Lightning-struck, Heim sprang to his feet. His head bashed the canopy. He looked up and saw a circle of sunlight, blinding on the ocean surface, above him.
“Are you hurt?” Vadász asked.
“By heaven—and hell—and everything in between.” Heim offered his hand. “Endre, I’ve been worse than a bastard. I’ve been a middle-aged adolescent. Will you forgive me?”
Vadász gripped hard. Perception flickered in his eyes. “Oh, so,” he murmured. “The young lady… Gunnar, she’s nothing to me. Mere pleasant company. I thought you felt the same.”
“I doubt that you do,” Heim grunted. “Never mind. We’ve bigger game to hunt. Look, I happen to know what the orbits and starting positions of those ships were. Cynbe saw no reason not to tell me when I asked—I suppose unconsciously I was going on the old military principle of grabbing every piece of data that comes by, whether or not you think you’ll ever use it. Well, I also know their classes, which means I know their capabilities. From that we can pretty well compute their trajectories. They can be pinpointed at any given time—close enough for combat purposes, but not close enough for their ground base to beam them any warning. Okay, so that’s one advantage we’ve got however small. What else?”
He began to pace, two steps to the cabin’s end, two steps back, fist beating palm and jaw muscles standing in knots.
Vadász drew himself aside. Once more the cat’s grin touched his mouth. He knew Gunnar Heim in that mood.
“Listen.” The captain hammered out the scheme as he spoke. “Meroeth’s a big transport. So she’s got powerful engines. In spite of her size and clumsiness, she can move like a hellbat when empty. She can’t escape three ships on patrol orbit. But at the moment there’s only one, Cynbe’s personal Jubalcho. I don’t know her orbit but the probabilities favor her being well away at any given time that Meroeth lifts. She could pursue, sure, and get so close that Meroeth can’t outrun a missile. But she ain’t gonna—I hope—because Cynbe knows that wherever I am, Fox isn’t likely very distant and he’s got to protect his base against Fox till his reinforcements arrive. Or if the distance is great enough, he’ll assume the transport is our cruiser, and take no chances!”
“So… okay… given good piloting, Meroeth has an excellent probability of making a clean getaway. She can flash a message to Fox. But then—what? If Fox only takes us aboard, we’re back exactly where we started. No, we’re worse off, because the New Europeans have run low on morale, and losing their contact with us could well push them right into quitting the fight. So—wait—let me think—Yes!” Heim bellowed. “Why not? Endre, we’ll go for broke!” The minstrel shouted his answer.
Heim reined in his own eagerness. “The faster we move, the better,” he said. “We’ll call HQ at the lake immediately. Do you know Basque, or any other language the Aleriona don’t that somebody on de Vigny’s staff does?”
“I fear not. And a broadcast, such as we must make, will doubtless be monitored. I can use Louchébème, if that will help.”
“It might, though they’re probably on to it by now… Hm. We’ll frame something equivocal, as far as the enemy’s concerned. He needn’t know it’s us calling from a sub. Let him assume it’s a maquisard in a flyer. We can identify ourselves by references to incidents in camp.
“We’ll tell de Vigny to start lightening the spaceship as much as possible. No harm in that, since the Aleriona know we do have a ship on the planet. It’ll confirm for them that she must be in the Haute Garance, but that’s the first place they’d look anyhow.” Heim tugged his chin. “Now… unfortunately, I can’t send any more than that without tipping my hand. We’ll have to deliver the real message in person. So we’ll submerge right after you finish calling and head for a rendezvous point where a flyer is to pick us up. How can we identify that, and not have the enemy there with a brass band and the keys to the city?”
“Hm-m. Let me see a map.” Vadász unrolled a chart from the pilot’s drawer. “Our radius is not large, if we are to be met soon. Ergo—Yes. I will tell them… so-and-so many kilometers due east of a place—” he blushed, pointing to Fleurville, a ways inland and down the Cote Notre Dame—“where Danielle Irribarne told Endre Vadász there is a grotto they should visit. That was shortly before moon-set. We, um, sat on a platform high in a tree and—”
Heim ignored the hurt and laughed. “Okay, lover boy. Let me compute where we can be in that coordinate system.”
Vadász frowned. “We make risks, acting in this haste,” he said. “First we surface, or at least lie awash, and broadcast a strong signal so near the enemy base.”
“It won’t take long. We’ll be down again before they can send a flyer. I admit one might be passing right over us this minute, but probably not.”
“Still, a New European vessel has to meet us. No matter if it goes fast and takes the long way around over a big empty land, it is in daylight and skirting a dragon’s nest. And likewise for the return trip with us.”
“I know.” Heim didn’t look up from the chart on his knees. “We could do it safer by taking more time. But then we’d be too late for anything. We’re stuck in this orbit, Endre, no matter how close we have to skim the sun.”
IX
“Bridge to stations, report.”
“Engine okay,” said Diego Gonzales.
“Radio and main radar okay,” said Endre Vadász.
“Gun Turret One okay and hungry,” said Jean Irribarne. The colonists in the other emplacements added a wolfish chorus.
Easy, lads, Heim thought. If we have to try those popguns on a real, functioning warship, we’re dead. “Stand by to lift,” he called. Clumsy in his spacesuit, he moved hands across the board.
The lake frothed. Waves swept up its beaches. A sighing went among the trees, and Meroeth rose from below. Briefly her great form blotted out the sun, where it crawled toward noon, and animals fled down wilderness trails. Then, with steadily mounting velocity, she flung skyward.
The cloven air made a continuous thunderclap. Danielle and Madelon Irribarne put hands to tormented ears. When the shape was gone from sight, they returned to each other’s arms.
“Radar, report!” Heim called through drone and shiver.
“Negative,” Vadász said.
Higher and higher the ship climbed. The world below dwindled, humped into a curve, turned fleecy with clouds and blue with oceans. The sky went dark, the stars blazed forth.
“Signal received on the common band,” Vadász said. “Jubalcho must have spotted us. Shall I answer?”
“Hell no,” Heim said. “All I want is her position and vector.”
The hollow volume of Meroeth trapped sound, bounced echoes about, until a booming rolled from stem to stern and port to starboard. It throbbed in Heim’s skull. His open faceplate rattled.
“Can’t find her,” Vadász told him. “She must be far off.” But she found us. Well, she has professional detector operators. I’ve got to make do with whatever was in camp. No time to recruit better-trained people.
We should be so distant that she’d have to chase us for some ways to get inside the velocity differential of her missiles. And she should decide her duty is to stay put. If I’ve guessed wrong on either of those, we’ve hoisted our last glass. Heim tasted blood, hot and bitter, and realized he had caught his tongue between his teeth. He swore, wiped his face, and drove the ship.