"Good. What else?"
"That’s it. It says there are only a few languages in its library, and all of those are modern."
"The last word," I said, "looks like Demosthenes."
"The orator?"
"I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t imagine why he’d go to the trouble to carve the name of a dead Greek on a wall. In these circumstances."
"Makes no sense," said Chase. "He had a computer available in the dome. Why didn’t he use that? He could have written whatever he wanted. Why go to all the trouble to carve it in rock?"
"The medium’s the message, as someone once said. Maybe an electronic surface wouldn’t express his feelings appropriately."
"I have a link with the computer on Corsarius. There are only two references to Demosthenes. One is the old Greek, and the other was a contemporary wrestler."
"What’s it say about him? The Greek, I mean."
"384-322 B.C. Old Style. Greatest of the Hellenic orators. Said to have been born with a speech impediment which he overcame by placing pebbles in his mouth and speaking against the sea. His orations persuaded the Athenians to make war against Macedonia. The best known were the three Philippics and three Olynthiacs. All dating from around 350 B.C., give or take a few years. The Macedonians won despite Demonsthenes' efforts, and he was driven into exile. Later, he died by his own hand."
"There’s a connection," I said.
"Yes. Tarien was an orator too. Maybe it’s a reference to him."
"I wouldn’t be surprised," I said. I’d noticed another inscription on the rock, at its base, in letters of a different sort: Hugh Scott, 3131. Cut with a smaller laser.
"That’s Universal time," said Chase. "It equates to either 1410 or 1411, Rimway." She sighed. "At the end, Sim might have forgiven his brother. Maybe he even realized he was right."
"Considering the circumstances, that would take a lot of forgiving." My feet hurt. The socks weren’t all that much protection, and I had to keep moving to prevent being burned. "Where’s our visitor?"
"Still coming. Still accelerating. They’re really piling it on." The air was still. "Alex?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think she found him? In time, I mean?"
"Leisha?" I’d been thinking about little else since I’d set down. Tanner had hunted for years. Candles’s lost pilot. And Sim.
Who walks behind the stars.
On far Belmincour.
"She didn’t have the resources of the Machesney Institute. My God, she must have been out here all that time, taking pictures and running them through computers, trying to recreate that constellation."
"What do you think?"
"I don’t know. But I suspect that’s that question that haunts Hugh Scott."
I’d resisted the temptation to cut my name in the rock alongside Scott’s, and wandered back toward the capsule. I was climbing into the cockpit when Chase’s voice took on a note of urgency. "Alex," she said, "I hate to break in with bad news, but there’s another one! And it’s big!"
"Another what?"
"A mute ship. Battle cruiser, I think. I should have seen it before, but I was watching the little one, and not paying much attention to the scan."
"Where?"
"About ten hours out. Also on an approach vector. It’s coming fast, but braking hard. Must be raising hell with the crew. Anyhow, it should be able to slow down enough to get into orbit. I think you’d better get back here so we can clear out."
"No," I said. I was sweating. "Chase, get out of the Centaur."
"You’re crazy."
"Please," I said. "There’s no time to argue. How far away is the destroyer?"
"About five minutes."
"That’s how much time you have to get aboard the Corsarius. If you don’t make it by then, you’re not going to make it at all."
"You’ve got the capsule."
"That’s why we shouldn’t be standing around talking. Move. Get over there any way you can, but get there!"
I saw the flash high in the western sky: a brief needle of light.
"Chase?"
"I’m okay. But you were right. The bastards just blew the Centaur to hell."
I tried to pick the destroyer up with the capsule’s scopes, but it was already out of range. Chase, who had a picture of it on Corsarius’s monitor, hadn’t figured out yet how to relay it down to me. It didn’t matter anyway. "I’m on my way," I said. "See you in a couple of hours. You might want to invest the time learning how to run Sim’s bridge. Can you get a message off to Saraglia?"
"I’ve already done that. But if they ever receive it, I’ll be amazed. This thing isn’t equipped for that kind of long-range transmission. Alex, I think we’re stuck here."
"We’ll manage," I said. "They’ve got to have a stardrive." I lifted off the shelf, and locked onto the numbers that Chase transmitted.
In the soft cool womb of the cockpit, over the late afternoon of the world, I thought about Sim and Scott. And it was Scott’s melancholy fate that caught at me.
Maybe because Christopher Sim was too remote.
Maybe because I knew Scott’s obsession would become my own.
I rendezvoused with Corsarius several hours later. By then I knew that Chase had been able to get the magnetics working. We’d be able to move, at least. The capsule wasn’t designed to fit in the warship’s bay, so I secured it to the hull outside one of the hatches. I wasn’t quite ready to cast it adrift, until I had a better idea how things stood.
Chase opened the hatch for me. "Okay," I said, as soon as I had my helmet off, "let’s get out of here."
She looked unhappy as we headed back toward the bridge. "We can’t outrun them, Alex."
"This is the Corsarius," I said.
"It’s also two hundred years old. But that’s not the problem. Listen: we’ve been through all this. We don’t have a stardrive. The computers are behaving as if we do, but we don’t—"
"We have to assume it’s there. If not, nothing else will make much difference."
"Okay. But even if we’ve got Armstrongs hidden back there somewhere, we need time to get a sufficient charge to make the jump—"
"How much time?"
"That’s what’s strange. The readout should be precise on that. But the computer says between twenty-five and thirty-two hours."
"I don’t think this is a time to worry about details."
"I suppose. Anyhow, I started to power-up as soon as I came on board."
"When will the mutes be here?"
"In about six hours."
"Then let’s get moving."
"They’ll catch us long before we can make the jump. Even if we assume the most optimistic numbers." She’d got the internal systems working. Each of the hatches opened as we approached, and closed behind us. "I thought it best to keep the individual compartments sealed, until we’re reasonably sure of internal integrity."
"Yeah," I said. "Good idea. How come we can’t outrun them? I thought this thing was supposed to be fast."
"It probably is. But they’re already at a high velocity; we’ll be moving out from a start-up."
I tried to visualize the situation. It sounded like Sim’s problem at Hrinwhar. Enemy ships bearing down, and no real chance to accelerate away. What had he done? "How long before we can vector out on a head-on course?" I asked.
"You mean go out to meet them?"
"In a manner of speaking."
She frowned. "Why make it easy for them?"
"Chase," I said. "What happens if we run right past them? How long does it take them to get turned around?"
"Hell." Her face brightened. "They’d never catch us. Of course, they’ll probably shoot a big hole in us as we go by."
"I don’t think so," I said. "They’re going to a lot of trouble for this ship. The whole point of the attack on the Centaur was to try to prevent our getting aboard Corsarius. I can’t believe they’ll risk destroying it."