Passage At Arms

3 Departure

Our Climber is a Class IX vessel: 910 gross tonnes combat-loaded at bay of departure; 720 tonnes without crew, fuel, stores, or expendable weaponry. There are few hyper-capable vessels smaller.

Deep probe and attack singleships run 500 to 600 tonnes, boasting a crew of one man.

The 910-tonne limit is an absolute. If the vessel goes over, she has to cut her contraterrene tonnage. Nine-twenty-five is the established book absolute over which Command won't permit a Climb attempt. There's a granite-hard barrier somewhere in the low 930s. Massing above it, a vessel will just sit and hum while the enemy knocks her apart.

The mass limit is why the Commander is displeased with the experimental cannon. The system, with its munitions, masses two tons. That means an equal reduction in fuel or stores. Hardware can't be touched. And Command would squeal like a hog with its balls in a vise if anyone suggested cutting missile inventory.

A Climber is a self-contained weapons system. People are aboard only because the system can't operate itself. Concessions to human needs are kept to a minimum.

You don't know what you can live without, don't know what agonizing decisions are, till you have to pick and choose what to take on patrol.

The other day, watching the Commander pack, I decided I was in for a ripe fly. One change of uniform. One kilo of tobacco, illegal. One thick, old-style book, by Gibbon. Who gives a good goddamn about the Roman Empire? One grim black revolver of equally ancient vintage, quasi-legal. A

curious weapon to carry aboard a vessel with a skin little thicker than mine. Two kilos of genuine New Earth coffee, the cheap stuff, probably smuggled to Canaan by a friend on a Fleet courier. A

liter of brandy, in violation of regs. Fill in the cracks and make up fifteen kilos with fresh fruit. No razor. No comb. None of the amenities expected of a civilized travel kit.

I thought his choices strange. I packed up an almost standard kit, leaving out the dinner jacket and such. He made certain my ten extra kilos were strictly cameras, stilltape, notebooks, and pencils. Pencils because they're lighter man pens.

I see all the old hands conform to the kit pattern set by the Old Man. We'll be up to our ears in fruit.

Our mother ship is one of several floating in a vast bay. The others have only a few Climbers suckered on. Each is kept stationary by a spiderweb of common rope. The ropes are the only access to the vessel. "They don't waste much on fancy hardware." Tractors and pressors would stabilize a vessel in wetdock anywhere else in the Fleet. Vast mechanical brows would provide access.

"Don't have the resources," Westhause says. "'Task-effective technological focus,'" he says, and I can hear the quotes. "They'd put oars on these damned hulks if they could figure out how to make them work. Make the scows more fuel-effective."

I want to hang back and look at the mother, to work out a nice inventory of poetic images. I've seen holoportrayals, but there's never anything like the real thing. I want to catch the flavors of watching hundreds of upright apes hand-over-handing it along with their duffel bags neatly tucked between their legs, as if they were riding very small, limp, limbless ponies. I want to capture the lack of color. Spacers in black uniform. Ships anodized black. The surface of the tunnel itself mostly a dark black-brown, with streaks of rust. The ropes are a sandy tan. Against all mat darkness, in the low-level lighting, without gravity, those lines take on a flat twodimensionality, so all of them seem equally near or far away.

The Commander beckons. "Come along, then. Too late to back out now." He's impatient to get to the ship. That doesn't jibe with his landside attitude, when he wanted nothing to do with another patrol. He's hurrying me because I'm lagging, and his custom is to be the last man to board his ship.

A mother-locked Climber can be entered only through a hatch in the "top" of its central cylinder.

The hatch isn't an airlock. It'll remain sealed through the vessel's stay in vacuum. The ship's only true airlock is at its bottom. That's connected to the mother now. Surrounding it is a sucker ring through which the Climber draws its sustenance till it's released for patrol. Power and water. And oxygen. Through the hatch itself will come our meals, though not prepared. Through that hatch, too, will come our orders, moments before we're weaned.

We linger round the outside of the top hatch while reluctant enlisted men go popping through like corks too small for the neck of a bottle. Some go feet first, some head first, diving behind their duffel. The hatch is a mere half meter in diameter. The men have to scrunch their shoulders to fit. Westhause is explaining the airlock system. "The only reverse flow consists of wastes," he concludes.

"And you give that any significance you want," the Commander mutters. "Shit for shit, I say. Down the hatch, men."

"Whatever happened to your youthful enthusiasm?"

The Commander refuses the bait. He has said too much already. A wrong word falling on an unfriendly ear can flatten a career trajectory. Climber Reel One operates on a primitive level. is a long, long way from Luna Command. The Admiral enjoys near dictatorial powers. The proconsular setup derives logically from the communications lag between Canaan and the centers of power. It's hard to like, but even harder to refute.

Fleet personnel can wish they had a more palatable overlord.

They call the central cylinder the Can. The Can is incredibly cramped, especially in parasite mode, while attached to the mother. Then, artificial gravity runs parallel to the cylinder's axis.

In operational mode, when the Climber provides its own gravity, the Can's walls become floors.

Even then there'll be very little room if everyone is awake at once.

I take one long look around and ask, "How do you keep from trampling each other?"

"Some of the men are in their hammocks all the time. Unless we're in business. Then everybody is on station."

The Can is fifteen meters in diameter and forty meters tall. Doubled pressure partitions separate it into four unequal compartments. Operations Division, the brains of the ship, occupies the topmost level. Immediately below is Weapons. The two divisions share their computation and defection capacity. The third level is Ship's Services. It's the smallest. It contains galley, toilet, primitive laundry and medical facilities, recyling sections, and most importantly, the central controls by which internal temperature is sustained. Below Ship's Services is Engineering.

Engineering's main task is to make the ship go from point A to point B. Their equipment, systems, and responsibilities often overlap with Ship's Services'.

A central structural member, called the keel, runs the length of the cylinder. When the ship is in operational mode the crew will take turns sleeping in hammocks attached to it. That's something to think about. I've never tried extremely low gravity sleep. I hear that it's hard to get a good rest, and dreams become a little crazy.

In parasite mode sleeping arrangements are catch-as-catch-can, with the quickest men hanging hammocks from available cross-members, then negotiating sharing deals with slower shipmates. Some of the places hammocks get slung seem almost too small for mice.

The luxury quarters of any ship, the Ship's Commander's stateroom, here consists of a screened-off section of beam near the entry hatch. He'll share his hammock with the First Watch Officer and Chief Quartermaster. Every hammock will be shared. It takes no imagination to see the potential for havoc in that. It takes some complex shuffling to put three men in one hammock and allow each a reasonable day's ration of sleep. I suspect Command would prefer android crews who need no sleep at all.

There's little open space inside the cylinder. The curved inner hull supports most of the consoles and working stations, with little separation between them. Two meters off the hull the inner circle begins. There're a few duty stations on that level, but most of the space is occupied by the ship's nervous and circulatory systems, and those parts of her organs which don't need to be instantly accessible. With the exception of a few holes providing access to the two-meter tunnel around the keel, the central eleven meters of the Can are an impenetrable maze of piping, conduit, wiring, junctions, humming boxes of a thousand shapes and sizes, structural beams, and ductwork.

I have to ask. "How the hell can human beings work in this jungle gym?"

Westhause smiles. "Looks better on holo, doesn't it?" Clambering around like a baboon in pants, he leads me to an abbreviated astrogator's console. Flanking it are a pair of input/ output consoles for the ship's main computation battery. Nudging up in front, like a calf to its mother, is the tiniest spatial display tank I've ever seen. I've see cheap children's battle games with bigger tanks. With a perfectly straight face, Wet-hause reminds me, "It won't be as nasty after we go on ship's gravity."

