Deep Freeze

CHAPTER NINE

It didn't seem to matter to the crew members of the Erin Kenner that Captain Joshua Webster was breaking more than one ironclad service regulation by failing to take the ship to the nearest U.P. port to offload a civilian stowaway. At first the young men and women of the ship's complement were a bit awed by their passenger. Each of them had seen at least one holofilm starring Sheba Webster. From their teen years Sheba had been the epitome of feminine beauty and sophistication. When they discovered that the Queen was an outgoing person who laughed easily, who was not pretentious, who was genuinely interested in what they had to say they adopted her as one of their own.

Sheba had discovered when she was quite young that the art of her acting was based on her knowledge of people. Even as a child she had made friends easily and had shown an inordinate curiosity about the intimate feelings and reactions of others. She had learned that it is quite difficult for any human being to dislike someone who is genuinely interested in him and what he has to say. When she listened attentively to one of her new friends, asking suitable questions at just the right time to encourage the speaker to bare his innermost convictions and dreams, she was not being manipulative. She was not seeking gain for herself, although gain accrued in the form of knowledge of the inner workings of the human mind. She was genuinely interested in what others thought and felt.

She worked out in the gym with members of the crew, watched holofilms with them, and answered their questions regarding the techniques of the trade. She joined a group of crewwomen in a literary discussion group, although her knowledge of literature was limited to what she had read in university and those books that had been made into films. The navigation officer gave her informal lessons in star identification. A young crewman allowed her to beat him at handball.

Her presence had ceased to be a matter of discussion when the Erin Kenner blinked away from the sparely starred periphery of the Milky Way into the total void of intergalactic space and rested beside a Rimfire beacon to draw charge into the generator from the entire spread of the majestic, tilted spiral of the galaxy. Now the blinks were long, measured in parsecs. The Rimfire route skirted the outer spiral on the plane of thegalactic disc. Each blink put a larger mass of stars and interstellar matter between the Erin Kenner and the U.P. worlds. The communication link with X&A headquarters on Xanthos became more and more attenuated, for the ship's regular reports of position traveled from blink beacon to blink beacon along the Rimfire route and then zigzagged inward through the scattered star fields toward Xanthos.

No space tugs were stationed along the outer circle. The last major incident requiring tug service for an X&A ship had involved Rimfire, herself, and was now nothing more than a part of history. The general attitude was that accidents didn't happen to a ship being operated under X&A procedures, but every spaceman knew deep in his heart that ships had disappeared and would disappear again. Ships were made of mechanical and electronic things. Mechanical and electronic things failed.

On the traveled space lanes help was always near at hand. Private sector space tugs, eager to claim salvage rights or lifting fees from a ship in trouble, were always within a few blinks. But out there on the rim one saw only gleaming, white masses of stars when one looked back toward home and the nearest private Mule or fleet class tug was back there, hidden somewhere behind that mass of stellar fire.

It was a long way home. Since Rimfire's epic voyage only a few explorers and prospectors had seen the scattered stars that lay before the Erin Kenner as she charged after several long blinks. On the control bridge Josh checked the charts, nodded.

"This is it," he said. "Old Folks left the route here. So did David's ship."

Angela studied the viewscreen. "Rather intimidating, isn't it? Just where do we start?"

"There," Sheba said, pointing to a small grouping of stars.

"Are we having another psychic moment?" Josh asked. He made a wry face, for even as he tried to sound sarcastic he had a feeling that he had lived the moment before, that he had looked into space from that particular beacon.

"Ever go shopping with Mother?" Sheba asked.

Josh nodded. "She always turned right when she entered a shop, even the grocery store."

"She would have been checking the charts and the viewscreen," Sheba said, "just as she did when we were going somewhere in the aircar."

Josh frowned. He'd heard the same words before somewhere, sometime. He turned to the navigator. "Mr. Girard, please take the watch."

"Aye, sir," Girard said.

"You two with me," Josh said gruffly.

"Is that an order?" Sheba teased.

"Yes," he said.

"All right, growly bear," Sheba said.

The expression took him back to his youth, to a time when the Webster house was filled with life and activity. Five of them, David, Ruth, Sarah, himself, Sheba in that order; and his mother and father, always there in time of crisis, always ready with a word of advice or a bandage for a skinned knee, whichever need fit the moment.

"Don't be a growly bear, Josh," his mother would say if he were cranky.

