Fate of Worlds: Return From the Ringworld

suggest you run like hell. We’re launching immediately.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lorraine hissed. “This ship doesn’t have the range to take you anywhere. It’s only for servicing the array.”

He knew that. If these ships had had interstellar range, they would have been much better secured. “Let me worry about where I’m going.” Because I’m worried enough for all of us.

Gingerly, Amelia extracted the comp from their captive’s pocket.

“Now get the roll of tape from my pocket. Lorraine, when I ease up bring your arms together. My colleague will tape your wrists together behind your back. Do you understand?”

Lorraine nodded.

“Try anything,” Sigmund warned, “and I’ll dislocate your shoulder.”

Amelia, paler than ever, sloppily taped together Lorraine’s wrists.

Sigmund released his hold, took the roll of tape, and did a proper job binding Lorraine’s arms. “You can get up now.”

Shrugging off Sigmund’s helping hand, Lorraine struggled to her feet.

He led the mechanic to the air lock. “Again, I’m sorry about this. If it makes a difference, this is done in a good cause.”

“You can tell yourself that,” Lorraine snarled.

He shoved her out the hatch. “Come with me to the bridge,” he ordered Amelia.

From a hundred feet above the field, in an infrared view as he tipped Elysium’s bow skyward, Sigmund glimpsed Lorraine. She ran awkwardly, arms bound behind her, already halfway across the tarmac.

He opened up the ship’s main thrusters.

* * *

MINUTES LATER, while Planetary Defense dithered over what to do about a receding object, Elysium shot beyond the edge of New Terra’s singularity and then vanished into hyperspace.

* * *

AS THE MASS POINTER LIT, its one long line indicating New Terra, Sigmund turned toward Amelia. He wondered which of them was more upset.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No, I’m not all right!” she shouted. “Thanks to you, I’m a mugger, a thief, a traitor, and a fugitive.”

He was all those things — and ancient and exhausted. His skin crawled from the knowledge he was once more in space, and on a ship before it could be fully checked out.

But he was also the professional here. Suck it up, he told himself.

Great advice, but he found himself lost in the view port’s hyperspace-denying images of a stormy, rockbound coast.

Koala could pop up within days and everything now depended on Amelia. He had to get her moving, engaged, fired up — and fast. The question was: how? For the love of her daughter? Patriotism? The lure of long-lost Earth.

No, Sigmund decided. Her pride.

“It’s time,” he told Amelia, “to prove you’re as smart as you think you are.”

* * *

“I HADN’T DARED not to believe,” Amelia said. Though her face was drawn and her eyes had grown puffy with exhaustion, she gazed with satisfaction upon her handiwork. Around her, Elysium’s photonics shop was awash in cannibalized probes: sensor platforms, hyperwave-radar buoys, and defensive drones. Two extensively modified probes sat side by side on a workbench. “But actually to have done it…”

Sigmund rubbed his eyes, as weary as she. He could contribute nothing to the effort beyond fetching spare probes from the nearby cargo bay and coffee from the relax room, but if he had gone off for much needed rest, Amelia might have slept, too. The hell of things was, he had no idea how much time they had. He had to assume, very little. With a gung-ho captain, Koala could appear any day.

What were the odds Louis Wu’s grandson was a slacker?

Sigmund said, “Then the probes will work?”

“Oh, they’ll do as you asked.” Amelia exhaled sharply. “Will that bring the results you expect? That’s out of my hands.”

Mine, too, Sigmund thought. “Shall we get them deployed?”

“That’s why we built them.” She paused. “Oh, crap, Sigmund. I can’t stay cool. I don’t know how you do it. That’s Julia out there.”

“I know.” Awkwardly, he gave Amelia a hug. “We’ll keep her safe. I promise.”

Snuggled against his chest, he felt her nod.

“I’ll be on the bridge for a little while,” he told her, letting go. “Once we’re in position, I’ll help you put the probes out the air lock.”

Their ship hung beyond the sensor range of the New Terran early-warning array, its normal-space velocity toward New Terra about five percent of light speed. A five-second jump brought them almost within the array’s reach.

They each carried one modified probe. With inner and outer air-lock hatches open, Sigmund pushed the altered defensive drone out through the air-pressure curtain. He backed out of the lock to let Amelia launch the modified hyperwave-radar buoy. When he rejoined her, the drone was only a glint by the glow of a distant blue nebula. They watched both probes drift away.

Sigmund slapped the button to close the outer hatch. “Shall we?”

“What if you’re wrong, Sigmund?”

Then we go to jail, my faith in humanity somewhat restored. “What if I’m right?” he countered.

Looking ready to cry, Amelia said, “Let’s do it.”

* * *

THE PROBES COASTED ACROSS the unmarked border of New Terra’s early-warning array. By then, Elysium had jumped several light-seconds away and killed its normal-space velocity.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Sigmund told Amelia.

“I’m ready now. First signal.”

She sent a low-power pulse to the modified defensive drone and it vanished into hyperspace. Like anything transitioning between normal and hyperspace, it made a ripple. The bigger the normal-space protective bubble, the bigger the ripple. Squandering energy prodigiously, this probe had, before jumping, inflated its bubble to the size of a decent-sized starship. To the early-warning array, it was a starship.

Now to make it look like an arriving starship.

“Second signal sent,” Amelia announced. “Our hyperwave gear is back in receive mode.”

They heard, “This is the Earth vessel Koala, calling New Terra.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Amelia said.

“So do I.”

From his console, Sigmund read the faint trace of hyperwave-radar pings. This far from the array, the echoes off Elysium would be undetectable. The buoy they had dropped was nearer to the array, but due to the little probe’s size its echoes would not be detectable either.

Instead, the scan had triggered an active hyperwave pulse from the decoy buoy. That pulse mimicked a ship-sized echo. As modified, the buoy radiated infrared, too. The IR would look like a ship’s waste heat.

“We’ll know soon,” Sigmund said.

But the seconds crawled.

“This is New Terra Planetary Defense,” their hyperwave radio announced. “Welcome,