He hoped Griffith would be all right. The young officer lay
254 vonda N. Mdntyre
unconscious, but his pulse was strong, his breathing regular, and his larynx uncrushed.
Kolya could not have overcome Griffith by a direct attack. Instead he had let Griffith believe he saw an opening. When Griffith came at him, determined to overwhelm him, Kolya gained the advantage by knowing what he planned.
Kolya considered fitting Griffith into a spacesuit and taking him along. In the end, he decided against the plan. It was too dangerous. Griffith might be right to fear that the carrier would not pause to rescue one human being, or even two.
You will not thank me, I suppose, Kolya thought. But you are fortunate. You will continue with the expedition, while I must stay behind.
Victoria wanted to be in the sailhouse, in the observatory, anywhere but here. She wanted to be watching as Starfarer's magnetic claws grabbed the cosmic string; she wanted to be in the center of everything that happened.
'If you do not reverse the sail, Hector will shoot to cripple your ship.'
'They can't be serious!' Victoria cried.
'Wait a minute!' the transport pilot shouted. She began to curse at the carrier.
Stephen Thomas shivered.
'I don't know about you. Fox, but I'm getting cold.'
He did know about her. She was sitting on a washing-machine-sized ultra-centrifuge, and her teeth were chattering.
'You could've picked a warmer place to hide. A nice meadow in the wild cylinder, maybe.'
'You have to sign in,' she said. 'You would have known where to look.'
'Through all sixty square kilometers?'
'Go ahead, make fun of me. I'm not getting on the transport.'
'I really appreciate this,' Stephen Thomas said. 'When
we get back, we all get to go straight to jail for kidnapping a
minor. A minor president's niece, at that.'
'Look on the bright side, Stephen Thomas,' Fox said.
'You'll get a lot longer sentence for helping steal Starfarer.
STARFARERS 2 55
Besides, maybe we won't get back.' She sniffled. 'It isn't fair!'
'I'm sorry. It isn't fair. But you still have to get on the transport and go home.'
'I thought you were my friend!'
'Stephen Thomas?'
Stephen Thomas glanced over his shoulder. 'In here, Sa-loshi. I found her.'
Satoshi came into the cold room.
'Hello, Fox.'
'Hello, Lono.'
'This is not a great place to hide.'
'I didn't think anybody would look here.' She glanced at the rock in her hand. 'You know ... if you tried to force me out, and I busted a few things in here, I might infect the whole ship with . . . with ... ' She searched for a suitably horrible possibility. 'With black plague.'
'Forget it,' Stephen Thomas said. 'We don't keep pathogens on board except in transcribed form. You might as well
try to infect somebody with a book.''
'I bet I could do some damage to the gene stocks.'
'You're a good geographer,' Satoshi said, 'but you haven't done any homework on genetics—or on the expedition's backups.'
'Says who?'
'Says me,' Stephen Thomas said. 'Dr. Thanthavong doesn't take chances. We keep backups of everything at the other end of the building.'
'Oh, yeah? Then how come you guys don't drag me up to the transport?'
'I don't believe in physical violence.'
'I don't either,' Stephen Thomas said, 'but I'm beginning to understand its attraction.'
The final countdown to transition began. As the carrier sped toward Starfarer, the starship's sail changed. Not reversing, as the carrier commanded, but withdrawing entirely.
In the sunless, starless place they would soon enter, no solar wind existed to fill it and keep it untangled.
'Redeploy the sail,' the voice of the carrier commanded.
256 vonda N. Mcintyre
'You wilt not be permitted to draw in the sail. You must reverse it.'
'The starship won't go into transition!' the transport pilot shouted. 'I know these people, they won't—'
'Esther, undock now, dammit!' Victoria cried.
Victoria let her breath out hard. She wished she were with Stephen Thomas and Satoshi. She wished they were all with Iphigenie in the sailhouse. The halyards drew in the great silver sheet, stretching and compressing it into taut folds, gently twisting it into a cable kilometers long, but only a few meters in diameter.
'Magnetic fields at full strength,' Arachne said through the speaker of the nearby hard-link- 'Magnetic fields engaged.'
'Shit!' Esther shouted. 'Undock!'
'It's too late!'
'Undock, dammit!'
'Encounter,' Arachne said, in its completely matter-of-fact computer voice.
The magnetic claws engaged with the cosmic string, transformed an infinitesimal percent of its unlimited energy, and began to build transition energy.
The countdown reversed, leading toward transition. Victoria imagined she could feel the increase of the starship's potential.
They can't stop us, she thought- No matter how fast the carrier moves, it can't catch us, it can't follow us, it can't stop Starfarer.
Ecstatic, she shouted in triumph and flung her arms around Thanthavong.
The voice of the carrier spoke.
'Fire.'
A point of light detached itself from the carrier and accelerated at terrifying speed toward the starship.
The missile hit.
Starfarer shuddered.
Victoria gasped. She held Thanthavong tighter, as if she could protect her if the starship collapsed around them.
Drifting free, Victoria saw the ship vibrating, and felt the trembling of the heavy, oppressive air. The rumble of the attack pressed against her hearing, a drumming of such low frequency that she felt it in her bones.
'Esther!' The traffic controller's voice rose as he tried to reach the transport pilot.
J.D. and Zev propelled themselves into the traffic control cubicle, J.D. pale with shock, Zev excited.
'What happened?'
'The missile,' Thanthavong said. 'Was it armed?'
'It can't have exploded,' Victoria said. 'We'd . . . we'd know.' She dove for the hard-link and desperately demanded real-time information on Starfarer's status.
Arachne responded sluggishly, but it did respond. The campus and the wild side both maintained their air pressure:
neither cylinder had been seriously breached. They had been built well, to retain their integrity under the stress of the spin, the pull of the solar sail, the unknown changes of transition.
