18
While the sisters went inside the terminal to try and ensure that formal embarkation procedures could be avoided, Merral and Vero found seats some distance from the building. Merral stared into the night. Away to his left was the main part of Isterrane City, where only a few lights remained in this first hour of the Lord’s Day. Ahead, within the space terminal itself, there were lights and movement as families gathered for the imminent departure for the Gate. And to the right, spotlights picked out the curving fuselage and wings of the shuttle lined up on the runway.
“Two in the morning is an awkward time for a flight,” Merral commented, as a wisp of vapor from the ramjets drifted upward and caught the light.
“I know, but to minimize the time people spend floating around at a Gate Station waiting for connections, someone has to start at a bad hour. And being the end of the line, it’s Farholme. Anyway, today it suits us perfectly. We will be out of the system by midday.”
Vero stopped, sniffing the night air. “I wonder,” he said, “whether I will come back. I suppose they may just say, ‘Thanks, Sentinel Enand, but we’ll handle it from here.’ ”
“Do you want to come back?” Merral asked, looking at the lights of Isterrane and thinking with a sudden pang of emotion of his own town and his family.
“I’ve grown to be quite fond of Farholme; Worlds’ End isn’t that bad a place. And I have grown fond of the people; particularly you, Anya, and Perena.” Vero paused, and Merral read much into his momentary silence. “But I need to go back. Above all, my task is not quite finished; I have to be sure that all this is sorted out. Then I will think of my future. I need to see my father.”
Suddenly, Merral found his longing for his family more than he could bear. “Vero,” he blurted out, “I need to leave a message with my parents. And Isabella. May I?”
Vero hesitated. “It will be just after one in Ynysmant. So they will all be asleep. Oh, I guess so. Just leave a message: say you are going on a private trip, that you are going to be out of touch. Whatever words you can find. But remember that your call may be monitored.”
That alone, Merral thought wearily, is cause for concern. Is privacy the first victim of these events? Until this is resolved, will anyone ever again have the confidence that his or her conversations are their personal and private affair? He suspected from her earlier outrage that Anya would have agreed.
A new thought struck him. “What about giving them a contact? In case they need me.”
“Ah. Oh, tell them to get in touch with Anya. She can pass it on. In two days she can give your address on Earth. Diaries are switched off on shuttles and liners anyway.”
Merral found the mental image of his mother hearing that her youngest child—her only son—had gone halfway across the Assembly without telling her, almost overwhelming. That would raise a few eyebrows permanently. Few, if any, people in Ynysmant had been to Ancient Earth, and no one he had ever heard of had gone at a day’s notice.
Merral found himself staring into the darkness as yet another new thought struck him. “But when am I coming back?” he asked, all too aware of the consternation in his voice.
“Back?” He saw Vero shrug his shoulders. “If they move quickly, you could be back in days with the Defense Force ships. They don’t bother with waiting at Gate Stations. Just in one Gate and out the next. You could do Earth to Farholme in twenty-four hours. You’ll feel lousy. But it can be done.”
So I could be back in a week, Merral thought and wondered if he would see anything of Ancient Earth other than offices. He walked a few meters away from the seat, called his mother’s diary, and was told—inevitably—that she was asleep.
“Hi, Mother and Father,” he dictated. “Vero and I just got back safely from the north. But I have some urgent work to do. I will be out of touch for a few days. You can reach me through Anya Salema Lewitz at the Planetary Ecology Center. Love to you and the rest of the family. Merral.”
When, however, a minute later he called Isabella, he was surprised to find that she answered in person. “Oh, er, hi, it’s Merral,” he spluttered. “I thought—”
“Merral! Where are you? I’ve been getting worried.” Her smooth voice radiated concern, and the message he had prepared—similar to that sent to his mother—evaporated from his mind.
“Why, Isabella, I thought you’d be asleep. It’s after one o’clock with you.”
“Yes,” came the answer. “I was just about to switch the diary off. I’ve been lying awake. Why don’t you switch to visual? I’m decent.”