But, damn it, the Erin Kenner was not the old Webster home in T-Town. She was a ship of the fleet. She was Service, X&A, and he was her captain and, by God, if he wanted to be a growly bear he was, after all, in command. In space he had dictatorial powers over every man and woman in the crew, and over his civilian passenger, whose presence aboard he was unable to explain, even to himself.

He led the two women into the captain's lounge, motioned them into leather chairs. "It's time we had a talk," he said gruffly.

"Lovely weather, isn't it?" Sheba said, winking at Angela.

"I'm serious, Queenie," he said.

"All right," Sheba said, putting her hands in her lap demurely.

"From the beginning, then," Josh said. "You said, Sheba, that you had to be aboard this ship. Why did you say that?"

Sheba shrugged eloquently. "I was just worried about Mom and Dad and Ruth and David."

"But you gave me the impression that getting aboard was a compulsion."

"Josh, are you asking if Sheba was experiencing what you, yourself, have called a psychic moment?" Angela asked.

Josh flushed. The study of psychic aberrations was as old as mankind.

There were things that could not be explained easily, but in all of the thousands of years of human history, going all the way back to Old Earth before the Destruction, it had never been proven that there were such things as telepathy or a spirit world or any of the other things propounded by self-styled psychics.

"I think we have to talk about such a possibility," he said. "Both you and Sheba have dreamed of the missing members of the Webster family.

That, in itself, is not remarkable. What made me curious is the similarity of the dreams."

"And you, Josh?" Sheba asked.

"All right," he said. "I'll confess that I've had some odd feelings. For example, just now when you suggested our entry point into the area we're going to explore by remembering how Mother entered a store or a mall or a park I heard Ruth's voice saying the same words."

"I was thinking of Ruth when I spoke," Sheba said.

"I can't explain it," Angela said, "but there's a certainty in my mind that Sheba is right in suggesting which star grouping to aim for. It's as if I, too, heard Ruth speaking. I saw her."

"In my dreams they are calling for help," Sheba said. She looked at Josh questioningly. "The same with you?"

He shook his head. "No, I don't dream about them. And it isn't logical to be concerned about them. Old Folks has provisions for another eighteen months. David is an experienced spacer. I kept telling myself that and for a long time I wasn't worried at all, not until a few months after David and Ruth went out, then, suddenly, the situation began to nag at me and Ispent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get out here myself."

He spread his hands. "Now we're here, and I've got my civilian sister with me. Going against regulations is not in the character of the man I thought I was. When I took the oath of loyalty to the United Planets government and pledged to honor the traditions of the Service, I meant what I said. I can almost believe that someone or something outside of me influenced me to bypass at least a score of planets where I could have put my stowaway in U.P. custody. I don't swallow that explanation, but I don't have any other."

"You did it because you love me," Sheba said, but added immediately,

"sorry. Bad habit, being flippant all the time. No one in our family has ever shown any psychic talent. It's a bit frightening to think that all of us are somehow being contacted by other members of the family over incredible distances, but I am being called, Josh. I am being called. I don't know where we're going, but I think I'll know when we get there."

"Josh," Angela asked, "are you saying that this—well, let's use Sheba's description of it and say this call—do you think it was strong enough to overcome your sense of duty and prevent you from putting Sheba off on a U.P. world?"

"Several times I was on the verge of giving the order to change course,"

Josh said. "Each time something seemed to say, no, don't do that."

"We're going to find them, Josh," Sheba said, "and for some reason it's necessary that I be there when we do."

"You're scaring me, you two," Angela said. "From now on we're going to be very, very careful, and suspicious as hell."

Because of her superior optic equipment the Erin Kenner was able to examine the family of planets circling the G class star from a great distance. Josh blinked the ship directly into orbit around the second planet and the ship's detection instruments were activated. Kirsty Girard, the navigator and science officer, began to report to her attentive audience, which consisted of most of the ship's crew.

"In places the ice is several hundred feet thick. It's thinnest on themountains. Those huge, flat areas are probably oceans. The planet is big enough to produce the gravity to hold an atmosphere, but most of the gases, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, have been frozen into the ice along with the water vapor."

The navigator went on to give readings on the planet's period of rotation, her electromagnetic field, her density.

"Her core is hot," she said. "She's got heavy metals, and one helluva lot of rich metallic ore close to the surface. I'd guess, without having probed, that she'll be a miner's paradise."

"Dad would have recognized the possibility of mining here," Sheba said.

