On the Orion Line
by
Stephen Baxter
The Brief Life Burns Brightly broke out ofthe fleet. We were chasing down a Ghost cruiser, and we were closing.
The lifedome of the Brightly was transparent,so it was as if Captain Teid in her big chair, and her officers and theirequipment clusters-and a few low-grade tars like me-were just floating inspace. The light was subtle, coming from a nearby cluster of hot young stars,and from the rivers of sparking lights that made up the fleet formation we hadjust left, and beyond that from the sparking of novae. This was the OrionLine-six thousand light years from Earth and a thousand lights long, a frontthat spread right along the inner edge of the Orion Spiral Arm-and the stellarexplosions marked battles that must have concluded years ago.
And, not a handful of klicks away, the Ghostcruiser slid across space, running for home. The cruiser was a rough egg-shapeof silvered rope. Hundreds of Ghosts clung to the rope. You could see themslithering this way and that, not affected at all by the emptiness around them.
The Ghosts' destination was a small, oldyellow star. Pael, our tame Academician, had identified it as a fortress starfrom some kind of strangeness in its light. But up close you don't need to bean Academician to spot a fortress. From the Brightly I could see with myunaided eyes that the star had a pale blue cage around it-an open lattice withstruts half a million kilometers long-thrown there by the Ghosts, for their ownpurposes.
I had a lot of time to watch all this. I wasjust a tar. I was fifteen years old.
My duties at that moment were non-specific. Iwas supposed to stand to, and render assistance any way that was required-mostlikely with basic medical attention should we go into combat. Right now theonly one of us tars actually working was Halle,who was chasing down a pool of vomit sicked up by Pael, the Academician, theonly non-Navy personnel on the bridge.
The action on the Brightly wasn't like yousee in Virtual shows. The atmosphere was calm, quiet, competent. All you couldhear was the murmur of voices, from the crew and the equipment, and the hiss ofrecycling air. No drama: it was like an operating theater.
There was a soft warning chime.
The captain raised an arm and called overAcademician Pael, First Officer Till, and Jeru, the commissary assigned to theship. They huddled close, conferring-apparently arguing. I saw the wayflickering nova light reflected from Jeru's shaven head.
I felt my heart beat harder.
Everybody knew what the chime meant: that wewere approaching the fortress cordon. Either we would break off, or we wouldchase the Ghost cruiser inside its invisible fortress. And everybody knew thatno Navy ship that had ever penetrated a fortress cordon, ten light-minutes fromthe central star, had come back out again.
One way or the other, it would all beresolved soon.
Captain Teid cut short the debate. She leanedforward and addressed the crew. Her voice, cast through the ship, was friendly,like a cadre leader whispering in your ear. "You can all see we can'tcatch that swarm of Ghosts this side of the cordon. And you all know the hazardof crossing a cordon. But if we're ever going to break this blockade of theirswe have to find a way to bust open those forts. So we're going in anyhow. Standby your stations."
There was a half-hearted cheer.
I caught Halle's eye. She grinned at me. She pointedat the captain, closed her fist and made a pumping movement. I admired hersentiment but she wasn't being too accurate, anatomically speaking, so I raisedmy middle finger and jiggled it back and forth.
It took a slap on the back of the head fromJeru, the commissary, to put a stop to that. "Little morons," shegrowled.
"Sorry, sir-"
I got another slap for the apology. Jeru wasa tall, stocky woman, dressed in the bland monastic robes said to date from thetime of the founding of the Commission for Historical Truth a thousand yearsago. But rumor was she'd seen plenty of combat action of her own before joiningthe Commission, and such was her physical strength and speed of reflex I couldwell believe it.
As we neared the cordon the Academician,Pael, started a gloomy countdown. The slow geometry of Ghost cruiser andtinsel-wrapped fortress star swiveled across the crowded sky.
Everybody went quiet.
The darkest time is always just before theaction starts. Even if you can see or hear what is going on, all you do isthink. What was going to happen to us when we crossed that intangible border?Would a fleet of Ghost ships materialize all around us? Would some mysteriousweapon simply blast us out of the sky?
I caught the eye of First Officer Till. Hewas a veteran of twenty years; his scalp had been burned away in some ancientclose-run combat, long before I was born, and he wore a crown of scar tissuewith pride.
"Let's do it, tar," he growled.
All the fear went away. I was overwhelmed bya feeling of togetherness, of us all being in this crap together. I had nothought of dying. Just: let's get through this.
"Yes, sir!"
Pael finished his countdown.
All the lights went out. Detonating starswheeled.
And the ship exploded.
I was thrown into darkness. Air howled.Emergency bulkheads scythed past me, and I could hear people scream.
I slammed into the curving hull, nose pressedagainst the stars.
I bounced off and drifted. The inertialsuspension was out, then. I thought I could smell blood-probably my own.
I could see the Ghost ship, a tangle of ropeand silver baubles, tingling with highlights from the fortress star. We werestill closing.
But I could also see shards of shatteredlifedome, a sputtering drive unit. The shards were bits of the Brightly. It hadgone, all gone, in a fraction of a second.
"Let's do it," I murmured.