"Any way is up when you can't get any farther down."

An argument breaks out in the keel passageway. Wanting to appear conscientious, I move toward the nearest access way.

"Never mind. They'll settle it. That's Rose and Throdahl. They're always fussing about something."

"If you say so. Where're the lockers, Waldo?"

"Lockers?" He grins. It's a mean grin. A sadist's grin. Your basic got-you-by-the-balls-and-nevergoing- to-let-go grin. "You are fresh meat, aren't you? What lockers?"

"Gear lockers." Why am I going on? I have one foot poised over an abyss now. "For personal gear."

I didn't expect the comforts of Officer's Country aboard a Main Battle, but I did figure on lockers. I can't leave my cameras lying around. Too much chance they'll walk away.

"You use your hammock. Your bunkmates sleep with it."

Comes the dawn. "No wonder nobody brings anything with them."

"Just one of the luxuries they've taken away. That's why the limited modifieds, like the Eight Ball, are so popular. Rumor is, they've still got a shower on old Number Eight."

"And I thought we had it bad in the bombards."

"That's right. The Old Man said you were in destroyers back when. Did my original active duty there. Luxury liners compared to this. Hello, Commander."

"There's got to be a better way."

The Commander shrugs as if to say that's a matter of complete indifference to him. He smiles a thin, grim smile that seems carefully studied, the secretive smile of a Commander on top of it all and mildly amused by the antics of the children in his charge. "Nature demands .her price. Board all squared away, Mr. Westhause?"

"I'm just starting my check sequence, Commander."

I take the hint. I'm in the way here. Everyone else is busy, too. The compartment is in a state of chaos. The sleeping arrangements seem fairly well settled. The men are slithering over and around one another to examine their duty stations. Despite the care the ship has received in wetdock, they want to double-check everything. It isn't that they mistrust the yard-birds' competence. They just want to know. Their lives depend on their equipment.

As I wander, I ponder the mystery of the Old Man. If anything, he's more taciturn, more remote, now that we've boarded the ship. He changed masks when he passed through the entry hatch. He turned on some sort of Commander's personality engineered to fit a profile of crew expectations.

Strong and silent, competent and confident. Tolerant of infractions in the personal sphere, strict regarding anything that might affect the welfare of the ship. I've seen the act before, on other ships. Never have I seen it assumed with such abruptness, such cold calculation. I hope he mellows out. I hope he doesn't exclude me from his thoughts entirely. He's half the story here.

Westhause changed, too, when the new Commander passed through his orbit. In moments he was oblivious to anything but his astrogational toys.

There must be a magic in the Climber. The Old Man and Westhause went away. First Watch Officer arrived. Lieutenant Yanevich is treating me like an old friend. Who else shifted personalities at the hatchway? Bradley? I don't know. I haven't seen him since we came aboard. I don't know any of the others.

I get out of their way in Ops by going exploring below. I don't run into anyone with the time or inclination to talk till I reach the bottom of the can. There I meet Ambrose Diekereide, our Engineer-in-Training.

I spend an hour talking the man's speciality. He loses me after the first five minutes.

Surviving Academy requires an acquaintance with physics.

1 got through the courses on stubborness and an elaborate system for memorization. I have a mind which surrounds itself with armor plate when it's faced with a physics more subtle than that imagined by Isaac Newton. I guess I really do see the fuzzy outlines of what Einstein said.

Reinhardt and hy-permechanics I take on faith. Despite Diekereide's heroic effort and all my prereading, null and Climbing will remain pure witchcraft till the day I die.

Diekereide says it's possible to look at our universe from a continuum of viewpoints. Classical.

Newtonian. Einsteinian. Reinr-rdter. All points on the spectrum, like the central wavelength line of each color cast by a prism.

The defining parameter of the Einsteinian view is the constant c, c being the velocity of light in a vacuum.

Then along comes Reinhardt, who turns it all over by saying

2 + 2 = 4 sometimes, and c is a constant only under certain special conditions, although those conditions obtain almost everwhere almost all the time. He conjured functions to demonstrate that gravity is the real universal integer.

Somewhere between those two views is where I start finding moss on both sides of the trees.

Diekereide tells me to imagine the universe as an orange. Okay. That's easy enough, even though my eyes tell me the universe is infinite. Hyperspace, where the Newtonian and Einsteinian rules break down, is the rind of the orange. Fine and dandy. Now friend Diekereide grips the orange like a baseball and throws the hard slider. He tells me the rind exists everywhere coequal with the universe it contains. An orange that is part rind all the way to the pips. Relates back to the curvature of space, where, if you head off on a straight line and stick with it long enough, you get back to where you started. Only, using Reinhardt's math, you can take shortcuts because in hyperspace every point touches every other point. In perfect hyperspace, which seems to be as mythical as perfect vacuum, you can travel the light years between point A and point B in no elapsed time.

Go explain me a cloud. Go out and explain me one of those great wads of wool called cumulus or cumulonimbus. Look it up in a book, how it works. Take that on faith. When I look at a cloud, I always wonder why the son of a bitch doesn't fall like a rock. Like a big hunk of iceberg, down, scrunch!

There is no pure hyper because it's polluted by leakover of time, gravity, and subnuclear matter, though the matter is not really matter in that state. Quarks and such, which aren't allowed to exist there, sit around shifting charge in zero elapsed time----- Reinhardt's hyperspace math depends on the universe's being closed and expanding. I gather that in that someday when we begin the collapse back toward the primal egg, hyperspace will undergo some sort of catastrophic reversal of polarity. Or, if Diekereide is right, the reversal will initiate the collapse.

That's why I can't get a handle on physics. Nothing is ever what it seems, and less reliably so with every passing day.

Again, gravity is the key.

One common fiction is to picture hyperspace as a negative image of the universe we see, inhabited by such woolly beasts as —c, contra-charged subnuclear binding energies, and anti-gravitons and anti-chronons.

Now that he has set it up, Diekereide throws the smoker up and in. He says a Climber takes it from there, in a direction "perpendicular" to hyperspace, into what is called the null.

Ain't no moss on the trees now. Ain't no trees around here. And he just kyped my compass.

In hyper 2 + 2 doesn't equal 4. All right. My mother used to believe wilder things in order to receive communion. But ... in null, e is only a second cousin of me2. In hyper c varies according to e in relation to a constant, m. In null even c2 can be a negative number.

My opinion? Another triumph for the people who blessed us with V- 1.

I lost my faith in God as soon as I was old enough to discern the rampant inconsistencies and contradictions in Catholic dogma. My faith in the dogma of physics went when, after having been browbeaten with the implacable laws of thermodynamics for years, I discovered the inconsistencies and contradictions involving neutron stars, black holes, hyper, and the Hell Stars. I just can't buy a package of laws that's good every day but Tuesday.

But I believe what I see and feel. I believe what works.

As a practical matter, to make the ship Climb, or go null, Engineering pumps massive energies into the Climber's torus, which is a closed hyper drive. When the energies become violent enough, hyper cannot tolerate the ship's existence. It spits the tub out like a peach pit, into a level of reality wherein nothing outside the toroid's field responds to ordinary physical law.

I'm reminded of those constructs topologists love to play with on computers. They don't try for just fourth- or fifth-dimensional constructs, they go for eighth or fifteenth. The ordinary mortal mind just can't encompass that.

Welcome to Flatland.

I'm an observer. A narrator. I should observe and report, not comment. As a commentator I tend to become flip and shallow.

