"Decline," Harpal said.
"The hell you will," Hans said. "We've had about enough emotional shit. Take the job or we're all damned."
Harpal gaped. Without waiting for his answer, Hans pushed through the crew to the edge of the schoolroom and the door, twisted around with feline grace, and said, "Martin's right. We're not children. We're scum. We've failed and we've lost friends. I condemn us all to hell until we kill these goddamned worlds, all of them. We're already dead; there isn't enough fuel to get out of here and go any place decent. Let's take these sons of bitches with us."
The crew began to look at each other now, shyly at first, then with a few reckless grins.
"God damn it," Paola Birdsong said, as if trying out the word for size. It was much too big a word for her, but the solemnity passed from her face, replaced by a grim, lively determination.
Rosa Sequoia floated as still as a statue, face as impenetrable as a mom's.
"Let's go see what's up," Hans said.
Hakim approached Martin as the crew echoed and laddered out of the schoolroom. "There have been changes," he said conspiratorially. "I would like you to be on the search team."
"Hans should—"
"Hans has no say, unless he wishes to disband the search team and start over. I do not think he will ask for that, Martin. I would enjoy working with you."
"Thank you," Martin said. "I accept."
Hakim smiled. "My friend," he said, touching Martin's shoulder.
There had indeed been changes. "I do not think we wasted our time," Hakim said as Hans, Harpal, and the search team gathered in the nose before the star sphere.
Nebuchadnezzar was no longer a brown world. Marked by streaks of bright red running longitudinally from pole to pole, dark lines like cracks covered the surface.
"It looks sick," Thomas Orchard said.
"It issick," Martin said in wonder. "Some of our makers and doers got through."
Hans regarded the star sphere image with chin in hand, frowning. "I thought everything we sent down turned to anti em and blew up."
"Three pods got through," Martin said. "We assumed they were destroyed some other way, but apparently they weren't."
Hans said nothing for a few seconds.
Hakim glanced at Martin almost shyly, as if preferring still to think of him as Pan. "Perhaps not all is lost," Hakim said.
"Bullshit. We're dead," Hans said. "But we may not die in vain."
"Perhaps that is what I mean," Hakim said.
"All right," Hans said. "How long would it take for seeds to come down from the outer haloes?"
"Nine or ten years," Martin said. Harpal concurred.
"The planet's still there. Either they haven't come in yet, or they were deactivated. Can we signal them?"
"'They should pick up the noach," Harpal said. "If they haven't been destroyed."
"Let's do it," Hans said. Hakim made the arrangements on his wand. The results were almost instantaneous; a signal sent out, a signal returned from a seed carrier to the ship's noach receivers. The carrier reported that eleven seeds had been delivered to Nebuchadnezzar's interior, sufficient to cook the planet's entire surface to a depth of fifty kilometers. Detonation of the seeds was imminent. Seeds would be delivered to Ramses within two tendays.
"I'll be damned," Hans said. "We've come to just in time for a show."
The search team and Martin moved closer to the star sphere.
"Let's send out remotes and take a closer look," Hans said. "We're how far?"
"Four hundred million kilometers from Ramses. Two hundred and fifty million from Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar must be a very sick planet," Hakim said. "We were more successful than we ever hoped."
"I trust in nothing," Hans said. "Martin didn't make any obvious big mistakes, and we still got whipped badly. I have to be that much better." He smiled almost shyly at Martin, suggesting that they might share some secret joke, and his smile actually took a weight from Martin's shoulders; he was not anathema, at least not to Hans. "If the planet's sick, and if our doers have jammed its defenses, we don't have to worry—but we haven't dropped doers on Ramses, and anything could happen there when the seeds arrive to be inserted. Am I right?"
Harpal and Martin nodded. Hakim was busy releasing remotes to increase their baseline. "What about those orbiting dark masses?"
"They have not changed," Hakim said, interrupting himself. "The same orbits, the same masses, the same sizes, judging by occultations."
"And the small craft?"
"We are actually not far from one such," Hakim said. "They are still in orbit. They have returned to status quo."
"I'd like to see the close one," Hans said.
"I have records from the past few tendays, recorded by the ship," Hakim said. "I will play them back." The star sphere sectioned and they watched a small bright point grow in size in compressed time to a long, blunt cylinder, gray in color, featureless, barely ten meters long. "It is coasting," Hakim said. "Quiet, no drives;"
"Can we take it out?" Hans asked.
Hakim looked to Harpal and Martin.
"I suppose," Harpal said dubiously. "Why waste the effort?"
"I want to try," Hans said dryly. "I guess I give the order, am I right?" He lifted his wand. "We're how close to this little slicker?"
"Two million kilometers."
"I want two rifles to waste a little fuel, see if we can destroy it. That'll wake the sons of bitches up if they're still sleeping, or if they're just logy from dealing with our doers. If they don't react, we know something…"
"What?" Martin asked.
"That these orbiting ships aren't important, or…" Hans shrugged. "That the planets are sitting ducks."
"Or something else," Harpal said.
"Keep it up," Hans said, not unkindly. "Keep badgering me. What else?"
He's getting into this much more quickly than I did. Good, Martin thought.
"Or they've got another trap set."
"That's what I think. But… I'm about to make the same mistake Martin did. I'm going to spring their trap and see what they can do to us. We survived the first one. Maybe we can survive the second. And if not, well…"He rubbed his palms together, as if scrubbing away dirt. "Our grief is shorter, hm?"
Martin shivered. Here was something he had never felt as Pan: fatalism. Hakim sensed it too, and looked away, swallowing. It was a reaction the others might embrace; a Wagnerian dedication to duty, a mighty blow against the enemy, valiant but useless, ending in death.
"Too strong, huh?" Hans asked, as if Martin had said something. "All right. I'll tone it down, but I still want two rifles out there. Kill it." He looked to Harpal. "Go to it, CR."
Harpal left the nose. Hans concentrated on the cylinder for a moment, frowning. "I can't imagine what purpose they serve, except… Hakim, could they work as mass detectors? Very sensitive to orbital changes caused by anything large entering the system?"
Hakim considered this. "I cannot say for sure, but I think there would be better ways to do that…"
"You could ask Jennifer," Martin suggested.
"She gives me the shivers," Hans said briskly. "But you're right. What other purpose? They accelerated hours before our assault… Psychological weapons. I can't buy that. These things don't give a damn about our psychology. They just want us dead."
"I have an idea," Thomas Orchard said. The other members of the search team had been keeping a low profile, taking Hans' measure now that he was Pan.