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The supervisor hesitated from one foot to the other, wiped his face. The stationmaster was offshift, asleep. It was hours into maindark. The supervisor was alterday chief, second highest on the station. The red-alert button was in front of him on the board, unused for all of Endeavor’s existence.
“... it’s behindus,” he heard next, the merchanter frequency, from out in the range. “Endeavor Station, do you read, do you read? This is merchanter John Lilesout of Viking. We’ve met a bogey out there ... it’s dragged us off mark ... Met ...”
Another signal was incoming. (!) (!!!) (!!!!!)
“... out there at Charlie Point,” the transmission from John Lileswent on. An echo had started, John Liles’ message relayed ship to ship from every prospector and orehauler in the system. Everyone’s ears were pricked. Bogeywas a nightmare word, a bad joke, a thing which happened to jumpspace pilots who were due for a long, long rest. But there weretwo images on scan, and a signal was incoming which made no sense. At that moment Endeavor Station seemed twice as far from the rest of mankind and twice as lonely as before.
“... It signaled us out there and we jumped on with no proper trank. Got sick kids aboard, people shaken up. We’re afraid to dump velocity; we may need what we’ve got. Station, get us help out here. It keeps signaling us. It’s solid. We got a vid image and it’s not one of ours, do you copy? Not one of ours or anybody’s.What are we supposed to do, Endeavor Station?”
Everywhere that message had reached, all along the time sequence of that incoming message, ships reacted, shorthaulers and orehaulers and prospectors changing course, exchanging a babble of intership communication as they aimed for eventual refuge out of the line of events. What interval incoming jumpships could cross in mere seconds, the insystem haulers plotted in days and weeks and months: they had no hope in speed, but in their turn-tail signal of noncombatancy.
In station central, the supervisor roused out the stationmaster by intercom. The thready voice from John Lileswent on and on, the speaker having tried to jam all the information he could into all the time he had, a little under three hours ago. Longscan techs in Endeavor Central were taking the hours-old course of the incoming vessels and making projections on the master screen, lines colored by degree of probability, along with reckonings of present position and courses of all the ships and objects everywhere in the system. Longscan was supposed to work because human logic and human body/human stress capacities were calculable, given original position, velocity, situation, ship class, and heading.
But one of those ships out there was another matter.
And John Lileswas not dumping velocity, was hurtling in toward the station on the tightest possible bend, the exact tightness of which had to do with how that ship was rigged inside, and what its capacity, load, and capabilities were. Computers were hunting such details frantically as longscan demanded data. The projections were cone-shaped flares of color, as yet unrefined. Com was ordering some small prospectors to head their ships nadir at once because they lay within those cones.
But those longscan projections suddenly revised themselves into a second hindcast, that those miners had started moving nadir on their own initiative the moment they picked up John Liles’ distress call the better part of three hours ago. Data began to confirm that hypothesis, communication coming in from SSEIS I Ajax, which was now a fraction nadir of original projection.
Lindyhad run early in those three hours, such as Lindycould ... dumped the sling and spent all she had, trying to gather velocity. Rafe plotted frantically, trying to hold a line which used the inertia they had and still would not take them into the collision hazard of the deep belt if they had to overspend. Jillan ran counterchecks on the figures and Paul was set at com, keeping a steady flow of John Liles’ transmission.
If Lindyoverspent and had nothing left for braking, if they survived the belt, there were three ships which might match them and snag them down before they passed out of the system and died adrift ... if they did not hit a rock their weak directionals could not avoid ... if the station itself survived what was coming in at them. They could all die here. Everyone. There were two military ships at Endeavor Station and Lindyhad no hope of help from them: the military’s priority in this situation was not to come after some minuscule dying miner, but to run, warning other stars so Paul said, who had served in Fargone militia, and they had no doubt of it. It was a question of priorities, and Lindywas no one’s priority but their own.
“How are we doing?” Rafe asked his sister, who had her eyes on other readouts. The curves were all but touching on the comp screen, one promising them collision, and one offering escape.
“Got a chance,” Jillan said, “if that merchanter gives us just a hair.”
Paul was transmitting, calmly, advising John Lilesthey were in its path. On the E-cha
“Rafe,” Jillan said, “recommend you take all the margin. Now.”
“Right.” Rafe asked no questions, having too much input from the boards to do anything but take it as he was told. He squeezed out the last safety margin they had before overspending, shut down on the mark, watching the computer replot the curves. In one ear, Paul was quietly, rationally advising John Lilesthat they were ten minutes from impact; in the other ear came the com flow from John Lilesitself, babble which still pleaded with station, wanting help, advising station that they were i
“Come on,” Rafe muttered, flashing their docking floods in the distress code, into the diminishing interval of their light-speed message impacting the 3/4 C time-frame of John Liles’ Doppler receivers. He was not panicked. They were all too busy for panic. The calculations flashed tighter and tighter.
“We’ve got to destruct,” Paul said at last in a thin, strained voice. “Three of us—a thousand on that ship—O God, we’ve got to do it—”
Sudden static disrupted all their scan and com, blinding them. “She’s dumping,”Jillan yelled. John Lileshad cycled in the generation vanes, shedding velocity in pulses. They were getting the wash, like a storm passing, with a flaring of every alarm in the ship. It dissipated. “We’re all right,”Paul yelled prematurely. In the next instant scan cleared and showed them a vast shape coming dead on. Rafe froze, braced, frail human reaction against what impact was coming at them at a mind-bending 1/10 C.
It dumped speed again, another storm of blackout. Rafe moved, trembled in the wake of it, fired directionals to correct a yaw that had added itself to their motion. Scan cleared again.
“Clear that,” Rafe said. “Scan’s fouled.” The blip showed itself larger than Ajax, large as infant Endeavor Station itself.
“No,” Paul said. “Rafe, that’s not the merchanter.”
“Vid,” Rafe said. Paul was already flicking switches. The camera swept, a blur of stars, onscreen. It targeted, swung back, locked.
The ship in view was like nothing human-built, a disc cradled in a frame warted with bubbles of no sensible geometry, in massive extrusions on frame and disc like some bizarre cratering from within. The generation vanes, if that was what those projections were, stretched about it in a tangle of webbing as if some mad spider had been at work, veiling that toadish lump in gossamer. Lightnings flickered multicolor in the webs, and reflected off the warted body, a repeated sequence of pulses.