'What?' Dorcas sounded edgy. As well she might be after these many hours, Saxtorph told himself.
'How could the tnuctipun bring the weapon to bear?' Tyra asked. 'The black hole was orbiting free in interstellar space, surely, light-years from anywhere. The mass is huge to accelerate.'
'They could have harnessed its own energy output to a polarizer system.'
'Really? Is that enough, to get it to a destination fast enough to be useful?'
Smart girl, Saxtorph thought. She hasn't got the figures at her fingertips, but those fingers have a good, firm, sensitive hold on reality. 'Through hyperspace,' Dorcas clipped.
'Forgive me,' Tyra said. 'I do not mean to be a nuisance. You must know more about tnuctipun technology than I do. But I studied what I was able. Is it not true that their hyperdrive was crude? It would not work before the vessel was moving close to light speed. This genstand has ordinary velocity, in the middle of empty space.'
'That is a shrewd question,' Dorcas admitted.
'A real fox question,' Saxtorph said. He was coming out of his preoccupation, aware how tired he was but also exuberant, full of love for everybody. Well, for most beings. Especially his comrades. 'It could stonker our whole notion. Except I believe I've found the answer. There is in fact a hyperdrive engine. It's not like anything we know or much like any of the hypothetical reconstructions I've seen of tnuctipun artifacts. But I believe I can identify it for what it is, or anyhow what it does. My guess is that, yes, they could take this black hole through hyperspace, emerging with a reasonable intrinsic velocity that a gravity drive could then change to whatever they needed for combat purposes.'
'How, when every ship must first move so fast?' Tyra wondered.
'I am only guessing, mind you. But think.' Despite physical exhaustion, Saxtorph's brain had seldom run like this. Talking to her was a burst of added stimulation. 'Speed means kinetic energy, right? That's what the Slaver hyperdrive depended on, kinetic energy, not speed in itself. Well, here you've got a terrific energy concentration, so-and-so fantastically many joules per mean cubic centimeter. If the tnuctipun invented a way to feed it to their quantum jumper, they'd be in business.'
'I see. Yes. Robert, you are brilliant.'
'Naw. I may be dead wrong. The tech boys and girls will need months to warm over this gizmo before they can figure it out for sure. They better be careful. Considering how well preserved the apparatus is, in spite of everything that the black hole inside and the universe outside could do, I wouldn't be surprised but what that hyperdrive is still in working order.'
'More powerful than ever,' Dorcas breathed. 'The black hole has been evolving.'
'Brrr!' Carita exclaimed. 'Knock it off, will you? If the ratcats got hold of it—' She yelped. 'But they were here! Weren't they? How much did they learn? How come they didn't whoop home to Alpha Centauri with this thing and scrub our fleet out of space?'
'Even taking its time, what a single expedition could find out would be limited, I should think,' Dorcas said. Her tone went metallic. 'We, though, the human species, we'd better make certain.'
'Yah,' Saxtorph concurred. He shook himself in his armor. 'Listen, I decree we're past the point of diminishing returns today. Let's head back, Carita, have a hot meal and a stiff drink, and sleep for ten or twelve hours. Then I have some ideas about our next move.'
'Wow-hoo!' his companion caroled, uneasiness shoved aside. 'I thought you'd decided to homestead. Say, ever consider how lucky the tnuctip race was, not speaking English? Spell the name backwards—'
'Never mind,' Saxtorph sighed. 'Compute your vectors and boost.'
Bound for Rover, he felt as if he were awakening from a dream. In the time lately past, he had experienced in full something that had rarely and barely touched him before, the excitement of the scientist. It had been a transcendence. How did that line or two of poetry go? 'Some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.' Or a new star, small and strange, foredoomed, yet waxingly radiant; and the archeology of a civilization vast and vanished. Now he returned to his ordinary self.
