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I don't pay much attention. The way to listen to Diekereide is through a mental filter. Let most of the chatter slide, yet catch the gems.

"There isn't any way to beat the fogging. It's because the ship is separated from the universe. If you can't stand it, stay out of null."

He's describing the subjective effects of Climb. When a vessel goes up, its crew experiences a growing insubstantiality in surroundings. From outside, the vessel becomes detectable only as an apparent minuscule black hole. There's a continuing debate over whether this is a real black hole or just something that looks and acts like one. It has moments when it violates the tenets of both Einsteinian and Reinhardter physics.

In essence, a ship in Climb can't be seen from outside, which is valuable in battle.

Unfortunately, said ship can't see, either. Astrogation in Climb is tricky work. Which explains Westhause's ardent affair with his Dead Reckoning tracer In null you have no referents, but you can maneuver. Even if you do nothing, you retain our norm inherent velocity and whatever weigh you put on in hyper. It vectors. You have to keep close track unless you don't mind coming down inside a star.

"That's really no problem, though," Diekereide says. "Unless you're operating in a crowded system, you won't come down in the middle of anything. The statistical odds are incredible. Build yourself a dome on a one-kilometer radius. Paint the inside black. Have a buddy take a blackened pfennig and stick it on the dome somewhere while the lights ate out. Then put on a blindfold, pick up a target rifle, and try to hit the coin. Your odds are better than ours of hitting a star by accident. The real danger is heat."

Every machine, even the human machine, generates waste heat. In norm and hyper ships shed excess heat automatically, by leakage through their skins, and, especially in Climbers, through cooling vanes. Our biggest such vane supports the CT tank. There are others on both the can and torus. The vessel has lots of lumps and bumps waiting its basic can and donut profile.

In null we can't vent a calorie. There's no place for the heat logo.

Heat is the bane of the Climbers, and not just because of the comfort factor. Virtually all computation and control systems rely on liquid helium superconductors. The helium has to remain at temperatures approaching absolute zero.

One way to cripple a Climber is to keep on her so tight she has to stay up. If she stays long enough, she'll cook herself. Forcing that is the principal function of the other firm's hunterkiller squadrons.

We aren't as unpredictable and evasive as the holonetnews would have people believe.

That little black hole, that little shadow we cast on hyper and norm, can kill us. "A pseudo- Hawking Hole," Diekereide says. "Named after the man who posited substellar black holes."

A Climber's shadow is minuscule but still distorts space. If someone comes close enough, with equipment sensitive enough, he can locate it.

There're three ways to hammer on a Climber in null," Diekereide says. He holds up three fingers, then folds one down. "First, and most effective in theory, and the most expensive, would be to send a drone Climber up to collide with your target and blow its CT. That's no problem right now.

The other firm doesn't have Climbers. Let's hope the war ends before they figure them out."

"Oh, yes." My tone is sufficiently sarcastic to raise an eyebrow.

"The other ways sound more difficult, and probably are, but they're what the other team has to work with. Their favorite is to concentrate high-wattage short-wave energy on our pseudo-Hawking.

Doesn't physically hurt us, naturally. But every photon that impacts on our shadow adds to our heat problem and shortens the time we have to shake them. They use fusion bombs the same way, but that's a waste of destructive capacity: Your pseudo-Hawking's cross section won't intersect a trillionth of the energy. But they'll do it if they want you bad enough.

"One thing they did, till we got wise, was to maneuver our shadow into their fusors. That puts a lot of heat in fast. But if you know what they're doing, you can maneuver and destabilize their magnetic bottle. They've given that up."

The other method of attack is plain physical battery.

A pseudo-Hawking point is so tiny it can slip between molecules. It doesn't leave the other firm much room to obtain leverage. But they've found their ways, usually using graviton beams from multiple angles. A Climber suffers every shock as the coherent graviton beams slam her Hawking point a centimeter this way or that.

"I went through one of those my first patrol," Diekereide says. "It was like being inside a steel drum while somebody pounded on it with a club. It's more frightening than damaging. They have so little cross section to work with. If it gets too bad, you go a little higher and cut your cross section. It's a game of cat-and-mouse. Every time out they try some new tactic or weapon. They say we have a few of our own in the cooker. A missile we can launch from null. A device we can run down from null to vent heat while we stay up."

"And a magnetic cannon?"

He snorts derisively. "I've got to admit, that's the only new gismo we've actually seen. What use the thing is, is beyond me."

"Ambrose, I'm getting a feeling about it. Nobody sees any use for it. Command isn't so thick they'd stick something on just because the Admiral's nephew thought it up." That theory has gone the rounds. Strange tales crop up to explain anything Command doesn't see fit to illuminate.

"Maybe it's some special, one-shot thing. Special mission."

"Think so? The Old Man say something?"

"No. And he wouldn't if he knew anything, which he doesn't Orders haven't come through yet."

"Anybody tell you how Tarkenton took out one of their Main Battles during the siege at Carmody?

That was in the Eight Ball. Her third mission."

Climber Fleet Tannian has developed a plethora of legends about famous patrols and Commanders.

Tarkenton's story is one of the big ones. His kill came during the war's darkest hour. It threw the enemy fleet into total confusion. The ship he skragged was control for the entire Carmody operation.

Those were the glory days, the easy days. Tarkenton is still alive. He commands Climber Fleet Two, far in toward the Inner Worlds. I saw him once, shortly after his appointment. He's a lean, holloweyed man who travels with a guard of ghosts.

There're a thousand stories, and I'm sure I'll hear them all. Diekereide dearly loves to talk.

One he tells is about the Executioner. The Executioner is the other team's best. He commands a pack of hunter-killer specialists. They operate more like bounty hunters than an escort squadron.

"We don't have to worry about him. They sent him to take on Tarkenton's Fleet six months ago."

You have to admire a man who makes a name for himself in destroyers. Destroyer people do the most thankless, unnoticed work there is.

I return to Ops after action stations secures. I want to see what the Old Man does with his fueling luck. Diekereide made a good guess. He wants to shake down his new hands and get the feel of the refitted ship.

"Not bad when you can walk around, is it?" Yanevich asks as I amble in.

"No. But the mode can be confusing. We'll go parasite again just when I get the hang of it."

He winks. "So it goes. So it goes. Have a seat." He offers the viewscreen chair.

I don't refuse. My leg is aching and I want a better look at Subic Bay. I didn't see much of her from below. I switch to augmented infrared and skip from camera to camera.

The image, when I find it, has a spectral look, which isn't unusual with infrared.

"That a new-type tanker? Or is the augmentation screwed up?"

The only tanker I ever saw consisted of a long rectangular girderwork with a perpendicular squashed-egg CT tank on either end. A flying dumbbell. Drives were at the ends of crossbars athwartships amidship, turning the dumbbell into a giant jack. Crew's quarters were inside the arms.