Hearing her voice with its inviting, affectionate tone, Merral felt a desire to confide in her. He wanted to tell her the awful truth about the north and the awesome news that he was on his way to Ancient Earth. But he couldn’t. After all, he told himself unhappily, even now they might be listening in.
“I’m under starlight. It’s not worth it,” he answered. Just as well really, he thought, remembering that he was wearing a uniform that was not his.
“Fine, Merral. We stay on audio then. But I have tons of questions, tons.” She paused. “I mean, the screen says you are in Isterrane. But how did you get there from Herrandown?”
“Ah. We had a lift from a general survey craft.”
“My! That’s a very odd way to travel. But it went well? What did you find out?”
With something of a shock Merral understood that the perception that he valued in Isabella was now turned against him.
“Well . . .” He paused, aware in the gloom that Vero was stirring, as if he had just realized that this was a live conversation. “Well, we have a lot of data. But it would be premature to say anything. I hope to be able to sort everything out soon.”
“So, no beetle-men?” The tone was curious.
Merral hesitated. “That would be telling. But I can’t talk too long. Look, I have to go away for a week or so. Work.” He felt the word sounded unconvincing.
“Without coming back to Ynysmant?” She sounded shocked, even affronted. “But where? Faraketha or Umbaga?”
“No. But I can’t say.”
“You can’t say! And you’re calling me now. Truly strange. So, can I call you when you get there?”
“Er, you can try. You can get me through Anya Salema Lewitz at the Planetary Ecology Center in Isterrane.”
“So this Anya Lewitz knows?” There was a hint of misgiving in her voice.
Merral could see Vero coming over to him.
“Yes, that’s the way it is. Look, I have to go. Sorry.”
There was a pause before Isabella answered, a pause only the merest fraction of a second long.
“Apologies accepted,” she said, in a cool way. “Have a good trip. I mean, are you traveling a long time? More than a day?”
Merral was aware that Vero was waving his hand disapprovingly at him. He reached for the Terminate tab.
“Sorry. Can’t say. Call Anya in forty-eight hours. Bye!”
Then he switched off.
“Sorry, Merral.” Vero’s tone was flustered and apologetic. “I mean . . . well . . . I wouldn’t ordinarily intrude, but I thought you were just going to leave a message. I was worried you might give too much away.”
“No, my apologies,” Merral sighed. “Of all the times! She was still awake. I only told her I was going to be traveling for a bit.”
“Did you mention how long?” There was alarm in Vero’s voice.
“I suppose that I implied a couple of days. They could hardly . . . could they?”
“Oh, they could. You can get anywhere in Farholme in less than that. And why from here, Isterrane Strip, an hour before the Gate shuttle goes? If they were listening . . .”
“Sorry,” Merral sighed. “I’m tired, Vero. I hope that wasn’t too much.”
“Well, maybe there’s nothing they can do. We may have damaged them badly. Let us hope so.”
Merral slid his diary back on his belt and sat down on the seat.
“How are you feeling?” Vero asked.
“The ankle aches but it’s okay. I’m just tired. And numbed, I guess. The idea that next time I sit out under stars they will be those of Ancient Earth. It’s all too much.”
“I know. You’ll find it a shock. But I think you will manage it better than me.”
Then they fell into a long silence. Merral found that his mind was still racing. For some time, he sat there watching the activity around the shuttle as hatches were closed and the control surfaces on the flaring wings and twin tail were flexed. As Merral stared at it, the thought struck him that he now knew that this was not the only type of vessel to have transited Farholme’s atmosphere over the last months.
New questions flooded his mind. What did this other ship look like? Did it have the same age-old lines as this? Was there just one? Did it, too, refuel in space from cometary ice, or did it have some novel energy to fuel its awesome speeds? If so, then why had it come in so fast, when it might have done so in near silence? As he stared at the vast white vessel, he was suddenly struck by the notion that the biggest issue centered on the fact that, whatever adorned the sides of its hull, it was not the emblem of the Lamb and the Stars.
He decided that he had thought long enough about the intruders and tried instead to comfort his mind with thoughts of Ancient Earth. He pictured its clouded pearl blue surface, its history, its knowledge, and its peace. He imagined the Council of Stewards: wise, concerned, and helpful. He allowed himself to picture the inevitable and solemn commissioning of the Defense Force and their proceeding at maximum speed to Farholme to render assistance.