Maybe I was out of it for a while.
Somebody grabbed my ankle and tugged me down.There was a competent slap on my cheek, enough to make me focus.
"Case. Can you hear me?"
It was First Officer Till. Even in theswimming starlight that burned-off scalp was unmistakable.
I glanced around. There were four of us here:Till, Commissary Jeru, Academician Pael, me. We were huddled up against whatlooked like the stump of the First Officer's console. I realized that the galeof venting air had stopped. I was back inside a hull with integrity, then-
"Case!"
"I-yes, sir."
"Report."
I touched my lip; my hand came away bloody.At a time like that it's your duty to report your injuries, honestly and fully.Nobody needs a hero who turns out not to be able to function. "I think I'mall right. I may have a concussion."
"Good enough. Strap down." Tillhanded me a length of rope.
I saw that the others had tied themselves tostruts. I did the same.
Till, with practiced ease, swam away into theair, I guessed looking for other survivors.
Academician Pael was trying to curl into aball. He couldn't even speak. The tears just rolled out of his eyes. I staredat the way big globules welled up and drifted away into the air, glimmering.
The action had been over in seconds. All abit sudden for an earthworm, I guess.
Nearby, I saw, trapped under one of the emergencybulkheads, there was a pair of legs-just that. The rest of the body must havebeen chopped away, gone drifting off with the rest of the debris from Brightly.But I recognized those legs, from a garish pink stripe on the sole of the rightboot. That had been Halle.She was the only girl I had ever screwed, I thought-and more than likely, giventhe situation, the only girl I ever would get to screw.
I couldn't figure out how I felt about that.
Jeru was watching me. "Tar-do you thinkwe should all be frightened for ourselves, like the Academician?" Heraccent was strong, unidentifiable.
"No, sir."
"No." Jeru studied Pael withcontempt. "We are in a yacht, Academician. Something has happened to theBrightly. The 'dome was designed to break up into yachts like this." Shesniffed. "We have air, and it isn't foul yet." She winked at me."Maybe we can do a little damage to the Ghosts before we die, tar. What doyou think?"
I grinned. "Yes, sir."
Pael lifted his head and stared at me withsalt water eyes. "Lethe. You people are monsters." His accent wasgentle, a lilt. "Even such a child as this. You embrace death-"
Jeru grabbed Pael's jaw in a massive hand,and pinched the joint until he squealed. "Captain Teid grabbed you,Academician; she threw you here, into the yacht, before the bulkhead came down.I saw it. If she hadn't taken the time to do that, she would have made itherself. Was she a monster? Did she embrace death?" And she pushed Pael'sface away.
For some reason I hadn't thought about therest of the crew until that moment. I guess I have a limited imagination. Now,I felt adrift. The captain-dead?
I said, "Excuse me, Commissary. How manyother yachts got out?"
"None," she said steadily, makingsure I had no illusions. "Just this one. They died doing their duty, tar.Like the captain."
Of course she was right, and I felt a littlebetter. Whatever his character, Pael was too valuable not to save. As for me, Ihad survived through sheer blind chance, through being in the right place whenthe walls came down: if the captain had been close, her duty would have been topull me out of the way and take my place. It isn't a question of human valuesbut of economics: a lot more is invested in the training and experience of aCaptain Teid-or a Pael-than in me.
But Pael seemed more confused than I was.
First Officer Till came bustling back with aheap of equipment. "Put these on." He handed out pressure suits. Theywere what we called slime suits in training: lightweight skinsuits, running offa backpack of gen-enged algae. "Move it," said Till. "Impactwith the Ghost cruiser in four minutes. We don't have any power; there'snothing we can do but ride it out."
I crammed my legs into my suit.
Jeru complied, stripping off her robe toreveal a hard, scarred body. But she was frowning. "Why not heavierarmor?"
For answer, Till picked out a gravity-wavehandgun from the gear he had retrieved. Without pausing he held it to Pael'shead and pushed the fire button.
Pael twitched.
Till said, "See? Nothing is working.Nothing but bio systems, it seems." He threw the gun aside.
Pael closed his eyes, breathing hard.
Till said to me, "Test your comms."
I closed up my hood and faceplate and beganintoning, "One, two, three . . ." I could hear nothing.
Till began tapping at our backpacks,resetting the systems. His hood started to glow with transient, pale bluesymbols. And then, scratchily, his voice started to come through. ". . .Five, six, seven-can you hear me, tar?"
"Yes, sir."
The symbols were bioluminescent. There werereceptors on all our suits-photoreceptors, simple eyes-which could"read" the messages scrawled on our companions' suits. It was abackup system meant for use in environments where anything higher-tech would bea liability. But obviously it would only work as long as we were in line ofsight.
"That will make life harder," Jerusaid. Oddly, mediated by software, she was easier to understand.
Till shrugged. "You take it as itcomes." Briskly, he began to hand out more gear. "These are basicfield belt kits. There's some medical stuff: a suture kit, scalpel blades,blood-giving sets. You wear these syrettes around your neck, Academician. Theycontain painkillers, various gen-enged med-viruses . . . no, you wear itoutside your suit, Pael, so you can reach it. You'll find valve inlets here, onyour sleeve, and here, on the leg." Now came weapons. "We shouldcarry handguns, just in case they start working, but be ready with these."He handed out combat knives.
