Guardsmen of Tomorrow (7 page)

A rough hand grabbed Dawes’ shoulder. Not Donovan’s-he knew that familiar touch too well. Angry, concerned for his friend, Dawes leaned sideways, twisting even as he thrust out a foot. Someone went flying over his leg. Someone else caught his wrist. He heard his name; so they knew him! With his free hand he snatched the attacker’s wrist, twisted hard, heard bone snap as he dropped to one knee. A sharp, deep-throated scream of pain, another flying body.

His name again, then an energy whine, heat-sizzle past his ear, and an explosion of stone and brick behind him. “Dawes!”

An ozone reek filled the air, and he rose cautiously. He knew a warning shot from a laser pistol. He groped for the still-warm wall, leaned against it, fingered the catch of his cloak nervously, and huddled inside its folds as he waited.

“Damn you, you’ve injured two of my best men.”

From either side new pairs of hands gripped his arms. A loud electric crackle, and anguished gasps. “Four,” Dawes corrected with a horrible grin, as two more bodies fell groaning. He relaxed a little; he recognized the voice that had addressed him.

“Next time you want to see me, Colonel, make an appointment-like everybody else.”

He paused. No one else tried to grab him, so he touched the catch of his cloak again, deactivating the microcircuitry hidden in its weave.

“You’ve been inventing again.”

There was a certain pitying sympathy in Samuel Straf’s voice that irritated Dawes.

“A stun-cloak,” he said. “What the hell did you do to Donovan, and what the hell do you want with me? I’ve got nothing to do with your damned Stellar Guard anymore.”

“I’m okay, Chil.” Donovan’s voice said he was a little less than okay, but alive at least. “Just too slow on this bum leg. I turned into a left hook.”

“He threw the first punch,” Straf said. “Understandable, I guess, since we’re not in uniform, but you don’t wear those in this part of the city. You haunt a bad neighborhood, Chilson.”

As if Chilson Dawes gave a starman’s damn what Samuel Straf thought. The Guard had dismissed him and shit-canned his last civilian research project on Straf’s recommendation. “Stuff it, Colonel.” He held out his arm for Donovan, instructing his friend, “Get me out of here before this skunk stinks up the place.”

“I’ve got a job for you,” Straf said stiffly. “You’re still drawing a Guard paycheck.

Technically, you never retired.”

Dawes gripped Donovan’s arm. “You fired me when you canceled the
Sabre
.”

“I put you on medical leave,” Straf shot back. “You’re blind, Chil.”

Chilson Dawes felt his heart freeze. “Stay away from me, Sam,” he said through clenched teeth. “Just stay away!”

“I’ll give you back the
Sabre
,” Straf said. A controlled but unmistakable urgency filled in his voice. “I’m authorized. It’s fueled and ready.”

“You’re full of it,” Dawes answered. But he listened. And shortly, he found himself sober on an atomic-powered tram from Tharsis City to the Guard starport at Valles Mari-naris.

In two hundred years of starfaring, humans had discovered no other intelligent races.

Recently, that had changed. Only a year after Dawes had lost his sight, the first exploratory ships had ventured past Vega into a sector named Burnham space after the astronomer who had mapped it. It was in Burnham space that the earthship
Lancelot
, under the command of Captain James Murray, first encountered the Kaxfen.

“Murray barely got his ship back to our outpost on Orth,” Colonel Straf explained to Dawes over cups of steaming coffee. “The Kaxfen weapons weren’t necessarily superior, but their numbers were. They swarmed over the
Lancelot
like insects.”

Donovan spoke from the window that overlooked the starport. “If you’ve got a name to call them by, you must have established some kind of communication.”

“Nothing face-to-face,” Straf answered. “Only voice communications. They’ve warned us out of Burnham space. They’re claiming it as their exclusive backyard, and they’re quite territorial about it. They promise to destroy any ship that ventures near it.”

Dawes sipped from his cup. “So humans have finally found neighbors in space, and managed to make enemies of them in our first meeting. I guess some things never change.” He leaned forward, felt for the edge of Straf’s desk, and set his cup down.

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

There was a brief silence. Straf cleared his throat. “You brought the
Sabre
home like a sighted man, Chil,” he said. “Even with your optic nerves burned out. Nobody knows that ship’s systems, controls, or capabilities better than you. Nobody’s touched her since you. No one dared.”

“You can’t be asking what I’m thinking,” Donovan interrupted, his voice turning angry.