Then realism took over, and he decided that his time would be more sensibly spent in prayer. He committed himself, his journey, and those he would leave behind into the hands of the almighty Father.
A few minutes later Perena and Anya came back. After sharing out the packages between them, they walked into the Embarkation Terminal. Merral found that there were fewer families waiting to see loved ones off than he had expected. But then, most farewells would have been said earlier in homes or at formal or informal parties. How strange to have missed all that.
Through the high windows, Merral could see what he assumed were the final checks being completed on the shuttle. Through its small round windows, they could see passengers taking their places silhouetted against the cabin lights. Merral noticed the name Shih Li-Chen inscribed beneath the cockpit in Communal and what he took to be the Old Mandarin script. Shih Li-Chen, he recollected: poet, church leader, and—unsurprisingly for early twenty-first-century China—martyr.
Perena, standing next to Vero, gestured at the ship. “Normally, I would have shown you around and introduced you to the crew.”
“Next time, Perena,” Vero replied. “For now, the fewer who know who we are, the better.”
Perena turned to Anya, who had been standing quietly by, staring out of the window, her usual ebullience apparently subdued by the impact of the night’s news.
“Sister, you want to say good-bye before I see these guys into their seats?”
Anya smiled at Vero and Merral. “Safe traveling, guys. I really wish I was going for the ride.”
“Personally,” Vero muttered in an aside, “I wish I could miss out on the ride.”
“It’s a pity we can’t all go,” Merral said.
Anya wrinkled her nose. “Your plants will wait, Tree Man, but my animals won’t. But I’ll pray that you get some good counsel on Ancient Earth, and I look forward to seeing you come back with the Defense Force. Both of you.”
Then Anya hugged them both in turn, and Merral fancied that her hold on him was longer and firmer than he might have expected. And was it too, he wondered briefly, more appreciated by him than it should have been? Merral was aware that, behind all the awesome news they had to take with them, there lay other personal issues that had to be resolved. His thoughts were interrupted by Perena gesturing them toward a service tunnel.
Carrying their baggage, Merral and Vero followed her along the tunnel. An approaching luggage hexapod moved to one side as they approached it, raising a forelimb in a mechanical gesture of acknowledgement. They passed it and walked through a complex hatch system that led to the rear crew compartment of the shuttle. The compartment was compact, low-roofed, and rather basic, and Merral felt that, with the six or more people in uniform in it busily packing equipment, it seemed almost cramped.
Perena smiled at someone by the door who Merral took to be a steward. “The two seats for Sabourin and Diekens, please,” she said, while Merral looked around, taking in the soft cream and yellow seating, the small portholes, and the neatly labeled hatches, ducts, and containers extending around and along the curved walls and between the seats. It occurred to Merral that if he had taken after his father and had had a greater affection for mechanical means of transport, he would have known far more about the shuttle and had some idea of the function that everything served.
The steward checked a listing and pointed to a pair of couches in a corner by the rear wall. Perena came over with them.
“I must go,” she said, almost under her breath, “but my prayers go with you.”
She hugged Merral and turned to Vero.
Suddenly, Perena’s reserved and cool expression slipped, and Merral caught an emotion of fear and strain on her face that he had never seen.
“Vero,” she whispered as she clutched him tightly, and Merral could only just make out her words. “We need help.”
“I think help will be here soon,” Vero replied in a near whisper.
“Please,” she begged, her subdued voice suddenly thickened in urgency. “I can feel it. It’s a spiritual concern. I feel—somehow—that there is something hateful here. Make sure help arrives.”
Then she released Vero and her face seemed to regain a look of calm nonchalance. A crewman settled down into an adjacent couch and a female voice warbled from a loudspeaker somewhere. “Captain here. Five minutes before takeoff is initiated. All ground crew, please leave now.”
“Vanessa Lebotin,” Perena said, apparently forcing her mouth into a smile. “She nearly beat me at old-time chess only the other month.”
