Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series) (14 page)

'Oh, of course. You've kept us in the sun right along, haven't you!'

Idiot comment! Heem angled to put a hooded Squam blip, S-47, in shadow.

'And the Squam ships are like cobras!' Jessica continued blithely. 'Oh, you may not know about them, Heem. They're original Solarian reptiles—here, I'll project a picture.' She formed a composite taste that did vaguely resemble a Squam.

The Squam ship reacted angrily to the shade. It twitched out of the way, trying to get around Heem to cut off
his
Star radiation. But the Squam misjudged Heem's acceleration and missed. Heem made a flavor of satisfaction: the Squam had expended more energy in the attempted retribution than it ever could have gained in Star radiation. It would exhaust its fuel that much sooner.

Actually, there was little to be gained by interfering with ships here at the merger. Few if any of them would be in contention for the lead, and if he allowed himself to remain at this stage of the column he would fail to make the next cut. He had to pass these, get into the first fifty, and do it without consuming too much fuel or gaining too much velocity.

'Too
much
velocity?' Jessica inquired. She had a way of accenting her concepts that annoyed him. 'Don't you
want
to go fast?'

"Not so fast that I cannot decelerate on target," Heem jetted gruffly. "Accelerating is only half the job."

'Oh, I see! Yes, of course! I'm used to land, to the planetary surface, where you will always coast to a stop if you stop pushing. But in space, with the conservation of angular momentum—'

"No. This is a powered trajectory, not an orbit."

'Anyway, you can't stop unless you decelerate, so you must save half your fuel, or—Heem, what happens if you miscalculate?'

"We may have occasion to taste that before the race is done."

She moved away from that aspect. 'The picture is coming in better, now! All the ships—it's like watching a holograph through a fog, but I'm really beginning to see! Oh, Heem, this makes it so much better! I don't feel so blind anymore!'

Heem intercepted the Star radiation of another ship, this one an Erb, E-38. He was accelerating marginally faster than the ships of the main column, but was outside the ideal channel. His freedom of travel counterbalanced his loss of the best route, so the only way he could gain was by shading the others. This was hardly enough by itself to enable him to win—but he had a strategy in mind.

The Erb, like the Squam, reacted angrily, trying to get out of the shadow. Heem maneuvered to keep it shaded. Erbs, more than most creatures, were extremely sensitive to radiation, as it was their main source of body energy. Heem had counted on that. The longer he shaded E-38, the more irritated the Erb would become.

'Now there's all kinds of things wrong with that!' Jessica protested. 'First, why upset the Erb when you can't gain anything for yourself? All you can do is invite retribution that will cost you both energy. Second, the light-energy involved is small, and the Erb knows that. The Erb can see, after all, just as I can in my own body; it knows exactly how much light is worth. It won't do anything foolish just because you shade it.'

"We shall taste," Heem jetted, feeling the thrill of incipient challenge.

'All right. I'll watch. But I don't see what you hope to accomplish.'

E-38 suddenly veered, trying to leap out of the shadow. In the process it moved into the path of a HydrO ship just overtaking it. The HydrO ship veered. "Get your mass out of my way, E-Thirty-eight," the HydrO sprayed.

The ships were so congested here that the erratic motions of the two were now interfering with several others. "Keep a straight course, fools!" S-47 sprayed.

'Do Squams spray too?' Jessica asked. 'I thought you said they used sound.'

"They do. The three-species communication grid renders their barbaric noise into intelligible taste. The same is true for the radiation emitted by the Erbs. HydrO taste is changed into their noise and radiation in their ships, too. No doubt the tractors on the surface of Eccentric will have a similar system."

She subsided, and he concentrated on the race. The disruption he had started had spread along a fair segment of the column. Ships were jerking in and out, and there was a medley of three-species cursing on the taste net. Heem remained safely out of it.

Suddenly he angled in just ahead of the melee, boosting his acceleration. "Look what I did to you, you idiot pilots!" he sprayed into space. "Not one of you has the wit to run a true course!"

'What are you doing!' Jessica cried, horrified. 'You're stirring up a hornets' nest! They'll group against you and wipe you out!'

