Leo eyed a monitor. “They’re almost in range to fire.” He paused a moment, then added, “They are in range to fire.”
Ti made a squeaking noise, and pulled his headset down. “Powering-up the Necklin field—”
“Gently” yelped Leo. “My vortex mirror—”
Silver’s hand sought Leo’s. He was overwhelmed by a desire to apologize, to Silver, to the quaddies, to God, he didn’t know who. I got you into this… I’m sorry…
“If you open a channel, Silver,” said Leo desperately, his head swimming in panic—all those children—We could still surrender—”
“Never,” said Silver. Her grip tightened on his hand, and her blue eyes met his. “And I choose for all, not just for myself. We go.”
Leo ground his teeth, and nodded shortly. The seconds thudded in his brain, syncopated with the hammering of his heart. The Security shuttle grew in the monitor.
“Why don’t they fire now?” asked Silver.
“Fire,” ordered Van Atta.
Bannerji’s bright computer schematics drew toward alignment, numbers flickering, lights converging. Dr. Yei, Van Atta noticed, was no longer in her seat. Probably hiding out in the toilet chamber. This dose of real life and real consequences was doubtless too much for her. Just like one of those wimp politicians, Van Atta thought scathingly, who talks people into disaster and disappears when the shooting starts…
“Fire now” he repeated to Bannerji, as the computer blinked readiness, locked onto its target.
Bannerji’s hand moved toward the firing switch, hesitated. “Do you have a work order for this?” he asked suddenly.
“Do I have a what?” said Van Atta.
“A work order. It occurs to me that, technically, this could be considered an act of hazardous waste disposal. It takes a work order signed by the originator of the request—that’s you—my supervisor—that’s Administrator Chalopin—and the company Hazardous Waste Management Officer.”
“Chalopin has turned you over to me. That makes it official, mister!”
“But not complete. The Hazardous Waste Management Officer is Laurie Gompf, and she’s back on Rodeo. You don’t have her authorization. The work-order is incomplete. Sorry, sir.” Bannerji vacated the weapons console and plunked himself down in the empty engineer’s seat, crossing his arms. “It’s as much as my job is worth to complete an act of hazardous waste disposal without a proper order. The Environmental Impact Assessment has to be attached, too.”
“This is mutiny!” yelled Van Atta.
“No, it isn’t,” Bannerji disagreed cordially. “This isn’t the military.”
Van Atta glared red-faced at Bannerji, who studied his fingernails. With an oath, Van Atta flung himself into the weapons console seat and reset the aim. He might have known—anything you wanted done right you had to do yourself—he hesitated, the engineering parameters of the D-class Superjumpers racing through his mind. Where on that complex structure might a hit not merely disable the rods, but cause the main thrusters to blow entirely?
Cremation, indeed. And the deaths of the four or five downsiders aboard could, at need, be blamed on Bannerji—I did my best, ma’am—if he’d done his job as I’d first requested…
The schematic spun in the vid display. There must be a point in the structure—yes. There and there. If he could knock out both that control nexus and those coolant lines, he could start an uncontrolled reaction that would result in—promotion, probably, after the dust had settled. Apmad would kiss him, just like a heroic doctor, singlehandedly stopping a plague of genetic abomination from spreading across the galaxy…
The target schematic pulled toward alignment again. Van Atta’s swearing palm closed around the firing switch. In a moment—just a moment—
“What are you doing with that, Dr. Yei?” asked Bannerji’s voice in startlement.
“Applying psychology.”
The back of Van Atta’s head seemed to explode with a sickening crack. He pitched forward, cutting his chin on the console, bumping the keypads, turning his firing program to confetti-colored hash in the vid. He saw stars inside the shuttle, blurring purple and green spots—gasping, he straightened back up.
“Dr. Yei,” Bannerji objected, “if you’re trying to knock a man out you’ve got to hit him a lot harder than that.”
Yei recoiled fearfully as Van Atta surged up out of his seat. “I didn’t want to risk killing him.…”
“Why not?” muttered Bannerji under his breath.
Furiously, Van Atta’s hands closed around Yei’s wrist. He yanked the metal wrench from her grasp. “You can’t do anything right, can you?” he snarled.
She was gasping and weeping. Fors, space-suited but still minus his helmet, stuck his head through again from the rear compartment. “What the hell is going on up here?”
Van Atta shoved Yei toward him. Bannerji, squirming uncomfortably in his seat, was clearly not to be trusted. “Hold onto this crazy bitch. She just tried to kill me with a wrench.”
“Oh? She told me she needed it to adjust a seat attitude,” remarked Fors. “Or—did she say ‘seat’?” But he held Yei’s arms. Her struggle, as ever, was weak and futile.
With a hiss, Van Atta heaved himself back into the weapons console seat and called up the targeting program again. He reset it, and switched on the view from the exterior scanners. The D-620-Habitat configuration stood out vividly in the vid, the cold and distant sunlight silver-gilding its structure. The schematics converged, caging it.
The D-620 wavered, rotated, and vanished.
The lasers fired, lances of light striking into empty space.
Van Atta howled, beating his fists on the console, blood droplets flicking from his chin. “They got out. They got out. They got out—”
Yei giggled.
Leo hung limply in his seat restraints, laughter bubbling in his throat. “We made it!”
Ti swung his headset up and sat no less limply, his face white and lined—Jumps drained pilots. Leo felt as if he’d just been twisted inside out himself, squeaking, but the nausea passed quickly.
“Your mirror was in spec, Leo,” Ti said faintly.
“Yes. I’d been afraid it might explode, during the stresses of the Jump.”
Ti eyed him indignantly. “That’s not what you said. I thought you were the hot-shot testing engineer.”
“Look, I’d never made one of those things before,” Leo protested. “You never know. You only make the best possible guesses.” He sat up, trying to gather his scattered wits. “We’re here. We made it. But what’s going on Outside, was there any damage to the Habitat—Silver, see what you can get on the comm.”
She too was pale. “My goodness,” she blinked. “So that was a Jump. Sort of like six hours of Dr. Yei’s truth serum all squeezed into a second. Ugh. Are we going to be doing this a lot?”
“I certainly hope so,” said Leo. He unstrapped himself and floated over to assist her.
Space around the wormhole was empty and serene—Leo’s secret paranoid vision of Jumping into waiting military fire was not to be, he noted gladly. But wait, a ship was approaching them—not a commercial vessel, something dangerous and official-looking…
“It’s some sort of police ship from Orient IV,” Silver guessed. “Are we in trouble?”
“Undoubtedly,” Dr. Minchenko’s voice cut in as he floated into Nav and Com. “GalacTech will certainly not take this lying down. You will do us all a favor, Graf, if you let me do the talking just now.” He elbowed both Silver and Leo aside, taking over the comm. “The Minister of Health of Orient IV happens to be a professional colleague of mine. While his is not a position of great political power, it is a channel of communication to the highest levels of government. If I can get through to him we will be in a much better position than if we try to deal with some low level police sergeant, or worse, military officer.” Minchenko’s eyes glinted. “There is no love lost between GalacTech and Orient IV at the moment. Whatever GalacTech’s charges, we can counter—tax fraud—oh, the possibilities.…”