“Perena,” Vero said softly, “I note your concern. I agree. I will do all I can. See you soon.”
Perena closed her eyes briefly, nodded, and then suddenly—as if to avoid revealing any emotion—turned, wove her way through the other dark-blue-uniformed personnel, and left by the hatchway.
Vero looked at Merral and sighed. Then he sat down and began to adjust his couch and, amid the sound of hatch doors closing and pumps whirring, Merral followed suit.
As Merral lay there, he decided that he should have said farewell to his family better. My father, with that love for transport machinery that I do not share, would doubtless have endlessly briefed me about the types of shuttles and their engines and what to look out for. My mother would have worried and flustered and forced me to take spare clothes. Instead, here I am, knowing almost nothing about where I am going and what I am doing when I get there.
He turned to Vero who was reading the instructions on a small packet marked “For Travel Nausea. Adult Strength.”
“A stupid question, Vero. Where exactly on Ancient Earth are we going?”
“Incidentally, when we get there you just call it Earth. It’s not pride; it’s just that there isn’t any chance of confusion. Anyway, where we land depends on which of the five Terran Gates we come out of. That depends on getting the best connection, just as in Cross the Assembly. From what Perena said, Beijing III is the most probable. If so, we take the long-haul passenger flier to Jerusalem. It is late spring there, too, so the weather should be fine.” He paused and gave a little dry laugh. “Just as well; I’ve left that coat behind. Do you remember it?”
At the memory of Vero’s ridiculous coat and their first meeting, Merral felt an amusement stained only by a fierce longing to be back in his own bed in his own house.
Then the takeoff launch instructions began. There was the hymn of the Assembly and the appeal to the Lord of the heavens for mercy and protection. After taxiing to the longest runway, there were the final commands, the rising vibrating roar of the engines just behind his head, the brief race down the runway, and the little skyward bound. Amid a rumbling vibration the ship flew upward and southward. Within minutes, though, they were in level flight, and with Merral watching their journey on the wallscreen, they crossed Hassanet’s Sea at ten kilometers altitude.
Just as Merral felt himself sliding into a doze, Vero nudged him. “Hold on. We are over the equator now. Serious acceleration is about to begin any minute now.”
The ship swung round to face eastward and tilted upward, with his seat rotating under him in response. Seconds later, there was a double warble from the speakers and a booming roar engulfed the cabin, making the storage cabinets rattle and the roof fixtures sway. Merral, forced down into his couch under the acceleration, closed his eyes and tried to think of something more pleasant.
Within a dozen minutes, the force and the vibration had waned, and out of the window, Merral was able to see sunlight glinting on the wingtips.
Dawn in space. It gave him an odd feeling.
He watched as Vero slowly took hold of his sleeve, lifted it, and let it drop.
But it didn’t drop. It floated there, devoid of weight.
Extraordinary. Zero g.
And he fell asleep.
When Merral woke up later, it took him a long time to come to terms with where he was. Only when he stared out of the porthole to see the blackness of space and the sharp pinpricks of stars and felt his limbs float up against the restraining straps was he sure that it really was not just a dream. For a moment, he thought they had stopped because of the silence; then he heard the distant hum of the engine pumps.
Aware of a full bladder, he unstrapped himself and, mindful of the fact the only experience he had of zero g was ten minutes in a traveling simulator as a student, made his way carefully to the lavatory cubicles. Then, grateful for the fact that, despite the costs of the technology, created gravity existed in shuttle washrooms, he drifted back over to the window. Everybody else in the compartment seemed to be busy, either working on their couches or, like Vero, asleep. At least, Merral reflected, traveling among people who do this on a weekly basis, I don’t have to queue to look out of the window.
As he stared through the gold-tinted glass, at first all he could see was the stars, perfect and clear against the flawless blackness. The night sky, he told himself, before remembering that this was the permanent reality of space. By tilting his head he could just make out the blue and brown curve of Farholme below, its edges blurred by the atmosphere.
