'Yes, Thinker. It indicates potential deceleration of promat.'
'That's bad, too, isn't it?'
'Very bad, Thinker. It means the containment chamber in the boom is failing.'
'Well, never mind about that, Sweety! Tell me what's going on around us! This power source above us—it's the stardrive, right?'
'I have insufficient data to respond accurately to the question, Thinker. I detect a mag field containment device enclosing an antimat generation and containment chamber.'
'Right, right, that's the antimat drive! But what about that other power source, up near the nose? What does it do?'
'I have insufficient data to respond to the question, Thinker. Both power sources appear to be part of an integrated stardrive system. Analysis is continuing.'
Two little balls of lightning floating up ahead exploded suddenly, showering me with sparks. I continued crawling forward along a narrow tunnel lined with mirrored surfaces. Something awful was blazing up ahead, as bright as a sun.
'Deadman. I love this. What the hell are you talking about, Sweety? If you detect antimat, it's an antimat drive, right? And the containment unit is failing, right? Talk to me, Sweety! What's the damned problem?'
'Negative, Thinker. There is a unitium-based mag field around the antimat power source midships, and it is stable. This does appear to be an antimat star drive. However, I detect a microscopic source of negative pressure in the second power source by the boom, enclosed by what appears to be a unitium-based containment unit that is failing. The unitium accelerates promat, which appears to be shielding the ship itself from the power source in the boom. Theoretically, this is D-neg. However, as this is not physically possible, I have discarded this information. Analysis is continuing.'
'D-neg! Deadman! How could they do that?'
'They could not, Three. It is not possible. The force would implode the ship, instantly. Nothing could contain such power.'
'Tell me again—what do you detect?'
'A microscopic point of negative energy density and negative pressure, infinitely powerful—theoretically similar to D-neg. I repeat, these observations are in error. I am running diagnostics.'
'I think we've got enough, Wester. Get back here!' Tara commanded urgently.
'With pleasure!'
###
Tara unlinked me back in the stardrive's control room. I let the A-suit parts fall noisily to the deck. They gleamed with moisture.
'That was fun!' I stripped off my soaking liteshirt and threw it to the floor. I was streaming with sweat. The alarms screeched on and the ceiling flashed violet. Gildron had hauled out the dead O's and Tara had let Willard into the control room. Gildron squatted down, showing Willard his teeth, and Willard laughed, popping his tiny fists in and out of Gildron's massive jaws.
'We've got a problem, Wester,' Tara said.
'No, I'm the one with a problem. You didn't just get fried with gamma.'
'Your A-suit kept out most of it, Wester. No, we've got a bigger problem than that.'
'Tell me something I don't know.'
'The immediate problem is the imminent failure of the unitium containment system which holds that D-neg in stasis.'
'I agree with your analysis. But this is crazy, Tara! The only thing we know about D-neg is that it can't be created, captured or contained—by unitium or anything else!'
'Everything else is secondary—the radiation, the pressure locks—let it happen, we can deal with it all. But we've got to keep that D-neg under control!'
'How can we worry about things that are beyond our understanding? Our best scientists don't understand D-neg. It's a reality, but nobody's ever gotten close to it—and here we've got Sweety saying this starship is powered by it, and the unitium containment is failing. Great! Thank you very much, Sweety. Information overload! Now please tell us what to do!'
'My analysis is continuing, Thinker,' Sweety interrupted, a trifle defensively.
'I agree we can forget the D-neg,' Tara said. 'There's no way we can understand it. But the D-neg itself is not the problem. The problem is the unitium containment unit that's failing. Let's concentrate on that.'
'Fine! What do you suggest? Nobody understands unitium, either!'
'I don't know. But we have the entire power compartment on the tacmap now, and I've asked for a solution. Unfortunately, the tacmod can't give us any help on the controls, Wester. No help at all. Unknown energy fields between the controls and the drive. Indecipherable!'
'This is terrific,' I said glumly. 'We'll be going nova any time now.'
'Gildron says this is a new problem. There was no alarm—no flashing lights—when he attacked the O's.'
'What! Are you sure?'
'Absolutely. The O's may have had a problem with the stardrive, before—but it didn't involve alarms or red lights.'
'Then it's something that happened as a result of Gildron's attack! Or maybe as a result of our attack.'
'Yes—I think so,' Tara said. 'But we don't know what caused it, or what will stop it!'
'It could be something simple—one of these controls jammed into the wrong position.'
'Or it could be something so complicated we have no possible way of understanding it, much less fixing it.'
'Don't panic!' I was beginning to panic. I took a deep breath. 'Let's think. What if this was a Legion starship—or a Systie ship, for that matter. The antimat containment is going critical. What do we do?'
'There's nothing wrong with the antimat containment unit on this ship.'
'I know that! Damn it! Why the hell do they need two power sources? Look—we're going to have to assume the D-neg containment unit works the same way, aren't we? What do we do?'
'It doesn't work the same way. D-neg would probably work the opposite way. But to answer your question, in antimat drive, we'd stabilize the iomag stream. If that fails, we'd be forced to eject the antimat from the ship, and go to the alternate drive.'
'Nice! Well, we're certainly not going to be able to stabilize the iomag stream. Are we even dealing with iomags? I can't even find an ON and OFF switch in this mess.' I gestured to the wall of alien instrumentation.
'It doesn't appear we are dealing with iomags. It's interesting that they use unitium,' Tara said, 'just as we suspected. Ever since Andrion Three, the Legion thought the O's were using unitium in their stardrive, for we knew unitium could theoretically be used to accelerate promat. Without iomag containment systems, antimat can't be controlled to produce the antigravity and negative pressure needed to hold open our artificial wormholes. We've just confirmed the Legion's suspicions about unitium, Wester. But the Legion never suspected D-neg! We thought the O's used antimat drive. What else could we think? Well, they've got antimat drive here, but it's bigger than that. D-neg! Lord! They use the unitium to contain and control the D-neg as well!'
'All right—can we eject the D-neg from the ship?'
'Forget it, Wester! Even if we were dealing with antimat on a Legion ship, with a week's intensive preparation, maybe the two of us could handle it without detonating the antimat. But not here, and not with D- neg.'
'Damn it! So what do we do? Give up?' I was sweating and furious. All our efforts, come to naught. And our wonderful prize, the Omni ship with all its awesome secrets, blown away in a microfrac probably because one of these damned controls was stupidly set in the wrong position. I glared at the instrumentation. There was no way we could possibly decipher any of it.
'The alternative,' Tara said, 'is to abandon ship.'
'I'm not leaving this room,' I said, 'until this problem is resolved.'
'According to the tacmod, it may be resolved very shortly. And it's not going to be a happy ending.'
The claxons wouldn't stop hooting. Was the tone becoming more urgent? I frantically scanned the controls. Death was certain, whether or not we abandoned ship. We had no idea where in the vac we were—no idea at