Pael shrank back.
"Take the knife, Academician. You canshave off that ugly beard, if nothing else."
I laughed out loud, and was rewarded with awink from Till.
I took a knife. It was a heavy chunk ofsteel, solid and reassuring. I tucked it in my belt. I was starting to feel awhole lot better.
"Two minutes to impact," Jeru said.I didn't have a working chronometer; she must have been counting the seconds.
"Seal up." Till began to check theintegrity of Pael's suit; Jeru and I helped each other. Face seal, glove seal,boot seal, pressure check. Water check, oh-two flow, cee-oh-two scrub . . .
When we were sealed I risked poking my headabove Till's chair.
The Ghost ship filled space. The craft waskilometers across, big enough to have dwarfed the poor, doomed Brief Life BurnsBrightly. It was a tangle of silvery rope of depthless complexity, occludingthe stars and the warring fleets. Bulky equipment pods were suspended in thetangle.
And everywhere there were Silver Ghosts,sliding like beads of mercury. I could see how the yacht's emergency lightswere returning crimson highlights from the featureless hides of Ghosts, so theylooked like sprays of blood droplets across that shining perfection.
"Ten seconds," Till called."Brace."
Suddenly silver ropes thick as tree trunkswere all around us, looming out of the sky.
And we were thrown into chaos again.
I heard a grind of twisted metal, a scream ofair. The hull popped open like an eggshell. The last of our air fled in a gushof ice crystals, and the only sound I could hear was my own breathing.
The crumpling hull soaked up some of ourmomentum.
But then the base of the yacht hit, and ithit hard.
The chair was wrenched out of my grasp, and Iwas hurled upward. There was a sudden pain in my left arm. I couldn't help butcry out.
I reached the limit of my tether andrebounded. The jolt sent further waves of pain through my arm. From up there, Icould see the others were clustered around the base of the First Officer'schair, which had collapsed.
I looked up. We had stuck like a dart in theouter layers of the Ghost ship. There were shining threads arcing all aroundus, as if a huge net had scooped us up.
Jeru grabbed me and pulled me down. Shejarred my bad arm, and I winced. But she ignored me, and went back to workingon Till. He was under the fallen chair.
Pael started to take a syrette of dope fromthe sachet around his neck.
Jeru knocked his hand away. "You alwaysuse the casualty's," she hissed. "Never your own."
Pael looked hurt, rebuffed. "Why?"
I could answer that. "Because thechances are you'll need your own in a minute."
Jeru stabbed a syrette into Till's arm.
Pael was staring at me through his faceplatewith wide, frightened eyes. "You've broken your arm."
Looking closely at the arm for the firsttime, I saw that it was bent back at an impossible angle. I couldn't believeit, even through the pain. I'd never bust so much as a finger, all the waythrough training.
Now Till jerked, a kind of miniatureconvulsion, and a big bubble of spit and blood blew out of his lips. Then thebubble popped, and his limbs went loose.
Jeru sat back, breathing hard. She said,"Okay. Okay. How did he put it?-You take it as it comes." She lookedaround, at me, Pael. I could see she was trembling, which scared me. She said,"Now we move. We have to find an LUP. A lying-up point, Academician. Aplace to hole up."
I said, "The First Officer-"
"Is dead." She glanced at Pael."Now it's just the three of us. We won't be able to avoid each other anymore, Pael."
Pael stared back, eyes empty.
Jeru looked at me, and for a second herexpression softened. "A broken neck. Till broke his neck, tar."
Another death, just like that: just for aheartbeat that was too much for me.
Jeru said briskly, "Do your duty, tar.Help the worm."
I snapped back. "Yes, sir." Igrabbed Pael's unresisting arm.
Led by Jeru, we began to move, the three ofus, away from the crumpled wreck of our yacht, deep into the alien tangle of aSilver Ghost cruiser.
We found our LUP.
It was just a hollow in a somewhat densertangle of silvery ropes, but it afforded us some cover, and it seemed to beaway from the main concentration of Ghosts. We were still open to the vacuum-asthe whole cruiser seemed to be-and I realized then that I wouldn't be gettingout of this suit for a while.
As soon as we picked the LUP, Jeru made ustake up positions in an all-round defense, covering a 360-degree arc.
Then we did nothing, absolutely nothing, forten minutes.
It was SOP, standard operating procedure, andI was impressed. You've just come out of all the chaos of the destruction ofthe Brightly and the crash of the yacht, a frenzy of activity. Now you have togive your body a chance to adjust to the new environment, to the sounds andsmells and sights.
Only here, there was nothing to smell but myown sweat and piss, nothing to hear but my ragged breathing. And my arm washurting like hell.
To occupy my mind I concentrated on gettingmy night vision working. Your eyes take a while to adjust to thedarkness-forty-five minutes before they are fully effective-but you are alreadyseeing better after five. I could see stars through the chinks in the wirymetallic brush around me, the flares of distant nova, and the reassuring lightsof our fleet. But a Ghost ship is a dark place, a mess of shadows andsmeared-out reflections. It was going to be easy to get spooked here.