Diekereide is a babbler, as mouthy as Westhause is off-ship. He meanders deeper into the forest. I hear the latest gossip about matter without fixed energy states, the new rumor about atoms with the nuclei outside. He gives me a blushing peek through the curtain at nonconcentric electron shells and light hydrogen atoms where electron and proton are separated by infinity. He whispers that matter in null has to exist in a state of excitement cubing that the same atom would have at the heart of a star. I don't ask which star. He might give individual specs.

Strange and wonderful things. I glance at the opening leading to Ship's Services and wonder if it's the same hole Alice tumbled down. I decide to keep an eye peeled for a talking rabbit with his nose in a wacky watch.

Diekereide has more secrets to share.

The more energy fed to the torus, the "higher" into null a Climber goes. Altitude represents a movement across a range of null wherein the physical constants change at a constant and predictable rate, for reasons as yet unknown.

"Oh, really?"

Diekereide is deep into his mysteries. He only catches the edge of my sarcasm. He gives me one puzzled glance. "Of course."

One of my nastier habits. If I don't understand, I tend to mock. I caution myself again: Observe and report.

Jokingly I ask, "What would happen if you threw the whole thing in reverse?"

"Reverse?"

"Sure. Sucked power out of the torus. Right out of the fabric of the universe."

The man has no sense of humor. He fires up Engineering's main computer and begins pecking out questions.

"I wasn't serious. I was joking. For God's sake, I don't want to know. Tell me more about altitude."

Altitude is important. I know that from my pre-reading. Altitude helps determine how difficult a Climber is to detect. The higher she goes, the smaller her "shadow" or "cross section."

Enter the rabbit. His name is Lieutenant Varese, the Engineering Officer. He indicates that Diekereide is late for a very important date and takes over the explaining. He has a whole different style.

Our paths have never crossed before, in this life or any other. Still, Varese has decided he isn't going to like me. He sends a clear message. It won't help even if I save his life. Diekereide, on the other hand, will remain my comrade and champion simply because I nod and "Uh-huh" in the right places during his monologues.

Varcse's unflattering estimate of my mental capacity is nearer the mark than his assistant's. He gives me a quick PR handout of a lecture.

He says the Effect—by which he means the Climb phenomenon—was first detected aboard overpowered singleships of the unsyncopated rotary-drive type. "The Mark Twelve fusion drive?" I ask brightly.

One sharp nod. "Without governor or Fleet synchronization." Scowl. Fool. You can't buy into the club that easily.

Pilots claimed that sudden, massive applications of power caused their drives to behave strangely, as if stalling, if you think in internal combustion terms, or temporarily flaming out, if you favor jets. Something was going on. External sensors recorded brief lapses of contact with hyper, without making concomitant brushes with norm.

Those reports came out of the first few actions of the war. The problem didn't arise earlier because in peacetime the vessels weren't subjected to such vicious treatment. There were apparent psychological effects, too. The affected pilots claimed that their surroundings became "ghostly."

Physicists immediately posited the existence of a state wherein fusion couldn't take place. The overexcited pilot would jam himself into null, his drive would cease fusing hydrogen, his ship would fall back...

Frenetic research produced the mass annihilation plant. Con-traterrene hydrogen, mixing with terrene in controlled amounts, can bang out one hell of a lot of energy in any reality state.

Demand produced a CT technology almost overnight. The first combat Climber went on patrol thirteen months after the discovery of the Climb phenomenon.

End of PR statement. Thank you very much for your kind interest. Now will you please go away?

We're very busy down here.

Varese doesn't use those exact words but makes his meaning perfectly clear. I don't think I'm going to like him much, either.

My second hour aboard. I've learned a valuable lesson about serving in the Climbers. Don't try to meet everybody and see everything right away. I've made myself odd man out in the hammock race.

I returned to Ops figuring I'd take whatever was left over, once everything was settled down.

There isn't anything. The enlisted men are eyeing me. I don't know if it's apprehension they feel, or if my response will give them some measure of me as a man.

This ship has no Officers' Country. No Petty Officers' Quarters. No Chiefs' Quarters. The wardroom is a meter-long drop table in Ship's Services. It doubles as a cook's bench and ironing board.

Everything has its round-the-clock use.

I work my way through Weapons without finding a home. Feeling foolish, I'm working my way through Ship's Services, to continuous polite negatives, when I notice Bradley watching. "Charlie, this scow is too damned egalitarian."

"I saw your problem coming, Lieutenant. Made you a place. Ship's laundry."

The ship's laundry is a sink-and-drainboard arrangement that doubles as a wash basin and sick bay operating table. Bradley has stretched an extra hammock in the clear space overhead. I up my estimate of the man. This is his first mission. He knows little more about the ship than I, yet he has identified a problem and taken corrective action.

"I won't get much sleep here." Under ship's gravity the nadir of the hammock should dip into the sink.

"Maybe not. It's the only basin aboard. But consider the bright side. You won't have to share with anyone else."

"I'm tempted to throw a tantrum. Only I think I'd get damned unpopular damned fast, throwing my commission around." A couple of Bradley's men are watching me with stony faces, waiting for my reaction.

"True." He's begun whispering. "The Old Man says seeing how much the new officers will take is their favorite sport."

"You and me against the universe, then. Thanks. If there's a next time, I'll know better than to play tourist."

"It's your time outside the Service, I guess. Dulled your instincts. I caught on right away."

He's skirting the edge of a painful subject. I beat the wolf down and reply, "The instincts better come back fast. I don't want to be the poor relation at the feast forever."

The watchers are gone. I've passed the first test.

"The Old Man says first impressions are critical. Half of us are outsiders."

"We'll all know each other better than we want before this's over."

"Hey, Lieutenant," someone shouts through the hatch to Weapons. "The Old Man wants you on the Ohone."

O-l. That's Operations. O-2 is Weapons. And so forth.

I dump my gear into my hammock and hand-over-hand up hooks welded to the keel. When we shift to operational mode, they will become hangers for slinging hammocks and stowing duffel bags.

Getting through the hatches is miserable in parasite mode, even under minimal gravity. The hatches are against the hull, not near the keel. You have to monkey over on bars welded to the overhead.

They'll become a ladder to the keel when the vessel goes operational.

Once at the hatch I have to hoist myself through, then repeat the process getting to Operations.

"The man who designed this monster ought to be impaled."

"An oft-heard suggestion," Yanevich says. "But the son of a bitch has gone over to the other firm."

"What?"

He smiles at my expression. "That's why we're all so gung ho. Didn't you know? We can't lay hands on the bastard till we win the war. Only then we'll have to fight over who gets to do what to him first. You want your shot, you'd better put in your paperwork now. Just don't count on too much being left when your chit comes up."

"There's got to be a better setup."

"No doubt. Actually, it's a computer design. They say the programmers forgot to tell the idiot box there'd be people aboard."

"The Commander sent for me."

"Not a command performance. Just so you can watch departure if you want. We're moving now." He nods toward the cabin. "The Old Man is up there. Here. Take my screen. It's on forward camera.

This'll do as your duty and battle station for now."

"Not much to see." The bearing and tilt on the camera tell me nothing. Forward. It should be staring at the wall of the wetdock. Instead, the screen shows me an arc of darkness and only a small amount of wall. The lighting seems brilliant by contrast with the darkness.

High on the wall, at the edge of the black arc, a tiny figure in EVA gear is semaphoring its arms.

I wonder what the hell he or she is up to. I'll probably never know. One of the mysteries of TerVeen.

A martial salvo from French horns blares through the compartment. The Old Man shouts, "Turn that crap down!" The march dwindles till it's barely audible.

