been deliberately buried. There are people like Ssessorn on many worlds, fighting a delaying and beclouding action while they await the Word, and these are the ones who will shout the loudest for surrender when it comes.'
'The lust for power,' said Glevan heavily, 'is a greater evil than the lust for gold.'
'Quite,' said Sekma, 'but of course they don't call it that any more, even to themselves. They do these things for the noblest of motives. Even Ssessorn, I'm sure, would never admit that he's acting out of sheer greed for power and hatred of the human races.'
'Well, the hell with their motives,' said Kettrick. 'I'm only interested in beating them. What kind of a thing is it that poisons a star? How is it delivered? You talk about scanning the planet, as though you expect it to be set up on the ground.'
'According to the best scientific conjecture…and I assure you that we've had some of the best brains in the Cluster, the ones we could trust, wringing themselves dry…the launching mechanism would have to be on the ground. It's a seeding operation, apparently. That is to say, the change in the sun is not made at one stroke, but in a number of strokes that continue to stimulate a growing reaction. The theory is that a fairly small launcher is set up, capable of delivering a series of very high-speed missiles. The warheads carry an artificially made cobalt isotope and a catalyst. These react with the cobalt atoms normally present in the sun and create still another isotope, violently unstable. Up to a certain critical point the action is reversible. Beyond that point the reaction is self-feeding and the sun turns itself into a gigantic cobalt bomb, destroying all life that may exist for millions of miles around it.
'Obviously, the missiles could not be launched from a ship, because the occupants thereof would fry in their own gamma rays if they waited around for the full operation. If the launcher is on the ground, they can rack up their warheads in an automatic loader and depart in safety.'
Kettrick nodded. 'All right. Let's get out the charts, then. I know the world of the Krinn probably better than anyone in the Cluster, though that isn't saying much. Maybe we can figure the likeliest spots. And you could almost double your capability by using the lifeboats as auxiliaries…'
'Not both of them. I'd have to keep one in case we spotted the launcher somewhere that the cruiser couldn't land. But the other one, yes.' He got out the charts.
Most of the remainder of the time they were in jump was spent in planning, except for the mealtimes and the sleeptimes, and one time when Kettrick found himself alone with Larith.
She had kept to her cabin a great deal. She had known early on, of course, that they were not bound for Trace. When Sekma told her she had only said, 'I am sorry you didn't believe me.' And her face had been as masklike and unreadable as Kettrick remembered it that night at Ree Darva. Since then she had hardly spoken, joining the others briefly at meals and then vanishing again, tightly wrapped in a shell of…what? Hurt pride that she had not been trusted, despair that she had failed in her mission? Or was it fear…fear of the Doomstar, of what might happen to Seri, and again, despair that she had failed in her mission? Kettrick didn't know.
When he came upon her unexpectedly in the wardroom she looked at him with eyes so deeply shadowed that he wondered if she had slept at all. 'I'm sorry,' she murmured, and tried to move past him to the door. He caught her and held her.
She was wearing a green I–C coverall, loaned to her so that she might change out of her single dress. He could feel her body through the hard masculine cloth, the beautiful body he had once joyed in, softly firm and supple and smoothly curved and vibrantly alive. Now it was rigid under his hand, and the feeling of vibrancy in it was only the all-pervading, nerve-rasping quiver that permeated every fiber during jump, the straining of each separate atom to retain its identity against a force that willed it to dissolve into chaos.
She brought her head up and said, 'Let me go, Johnny. You have nothing to do with me any more. Nothing.'
'I believe you,' he said. He did not let her go. She was so close to him that he was aware of her warmth and the faint fragrance of her hair. She was beautiful. Deep inside him he felt something like the stabbing of a knife. 'Did you ever love me, Larith?'
'That's a foolish question, Johnny.'
'I suppose it is.' He took his hand away. 'All right.'
He left her, crossing the small room, and she spoke from behind him with a bitterness that shocked him.
'You shouldn't have come back. Did you think we needed you? Did you think we were dying for lack of you? Why didn't you just leave us alone!'
She was gone then, pushing with a small shiver of revulsion past Chai. Kettrick remembered that Seri had never permitted the Tchell inside the house when she was there.
Chai snorted gently. She did not say anything. The perfect lady, Kettrick thought, in spite of her fur.
He poured himself a drink and did not drink it. He sat staring at it and forgot it was there.
After a long while he realized that for almost the first time since leaving Earth he had thought of a girl named Sandra and wished her well.
Some time later they came out of jump.
The White Sun blazed in the sky ahead of them, one of the few hot white stars in the Hyades, a savage young warrior among the middle-aged and mellow suns. The fierce light beat at the cruiser's safety shields.
The radiation counters showed normal.
'Temporary reprieve,' muttered Kettrick. 'Or were we wrong?'
Sekma did not answer.
They stared from the shielded windows of the bridge at the world of the Krinn swimming through the glare. There was no doubt about which planet might have been chosen as a platform from which to launch the Doomstar. The two small inner worlds were semi-molten, the outer three impossible because of poisonous atmosphere, gravitation, or cold. The world of the Krinn alone supported life. After its own fashion.
The surface markings of the planet began to show in patchy glimpses between high cloud cover and the much lower clouds of smoke and dust. Kettrick made out the heliograph flash of white deserts, the black lava blotches of volcanic zones, the crinkled desolation of mountain ranges still raw and cruel with youth, the basins of shallow seas drying in the sun. Still closer, and he could see the great winding river courses and the green of the fertile belts.
The radarman said sharply, 'Sir!'
At almost the same instant, while Weapons Control was in the act of starting to range and the ports were sliding open, according to prearranged plan, Communications cried out, 'Sir! A message coming through…'
It came through clearly, in spite of the hiss and crackle of atmospherics.
In the intense silence that followed, the radarman said, 'She's gone.'
No radar, no killer beam nor missile could follow
The world of the Krinn raced toward them. The White Sun blazed.
And the radiation counters gave a small premonitory leap.
22
Sekma was the first one to break the silence. His voice was low but it was steady, and it had a hard, iron ring to it.
'We will conduct the sweep of the day side, as planned. There is a chance that we can find the launcher and deactivate it before the critical point is reached.'
The acting skipper, a Darvan like Sekma and a good solid man, said, 'How long would that give us?'
'It is estimated,' Sekma said, laying a small stress on the word, 'that the point beyond which the reaction will not reverse itself is reached in approximately twelve hours from the impact of the first missile. That would have been at sunrise.' He paused briefly. 'Unfortunately we have no way of guessing at the longitude of the launcher emplacement, so it doesn't help us much.'
