"Obviously, the missiles could not be launched from a ship, because the occupants thereof would fry in their own gamma rays if they waited around for the full operation. If the launcher is on the ground, they can rack up their warheads in an automatic loader and depart in safety."
Kettrick nodded. "All right. Let's get out the charts, then. I know the world of the Krinn probably better than anyone in the Cluster, though that isn't saying much. Maybe we can figure the likeliest spots. And you could almost double your capability by using the lifeboats as auxiliaries…"
"Not both of them. I'd have to keep one in case we spotted the launcher somewhere that the cruiser couldn't land. But the other one, yes." He got out the charts.
Most of the remainder of the time they were in jump was spent in planning, except for the mealtimes and the sleeptimes, and one time when Kettrick found himself alone with Larith.
She had kept to her cabin a great deal. She had known early on, of course, that they were not bound for Trace. When Sekma told her she had only said, "I am sorry you didn't believe me." And her face had been as masklike and unreadable as Kettrick remembered it that night at Ree Darva. Since then she had hardly spoken, joining the others briefly at meals and then vanishing again, tightly wrapped in a shell of…what? Hurt pride that she had not been trusted, despair that she had failed in her mission? Or was it fear…fear of the Doomstar, of what might happen to Seri, and again, despair that she had failed in her mission? Kettrick didn't know.
When he came upon her unexpectedly in the wardroom she looked at him with eyes so deeply shadowed that he wondered if she had slept at all. "I'm sorry," she murmured, and tried to move past him to the door. He caught her and held her.
She was wearing a green I–C coverall, loaned to her so that she might change out of her single dress. He could feel her body through the hard masculine cloth, the beautiful body he had once joyed in, softly firm and supple and smoothly curved and vibrantly alive. Now it was rigid under his hand, and the feeling of vibrancy in it was only the all-pervading, nerve-rasping quiver that permeated every fiber during jump, the straining of each separate atom to retain its identity against a force that willed it to dissolve into chaos.
She brought her head up and said, "Let me go, Johnny. You have nothing to do with me any more. Nothing."
"I believe you," he said. He did not let her go. She was so close to him that he was aware of her warmth and the faint fragrance of her hair. She was beautiful. Deep inside him he felt something like the stabbing of a knife. "Did you ever love me, Larith?"
"That's a foolish question, Johnny."
"I suppose it is." He took his hand away. "All right."
He left her, crossing the small room, and she spoke from behind him with a bitterness that shocked him.
"You shouldn't have come back. Did you think we needed you? Did you think we were dying for lack of you? Why didn't you just leave us alone!"
She was gone then, pushing with a small shiver of revulsion past Chai. Kettrick remembered that Seri had never permitted the Tchell inside the house when she was there.
Chai snorted gently. She did not say anything. The perfect lady, Kettrick thought, in spite of her fur.
He poured himself a drink and did not drink it. He sat staring at it and forgot it was there.
After a long while he realized that for almost the first time since leaving Earth he had thought of a girl named Sandra and wished her well.
Some time later they came out of jump.
The White Sun blazed in the sky ahead of them, one of the few hot white stars in the Hyades, a savage young warrior among the middle-aged and mellow suns. The fierce light beat at the cruiser's safety shields.
The radiation counters showed normal.
"Temporary reprieve," muttered Kettrick. "Or were we wrong?"
Sekma did not answer.
They stared from the shielded windows of the bridge at the world of the Krinn swimming through the glare. There was no doubt about which planet might have been chosen as a platform from which to launch the Doomstar. The two small inner worlds were semi-molten, the outer three impossible because of poisonous atmosphere, gravitation, or cold. The world of the Krinn alone supported life. After its own fashion.
The surface markings of the planet began to show in patchy glimpses between high cloud cover and the much lower clouds of smoke and dust. Kettrick made out the heliograph flash of white deserts, the black lava blotches of volcanic zones, the crinkled desolation of mountain ranges still raw and cruel with youth, the basins of shallow seas drying in the sun. Still closer, and he could see the great winding river courses and the green of the fertile belts.
The radarman said sharply, "Sir!"
At almost the same instant, while Weapons Control was in the act of starting to range and the ports were sliding open, according to prearranged plan, Communications cried out, "Sir! A message coming through…"
It came through clearly, in spite of the hiss and crackle of atmospherics.
"Silverwing to cruiser. Watch your counters and consider whether you wish to live. Too bad you came so late." With a hint of sibilant laughter, the voice added, "Goodbye."
In the intense silence that followed, the radarman said, "She's gone."
No radar, no killer beam nor missile could follow Silverwing into the limbo of not-space. The men in the bridge stood still, a little stunned by the swiftness of what had happened. Kettrick saw that Sekma's face was ashen under the golden bronze and he thought that his own must be the same.
The world of the Krinn raced toward them. The White Sun blazed.
And the radiation counters gave a small premonitory leap.
22
Sekma was the first one to break the silence. His voice was low but it was steady, and it had a hard, iron ring to it.
"We will conduct the sweep of the day side, as planned. There is a chance that we can find the launcher and deactivate it before the critical point is reached."
The acting skipper, a Darvan like Sekma and a good solid man, said, "How long would that give us?"
"It is estimated," Sekma said, laying a small stress on the word, "that the point beyond which the reaction will not reverse itself is reached in approximately twelve hours from the impact of the first missile. That would have been at sunrise." He paused briefly. "Unfortunately we have no way of guessing at the longitude of the launcher emplacement, so it doesn't help us much."
It did not help at all. And the mocking voice had said, "Too bad you came so late."
"After the critical point is reached," Sekma was saying, "the progression is more rapid. The radiation becomes lethal in something like six or seven hours. Normal shielding such as we have is no protection. Therefore…"
"Therefore," said the skipper, "we had better make the most of our X-number of hours."
He did not mention that if the search were called off the cruiser might land, be hastily serviced, and gotten off again in time to clear the planet and jump for safety. Kettrick knew it must be in his mind. It was in his own mind and he knew that every man there was thinking the same thing. Only one force held them silent, and judging by himself it was not courage but shame; no one wanted to be the first to suggest that they turn tail and run.
Sixteen hours? Maybe. Maybe only half that. There wasn't any way of knowing. Nobody had observed the birth of a Doomstar before, to gather data. They were the lucky first. It was a pity that their observations would be lost to science.
To change the subject in his own mind, he said, "Deactivating the launcher by hand makes it tougher. Is it impossible just to blast the thing?"