When the ten minutes were done, AcademicianPael started bleating, but Jeru ignored him and came straight over to me. Shegot hold of my busted arm and started to feel the bone. "So," shesaid briskly. "What's your name, tar?"
"Case, sir."
"What do you think of your newquarters?"
"Where do I eat?"
She grinned. "Turn off your comms,"she said.
I complied.
Without warning she pulled my arm, hard. Iwas glad she couldn't hear how I howled.
She pulled a canister out of her belt andsquirted gunk over my arm; it was semi-sentient and snuggled into place,setting as a hard cast around my injury. When I was healed the cast would fallaway of its own accord.
She motioned me to turn on my comms again,and held up a syrette.
"I don't need that."
"Don't be brave, tar. It will help yourbones knit."
"Sir, there's a rumor that stuff makesyou impotent." I felt stupid even as I said it.
Jeru laughed out loud, and just grabbed myarm. "Anyhow it's the First Officer's, and he doesn't need it any more,does he?"
I couldn't argue with that; I accepted theinjection. The pain started ebbing almost immediately.
Jeru pulled a tactical beacon out of her beltkit. It was a thumb-sized orange cylinder. "I'm going to try to signal thefleet. I'll work my way out of this tangle; even if the beacon is working wemight be shielded in here." Pael started to protest, but she shut him up.I sensed I had been thrown into the middle of an ongoing conflict between them."Case, you're on stag. And show this worm what's in his kit. I'll comeback the same way I go. All right?"
"Yes." More SOP.
She slid away through silvery threads.
I lodged myself in the tangle and started togo through the stuff in the belt kits Till had fetched for us. There was water,rehydration salts, and compressed food, all to be delivered to spigots insideour sealed hoods. We had power packs the size of my thumbnail, but they were asdead as the rest of the kit. There was a lot of low-tech gear meant to prolongsurvival in a variety of situations, such as a magnetic compass, a heliograph,a thumb saw, a magnifying glass, pitons, and spindles of rope, even fishingline.
I had to show Pael how his suit functioned asa lavatory. The trick is just to let go; a slime suit recycles most of what yougive it, and compresses the rest. That's not to say it's comfortable. I'venever yet worn a suit that was good at absorbing odors. I bet no suit designerspent more than an hour in one of her own creations.
I felt fine.
The wreck, the hammer-blow deaths one afterthe other-none of it was far beneath the surface of my mind. But that's whereit stayed, for now; as long as I had the next task to focus on, and the nextafter that, I could keep moving forward. The time to let it all hit you isafter the show.
I guess Pael had never been trained likethat.
He was a thin, spindly man, his eyes sunk inblack shadow, and his ridiculous red beard was cram up inside his faceplate.Now that the great crises were over, his energy seemed to have drained away,and his functioning was slowing to a crawl. He looked almost comical as hepawed at his useless bits of kit.
After a time he said, "Case, isit?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are you from Earth, child?"
"No. I-"
He ignored me. "The Academies are basedon Earth. Did you know that, child? But they do admit a few off-worlders."
I glimpsed a lifetime of outsider resentment.But I could care less. Also I wasn't a child. I asked cautiously, "Whereare you from, sir?"
He sighed. "It's 51 Pegasi. I-B."
I'd never heard of it. "What kind ofplace is that? Is it near Earth?"
"Is everything measured relative toEarth. . . ? Not very far. My home world was one of the first extra-solarplanets to be discovered-or at least, the primary is. I grew up on a moon. Theprimary is a hot Jupiter."
I knew what that meant: a giant planethuddled close to its parent star.
He looked up at me. "Where you grew up,could you see the sky?"
"No-"
"I could. And the sky was full of sails.That close to the sun, solar sails work efficiently, you see. I used to watchthem at night, schooners with sails hundreds of kilometers wide, tack this wayand that in the light. But you can't see the sky from Earth-not from theAcademy bunkers anyhow."
"Then why did you go there?"
"I didn't have a choice." Helaughed, hollowly. "I was doomed by being smart. That is why your preciouscommissary despises me so much, you see. I have been taught to think-and wecan't have that, can we. . . ?"
I turned away from him and shut up. Jeruwasn't "my" commissary, and this sure wasn't my argument. Besides,Pael gave me the creeps. I've always been wary of people who knew too muchabout science and technology. With a weapon, all you want to know is how itworks, what kind of energy or ammunition it needs, and what to do when it goeswrong. People who know all the technical background and the statistics areusually covering up their own failings; it is experience of use that counts.
But this was no loudmouth weapons tech. Thiswas an Academician: one of humanity's elite scientists. I felt I had no pointof contact with him at all.
I looked out through the tangle, trying tosee the fleet's sliding, glimmering lanes of light.
There was motion in the tangle. I turned thatway, motioning Pael to keep still and silent, and got hold of my knife in mygood hand.
Jeru came bustling back, exactly the way shehad left. She nodded approvingly at my alertness. "Not a peep out of thebeacon."
Pael said, "You realize our time here islimited."
