Chapter 41
Harvesting Trouble
Captain (Lieutenant Commander) Christiaan Weygand's handling of the Survey ship Vitus Bering reflected several astrogational facts of life. Warpspace differs from hyperspace in many ways besides the number of dimensions. For Weygand's purposes, four of those differences were decisive. (1) Hyperspace drive is far "faster" than warpdrive (which in turn is far "faster" than gravdrive). (2) In hyperspace, astrogation is approximate, with vagaries whose effects accumulate over the duration of a jump, while in warpspace, astrogation is quite precise. (3) In warpspace, the F-space potentiality is far less distorted by nearby planetary masses. With sufficient skill and care, one can venture minutely near a planetary mass. In hyperspace, approaching as near as a million miles to a planet no larger than Pluto would destroy the ship. And (4), warpdrive is suitable for covert encroachment, particularly since warpspace does not produce emergence waves in the warp-space potentiality.
Thus Weygand had first brought the Bering out of hyperspace two weeks short of the Tagus System, after a forty-seven-week jump. It was time to locate himself in F-space-familiar space, "real" space-and take a new set of astrogational readings. It was common to think of it in golfing terms, as sizing up the "lie" before hitting the approach shot-the final hyperspace jump to the Tagus System.
Then he'd generated hyperspace again, to reemerge in the system's remote fringe-far enough out that the Bering's hyperspace emergence waves would be undetectable on Tagus.
Theoretically of course, the Wyzhnyny could surround the system with alarm buoys or picket boats parked twelve or fifteen billion miles out, in the cometary cloud. But given the enormous spherical surface that went with such a radius, to provide and place the necessary number of sentries would be impractical at best.
Survey ships had some drawbacks for such missions, but one decisive advantage: their superb instrumentation. Even from where she'd emerged, 29 billion miles from the primary, the Bering could plot the orbits of the system's planets and major satellites. And do it in a few hours, applying the mechanics of planetary systems to the tiny orbital segments observed. The info was necessary for the warpspace "chip shot" Weygand made next.
That chip shot-that warpspace jump-took more than a day to bring the Bering near enough to Tagus's sole moon to detect it in the F-space potentiality. But once in F-space, and so near to Tagus, the ship's electromagnetic output could quickly be detected from the planet's surface, or by ships in the vicinity. And Drago Dravec's experience had been that the Wyzhnyny left a space force at their colonies. Something one might assume without evidence.
Weygand had known all that since he'd been given his first mission briefing, a year earlier. It hadn't troubled him then, and it didn't now. He ordered key personnel wakened from stasis, and still in warpspace, maneuvered into the lee of the moon before emerging. Hidden from the planet, less than a mile from the lunar surface. Which just now was the bright side, for on Tagus, the moon was near the "new" phase.
After a brief sensor scan, he landed.
Now come the real challenges, he told himself. Find the Wyzhnyny colony at the old pirate base. Put down a team to collect hornets and bring them back to the Bering, which was to remain behind the moon. Then send marines down to take some Wyzhnyny prisoners and bring them up. After that, he'd generate warpspace, the science team could start their examinations, and they'd all fly home.
Simple but not easy. The hornets alone sounded daunting; Weygand had had a lifelong aversion to stinging insects, and Morgan had said the Tagus hornets were as big as his thumb. But with decent luck they could capture their hornets and be gone without the Wyzhnyny knowing they'd been there. Capturing Wyzhnyny, on the other hand… that would bring them into physical contact with the enemy. He carried two squads of marine commandos in stasis, under a captain, with gunnery sergeants as squad leaders. Two squads! How many fighting personnel did the Wyzhnyny have on Tagus? A division? Half a dozen divisions?
But War House wants those prisoners, he thought. And what do I know? I'm a Survey skipper, not a general.
A lot depended on how slack the Wyzhnyny had become here, after a Standard year without anything resembling a threat. Because if any of them-the Bering, the scout, the collection boat-caught the Wyzhnyny's attention, the prospect of getting away with prisoners would be nil.
"Captain, sir," said a man behind him, "the personnel you requested are being revived."
Weygand swiveled his command chair halfway around. "Thank you, Chief. And the steward?"
"The steward is preparing their meal."
"Good. Tell Captain Stoorvol I want to talk with him as soon as he's finished eating."
There was no rush, but the sooner done, the sooner gone.
They'd drilled the procedure back in the Sol System. The Bering had emerged off Luna's far side (and been snooped by a police craft from nearby Yerikalin Dome). The Tagus rainforest had been represented by the Maranon Ecological Benchmark Preserve, in Terra's Peruvian Autonomy. And to make the drill complete, the hornet team had returned (illegally) with a bunch of outraged Terran hornets. None had been the size of a man's thumb, but they were big-time mean.
There too it had been Captain Paul Stoorvol who'd piloted the short-range scout, SRS 12/1. And beside him, as here, had been Alfhild Olavsdottir, blond and perhaps forty years old, stocky and fit-looking. Now as then, Stoorvol guided the scout smoothly across the lunar gravitic field, veering around occasional topographic obstacles, then slowing as he approached the limb of the moon. He stopped when he'd cleared it, parking a bare hundred feet off the surface.
From there they got their first look at Tagus, a little less than 170,000 miles away. Alfhild Olavsdottir inhaled sharply. "Holy Gaea!" she said. "It's gorgeous!"
Her oath annoyed Stoorvol; he disliked Gaeans. But the annoyance was remote; his feelings were often somewhat remote. Besides, lots of non-Gaeans used that oath, and somehow Alfhild Olavsdottir didn't strike him as a Gaean. A deist maybe. Deism was supposed to be big among scientists.
At any rate she was right: Tagus was beautiful. Colonized worlds invariably were; it went with being Terra-like. At the moment, what dominated his view of Tagus was the world ocean-a vivid blue with white cyclonic swirls. The equatorial zone showed a modest continent whose predominant blue-green suggested heavy forest.
After perhaps ten seconds of planet gazing, Stoorvol called up his instrument display, checking for technical electronic activity. He found plenty, from a single south-coast locale. Two other sources appeared that the scout's shipsmind identified as surveillance buoys parked above the equator at an altitude of 4,600 miles. He marked their locations with icons, but just now his primary interest was the surface location. Centering it on his screen, he magnified the site. It was nearly rectangular, a six by eight-mile area cleared of forest-distinct enough to be measured by his scanner from 170,000 miles out. He marked it with another icon.
"That's probably the colony," he said. "Or one of them. We'll have to check the other hemisphere, but except for size, this one fits Morgan's site description. It's equatorial and on a south-coast headland-an open block with forest on two sides, the ocean on a third, and an inlet on the fourth."
Olavsdottir nodded. "It's hard to imagine a natural opening looking like that."
Stoorvol held the scout where it was, and they kept alternate, one-hour watches. Whoever wasn't on watch used the main cabin to nap, snack, exercise, or otherwise break the monotony. The scout's shipsmind didn't experience time in the same way humans do, and it also had external tasks. It assigned an arbitrary meridian to Tagus, bisecting the visible Wyzhnyny settlement. With that and the equator as references, it mapped the gravitic matrix and what could be seen of the surface-topographic and water features, broad vegetation types-along with much that didn't show on the surface, including gravitic and magnetic gradients and anomalies.