He arrived at the communications center at the same moment as Shuttleport Three’s chief administrator, Chalopin. She was trailed by her Security captain, what’s-his-name, oh, yes, that idiot Bannerji.
“What the hell is going on here?” Chalopin snapped without preamble. “An accident? Why haven’t you requested assistance? They told us to hold all flights—we’ve got a major production run backed up halfway to the refinery.”
“Keep holding it, then. Or call the Transfer Station. Moving your cargo is not my department.”
“Oh, yes it is! Orbital cargo marshalling has been under Cay Project aegis for a year.”
“Experimentally.” He frowned, stung. “It may be my department, but it’s not my biggest worry right now. Look, lady, I got a full-scale crisis here.” He turned to one of the comm controllers. “Can you punch me through to the Cay Habitat at all?”
“They’re not answering our calls,” said the comm controller doubtfully. “Almost all of the regular telemetry has been cut off.”
“Anything. Telescopic sighting, anything.”
“I might be able to get a visual off one of the comsats,” said the controller. He turned to his panel, muttering. In a few minutes his screen coughed up a distant flat view of the Cay Habitat as seen from synchronous orbit. He stepped up the magnification.
“What are they doing?” asked Chalopin, staring.
Van Atta stared too. What insane vandalism was this? The Habitat resembled a complex three-dimensional puzzle pulled apart by an idle child. Detached modules seemed spilled carelessly, floating at all angles in space. Tiny silver figures jetted among them. The solar power panels had mysteriously shrunk to a quarter of their normal area. Was Graf embarked on some nutty scheme for fortifying the Habitat against counterattack, perhaps? Well, it would do him no good, Van Atta swore silently.
“Are they… preparing for a siege or something?” Dr. Yei asked aloud, evidently following a similar line of thought. “Surely they must realize how futile it would be…”
“Who knows what that damn fool Graf thinks?” Van Atta growled. “The man’s run mad. There are a dozen ways we can stand off at a distance and knock that installation to bits even without military supplies. Or just wait and starve them out. They’ve trapped themselves. He’s not just crazy, he’s stupid.”
“Maybe,” said Yei doubtfully, “they mean to just go on quietly living up there, in orbit. Why not?”
“The hell you say. I’m going to hook them out of there, and double-quick, too. Somehow… No bunch of miserable mutants are going to get away with sabotage on this scale. Sabotage—theft—terrorism…” “They are not mutants,” began Yei, “they are genetically-engineered childr—”
“Mr. Van Atta, sir?” piped up another comm controller. “I have an urgent memo for you listed on my all-points. Can you take it here?” Yei, cut off, spread her hands in frustration.
“Now what?” Van Atta muttered, seating himself before the comm unit.
“It’s a recorded message from the manager of the cargo marshalling station out at Jumppoint. I’ll put it on-line,” said the tech.
The vaguely familiar face of the Jump point station manager wavered into focus before Van Atta. Van Atta had met him perhaps once, early in his stint here. The small Jumppoint station was manned from the Orient IV side, and was under Orient IV’s operations division, not Rodeo’s. Its employees were regular Union downsiders and did not normally have contact with Rodeo, nor with the quaddies once destined to replace them.
The station manager looked harried. He gabbled through the preliminary ID’s, then came abruptly to the meat of his matter; “What the hell is going on with you people, anyway? A crew of mutant freaks just came out of nowhere, kidnapped a Jump pilot, shot another, and hijacked a GalacTech cargo Super-jumper. But instead of jumping out, they’ve headed back with it toward Rodeo. When we notified Rodeo Security, they indicated the mutants probably belonged to you. Are there more out there? Are they running wild or something? I want answers, dammit. I’ve got a pilot in the infirmary, a terrorized engineer, and a crew on the verge of panic.” From the look on his face the station manager was on the verge of panic himself. “Jumppoint Station out!”
“How old is this memo?” said Van Atta rather blankly.
“About,” the comm tech checked his monitor, “twelve hours, sir.”
“Does he think the hijackers are quaddies? Why wasn’t I informed—” Van Atta’s eye fell on Bannerji, standing blandly at attention by Chapolin’s elbow, “why wasn’t I informed of this at once by Security?”
“At the time the incident was first reported, you were unavailable,” said the Security captain, devoid of expression. “Since then we’ve been tracking the D-620, and it’s continued to boost straight toward Rodeo. It doesn’t answer our calls.”
“What are you doing about it?”
“We’re monitoring the situation. I have not yet received orders to do anything about it.”
“Why not? Where’s Norris?” Norris was Operations manager for the entire Rodeo local space area; he ought to be on this thing. True, the Cay Project was not in his chain of command proper, as Van Atta reported directly to company Ops.
“Dr. Norris,” said Chalopin, “is attending a materials development conference on Earth. In his absence, I am acting Operations manager. Captain Bannerji and I have discussed the possibility of his taking his men and the Shuttleport Three Security and Rescue shuttle and attempting to board the hijacked ship. We’re still not sure who these people are or what they want, but they appear to have taken a hostage, compelling caution on our part. So we’ve let them continue to decrease their range while we attempt to gain more information about them. This,” she eyed him beadily, “brings us to you, Mr. Van Atta. Is this incident somehow connected to your crisis at the Cay Habitat?”
“I don’t see how—” Van Atta began, and broke off, because suddenly he did see how. “Son-of-a-bitch…” he whispered.
“Lord Krishna,” Dr. Yei said, and wheeled to stare again at the live vid of the Habitat half-dismantled in orbit far above them. “It can’t be…”
“Graf’s crazy. He’s crazy, the man’s a flaming megalomaniac. He can’t do this—” The engineering parameters paraded inexorably through Van Atta’s mind. Mass—power—distance—yes, a pared-down Habitat, a percentage of its less-essential components dropped, might just barely be torqued by a Superjumper into wormhole space, if it could be wrestled into position at the distant jump point. The whole damn thing… “They’re hijacking the whole damn thing!” Van Atta cried aloud.
Yei wrung her hands, half-circling the vid. “They’ll never manage. They’re barely more than children! He’ll lead them to their deaths! It’s criminal!”
Captain Bannerji and the shuttleport administrator glanced at each other. Bannerji pursed his lips and opened his hand to her, as if to say, Ladies first.
“Do you think the two incidents are connected, then?” Chalopin pressed.
Van Atta too paced back and forth, as if he could so coax an angle from flat view of the Habitat. “… the whole damn thing!”
Yei answered for him, “Yes, we think so.”
Van Atta paced on. “Hell, and they’ve got it apart already! We aren’t going to have time to starve ‘em out. Got to stop ‘em some other way.”
“The Cay Project workers were very upset at the abrupt termination of the Project,” Yei explained. “They found out about it prematurely. They were afraid of being remaindered downside, being unaccustomed to gravity. I never had a chance to introduce the idea gradually. I think they may actually be trying to—run away, somehow.”
Captain Bannerji’s eyes widened. He leaned across the console on one hand and stared into the vid. “Consider the lowly snail,” he muttered, “who carries its house on its back. On cold rainy days when it goes for a walk, it never has to backtrack.…”