Straf’s boots scuffed as he came around the desk closer to Dawes. ‘’I’m asking if you think you can pilot the
Sabre
.“

Donovan exploded. “Goddamn you, he’s!…”

“Shut up, Donovan!” Dawes yelled. His thoughts whirled. When Straf had mentioned giving him back the
Sabre
, Dawes had assumed the colonel had meant in an advisory or research capacity. Could he pilot her? Did Straf realize what he was offering? He answered, “Hell, yes!” Then he settled back in his chair, suspicious.

“But you haven’t told me everything, Sam. The
Sabre’s
, only a prototype, not a warship.”

“I wasn’t exactly truthful when I said no one had touched her,” Straf admitted. “I’ve had her outfitted with the new Kleinowski planet-killer lasers. She’s not totally defenseless.”

“Or without offense either,” Dawes said. “But what’s this all about?”

Sound of paper rattling, and a light breeze fanned over Dawes’ face. He envisioned Straf shaking a sheaf of pages as if Dawes could see them. It stopped suddenly, and Straf cleared his throat again. “We’ve got a cryo-ship…”

“An ice-wagon?” Donovan said from the window. “Who the?…”

“Don’t be crude,” Straf said, then he continued. “A cryo-ship. Yes, they’re antiquated, but certain religious groups prefer them to translight travel.”

Dawes nodded. “Because they think the laws of nature and God don’t apply to hypespace, they refuse to go there. They’d rather travel like a tray of ice cubes.”

Straf cleared his throat again. “They’re entitled to their beliefs. But we’ve got a problem. The Via
Dolorosa
launched from Earth fifteen years ago, well before we knew about the Kaxfen. It’s carrying a complement of five thousand New Hope congregationalists all in deep sleep to a new m-class planet in System 2X-185. Their course skirts right across the edge of Burnham space.”

Dawes frowned as he leaped ahead of Straf’s slow explanations. “Like most ice-wagons, the
Via Dolorosa
is operating only on computers. It’s also totally defenseless. You want me to save some fundamentalist butt.”

There was more than a hint of indignation in Straf’s response. “My parents are on the
Via Dolorosa”
he answered. “I’ve pulled strings to give you back the
Sabre
, Chil. And if that’s not enough incentive, I’ve got another trick up my sleeve.”

A brittle click as Straf thumbed an intercom switch on his desk. A moment later the door opened. By the whiff of lavender perfume and a soft tread, Dawes guessed that a young woman had entered the room. Donovan gave a low, appreciative whistle.

“You’d like the look of her, Chil,” he said.

A tiny scrape of metal; a barely audible creak as of a lid opening. A stronger whiff of lavender as the woman bent close. A soft weight settled on Chilson Dawes’

shoulder. For a moment, he sat tense, expectant. Then, he felt a creepy scuttling sensation near his neck. He gave a startled cry and lunged from his chair to encounter cool glass-the window-under his palms. “What are you!…”

Whatever the thing was, it clung to him. Scores of small caterpillar feet clutched his collar, prickled over his bare neck.

He shot out a hand for Donovan. “Get it off! Get it-” Gripping the Irishman’s arm, he caught his breath suddenly and froze.

Like a black mist, the darkness that had filled his eyes for three years dissolved.

Through the reflected glare of his own face in the glass, he saw the freighters and gleaming starships in the port yards, beyond those the dark Martian mountains and escarpments, and above the glimmering stars in the night sky with Phobos high as Deimos sank in the west.

Chilson Dawes forgot where he was, forgot the others in the room, the creature on his shoulder. He covered his eyes with his fists, then looked again. Tears began to stream on his cheeks; he wept like a child, confused, shaking. Donovan had hold of him on one side, and Straf on the other. He was barely aware of them as he stared outward at that awesome vista.

Unexpectedly, the room seemed to rotate. Without turning, he saw Straf’s worried face, older than he’d remembered, then another face, very feminine and quite amused. The creature on his shoulder began to purr softly.

Dawes regained a measure of self-control. Donovan hadn’t lied. The woman was indeed something to see, even in her shapeless lab coat. The creature seemed to like her, too, though Dawes wasn’t sure quite how he knew that. He reached cautiously up to touch the thing on his shoulder. His first impression had been right; it was much like a caterpillar, lightly furred, but nearly twelve inches long.

“I don’t understand,” Dawes said, half afraid the miracle would end. He stroked the creature with a forefinger; it nuzzled against his ear, and its purring increased.

