The Chaos Weapon (26 page)
“Amen to that, if you think you can get the accuracy.”
“I know I can. Reading a few microseconds before the major blasts I can see twenty-megaton explosions with a nuclear rise-time. Have the corvettes anything else with those characteristics?”
“Not a blessed thing,” said Hover, picking up the handset and relaying the arming instruction. “You know, I’ll never get used to the idea of fighting backwards—designing the battle tactics according to the nature of the results they’re seen to produce. What would happen if we hadn’t any weapons of the caliber you describe, Shadow?”
“Then either I wouldn’t be able to see that particular result, or else some other reaction would have to supply the change in entropy. Honestly, Cass, you don’t know the first thing about Chaos!”
“I’m learning fast,” said Hover humbly, reflecting that the scornful reproach issued from one less than half his age. “Anything in your field, Brin?”
The pallid seer, raw with youth, sat with his elbows propped on a console and his chin resting in his cupped hands, listening as if mere human ears could actually hear sounds transmitted through the vacuum of space.
“I hear them now. There are many.”
Brin’s fingers began to adjust sets of pointers to indicate the position of the focus of his attention, and with cool and precise movements he began to trim their indications to show how the situation was changing. Hover’s computers picked up the adjustments and began to produce figures on position, heading, and velocity, which the marshal both transmitted to the corvettes and used for a scan search right at the limits of the range of his screens.
“Bogies sighted!” The corvette-leader’s tone was
jubilant and congratulatory. “Amazing the difference it makes knowing where to look.”
Shadow had slipped from her comfortable seat into the weapons cockpit simulator and was feeling the controls.
“Are weapons armed?” she asked the corvette-leader direct.
“Armed and under your control.” The answer was prompt. “You’re way beyond sensible weapon range, but good luck anyway.”
Scowling with concentration, Shadow worked assiduously at the firing controls, directing sixteen long-range missiles not at the alien craft but to theoretical points of intercept time and position where her Chaos insight told her the events were designed to take place. The space around the patrol-craft became patterned with long ion trials from the projectiles as they leaped on their mission from the tubes of the corvettes slightly to their rear, but over the communications channel came occasional expressions of disbelief in the validity of the courses the weapons were taking.
By this time Hover’s own screens had begun to acquire a scatter of light which was the image of the alien squadron still too distant to be resolved by the scanners. In closer proximity but receding fast, the images of the missiles could also be seen, making for their Chaos-predicted destination that appeared to hold scant chance of becoming the actual point of interception. The corvette-leader had also come to the same conclusion.
“I guess we screwed that one up! The bogies are way off line.”
As if deliberately to confound his statement, the whole alien squadron turned sharply to a new heading which curved them with unique precision exactly to the points to which the missiles had been heading. Even without the screens, the beautiful rosettes of the great explosions could be seen framed clearly against the dark wastes of the void. Shadow’s slight smile of triumph was a wonderful thing to see.
“I’ll be damned!” The
corvette-leader’s amazement came clearly over the communicator. “You know, I’d swear you knew they were going to make that turn even before they’d decided it themselves.”
“That’s the way the system runs,” said Hover. “Unnerving, isn’t it. But keep on-line, Captain, because I don’t think this run is finished yet.”
Shadow had been making a slow wave with her hand, which was the shipboard gesture of uncertainty.
“What’s on your mind, Shadow?”
“I still sense something peculiar out there. I was reading Chaos reactions, and they’ve all been accounted for. But what if there were more than sixteen ships in that squadron—some designed not to betray themselves through release of entropy?”
Hover consulted his screens, but the spreading patches of ion contamination from the previous explosions effectively swamped the meager resolution of the instrument working at the extreme end of its range.
“Brin—any ideas on this?”
“I thought more ships than sixteen. I thought about twenty. I can still hear something there. Not creatures but ship noises. Ships without power.”
“Yet no more entropic reactions, Shadow?”
“None I can find.” Her serious frown betrayed the intensity with which she was scanning the patterns for any trace of future energy liberation.
“Captain,” Hover was back talking to the corvettes, “we think there’s still another four bogies out there. They seem to be ghost ships—not under power and with no Chaos evidence that they’re likely to employ weaponry.”
“I think we have them on the edge of our screens. Do you want us to take them out of space?”
“Negative! There has to be a reason for their being out there, and I’d like to know what that reason is. Can you run a close reconnaissance and see if you can transmit some pictures back to me? But don’t take any chances. It could be a trick.”
“Understood, Marshal. We’re going in
right away. Prepare to record the scan, because it’s going to be a fast run.”
Hover switched on his recorders, and they watched with stilled breath as all three corvettes made a fast sortie toward the strange and alien space-hulks. The first corvette made a pass at a distance and reported no antagonistic reaction. The second approached closer, and some detailed imagery was obtained on the screens. Again there was no response from the aliens. The third ship’s pass was daringly close; the images on the screens swooped large and stark; and then all three corvettes were safely away out into the reaches of deep-space beyond. Immediately, the facsimile printer began to issue a ream of permanent copies into the marshal’s hands.
“What do you find?” asked Shadow.
He handed her a picture. “Notice anything strange about that vessel?”
She wrinkled her nose at its dark ugliness. “It all looks strange to me.”
“There’s one aspect stranger than all the others. Even alien spacemen have one thing in common with us—they don’t take to space with the space-locks open.”
The communicator broke back into life. “Hullo, Bogy-finder, did you get what you were looking for?”
