But on this tiny ship, all was not as it appeared.
Hidden beneath its cracked flight control panel was an array of incredibly advanced, ultra-long-distance sensors that were so sensitive they could spot an approaching ship from fifty light-years away, or roughly twice the distance of a typical LDS. Ensconced below the stained floor panels was an LS2 life-sign detector, which allowed the operator to search an entire planet for signs of human life including heartbeats, breathing patterns, voices, footfalls, even DNA samples blowing in the wind. In the ship's nose, twisted and battered though it was, sat a four-pack of so-called XZ guns so powerful, they could send a bolt of destructo-beams more than five light-years in any direction. And what seemed to be a broken-down ion-ballast engine in the back was actually hiding a tiny but powerful prop-core power unit beneath it. This meant the ZeroVox could actually fly in two ways: ion power or in Supertime at close to two light-years a minute.
The ZeroVox was not a space truck at all. It was a brilliantly disguised, heavily armed spy ship.
And sitting at the helm was the SF3 secret agent, Gym Bonz.
He was carrying a crew of four clankers with him, robots that resembled human beings, but just barely, in that they had two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head, all made of metal. Then-launch from Earth had gone off without a hitch. They had left from an isolated docking bay at the far end of Eff-Kay Jack, the enormous spaceport located next to Earth's capital, Big Bright City, and then fully kicked in the ion-ballast engine on leaving Earth's atmosphere. They were soon soaring past the Martian orbital plane.
While their destination was the mid-Two Arm, and specif-ically the Moraz Star Cloud, where the phantom battle sup-posedly took place, they would have to pass through the Pluto Cloud first. Made up of millions of artificial moons and heavily armed satellites stationed at roughly the same distance the ninth planet was from the Sun, the Pluto Cloud was a seventy-third-century version of a moat. No one got in or out of the Solar System, the Empire's inner sanctum, without passing through it and showing the proper authorization. Anyone caught trying to run the border crossing was usually executed on the spot.
This massive security swarm was under the command of the Solar Guards, and in this case, they usually did their jobs too well. The SG had a variety of ways to scan a ship, ID its passengers, rummage its cargo. One sniff of suspicion, and the SG border troops wouldn't think twice about tearing a ship apart, one electron bolt at a time. Even in the best of times, getting through their checkpoints could be troublesome. These days, it was bound to be more difficult.
Bonz was confident he could pull it off, however, though he knew he would have to be very careful.
Leaving the Solar System with his undercover identity already in place was es-sential to his mission. At the very least it would prevent an SG stealth beam from attaching itself to his tail, as might hap-pen if he'd passed through the Pluto Cloud in full SF uniform. But from all appearances, his ship was nothing more than a poky space lorry whose ID string would claim its one and only purpose was to pick up and deliver slow-ship wine to planets all around the Milky Way. All of the hidden exotic equipment was being concealed by holographic barrier beams, essentially modified spectrum rays that made things look like something they were not, from the subatomics up, and thus immune from most scanning units. Right down to the last detail, nothing on board the Zero could be linked back to SF3 or Bonz's true identity. He'd done this sort of thing many times before and had not been caught yet.
But shortly after passing through what was left of the as-teroid belt, Bonz realized his masquerade might not go as smoothly as he'd planned. He hadn't been out of the Solar System since returning to Earth from his last mission about six weeks before. He was noticing now that in just that short time, things had changed drastically in the solar neighborhood.
On a typical ride out from Earth, the casual traveler was likely to pass a steady stream of passenger-carrying space-ships, both military and civilian, moving between the Pluto Cloud and the mother planet. Some were on their way out of the Solar System; others were traveling within it. Supply ships of all sizes were also a common sight, as were private vessels belonging to higher-up government officials or even members of The Specials, as the very-extended Imperial Family were known. It was also not uncommon to encounter sightseeing ships taking well-heeled joyriders on the famous nine-planets-in-an-hour tour, a breakneck spin around the original worlds of the Solar System, all of them puffed and populated some 5,000 years before.
But Bonz saw none of this frivolity now. The interplanetary travel lanes beyond Mars were devoid of anything but Solar Guard warships. From scouting vessels to monstrous Star-crashers, they seemed to be everywhere. And these weren't just single SG vessels flying about. There were hundreds of them traveling in single- or double-line formations — convoys, moving back and forth between Earth and the outer reaches of the Solar System. Even more disturbing, these SG ships were flying in full battle dress, meaning their gun doors were open, and their weapons were exposed, as if they were going in to battle — or trying to look as intimidating as possible. If it was the latter, they were doing a good job of it.
Bonz steered ZeroVox past the Jupiter Loop and then closer to Saturn, a pang of grief catching in his throat as he zoomed by the tiny jewel moon of Titan, once his happy home. He was heading for one of the main Pluto Cloud checkpoints for leaving the Solar System, a gigantic confluence of SG garrison moons known as the Saint Golden's Gate. But now his ultra-long-distance scans were telling him there was a major tie-up of ships at this heavily used border crossing; the traffic jam stretched for thousands of miles in all directions. Bonz keyed into some string comm chatter coming from the area, and the conversations confirmed what he had initially feared: the SG was not only stopping and questioning every vessel com-mander entering or leaving the Solar System, they were ul-trascanning every ship, too. This was not good news.
They reached the Pluto Cloud about a half hour later, taking their place in the long line of outward-bound ships. The queue was moving very slowly; as he watched the search process on his long-range viz scanner Bonz could see why. Essentially every ship had to pass through a gigantic gold ring, nearly a half mile in circumference, that the SG had set up next to the Saint Golden's Gate checkpoint. This was the ultraring, and, it could see all. The SF3 technicians who had presented Bonz with the ZeroVox for this mission had assured him that the disguised vessel would be able to go through a typical SG security beam with no problem. But this huge ring was about one hundred times more powerful, more invasive mat the typ-ical SG scanner.
Would Zero pass the test?
There was only one way to find out.
It took six long hours, but finally the ZeroVox reached the front of the line.
It was directed into the huge scanning ring, which had been set in place between two small artificial moons slightly beyond the Saint Golden's Gate. There were no less than 2,000 SG troops in the vicinity of the big scanner. Some were stationed in huge gun turrets on the two accompanying moons; others were manning the ultraring itself. Three SG culverins were also hovering nearby. This trio of small, swift warships was bristling with weapons, all of them pointed at a spot just be-yond the exit point from the ultraring. The message was clear: anyone not passing muster would be blasted first, with questions asked later.