Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Prince Freskel-Gar watched the screen showing the Giants' ship while he listened to the colonel's summary of the message from the human accompanying them who had called himself Hunt. With all that was going on that day, he hadn't had time yet to discover what the story was behind this awesome-looking vessel whose appearance had troubled even Broghuilio. It was coasting in space, maintaining a position that kept the Moon interposed between it and Minerva. The view was being captured by one of the Broghuilio's ships on the Farside surface. It was being relayed too, from the Agracon, to Wylott and his advance group of Jevlenese at Dorjon. The Jevlenese were also human, but they seemed different from the two who had landed with the Giants. It sounded as if this was going to be a complicated story.

The last-minute decision to bring forward the takeover at the Agracon had been pulled off surprisingly smoothly, with the world outside still unaware that it had happened. It was important that news of Perasmon's end be known first, before Freskel-Gar began moving overtly to consolidate his position. As expected, there had been a barrage of calls and messages querying the apparent hitches with communications, and some visitors had been inconvenienced, but by and large the cover stories had stood. Later, an explanation could be concocted attributing the early moves in the Agracon to security precautions taken in response to an intelligence alert that had been recognized only later as pertaining to the assassination. To minimize the time for which the action at the Agracon would need to be concealed, Hat Rack had also been brought forward and would now be executed over mid-ocean. That part of the operation was being directed by Freskel-Gar's deputy, Count Rorvax, from Dorjon. For obvious reasons the details had been made available only to an absolute minimum who had a need to know.

All in all, Broghilio's show of nerve had paid off. His improvised amendment to the plan to accommodate the sudden change in the situation appeared to be working. This surely wasn't a time for Freskel-Gar to be losing his nerve and over-reacting. So the big news from Hunt, the colonel was telling him, was that the Giants knew about "an action" and "who was responsible." All very vague, with nothing specific stated explicitly. Freskel-Gar didn't see how they could know-even the colonel who was delivering the message didn't know what it was in reference to. Most likely, Freskel-Gar, thought, with their advanced surveillance resources the aliens had detected the Hat Rack flight climbing and moving on an interception course, made a lucky guess, and the rest was pure bluff. So Broghuilio was intending to scrap his ships because Minerva didn't have the resources to refuel and maintain them. Well, wouldn't that apply equally well to the ship that the Giants had arrived in too? Hunt said no, but that was no doubt just another part of the bluff. And if their ship was so superior, why were the Giants evacuating it right now, as he watched? They didn't seem to have much ability to resist whatever Broghuilio was threatening. No, just at the moment Freskel-Gar saw no reason to reverse his decision.

Broghuilio appeared on the channel being maintained to Farside and announced that he intended taking command of the Giants' starship. "I will inform you when I have completed my assessment," he said. And with that, the link cut out.

The essence of gaining the controlling hand in this kind of situation lay in assertiveness. Freskel-Gar had acquiesced when Broghuilio tested his mettle by presuming to give orders. The thing now was to keep to the precedent. To have consulted first about taking over the Shapieron would have been tantamount to seeking approval, conceding Freskel-Gar the territory. Keeping the channel open would have been fitting for a subordinate reporting progress. Broghuilio would decide his course of action independently, in his own time as it suited him, and then announce it.

"Auxiliary compensators stabilized… Thrust vector balanced," the computer advised. "All ships ready to lift off."

The captain scanned the bridge-deck readouts. "Proceed."

Broghuilio stood watching, arms folded, as the side-view displays showed the other four craft shedding their coatings of rubble and dust as they rose from the lunar surface. Although the altering surface perspective showed his flagship to be climbing too, with inbuilt Thurien-type g-localizers there was no sensation of movement. The five ships formed into a V with the flagship at the head and turned onto a course directly outward from Luna, in the direction of the Shapieron. If he transferred his followers and installed the armaments now, the complications of having to land his ships on Minerva and then dispose of them there could perhaps be avoided. Why should they live like thieves in hiding among hostelries provided by Freskel-Gar, when they could base themselves in a functioning starship?

