“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re not really aware of any of this, are you? I mean, you don’t know what we’ve actually accomplished, do you?”
“In fact, I do, David.”
“Are you as pleased as I?”
“I have no way to gauge the level of your pleasure.”
He thought about it a moment. “I wonder if you’re really there.”
“Of course I am, sir.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.”
Kellie came back. “I heard voices,” she said. “Everything okay?”
“So far.”
AT MIDMORNING, THE Jenkins reported that Digger and Whit had decided to play it safe, and were back on the ground positioning projectors. This had happened, Julie said, not because anyone had any doubts that the Hawksbill had turned the cloud aside, but because Whit enjoyed wandering invisible among the theaters and cafés. And Digger wanted to keep him happy.
“She doth protest too much,” said Kellie.
But it was a good idea. Collingdale felt that he was in control, but caution back at Lookout couldn’t hurt.
They ate breakfast, took turns napping, and watched another sim, a musical, The Baghdad Follies. When it was over, Kellie suggested lunch, but neither of them was hungry. Their package of daily newscasts and specialty shows arrived during the early afternoon. The newscasts consisted of the usual array of political shenanigans, corporate scandal, and occasional murder. A pair of Holy Balu parents had run off with their desperately ill child rather than allow doctors to cure him, using a technique that required infusion of synthetic blood. Kosmik, Inc., the terraforming and transportation giant, had collapsed amid charges of theft, profiteering, and collusion at the top. A battle had broken out over implants that could increase one’s intelligence, or maybe not, depending on how one defined the word.
By late afternoon they were beginning to feel safe.
“Bill,” said Collingdale, “how about giving us another two degrees? To port?” Jerk the son of a bitch around a little bit more.
Kellie confirmed the order.
“Executing,” said Bill.
The thrusters realigned themselves and fired briefly. The ship angled a bit farther away from Lookout.
The viewports lit up. Lightning out there somewhere. But that was nothing new.
“I’ll be right back,” Kellie said.
She left him alone on the bridge. It was a good moment, filled with a sense of victory, of having beaten long odds. Of having taken a measure of vengeance for Moonlight.
Kellie came back carrying a bottle of chablis and two glasses. She filled both and held one out for him. “Sorry,” she said. “The champagne supply is depleted.”
He took his glass and looked at it. She raised hers. “To the Goompahs,” she said.
It would have been hard to find a man less given to superstition than David Collingdale. And yet—he raised his own. “May their luck hold,” he said, and drank.
As if the comment had stirred him, Bill’s voice broke through the mood.
“The cloud is turning to starboard.”
“You mean to port,” said Kellie.
“To starboard. It is turning back toward its original course.”
Collingdale’s blood froze. “Bill, are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s throwing off more plumes. To port. And forward. I do believe it’s trying to brake again.”
Kellie looked at him. “Dave, can it still get to Lookout?”
“I don’t know. How the hell can I tell what the damned thing can do?”
She centered the cloud’s vector on the navigation screen, then added the kite’s image. The kite, which had been centered, was off to the left. The omega was turning.
They informed Digger.
“What happened?” he demanded. His voice suggested it was Collingdale’s fault.
“We think we got too far away from it.”
“Can’t you slow down? Get back in front of it again? Dangle the kite in its nose?”
“Negative,” said Kellie. “We can’t maneuver with the kite tied on our rear end. It’s sitting right behind the tubes.”
“Well, what the hell—”
“There is good news,” said Bill. “We have thrown it off its timetable. On its original trajectory, it would have arrived directly over the Intigo. Preliminary projection suggests that, if it can reach Lookout at all, it will get there a day and a half later.”
“Oh,” said Digger. “A day and a half. Well, that makes all the difference in the world.”
“No.” Kellie pressed an index finger to her lips. “That means it hits the back side of Lookout.”
“That’s correct,” said Collingdale.
They listened to Digger breathing. “Okay,” he said finally. “You guys better just get out of there. We’ll do what we can on this end.”
COLLINGDALE COULDN’T SEE any difference in the cloud, couldn’t see that it had changed course, couldn’t see that it had thrown on its brakes and was doing the equivalent of a sharp right turn. It would be a few hours before the change became noticeable.
“There might be something we could try,” he said. “How about we cut the kite loose so we can move around a little.”
“And then what?”
“Kellie, the Hawksbill is a big, oversize box of a ship. We could take it around and dangle ourselves in front of the thing, see if we can distract it.”
“Dangle ourselves?”
Bad choice of phrase there. “The ship. Dangle the ship.”
“I’m not sure I see the difference.”
“Listen, if we get closer to it, and line ourselves up with the kite, which we can do if we move quickly, it’ll be looking at two boxes. It might be enough to draw it away.”
“It might get us killed.”
He let her see that he understood what she was saying. “It might make all the difference. If we can push it a bit farther, just a little bit, maybe just a hesitation on its part, it might save everything—”
“—How close were you thinking of going?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“Damn it, David. The Hawksbill is a target. We are exactly what that thing has for breakfast. What it might do is gobble us up and keep going.”
“Okay.” He allowed the contempt he felt to show in his voice. “Okay, let’s go home.”
She looked at him suspiciously.
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re the captain.”
“Bill,” she said, “release the kite and retract the cables. We’re going back to Lookout.”
“In a few days, though,” he continued, “when that thing rolls in on the Goompahs, and kills them by the tens of thousands, you’re going to remember you had a chance to stop it.”
She froze at that, as he knew she would. “Collingdale,” she said, “you are a son of a bitch.”
“Kite released,” said Bill.
“You know I’m right,” he said, “without my having to say it. If I weren’t here, if you were alone, you’d do it.”
He thought he saw fear in her eyes. But she pulled herself together. “Buckle in,” she told him. They waited in a silence you could have hit with a sledgehammer until Bill announced that the cables were safely withdrawn.
“This way,” he said, listening to his words echo around the bridge, “we won’t have to fight a guilty conscience. Either of us.”
She ignored him. “Bill,” she said, “get us well away from the kite. When we can use the main engines, put us back in front of the cloud. I want to come in over the top again, from the rear, and I want to drop down in front of it, match course and speed, and line up between the face of the thing and the kite.”
“How close do you wish to cut it, Kellie?”
“I’ll let you know when we get there,” she said.
SHE SETTLED IN front of the cloud at a range of three hundred klicks. Ahead, the box kite was a bright star. But the cloud was visibly leaning to starboard.