Damn! How imperceptive can one man be? We're moving out. We're under way already. Must have been for quite a while. That creeping arc of darkness is naked space. The mother is crawling out of TerVeen's backassward alimentary canal. "They didn't waste any time."

"Excuse me, sir?" The man on my left offers a questioning look. A Tachyon-Detection Specialist, I see.

"Thinking out loud. Wondering what the devil I'm doing here." I catch the strains of the horns.

"Outward Bound," I realize. I've never heard them sung, but I hear some idiot has put words to an ancient march, retitled it, and made it the official Climber battle hymn. Full of eagerness to be at the enemy. A nitwit's delight.

Someone in the inner circle reads my mind and breaks into song. "Outward Bound," all right. I recognize the version I beard being sung by bunny hoppers in the ruins. From somewhere else an authoritative voice says, "Stow it, Rose." This isn't a voice I recognize. Someone I haven't yet met.

I close my eyes and try to imagine our departure as it would appear to an observer stationed on the wall of the great tunnel. The Climber people come hustling in, hours after the mothercrew has begun its preparations. They swarm. Soon the mother reports all Climbers manned and all hatches sealed and tested. Her people scamper over her body, releasing the holding stays, being careful not to snap them. Winches on the tunnel walls reel them in.

Small space tugs drift out from pockets in the walls and grapple magnetically to pushing spars extending beyond the mother's clinging children.

Behind them, way behind them, a massive set of doors grinds closed. From the observer's viewpoint they're coming together like teeth in Brobdingnagian jaws. They meet with a subaudible thud that shakes the asteroid.

Now another set of doors closes over the first. They snuggle right up tight against the others, but they're coming in from left and right. Very little tunnel atmosphere will leak past them.

Redundancy in all things is an axiom of military technology.

There are several vessels caught in the bay with the departing mother. They have to cease outside work and button up. Their crews are cursing the departing ship for interrupting their routine. In a few days others will be cursing them.

Now the great chamber fills with groans and whines. Huge vacuum pumps are sucking the atmosphere from the tunnel. A lot will be lost anyway, but every tonne saved is a tonne that won't have to be lifted from Canaan.

The noise of the compressors changes and dwindles as the gas pressure falls. Out in the middle of the tunnel, the tugs slow the evacuation process by using little puffs of compressed gas to move the mother up to final departure position.

Now a pair of big doors in front of the mother begins sliding away into the rock of the asteroid.

These are the inner doors, the redundant doors, and they are much thicker that those that have closed behind her. Great titanium slabs, they're fifty meters thick. The doors they back up are even thicker. They're supposed to withstand the worst that can be thrown against them during a surprise attack. If they were breached, the air pressure in the 280 klicks of tunnel would blow ships and people out like pellets out of a scattergun.

The inner doors are open. The outer jaws follow. The observer can peer down a kilometer of tunnel at a round black disk in which diamonds sparkle. Some seem to be winking and moving around, like fireflies. The tugs puff in earnest. The mother's motion becomes perceptible.

A great long beast with donuts stuck to her flanks, moving slowly, slowly, while "Outward Bound" rings in the observer's ears. Great stuff. Dramatic stuff. The opening shots for a holo-show about the deathless heroes of Climber Fleet One. The mother's norm-thrusters begin to glow. Just warming up. She won't light off till there's no chance her nasty wake will blast back at her tunnelmates.

The tugs are puffing furiously now. If the observer were to step aboard one, he would hear a constant roar, feel the rumble coming right up through the deckplates into his body. Mother ship's velocity is up to thirty centimeters per second.

Thirty cps? Why, that's hardly a kilometer per hour. This ship can race from star to star in a few hundred thousand blinks of an eye.

The tugs stop thrusting except when the mother's main astrogational computers signal that she's drifting off the cen-terline of the tunnel. A little puff here, a little one there, and she keeps sliding along, very, very slowly. They'll play "Outward Bound" a dozen times before her nose breaks the final ragged circle and peeps cautiously into her native element. Groundhog coming up for a look around.

The tugs let go. They have thrusters on both ends. They simply throw it into reverse and scamper back up the tunnel like a pack of fugitive mice. The big doors begin to close.

The mother slides on into the night, like an infant entering the world. She hasn't actually put weigh on but has taken it off. She's coming out the rear end of TerVeen, relative to the asteroid's orbit around Canaan. The difference in orbital velocities is small, but soon she'll drift off the line of TerVeen's orbit.

Before she does, word will come from Control telling her the great doors are sealed. Her thrusters will come to life, burning against the night, blazing off the dull, knobby surface of TerVeen.

She'll gain velocity. And up along her flanks will gather the lean black shapes of her friends, the attack destroyers. The French horns may toot a final hurrah for those who'll never return.

Outward bound.

What am I doing here? The arc of darkness has devoured the last of the light. And there're creatures hidden in it, somewhere, eager to end my tale.

"No sweat, sir," my neighbor informs me. "Getting to the patrol zone is a milk run. They haven't hit a mother yet."

That record doesn't impress me. There's a first time for everything, and my luck hasn't been hot for several years. The butterflies stampeding in my stomach are trying to tell me something.

"The Lord is with us, sir. Recall the psalm, if you will. 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.'"

At the moment I could use a comforting rod and staff. Anything. A little superstition doesn't hurt once in a while does it? "Huh?"

"Meow?"

Something is rubbing against my shins. I push back from the console..."Oh, shit. What the fuck? A

goddamned cat?"

I'm surprised at myself. I must be more on edge than I'm willing to admit. I don't usually have a garbage mouth.

"That's Fleet Admiral Minh-Tannian," my neighbor says. "Pure-blood, registered alley cat. A

pedigree a millimeter long." He smiles so I'll know that he's joking. The smile is useful. He has a flat delivery.

An enlisted man with Chief's stripes leans on the back of my seat, considering the cat. I've never seen a more scabrous beast. The Chief offers his hand. "Felipe Nicastro, sir. Chief Quartermaster.

Welcome aboard. Your four-legged friend usually answers to Fred, or Fearless Fred. Named after our glorious leader, of course. Those yardbirds take good care of you, Fred?" Nicastro glances round the compartment. "Old Fearless himself should be up on squadron net by now. Throdahl? Anything from the Great Balloon?"

Throdahl is the Climber's radio operator. At the moment he's pressing a tiny headphone to his left ear. "His carrier is open, Chief. Any second."

The Commander calls out, "Log it, Throdahl. Give the Lieutenant a couple minutes for flavor, then shit-can it. Except for the Recorder."

I glance up at the Chief. He's hanging on my reaction. "Not much formality here, Chief. Does it affect discipline?"

"Our competitors pack guns. That's discipline enough."

I make a mental note: Query the Commander re his order. Ignoring the Admiral won't set well in some quarters. The Mission Recorder remembers everything, be it a command decision or simple whisper of discontent.

My exterior view gives way to the craggy, photogenic visage of Fleet Admiral Frederick Minh- Tannian, Navy's proconsul on Canaan.

"You probably see more of this nitwit on the Inner Worlds than we do out here." Glancing up, I see Nicastro has given way to Lieutenant Yanevich. The Chief has stepped to one side. "He's a glory hound."

"A gasbag too," Nicastro declares. He's needling me subtly. Maybe he thinks I report direct to the Admiral.

Hardly. At the moment, faced by my first mission, after weeks of having heard how bad it is out there, the last thing I'll have is a rousing attack of patriotism. I'm too busy being scared.

Tannian is speaking. I don't bother listening to more than a few snatches. "... implacable resistance... Remorselessly onward... Until the death, jaws locked in the throat of the enemy...