"He'd have filed a claim of discovery."

"Which makes me wonder if we made the right turn," Josh said.

"Because if he had found this planet, he'd have certainly filed a claim."

Josh had set the Erin Kenner's orbit to cover all of the ice planet's surface, moving from pole to pole. Below them the surface was monotonously uniform. The ice shimmered and reflected light on the day side and sparkled back the image of the stars on the night side. Aside from the indications of large metallic deposits the planet offered nothing of interest. When the surface survey had been underway for four hours, Josh left the bridge and joined Angela and Sheba in the captain's lounge for the

"midday" meal. Josh had taken his first bite when the lounge was filled with the eerie, hair-raising clangor of the ship's emergency alarm. He was out the door in one leap.

As he ran the few steps to the bridge, he felt the ship lurch. Kirsty Girard was at the controls, punching evasive maneuvers into the computer.

"We are under attack, Captain," the navigator said.

"Weapons control," said a crisp, businesslike voice. "Missiles have been fired. Six incoming. Vectors—"

"Shields up," Josh ordered.

A tingling sensation at the back of his neck told him that the computer had responded to the order.

"Weapons," Josh barked, "have you determined the origin of the missiles?"

"That is affirmative," Weapons said. "View-screen three, sir."

Josh lifted his head. On the screen, made small by distance, was a compact vessel with lines that were unfamiliar. The Erin Kenner lurched again, seeking more room to maneuver in near space.

"Generator ready?" Josh asked.

"Full charge, sir," said the voice of the chief engineer.

"Navigator, blink set?"

"Yes, sir," Kirsty Girard said.

If things got too hot, the Erin Kenner could simply disappear to safety a few light-years away.

"Missiles incoming," weapons said. "Range five miles."

"You may take counteraction when ready, Weapons," Josh said.

Angela took Kirsty Girard's place at the controls. The navigator went back to her station.

"Range to alien craft?" Josh asked.

"Twenty miles and closing," Weapons said.

"At ten miles try her with a disrupter," Josh ordered.

"Aye, sir," said Weapons. "Disrupter armed and ready. Counteraction underway."

"Give me a close-up of those missiles," Josh said to Kirsty.

At first they were just tiny dots on the screen. Girard fiddled with the optics and one of the missiles sprang into the forefront. It was sleek and deadly looking as if it had been designed to be fired in atmosphere and not in the vacuum of space. There were no markings visible. The warhead cone was rounded, streamlined. Suddenly the image of the missile wasreplaced by a flower of red fire, and in quick succession there were five other explosions. The screen was clear.

"Incoming missiles destroyed, sir," Weapons reported.

"Show me the ship," Josh said.

The navigator had the attacker on the big screen. Like the missiles she had fired, the ship seemed to have been designed for flight within an atmosphere. Her metal was dark and, as with the missiles, there were no markings visible.

"Weapons, sir. We have disrupter range."

"Hold on," Josh said. "Kirsty, what do you read?"

"You're not going to believe this, sir."

"Try me."

"My detectors say she's got a hydrogen fusion plant."

"Interesting," Josh said. "It's been almost a thousand years since fusion engines were in use." He looked at Angela. Her face was set as she gave her full attention to the controls. "All right, Weapons, let's see if we can cool this fellow's jets a bit."

On the screen a shimmer of orange fire engulfed the oncoming vessel. It lasted for only a split second.

"Kirsty?" Josh asked.

"She reads dead, sir," Kirsty said. "No electrical currents. The fusion reaction has ceased."

"Weapons, stand by for close approach. Tractor beam ready," Josh said.

Angela's tongue was in the corner of her mouth as she edged the Erin Kenner into proximity with the alien ship. A close up view told them nothing more about the attacker. There were no visible viewports, no locks, no apparent access to the smooth, squat hull.

"Got her," said Weapons. "Tractor beam in place."

"All right, Science Officer," Josh said, "she's all yours. Let's see what's inside. Weapons, lasers ready at all times, if you please. Don't wait for my order. If she so much as wiggles, open fire immediately."

"Lasers ready and on target, sir," said Weapons.

"I'm getting penetration, sir," Kirsty Girard said. "It's rather odd."

"How odd?" Josh asked.

"Sir, there are no spaces inside the ship."

"Explain," Josh said.

"The entire area of the interior is filled solidly. I was wondering how she could have a fusion engine in such a small hull. It's possible because there are no open areas, no space for crew."

