Inea drew back warily. “How do you know?”
Promise or no promise, he had to tell them about the “tainers and the decoy loaded with explosive-and the blood Connie was sending him amidst the explosives she hadn’t known about. ”I don’t think Abbot knows, unless the Tourists among the blockaders found out the supply caravan from Luna Station’s a decoy and the real supplies are coming direct from Earth’s surface to our backyard. And somehow, I doubt Colby’s security has been broken this time.“
Chapter twenty-three
The little eight-passenger Toyota filled with the intense weight of H’lim’s Influence, potential energy that gathered like an approaching hurricane. They rode in silence while Inea puzzled out the Cobra control board, producing an occasional squawk of voices as she flicked across World Sovereignties channels.
Then, nosing past the station outbuildings, they heard the flurry of traffic as the station prepared to receive the “tainers, which, Titus was gratified to discover, were on course and on schedule. Listeners, not knowing of the plan and its code words, wouldn’t have made any sense out of the brief messages audible before scrambling was invoked and the Toyota’s radio lost the signal.
Titus found a double ribbon of tracks going off Project Station toward the Eighth, no doubt made by the maintenance crews now based at the station, the closest habitat to the Eighth. With a sigh of relief, he ran the shield over the direct vision port, cutting out the painful sunlight and Earthlight, fljen stepped down the screen images so the sun was bearable, Earth only hinted at, and the stars invisible.
Just past the station perimeter, he spotted a crude sign made from a dented oxygen bottle with an 8 painted on it and the glyph of a frowning face. As they passed it, he saw the reverse side showed a smile and a P.S. When they had lost sight of the station and had not yet seen the Array, he was very glad of the track, and the occasional frowning face painted or carved on rocks.
H’lim’s power pounded through him, reaching for Abbot, casting a shimmer of unreality over everything. Even the dim images of the sky, human symbols electronically cast, seemed unreal to his luren vision, arbitrarily manipulated.
He tried to shake free, building in his mind an image of how Earth would look to H’lim’s naked eye, five times brighter than the moon, faint swirls of infrared, throbbing with colors only luren could see. He knew all the graphs, but until this moment, they had remained just mathematics. Now, fighting the pall of Influence, he synthesized breathtaking spectacle, the Cosmic Artist at His best.
Then he thought of H’lim, suffering from the negligible particle flux within the Toyota, and knew what the luren had meant when he labeled his species a bioengineered failure. To see the spectral beauty they were designed to see, they must endure being scorched by their own sun! All his deductions from the output spectrum of the lighting panel had been hogwash. Luren built their lighting systems to suit their artificially designed senses, not to replicate a sun that had not guided the evolution of their genes.
He tried to explain this to Inea, but she shook her head, crouching over the scanner board, hunching inside her suit.
Titus became aware of Abbot’s presence, hurling a spear of outrage through the haze of H’lim’s power. It took no telepathy to know why. His son and his grandson were defying him, H’lim trying to paralyze Abbot even from this distance.
As the battle raged invisibly around her, Inea stifled a whimper. Titus hitched over as far as he could and gathered her up. Through the odd tactile effect of suit against suit, he created for her a bubble in the flow between H’lim and Abbot, explaining the battle. “So the overwash is getting to you, like a fourteen-cycle note. Understand? You’re afraid because it stimulates your nerves, not because you’re afraid.”
“Oh, that surely helps a lot.” Her voice quavered, but there was a thin smile on her lips now.
H’lim’s tinny voice issued from the helmets. “He’s slowing, but I can’t hold him.”
Titus read the suppressed agony in H’lim’s tone. The solar flux was depleting the luren’s strength. “I’m not expecting miracles,” Titus replied, “just do your best.”
They passed the left-hand cutoff up to Collector Six, the station’s furthest and largest outlying power source. It was plastered up an inside curve of a crater opposite a bulldozed rim so the panels got the most direct sun. Hundreds of panels sent energy to superconductor storage tanks for the long night ahead, keeping the station independent. The Sixth was the newest on the moon, so efficient the station sold power to refineries, factories, and supplied the Eighth Array.
The Collector fell behind them, the path becoming fainter and narrower. Gradually, Titus noticed he was struggling with the steering. Something was wrong with the left tread, but he refrained from mentioning it. H’lim’s power filled the cabin with such pressure, Titus thought it would surely burst. He wasn’t about to disrupt that kind of locked concentration. He’d heard tell of Influence duels to the death, but never witnessed one before. I don’t understand how H’lim can do it!
Then he remembered that H’lim had claimed the higher loyalty to his First Father. If Abbot’s message went out, his First Father would be in danger. He’ll kill Abbot before we even get there!
Without conscious decision, he found himself adding his weight to the luren’s, supplying energy for that stupendous field. His lips peeled away from his clenched teeth as if he were making a physical effort.
From the helmets stowed on the instrument hump between him and Inea, H’lim’s voice erupted in a karate yell. All the gathered energy exploded outward. Titus felt it connect, felt Abbot recoil, and then abruptly, everything cut off. For a moment, he thought he’d gone blind and deaf, too, but then realized that only the luren senses had been paralyzed.
“I got him!” shouted H’lim. “Did you hear me? Titus? Inea? Are you all right?”
“Is he dead?” asked Titus, oddly bereft and frightened.
“No. I am merely a co-mortal, not a god to work miracles. I distracted him, and something happened to his vehicle. I believe the terrain was the real victor.”
Ashamed yet relieved, Titus answered, “It may be enough.” His whole body was ringing and aching, and all he could do was put a gloved hand over Inea’s clad knee and try to convey confidence. She didn’t look well.
A nerve-racking and tedious time later, H’lim announced that a large number of humans were converging on a point off to their right. “Shall I divert them?”
“No! Must be blockaders after the decoy caravan,” said Titus. “Inea, get a fix on them. This thing must have radar. Read the labels. That’s how I found the ignition.”
“This is all Cobra stuff, just like the observatory.” A screen lit with an overhead radar scan. “I make it seven ships at two-o’clock-those converted two-seaters the blockaders use as bombers.” She checked the readout. “I’m guessing, but I think they’re over the decoy caravan. Whatever it is, it’s heading toward the quarantine dock they built outside the station perimeter, but going cross-country, not on a path. It’ll pass within two klicks of us.”
“Got to be the caravan, then.” Titus fought with the controls.
“Titus, it’s changing course! It’ll intercept us-somewhere over that big sharp hill ahead, the one with the spike sticking out the top.”
“What?” He checked his odometer and her readouts. “That spike is the radio mast of the Eighth. The decoy caravan is heading into the Array basin!” Clumsy in his vacuum suit, he hitched himself out of his seat pulling Inea around him. “Quick, you drive.” He squirmed over the instrument hump and reached for the scanner controls.