Bold and courageous warriors yielding your final gram of courage..."

Such is the stuff of the Admiral's speech. Such is the stuff of his world view. Some pep talk. He could bore the last erg of fight out of the home team before the biggest game of the year. Didn't he ever serve in a fighting ship? Nobody wants to hear that shit.

I can't help growling, "Sounds like he thinks we're a destroyer squadron off to shoot up a Sangaree raidstation."

"Cruisers." Yanevich grins. "He came up in cruisers."

Before Throdahl abbreviates that football rally of a speech, I become as derisive as any of my companions. It's catching. The Admiral asks for it. It's painfully clear that he doesn't understand fighting men at all. There's something very definitely wrong when even the career officers hold their supreme commander in total contempt.

Yanevich is worse than the enlisted men. He seems to think Tannian is making a direct assault on his intelligence. He has several crude suggestions for the Admiral, all involving donut-shaped titanium suppositories.

Nobody seems to care that the Mission Recorder will remember what they say.

Only one man listens to Tannian. I pick him out instantly. He's the one nodding in all the right places, and looking mildly dismayed by his shipmates.

"Chief?" I point.

"Gonsalvo Carmon. Operations Electronic Technician. Fourth Mission. Bronwen. They skragged it at the beginning of the war. He's a crusader."

"Oh." They're worse than the Tannians. The Tannians are just blowing hot air. The crusaders mean it. They can get you killed, trying to do the things the Tannians just talk about.

"Gentlemen, please," the Commander shouts into the catcalls and obscene suggestions. "Please remember your dignity. Please remember that this is Navy, and Navy demands respect for senior officers." The compartment descends into nervous silence. There could be some black marks coming up. "Besides, the old fartbag means well."

Redoubled howling.

"Don't you worry about the Recorder?" I asked the First Watch Officer.

"Why? There's a war on. Unless we take a ride on Hecate's Horse and they recover the Recorder, the scanners only check our operational statistics. Missiles expended versus shipping destroyed.

Tactics, successful and unsuccessful. You can't tell one voice from another on that cheap tape anyway. Unless you want to take voiceprints. The scanners are old Climber people anyway. They know what's going on out here."

"Oh." Nevertheless, I reprimand myself for having participated in the mockery. My position is precarious. I dare not antagonize anyone for fear I'll dry up my sources.

My screen blanks. Nicastro murmurs, "Look at that! He screwed up his channel changes."

Instead of space, my screen is showing us the most beautiful black woman I've ever seen. The Chief says, "I'll straighten him out."

"Don't bother. I don't mind looking at this. I don't mind at all."

It's obvious that she and the radioman are very close friends. Embarrassingly close. Even while I'm considering swearing off Nordic blondes, I'm beginning to fidget. Voyeurism's never been my cup of tea.

"Hey, Monte," one of the computermen shouts. "Tell her to save some of that for me."

Only then does Throdahl realize that he has fed his interchip personal to every screen.

"Shove it, Rose." The beautiful lady vanishes. I suppose it's the situation, being on the edge of peril, that makes me overreact. I know I'm going to mourn and remember this vision forever. I'm going to fall asleep thinking about her. Hell, maybe I'll try to meet her when we get back.

Assuming we get back.

We have to. This Climber is invulnerable. I'm aboard. They can't dust a Climber carrying a correspondent. Yes. I'll be seeing you, lady.

Some of the others are adopting the same plan. It's the nature of the moment, surely. I've seen it before, on other ships. Soon there'll be no further talk of tomorrow, and very little thought of it. Life will become moment to moment. The Climber will contain the whole universe. Big plans for the future will extend no farther than work to be accomplished during the next off-watch period.

The cat lands in my lap. Startling as his presence was, I forgot him. "Uh. Hello, Fred." I'm not on good terms with cats. Generally we contrive to ignore one another. I scratch the top of his head, then around his ears. He seems satisfied. "What do you think?" I ask him.

These clowns have broken a whole volume of regs by installing an animal aboard. How did they manage it? In one of the duffel bags?

What's cat hear doing to the atmosphere system?

A cat is a small thing. But getting him from Canaan into TerVeen, then into the ship, would require a substantial conspiracy.

"All is forgiven, I see." That's the Commander's uniquely calm and toneless voice. Turning, I see him balanced among the cross-members, clinging like a spider monkey. He has his cap pushed way back on the crown of his head. His hair sticks out like pieces of broken straw. He looks younger and happier now that he's here, now that the unknowns have been removed from his life. His smile seems gentle, almost feminine. There's a playful humor in his eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"That was Fred's mass share you took for your extra gear. There won't be any goodies for him this patrol." He waves one hand. I wonder why I've never noticed how long and delicate his fingers are.

Piano-player fingers. Artist's fingers. Definitely not the thick sausages of a professional warrior. "No matter. Fred is a master of the innovative scrounge. He'll get fat while the rest of us turn into pus-colored scarecrows."

I've seen tapes of "victorious heroes" returning from successful patrols. The Caucasians were, indeed, pus-colored and ragged. Even the darker spacers had a washed-out look.

The Old Man must be in on the plot. He drifts away before I can ask any questions. So I'll ask Yanevich. But the First Watch Officer has vanished, too. Along the way and partly up the curve of the hull, Westhause is engrossed in the subleties of his Dead Reckoning system, murmuring to it as if it needs endearments now so it will perform well later. Is he seducing the equipment?

Everyone is preoccupied. Except the Chief Quartermaster.

Nicastro is a small, lean, dark man, mid-twenties going on fifty. This will be his last patrol.

Daring fate and superstition, he married during his leave. He now looks like he regrets his temerity. His jitters are showing. The short-timer shakes, they call them. They say it takes a rock of a man to get through the tenth mission without cracking a little.

"Chief, tell me about Fred." How does the animal survive? This plainly isn't his first mission.

The old hands act like he's part of the crew.

Has some genius cobbled together a feline combat suit and taught him to go to it when the alarm sounds?

Nicastro turns his small, dark eyes my way. They're slightly crazy eyes, eyes that look back on too many patrols. "He comes with the ship. He's got seniority. Nobody knows how he got here anymore. This's his fourteenth patrol. Won't take a groundside billet. Hides out whenever we pull in. Hangs hi there smiting them hip and thigh, just like his namesake says. Please keep an eye on the screen, sir. We're not redundant in the Climbers. You're the only visual watch right now."

Nicastro's answer doesn't satisfy me, but I suspect it's the best I'll get. For a while. I still have to prove myself. I have to show these men that I can pull my weight, that I can take the heat. I'm supernumerary. That means there'll be just a little less for everyone else. I take up space, generate heat, consume food. Worse, I'm an outsider. One of those damned fools who fill the holonets with utter shit.

There won't be much joy in this for me. Let's hope that it'll be a short, showy mission.

I'll handle my shipboard duties. You don't forget the training. What worries me is that I may have lost my edge. I may have gotten fat. I may no longer have the self-discipline needed to endure the hardships.

"After-drag scoops clear," one of the nonrated men reports. He's repeating information coming from the mother ship. Nobody really cares. But we need to know where we are should we have to jump off the mother. A few minutes later, the same man reports, "Released from tug control. Stand by for point-one gee acceleration."

Nicastro gestures. I glance up. He points. Inertia will drag us in that direction. I nod. I'd forgotten our attitude on the mother. There'll be a little sideways drag.

"Quartermaster, sound general quarters when acceleration commences." The First Watch Officer has returned. Nicastro changes position slightly, and speaks to one of the men.