"That's HydrO-Sixty-six," a Squam exclaimed. "He started this!"

There was a smear of responses. Soon a minor fleet of irate ships came after Heem.

Heem positioned himself in the center of the buoyed channel. "You imposters can't even catch me! What do you think you're trying to do? Turn about and go home before you get lost in space!"

'This is absolutely crazy!' Jessica cried. 'They'll kill us!'

"Lost in space!" a HydrO sprayed indignantly. "We'll lose
you
in space, foulspray!"

'They have nothing to lose,' Jessica said. 'They know they're too far back to win. They need a scapegoat. They'll use up their fuel going after you, instead!'

"So they will," Heem agreed. "I did advise you that you would not enjoy this aspect of the race."

'You sure did,' she agreed glumly.

A Squam ship shot out of the pack, accelerating at several gravities to catch Heem. But as it came near, Heem angled his drive-jet to give it an unhealthy taste of exhaust. "Eat
that
, fool!" he sprayed.

"A foul! A foul!" another Squam cried as the first Squam lost power and fell back through the column. "Did you perceive that? H-Sixty-six deliberately exhausted that ship!"

"What?" Heem inquired with mock innocence. "I merely adjusted course to avoid collision. Nothing other than that can be proved."

'Ooooh!' Jessica cried, half angry, half applauding.

"This is foul!" the Squam exclaimed.

"
Squams
are foul!" Heem sprayed. "What else except the foulest would eat animal tissue and excrete compost?"

'A Solarian would!' Jessica objected.

"H-Sixty-six has a good roll on that," a HydrO sprayed. "Squams
are
basically disgusting."

"Look who's squirting!" another Squam retorted. "Any creature who slimes continuously and rolls about like a loose rock—"

"The truth is obvious," an Erb glinted. "Both Squams and HydrOs are disgusting."

"Especially incompetent ones like all of you," Heem sprayed.

"First we must dispatch this troubler," S-52 said. "Then we can debate esthetics."

"You could not dispatch a dead plant, Squam!" Heem sprayed.

'Why do you keep antagonizing them?' Jessica demanded. 'Do you have a death wish? You're starting a race riot!'

"Angry creatures are not sensible creatures," Heem explained.

'That is my point! They will destroy us!'

Two more ships shot out of the mass at high acceleration. They drew up parallel to Heem, then angled across. They were S-44 and E-49. "We'll knock you out of space, H-Sixty-six!" the Squam cried.

Heem juggled his ship precisely. The two attackers missed, closed on each other, and rebounded apart, out of control.

'What happened?' Jessica demanded. 'They didn't crash, they didn't foul up on their own exhausts; they bounced apart without touching!'

"Each ship has a repulser shield to ward off meteorites and prevent collisions. This is necessary and standard with narrow-channel interplanetary traffic. None of these ships will crash into each other."

She sighed. 'These little details you assume I already know! But they—something happened to them, more than just bouncing.'

"The repulsers can be harsh, especially when the effect is unanticipated. Those two pilots are probably unconscious."

'So you knocked out two more rivals who were already behind us! What does it gain you?'

"The pattern will emerge." Heem turned his attention to the other ships again. "Real amateurs!" he sprayed derisively. "Unfit to clutter space."

There was a confusion of tastes, sounds, and glints on the communication net. Then six ships were accelerating rapidly toward Heem's ship. "Close him in," S-51 directed. "Do not let him escape again!"

'Now you've done it!' Jessica said. 'You are positively suicidal! Just like a male!'

"A number of these competitors are female," Heem remarked. He noted the ominous convergence of ships, but did not attempt evasive action.

"You want to accelerate?" the Squam demanded. "We shall provide you acceleration!" The six ships formed a tight ring around Heem's ship, battering him with their massed repulser fields.

'What are they doing?' Jessica cried, alarmed.

"They're giving us a ride."

'A ride? That doesn't make sense!"

The six ships jumped their acceleration. Heem's ship, shoved violently by the repulsers, leaped forward, pinned within their cone. The acceleration climbed to three g, then four g, then five g.

The other ships of the column got hastily out of the way and fell behind.