Iasked, "The suits?"
"He means the star," Jeru saidheavily. "Case, fortress stars seem to be unstable. When the Ghosts throwup their cordon, the stars don't last long before going pop."
Pael shrugged. "We have hours, a fewdays at most."
Jeru said, "Well, we're going to have toget out, beyond the fortress cordon, so we can signal the fleet. That or find away to collapse the cordon altogether."
Pael laughed hollowly. "And how do youpropose we do that?"
Jeru glared. "Isn't it your role to tellme, Academician?"
Pael leaned back and closed his eyes."Not for the first time, you're being ridiculous."
Jeru growled. She turned to me. "You.What do you know about the Ghosts?"
I said, "They come from someplace cold.That's why they are wrapped up in silvery shells. You can't bring a Ghost downwith laser fire because of those shells. They're perfectly reflective."
Pael said, "Not perfectly. They arebased on a Planck-zero effect. . . . About one part in a billion of incidentenergy is absorbed."
I hesitated. "They say the Ghostsexperiment on people."
Pael sneered. "Lies put about by yourCommission for Historical Truth, Commissary. To demonize an opponent is atactic as old as mankind."
Jeru wasn't perturbed. "Then why don'tyou put young Case right? How do the Ghosts go about their business?"
Pael said, "The Silver Ghosts tinkerwith the laws of physics."
Ilooked to Jeru; she shrugged.
Pael tried to explain. It was all to do withquagma.
Quagma is the state of matter that emergedfrom the Big Bang. Matter, when raised to sufficiently high temperatures, meltsinto a magma of quarks-a quagma. And at such temperatures the four fundamentalforces of physics unify into a single superforce. When quagma is allowed tocool and expand its binding superforce decomposes into four sub-forces.
To my surprise, I understood some of this.The principle of the GUTdrive, which powers intrasystem ships like Brief LifeBurns Brightly, is related.
Anyhow, by controlling the superforcedecomposition, you can select the ratio between those forces. And those ratiosgovern the fundamental constants of physics.
Something like that.
Pael said, "That marvelous reflectivecoating of theirs is an example. Each Ghost is surrounded by a thin layer ofspace in which a fundamental number called the Planck constant is significantlylower than elsewhere. Thus, quantum effects are collapsed . . . because theenergy carried by a photon, a particle of light, is proportional to the Planckconstant, an incoming photon must shed most of its energy when it hits theshell-hence the reflectivity."
"All right," Jeru said. "Sowhat are they doing here?"
Pael sighed. "The fortress star seems tobe surrounded by an open shell of quagma and exotic matter. We surmise that theGhosts have blown a bubble around each star, a space-time volume in which thelaws of physics are-tweaked."
"And that's why our equipmentfailed."
"Presumably," said Pael, with coldsarcasm.
I asked, "What do the Ghosts want? Whydo they do all this stuff?"
Pael studied me. "You are trained tokill them, and they don't even tell you that?"
Jeru just glowered.
Pael said, "The Ghosts were not shapedby competitive evolution. They are symbiotic creatures; they derive from lifeforms that huddled into cooperative collectives as their world turned cold. Andthey seem to be motivated-not by expansion and the acquisition of territory forits own sake, as we are-but by a desire to understand the fine-tuning of theuniverse. Why are we here? You see, young tar, there is only a narrow range ofthe constants of physics within which life of any sort is possible. We thinkthe Ghosts are studying this question by pushing at the boundaries-by tinkeringwith the laws that sustain and contain us all."
Jerusaid, "An enemy who can deploy the laws of physics as a weapon is formidable.But in the long run, we will out-compete the Ghosts."
Pael said bleak, "Ah, the evolutionarydestiny of mankind. How dismal. But we lived in peace with the Ghosts, underthe Raoul Accords, for a thousand years. We are so different, with disparatemotivations-why should there be a clash, any more than between two species ofbirds in the same garden?"
I'd never seen birds, or a garden, so thatpassed me by.
Jeru just glared. She said at last,"Let's return to practicalities. How do their fortresses work?" WhenPael didn't reply, she snapped, "Academician, you've been inside afortress cordon for an hour already and you haven't made a single fresh observation?"
Acidly, Pael demanded, "What would youhave me do?"
Jeru nodded at me. "What have you seen,tar?"
"Our instruments and weapons don'twork," I said promptly. "The Brightly exploded. I broke my arm."
Jeru said, "Till snapped his neckalso." She flexed her hand within her glove. "What would make ourbones more brittle? Anything else?"
I shrugged.
Pael admitted, "I do feel somewhatwarm."
Jeru asked, "Could these body changes berelevant?"
"I don't see how."
"Then figure it out."
"I have no equipment."
Jeru dumped spare gear-weapons, beacons-inhis lap. "You have your eyes, your hands and your mind. Improvise."She turned to me. "As for you, tar, let's do a little infil. We still needto find a way off this scow."
I glanced doubtfully at Pael. "There'snobody to stand on stag."
Jeru said, "I know. But there are onlythree of us." She grasped Pael's shoulder, hard. "Keep your eyesopen, Academician. We'll come back the same way we left. So you'll know it'sus. Do you understand?"
