"The Web wasn't meant for travel, it was a means of communications, like a fiber-optic network. Of course, all that's hearsay now."
"These Builders sure built for the ages if their ‘machines' are still operating."
"Seeker says the Web is deteriorating. Traffic wears it out. In the past billion years a thousand races have found it. The Presences can't keep up. They've stopped trying in some regions."
"Whoa. This is too much right now, with everything else." He had waiting calls nagging. "Get it prepared for review. Sounds like a first-rate job."
"Thank you, sir. It hasn't been easy. I thought you'd want the key information. I wouldn't have interrupted had I realized we were operationally engaged." She departed.
He muttered, "She has been preoccupied."
Aleas said, "An interesting revelation. Consider the consequences of that becoming general knowledge."
"Eh?"
"We've spent millennia claiming Guardships represent the limit to technology. We believed it. Now suppose this gets out."
"Why worry? The information hasn't exactly been secret." He turned to his calls waiting.
The third was interesting. A fighter had located the main of the Outsider forerunner. It was damaged but functioning.
He ordered the derelict collected.
— 135 —
The starspace journey became dreary fast. There was only so much planning possible. Once everyone had added to the wishlist, there was nothing left but routine duty and watching stores dwindle. Turtle spent his time with Midnight, trying to know her while he could.
Time's gnawing had become obvious. Blessed was troubled. Then Midnight herself caught on, at least unconsciously. She suffered mild depressions. They would get worse.
Turtle was nursing her through a spate of tears when Provik appeared. "Better come forward." His tone was grim.
A crowd had gathered. One of his people had held his seat. "It's set to run."
He ran the tape.
A recon probe ripped past. "Twenty minutes ago." Two more followed, barely detectable. Calculation indicated they had come from the vicinity of Starbase.
"VII Gemina. WarAvocat figured it out."
His people had run the options. They had found what he expected. There were no options.
The rider did not carry foodstuffs enough and could recycle nothing but air and water. It had not been designed for protracted independent operation.
They were committed to the shortest possible starspace run.
One of his people said, "If ten of us were to..."
"No."
"It would give the rest more time."
"No."
"Better ten dead than all dead."
"Better no dead than ten."
"Sir..."
"The subject is closed. And I will not tolerate disobedience. Find out what resources we have. Hospital, chemicals normally used for other purposes, vermin, whatever." He had a despicable idea. "Anyone kills himself, the rest of us will eat him." His gorge rose but he meant it. They knew that. None would subject his comrades to that.
"We begin strict rationing. We avoid activity as much as possible."
Turtle made a course adjustment. It would take two days longer to reach the strand, away from where it had intersected his earlier course. It was the best he could do.
All systems went down to minimal. He ran Stealth and SCAM patterns to blind active scans, launched an ECM probe programmed to look like a ridership trying to do a sneak down his former course. He sent a second probe off on a likely alternate course. He reviewed the tricks they had used in the old days. Some should be good still.
He hoped Hanaver Strate was WarAvocat VII Gemina still.
— 136 —
VII Gemina broke away running dead slow relative. Ops took sights and moved ship to a position astride the quarry's last known course. No scan, passive or active, detected anything.
That was to be expected. The Guardship was days early.
WarAvocat was in Hall of the Watchers. The display wall showed nothing but the starfield. Outwardly he appeared calm, confident. But that was half his job. Inwardly, he was paralyzed by a conviction that whatever he did the Ku would anticipate. Like they were tied into a knot of predestination.
He could not see beyond the Ku's prime objective, the strand, which he would use for all it was worth, on and off, to shake the Guardship.
Aleas said, "He'll see our corona soon, Hanaver."
"I know." He moved closer, whispered, "My mind has turned to gelatin. I don't know what to do besides wait. Unless I make him go against an unknown."
Aleas looked quizzical.
"You take him. He doesn't know you."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes."
Aleas reflected, examined the estimated situation, ran some calculations. He saw her intent, was surprised he had not thought of it himself, and worried. If the Ku did slip past, it was all over. He would vanish before they could recover riders. Secondaries had become too precious to abandon.
Aleas took VII Gemina onto the Web, moved twelve light minutes, broke away, launched a fourth of the secondaries and a decoy that would look like a Guardship. Then she moved twenty-four minutes the other way, made an identical launch. Then she returned VII Gemina to its starting point, through starspace. She launched the remaining secondaries and another decoy construct.
WarAvocat wanted to ask questions. He refrained. He had put it into her hands. He had to let her run it. Even though he would answer for any failure.
Aleas ordered all secondaries to assemble on the central construct if VII Gemina went onto the Web in pursuit.
A perfect solution.
It took her thirty-five hours to make her dispositions.
She had one more surprise. She ordered the whole sprawl to advance toward Starbase.
— 137 —
Turtle was not surprised by the third corona.
Provik said, "They want us bad, don't they?"
"Kez Maefele, we will pass within a million kilometers of the one on the right," a watchstander reported.
"Feed me the data." He retreated inside himself, put everything to the wizard. The way they had done in the old days, never depending on the infallibility of computation systems. Let intuition bear the load.
It took an hour to fall into place.
"There is only one Guardship. They could not have gotten three together. The one in the middle will be real. We will maintain our present heading."
He wished he had not launched those decoys.
He ran calculations. He could reach them with a carefully aimed tight-beam pulse without betraying himself.
"Use the docking jets to put the tumble back on," he directed. "We'll take our radiation profile down till we can barely stand the cold. We'll try sliding through as a wreck."
Watchers reported an intercepter had a contact, on the time mark and not far off the Ku's projected track. Riders converged.
"A missile," Aleas grumped. "Hell. All that excitement for nothing."
WarAvocat doublechecked. It was enemy. Seemed unlikely that the Ku would have used so passive a decoy. He went back to Gemina's visuals of the fighting. He could find nothing that argued one way or another. The resolution was not fine enough to discriminate missiles and projectiles.
Next contact came fourteen hours later. Another loose missile.
WarAvocat frowned. That seemed a long coincidence, but they did not fit the Ku's style. They should have come in a hurry, making a racket. Serials and other markings might show from which ship they had launched. But there was no reason to expect their proximity fuses to have failed.
Twenty hours after the second contact Aleas asked, "Could he have turned back?"