within the darkened, stifling cabin, been able to locate the launch release, the engagement of which had two primary effects, the first being to activate the clearance thruster, used for distancing the capsule from the mother ship, to protect it in the event of explosions or radiation, and the second being to activate, after the clearance burn, various systems internal to the vehicle, which supplied heat, light and oxygen. This delay in activating the clearance thruster kept the capsule cold when the first tracking shots left the Ortungen fleet. Two missiles, which tracked from the ships themselves, by means of monitors, not heat, had followed the capsule for over fifteen hundred miles. Then it had disappeared from the monitors. The gladiator had, of course, manually, disengaged the locating beacon, and turned off internal and external lighting as soon as these devices could be located. He had also reduced the noise level in the vehicle as much as possible, levering down even the life support systems to minimum settings. The ship was then like a silent, dark mote in a silent, dark sea, a mote which seemed to be nowhere, but might be anywhere. A pursuit craft had been sent out, but it was soon recalled to the mother ship. It paused only long enough to collect the two missiles, which had then been disarmed by signals from the mother ship. It was not clear to the gladiator why the pursuit had been so soon terminated. The capsule had suffered damage in its emergence from the Alaria. This damage rendered accessible navigational equipment inoperative and impaired the utility of manual devices for controlling the vernier thrusters, used for course adjustments. In effect the ship was, manually, blind and rudderless. This injury was not, under the circumstances, however, a serious one. The escape capsules, you see, were not designed for skilled, practiced operators. Their functioning was largely a matter of automatic sequences. Once the launch sequence had been activated, the capsule was designed to clear the mother vessel, initiate life support and transmit a tracking signal. One purpose of the verniers, of course, was to make it possible to remain in the vicinity of the initial launch, in case rescue might be imminent. To be sure, that would not have been wise under the circumstances which then prevailed. I think there is little doubt that the gladiator was fortunate to have escaped from the vicinity of the Ortungen fleet. For example, his capsule being largely uncontrollable he could not have used a launch trajectory which might have made use of an Ortungen ship as a shield, so that it would be exposed only to the guns of the shield ship, have engaged in complex evasive activity, engaged and disengaged engines in such a way as to leave a scattered, confusing track of dissipating heat behind it, made use of distant stars and bodies, and occasional debris, and such, to mask its position, and so on. To be sure several escape capsules, over the past few days, had managed to successfully elude the Ortungen fleet, most often when they burst forth together, using the schooling effect to disconcert the predator. Although it is not immediately germane to our narrative, it is of interest to note that Pulendius was among those who had managed to flee the Alaria successfully. Some days later he and his party were picked up by one of ten imperial cruisers. The presence of these cruisers in the vicinity was no accident. They had come in response to the distress call of the Alaria. This was the reason, incidentally, that the pursuit of the gladiator’s ship, and, indeed, of another, as well, had been so soon terminated. Most escape capsules, however, as you may have gathered, were not successful in eluding the Ortungen fleet. Indeed, only a handful was successful; most were destroyed. Indeed, an escape capsule which had left the Alaria only moments before that of the gladiator had, several hours later, as a result of the explosion of a pursuing missile, been severely damaged, and cast adrift thereafter amongst the gravitational geodesics of that portion of space. The clearance thruster had been detached, the explosive bolts being fired, shortly before the projected strike of the missile. The missile had struck the trailing thruster and not the escape capsule. The capsule itself, however, given the proximities involved, and the quantity and speed of the debris, both of the thruster and the missile, had been severely damaged. If one detaches the thruster, or such a device, prematurely, it is unlikely to be useful as either a decoy or a shield. It is unlikely to be useful as a decoy because, at least within practicable detection distances, it can be distinguished from the target. As a shield it must appear suddenly enough and close enough to the missile’s target that it is not possible for the missile, closing on the target, to avoid it. It must, accordingly, be interposed at almost the last moment, and the attendant risks accepted. Had the escape capsules been war vessels, of course, they would have been equipped with more sophisticated defensive devices. As it was, they were not even armed with handguns. Weaponry, as we now well know, tended to be carefully controlled by the empire. And, indeed, the escape capsules which had been stored in Section 19 were supernumerary capsules, and not a part of the regular escape complement, which complement consisted of capsules readied in the locks. Accordingly, they were not even equipped with charts, not that these would have been of great use to most civilian occupants. They were equipped, however, happily, with the usual complements of stores. In the case of the last two escape capsules, those with which we have been recently concerned, these stores had been to some extent depleted by the fugitives, those who had been hiding in the hold. On the other hand, this matter was not serious, as a very limited number of passengers was involved in both cases.
“The horns, Master!” said Janina.
“Yes,” he said.
The horns had again sounded.
The gladiator had lost consciousness a few hours after the launching of the escape capsule. He had awakened later, it was not clear how long he had been unconscious, to feel a dampened rag being pressed in the darkness to his brow.
“Master?” had asked Janina.
His armor had been removed.
They knew not where they were.
He had then again lapsed into unconsciousness, weakened from the loss of blood, bruised, shaken, from the impact of the armor blasted back against his body.
After two days they had illuminated the cabin.
The gladiator had lain on one elbow, and looked at the slave.
She cast her eyes downward, shyly.
“Remove your clothing,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
He then took her in his arms and turned her beneath him, onto the steel plating of the escape capsule flooring.
“Master is strong!” she whispered.
“Be silent,” he told her.
“Yes, Master,” she had said.
When a slave is told to be silent, you see, she may not speak.
But, in a few moments, she gasped, and cried out, and then, later, clung to him, his, subdued.
The capsule had drifted in space for weeks, lonely and rudderless, tugged this way and that by forces so subtle they could not have detected them, but then, eventually, as the consequence of the invisible geography of gravity, they began, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, to spiral toward a world. The testing sequence was initiated, and it soon became clear to the capsule’s occupants that, for one reason or another, whether from a lack of necessity or because of inoperability consequent upon damage, the secondary clearance system was not going to fire. The implementation of the landing program had begun, of course, immediately after the processing of the results of the testing sequence.
There had been several tiny ports in the escape capsule, of only some four inches in diameter. It was difficult to see through them. The monitoring cameras, fore and aft, were not functioning.
They could feel heat, even within the capsule, as the atmosphere was penetrated.
In the descent something must have gone wrong, for a disk at the bow began to flash redly.
A whining, sirenlike sound filled the cabin for a brief moment, and then stopped. The disk stopped flashing.
They could see trees below.
They were moving laterally. Behind them, but visible through one of the ports, was a rope of fluid, aflame.
“There is no place to land,” had screamed Janina.
The terrain below was, indeed, rugged, and forested.
There was a frightening sound as the speeding capsule lashed through branches and then, suddenly, climbed, again, upward. Then it spun about, and hovered, arid seemed to slip in the air, down a dozen feet, and then another dozen feet. It righted itself. It began to descend again, and then, again, abruptly, in the light of what obstacle the occupants knew not, rose up again.