A few minutes later the starscape rotated slowly, and Merral reached out for the wall for some sort of stability. Now, hanging above the eternal black backdrop, the sprawling silver tubes, spheres, and cylinders of the Gate Station came into view. Merral stared at it, blinking at the brilliant glitter of the silver foil-coated block of captured comet at the edge of the fuel processing section and tentatively identifying the central station complex. There, protruding delicately from the middle of the cylinders, like a mast on a homemade raft, was the matte, titanium gray, stub-ended long column of the inter-system liner. With its hexagonal cross-section, Merral realized that it looked like an enormous pencil.
But was it really enormous? The scale was impossible to tell, and for a moment, Merral had a fancy in which all he was looking at was merely some tiny but immaculately crafted model a few centimeters across. Then, floating over the fuel storage tanks and casting a tiny distorted pitch-black shadow below, he made out the shape of a general survey craft, some sister vessel to the Nesta Lamaine, and the sense of scale became apparent.
Then there was another course change, and one by one the dazzling bronze yellow Gate beacons rotated into view. He peered at the midpoint of the six beacons, straining his eyes until he saw, glinting dully, a minute metallic object. The Gate, he said to himself in awe. I can see the Gate with my naked eye!
The call came to return to seats before deceleration, and he drifted back and buckled himself in.
With what Vero sleepily remarked was “typical Assembly caution,” it took fifteen minutes from the first gentle echoing tap of the Shih Li-Chen docking with the Farholme Gate Station until, to the accompaniment of various whistles and hisses, the hatchway opened to reveal a corridor into the station. Floating over to the exit, laden with their bags and the plate samples, they left the Shih Li-Chen, drifted into one end of the gravity transition corridor, and walked out of the other at the ferry car system.
After ten minutes of travel down tunnels and along corridors with only the briefest of glimpses of space and stars, Merral and Vero were unloaded at the lower entrance to the Heinrich Schütz. They walked into the gravity transition corridor and at the other end floated their way out into the crew and technical section.
As Vero asked for the locations of the couches for Sabourin and Diekens, Merral looked around in awe. He had, he supposed, been unimpressed by the interior of the Shih Li-Chen, which had seemed little more than an exaggerated and overlarge general survey craft. But this was different.
Merral knew, of course, that the Heinrich Schütz, as an inter-system liner, was one of that order of vessels known as the “Great Ships.” Other than their size, the distinguishing feature of their order was the fact that their designers had had a freedom to work denied to them in the lesser craft that had to fly through atmospheres. He had seen many illustrations of the interior design of the Great Ships, but to be inside a real one, rather than a simulation, was somehow a very different experience. The results, honed over generations, were, to Merral’s eyes, an outstanding and eye-catching triumph.
His first thought as he looked around was that it reminded him of being in some enormous and fantastic seashell with a spiral-curved floor sweeping upward above him and linking fluidly with the walls and the central column. The impression of being in a natural organic structure was aided by the scarcity of straight lines, the pale milk-and-honey coloring, and the smooth porcelain texture of the walls. Abundant lighting, whose source appeared to be everywhere and nowhere, lit the interior so that the whole ship seemed to glow as if it were a translucent shell illuminated by sunlight.
Then, suddenly, Merral’s point of view changed, and he saw himself at the base of a high ancient tower with a vast snowy marble ramp sweeping gracefully through buttresses and archways up a score of levels in smooth, gentle, stepless curves. In the end, he concluded that both views were true; the interior was both organic and architectural.
“Over here.” Vero’s voice intruded into Merral’s contemplation.
“Sorry. I was just taken aback by it. It’s beautiful.”
Vero gave his friend an amused grimace as he gestured to a pair of couches. “It’s some compensation for the turbulence when we go through Below-Space. But I have to admit that the Assembly designers were surely right in thinking that a purely functional form was not an adequate response to the privilege of traversing Below-Space. You were told Horfalder’s maxim?”
Merral tugged himself forward on a strap and floated over to where couches protruded at the edge of a fluted ridge curving out from the towering central column. “Horfalder? I remember something, but you tell me.”
“She was head of the design team for the Composer Class; she said that as the average distance covered by an inter-system liner between Gates was equivalent to around fifty years of space flight, the least they could do was create a structure that you could live with for a half century. Even if you were only in it for a few hours.”
