The Rebel Worlds

“Do you ’spect danger?” she asked quietly.

“I’d better not expect anything else.” He departed. The bridge viewscreens showed Virgil astonishingly grown. Asieneuve had entered the system with a high relative true velocity, and her subsequent acceleration would have squashed her crew were it not for the counteraction of the interior gee-field. Its radiance stopped down in simulacrum, the sun burned amidst a glory of corona and zodiacal light.

Flandry assumed the command chair. Rovian said: “I suppose the vessel was orbiting, generators at minimum, until it detected us. If we wish to rendezvous with it near Aeneas” — a claw pointed at a ruddy spark off the starboard quarter — “we must commence deceleration.”

“M-m-m, I think not.” Flandry rubbed his chin. “If I were that skipper, I’d be unhappy about a hostile warship close to my home planet, whether or not she’s a little one and says she wants to parley. For all he knows, our messages are off tapes and there’s nobody here but us machines, boss.” He didn’t need to spell out what devastation could be wrought, first by any nuclear missiles that didn’t get intercepted, finally by a suicide plunge of the ship’s multiple tons at perhaps a hundred kilometers a second. “When they’ve got only one important city, a kamikaze is worth fretting about. He could get a wee bit impulsive.”

“What does the captain mean to do, then?”

Flandry activated an astronomical display. The planet-dots, orbit-circles, and vector-arrows merely gave him a rough idea of conditions, but refinements were the navigation department’s job. “Let’s see. The next planet inward, Dido they call it, past quadrature but far enough from conjunction that there’d be no ambiguity about our aiming for it. And a scientific base … cool heads … yes, I think it’d be an earnest of pious intentions if we took station around Dido. Set course for the third planet, Citizen Rovian.”

“Aye, sir.” The directives barked forth, the calculations were made, the engine sang on a deeper note as its power began to throttle down speed.

Flandry prepared a tape a

Time crept by. “What if we are not allowed to leave this system afterward?” Rovian said once in Eriau.

“Chance we take,” Flandry replied. “Not too big a risk. I judge, considering the hostage we hold. Besides, in spite of our not releasing her to him, I trust friend McCormac will be duly appreciative of our having gotten her away from that swine Snelund … No, I shouldn’t insult the race of swine, should I? His parents were brothers.”

“What do you really expect to accomplish?”

“God knows, and He hasn’t seen fit to declassify the information. Maybe nothing. Maybe opening some small cha

“Can you not indulge here?”

“The captain on a human ship isn’t supposed to have human failings, they hammered into me when I was a cadet. I’ll have too many explanations to invent for my superiors as is.”

Rovian emitted a noise that possibly corresponded to a chuckle.

The hours trickled past. Virgil swelled in the screens. Rovian reported: “Latest data on the other ship indicate it has decided we are bound for Dido, and plans to get there approximately simultaneously. No communication with it thus far, though it must now be picking up our broadcast.”

“Odd. Anything on the vessel herself?” Flandry asked.

“Judging from its radiations and our radar, it has about the same to

“No doubt the Aeneans have pressed everything into service that’ll fly, from broomsticks to washtubs. Well, that’s a relief. They can’t contemplate fighting a regular unit like ours.”

“Unless the companion—” Rovian referred to a second craft, detected a while ago after she swung past the sun.

“You told me that one can’t make Dido till hours after we do, except by going hyper; and I doubt her captain is so hot for Dido that he’ll do that, this deep in a gravitational well. No, she must be another picket, brought in on a just-in-case basis.”

Nevertheless, he called for armor and battle stations when Asieneuve neared the third planet.

It loomed gibbous before him, a vast, roiling ball of snowy cloud. No moon accompanied it. The regional Pilot’s Manual and Ephemeris described a moderately eccentric orbit whose radius vector averaged about one astronomical unit; a mass, diameter, and hence surface gravity very slightly less than Terra’s; a rotation once in eight hours and 47 minutes around an axis tilted at a crazy 38 degrees; an oxynitrogen atmosphere hotter and denser than was good for men, but breathable by them; a d-amino biochemistry, neither poisonous nor nourishing to humankind — That was virtually the whole entry. The worlds were too numerous; not even the molecules of the reel could encode much information on any but the most important.

When he had do

“I’d like to get in touch with your research base,” he said, “but how the deuce can I find it under that pea soup?”

“They may not answer your call.”

“On the other hand, they may; the more likely if I beamcast so they can tell I’ve got them spotted. That ship closing with us is maintaining her surly silence, and — Well, if they’re old chums of yours on the ground, they ought to respond to you.”

She considered. “All right, I trust you, Dominic Flandry. The base, Port Frederiksen” — a brief white smile — “one of my ancestors founded it — ’s on the western end of Barca, as we’ve named the biggest continent. Latitude 34° 5’18” north. I’spect you can take it from there with radar.”

“And thermal and magnetic and suchlike gizmos. Thanks. Stand by to talk in, oh, maybe half an hour or an hour.”

Her look was grave. “I’ll speak them truth.”

“That’ll do till we can think of something better and cheaper.” Flandry switched off, but it was as if her countenance still occupied the screen. He turned to Rovian. “We’ll assume an approximate hundred-minute orbit till we’ve identified the base, then move out to a synchronous orbit above it.”

The exec switched his space-armored tail. “Sir, that means the rebel ship will find us barely outside atmosphere.”

“And it’s useful to be higher in a planet’s field. Well, didn’t you last inform me she’s coming in too fast to manage less than a hyperbolic orbit?”

“Yes, sir, unless it can brake much quicker than we can.”

“Her master’s suspicious. He must intend to whip by in a hurry, lest we throw things at him. That’s not u

“Aye, sir. Have I the captain’s permission to order screen fields extended at full strength?”

“Not till we’ve located Port Frederiksen. They’d bedbug the instruments. But otherwise, except for the detector team, absolute combat readiness, of course.”

Am I right? If I’m wrong — The loneliness of command engulfed Flandry. He tried to fend it off by concentrating on approach maneuvers.

Eventually Asieneuve was falling free around Dido. The cessation of noise and quiver was like sudden deafness. The planet filled the starboard screens, dazzling on the dayside, dark when the ship swung around into night, save where aurora glimmered and lightning wove webs. That stormy atmosphere hindered investigation. Flandry found himself gripping his chair arms till he drove the blood from his fingernails.