In addition to having similar apprehensions, Showm and Eesyan were dealing with undergoing actual coercion and experiencing the threat of force for the first time. While they were aware of Earth's ways and its history, it was awareness in an intellectual sense, recorded second-hand; knowledge about, but not knowledge of. To be compelled to submit to the will of another by the threat of physical attack was unknown to anyone raised in the Thurien culture, and virtually unthinkable. The part that nothing had prepared them for was the deeply disturbing feeling of helplessness, humiliation, and shame. Showm tried to picture the effects of a race's entire history being rooted in such ways to the degree where many of them-maybe the majority, even-were incapable of conceiving how a society could exist otherwise. What crippling of the emotions and the mind did it produce? What shackling and distorting of all that was creative? What needless terrors and obstacles to be overcome? With just this small taste, the true meaning of the mission and the significance of what it might have accomplished took on a whole new dimension. She moved from one undersize, uncomfortable human seat to another to relieve her cramped limbs, and tried not to think about it.
Probably the least affected by the predicament that they all found themselves in were Monchar and the two crew officers from the Shapieron. The thought of being marooned in the wrong universe carried no great impact with them, for they had been marooned in a different manifold of space and time for most of the past twenty-four years anyway. Their home, as it had been, was gone. Despite finding descendants of their kind, the times of Earth and Thurien that they had returned to were very different from everything they had known. Wrong universe or not, in many ways this one was more familiar. They were the only ones who had known Minerva before.
But with all their different psychologies, experiences, and strategies for evasion, there was one question that all of them had been asking ever since they walked into the communications room and found Broghuilio staring out at them from the screen: why had there been no response from the probe that should have told them the Jevlenese were here?
CHAPTER FORTY
The Jevlenese lighter nosed its way into the Shapieron's cavernous main docking bay amid service gantries and access ramps, located the marker flashing over the assigned berthing doors, and attached. The bay could be closed and filled with air for extended loading and unloading or maintenance work on the ship's daughter vessels, but it was not necessary on this occasion.
Broghuilio led his party through the lock cautiously. The huge, deserted vessel seemed somehow sinister in its emptiness and quietness, as if beckoning them on into a trap. They found themselves in a large open area with conveyors and freight-moving machinery, and wide corridors leading away in the direction of the interior of the ship. Broghuilio stopped and looked around. The construction was of the solid, heavy engineering of a bygone era, not like the light and colorful Thurien designs that he was used to. He felt more as if he were in the lower levels of an old, abandoned city than the inside of a spacecraft. As a warship, fitted with the weapons from his own craft, it would be invincible.
Even with the emptiness, there was an uncanny feeling of being watched. Maybe it was the emptiness that produced the feeling. He looked warily from side to side. "Where is the controlling system?" he called out. "Can you hear me?"
"I hear you," a disembodied voice answered, echoing in the vaults and chambers. It sounded as if it were coming from a tomb. Beside Broghuilio, Estordu shivered nervously.
"We will require guidance in making our inspection," Broghuilio said.
"To where do you wish to be conducted?"
Broghuilio tried to muster more effort to sounding like someone in charge. "Let's start with the Command Deck. We will view the plans and layout charts of the vessel there."
"Follow the blue lamps to your right. They will lead you to a transit access point. A capsule will be waiting."
"Follow me," Broghuilio said to his party. Best to fit into the role right from the beginning.
In the Shapieron's surface lander standing fifty miles off, Garuth watched the progress of the Jevlenese despondently over the link that ZORAC was maintaining. Shilohin, the rest of his crew, and the three Terrans who had remained up on the ship looked on silently. They knew his anguish and sympathized, but there was nothing they could say that would alleviate it. They had all known him long enough not to hold any blame. The calculation he had been forced to make was brutal, and every one of them would have reached the same answer. But to be driven from his own ship, and now have to sit out here like some exile in banishment, watching Broghuilio strut around assessing his property. Garuth still couldn't bring himself to look any of his crew in the face. He didn't think he would ever feel like a starship commander again.
Shilohin had approached. She spoke from nearby behind him. "Don't torment yourself, Garuth. You chose as you had to. We are not Terrans. We have no experience of dealing with threats of violence against others, or of gauging the seriousness of such intents. All of us are alive and unharmed. That is your first responsibility. You could not have risked the threat of Broghuilio's weaponry. What did you have to bargain against it?"
Garuth sighed heavily. "The worst is this feeling of… of utter helplessness. It doesn't sit well with a commander. You say we are alive and unharmed. That is true. But for how long? What incentive does Broghuilio have to complicate his situation by keeping us around once he has control of the ship?"
"Perhaps a very strong one," Shilohin said. "Alive, we are hostages. It's the only way Broghuilio can keep command of ZORAC. You see my point?"
Shilohin did have a point. And being honest with himself, Garuth admitted inwardly that he had allowed himself to get too focused on what he saw as his ignominy to have thought of it. "Yes. And it's a valid one," he replied. "But not much of an existence to look forward to."
"But it's an existence. And it gives us the one thing we desperately needed after walking in unprepared to such a shock as we did. It gives us time."
A communications supervisor brought a message to one of the aides, who conveyed it to Freskel-Gar. "Count Rorvax is calling from Dorjon. Maximum priority." Freskel-Gar strode over to the screen indicated, where his deputy was waiting, looking worried. The implication was that there was a problem to do with Hat Rack.
"What is it?" Freskel-Gar asked.
"It's been turned around. The flight. Cerian ground control has rerouted it and ordered it down to a low level. They're not divulging its destination. Cerian interceptors are already airborne and heading for the area. Obviously they know."
The news came like an unexpected punch in the face. It couldn't be… Not when everything had been going like a smoothly running machine. It was one of those rare moments in Freskel-Gar's life that his thinking processes seized up, if only for an instant. The mystery human, Hunt, was looking at him across the floor from where he was still standing with the colonel. From that distance, he seemed to know; as he'd said he did. Who else knew?
This was desperate. It called for fast thinking. "We need to be the first to go public," Freskel-Gar said. "Make it sound like a Cerian hijack. Kidnaping Perasmon…"