I punch commands to my camera mount, scanning surrounding space. The mother is clear of TerVeen. A

bright half-moon is slowly dwindling behind her. She's no longer safe. We've entered the battle zone. We have to be ready. The gentlemen of the other firm could show at any time.

The relay talker begins chattering continuously. "Planetary Defense standing by. Red Flotilla on station. Screen Romeo Tango Sierra, axis two niner seven relative, fifteen degrees zenith."

Somewhere, someone is typing madly, entering the information into a computer terminal. I'm startled because the keys make noise. They must be mechanical. On the big ships, terminals don't have keys, just a lettered, pressure-sensitive surface that records the lightest touch of a finger.

Keeping one eye on TerVeen, I beckon Yanevich. He ambles over wearing a slight smirk, as if he's sure I'll ask an especially stupid question. "Where're the suit lockers?" I've realized that I haven't been fitted. What've they done, taken something off the rack for me?

"Don't worry about it."

"But I'll need one for GQ."

He grins. "Just stay put."

In a slight panic, "What about the suit?"

He lays a finger alongside his chin hi mock thoughtfulness. It's a strong, square chin. A

recruiting-poster chin. It doesn't go with his narrow face and string-bean body. It makes him look bottom-heavy. His face has a sort of dull look in repose. "Suits. Let's see. I think Mr. Varese might have a few EVA jobs down in Engineering."

"No suits? My God..." They snuck one through on me. Never have I heard of going into action without the extra protection of suits. I glare at the hull. Six millimeters of stressed titanium alloy between me and the big dark. Two more millimeters of spray-on polyflex foam there to fill any micro-meteorite punctures, plus a little insulation. All that inside the metal. And no suits.

"Surprise!" Yanevich crows. "You know how much a suit masses?"

That's incredible. What can they possibly be thinking at Command? No suits. It indicates an appalling lack of concern for the men.

There's a hand on my shoulder. I look up into Chief Ni-castro's weak smile. "Welcome to the Climbers, sir."

No suits? One breach in the hull and we're done. Welcome to the Climbers indeed!

Some quick impressions.

Officers: generally cool. Those I traveled with cool to medium-friendly. Of the others, only subLieutenant Diekereide has shown any warmth. Not too much resentment, considering. I suppose most of it has been transferred to the Admiral. They assume my presence is Tannian's idea. Only the Commander has any inkling of how hard I fought to get aboard. I wonder if he has an inkling of how sorry I am already?

Crew: so far neutral to cool, with the possible exception of Chief Nicastro.

Of the others, only the tachyon man has spoken to me. I'll have to be patient. Even in the Line the men are wary of new officers. This go they have three to break in.

This is Diekereide's third patrol, but his first with this Climber. They shuffle hell out of Engineers before they give them their own ship. Then they become part of the power plant. The subLieutenant strikes me as the type eager to be friends with everybody—at least till he settles in. He comes on a little too strong. I presume he's a solid Engineer. He wouldn't be here otherwise. The propaganda is right in one respect. Climber people are the best of the best, the Fleet elite.

However competent he may be, I can't picture Diekereide's becoming a good officer in the leadership sense. Maybe that goes with his territory.

It took no genius to discover that Lieutenant Varese isn't popular. I didn't have to observe his men behind his back to guess it. He's the perpetual fussbudget, never satisfied with anyone's work. He can't keep his mouth shut when that's the wisest course. And if he has a choice of a positive and a negative comment, he'll choose the latter every time.

I've only had glimpses of Lieutenant Piniaz. He's somewhat like Varese, though quieter, yet more belligerent and bitter. There's a huge chip on his shoulder. I understand he came up through the ranks.

Bradley appears to be standard Academy product. He's self-sufficient, competent, and confident.

He's efficient and soft-spoken. He seems to have won his men already. He'll get ahead if he survives his ten missions.

He's a child today. In two years he'll be a clone of the Commander. There'll be lines in his face.

He'll have hollow eyes. He'll look ten years older than he is. And his men will have complete confidence in him, and none at all in Command. They'll follow him in a strike on the gates of hell, confident the Old Man can pull it off. And they'll curse the idiots who formulated the mission all the while.

I've had little real opportunity to gauge the enlisted men. Here in Operations the outstanding characters seem to be Jung-haus (the tachyon man, commonly called Fisherman), Carmon (occasionally called the Patriot), Rose, Throdahl, and Chief Nicastro. They're all old hands, and they've all spaced with the Commander before.

Rose and Throdahl are prototypical noncoms. Struck from the original mold, designed by Sargon I.

They have one-track minds. They seem to know nothing but sex. Their banter, though probably old at the time of the fall of Nineveh, has its entertaining moments.

Carmon is a silent patriot, thank heaven. He doesn't irritate us with speeches. He reminds me of a lizard quietly awaiting the approach of prey. He has that patient, "the day is going to come" air.

His intensity makes the others nervous.

As advertised, Fisherman is the resident evangelist. Every ship has one. It seems to be an unofficial billet, generated by some need in the group subconscious. I was surprised to find one on a vessel this small. Ours is a Christian, with a definite charismatic bent.

Since we have a Preacher, it seems likely we'll also have a Loan Shark, a Moonshiner, a Peddler

(the man who always has something to sell, and who can get you anything you want), a Bookmaker, a Thief, and a Gritch. The latter is the man everyone loves to hate, and the most important character in any small, closed social system. A closed group always seems to create one. He becomes a walking catharsis, a small-time Jesus who involuntarily takes our sins upon himself.

He's always that one man who's a little more different, a little more strange. The body politic alienates and hates him, and as a consequence everyone else gets along a little better.

Chief Nicastro may be our coward, simply by circumstance. He's scared to death of this mission. I suspect it would be that way for any man making his final patrol. I have a touch of it myself.

When there's nothing but another mission ahead, a man can look forward to nothing but another mission. He knows better than to plan the rest of his life. The short-time shakes set in during the magical final run. There's a chance there might be a tomorrow. You don't want to jinx it by thinking about it. And you can't help thinking.

There are seven more men in Ops: Laramie, Berberian, Brown, Scarlatella, Canzoneri, Picraux, and Zia. They're less obvious, less flamboyant, less loud, either by nature or because this is their first patrol aboard the Climber.

"Got to piss, better do it now," Yanevich says. "Compartment hatches seal at GQ."

The hatches are massive, one on each side of the double intercompartmental bulkhead. They'll keep a breach from claiming the entire ship. Each compartment is its own lifeboat. The Can is held together by explosive bolts. We can blow the four sections out of the hole in the donut if we have to.

I want to ask about that. Has anyone ever actually tried it? Is there any point? I can't see it.

Again the First Watch Officer has disappeared before I can formulate my questions.

How do they cut the keel? The keel is a single piece of steel running the height of the Can. Some way has to exist to sever it between compartments. And how do we drift apart? There has to be a thruster to drive the compartments away from the doomed donut.

I can see that, I think. There's a big, wide lump around the keel in the bulkhead facing Weapons.

A lot of tubing runs into it from small tanks slung around the compartment. Conduit too. Must be a small chemical thruster, just enough to kick the compartment away. Five or ten seconds of burn time, just a pittance of delta-v...

The Tachyon-Detection Technician volunteers, "I was in Sixty-seven Dee." His attitude says that means something. Maybe it does to veteran Climber people. It rings no bells with me. Maybe if he told me her Commander's name-----A few successful patrols can make a Commander famous. The Old Man is one of the current crop. No one knows from hull numbers. A ship has to be big and have a name before it becomes famous. I'd barely heard of the Eight Ball before reaching TerVeen. But I know Carolingian and Marseilles and Honan well, and all they ever did was get skragged. Dramatically, of course. Very damned dramatically, with the holonets beating the drums all the while.