Pael shrugged her away, focusing on thegadgets on his lap.
I looked at him doubtfully. It seemed to me awhole platoon of Ghosts could have come down on him without his even noticing.But Jeru was right; there was nothing more we could do.
She studied me, fingered my arm. "You upto this?"
"I'm fine, sir."
"You are lucky. A good war comes alongonce in a lifetime. And this is your war, tar."
That sounded like parade-ground pep talk, andI responded in kind. "Can I have your rations, sir? You won't be needingthem soon." I mimed digging a grave.
She grinned back fiercely. "Yeah. Whenyour turn comes, slit your suit and let the farts out before I take it off yourstiffening corpse-"
Pael's voice was trembling. "You reallyare monsters."
I shared a glance with Jeru. But we shut up,for fear of upsetting the earthworm further.
I grasped my fighting knife, and we slid awayinto the dark.
What we were hoping to find was someequivalent of a bridge. Even if we succeeded, I couldn't imagine what we'd donext. Anyhow, we had to try.
We slid through the tangle. Ghost cable stuffis tough, even to a knife blade. But it is reasonably flexible; you can justpush it aside if you get stuck, although we tried to avoid doing that for fearof leaving a sign.
We used standard patrolling SOP, adapted forthe circumstance. We would move for ten or fifteen minutes, clambering throughthe tangle, and then take a break for five minutes. I'd sip water-I was gettinghot-and maybe nibble on a glucose tab, check on my arm, and pull the suitaround me to get comfortable again. It's the way to do it. If you just pushyourself on and on you run down your reserves and end up in no fit state toachieve the goal anyhow.
And all the while I was trying to keep up myall-around awareness, protecting my dark adaptation, and making appreciations.How far away is Jeru? What if an attack comes from in front, behind, above,below, left or right? Where can I find cover?
I began to build up an impression of theGhost cruiser. It was a rough egg-shape, a couple of kilometers long, andbasically a mass of the anonymous silvery cable. There were chambers andplatforms and instruments stuck as if at random into the tangle, like foodfragments in an old man's beard. I guess it makes for a flexible, easilymodified configuration. Where the tangle was a little less thick, I glimpsed amore substantial core, a cylinder running along the axis of the craft. Perhapsit was the drive unit. I wondered if it was functioning; perhaps the Ghostequipment was designed to adapt to the changed conditions inside the fortresscordon.
There were Ghosts all over the craft.
They drifted over and through the tangle,following pathways invisible to us. Or they would cluster in little knots onthe tangle. We couldn't tell what they were doing or saying. To human eyes aSilver Ghost is just a silvery sphere, visible only by reflection like a holecut out of space, and without specialist equipment it is impossible even totell one from another.
We kept out of sight. But I was sure theGhosts must have spotted us, or were at least tracking our movements. After allwe'd crash-landed in their ship. But they made no overt moves toward us.
We reached the outer hull, the place thecabling ran out, and dug back into the tangle a little way to stay out ofsight.
I got an unimpeded view of the stars.
Still those nova firecrackers went off allover the sky; still those young stars glared like lanterns. It seemed to me thefortress's central, enclosed star looked a little brighter, hotter than it hadbeen. I made a mental note to report that to the Academician.
But the most striking sight was the fleet.
Over a volume light-months wide, countlesscraft slid silently across the sky. They were organized in a complex network ofcorridors filling three-dimensional space: rivers of light gushed this way andthat, their different colors denoting different classes and sizes of vessel.And, here and there, denser knots of color and light sparked, irregular flaresin the orderly flows. They were places where human ships were engaging theenemy, places where people were fighting and dying.
It was a magnificent sight. But it was a big,empty sky, and the nearest sun was that eerie dwarf enclosed in its spooky bluenet, a long way away, and there was movement in three dimensions, above me,below me, all around me. . . .
I found the fingers of my good hand hadlocked themselves around a sliver of the tangle.
Jeru grabbed my wrist and shook my arm untilI was able to let go. She kept hold of my arm, her eyes locked on mine. I haveyou. You won't fall. Then she pulled me into a dense knot of the tangle,shutting out the sky.
She huddled close to me, so the bio lights ofour suits wouldn't show far. Her eyes were pale blue, like windows. "Youaren't used to being outside, are you, tar?"
"I'm sorry, Commissary. I've beentrained-"
"You're still human. We all have weakpoints. The trick is to know them and allow for them. Where are you from?"
I managed a grin. "Mercury. CalorisPlanitia." Mercury is a ball of iron at the bottom of the sun's gravitywell. It is an iron mine, and an exotic matter factory, with a sun like a lidhanging over it. Most of the surface is given over to solar power collectors.It is a place of tunnels and warrens, where kids compete with the rats.
"And that's why you joined up? To getaway?"
"I was drafted."
"Come on," she scoffed. "On aplace like Mercury there are ways to hide. Are you a romantic, tar? You wantedto see the stars?"
"No," I said bluntly. "Life ismore useful here."
She studied me. "A brief life shouldburn brightly-eh, tar?"
"Yes, sir."
"I came from Deneb," she said."Do you know it?"
