The lenses were electronic, able to show her a drinking mug on the surface in fine detail—but just in case they failed, there was one optical zoom lens, only a foot long, but capable of the same amazing magnification as the electron-telescope.
What did she see?
Sand.
She was zoomed out as wide as she could be—she had to cover a whole hemisphere, since she could only be sure of the one orbit (and not even that, really). The boys back home could expand anything they saw that might be worth expanding. For herself, out of idle curiosity, she could isolate any one feature of the surface, hold it in a buffer memory, and expand it to full view.
She intended to. If she was going to give her life for this look, she meant to have it.
She tested the buffer on a faint line that she thought might be a mountain range. Sure enough, there they were, rounded humps swelling up toward her—old mountains, worn down by wind. Not water, though—there was too little of it on this planet…
She canceled the view, hovering over her instruments, the enemy forgotten in the thrill of fulfilling her mission, of seeing the closely guarded secret, whatever it may have been.
The miles unrolled beneath her. The pole shifted slowly, a tiny ice cap moving from the top of the screen to the center, then to the bottom, and the southern ice cap began to come into view…
All of a sudden, she remembered the Kilrathi fighters. She stepped back over to the lookout’s screen. There they were, red sawteeth chasing a green dot, thousands of kilometers away.
But what was this? A larger triangle, a bomber at least, perhaps a small ship, spurring away from a cruiser, chasing after her!
Her heart leaped into her throat again. She poised, ready to leap to her recording equipment, ready to hit the patch that would activate the burst transmission of all the data gathered so far…
And saw a tiny oblong in the center of the Southern hemisphere, halfway down her screen. It was too regular to be a natural formation.
Triumph flamed through her veins as she punched to isolate the oblong into the buffer, then swelled it to fill the screen…
It was a fairy-tale castle.
It was a bird’s-eye view of a fairy-tale castle, all turrets and alabaster and sapphire, glowing in the sunset as though it were all made of jewels.
All about it lay only desert, empty rock, empty sand…
The words leaped unbidden into her head:
This was it. She didn’t know how or why she knew it, didn’t know what it was or why it was important—but this was it. This was why Vukar Tag was so heavily guarded, why it was crucial. Some ancient treasure of the Kilrathi, some source of racial pride, an emotional anchor, a ceremonial site—whatever it was, it was vital to them, drastically important.
A beep came from the sentry screen. She turned, staring at it, saw the red triangle closing on the green dot in the center of the screen that was her own hulk.
She leaped, and hit the “Transmit” button.
Above her, atop the hulk, the microwave dish sent a half-second burst of encoded data spinning after the Johnny Greene at a hundred times its speed…
Ramona felt the final, surging euphoria of victory. She stood next to her recording equipment, watching the empty sand unroll before her, feeling the singing victory, but with the horrible dread coming up beneath it, the certainty of doom.
There was nothing she could do. The ship had no engines, no thrusters, no way to steer or run at all. She could only wait, only trust to blind luck, only hope that she would live to see the completion of her orbit, to once more see the Joh—
Aboard the Johnny Greene, Billy saw the flash and let out a high, keening wail.
“They got her.” Grounder sat rigid.
“Annihilated!” Billy mourned. “Nothing left but atoms! Brave woman! Valiant warrior!”
“Did she die for nothing?” Coriander barked.
“No,” Billy said. “I got her burst transmission five seconds before the flash. Stored on crystal, and I just backed it up. Heaven only knows what it was!” His voice sank low, tragic in tone. “Lord, I hope it was worth her life!”
Grounder stared at him, amazed, realizing Ramona had made far more of an impact on Billy than any of them had known—including him. He had a thing for her. Shrew though she was, he had it bad.
“I hope it’s worth our lives!” Harcourt’s voice snapped them out of it. “No point in going back for her now. You’re sure she’s dead, Billy? Not the slightest chance?”
Billy shook his head, already deep in grief. “When a blue dot turns yellow and takes up that much space on the screen, Captain, there’s nothing left but ions. I don’t know what they hit her with, but it did a real thorough job.”
“Then the hell with Vukar Tag, and the hell with their asteroid belt,” Harcourt snapped. “We can make her death worth something, by getting that data back to the Admiralty.”
The ship began to shudder, ever so slightly.
“How much longer can we take the stress of full thrust, Chief?” Harcourt snapped.
“Half an hour sure, forty-five minutes maybe.” Coriander watched the battle display, transfixed.
“How far to the jump point at this velocity, Barney?” Harcourt demanded.
“Twenty-five minutes, if those fighters from the gas giant don’t get us first,” Barney answered.
“Range!” Billy shouted, his face suddenly savage. “Tear ’em apart, gunners!”
“Fire,” Harcourt said quickly, so that Billy wouldn’t have been giving an order beyond his rank.
Harry’s whoop echoed through the intercom, with Flip’s warbling yell right behind it. The guns were in phase, so they felt nothing, they heard nothing—but the battle display showed dots of blue breaking out all along the line of red arrowheads. Blue met red; they turned yellow, expanding.
But something big was coming up behind them—a destroyer.
“Missiles!” Harcourt snapped. “Fire One! Two!”
Larger blue dots shot away from the Johnny Greene, through the red arrowheads—but the arrowheads converged on them like bees on a bear. One blue circle turned yellow with the dozen arrowheads that had beset it—but the other broke through.
Some of the red arrowheads were past the little blue dots.
“Hit ’em, Harry!” Harcourt yelled,
Harry answered with a cowboy’s holler, and the blue dots peppered the red arrowheads. One went up in a yellow flash, another, another…
The last spat a red dot of its own.
The Johnny Greene rocked, the sound of the explosion echoing through its hull.
“Harry!” Harcourt snapped.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Harry growled, disgusted. “There! And there!”
The red arrowhead turned yellow, expanding.
“Jump point ahead!” Grounder snapped.
“Three Cats astern!” Billy cried.
Jolie whooped over the intercom.
On the battle display, another field of blue dots sprang out behind the Johnny Greene.
“Got any use for a dead Cat?” Jolie shrilled. “I’ll get you a few!”
On the screen, one of the arrowheads turned into a yellow flash, expanding—but the other lanced through the arc of blue dots, closing on the green circle that was their ship, closing, closing…