"A drone?" Josh asked.

"Lots of complicated circuitry, sir. It's a good guess that she's remote controlled."

"Weapons?"

"The only empty spaces I can find are the size of the six missiles she fired," Kirsty said. "I get no reading of explosive warheads."

"Nuclear material?" Josh asked, thinking that it was logical, since the ship ran on fusion power, that she'd carry nukes.

"None, sir."

"All right," Josh said. "Weapons, you're still on full alert. Science, continue your probes. Let me know if you come up with anything else of interest. Hold where we are until we've examined this beast fully. When you're convinced that you know all of her secrets, let me know and we'll think about having a closer look."

In the lounge, Angela asked, "You're going out when Science finishes probing and testing?"

"I want to see what's inside her," Josh said.

"I'll go with you, of course," Angela said.

"It would be unwise to put both the ship's captain and the first mate at risk at the same time," he said.

"Yes," she said. "Sorry."

"Angel, it was a damned primitive and pitiful attack," he said, as he pushed his hair back with one hand. "And a fusion engine?"

"Anachronistic," she said.

"Captain," said Kirsty Girard on the ship's communicator, "it's all clear to board the alien."

"Thank you, Kirsty," Josh said. "Tell the ship's machinist to suit up and test my suit. We'll need two molecular disrupters."

"Weapons?" Girard asked,

"Side arms only."

Pat Barkley, the ship's machinist, was waiting in the starboard air lock, bulky in E.V.A. gear. Angela helped Josh into his suit, closed the inner hatch, leaving the two men alone. Air hissed out of the lock and the outer hatch opened. Josh led the way out, spinning slightly when the awkward molecular disrupter caught on the side of the lock. The alien ship was just twenty feet away. Josh kicked over, moving very slowly, broke his movement with his right hand against the dark metal of the alien, said,

"Ouch, damnit," because, slow as he was moving, inertial force put a strain on his wrist, causing it to pop painfully. Pat Barkley landed lightly beside him, taking up the shock with his knees.

Josh secured his disrupter and released the umbilical that had attached him to the Erin Kenner. Barkley followed suit. Both men then secured themselves to the alien with a magnetic clamp attached to a line fed from the suit's belt and began to crawl over the hull of the small ship. She was the size of the Erin Kenner's launch.

"Recognize the alloy?" Josh asked Barkley.

"No, sir," Barkley said.

There were no visible seams. The ship's hull was as smooth as an egg, and as integrated. Josh ordered the Erin Kenner to move away to a safe distance.

"Okay, Pat," Josh said, picking up his cutting torch, "let's see what she's made of."

They worked side by side. The object was to cut out a square of metal from the ship's hull without damaging the tightly packed electronics inside. Josh fired off his disrupter, aimed the beam at the ship's metal, and saw it being reflected outward in a flaring flower.

"Whoa," Pat Barkley said. "What have we here?"

"You tell me," Josh said.

"Whatever it is, it's damned strong," Pat said. "And it would resist the heat at the surface of a star. Hold on, sir, and let me try another setting."

Pat adjusted his instrument, making the beam so fine that it could split atoms. The force no longer flared out. Slowly a small cut was being made in the odd metal. Pat gave the captain the setting. Josh began his own cut three feet away and parallel to Pat's.

"You're set a little deep, Captain," Pat said. "Cut the beam back two marks."

Josh obeyed. It took them almost an hour to remove a square of metal and expose the interior. Pat Barkley was examining the edges of the cut.

"Captain, I think we'd better get Science to check out this metal. If I'm right, and if it's as heat resistant as I think it is, it might be very useful."

"In what way?"

Pat laughed. "Well, I'd guess in a lot of ways, but I have a one-track mind and can think of only one at the moment. Back home I have an atmospheric racer. If I could put a skin of this stuff on its hull, I'd win every race there is. As you know, sir, there's almost no limit to how fast you can push a ship in atmosphere so far as sheer power is concerned. The limiting factor is the ablation factor of the metal in the ship's hull. In agood, tight race I burn off a full quarter-inch of metal. With this stuff—"

An image leapt into Josh's mind. A fiery object made a downward arc into atmosphere, flared to within two thousand feet of X&A headquarters, and went vertically back into space. A hull that could withstand speeds measured in thousands of feet per second in atmosphere would have made possible the wild, buzzing approach to headquarters, but why? You don't get out of a ship going so fast that it's nothing more than a glowing fireball.