Fisherman wants priming. He's like a brand-new acquaintance who hands you a holo of the kids, then, embarrassed by his own temerity, bites his lips and awaits your comment. "What happened?"

"Not that great a story, I guess." He manages to look both sorry he's spoken and mildly disappointed in me. Sixty-seven Dee must be one of the legends of the Fleet.

"I don't know. I haven't heard it."

Junghaus doesn't look old enough to be a veteran. He can't be more than nineteen. Just a pimplyfaced, confused kid who looks two sizes too small for his uniform. Yet he has four little red mission stars tattooed on the back of his left hand, over the knuckles at the roots of each finger. "Catch a fistful of stars..." They'll creep along the next rank of knuckles now. A

barbarous custom that's scrupulously observed. One of the superstitions.

Half the crew is under twenty. They're the influx from Canaan. The older men are Regulars from the Fleet.

The Old Man calls this the Children's War. He seems to have forgotten his history. Most of them are.

Fisherman thinks it over and shrugs. "We lost hull integrity in Engineering. We weren't even in action. Just running a routine drill. Lost everybody in the compartment. Couldn't get through to seal the breach. All the suits were stored there. Regulations. The rest of us had to gut out twenty-two days before we were picked up. The first two weeks weren't that bad. Then the stored power started to go..."

A shadow crosses his almost cherubic face. He doesn't want to remember, and can't help it. His effort to stay here with me produces a visible strain.

"Engineering supposedly has better protection. Guess that's where you can get killed the quickest."

He startles me, using the word killed. He looks calm enough, but that betrays his turmoil. He's talking about the traumatic experience of his life.

I try to envision the terror, inexorably fading into hopeless resignation, aboard a vessel that's lost power and drives. Those who survived the initial disaster would depend entirely on outside intervention. And Climber paths seldom cross.

Give Command this: They try to find out why when a vessel stops reporting.

"You didn't blow the bolts?" I'm curious about those bolts. They're a facet of the ship wholly new to me, a nifty little surprise that must have all its secrets exposed.

"Blow them? Out there? Why? They can find a ship. They usually know where to look. But a section... They almost never find them. You don't break up unless the ship is going to blow." His final sentence has the ring of an Eleventh Commandment.

"But with the power dwindling and all that unmonitored CT hanging there..."

"The E-system functioned. We made it. Don't think we didn't argue about separating." He's becoming defensive. I'd better change my style. You can't grill them. You have to get them to volunteer.

"Really, you can't separate unless you know they'll pick you up right away. Only Ship's Services can last more than a few days after separation."

"That's what I call gutting it out." How did they take the pressure? With nothing to do but watch the power levels fall and bet on when the magnetics would go. "I don't think I could handle it."

"Acceleration hi ten seconds," the relay speaker tells us. "Nine. Eight..."

The acceleration alarm yammers. Everything is supposed to be secure. Don't want anything rocketing around, smacking people. The hatch to Weapons clunks shut. Yanevich gets down on his stomach to examine the seal.

The Old Man glares at the compartment clock. It says we're nineteen hours and forty-seven minutes into Mission Day One. Down on Canaan, at the Pits, it's the heart of night again. I search with my camera, and there's the world, immense and glorious, and very much like every other human world.

Lots of blue and lots of cloud, with the boundaries between land and sea hard to discern from here. How high is TerVeen? Not so high the planet has stopped being down. I could ask, but I really don't care. I'm headed the other way, and an unpleasant little voice keeps reminding me that a third of all missions end hi the patrol zone.

"Where're the plug-ups?" the Commander demands. "Damn it, where the hell are the plug-ups?"

"Oh." The man doing the relay talking hits a switch. Little gas-filled plastic balls swarm into the compartment. They range from golf-ball to tennis-ball size.

"Enough. Enough," Nicastro growls. "We've got to be able to see."

A new man, I decide. He's heard about the Commander. He's too anxious to look good. He's concentrating too much. Doing his job one part at a time, with such thoroughness that he muffs the whole.

The plug-ups will drift aimlessly throughout the patrol, and will soon fade into the background environment. No one will think about them unless the hull is breached. Then our lives could depend on them. They'll rush to the hole, carried by the escaping atmosphere. If the breach is small, they'll break trying to get through. A quick-setting, oxygen-sensitive goo coats their insides.

The cat scrambles after the nearest ball. He bats it around. It survives his attentions. He pretends a towering indifference.

He's a master of that talent of the feline breed, of adopting a regal dignity in the face of failure, just in case somebody is watching.

Breaches too big for the plug-ups probably wouldn't matter. We would be dead before we noticed them.

Satisfied with the hatch, Yanevich rises and leans past me to thumb a switch. "Ship's Services, First Watch Officer. Commence conversion to patrol atmosphere."

The ship is filled with the TerVeen mixture, which is nominal planetary. Ship's atmosphere will be pure oxygen at twenty percent of normal pressure. That reduces hull stress and potential leakage and eliminates useless mass. Low-pressure oxygen is standard Fleet atmosphere.

The convenience has its drawbacks. Care to avoid fires is needed.

That madman, the Commander, brought a pipe and tobacco. Will he actually smoke? That's against regs. But so is a ship's cat.

"Radar, you have anyone from the other firm?"

"Nothing immediate, sir."

That's a relief. I won't get my head kicked hi during the next five minutes.

Why does Yanevich bother? In parasite mode the vessel's only usable weapon is mat silly magnetic cannon.

Out of nowhere, Junghaus says, "The Lord carried us through. He stands by the Faithful." It takes me a moment to realize that he's returned to our earlier conversation.

A trial shot, I suppose. To see how I react. It'll build to full-scale proselytization if I don't stop it now. "Maybe. But it seems to be he spends a lot of time buddying up with the other team."

"That's 'cause they've got the aged whiskey," someone hoots. Junghaus stiffens. I glance around, can't identify the culprit. I didn't realize that our voices carried that well.

It's very quiet in here. The equipment makes almost no noise.

Junghaus persists. I guess that's why they call him Fisherman.

It seems like forever since I've encountered a practicing Christian. They just don't make them anymore. The race has nd need for its old superstitions out here. New faiths are still in formative stages.

"We're being tried in the crucible, sir. Those who are found wanting will perish."

That same voice says, "And the Lord saith unto him, verily, I shall tax you sorely, and tear you a new asshole."

Nicastro snaps, "Can the chatter."

Was Fisherman a believer before his toe-to-toe with death? I doubt it. I can't ask. The directive to silence includes myself, though the Chief would never be so irisubordinate as to tell an officer to shut up.

"Increasing acceleration to point-two gee in two minutes."

"Contact, by relay from tender Combat Information, desig Bogey One, bearing one four zero right azimuth, altitude twelve degrees nadir, range point-five-four million kilometers. Closing.

Course..."

Here we go. The beginning of the death dance. They've spotted us. They'll throw everything but the proverbial sink. They don't like Climbers.

I missed something while trying not to panic. From the talker's information Yanevich has deduced,

"It's just a picket boat. She's staying out of our way. Carmon, warm the display tank."

I sneer at that toy. On the Empire Class Main Battles they have them bigger than our Ops compartment. And they have more than one. For a thrill, hi null grav, you can dive in and swim among the stars. If you don't mind standing Commander's Mast and doing a few weeks' extra duty.

TerVeen slips past the terminator. Canaan is barely visible. No evidence of human occupation.

