Genesis

energy conduit for the fold system.'

He gave a bitter smile. 'Was, I should say.'

'Which means that after the fold system disappeared, the gun's power source was separated from it, correct?' Gloval asked. 'What are you planning to do, since we haven't much spare conduit left?'

And, ironically, conduit was one of the very few things the fabricators couldn't reproduce with materials at hand. But the main gun was SDF-1's hope of survival; Gloval studied Lang, hoping the man had an answer.

Lang assumed the tone he'd used in his lectures back on Earth. 'The SDF-1's construction is Robotech construction, sir. That is, the ship is modular, as our Veritech fighters are modular. Variable geometry, you see.'

Lang ran a series of illustrations to show what he meant. 'So, simplistically speaking, we should by all rights be able to reconfigure the ship, altering its structure in such a way as to bridge the gap that now exists between the main gun and its power source.'

It was all a little breathtaking and bold; the proposed reconfiguration, with modules realigned in new shapes, was radically different from the SDF-1 as she now existed.

Gloval felt very uneasy. Lang went on, 'The problem, very simply, is that until this modular transformation is completed, the main gun cannot be fired.'

Lang gestured to the diagrams. 'There are going to be major changes, both internally and externally. Of course, the rebuilding of the city and the other modifications made by and for the refugees were never planned for in the ship's construction. I anticipate considerable damage. It's going to be quite a mess for a while.'

Gloval was staring at the diagrams, haunted by the awful scenes he'd been forced to witness out the SDF-1 bridge viewport after the spacefold. Mention of structural conversions and damage automatically made alarm bells go off in any seasoned spacer's head; despite Lang's cool calculations, the risk wasn't just of damage-it was of utter disaster.

'Don't we have any other way to fire the main gun, Doctor?'

'You mean besides a modular transformation, sir? No other way that I know of.'

Gloval turned away from the screen angrily. 'We just can't! The people are only now getting used to being here, trying to patch their lives back together. To subject them to such chaos and perhaps lose more lives-no, it would be just too much.'

But a small part of him feared that the decision wasn't that simple; events could force his hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Rick Hunter who crashed in that hold would never have listened to Roy Fokker. The one who came out…

Well, it's just funny how things happen sometimes, isn't it?

The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter

Can I have two more orders of egg foo yong and a milk shake, please?' the air crewman yelled over the din in the White Dragon.

'Milk shake?' Minmei shivered at the thought, but she put the order in anyway. Uncle Max didn't seem to mind in the least; he was happier than she'd ever seen him, doing the work of three men back in the kitchen, performing miracles with stove and wok.

And the place was packed; word had gotten around even faster than Minmei had hoped. The SDF-1 liaison officers were overjoyed at this solution to their food distribution headaches and provided incentive packages to get the whole population to resume as normal a life as was possible under the circumstances.

Minmei turned, then burst into a smile. 'Oh, hi, Rick!'

But he gave no sign of having heard her, slouching toward the door with hands in pockets. Minmei watched him go, her brows knit, suddenly worried and confused.

The hangar bay was dark, quiet as a tomb. Very appropriate, Rick thought.

He pulled the bright red-and-white striped chute off the dashed remains of Mockingbird just enough to be able to gaze down at a flattened section of engine. The racer was wreckage and would never be anything else again. He still couldn't bring himself to accept that, and so he forced himself to stare, to acknowledge.

He shook his head. 'Boy, what a mess.'

'Hey, Rick!' It was Roy, stepping into the little circle of light. 'Now, show me this junk pile.'

Rick came to his feet, fists balled. 'Listen, buddy, this is the racer I won eight international championships in. You call it junk? I oughta knock your block off, Roy!'

Roy kneeled to take a better look at Mockingbird's remains. 'Actually, it's very nice junk. But-them's the breaks, kiddo.'

Rick seemed about to explode.

'Hey, I've got an idea.' Roy grinned. 'Let's take a walk, okay?'

Rick looked startled. 'I've never seen you so depressed in my life,' Roy went on. 'What you need is exercise!' He came over to put an arm around his friend's shoulders. 'Try it! You'll like it!'

Roy's walk took them to the uppermost part of SDF-1 for an astonishing view.

From the lounge of the officers' club, Rick found himself looking down on the Daedalus. 'Wow! An aircraft carrier connected to the Robotech ship?'

There was a long elbowlike housing holding the carrier fast. Rick could see that the ship had been patched and made airtight and was in service. All six bow and waist cats appeared to be in operation. As he watched, an elevator brought up two Veritechs for launch.

The Thor-class supercarrier, almost fifteen hundred feet long, had undergone a lot of other modifications. Most conspicuously, its 'island'-the towerlike superstructure that had once dominated the flight deck and been the Daedalus's bridge-had been removed to leave the deck perfectly flat. All flight operations had been combined in the SDF-1's command center, and the salvaged materials and equipment had been used in the design changes.

The Veritechs spread their wings, not for the sake of aerodynamics but rather because the wider placement of thrusters gave them better control. The hookup men and cat crews, now spacesuited and still color-coded according to their jobs, went through the time-honored routine.

As Rick watched, a bow cat officer pointed to his 'shooter,' the man who actually gave the order to launch. The cat officer signalled the Veritech pilot with a wave of a flashlight, pointing toward the bow, dropping to one knee to avoid being accidentally hit by a wing.

The fighter was accelerated off the flatdeck's hurricane bow at almost 200 knots-not because airspeed was necessary in the airlessness of space but to get the Veritech launched and clear of the ship in a hurry, as it would have to be in combat, so as not to be a sitting duck for alien pilots.

The Veritech banked and soared away. Rick had to remind himself that it was flying in total vacuum; Robotech control systems made the operation of a fighter very much a matter of thought, and the Veritech pilots were used to thinking in terms of atmospheric flying. And so the Veritechs flew that way; it was wasteful of power, but power was something Robotech ships, with their reactor drives, had in great supply.

Rick watched longingly. 'Terrific.'

'How'd you like to fly one again?' Roy clapped Rick on the shoulder.

Rick spun on him. 'What are you saying?'

'Join us, Rick. Become a Veritech pilot and stop all this moping around.'

Rick's expression hardened. 'I don't want to be a fighter pilot.'

'Oh? You'd rather drag yourself around the SDF-1 like a lovesick idiot? Well?'

Rick broke loose of Roy's hand, turning away. 'Roy?' he said over his shoulder.