He had more running in his favor than just the weaponry, the ship, and knowledge of how to use them, Broghulio had decided. There was also the psychological factor. The Lambians and the Cerians walked around in uniforms, held exercises, and drew plans on maps, but they were still playing at being soldiers. He had the records of two thousand years of Earth's history to go on. Having been entrusted with its surveillance by the Thuriens had definite advantages.

So they were playing that kind of game, were they? Freskel-Gar was conscious of his staff officers around him, outwardly impassive but waiting to see his reaction. He reassessed his situation rapidly. The destruction of whatever the objects had been that Broguilio ordered taken out had demonstrated the potency of his weapons. But before the Giants' craft arrived, Broghuilio had been willing to join Lambia as an equal partner. Now, all of a sudden, he was foregoing all else to get his hands on the Giants' ship. So maybe there was some substance after all to Hunt's claim that it had things going for it that Broghuilio's ships didn't. Freskel-Gar was feeling less sure about the formidable ally that he had thought he could count on. He needed to improve his own bargaining position drastically.

"The Jevlenese general Wylott is asking what's happening," an aide reported, gesturing toward one of the consoles a short distance away. The transmission from the ships on Farside would have been lost at Dorjon also.

"Tell him we're looking into it," Freskel-Gar replied.

Broghuilio was not in control of the Giants' ship yet. Maybe there was a way of leveling the situation. Hadn't Hunt said something about the translating device being the starship's computer? It would presumably have a picture of the situation out there on the other side of the Moon that it might be disposed to share. If nothing else, that would show Freskel-Gar's staff that they didn't need to await Broghuilio's pleasure to be informed as to what was going on.

Freskel-Gar indicated the screen that had been displaying the starship. "Do we still have the connection via that shuttle they landed in that's standing out back?"

The colonel checked with the engineering chief. "It's still there. There's just nothing coming over it."

"Can we activate it somehow?"

The engineering chief moved behind the chairs of the operators manning a section of equipment. "It seemed to be voice driven." He raised his tone and addressed a grille. "Hello?… Testing?… This is Melthis calling the ship." There was no response.

"Try Cerian," someone suggested. "The aliens spoke some Cerian." It did no good.

"How about these?" Another engineer produced the collection of headbands, ear pieces, and wrist sets that had been taken from the captives. Nothing worked.

"There's probably some kind of activation code word," the engineering chief said.

Freskel-Gar frowned in annoyance. "Is that human who wanted to talk to it still out there?" he asked. "The one called Hunt."

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Bring him back in."

The colonel went out to the ante-room and came back with Hunt. Using signs and words, the engineering chief explained the problem. Hunt turned to the grille that was connected to the channel being relayed through the shuttle.

"ZORAC?"

"Yes, Vic?" a voice replied.

ZORAC integrated the data from its external sensors to compose a representation of the five Jevlenese vessels closing in around the Shapieron to command it from all sides. As instructed by Garuth before he and the others evacuated the ship, ZORAC had opened the main docking bay doors. As it watched, processing and evaluating the incoming data, three things happened simultaneously.

A communications processor forwarded a message received via the probe positioned to provide a signal path around the Moon. It was an acknowledgment from the Lambian embassy in Osserbruk, the Cerian capital. This was ZORAC's latest try at getting through to the Cerian President's Office, after its attempt via the National Aerospace Directorate hadn't worked.

Vic Hunt reappeared, after a long delay, on the channel to the shuttle that had landed in Melthis.

And the Jevlenese leader, Broghuilio, initiated contact over the link that Garuth had told ZORAC to keep open to the Jevlenese flagship. "I am calling the Shapieron."

"Shapieron. I hear you," ZORAC replied.

"Am I talking to the ship's controlling AI?"

"You are."

"We are about to come aboard, as was previously advised."

"I understand."

"Confirm that the vessel had been evacuated of all occupants."

"Confirmed." They were now in the surface lander that had withdrawn far outside the screen of Jevlenese ships. Garuth had yielded to the threat of violence against those down on the surface. ZORAC concluded that bioforms had their built-in operating directives too.