"No."
"Sixteen hundred light years fromEarth-a system settled some four centuries after the start of the ThirdExpansion. It is quite different from the solar system. It is-organized. By thetime the first ships reached Deneb, the mechanics of exploitation had becomeefficient. From preliminary exploration to working shipyards and daughtercolonies in less than a century. . . . Deneb's resources-its planets andasteroids and comets, even the star itself-have been mined to fund freshcolonizing waves, the greater Expansion-and, of course, to support the war withthe Ghosts."
She swept her hand over the sky. "Thinkof it, tar. The Third Expansion: between here and Sol, across six thousandlight years-nothing but mankind, the fruit of a thousand years ofworld-building. And all of it linked by economics. Older systems like Deneb,their resources spent-even the solar system itself-are supported by a flow ofgoods and materials inward from the growing periphery of the Expansion. Thereare trade lanes spanning thousands of light years, lanes that never leave humanterritory, plied by vast schooners kilometers wide. But now the Ghosts are inour way. And that's what we're fighting for!"
"Yes, sir."
She eyed me. "You ready to go on?"
"Yes."
We began to make our way forward again, justunder the tangle, still following patrol SOP.
I was glad to be moving again. I've neverbeen comfortable talking personally-and for sure not with a Commissary. But Isuppose even Commissaries need to talk.
Jeru spotted a file of the Ghosts moving in acrocodile, like so many schoolchildren, toward the head of the ship. It was themost purposeful activity we'd seen so far, so we followed them.
After a couple of hundred meters the Ghostsbegan to duck down into the tangle, out of our sight. We followed them in.
Maybe fifty meters deep, we came to a largeenclosed chamber, a smooth bean-shaped pod that would have been big enough toenclose our yacht. The surface appeared to be semi-transparent, perhapsdesigned to let in sunlight. I could see shadowy shapes moving within.
Ghosts were clustered around the pod's hull,brushing its surface.
Jeru beckoned, and we worked our way throughthe tangle toward the far end of the pod, where the density of the Ghostsseemed to be lowest.
We slithered to the surface of the pod. Therewere sucker pads on our palms and toes to help us grip. We began crawling alongthe length of the pod, ducking flat when we saw Ghosts loom into view. It waslike climbing over a glass ceiling.
The pod was pressurized. At one end of thepod a big ball of mud hung in the air, brown and viscous. It seemed to beheated from within; it was slowly boiling, with big sticky bubbles of vaporcrowding its surface, and I saw how it was laced with purple and red smears.There is no convection in zero gravity, of course. Maybe the Ghosts were usingpumps to drive the flow of vapor.
Tubes led off from the mud ball to the hullof the pod. Ghosts clustered there, sucking up the purple gunk from the mud.
We figured it out in bioluminescent"whispers." The Ghosts were feeding. Their home world is too small tohave retained much internal warmth, but, deep beneath their frozen oceans or inthe dark of their rocks, a little primordial geotherm heat must leak out still,driving fountains of minerals dragged up from the depths. And, as at the bottomof Earth's oceans, on those minerals and the slow leak of heat, life formsfeed. And the Ghosts feed on them.
So this mud ball was a field kitchen. Ipeered down at purplish slime, a gourmet meal for Ghosts, and I didn't envythem.
There was nothing for us here. Jeru beckonedme again, and we slithered further forward.
The next section of the pod was . . .strange.
It was a chamber full of sparkling, silverysaucer-shapes, like smaller, flattened-out Ghosts, perhaps. They fizzed throughthe air or crawled over each other or jammed themselves together into greatwadded balls that would hold for a few seconds and then collapse, theircomponent parts squirming off for some new adventure elsewhere. I could seethere were feeding tubes on the walls, and one or two Ghosts drifted among thesaucer things, like an adult in a yard of squabbling children.
There was a subtle shadow before me.
I looked up, and found myself staring at myown reflection-an angled head, an open mouth, a sprawled body-folded over,fish-eye style, just centimeters from my nose.
It was a Ghost. It bobbed massively beforeme.
I pushed myself away from the hull, slowly. Igrabbed hold of the nearest tangle branch with my good hand. I knew I couldn'treach for my knife, which was tucked into my belt at my back. And I couldn'tsee Jeru anywhere. It might be that the Ghosts had taken her already. Eitherway I couldn't call her, or even look for her, for fear of giving her away.
The Ghost had a heavy-looking belt wrappedaround its equator. I had to assume that those complex knots of equipment wereweapons. Aside from its belt, the Ghost was quite featureless: it might havebeen stationary, or spinning at a hundred revolutions a minute. I stared at itshide, trying to understand that there was a layer in there like a separateuniverse, where the laws of physics had been tweaked. But all I could see wasmy own scared face looking back at me.
And then Jeru fell on the Ghost from above,limbs splayed, knives glinting in both hands. I could see she was yelling-mouthopen, eyes wide-but she fell in utter silence, her comms disabled.
Flexing her body like a whip, she rammed bothknives into the Ghost's hide-if I took that belt to be its equator, somewherenear its north pole. The Ghost pulsated, complex ripples chasing across itssurface. But Jeru did a handstand and reached up with her legs to the tangleabove, and anchored herself there.
