“The shipyard told you to carry it.” Sauer looked skeptical. “It’s a dead causal channel, man! Have you any idea how much one of those things is worth?”
Martin nodded shakily. “Have you any idea how much this ship is worth?” he asked. “MiG put it together. MiG stands to make a lot of money selling copies: more if it earns a distinguished combat record. Has it occurred to you that my primary employers — the people you rented me from — have a legitimate interest in seeing how you’ve changed around the ship they delivered to you?” Sauer tossed the cartridge on Martin’s bunk. “Plausible. You’re doing well, so far: don’t let it go to your head.” He turned and rapped on the door. “If that’s your final story, I’ll pass it on to the Captain. If you have anything else to tell me, let the supervisor know when he brings your lunch.”
“Is that all?” Martin asked as the door opened.
“Is that all?” Sauer shook his head. “You confess to a capital offense, and ask if that’s all?” He paused in the doorway and stared at Martin, expressionless. “Yes, that’s all. Recording off.” Then he was gone.
Vassily had gone to Lieutenant Sauer immediately after the abortive search through Rachel’s luggage: badly frightened, needing advice. He’d poured everything out before Sauer, who had nodded reassuringly and calmed him down before explaining what they were going to do.
‘They’re in it together, son, that much is clear. But you should have talked to me first. Let’s see this gadget you took from him, hmm?“ Vassily had passed him the cartridge he’d stolen from Martin’s PA.
Sauer took one look at it and nodded to himself. ”Never seen one of these before, have you? Well, don’t worry; it’s just the lever we need.” He tapped the exhausted causal channel significantly. ”Don’t know why he had this on board, but it was bloody stupid of him, clear breach of His Majesty’s regulations.
You could have come to me with it immediately, no questions asked, instead of digging around the woman’s luggage. Which, of course, you didn’t do. Did you?“
“Uh — no, sir.”
“Jolly good.” Sauer nodded to himself again. “Because, if you had, I’d have to arrest you, of course. But I suppose, if she left her door unlocked and some enlisted man tried to help himself to her wardrobe, well, we can investigate it …” He trailed off thoughtfully.
“Why can’t we arrest the woman, sir? For, um, possession of illicit machinery?”
“Because”—Sauer looked down his nose at Vassily— “she’s got a diplomatic passport. She’s allowed to have illegal machinery in her luggage. And, frankly, far as I can tell, she’s got an excuse. Would you be complaining if she had a sewing machine? That’s what she’ll say it is; a garment fabricator.”
“But I saw these things coming out of there, with too many legs! They were after me—”
“Nobody else has seen them,” Sauer said in a soothing tone of voice. “I believe you; you probably did see something. Spy robots, perhaps. But good ones, good enough to hide — and without evidence—” He shrugged.
“What are you going to do, then, sir?”
Sauer glanced away. “I think we’re going to pay Mr. Springfield a visit,” he murmured. “We’ll take him away. Stick him in the cells for a bit. And then”—he grinned, unpleasantly—“we’ll see which way our diplomat jumps. Which should tell us what all this means, shouldn’t it?” Neither of them noticed the pair of polka-dotted knickers hiding behind the ventilation duct overhead, listening patiently and recording everything.
Confessions
The Lord Vanek accelerated at an economical two gees, using its drive kernel to curve the space-time ahead of it into a valley into which it slid easily, without imposing punishing stress on crew or machinery.
Ninety-two thousand tonnes of warship (with an eight-billion-tonne black hole at her core) took a lot of moving, but once set in motion, it could go places fast. It would take days to cross the vast gulf that separated Lord Vanek’s parking station from the first jump point on the return leg of its timelike path — but nothing like the years that humanity’s earliest probes had taken to cover similar distances.
The ships of the fleet had traveled barely twenty light-years from the New Republic, but in the process, they had hopped forward in time by four thousand years, zigzagging between the two planetless components of the binary system in an attempt to outrun any long-term surveillance that the Festival might have placed on them. Soon the spacelike component of the voyage would commence, with a cruise to a similar system not far from Rochard’s World; then the fleet would pursue a bizarre trajectory, looping back into the past of their own world line without actually intersecting that of their origin point.
Along the way, the fleet tenders would regularly top up the warships with consumable provisions, air and water and food; no less than eight merchant ships would be completely stripped and abandoned to fall forever between the stars, their crews doubled up aboard other vessels. The voyage would strain the Navy’s logistic system beyond the point of failure: something had to give, and an entire year’s shipbuilding budget would go into the supply side of this operation alone.
As they cruised between jumps, the warships exercised continually. Tentative lidar pulses strobed at the deep vacuum beyond the heliopause as officers sought firing solutions on the ships of the other squadrons; missile and torpedo trajectories were plotted, laser firing solutions entered into the tireless gear mills of the analytical engines. Tracking ships at long range was difficult, for they didn’t emit much detectable radiation. Radar was hopeless: to pump out sufficient energy to get a return, the Lord Vanek would have produced enough waste heat to broil her crew alive. As it was, only her vast radiator panels, spread to the stars and now glowing a dull red, allowed them to run the lidar at high intensity for short periods of time. (Vacuum is a most effective insulator — and active sensors capable of reaching out across billions of kilometers run hot.)
Martin Springfield knew nothing of this. Lying in his cell he’d spent the past two days in despondent boredom, alternating between depression and guarded optimism by turns. Still alive, he thought. Then: Not for long. If only there was something he could do! But on board a starship, there was nowhere to run. He was enough of a realist to understand this: if they ran out of options here, he was dead. He’d simply have to hope that they hadn’t worked out what he’d done, and would release him rather than antagonizing the shipyard.
He was sitting on the bunk one evening when the door opened. He looked up at once, expecting Sauer or the Curator’s kid spook. His eyes widened. “What are you doing here?”
“Just visiting. Mind if I sit down?”
He nodded uneasily. Rachel sat on the edge of the bunk. She was wearing a plain black jumpsuit and had tied her hair back severely; her manner was different, almost relaxed. It wasn’t a disguise, he realized; she wasn’t acting the part of a woman of easy virtue or a diplomat posted to a banana republic, or anyone else, for that matter. She was being herself — a formidable figure. “I thought they’d have locked you up, too,” he said.
“Yes, well …” She looked distracted. “One moment.” She glanced at her pocket watch. “Ah.” She leaned over toward the head end of his bunk and placed something small and metallic on it.
“I already spiked the bugs,” he said. “They won’t hear much.” She glared at him. “Thanks for nothing.”