He continued walking until he reached one of the ship’s many weapons holds. In this one were stored the two missiles built to his specification at Blentport.
This was the first time, after carrying their picture in his head, that he had actually seen them. He remembered the skepticism in the Blentport machine shops when he’d explained what he wanted. Of course we can build them, they’d said, but why should we? He knew Smithson would have made sure they were built exactly to specification, but he still needed to see for himself.
They towered over him. They were low-tech almost to the point of being primitive: ugly and utilitarian, made of blue-black welded cast iron plates, with a drive bulge at the rear which swelled so fatly it looked like a growth. He wished he’d asked Blentport for more, though two should be enough, if they worked, and if the occasion for using them arose. He knew exactly how and when and where they’d be used, but he still wasn’t sure how the idea had occurred to him. It was as though it had always been there, but dormant. After looking at them for a couple more minutes he turned and made his way back to the Bridge.
He met only two other crew members on the journey there, and one on the way back. He greeted them by name and rank, and they greeted him with a muttered “Commander.” They had to struggle past each other like termites. The ship’s burrows were imperfect and unfinished, cobbled together almost as an afterthought to accommodate mere people.
He returned to the Bridge, greeting them, and being greeted, quietly. He sank back into his contour chair. The Bridge was murmurous and discreet, with restful soft light and muted sounds in different registers and keys. Like any good butler, the ship had unobtrusively but thoroughly attuned itself to Foord’s preferences. It made the alarms, when they sounded, discreet and murmuring; understated, like him. It had done the same for the electronic noises at the Bridge consoles, and for the Bridge lighting, without his having to instruct it. Like Jeeves, he thought, and that reminded him of his father’s old books, now neatly shelved in his study: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and all the usual classics, plus some P.G.Wodehouse.
Time passed. They continued through the Gulf towards Horus 5, at an unvarying thirty percent.
“Commander,” Thahl said, “I have another call from Director Swann.”
“Is it on the same matter as before?”
“Yes, Commander. He says She could make an emergence at any time. He demands to know why we aren’t making more speed towards Horus 5.”
“Is Demands an advance on Insists?”
“I don’t know, Commander.”
“The answer is the same, Thahl. Tell him, Later.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Cyr looked across her console at Foord and half mouthed, half whispered, Piling Indignities On Him. It was as though their conversation in his study had never taken place. She and Thahl had already moved on from what had happened at Blentport, but for different reasons. Cyr considered it trivial. Thahl, being a Sakhran, would not waste time wishing for it to unhappen.
Foord looked around the Bridge.
“We’ll do this as I said at our first briefing. We’ll cross the Gulf at thirty percent photon speed, switch down to ion drive, and make a wide pass around Horus 4. A very wide pass. Then we’ll cross the Belt to Horus 5. Questions?”
There were none. Foord went on.
“Director Swann seems to think we should rush to keep our appointment with Her. I think we don’t need to. When She makes Her emergence, I believe She’ll wait for us.” He paused for effect, looking round at them, and added “Why should that be? …Well, I found out something recently. Something which nobody seems to have noticed.”
“You mean that thing about the planets being in alignment?” Smithson asked. “I thought everybody knew that.”
Foord’s moment hung in the air, dissolving.
The ship plunged on. Round the circumference of the Bridge screen, and at the consoles which followed its circumference, components clicked and hummed and shone, reporting the fiction of the ship’s movement—fiction because it moved through a medium whose absolute motion, geared down from universe to galaxy to solar system to planet to ship, was too vast to discern; and fiction also because its own movement, like that of space, was subdivided into the movements of its larger and smaller parts. The slender arrowhead hull moved towards the outer planet of Horus system, and the scanners and weapons tracked endlessly back and forth through a notional sphere of which the star Horus was centre; the synapses in its Codex, the aggregation of its nine sentience cores, moved back and across and back in latticeworks; the subatomic particles in its bionics and electronics moved in orbits around their nuclei. The ship was an illusion moving through an illusion. With nine percent sentience, it only nine percent knew itself. It faded in and out of self-awareness, not unlike people.
Foord yawned and settled deeper into his contour chair. “Status reports, please.”
Joser hit the alarms. “Commander, an unidentified ship has just entered the Gulf.”
3
“Battle stations, please,” Foord murmured.
Darkness grew like fur on the Bridge. The main lights dimmed, leaving only the glow from the consoles and from the stars on the circular Bridge screen. Seats extended to full harness configuration. Alarms sounded politely through the ship’s inhabited burrows.
“Thahl, please request the intruder to make identification.”
A tall beaker of amber fluid—a sleep and defecation inhibitor—had appeared in Foord’s chairarm dispenser. He sipped it thoughtfully.
“Well?”
“No reply, Commander.”
“Keep trying, will you? Joser, position of intruder, please.”
“12-19-14, Commander. Behind us, coming from the direction of Sakhra.”
“Thank you. Kaang, please turn us to face that reference. Then hold.”
There was a muffled bump, which just failed to ripple the fluid in the beaker which Foord had left balanced on his chairarm, as the photon drive shut down and the gravity compensators cut in. Other compensators swept the screen invisibly, turning the starfield from an analogue to a real image.
“Joser?”
“Preliminary readouts indicate that the intruder is a Class 097 cruiser of Horus Fleet, Commander. A visual will follow shortly.”
The Charles Manson turned, manoeuvre jets playing like fountains from the outlets grouped round the nose, midsection and rear of its hull, Kaang first activating jets for the turn and then others to counter it, and others to counter those, and so on; normally an operation left to computers, but Kaang did it manually for greater speed. The starfield stretched around the circular screen as if it was a tight skin inside which the Bridge rotated. The ship came to rest.
“Joser, you’re sure that’s a Horus Fleet ship?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Sure enough to attack it if you were Her?”
Joser blinked at the strangeness of the question, but said “Yes, Commander. I’m now getting detailed readouts which are quite definite. And the visual is coming up now.”
“Thank you. Superimpose it when it’s ready, please. Thahl?”
“Still no reply to our requests for identification, Commander.”
“Then get Horus Fleet Directorate at Sakhra, please.”