But if they did get him they’d take one hundred percent of his find. Everything.
Brennan smiled to himself. He’d risk it.
Phssthpok’s mouth closed once, twice, three times. A yellow tree-of-life root separated into four chunks, raggedly, because the edges of Phssthpok’s beak were not sharp. They were blunt and uneven, like the top of a molar. Phssthpok gulped four times.
He had hardly noticed the action. It was as if his hand, mouth and belly were on automatic, while Phssthpok watched the scope screen.
Under 104 magnification the screen showed three tiny violet points.
Looking around the edge of the scope screen Phssthpok could see only the bright yellow star he’d called G0 Target #1. He’d been searching for planets. He’d found one, a beauty, the right size and approximate temperature, with a transparent water-bearing atmosphere and an oversized moon. But he’d also found myriads of violet points so small that at first he’d thought they were mere flashes in his retinae.
They were real, and they moved. Some moved no faster than planetary objects; others, hundreds of times faster than escape velocity for the system. They glowed intensely hot, the color of a neutron star in its fourth week of life, when its temperature is still in the millions of degrees.
Obviously they were spacecraft. At these speeds, natural objects would have been lost to interstellar space within months. Probably they used fusion drives. If so, and judging from their color, they burned hotter and more efficiently than Phssthpok’s own.
They seemed to spend most of their time in space. At first he’d hoped they were some form of space-born life, perhaps related to the starseeds of the galactic core. But as he drew nearer the yellow sun he’d bad to abandon the idea. All the sparks had destinations, from the myriad small orbiting rocks to the moons and planets of the inner system. One frequent target was the world with the water atmosphere, the one he’d classified as Pak-habitable. No lifeform native to space could have taken its gravity or its atmosphere.
That planet, G0 Target #1-3, was the biggest such target, though the spacecraft touched many smaller bodies. Interesting. If the pilots of those fusion craft had developed on G0 Target #1-3, they would naturally prefer lighter gravities to heavier.
But the ones he sought hadn’t the minds to build such craft. Had something alien usurped their places?
Then he and his thousands had given their long lives to extract only a sterile vengeance.
Phssthpok felt fury building in him. He held it back. It needn’t be the answer. G0 Target #1 was not the only likely target. Probability was only twenty-eight percent. He could hope that the ones he had come to help circled another star.
But he’d have to check.
There is a minimum speed at which a Bussard ramjet will operate, and Phssthpok was not far above it. He had planned to coast through the system until he found something definite. Now he would have to use his reserve fuel. He had already found a blue-white spark moving at high velocity toward the inner system. He should be able to match its course.
Nick landed Hummingbird, hurriedly issued orders for unloading and sale of his cargo, and went underground. His office was some two miles beneath the rocky bubble-dotted surface of Ceres, buried deep in the nickel-iron substrate.
He hung his suit and helmet in the vestibule of his office. There was a painting on the front of the suit, and he patted it affectionately before he went in. He always did that.
Most Belters decorated their suits. Why not? The interior of his suit was the only place many a Belter could call home, and the one possession he had to keep in perfect condition. But even in the Belt, Nick Sohl’s suit was unique.
On an orange background was the painting of a girl. She was short; her head barely reached Nick’s neck ring. Her skin was a softly glowing green. Only her lovely back showed across the front of the suit. Her hair was streaming bonfire flames, flickering orange with touches of yellow and white, darkening into red-black smoke as it swept across the girl’s left shoulder. She was nude. Her arms were wrapped around the suit’s torso, her hands touching the air pac on its back; her legs embraced the suit’s thighs, so that her heels touched the backs of the flexible metal knee joints. It was a very beautiful painting, so beautiful that it almost wasn’t vulgar. A pity the suit’s sanitary outlet wasn’t somewhere else.
Lit lounged in one of the guest chairs in Nick’s office, his long legs sprawling far across the rug. He was attenuated rather than big. Too much of his childhood had been spent in free fall. Now he could not fit into a standard pressure suit or spacecraft cabin; and wherever he sat, he looked like he was trying to take over.
Nick dropped into his own chair and closed his eyes for a moment, getting used to the feel of being First Speaker again. With his eyes still closed he said, “Okay, Lit. What’s been happening?”
“Got it all here.” Rustle of paper. “Yah. The monopole source is coming in over the plane of the solar system, aimed approximately at the sun. As of an hour ago, it was two point two billion miles out. For a week after we spotted it it showed a steady acceleration of point nine two gee, largely lateral and braking thrust to warp its course around the sun. Now it’s mainly deceleration, and the thrust has dropped to point one four gee. That aims it through Earth’s orbit.”
“Where will Earth be then?”
“We checked that. If he goes back to point nine two gee at — this point, he’ll be at rest eight days from now.
“And that’s where Earth will be.” Lit looked grim. “All of this is more than somewhat approximate. All we really know is that he’s aimed at the inner system.”
“But Earth is the obvious target. Hardly fair. The Outsider’s supposed to contact us, not them. What have you done about anything?”
“Mostly observations. We’ve got photos of what looks like a drive flame. A fusion flame, somewhat cooler than ours.”
“Less efficent, then… but if he’s using a Bussard ramjet, he’s getting his fuel free. I suppose he’s below ramjet speeds now, though.”
“Right.”
“He must be huge. Could be a warship, Lit. Using that big a monopole source.”
“Not necessarily. You know how a ramrobot works? A magnetic field picks up interstellar hydrogen plasma, guides it away from the cargo pod and constricts it so that the hydrogen undergoes fusion. The difference is that nobody can ride them because too much hydrogen gets through as radiation. In a manned ship you’d need enormously greater control of the plasma fields.”
“That much more?”
“Mitchikov says yes, if he came from far enough away. The further he came, the faster he must have been going at peak velocity.”
“Um.”
“You’re getting paranoid, Nick. Why would any species send us an interstellar warship?”
“Why would anyone send us a ship at all? I mean, if you’re going to be humble about it… Can we contact that ship before it reaches Earth?”
“Oddly enough, I thought of that. Mitchikov has several courses plotted. Our best bet is to start a fleet from the trailing Jupiter Trojans sometime within the next six days.”
“Not a fleet. We want the Outsider to see us as harmless. Do we have any big ships in the Trojans?”
“The Blue Ox. She was about to leave for Juno, but I commandeered her and had her cargo tank cleared.”
“Good. Nice going.” The Blue Ox was a mammoth fluid cargo carrier, as big as one of the Titan Hotel’s luxury liners, though not as pretty. “We’ll want a computer, a good one, not just a ship’s autopilot. Also a tech to run it, and some spare senses for the machine. I want to use it as a translator, and the Outsider might talk by eye-blinks or radio or modulated current. Can we maybe fit a singleship into the Ox’s cargo hold?”