"But I picked her as a lover," said Louis to himself. "Damn Nessus!" If Teela had ever been found in a stress situation, Nessus would have rejected her as unlucky!
It had been a mistake to bring her. She would be a liability. He would spend too much of his time protecting her when he should be protecting himself.
What kinds of stress situations might they face? The puppeteers were good businessmen. They did not overpay. The Long Shot was a fee of unheard-of value. Louis had the chilly suspicion that they would earn it.
"Sufficient unto the day," Louis said to himself.
And he returned to his crash couch and slept for an hour under the sleep headset. Waking, he swung the ship, into line and dropped back into the Blind Spot.
Five-and-a-half hours from Sol he dropped out again.
The puppetwes coordinates defined a small rectangular section of the sky as seen from Sol plus a radial distance in that direction. At that distance, those coordinates defined a cube half a light year on a side. Somewhere in that volume, presumably, was a fleet of ships. Also in that volume, unless instruments had fouled him up, were Lous Wu and the Long Shot.
Somewhere far behind him was a bubble of stars some seventy light years in diameter. Known space was small and very far away.
No point in searching for the fleet. Louis wouldn't know what to look for. He went to wake Nessus.
Anchored by his teeth to an exercise rung, Nessus peered over Louis's shoulder. "I need certain stars for reference. Center that green-white giant and throw it on the scope screen …"
The pilot's cabin was crowded. Louis hunched over the instrument panel, protecting buttons ftm the puppeteer's careless hooves.
"Spectroanalysis … yes. Now the blue-and-yellow double at two o'clock …
"I have my bearings. Swing to 348, 72."
"What exactly am I looking for, Nessus? A cluster of fusion flames? No, you'd be using thrusters."
"You must use the scope. When you see it, you will know."
On the scope screen was a sprinkling of anonymous stars. Louis ran the magnification up until … "Five dots in a regular pentagon. Right?"
"That is our destination."
"Good. Let me check the distance. — Tanj! That's wrong, Nessus. They're too far away."
No comment.
"Well, they couldn't be ships, even if the distance meter isn't working. The puppeteer fleet must be moving at just under lightspeed. We'd see the motion."
Five dim stars, in a regular pentagon. They were a fifth of a light year distant and quite invisible to the naked eye. At present scope magnificatim they would have to be full sized planets. In the scope screen one was faintly less blue, faintly dimmer than the others.
A Kemplerer rosette. How very odd.
Take three or more equal masses. Set them at the points of an equilateral polygon and give them equal angular velocities about their center of mass.
Then the figure has stable equilibrium. The orbits of the masses may be circular or elliptical. Another mass may occupy the center of mass of the figure, or the center of mass may be empty. It doesn't matter. The figure is stable, like a pair of Trojan points.
The difficulty is that there are several easy ways in which a mass can be captured by a Trojan point. (Consider the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter's orbit.) But there is no easy way for five masses to fall accidentally into a Kemplerer rosette.
"That's wild," Louis murmured. "Unique. Nobody's ever found a Kemplerer rosette …" He let it trail off.
Here between the stars, what could be lighting those objects?
"Oh, no you don't," said Louis Wu. "You'll never make me believe it. What kind of an idiot do you take me for?"
"What is it that you will not believe?"
"You know tanj well what I won't believe!"
"As you please. That is our destination, Louis. If you will take us within range, a ship will be sent to match our velocity."
The rendezvous ship was a #3 hull, a cylinder with rounded ends and a flattened belly, painted shocking pink, and windowless. There were no engine apertures. The engines must be reactionless: thrusters of the human type, or something more advanced.
On Nessus's orders Louis had let the other ship do the maneuvering. The Long Shot, on fusion drives alone, would have required months to match velocities with the puppeteer "fleet". The puppeteer ship had done it in less than an hour, blinking into existence alongside the Long Shot with her access tube already reaching like a glass snake toward the Long Shot's airlock.
Disembarking would be a problem. There wasn't room to release all the crew from stasis at once. More important, this would be Speaker's last chance to take control of the ship.
"Do you think he will obey my tasp, Louis?"
"No. I think he'll risk one more, shot at stealing the ship. Tell you what we'd better do …"
They disconnected the instrument panel from the Long Shot's fusion motors. It was nothing that the kzin couldn't fix, given a little time and a touch of the mechanical intuition possessed by any toolmaker. But he would not have the time …
Louis watched the puppeteer move through the tube. Nessus was carrying Speaker's pressure suit. His eyes were tightly closed; which was a pity, because the view was magnificent.
"Free fall," said Teela when he opened her crash couch. "I don't feel so good. Better guide me, Louis. Wbat's happening? Are we there?"
Louis told her a few details while he guided her to the airlock. She listened, but Louis guessed she was concentrating on the pit of her stomach. She looked acutely uncomfortable. "There'll be gravity on the other ship," he told her.
Her eyes found the tiny rosette where Loius pointed. It was a naked-eye object now, a pentagon of five white stars. She turned with astounded questions in her eyes. The motion spun her semicircular canals; and Louis saw her expression change in the moment before she bolted into the airlock.
Kemplerer rosettes were one thing. Free-falt sickness was something else again. Louis watched her recede against the unfamiliar stars.
As the couch cover opened, Louis said, "Don't do anything startling. I'm armed."
The kzin's orange face did not change expression. "Have we arrived?"
"Yeah. I've disconnected the fusion drive. You'd never reconnect it in time. We're in the sights of a pair of big ruby lasers."
"Suppose I were to escape in hyperdrive? No, my mistake. We must be within a singularity."
"You're in for a shock. We're in five singularities."
"Five? Really? But you lied about the lasers, Louis. Be ashamed."
At any rate, the kzin left his couch peaceably enough. Loins followed with the variable-sword at the ready. In the airlock the kzin stopped, suddenly caught by the sight of an expanding pentagon of stars.
He could hardly have had a better view.
The Long Shot, edging close in hyperdrive, had stopped half a light-hour ahead of the puppeteer "fleet": something less than the average distance between Earth and Jupiter. But the "fleet" was moving at terrible speed, falling just behind its own light, so that the light which reached the Long Shot came from much further away. When the Long Shot stopped the rosette had been too small to see. It had been barely visible when Teela left the lock. Now it was impressively large, and growing at enormous speed.
Five pale blue dots in a pentagon, spreading across the sky, growing, spreading …
For a flashing instant there were five worlds around the Long Shot. Then they were gone, not fading but gone, their receding light reddened to invisibility. And Speaker-To-Animals held the variable-sword.
"Finagle's eyes!" Louis exploded. "Don't you have any curiosity at all?"