"I never heard of you and I don't want to talk to any geneticist. What happened to Victoria?"
Thanthavong spread her hands, defeated, embarrassed, and yet drily amused. "And here I thought I was a universal historical figure." She returned the controller's sound pickup to Victoria.
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253
Victoria gathered her thoughts and tried again.
"Esther, you don't want to be responsible for the first hijacking in space, do you? You've got a duty to your passengers."
"The first hijacking'" the pilot said angrily. "You're a good one to talk about hijacking!'*
"We've all agreed what to do. Everybody on the transport has chosen to return—and everyone who chose to return is on the transport. Starfarer isn't going to change course. There isn't much time. If you stay docked ..."
"I don't believe you'll kidnap us," Esther said.
Victoria backed out of the pickup's range.
"I don't know what to say to her."
"Is there anyone on board she might respond to?"
Victoria could not think of anyone. She felt as if her thoughts were doing nothing but going around in confused little circles.
"Sure!" the controller said suddenly. "She's a pilot. Get Cherenkov.''
"Of course," Thanthavong said.
"Where is he?"
They both glanced at the controller, as if he could divine the cosmonaut's whereabouts.
He shrugged. "No idea."
Victoria reached for the web, but found only the empty biankness of the blasted connections.
"Maybe we could go look . . . ?"
But there were too many places to look, and too short a time left in which to look for him.
The traffic controller groaned. "Oh, shit. Listen."
The voice on the speaker changed.
"Starfarer, this is the carrier Hector. Reverse your sail immediately. The starship must begin to decelerate immediately or we'll be forced to take drastic action."
Kolya grabbed Marion Griffith and kept him from crashing to the floor. Kolya knew many ways of killing a human being, but very few ways of taking a person's consciousness without causing damage.
He hoped Griffith would be all right. The young officer lay
254 vonda N. Mdntyre
unconscious, but his pulse was strong, his breathing regular, and his larynx uncrushed.
Kolya could not have overcome Griffith by a direct attack. Instead he had let Griffith believe he saw an opening. When Griffith came at him, determined to overwhelm him, Kolya gained the advantage by knowing what he planned.
Kolya considered fitting Griffith into a spacesuit and taking him along. In the end, he decided against the plan. It was too dangerous. Griffith might be right to fear that the carrier would not pause to rescue one human being, or even two.
You will not thank me, I suppose, Kolya thought. But you are fortunate. You will continue with the expedition, while I must stay behind.
Victoria wanted to be in the sailhouse, in the observatory, anywhere but here. She wanted to be watching as Starfarer's magnetic claws grabbed the cosmic string; she wanted to be in the center of everything that happened.
"If you do not reverse the sail, Hector will shoot to cripple your ship."
"They can't be serious!" Victoria cried.
"Wait a minute!" the transport pilot shouted. She began to curse at the carrier.
Stephen Thomas shivered.
"I don't know about you. Fox, but I'm getting cold."
He did know about her. She was sitting on a washing-machine-sized ultra-centrifuge, and her teeth were chattering.
"You could've picked a warmer place to hide. A nice meadow in the wild cylinder, maybe."
"You have to sign in," she said. "You would have known where to look."
"Through all sixty square kilometers?"
"Go ahead, make fun of me. I'm not getting on the transport."
"I really appreciate this," Stephen Thomas said. "When
we get back, we all get to go straight to jail for kidnapping a
minor. A minor president's niece, at that."
"Look on the bright side, Stephen Thomas," Fox said.
"You'll get a lot longer sentence for helping steal Starfarer.
STARFARERS 2 55
Besides, maybe we won't get back." She sniffled. "It isn't fair!"
"I'm sorry. It isn't fair. But you still have to get on the transport and go home."
"I thought you were my friend!"
"Stephen Thomas?"
Stephen Thomas glanced over his shoulder. "In here, Sa-loshi. I found her."
Satoshi came into the cold room.
"Hello, Fox."
"Hello, Lono."
"This is not a great place to hide."
"I didn't think anybody would look here." She glanced at the rock in her hand. "You know ... if you tried to force me out, and I busted a few things in here, I might infect the whole ship with . . . with ... " She searched for a suitably horrible possibility. "With black plague."
"Forget it," Stephen Thomas said. "We don't keep pathogens on board except in transcribed form. You might as well
try to infect somebody with a book.''
"I bet I could do some damage to the gene stocks."
"You're a good geographer," Satoshi said, "but you haven't done any homework on genetics—or on the expedition's backups."
"Says who?"
"Says me," Stephen Thomas said. "Dr. Thanthavong doesn't take chances. We keep backups of everything at the other end of the building."
"Oh, yeah? Then how come you guys don't drag me up to the transport?"
"I don't believe in physical violence."
"I don't either," Stephen Thomas said, "but I'm beginning to understand its attraction."
The final countdown to transition began. As the carrier sped toward Starfarer, the starship's sail changed. Not reversing, as the carrier commanded, but withdrawing entirely.
In the sunless, starless place they would soon enter, no solar wind existed to fill it and keep it untangled.
"Redeploy the sail," the voice of the carrier commanded.
256 vonda N. Mcintyre
"You wilt not be permitted to draw in the sail. You must reverse it."
"The starship won't go into transition!" the transport pilot shouted. "I know these people, they won't—"
"Esther, undock now, dammit!" Victoria cried.
Victoria let her breath out hard. She wished she were with Stephen Thomas and Satoshi. She wished they were all with Iphigenie in the sailhouse. The halyards drew in the great silver sheet, stretching and compressing it into taut folds, gently twisting it into a cable kilometers long, but only a few meters in diameter.
"Magnetic fields at full strength," Arachne said through the speaker of the nearby hard-link- "Magnetic fields engaged."
"Shit!" Esther shouted. "Undock!"
"It's too late!"
"Undock, dammit!"
"Encounter," Arachne said, in its completely matter-of-fact computer voice.
The magnetic claws engaged with the cosmic string, transformed an infinitesimal percent of its unlimited energy, and began to build transition energy.
The countdown reversed, leading toward transition. Victoria imagined she could feel the increase of the starship's potential.
They can't stop us, she thought- No matter how fast the carrier moves, it can't catch us, it can't follow us, it can't stop Starfarer.
Ecstatic, she shouted in triumph and flung her arms around Thanthavong.
The voice of the carrier spoke.
"Fire."
A point of light detached itself from the carrier and accelerated at terrifying speed toward the starship.
The missile hit.
Starfarer shuddered.
Victoria gasped. She held Thanthavong tighter, as if she could protect her if the starship collapsed around them.
Drifting free, Victoria saw the ship vibrating, and felt the trembling of the heavy, oppressive air. The rumble of the attack pressed against her hearing, a drumming of such low frequency that she felt it in her bones.