“More than I was looking for, thanks, Captain. I think we’ve got something really exciting out there. I’ve got to get some specialists to look it over. I suggest you resume patrol, but keep an occasional fix on the ghost ships ready to guide a lab-ship in as soon as I can get one here.”
“Understood, Marshal. It’ll be done. And thanks for your assistance. Sixteen bogies in one night is a new sort of record for us.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Jym Wildheit. It was he who persuaded the Sensitive seers to join us with their talents, and it’s he and his wife who train the Bogy-finder teams. If you ever get near Mayo, call in and
see them. They’re always glad of feedback from the operating end.”
“What did the survey tell us, Jym?” asked Hover.
“The damnedest thing. There’s only one way we can interpret those ghost ships—and that’s to assume they were deliberately set up as a sort of museum.”
“I don’t figure it.”
“Neither did we at first. There were no aliens aboard, but from the exhibits and the layout inside, I’d say the vessels were designed to give us a fair insight into what type of creatures they are, their habits and customs, and their sciences and arts. It was a thumbnail sketch of several non-human races we’ve often fought but never actually met.”
“I believe it, because you tell me it’s so. But did you also figure out why they left them there?”
“We can only hazard a guess. But it has the right feel about it. We think this is a primary bridge attempting to cross the communications gap that separates the aliens from ourselves. They’ve given us this much understanding preparatory to trying to start a dialogue.”
“A dialogue on what?”
“Peace, Cass. We think they’re trying to sue for peace.”
“After all these years?”
“Don’t forget times have changed. They haven’t won a single engagement since we started our Bogy-finder scheme, and the rate at which they’re losing ships must be stretching their resources close to breaking point.”
“Are we going to respond?”
“We’ve nothing to lose by trying. Before we had their museum we didn’t even know what they looked like, let alone how we might start a conversation. Now we’re cracking the whole mystery open, and Space Force is assembling our own space-museum which we intend leaving in one of their regular patrol routes. This could be a big thing, Cass. Understanding
can negate an awful lot of irrational fear—the sort of fear that makes a species start a shooting war when there’s maybe a more peaceful means to achieve the same end.”
“I’ll go along with that,” said Hover. “But I was reflecting on how near we came to missing out on this whole thing. Without the seers we couldn’t have got on top of the aliens for centuries, and without Roamer we’d never have gotten the cooperation of the seers. And if you and Roamer hadn’t …”
“…
for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost …”
“That’s a quotation, isn’t it?”
“And even more apt now we have Chaos techniques to allow us to explore causal chains. And speaking of Chaos, I think we’re going to have a visit from one with a special brand of her own.”
They were sitting in the pleasant garden of Wildheit’s official residence. As Federation Representative on Mayo, Wildheit’s status was nominally that of a planetary ambassador; but his work on behalf of the Sensitives with the Federation, and his masterstroke in introducing the Bogy-finder teams which had so successfully blended the seers’ talents with Federation technology, had placed him as a man of great influence with both communities. Yet for all the prestige, the man was mainly unchanged: it was Mayo itself which had felt the impact of his careful persuasion. No longer were the Sensitives a closed community, and a modest spaceport was even taking shape on the plains across the river.
Through the new archways driven through the old guard-wall they could see right down the slope to the Children’s Place. Around the grassy banks a herd of placid animals filled their stomachs yet were directed with such purpose by the solitary shepherdess that the grass and all the edges of the paths were neatened as they passed. Roamer herself was coming up the walk from the Children’s Place, holding the hand of a diminutive edition of herself. Even from a distance
Hover could see that the child had something of Wildheit’s determination added to the wild-eyed promise bestowed by her mother.
“Here’s the one you’ve been waiting for, Cass—little Wanderer Wildheit herself.”
Hover coaxed the bright-eyed child on to his knee, alert to the way she anticipated his every movement even before he had decided on the action for himself.
“I thought you told me,” he said after a while, “that mixed marriages were liable to dispel the seers’ talent-lines by dilution?”
“How’s that for natural perversity, Cass? You won’t be able to see it yet, but Wanderer has so many talent-lines developing that we dare not even look for more. Instead of the dilution we’d expected from crossing bloodlines, the union has actually released some wild talents even the Sensitives hadn’t seen before. For instance …”
Hover held up his hand. “Don’t tell me! Even my inferiority complex is acquiring an inferiority complex. But I just wonder if the two of you have stopped to consider the consequences of what you’ve started here.”
“What do you mean, Cass?”
“When little Wanderer begins to feel her feet, who’ve we left to help protect the rest of the universe?”
If you've enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you'll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.
For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …
For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …
Visit the SF Gateway.
Cageworld
1.
Search for the Sun
(1982) (aka
Cageworld
)
2.
The Lost Worlds of Cronus
(1982)
3.
The Tyrant of Hades
(1982)
4.
Star Search
(1983)
Other Novels
The Dark Mind
(1964) (aka
The Transfinite Man
)
The Patterns of Chaos
(1972)
The Wizard of Anharitte
(1973)
Survival Game
(1976)
The Chaos Weapon
(1977)
Manalone
(1977)
The Ion War
(1978)
The Timewinders
(1980)
Collections
The Unorthodox Engineers
(1979)
Colin Kapp (1928 – 2007)
Born in 1928, Colin Kapp was both a British SF author and a worker in electronics, later becoming a freelance consultant in electroplating. His writing career began with the publication of ‘Life Plan’ in
New Worlds
in November 1958. Kapp is best known for his stories about the Unorthodox Engineers, which gained a modest cult following. He passed away in 2007.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Colin Kapp 1977
All rights reserved.
The right of Colin Kapp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz