"Are the plans and blueprints of the ship available as I requested?"
"They can be viewed in the holo-display tanks of the Navigation section, forward to your right and up the blue steps."
Broghuilio moved along the aisle and stopped to survey his realm from this new perspective. "You know, ZORAC, you have no choice but to learn to get along. You have to cooperate while we hold your previous associates. And I have to preserve them as long as I need your cooperation. We both have the basis for a deal."
"I understand."
And, of course, there was always the possibility that in time it might come to evolve new loyalties. Broghuilio turned and climbed the steps up to the dais itself. From this elevation, the panorama looked even more spectacular. He imagined it all lit and alive, the stations manned, the panels and screens active. And his to command.
"Bring up the main displays," he ordered. "I want outside views all around the ship."
One by one the large screens facing the dais came to life to show the five Jevlenese vessels against a slowly moving carpet of stars. The brilliant cloud-streaked disk of Minerva stood in the background on one, and a part of the Moon off on an edge in another. A holo image below and in front of the dais showed a three-dimensional representation of the Shapieron with the screens indicated around it in their correct orientations and directions.
In the center behind Broghuilio, the commander's chair and console faced out over it all. Broghuilio turned and regarded it. He straightened his shoulders, puffed up his chest, and approached his future seat slowly, almost with reverence. This was a solemn and symbolic moment. His followers watched silently from below.
And then Broghuilio stopped abruptly.
Another Broghuilio had appeared out of nowhere, already sitting in the Commander's chair. The expression of rapture that had been on his face lasted for an instant, then switched to one as bewildered as that on the face of the Broghuilio who was standing stupefied, gaping at him. The Broghuilio sitting recovered first. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
"I could ask you the same thing," Broghuilio standing shot back. The questions were reflex. It was obvious to both who the other was. What was far from obvious was a sensible question to try and make sense of it.
"What are you doing dressed like that, in my ship?"
"Your ship? What do you mean? This is-" Broghuilio standing faltered as Broghilio sitting vanished in front of his eyes.
"Who the hell are you?"
He turned dazedly. Another Broghuilio was halfway up the steps to the dais. At the same time, consternation was breaking out among the rest of the group below as two Estordu's recoiled from each other as if they had like charges, while the flagship captain disappeared from one place to reappear in another. The whole area below the dais dissolved into a mйlange of figures popping in and out of existence randomly. On one of the screens, the image of a Jevlenese ship disappeared, leaving just an empty starfield.
And suddenly Broghuilio was back on the bridge in his flagship, looking at screens showing surroundings of the terrain on Luna. General Wylott was there somehow. In the background, Estordu was jabbering something unintelligible. Another Broghuilio came onto the bridge, stopped dead, and gaped.
"What's happening?" Broghuilio from the Shapieron demanded. "How did we get here? And who the hell are you?"
"I could ask you the same question."
"What happened to the Ganymean ship?"
The other Broghuilio shook his head, obviously not comprehending. "What Ganymean ship?"
Fifty miles from the Shapieron, Garuth stood with the others in the surface lander, watching incredulously as the pattern of craft clustered in space fluctuated crazily. The five Jevlenese ships performed a dance of vanishing and reappearing, jumping from one spot to another. At one instant there would be six or seven, an instant later, just two or three. In a zone extending for an uncertain distance, the time lines from scores or more of realities in which they had happened to take up different positions were converging and becoming entangled. At the center, the Shapieron itself seemed to shift back and forth spasmodically. The channel from the lander's local control system was connected through to a simple circuit breaker that would deactivate the bubble that defined the expanded convergence zone. All Garuth needed was one specific combination. Below his chest in front of him, his hands opened and closed as he flexed his fingers unconsciously in anticipation.
The number of Jevlenese ships shrank to three, two… he tensed… then, suddenly, six. If none of the time lines impinging on the Shapieron included a Jevlenese ship, it followed that the Shapieron couldn't contain anyone who had been brought to it by one, and therefore it would have to be empty.
Then, just for a moment, the Shapieron stood on its own in space. Every one of the five Jevlenese craft and their various alternative versions were momentarily in some different reality.
"NOW!" Garuth called. An icon on a display changed to confirm the transmission. Would the signal get there fast enough?
On the screen, the image of the Shapieron steadied itself. Nothing else changed.
Everyone waited breathlessly. Nothing. Not a sign of any Jevlenese ship.
"I think you've done it, Garuth," Shilohin whispered.
"Magnificent," Chien complimented.
In the background, Duncan and Sandy quietly clasped hands and smiled at each other reassuringly.
Garuth swallowed disbelievingly. The picture replayed itself in his mind of the strutting oaf parading himself inside his ship. The memory came back of the humiliation he had been forced to accept. And a slow smile of satisfaction formed on his face. He felt like a starship commander again.
The lander closed with its regular port in the Shapieron's main docking bay. Garuth had waited a further fifteen minutes before returning. A systematic search of the ship confirmed that no trace of Broghuilio and the Jevlenese was to be found.
It was necessary to search the ship physically because another result that had been feared was also confirmed. During the wait, nothing further had been heard from ZORAC, and no response could be evoked from it either from the lander or upon entering the Shapieron. In the same way as had happened with the system in the probe, the riot of desynchronization had scrambled ZORAC's internal processes to the point where it ceased functioning coherently. But the network that formed ZORAC was far more complex than the probe's equipment, and the energy concentration at the core of the disruption induced by starship power was more intense than anything the probe had come through. After analyzing the logs and records, Shilohin's scientists announced that not enough was left running for the damage to be repaired. ZORAC was irrecoverable.
That was why ZORAC had requested authorization by the Commander before proceeding.
ZORAC had known.
Rodgar Jassilane, the Shapieron's engineering chief, restored the channel to the shuttle down in Melthis. The interface that ZORAC had created into the Agracon system was working. Garuth got ready to deliver the news as best he could without ZORAC available to translate. He asked Jassilane to prepare a replay of the event sequence as captured from the lander.
A Lambian was calling something about an armored column on the move toward the Agracon. Somewhere else, an infantry regiment had declared for the king. In the middle of it all, Hunt and the officer watching him stood to one side, seemingly forgotten. The atmosphere in the communications room was tense. Nothing more had been heard from the Jevlenese. But from the bits that Hunt could pick up, Freskel-Gar was having other problems. The regular forces and the nation appeared to be rallying to Perasmon. Although Freskel-Gar was visibly under strain, whether he would try to brazen it out using the prisoners as bargaining chips, or concede now and make things easier was unclear. It could go either way.