For Love and Glory

“Signal received,” Dagmar broke in. “Audio on the fifth standard laser band. Code: ‘Distress. Please respond immediately.’ ”

A dream-hand caught Lissa around the throat.

“You know where it’s from?” she heard Valen snap.

“Yes. The Susaian ships just south of us. One of them.” If Dagmar has to correct herself, is she frightened?

“Acknowledge and translate, for God’s sake!”

Lissa had an impression that the hisses and whistles beneath the impersonal robotic voice were equally calm. “Moonhorn, commanding Supremacy, beaming to Asborgan vessel Dagmar. We request information as to your condition after the event.”

“We’re in good shape,” Valen said. “You?”

“Not so,” came after seconds of time lag. “We and Amethyst were tossed together, too fast for effective preventative action. Both ships are disabled. Casualties are severe.”

“A gravitational vortex,” Esker said raggedly. “A potential well, an abnormal local metric, expanding principally in the main inertial plane. It didn’t flatten to the ordinary curvature of space-time till it had passed you.” Lissa thought he found refuge in theory. Did he utter mere guesses? Belike he did. Who was sure of anything, here?

Her eyes tracked the dwindling star that was not a star. It gleamed exquisite, like a ringed planet seen from a distance, save that it was also like a galaxy with a single spiral arm. There passed through her: If Gerward hadn’t settled for less than we wanted, Dagmar too would be drifting helpless, a wreck. I might be dead. Oh, he might be!

“We’re sorry to hear that, madam,” Valen said. “Can we help?”

“I do not know,” Moonhorn answered, “but you are our single hope. We have contacted our nearer fellows. Ordinarily we could wait for them. However, observation and calculation show we are on a collision trajectory with one of those gaseous objects spewed from the fusion. We shall enter it in approximately four hours and pass through the center. At its speed, that will go very fast. But radiometric measurements show temperatures near the core that even in so brief a passage will be lethal. No Susaian craft is close enough, with sufficient boost capability, to arrive before then.”

Stillness descended. The time felt long until Valen asked, slowly, “You have no escape? No auxiliaries, anything like that?”

“Nothing in working order,” said Moonhorn. “Else I would not have troubled you. We realize that for you, too, a rescue may well be impossible.”

“We can cross the distance between at maximum boost, ten Terran gravities, with turnover,” Dagmar said, “in approximately one hundred and fifty minutes. To escape afterward, we should accelerate orthogonally to the thing’s path, but at no more than five gravities, since you have injured persons with you and the hale will have no opportunity to prepare themselves either. This acceleration must begin no later than half an hour before predicted impact, if we are to avoid the hottest zone. Before we start, my crew must make ready; otherwise, at the end of the first boost, they will be disabled, perhaps dead. Allowing time for that also, we should have half an hour, or slightly less, for the transfer of crews from your vessels to me.”

In short, Lissa thought, the operation is crazily dicey. No. We can’t. The odds are too big against us.

Her gaze went to the clouds. She didn’t know which of them was the murderer on its way, but they seemed much alike. Faerie nebulosity reached out around a glowing pink that must be gas overlying the white-hot, ultraviolet-hot, X-ray-hot middle. As she watched, small light-streaks flashed from it and vanished. Meteors. No, they must in reality be monstrous gouts of fire.

“I see,” Moonhorn was saying gravely. “Our hope was slight at best. Since those are the actual parameters, the risk is unacceptable. I would make that judgment myself, were situations reversed. Thank you and farewell.”

“No, wait!” Valen clawed at the locks on his harness. “We’re coming. Crew, prepare for ten gee acceleration.”

Is this possible? “Gerward, you can’t mean that,” Lissa protested.

His look upon her was metallic. “You heard me,” he said. “All of you did. Get into the tank. That’s an order.”

XXVII

The chamber was completely filled and closed off; should a sudden change of vector occur, slosh could be fatal. The salt water was at body temperature; apart from their sanitary units, skinsuits served only modesty. Afloat, loosely tethered, breathing through air tube and mask, you might soon have drowsed, were your faring peaceful. Not that comfort was complete. The liquid took weight off bones and muscles, it helped keep body fluids where they belonged. Yet heaviness dragged at interior organs, while nothing but medication held pain and weariness at bay. Eventually you must pay what your vigor was costing you, with interest.

A low, nearly subliminal pulse throbbed through Lissa. Dagmar could not hurl herself along at full power without a little of that immense energy escaping to sing in her structure. Hands and the miniature control panel on which they rested were enlarged in vision, seemed closer than they were. Yet shipmates on every side had gone dim, half unreal, in a greenish twilight.

Talk went by conduction from a diaphragm in the mask. After the scramble and profanity of getting positioned were done and boost had commenced, silence replaced a privacy that no longer existed.

Lissa broke it first. “Captain,” she said stiffly.

Valen never took his eyes off the single viewscreen, before which he was. “Yes?”

“Captain, I petition you to reconsider. I believe the others will join me in this.”

“I do, sir!” She had not expected shy Noel to speak up. “The science we’re losing, that we might do every minute if we weren’t idled here.”

“The science we will lose, sir, if we don’t survive,” Tessa chimed in. “That all the human race will.”

“The chances of our survival are poor, you know,” Lissa said.

“A crazy gamble,” Elif felt emboldened to add, “and for what? For some lizards that did their best to keep us away.”

“Mind your language,” Valen reprimanded in an automatic fashion. “Esker, have you any comment?”

“Well, Captain, uh, well,” the physicist replied, “of course, when you commanded, we obeyed. We’re no mutineers. But it’s not too late for you to reconsider and turn back, sir. Your impulse was generous—fearless, yes —but thinking it over, wouldn’t you agree we have a higher duty?”

He’s actually desperate enough to behave reasonably, Lissa thought in amazement.

“Orichalc?… No, I forgot, your trans wouldn’t work here.” Lissa thought fleetingly how lonesome that must feel. Valen turned his head. “But you have picked up a little Anglay, I believe. Nod if you vote for us going on, wave your tail if you vote for us going back.”

After seconds had mounted, it was the tail that moved.

Valen barked a laugh. “Unanimous, eh? Except for me.” He stared again at the viewscreen. From her post, Lissa saw it full of night; but he must be watching the flames. “However, I am the captain.”

She summoned her will. “Sir,” she said, “I have the authority to set our destination. It is in safe space.”

“I have the authority to overrule you if I see a pre-emptive necessity.”

“Crew may lawfully protest unreasonable orders.”

“If the protest is denied, they must obey.”

“This will mean a board of inquiry after the voyage.”

“Yes. After the voyage.”

“If the captain shows… dangerous incompetence, the crew may relieve him of his duties. The board of inquiry will decide whether or not they were justified.”

“How do you propose to do it? This ship is programmed to me.” Valen raised his voice, though it remained as