his skin behind his ear making him aware that someone was trying to fone him. He allowed the connection by reaching up and pressing his forefinger against the fone there.
‘Political Officer Ruger,’ said Captain Scotonis, ‘you wished to be kept updated of any changes in Argus’s status. It has fired up a steering thruster and changed course, but only by about half a degree.’
Clay halted, his finger still up against his fone. ‘Any idea why?’ He glanced at Liang and the other three staff officers, who were gazing at him with a strange blank indifference.
‘Not as yet.’
‘I’m coming up to the bridge now,’ said Clay.
‘No need for that,’ said Scotonis. ‘It’s not as if we need to go rushing about.’
War is one per cent terror and ninety-nine per cent boredom. Clay was not sure where he had heard that, but it seemed to apply perfectly to this particular journey. He’d been terrified during the initial acceleration of the
‘I’m on my way,’ Clay replied, then with another press of his finger he shut down the communication. Returning his attention to Liang he said, ‘We’ll have to cut this short, I’m afraid. Something has come up.’
Liang acknowledged that with a serious nod, but was unable to hide a flash of impatience. The man probably considered Clay a waste of time and space that was better occupied by another fighting man or maybe a few more crates of bullets. Liang was certainly all about the job, since his only recreation seemed to be playing fast games of mah-jong against a computer program, and constantly winning.
Scotonis and Pilot Officer Trove, who had now grown a scrubby Mohican to divide her narrow black skull, occupied the main bridge floor. Trove was in her seat, a virtuality mask over her face, while Scotonis stood towards the edge of the same bridge floor, talking with one of the crew who occupied a cradle suspended before a mass of overcomplicated-looking controls. What had one of them said – yeah, designed by committee. Clay walked over to stand beside the captain.
‘Tell me more about this course change,’ he said.
Scotonis turned towards him, his face devoid of expression. ‘There’s not much to tell, really. They altered their vector by half a degree.’
‘Does this course take them towards an asteroid designated as GH467?’ Clay asked.
Scotonis looked genuinely puzzled for the first time since Clay had met him. ‘GH467?’ he echoed. ‘Why would that be significant?’
‘Galahad offered to let them go if they moor a space plane to that asteroid, but one that contained the Gene Bank data and samples – and Alan Saul,’ Clay explained.
‘Really?’ said Scotonis, again surprised.
Clay continued, ‘She made the offer because, if they accepted it, there would be less chance of the Gene Bank stuff being destroyed, and they would then be delayed by an appreciable time and quite likely already at odds with each other.’
‘Ah,’ said Scotonis, ‘so it wasn’t an honest offer.’
‘Our mission remains the same: get those samples, and capture or kill the rebels aboard Argus. Then, if the Mars Traveller has not been destroyed, we place a small crew aboard the station, to dispatch it back to Earth, while we swing back to Mars and deal with the rebels there.’
Scotonis gave a brief nod to this, then headed over to Trove, who had just taken her face out of the VR mask. ‘You heard?’
‘I heard,’ she replied sourly. ‘This course change does take them closer to GH467, but not directly towards it. Incidentally, that asteroid was maybe not the best choice, since it is now widely diverging from the original route they took towards Mars.’ She shrugged. ‘I suspect it was chosen by someone unacquainted with astrogation.’
That was an unconcealed criticism of Serene Galahad, and this sort of comment was becoming more common from Scotonis and his senior crew as they realized that Clay simply could not kill them without jeopardizing the entire mission. He decided then that he would have to do something about this before it went any further, for he must maintain his facade of loyalty to Galahad, but not now. Instead he would wait until Trove returned to her cabin.
‘So there’s no guarantee that they are heading there?’ Clay asked, pretending he hadn’t noticed her sniping.
Trove shrugged. ‘They could be, but we won’t know for certain unless they make a further course correction within the next month, then begin deceleration – which is about the window they need for something as unwieldy as Argus Station.’
Clay headed over to his chair and sat down. ‘I need to speak to Messina’s clones.’ Now familiar with the controls on the console that he could swing across before him on a jointed arm, he quickly punched in his instructions and made the call.
After the signal delay Alex’s face appeared in a frame on the multi-screen ahead of him. Of course it did: it wasn’t as if the two clones there had much else to do. The face was thinner now, and haggard. Trapped in the hydroponics unit, they weren’t short of water or air, but their supply of food was meagre, for they could only take a limited amount from the food growing in the tanks without the agribots detecting the loss and reporting it. The degree of self-discipline that had kept the two clones inside that unit for so long, nibbling at a few leaves and the odd potato, while steadily making reports on what little data they could glean, had told Clay just how intense was their conditioning, and just how far away they were from being genuine human beings.
