Return to Fanglith

SEVEN

Larn:

While Tarel stood weeping above me, my mind cleared. Four of us were still alive; I include Bubba in my count of people. If we could just stay that way, someday I could find out who did the shooting back there.

Tarel turned and stumbled toward the washroom, and I got up. I'd have liked to help him-his hard hands had saved me from myself twice in maybe a minute- but what he needed was a little time alone.

Just aft of the exit door was the gunnery control station; I recognized it from holodramas I'd seen. But by the time I could hope to figure it out and learn to use it, we'd be dead or possibly "safe" in FTL mode. Once in FTL I'd have plenty of time to work with it. So I walked over to Deneen and sat down in the copilot's seat.

From the side, her jaw looked set and her eyes intent. There was no sign that she knew I'd come over, though I'm sure she did. I looked the instrument panel over; most of it, though not all, was familiar from the cutters dad had owned. Neither Deneen nor I should have any trouble flying it, and she was doing fine.

She'd have to take us out the better part of a million miles before shifting to FTL mode; otherwise, the stresses would tear the ship apart.

In spite of everything, dying wasn't something I wanted to do for a while, and neither did Deneen, I was sure.

Neither had Piet a few minutes ago, nor Jenoor. Nor the marine sergeant who'd laid his life on the line to help us get away, and lost it.

I told myself I wouldn't waste the chance they'd given us.

The array of stars I could see through the wraparound for'rd window didn't mean much to me, so I turned my eyes to the instrument display. We were already 63 miles out; the right-hand digits were a blur, and even the tens were changing too fast to read. At the hundreds position, a 4 replaced the 3 almost at once, followed quickly by a 5, then a 6. Pretty soon, I told myself, the hundreds would be changing too fast to read, too. Short seconds later we turned over 8,000.

I wondered if it was possible we might get away unattacked. There had to be patrol craft on picket around Evdash, between the hard radiation belts, probably piloted by some of the more reliable people the Imperials could identify, or maybe by Imperials themselves. They were sure to have been warned by now that we were outbound fugitives. There were monitor screens above the window that ought to show any approaching hostiles, if I could figure out how to turn them on. Without them, we couldn't take evasive action.

Not that Deneen or I was anything approaching a fighter pilot, but we ought to be able to do something. It might make the difference between getting away and getting blown out of the sky. Without the monitor screens on, all she could do was keep accelerating at maximum for mass-proximity mode, the computer holding us on the curving course that gave us the greatest momentary distance from Evdash.

Above the more familiar console section was a sort of shelf with key rows that probably controlled things such as the monitor screen, but they were marked only by initials or symbols. Let's see, I thought, if I can call up a keyboard diagram on the computer.

But first I reached for something I did recognize- the radio switch-and turned it on. Through the weird distortion effect of an accelerating mass-proximity drive, a demanding voice spoke from it, ordering: "… at once, we will destroy you! Fugitive scout! If you do not…"

Deneen's hand reached up and cuffed the switch on her side, overriding mine and turning it off. She didn't even glance over at me. "I'm flying this," she said tightly.

"Right." I could see her point: she didn't need the distraction. We both knew what our situation was, and all we could do was try to run through it. Letting threats pour into our ears wouldn't help, and she could do anything at the control console that she thought needed done.

The accent had been Evdashian, though. That had been apparent, even through the distortion And despite the threatening words, that was at least a little bit encouraging. The pilot might not be as zealous to kill or capture us.

I looked around for Bubba and didn't see him. Had he run back outside for some strange reason before Deneen got the door closed? It didn't seem possible; he was one of the most rational people ever born. But it was out of character for him to go hide somewhere. Then I realized-he was with Tarel; he had to be.

Meanwhile, if somehow we managed to get far enough to jump to FTL mode, the scout would have to be our home for as long as it took us to get somewhere. I got up and started to explore it.

She was a lot larger than our family cutter. Built for a patrol crew of six, she actually had two little restrooms; six tiny cabins, each just big enough to get in and out of the narrow bunk, a shower; and a snug little galley. The food storage compartment was a little worrisome, though. It had been stocked for maybe a ten- or twelve-day patrol, and anywhere we decided to go would probably be farther than that. There was an emergency store of dried foods, but I didn't have a good feel for how long stuff like that would last us.