Broghuilio appeared less sure of the fact, however. ZORAC read the expression, pattern of muscles tensions, and intonations of voice that it had learned to associate with human uncertainty and apprehension. "I just wish to remind you of the fate of the Thurien devices that appeared here immediately before the Shapieron," Broghuilio said. "The weapons responsible are trained on your ship, and also on the lander that is standing off outside the limit. We expect to be received aboard the Shapieron without interference or any clever surprises. I hope the implications are clear. Do I make myself understood?"

"Perfectly."

ZORAC had no surprises waiting. Even if it had conceived any, with the Ganymeans and their human friends in jeopardy it would have been unable to act on it.

Frenda Vesni sat listening to Negrikof bellowing in the next room. She had just put a call through from a secretary at the Lambian embassy in Osserbruk, saying that a message purporting to be from an alien spacecraft in the vicinity of Minerva had warned that President Harzin's plane was going to be shot down. Ironically, the Lambian had ended up being routed through to the same desk as the alert from NAD earlier.

"Look, what is this? Doesn't anyone have any sense of discrimination left anymore?… No, I don't take it seriously… Because we've had it going on all day. There's some hackers loose who are having what they think is fun, and that people like you and me have got nothing better to do… No, because if I did that every time…"

Another indicator flashed on Vesni's desk. The head and shoulders appeared of a man in Army uniform. "This is Frenda Vesni."

"Is that Intel Dir? I was told I need to speak with Zumo Negrikof. It's very urgent."

"He's on a call to the Lambian embassy right at this minute. I'm his second. Can I help you?"

"I'm not sure it can wait. I really need to talk to someone in the President's Office, but I was told we have to go through you. Can you interrupt him, please?"

"What's it about?

"I'm with Chief of Staff Headquarters. We've received a warning through one of our locations that has contacts in Lambia that the plane that's on its way here with the President and the Lambian King aboard is in imminent danger. The President's Office has direct contact with the plane and also with ground control. They need to know."

Vesni turned her head for a moment. Negrikof was still yelling. If this had come through on its own, she would have let Negrikof deal with it. But there had been three warnings now. And this one wasn't claiming to be a talking starship. Her terms of office authorized her to act on her own initiative if her chief were unavailable and it was a matter of national security or an emergency. Well, this certainly qualified. She thought about the probable reaction from Negrikof if it turned out to be a hoax or a misunderstanding of something. Then she weighed that against the consequences if the warning was genuine. She took a deep breath. There were times in life when you just had to hope you were right.

"Taking all the details would just lose more time," she said. "I'll connect you through to the President's Office directly."

In the Lambian communications room, the views being sent back by ZORAC of the five Jevlenese ships positioned around the Shapieron were distributed across several screens. A daughter craft of some kind was detaching from one of them. It was obvious to Hunt now. The Jevlenese had to have been on the Moon somewhere. His spirits sagged as he watched. Even at this early stage, the alliance between Broghuilio and Freskel-Gar had proved itself durable enough and flexible enough to seize a new opportunity when it presented itself, virtually without even faltering in their stride. Now they had a functioning starship as well as Jevlenese weaponry. So much for the mission and its hope of averting a planetary war. About the only consolation Hunt could see was that at least this way, the advantage would be so devastatingly to one side that it might be over sooner, without spreading to dimensions that would engulf the whole of Minerva. So the mission might have created a new reality after all that was at least an improvement, if not the ideal they had hoped for. And that was something, for with the beacons gone and the Shapieron now taken over by Broghuilio, it was beginning to look very much as if they might be stuck in it.

He stared at the images of the Jevlenese craft seen from the Shapieron, hanging seemingly motionless in the void against the background of stars. Different stars-not a pattern that would have been visible from the Solar System of the time that he belonged to in a different universe. How many ships and constructions against a backdrop of space had he seen since that first trip from Earth to take part in the investigation after the discovery of "Charlie" on the Moon?

The last time had been when he went out physically to MP2 with Chien to observe the first tests involving on-board bubble generation out at the Gate. The blunt, boxy shapes of the Jevlenese vessels reminded him of the raft that it had been installed on. They'd thought they had the convergence problem solved, only to have it reappear once more when the local bubble at the raft was detached. That had been their second encounter with convergence-induced craziness-involving not virtual objects that time, but real ones. The versions of the raft multiplying and vanishing before their eyes had been solid, material bodies. The bubble had to be deactivated after stabilization to suppress the effect.