"Secure samples, Pat, and we'll turn them over to Science."

Beyond a thin layer of what looked like circuit boards there was a space of honeycomb construction. Each of the interstices was enclosed in a transparent material. Josh's initial efforts had not only sliced through the circuitry, but had opened one of the interstitial spaces. Liquid had condensed on the transparent surface. He inserted a test probe and the suit's tiny computer communicated information to the base unit aboard the Erin Kenner and reported almost instantly. Preliminary analysis indicated that the liquid was one of the amino acids.

Beyond the honeycomb was the solid metal side of the hydrogen fusion chamber. It wouldn't be healthy to cut into that.

"I think we've done about all we can without doing serious damage,"

Josh said.

"She's all engine, sir, with just a thin layer of electronics and the amino acid chambers under the outside hull."

"And the amino acid chambers are?"

Barkley shrugged inside his suit. "Computer storage chambers? Brain?"

"Primitive weaponry," Josh said. "Missiles that a city aircar could defeat. A rather stupid, head-on attack against a vastly superior ship. How do those things go with an alloy that could take a ship through sun flares and what seems to be an amino acid data storage system?"

They used shoulder jets to propel themselves back to the Erin Kenner.

It was always a bit spooky to be flying free in space, and both men sighed in relief when they eased up to the ship's air lock and clamped on withmagnetic spots.

Kirsty Girard was waiting for the captain on the bridge. "I've been running fine analysis on the metallic reading that lay closest to the surface," she said. "I want to show you two of them."

"Lead on," Josh said.

Kirsty activated a screen. First she showed Josh the overall view of an icy plain below a rise. "Here, the instruments detected metal quite close to the surface," she said. "I ran it through enhancement while you were E.V.A."

"And?" Josh asked.

"It's durametal, sir," Kirsty said. "Two durametal objects close enough together to show as one large metallic deposit on general scan."

"Two spaceships?" Josh asked, his heart pounding as he anticipated her answer.

"That's my guess, sir."

"Angela, have someone put a homing beacon on that ship out there so we can find it again when we want it," Josh ordered. "Kirsty, as soon as that's been done, take us down."

The Erin Kenner hovered two hundred feet above the elongated mound of ice and snow that hid two objects made of durametal. Josh, Angela, and Sheba were on the bridge, watching nervously as Kirsty tilted ship to play the exhaust of the flux drive over the mound. Water began to run down the slope of the mound only to refreeze quickly. It took two hours to expose the distinctive contours of a Zede luxury liner, another hour to melt away the ice that hid the name, Fran Webster.

"All right, Kirsty," Josh said, his voice low. "Secure. Lift to orbit."

"But we haven't seen the other ship," Sheba protested. Her large emerald eyes were red with weeping.

"I don't think we have to, Queenie," Josh said. "I think you can bet thatthe other ship is the Old Folks."

"They must have violated the first rule of exploration," Angela said.

"What's that?" Sheba asked.

"Even if you discover a place that looks, smells, and states in large print that it's the Garden of Eden and there's a fellow there in a long white robe blessing you, don't land until Science has checked it out," Josh said.

From a stable orbit a robotic probe lowered itself on a tiny column of flux force. It landed near the Fran Webster. Already a white film was forming on the exposed metal of David Webster's Zede Starliner. The probe crawled past the luxury liner and began to play a heat beam over the mound of ice next to it. Optics aboard the probe soon showed an open hatch, and, on the ship's bow, the words Old Folks. Heat melted away ice that blocked the open hatch and soon the transmitter on the probe was beaming up a holoimage. Two humanoid forms lay side by side. Dan Webster had thrown his arm over Fran and that pose had been preserved in death.

"But I was told that they were alive," Sheba protested through tears.

The robot crawled back to the Fran Webster. The cutting properties of a molecular disrupter had to be used to gain entry. Sheba was still weeping silently, but when the hololens focused on the two humanoid forms encased in a sheen of ice she gasped and turned away. Both faces were recognizable. There was no doubt that the dead were David and Ruth Webster.

"Something's wrong," Sheba whispered.

"Yes, very wrong," Josh said bitterly. "They're dead."

"No, that's not what I mean," Sheba said, but she did not have to explain. Angela's face was flushed. Josh averted his eyes. Only Sheba continued to stare in horror at the screen where her brother and sister were frozen in an obscene coital embrace.