Then the ring of ships contracted. The pressure became intense. 'They're crushing us to death!' Jessica cried.

"That is the intent," Heem responded. "They are using the positioned repulsers to compact us, to put us under such pressure that we can not resist what they will do next."

'Do next? There's worse coming?'

"They will hurl us out of the column, into the Star or the Hole. With luck, we will not recover in time to jet out of that well—or if we do, we will lack sufficient fuel to make it safely to planetfall. In any event, we will be out of the race."

'Can't we do anything?'

"Have no concern. I flavored the text on space maneuvers."

'You flavored—oh, you mean you wrote the book on dirty tactics! Well, I certainly hope you know what you're doing. All I can see is that your insults are getting us further behind and deeper into trouble.'

Heem jetted a complex pattern on the button controls. Water swished into the compartment.

'But this is the acceleration protection!' Jessica cried. 'For takeoff and landing, when you have to withstand up to ten gravities—' She broke off her thought, reconsidering. 'Oh—to withstand the repulser pressure. How clever. But then you can't maneuver the ship; it's on automatic.'

"I have just preprogrammed the ship to cut the main drive and stabilize with the side jets after acceleration. After that it will return to pilot-control phase."

'But that won't stop them from hurling us out of the channel!'

"Their operation is based on the assumption that I will maintain normal acceleration, or raise it up several gravities in a vain attempt to escape them. The reactions of a pilotless, driveless ship are quite different."

'Quite helpless, it seems to me!'

The pressure exerted by the six ships continued, but now Heem hardly felt it. The fluid of the ship held him cushioned. The drive cut off abruptly, releasing his body from gravity. There was a jolt as the six ships took up the slack, shoving his ship forward with the same acceleration.

'What's happening?' Jessica demanded. 'I was just beginning to see, but now there is no input. Just the blank-ness of suspension.'

"They are boosting us forward at about three gravities," Heem explained, basing his judgment on experience as he felt the diminished impact of the thrust. "They aren't skilled enough to coordinate the package for a turn, so they're trusting to random imbalances in thrust to cause us to veer out of the channel. But my ship is stable and precisely on course, so we are progressing due forward. They think that my cutting off the main thrust means that I have lost control; now they are shoving a derelict."

'
Aren't
they?'

The extreme impetus continued for some time, then ceased with a jerk. "Now they have turned us loose. They are probably almost out of fuel themselves; pushing a spaceship is immensely wasteful." The liquid drained, freeing him for action. Heem activated the space-taste. "Taste where we are now!" he jetted jubilantly, picking up the pattern of blips.

Jessica looked. 'We're halfway up the line!'

Heem cut in the main jet. "And we have saved a fair margin of fuel. We can now accelerate at a slightly greater rate without exhausting our available supply."

'But that means those six ships really helped us, while using up their own reserves!'

"As I jetted before: they are fools. Had they boosted one of their own number similarly, they could have vaulted him back into contention. But they allowed my impertinence to befuddle their rational processes."

'They certainly did! Imagine allowing the quest for short-term vengeance to ruin your own chances! I would not have believed it possible.' She paused. 'No, it is possible. My own people are like that. Through history deeds are done that should not be, in the name of vengeance, while positive and necessary things are left undone. Billions for defense and not one cent for improvement. But it's still a ridiculous way to operate.'

Heem found he agreed intellectually, but not emotionally. He had been motivated to avenge what Slitherfear Squam had done, and this had profoundly influenced his entire life. He could not claim this was wrong; there needed to be justice, and without retribution there would be no justice.

'Oh, I don't agree with that!' Jessica protested.

"You hardly need to." Heem angled back into the line so that his blip would not be so obvious to the others. There had been no reaction from the six ships who had boosted him; they had realized that they had been outmaneuvered the moment his main jet came back on, and they were not eager to advertise the manner in which they had been fooled.

Heem, accelerating at a steady 1.1 g, was passing ships steadily now. Here in the midsection of the column they were strung out more evenly, and less given to direct rivalries. In short, they were more intelligent, disciplined competitors, which was one reason they were here, making a fair roll for it.