Merral looked around again, considered Horfalder’s wisdom, and found it good. Then, having stowed his holdall and the plate sample in a compartment under the couch, he lay down, trying not to float off, and stared around again. Now, though, as he looked harder, he realized that underneath his first complementary images of the shell and the tower he could see the ship as a machine. As he stared upward he could imagine the twenty-odd levels above him as distinct compartments, and glancing around he could see, concealed in one way or another, all the lockers, access panels, handholds, and information screens that such a ship needed.
With the final preparations being made around him, Merral strapped himself down and found a switch that lowered a screen down just in front of his eyes. On it he was able to read about the composer Heinrich Schütz, and he marveled again that anybody could have dedicated music to the Almighty during a war that lasted thirty years. Then as he chewed the simple food that was passed around, he glanced at the explanatory section on the ship itself.
He could easily imagine how much his father would have enjoyed reading about the Composer Class (prototype built in 9101, the Heinrich Schütz being the twenty-fifth of the second series) and its lifespan of around a thousand years before a complete renovation was needed. Yet now, more than ever, he found himself with little appetite for machinery or mechanics. With more interest, he went through the elementary introduction to Gate travel with a well-done and elaborate version of the traditional analogy of the two ways of getting across a narrow but deep estuary.
Travel in Normal-Space, it reminded him, was analogous to the long, slow journey round the edges, while the Gate travel was like taking a shortcut through a tube running directly through the waters. It was a familiar illustration, but now, on the verge of taking that shortcut, it had a new relevance. The illustration was developed to explain some of the Below-Space features such as the notorious turbulence, which was here portrayed as being analogous to the buffeting of the estuary’s water against the tube. Then, balking at a treatment of plasma engines, Merral allowed the screen to retract.
Eventually, just before ten o’clock, the last door closed and Captain Bennett gave her welcome from the speakers. After that the Assembly hymn was played and there was the traditional solemn appeal to the sovereign Lord on undertaking Below-Space travel, with its acknowledgement that such travel was a privilege and its request for safe arrival.
At exactly ten o’clock, just as the “Amens” were dying away, there was a dull thud as the linkages detached themselves. Slowly, Merral heard a gentle low-frequency rumble begin behind him and his couch began to sway ever so slightly. He lowered the screen to where he could read it and checked the flight plan. They would swing in a wide arc clear of the station to align themselves exactly above the hexagon at what was known as the burn-point. There, at 10:40, the plasma engines would ignite at full burn to start the rapid straight-line acceleration that would give them the ten-thousand-kilometers-an-hour speed needed to coast quickly along the Normal-Space tunnel linking the Gates. At 10:55 they would enter Farholme Gate, emerging a mere ten and a half minutes later at Bannermene Gate. Forty light-years away.
Merral lay back, feeling pushed slightly down into his couch by the acceleration’s comforting semblance of gravity that a wall sign declared to be 0.6 g. He was still tired, and in his brain a thousand thoughts seemed to be chasing each other.
Some of the dozen people around him in this part of the Space Affairs section were busy monitoring the ship and the passenger levels, while others were plainly relaxing or sleeping. One or two were walking buoyantly from the lift section in the middle of the ship.
Eventually Merral closed his eyes, wondering if he was tired enough to sleep through both burn-point and the Below-Space transit. He was aware that some people claimed to have slept through Gate passage, but most stayed awake due to the buffeting and those various psychological effects such as disorientation that were common, but which still eluded comprehension. Merral tried to get his mind to relax and encouraged it to concentrate on nothing. Imagine a white snow field, he told himself, during a blizzard.
“Sentinel Enand? Forester D’Avanos?” The voice was urgent.
Startled, Merral opened his eyes to see a man in a dark blue uniform bending over him, clutching the side of the couch.
“Yes? I’m Merral D’Avanos,” he answered, wondering with some alarm how this man knew his name.
“I’m Charles Frand, Second Communications Officer.” The angular face with a thin black moustache had an expression that seemed to request immediate action. “Captain Bennett needs to see you both now. There’s been an odd message. Can you both come forward to the bridge please? Immediately. We will be at burn-point in minutes.”