Convergence suppression. The words repeated themselves in Hunt's mind. Something insistent was trying to make itself heard from his unconscious. Something significant.

Convergence suppression… The bubble generator that the Shapieron was fitted with had to be deactivated for the same reason, when the umbilical was broken to allow the ship to operate autonomously. Otherwise the resulting imbalance would expand the local bubble along with its core convergence zone. Out to what kind of radius? Hunt didn't know. But the raft's on-board power source had produced one extending far enough to materialize multiple versions of it. And dematerialize them…

The bubble generator aboard the Shapieron was driven by a starship's power.

Like something materializing from another realm, an impossible thought took shape in Hunt's mind. He had to find a way of getting through to ZORAC!

Hunt turned to the Lambian who seemed to have been assigned as his handler. "I have known Broghuilio before," Hunt said, speaking better Lambian than he had effected before. "Not to be trusted. You make a mistake."

"You talk when we tell you," the Lambian said.

Hunt nodded at the console still showing Wylott protesting about being abandoned. Presumably he was at some other location. "Look. They don't even trust each other."

"Quiet!"

In the room that Hunt had been brought from, the rest of the party from the Shapieron sat resignedly under the watchful eyes of the guards standing inside the door. In the nearest alternative to action that offered itself, Danchekker wiped imaginary smears from his spectacles for the umpteenth time. He had tried to initiate some kind of communication with the guards but decided they were robots. An interesting conundrum, he reflected. Minerva had no military history worth talking about, and yet the mind-set was the same as he had encountered everywhere on Earth, and when he was on Jevlen. Did the military do it to people, or were certain kinds of people drawn to the military? He observed that he was making an unwarranted assumption of a dichotomy-that the two answers were mutually exclusive. ZORAC would have pulled him up on it.

He realized that he was playing mind games with himself to evade facing the feeling of isolation that was trying to steal up from some lower recess of consciousness and seize him with something akin to panic. They were marooned on an alien planet in a remote era of a past that wasn't even of their own universe, with apparently no way of getting back. Now even the link back to the Shapieron was gone. He had no idea what Hunt was trying to achieve, since they hadn't been permitted to talk. There was little Danchekker could see that he could achieve. It had all the marks of an act of desperation about it-Hunt's way of avoiding a confrontation with the same issue in his own mind. What the Ganymeans were thinking was lost to Danchekker behind their inscrutable expressions. He removed his spectacles and took his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe them.

In addition to having similar apprehensions, Showm and Eesyan were dealing with undergoing actual coercion and experiencing the threat of force for the first time. While they were aware of Earth's ways and its history, it was awareness in an intellectual sense, recorded second-hand; knowledge about, but not knowledge of. To be compelled to submit to the will of another by the threat of physical attack was unknown to anyone raised in the Thurien culture, and virtually unthinkable. The part that nothing had prepared them for was the deeply disturbing feeling of helplessness, humiliation, and shame. Showm tried to picture the effects of a race's entire history being rooted in such ways to the degree where many of them-maybe the majority, even-were incapable of conceiving how a society could exist otherwise. What crippling of the emotions and the mind did it produce? What shackling and distorting of all that was creative? What needless terrors and obstacles to be overcome? With just this small taste, the true meaning of the mission and the significance of what it might have accomplished took on a whole new dimension. She moved from one undersize, uncomfortable human seat to another to relieve her cramped limbs, and tried not to think about it.

Probably the least affected by the predicament that they all found themselves in were Monchar and the two crew officers from the Shapieron. The thought of being marooned in the wrong universe carried no great impact with them, for they had been marooned in a different manifold of space and time for most of the past twenty-four years anyway. Their home, as it had been, was gone. Despite finding descendants of their kind, the times of Earth and Thurien that they had returned to were very different from everything they had known. Wrong universe or not, in many ways this one was more familiar. They were the only ones who had known Minerva before.

But with all their different psychologies, experiences, and strategies for evasion, there was one question that all of them had been asking ever since they walked into the communications room and found Broghuilio staring out at them from the screen: why had there been no response from the probe that should have told them the Jevlenese were here?