He ached, his tongue was a block of wood, his eyelids were sandpaper, but he rejoiced. By God, he had seen Truth naked, and She took him by the hand and led him beyond himself, into Her own country! It wouldn't happen again, he supposed; and that was as well. He wasn't built for it. But this once it did happen.
When he and Carita completed airlock cycle, their shipmates were waiting for them. Dorcas embraced him. 'Welcome, welcome,' she said tenderly.
'Thanks.' He looked past her shoulder. How bright was Tyra's hair against the bulkhead. His brain hadn't yet stopped leapfrogging. 'We've got facts to go on,' he blurted. 'Knowing what the kzinti found, we can make a pretty good guess at what they did. And where they are. With your dad.'
'O-o-oh—' the Wunderlander gasped. He disengaged. She sprang forward, seized and kissed him.
Chapter XI
When the kzinti again drew Peter Nordbo into time, his first clear thought was: Hulda, Tyra, Ib. More than twenty years now. Do you live? I almost wish not, I who come home after helping our masters arm themselves for the enslavement of all humanity. Forgive me, my darlings. I had no choice.
'Up,' growled the one that hulked above him. 'The commander wants you. Why, I don't know.'
Nordbo blinked, bewildered. Through the gloom in the chamber he recognized the kzin. It wasn't the technician in charge of such tasks, it was one of the fire-control ratings. Their designation translated roughly as 'Gunner.' What had gone on? A fight, a killing? The crew were disciplined and the discoveries at the black hole had kept them enthusiastic; nevertheless, after months in close quarters, tempers grew foul and quarrels flared.
Well he knew. He bore several scars from the claws of individuals who took anger out on him. They were punished, though no disabling injury was inflicted. Nor had torture left him crippled, being carefully administered. He was too useful to damage without cause. 'Move!' Gunner hauled him from the box and flung him to the deck. There was mercy in the wave of physical pain that swept from the impact. For a moment it drowned every other awareness.
It faded, Nordbo remembered anew, he crept to his feet and hobbled off.
The corridor stretched empty and silent. How utterly silent. The rustle of ventilators sounded loud. Dread sharpened in him and cut the last dullness away. A-shiver, he reached the observation turret and entered. Only the heavens illuminated it.
No suns of Alpha Centauri shone before him, no constellations whatsoever. Around a pit of lightlessness, blue stars clustered thinly. As he stared aft he saw more, whose colors changed through yellow to red; but behind the ship yawned another darkness rimmed with embers.
Aberration and Doppler effect, he recognized. We haven't slowed down yet, we're flying ballistic at half the speed of light. Why have they revived me early? They didn't expect to. I'd served my purpose. No, their purpose. I could merely pray that when their scientists on Wunderland finished interrogating me, I'd be released to take up any rags of my life that were left. Unless it makes more sense to pray for death.
Yiao-Captain poised athwart the stranger sky. Its radiances gleamed icy on eyeballs and fangs. His ears stood unfolded but his tail switched. 'You are not where you think you are,' he rumbled. 'Twenty-two years have passed,' — Nordbo's mind automatically rendered the timespan into human units—'and we are bound for our Father Sun.'
The shock was too great. It could not register at once. Nordbo heard himself say, 'May I ask for an explanation?'
Did Yiao-Captain's curtness mask pain of his own? 'We were about three years en route back to Alpha Centauri.' After half a year at the black hole. 'A message came. It told of a fleet from Sol, invading the system and shattering our forces. Somehow the humans have gained a capability of traveling faster than light. No ship without it can win against the least of theirs. We must inevitably lose these planets. It must already have happened when Snapping Sherrek received the beam.
'When I was roused and informed, naturally I did not propose to continue there, bringing my great news to the enemy. I ordered our forward velocity quenched and the last of our delta v applied to send us home.'
At one-half C, a trip of nearly six decades. Nordbo's thought trickled vague and slow. Can't stop at the far end. Hurtle on till the last reserve mass has been converted, the screen fields go out, and the wind of our passage