A look of profound alarm crossed Vero’s face as he gingerly unstrapped himself. “Odd . . . ,” he murmured.
Together, they walked unsteadily across the floor to the elevator tube, aware of others watching them. As they accelerated up through the central spine of the ship, Vero, gripping a hold-bar tight, stared at Merral. “I don’t like it,” he muttered. “I don’t like it at all! There is barely half an hour before we leave the system.”
The door opened into the high-roofed command cabin. Merral was vaguely aware that the spiral theme continued here, with the space being dominated by a single sweeping floorway that ran in a smooth curve from the base up to the vaulted ceiling. On this grand sweep was a series of pastel-colored consoles all facing one high, flat wall, on which an enormous image of the Gate appeared. Merral felt sure that the screen surface must match a plane of the hexagonal outer surface.
“Created gravity here, careful,” Officer Frand said. “Captain’s up to the right. Blue console.”
Gripping the sculpted handrail, they walked up the gentle sweep of the floor. As they did, Merral looked across at the screen, recognizing that the image was a computer-generated illustration showing the Gate from an oblique angle. Incomprehensible data readouts shimmered around the edges of the screen.
A lean woman with blonde hair in a tightly coiled braid rose stiffly from her seat and turned to them as they approached the cluster of three consoles grouped on the top of the slope that evidently formed the bridge. The captain, Merral thought, seeing the two yellow flashes on her shoulders.
She greeted them with an abrupt and rather cool handshake.
“Captain Leana Bennett,” she announced in a precise, truncated way that mingled authority with perplexity. Looking at her tanned face with its fine etching of lines, Merral realized she was his mother’s generation, but of a very different character. There was a tautness and precision about Captain Bennett’s frame, face, and manner that told you immediately why the Assembly trusted her with over three hundred lives and an almost priceless ship.
“And you are not Engineers Sabourin and Diekens. Rather, you are instead a sentinel and a forester. How very irregular.” She looked sternly at them for a second with piercing dark brown eyes. “But that can wait. This came in five minutes ago. Comms, show it, please.” She pointed to a small screen on one of the adjacent consoles.
A flickering image of Perena Lewitz appeared. “Captain Bennett, this is Perena Lewitz, Captain of the Nesta Lamaine.” Merral strained to hear the voice, which was slightly distorted.
“This is very urgent. I am unable to access you through normal channels. I have just received an unusual message, which I think I trust. It says that your ship must not enter the Gate. Repeat: not enter the Gate. There is a peril there. The problem is related to Sentinel Enand and Forester D’Avanos who are occupying the couches of Space Affairs Engineers Sabourin and Diekens. They may be able to explain the situation. But, I repeat, I have been warned that your ship must not enter the Gate. I suggest you return to Gate Station and—”
The image on the screen froze, broke into lines of static, and faded away.
“Return to Gate Station?” Vero whispered in alarm. “But we have to go through. . . .” Then he stopped and stared at Merral, his eyes glinting. Intuitively, Merral knew they both had the same thought: Is it her?
Vero turned to the captain. “I suppose the message is, well—authentic?”
“Authentic? That’s an odd way of putting it. Charlie?” The captain turned stiffly to Officer Frand who gestured his bewilderment with a shrug and an opening of his hands.
“Captain, gentlemen,” he said, “all I can say is that it came in just now by one of the backup communications links. One of the old laser systems. Out to the Gate Station and then bounced on to us. It’s hard to verify. I mean, we take these things on trust. But—” He turned a perplexed gaze to the captain. “Why wouldn’t it be authentic?”
“Don’t ask me, Charlie.” She looked bewildered. “Why are these men not Sabourin and Diekens? This is beyond me. But it looked and sounded like Captain Lewitz to me.”
“Two minutes to burn-point, Captain,” came a quiet voice from the console to the right. Merral glanced at the wallscreen to see that they were now nearly face-on to the hexagon and that in the bottom right corner, one set of digits had just counted down below 120.
“Helm Officer,” the captain responded crisply, “proceed as scheduled.”