While I was snooping through the galley, I felt a swerve: Deneen had made an evasive move. I jumped up and went back out to the controls area. Tarel came out, too. The monitor screens were on now, and I could see why she was taking evasive maneuvers. The mid-line starboard screen showed a blip that was trying to center on it-Sock Onto us-and we were sliding to port to keep it off center. There was also a blip on the midline port screen, but it looked a lot smaller, which should mean a lot farther away. On the instrument screen, the hundreds digits were blurred now, and the thousands digits said ninety-seven. Ninety-eight.

For just an instant the nearer blip slid into the central ring, but apparently it could only lock on us when it was perfectly centered. At that instant Deneen swerved us sharply to starboard, and the bogey slid out. At the speed we were moving, a swerve like that took us miles off line in a second. If the scout hadn't been encased in its own little quasi-space at the time, we'd have been smeared all over the bulkheads. Or actually, we would have been long before, simply from acceleration.

Tarel and I just stood there, watching. The bogey would get close to the ring, sometimes actually getting into it, while Deneen did her best to keep him from centering. It seemed as if a lot of time was passing, but it wasn't, really. The mileage on the instrument screen passed 300,000-distance from planetary mass, actually. We had a long way to go yet before we dared shift into FTL mode. Twice again the bogey almost centered- once it seemed it must have-and we slipped away. I couldn't help but think that its pilot wasn't trying as hard as he could. He'd hardly dare do any more than be just slightly slow of reflexes though, a tiny bit short on coordination. The whole chase would be recorded on his computer, and if we got away, there'd almost surely be a board of review. I could imagine the Imperial Military Administration on Evdash making an example of her commander and pilot-maybe her whole crew.

That's when I really realized how much others were risking for us. I told myself silently that if we got away, we wouldn't disappoint them.

By 430,000 miles, I'd begun to feel almost optimistic. That's when I noticed that the second blip was getting closer. I didn't know how close it needed to be to have us in range, but it had gotten close enough to identify as a light cruiser, which probably meant it was Imperial. A light cruiser could launch twin-seat chasers when he was near enough, and we couldn't hope to evade them all.

"Any time you want me to take over-" I told her.

She shook her head without speaking, her hands semi-relaxed on the control arm. I'd expected that, and she could pilot as well as I could. So I just stood by, not distracting her anymore. I was ready if needed, or as ready as I could be, and she knew it. She kept evading our nearest pursuer, and we kept getting farther and farther from Evdash, but the cruiser kept getting nearer.

Then the cruiser launched three tiny blips-chasers- and I discovered what it looked like to be really gained on. Their launch position had already been gaining on us, and to that velocity they added their own-not too great at first, but it would increase fast. My glance flicked to the instrument screen-614,000, 615,000, 616,000-and back to the monitor. Deneen's principal attention was still on our original bogey-had to be-as he slipped and swerved around the ring, but mine was on the chasers. They were getting closer. And now there were three rings in the midline port screen, each with a little bogey in or near it. As soon as any one of them was near enough to lock on us, that would be it. Their torpedoes would follow us unshakeably, even into FTL if need be.

My eyes had just read 622,000 when Deneen hit the FTL key. I didn't see her do it, but the monitors went blank and so did the for'rd window. And we hadn't come apart! The instrument screen read "all systems ftl-mode normal, PSEUDOVELOCiTY i." The chasers hadn't launched torpedoes before we jumped; launch would have shown on the monitor. Which meant we were safe from them.

Deneen got up as if she could hardly move, and without looking at me, said, "The old survey cube is in my attache case." It lay on the deck beside the pilot seat, and she poked it with a foot.

"The old survey cube?" I stared at her. "You want to go to Fanglith?"

"Why not? We don't have anywhere else. Take over. I'm going to take a shower and lie down for a while. We can talk later."

Without waiting for an answer, she went aft to one of the sleeping rooms.

Fanglith! Still, this was not the time to overrule or argue with her. I slid onto the pilot's seat, took the survey cube out of the case, and inserted it in the computer. The computer was standard and the main menu format familiar. At my instruction it gave me the menu for the survey cube, then read off the coordinate equation for Fanglith and wrote it into astrogation. Deneen was right. We could talk about it after she'd unwound a bit, and decide on some other destination, if for no other reason than that we didn't have enough food to get to Fanglith.

Grinder maybe-the place Piet had talked about- where dad and mom were likely to go if they got off Evdash.