The woman laughed lightly. “Neither do we,” she said. “A team of explorers found it and its kin on a little mud-ball planet in the Mintaka system. They don’t seem to be intelligent, but we’re not sure. They do have a weird form of tactile telepathy-a defense mechanism, we think, against the numerous predators on their world. As long as you’re in physical contact, you can share sight, hearing, sensation. It doesn’t seem to have a sense of smell, though. And when you feed it…” She laughed again.

“I’d put it down if I were you and put up with a few moments of blindness.”

Dawes looked at Donovan, then back to the woman. “I only have black-and-white vision.”

She nodded. “You’re seeing through its eyes, Mister Dawes, not your own. Those are still quite useless.”

“I had this flown in for you,” Straf said. “There are only a couple in the entire Sol system. I need you, Chil. Not only for my parents’ sakes. We can’t let five thousand people just be slaughtered in their sleep. Even at translight, our nearest ships can’t reach the
Via Dolorosa
before she enters Burnham space. Only the
Sabre
can.”

“Why Chilson, Colonel?” Donovan demanded. “You’ve had nearly two years to locate and divert this ice-this cryo-ship.”

Straf frowned and seated himself on the edge of his desk. His voice turned harsh.

“Frankly, we screwed up. Because the
Via Dolorosa
launched so long ago and is moving so slowly, the bureaucrats in Tracking Control forgot about her. On top of that, the Guard’s been distracted with a lot of pirate activity lately.” He paused and rubbed his chin. When he spoke again, the harshness was gone from his voice, replaced with an obvious fatigue. “Last week would have been my parents’ wedding anniversary. I’m older now than they were when they launched with the other con-gregationalists. I’d just entered the Guard back then. Maybe I’m getting sentimental, Chil, because on a whim, I pulled out an old star chart my father left me outlining their course. I hadn’t looked at it since I was a punk. When I saw the danger, I started pulling strings and bending a lot of rules to arm the
Sabre
, then trace you down, to…”

Dawes’ mind raced as he considered all the angles. An excitement he hadn’t known in three years filled him. “What do you call this thing?” he interrupted, continuing to stroke the creature. It had a strangely soothing effect.

“We call it a Mintakan mind-worm,” Straf answered.

Dawes scoffed. “You would. God, that’s unimaginative.” He thought for a moment, then addressed the caterpillar. “Okay, little fella, from now on, your name’s

‘Hookah.’” The woman in her lab coat still filled his vision; he wondered what his chances would be of getting a date with her, and muttered, “Because if this whole thing isn’t right through the looking glass, nothing is.” He wiped the last traces of tears from his cheeks and turned his shoulder so that Straf’s face came into view.

“And you’re tossing in one hell of a fat cash bonus.”

Even at translight, our nearest ships can’t reach the
Via Dolorosa
before she
enters Burnham space. Only the
Sabre
can
.

God, how it must have killed Straf to make that admission. From the beginning he’d been skeptical of Dawes’ project. Once a translight pilot himself, the colonel had done his best to delay funding and make himself an obstacle around which Dawes and his research team had had to dance-because, if successful, Project
Sabre
meant a total retooling, perhaps even a dismantling, of the Stellar Guard as it existed.

Project
Sabre
represented that kind of a revolution.

Translight vessels were the fastest ships ever developed by mankind. They had given humans the stars, allowed them to explore, to settle new colony worlds, given man frontiers undreamed. Yet, even translight vessels, traversing hyper-space, required time to journey from one point to another. Sometimes that time factor was a matter of weeks, sometimes a matter of months. Sooner or later, as mankind kept pushing out, it would be years, until even translight travel would become insufficient.

Project
Sabre
was the answer to that-the next step. With massive engines built into the body of a Foss Starfish, the largest ship in the Guard fleet, the
Sabre
not only folded space, it creased it. This
fold-space
drive system, Dawes’ brainchild, made translight travel slow by comparison, obsolete. Practically instantaneous, in Dawes’

opinion it was as close as man was likely to come to teleportation.

There were only two drawbacks. The field generated by the fold-space drive was, as Dawes liked to describe it,
gravitationally sensitive
. The ship had to be in deep space beyond the range of any stellar object before it was activated. That meant the ship had to carry a translight drive as well as the fold-space drive. This required a big vessel like the Foss Starfish. Nor could any other ship be within a parsec’s distance because of the destructive distortion ripple caused by the field.