me that you could space all of us. After you've got the money."

Javelin shrugged. "I won't. It's a chance you'll have to take. I'm not above pulling a fast one to save myself some money—no holehunter ever is. Stinginess is second nature to us. But I won't break a bargain. I contracted to take you there, and that's what I'm going to do."

"Why?"

Javelin looked a little embarrassed. "Well, we're going to meet some aliens, maybe. I guess I do have a little loyalty to the human race. It didn't seem right to go alone; I thought I ought to take a cross-section of the race, if I could."

Lilo laughed. "A holehunter, a killer, a disbarred teacher, and a condemned criminal."

"Is that what you are? You'll have to tell me all about it one of these days. We'll have plenty of time."

Lilo choked up. She did want to talk about it. She hadn't been able to bring it up with Cathay; maybe Javelin would be the person.

"What about Vaffa?" she asked.

"I don't know. I'll take her along if she behaves. But I won't feel I've broken the contract with Tweed if I have to destroy her like a mad dog, as a menace to the safety of the ship."

"That's it. I'm worried about her. She's not good with abstractions. I can explain to her that being good, not causing trouble, is what the Boss would want her to do. Otherwise, you kill her and Tweed loses out. Damn! Why should I be trying to save her life? She's threatened to kill me many times. She's killed two of my clones."

"All you'd have to do to kill her," Javelin observed, "is to leave things alone. She'd clash with me, and that would be it, right?"

"I think so." Lilo sighed. "I don't know if it's that I hate to see anyone killed, or if I'm afraid I might get killed before you got rid of her. Anyway, it's an explosive situation. Here's what I want. I don't think Vaffa's capable of disobeying a direct order from Tweed. I want to add a demand to your list. He must order her not to harm you, or me, or Cathay. She's to be relieved of her duties guarding us. He must impress on her that she is his only representative on the ship, that it's all in her hands. She's got to live to report back to him, and to do that she must live peacefully with us."

"Done. Will that work?"

"I'm sure of it. It will settle her mind, make her accept it. And Tweed will go along. He won't be happy, but he doesn't have much choice, does he?"

"That's how I saw it," Javelin said smugly.

Lilo smiled, and finally dared to let herself believe she was free. She was cooped up on this ship, but she was free.

"How long will we be gone, by the way?" she asked.

"The trip will take about three hundred million seconds, going out."

"Would you mind putting that into standard Earth months?"

"About one hundred and twenty. Twenty years, round trip."

19

We could have made the trip to Poseidon much faster than we did. Even hauling my entire Ring base, that tug Cathay stole had plenty of power; it was built to shove quantum black holes around with a minimum of fuss.

But the whole stunt depended on arriving at Poseidon at exactly the right time, coming from just the right angle. We were constrained by the relative positions of Jupiter and Saturn at the time of departure, the orbital speed of Poseidon, and its rotation rate.

I had never bothered to give my rock hideaway a name. As we neared Poseidon and cut in the tug's engines again to get the rock up to speed, Cathay named it Vengeance.

They were hanging motionless relative to Poseidon, about fifty kilometers away. Without magnification it appeared as a small, irregular patch of gray, but on Lilo's screen it could be seen in more detail. It was dark and jagged, and coming around the horizon was a small cup with a fierce blue light in it.

Lilo thought back to the last time she had seen Parameter/Solstice. She had wanted them to come along, but it was obviously out of the question. If she and Cathay were successful with what they were about to do, there would be no time for dropping Parameter off anywhere; they would have to leave the system quickly. But Lilo wished they could have been with her to see their plan work.

If it worked, she reminded herself, swallowing nervously.

"Ten seconds," Lilo called out. She was wired into the computer, monitoring its performance through the cameras on Vengeance. She could feel the tiny bursts from the steering rockets as the guidance program made fine adjustments to the course. Now the target was coming up at blinding speed, made accessible to Lilo's senses only through the computer link. She got a glimpse of silver, then the impact destroyed the camera.

"A hit," she said quietly. She pulled the computer cord from the socket in her head.