He pecked away at the calculator for a moment or two and stared at its dials.
"No, the two ships haven't moved relative to us, Gillbret. What's changed the massometer is that a third ship has joined them. As near as I can tell, it's five thousand miles off, about 46 degrees? and 192 degrees f from the ship-planet line, if I've got the clockwise and counterclockwise conventions straight. If ' I haven't, the figures are, respectively, 314 and 168 degrees."
He paused to take another reading. "I think they're approaching. It's a small ship. Do you think you can get in touch with them, Gillbret?"
"I can try," said Gillbret.
"All right. No vision. Let's leave it at sound, till we get some notion of what's coming."
It was amazing to watch Gillbret at the controls of the etheric radio. He was obviously the possessor of a native talent. Contacting an isolated point in space with a tight radio beam remains, after all, a task in which the ship's control-panel information can participate only slightly. He had a notion of the distance of the ship which might be off by a hundred miles plus or minus. He had two angles, either or both of which might easily be wrong by five or six degrees in any direction.
This left a volume of about ten million cubic miles within which the ship might be. The rest was left to the human operator, and a radio beam which was a probing finger not half a mile in cross section at the widest point of its receivable range. It was said that a skilled operator could tell by the feel of the controls how closely the beam missed the target. Scientifically, that theory was nonsense, of course, but it often seemed that no other explanation was possible.
In less than ten minutes the activity gauge of the radio was jumping and the Remorseless was both sending and receiving.
In another ten minutes Biron was able to lean back and say, "They're going to send a man aboard."
"Ought we to let them?" asked Artemisia.
"Why not? One man? We're armed."
"But if we let their ship get too close?"
"We're a Tyrannian cruiser, Arta. We've got three to five times their power, even if they were the best warship Lingane had. They're not allowed too much by their precious Articles of Association, and we've got five high-caliber blasters."
Artemisia said, "Do you know how to use the Tyrannian blasters? I didn't know you did."
Biron hated to turn the admiration off, but he said, "Unfortunately, I don't. At least, not yet. But then, the Linganian ship won't know that, you see."
Half an hour later the visiplate showed a visible ship. It was a stubby little craft, fitted with two sets of four fins, as though it were frequently called upon to double for stratospheric flight.
At its first appearance in the telescope, Gillbret shouted in delight. "That's the Autarch's yacht," he cried, and his face wrinkled into a grin. "It's his private yacht. I'm sure of it. I told you that the bare mention of my name was the surest way to get his attention."
There was the period of deceleration and adjustment of velocity on the part of the Linganian ship, until it hung motionless in the plate.
A thin voice came from the receiver. "Ready for boarding?"
"Ready!" clipped Biron. "One person only."
"One person," came the response.
It was like a snake uncoiling. The metal-mesh rope looped outward from the Linganian ship, shooting at them harpoon-fashion. It's thickness expanded in the visiplate, and the magnestized cylinder that ended it approached and grew in size. As it grew closer, it edged toward the rim of the cone of vision, then veered off completely.
The sound of its contact was hollow and reverberant. The magnetized weight was anchored, and the line was a spider thread that did not sag in a normal weighted curve but retained whatever kinks and loops it had possessed at the moment of contact, these moving slowly forward as units under the influence of inertia.
Easily and carefully, the Linganian ship edged away and the line straightened. It hung there then, taut and fine, thinning into space until it was an almost invisible thing, glancing with incredible daintiness in the light of Lingane's sun.
Biron threw in the telescopic attachment, which bloated the ship monstrously in the field of vision, so that one could see the origin of the half-mile length of connecting line and the little figure that was beginning to swing hand over hand along it.
It was not the usual form of boarding. Ordinarily, two ships would maneuver to near-contact, so that extensible air locks could meet and merge under intense magnetic fields. A tunnel through space would connect the ships, and a man could travel from one to the other with no further protection than he needed to wear aboard ship. Naturally, this form of boarding required mutual trust.
By space line, one was dependent upon his space suit. The approaching Linganian was bloated in his, a fat thing of air-extended metal mesh, the joints of which required no small muscular effort to work. Even at the distance at which he was, Biron could see his arms flex with a snap as the joint gave and came to rest in a new groove.
And the mutual velocities of the two ships had to be carefully adjusted. An inadvertent acceleration on the part of either would tear the line loose and send the traveler tumbling through space under the easy grip of the faraway sun and of the initial impulse of the snapping line-with nothing, neither friction nor obstruction, to stop him this side of eternity.
The approaching Linganian moved on confidently and quickly. When he came closer it was easy to see that it was not a simple hand-over-hand procedure. Each time the forward hand flexed, pulling him on, he would let go and float onward some dozen feet before his other hand had reached forward for a new hold.
It was a brachiation through space. The spaceman was a gleaming metal gibbon.
Artemisia said, "What if he misses?"
"He looks too expert to do that," said Biron, "but if he does, he'd still shine in the sun. We'd pick him up again."
The Linganian was close now. He had passed out of the field of the visiplate. In another five seconds there was the clatter of feet on the ship's hull.
Biron yanked the lever that lit the signals which outlined the ship's air lock. A moment later, in answer to an imperative series of raps, the outer door was opened. There was a thump just beyond a blank section of the pilot-room's wall. The outer door closed, the section of wall slid away, and a man stepped through.
His suit frosted over instantly, blanking the thick glass of his helmet and turning him into a mound of white. Cold radiated from him. Biron elevated the heaters and the gush of air that entered was warm and dry. For a moment the frost on the suit held its own, then began to thin and dissolve into a dew.
The Linganian's blunt metal fingers were fumbling at the clasps of the helmet as though he were impatient with his snowy blindness. It lifted off as a unit, the thick, soft insulation inside rumpling his hair as it passed.
Gillbret said, "Your Excellency!" In glad triumph, he said, "Biron, it is the Autarch himself."
But Biron, in a voice that struggled vainly against stupefaction, could only say, "Jonti!"
Thirteen: The Autarch Remains
The Autarch gently toed the suit to one side and appropriated the larger of the padded chairs.
He said, "I haven't had that sort of exercise in quite awhile. But they say it never leaves you once you've learned, and, apparently, it hasn't in my case. Hello, Farrill! My Lord Gillbret, good day. And this, if I remember, is the Director's daughter, the Lady Artemisia!"
He placed a long cigarette carefully between his lips and brought it to life with a single intake of breath. The scented tobacco filled the air with its pleasant odor. "I did not expect to see you quite so soon, Farrill," he said.
"Or at all, perhaps?" said Biron acidly.
"One never knows," agreed the Autarch. "Of course, with a message that read only 'Gillbret'; with the knowledge that Gillbret could not pilot a space ship; with the further knowledge that I had myself sent a young man to Rhodia who could pilot a space ship and who was quite capable of stealing a Tyrannian cruiser in his desperation to escape; and with the knowledge that one of the men on the cruiser was reported to be young and of aristocratic bearing, the conclusion was obvious. I am not surprised to see you."