Surprising how much effort it takes to make human works visible from space, considering them with the eyeball alone.

I adjust the camera angle. Now I see nothing but stars and a fragment of mother-ship frame almost indistinguishable in the darkness. Doubling the magnification, I set a visual search pattern. I catch a remote, traveling sparkle. "Watch Officer."

Yanevich leans over my shoulder. "One of ours. Putting on inherent velocity. Probably going to check something out."

I continue searching and become engrossed in the view. A while later I realize I'm daydreaming.

We've moved up to point-four gees acceleration. Someone has a magician's touch. His compensations have prevented inertia from vectoring any weird gravity orientations.

We have three bogeys numbered and identified. Chief Nicastro tells me, "They don't bother us before we clear the Planetary Defense umbrella."

The thin screen surrounding the planet will have sucked round our way, to help give us a running start.

From planetside it looked like the gentlemen of the other firm were everywhere. But a sky view from a surface point makes only a tiny slice of pie. A slice studied only when it is occupied. In space the picture becomes much more vast.

The minuteness of an artifact in space is such that you would think that searches might as well be conducted by rolling dice. Chance and luck become absurdly important. Intelligence and planning become secondary.

Still, Command knows whence the enemy comes, and whither he is bound. A sharp watch on the fat space sausage between those points helps narrow the odds. Climbers patrol the likeliest hunting grounds.

The passing legion of verbal reports fades, becoming so much background noise, no more noticed than the ubiquitous plug-ups. I shift my attention from the chatter to the chatterers. I can't always see them, either because they've gone around the curve or because they roam. Fisherman.

Monte Throdahl. Gonsalvo Carmon, who is almost worshipful as he nurtures the display tank. N'Gaio Rose and his Chief, a computerman named Canzoneri who has a diabolical look. Westhause remains fixated on his Dead Reckoning gear. The men I can't see are Isadore Laramie, Louis Picraux, Miche Berberian, Mel-vin Brown, Jr. (he gets insistent about that Jr.), Lubomir Scar-latella, and Haddon Zia. I don't know all their rates and tasks yet. I catch what I can when I hear it mentioned.

The men I can see are serious and attentive, though they don't resemble the heroes Admiral Tannian has created in the media. They sneer at the part, though I think they'd play it to the hilt given leave on a world where they're not well known.

Looks like I've got it made. Nothing to do but watch a screens And damned sure nothing is going to happen on it before some other system yells first. Everybody else is doing two jobs at once. While the Climber is being taken for a ride.

An hour after departure we reach point-five gee acceleration. The compensator finally muffs his adjustment. The universe tilts slightly and stays askew for two hours. The Old Man doesn't bother complaining. They don't notice it down in Engineering because they're closer to the gravity generators in the mother.

Yanevich's prowling brings him within range. "Why are we holding hyper?" Seems to me a quick getaway is in order.

"Waiting for the other firm. They have ships in hyper waiting to ambush us. We won't take till they drop and show us their inherent velocities and vectors. Can't just go charging off, you know.

Got to give them the slip. If we don't, they'll dog us to Fuel Point and all hell will break loose."

I crane and look at the display tank. The mother is the focus there. Neither side looks inclined to start anything.

Each is hoping the other will screw up.

Reminds me of my short career as an amateur boxer. What was that kid's name? Kenny something. They shoved us in the ring and said have at it. We circled and feinted, feinted and circled, and never did throw a real punch. Not chicken, either one of us. Just cautious, waiting for the other guy to commit, to reach and leave an opening. Coach got peeved and sarcastic. We danced while he badmouthed our conservative style.

We didn't let him get to us. We circled and waited. Then our turn hi the ring was up. They never put us hi again.

The next two kids were Coach's type. Gloves flying everywhere. Whup! Whup! Whup! Pure offense, and the winner is the last man twitching. Your basic kamikaze. Blood, spit, and snot all over the ring. Coach had to cut it off before somebody got creamed.

Coach Tannian stays out of the way while a squadron is departing. He's a mixer but has learned to appreciate the conservative approach. There are times when footwork is more important than punch.

While the butterflies float, the mother keeps increasing her rate of acceleration. The relay talker says, "Coming up on time Lima Kilo Zero."

"What does that mean?"

Yanevich is passing. "The point when we hit fifty klicks per second relative to TerVeen. When we throw a rock hi the pond to see which way the frogs jump. We're following a basal plan preprogrammed after an analysis of everything that's been done before." He pats my shoulder.

"Things are going to start happening."

The clock indicates that Mission Day One is drawing to a close. I suppose I've earned my pay. I've stayed awake all the way round the clock, and then some.

"Bogey Niner accelerating."

We've got nine of them now? My eyes may be open, but my brain has been sleeping.

I watch the tank instead of trying to follow the ascensions, decimations, azimuths, and relative velocities and range rates the talker chirrups. The nearest enemy vessel, which has been tagging along slightly to relative nadir, has begun hauling ass, pushing four gravities, apparently intent on coming abreast of us at the same decimation.

"They do their analyses, too," Yanevich says.

His remark becomes clear when a new green blip materializes in the tank. A parr of little green arrows part from it and course toward the point where bogey Nine would've been had she not accelerated. The friendly blip winks out again. Little red arrows were racing toward it from the repositioned enemy.

"That was a Climber from Training Group. Seems he was expected."

The two missile flights begin seeking targets. Briefly, they chase one another like puppies chasing their tails. Then their dull brains realize that that isn't their mission. They fling apart, searching again. The greenies locate the bogey, surge toward her.

She takes hyper, dances a hundred thousand klicks sunward, and ceases worrying about missiles. She begins crawling up on the mother's opposite quarter.

"A victory of sorts," Yanevich observes. "Made them stand back for a minute."

By evading rather than risking engaging the Climber's missiles, our pursuer has complicated her inherent velocity vector with respect to her quarry. We can take hyper now and shake her easily.

Unfortunately, she has a lot of friends.

The enemy missiles head our way. We're the biggest moving target visible. The mother's energy batteries splatter them.

This is a complex game, played in all the accessible dimensions and levels of reality. The Training Climbers give the home team an edge. Each of then* appearances scrapes another hunter off the mother's trail, making her escorts more formidable against any attack.

"We're almost clear," Yanevich says. "Won't be long before we do a few false hyper takes to see what shakes."

The first of those comes up a half hour later. It lasts only four seconds. The mother jumps a scant four light-seconds. Her pursuers try to stay with her, but tune lags talcing and dropping hyper distort their formation. While they're trying to adjust, the mother skips twice more, in a random program generated beforehand and made available to our escort.

They're not dummies over there. They react quickly and well. They have one grand advantage over us. They have instantaneous interstellar communications gear, or instel. All their ships are equipped. We only have a handful scattered throughout the Fleet. Our normal communications are limited to the velocity of light.

Yanevich says, "Now a test fly to see if they've been holding anything back. And they are. They always are."

This tune there's a half hour interval between the take and drop hyper alarms. In the interim the opposition throws in a pair of singleships. They bust in out of deep space almost too fast for detection. For a few seconds a lot of firepower flashes around. No one gets hurt. The singleships bounce off the escort screen.

"Now a lot of stutter steps and mixing so they lose track of which ship is which. We hope." The mother's maneuvers have gained her a margin hi which she can commence grander maneuvers.

Alarms jangle almost continuously while the flotilla mixes its trails. I await the final maneuver, which I assume will be a flower, with every ship screaming off in a different direction, getting gone before the other firm decides which to chase.

I guess right. "What now?"

"We have lead time now," Yanevich assures me. "Next stop, Fuel Point."