Then her brown eyes turned back to Vero and Merral, shifting from one to the other in careful scrutiny. “Naturally, I immediately tried to contact her. I also instigated a check on the Gate and have asked Gate Control for a full update.”
With a quick gesture of a finger she summoned a slight young man with cropped brown hair from a console at a lower level. He bounded up energetically toward them with an active datasheet in his hand. Then she lifted an inquiring eyebrow at Officer Frand, who had been checking an adjacent console screen with another officer.
“Captain,” Frand said, “still no response from her diary. It’s apparently switched off. But it’s the Lord’s Day and meeting time, so there’s no surprise there.”
“Yes. Except if she did try and call us.” Captain Bennett turned her troubled face to the man who had just arrived. Merral noticed a neat yellow hexagon badge on his blue overalls.
“Gateman Lessis,” Captain Bennett said in an urgent way. “review the Gate systems. In view of this message.”
The Gateman turned to her, his back straight. “Captain, I report that the Gate seems normal.” The tone was intelligent, confident, and unruffled. “I have reviewed all our data and that from Gate Control. All readings are within normal limits.”
Merral had the impression of a man with a sharp mind, thorough training, and total mastery of his field. He would, he told himself, have expected nothing less.
“Thank you, Mikhael. Please stay for a moment. So you see, gentlemen, I have a real problem. I know Perena slightly but there is not enough evidence for me to abort. Indeed no evidence. If we return to Gate Station it will be at least six hours before we can reenter the Gate. That will throw up a lot of problems for connections.” Captain Bennett turned pensive eyes first on Merral and then on Vero. “Do either of you have any new data?”
“Captain,” Merral appealed, “I need to talk to my friend here. For a moment only.”
The captain flicked a glance at the screen. The image now was of a fully symmetrical hexagon, and in the corner of the screen the seconds counter now stood at ninety seconds.
“You have just over a minute,” she said politely, and turned to peer at the Gateman’s datasheet.
Merral and Vero took a step back and faced each other.
“Vero, is it a trick?” Merral asked, searching to see any indication in his friend’s eyes as to whether they should trust the message.
“It must be. . . . Surely it’s a trick to stop us from leaving?”
Merral forced himself to think. He was aware that he was tired, aware that it was a complex matter, aware that the seconds were ticking away, but also aware that he had to make a right decision. It sounded like Perena, but now he did not automatically believe anything on a screen. And to be summoned back now? Lord, grant wisdom and overrule if we get it wrong.
A sudden revelation struck him. Supposing I look at the problem the other way about, as with an inverse logic? Think like a sentinel. Put myself in the shoes of the intruders. If I wanted to stop this ship, would I have done it this way?
“No!” he blurted out, suddenly certain. “It’s a genuine message. The intruders would have faked a direct message to the captain. To do it this way makes no sense.”
“Right.” Vero blinked nervously. “Yes, I back you.”
They turned to face the captain, who was looking expectantly at them.
“It’s a real threat,” Merral said with as much urgency as he could muster. “Believe me. It’s unparalleled, but it’s real.”
Behind her he could see the screen saying there were twenty seconds left. The captain’s cool, unflustered eyes flicked to Vero.
“Yes,” Vero added, “a genuine warning of genuine peril. Please return to Gate Station.”
Captain Bennett bit her lip and glanced at the screen. “Gateman Lessis, you are completely happy with the Gate status?” Her face stared at him, as if seeking the slightest hint of doubt.
The Gateman paused, blinked, glanced at his datasheet, and returned the stare with wide, confident eyes. “Captain, all the information I have suggests no hint of anything untoward.” He glanced at the image as more words tumbled out. “If I may say, the last significant Gate problem was a generation ago and half the Assembly away. That was only a Class One failure and automatically fixed within hours. The Gate’s reputation for reliability is well merited, Captain. As you know. There are at least two levels of duplicate safety mechanisms on every system.”
The seconds scrolled down to zero.
The captain looked at the screen, shook her head, and then gestured to the man at the console to her right.
“Helm Officer,” she ordered, “initiate burn.”