The Ghost began to spin, trying to throw Jeruoff. But she held her grip on the tangle, and kept the knives thrust in itshide, and all the Ghost succeeded in doing was opening up twin gashes, rightacross its upper section. Steam pulsed out, and I glimpsed redness within.
For long seconds I just hung there, frozen.
You're trained to mount the proper reactionto an enemy assault. But it all vaporizes when you're faced with a ton ofspinning, pulsing monster, and you're armed with nothing but a knife. You justwant to make yourself as small as possible; maybe it will all go away. But inthe end you know it won't, that something has to be done.
So I pulled out my own knife and launchedmyself at that north pole area.
I started to make cross-cuts between Jeru'sgashes. Ghost skin is tough, like thick rubber, but easy to cut if you have theanchorage. Soon I had loosened flaps and lids of skin, and I started pullingthem away, exposing a deep redness within. Steam gushed out, sparkling to ice.
Jeru let go of her perch and joined me. Weclung with our fingers and hands to the gashes we'd made, and we cut andslashed and dug; though the Ghost spun crazily, it couldn't shake us loose.Soon we were hauling out great warm mounds of meat-ropes like entrails, pulsingslabs like a human's liver or heart. At first ice crystals spurted all aroundus, but as the Ghost lost the heat it had hoarded all its life, that thin winddied, and frost began to gather on the cut and torn flesh.
At last Jeru pushed my shoulder, and we bothdrifted away from the Ghost. It was still spinning, but I could see that thespin was nothing but dead momentum; the Ghost had lost its heat, and its life.
Jeru and I faced each other.
I said breathlessly, "I never heard ofanyone in hand-to-hand with a Ghost before."
"Neither did I. Lethe," she said,inspecting her hand. "I think I cracked a finger."
It wasn't funny. But Jeru stared at me, and Istared back, and then we both started to laugh, and our slime suits pulsed withpink and blue icons.
"He stood his ground," I said.
"Yes. Maybe he thought we werethreatening the nursery."
"The place with the silversaucers?"
She looked at me quizzically. "Ghostsare symbiotes, tar. That looked to me like a nursery for Ghost hides.Independent entities."
I had never thought of Ghosts having young. Ihad not thought of the Ghost we had killed as a mother protecting its young.I'm not a deep thinker now, and wasn't then; but it was not, for me, acomfortable thought.
But then Jeru started to move. "Come on,tar. Back to work." She anchored her legs in the tangle and began to grabat the still-rotating Ghost carcass, trying to slow its spin.
I anchored likewise and began to help her.The Ghost was massive, the size of a major piece of machinery, and it had builtup respectable momentum; at first I couldn't grab hold of the skin flaps thatspun past my hand. As we labored I became aware I was getting uncomfortablyhot. The light that seeped into the tangle from that caged sun seemed to begetting stronger by the minute.
But as we worked those uneasy thoughts soondissipated.
At last we got the Ghost under control.Briskly Jeru stripped it of its kit belt, and we began to cram the baggy corpseas deep as we could into the surrounding tangle. It was a grisly job. As theGhost crumpled further, more of its innards, stiffening now, came pushing outof the holes we'd given it in its hide, and I had to keep from gagging as thefoul stuff came pushing out into my face.
At last it was done-as best we could manageit, anyhow.
Jeru's faceplate was smeared with black andred. She was sweating hard, her face pink. But she was grinning, and she had atrophy, the Ghost belt around her shoulders. We began to make our way back,following the same SOP as before.
When we got back to our lying-up point, wefound Academician Pael was in trouble.
Pael had curled up in a ball, his hands overhis face. We pulled him open. His eyes were closed, his face blotched pink, andhis faceplate drip with condensation.
He was surrounded by gadgets stuck in thetangle-including parts from what looked like a broken-open starbreaker handgun;I recognized prisms and mirrors and diffraction gratings. Well, unless he wokeup, he wouldn't be able to tell us what he had been doing here.
Jeru glanced around. The light of thefortress's central star had gotten a lot stronger. Our lying-up point was nowbathed in light-and heat-with the surrounding tangle offering very littleshelter. "Any ideas, tar?"
I felt the exhilaration of our infil drainaway. "No, sir."
Jeru's face, bathed in sweat, showed tension.I noticed she was favoring her left hand. She'd mentioned, back at the nurserypod, that she'd cracked a finger, but had said nothing about it since-nor didshe give it any time now. "All right." She dumped the Ghost equipmentbelt and took a deep draught of water from her hood spigot. "Tar, you'reon stag. Try to keep Pael in the shade of your body. And if he wakes up, askhim what he's found out."
"Yes, sir."
"Good."
And then she was gone, melting into thecomplex shadows of the tangle as if she'd been born to these conditions.
I found a place where I could keep up360-degree vision, and offer a little of my shadow to Pael-not that I imaginedit helped much.
I had nothing to do but wait.
As the Ghost ship followed its own mysteriouscourse, the light dapples that came filtering through the tangle shifted andevolved. Clinging to the tangle, I thought I could feel vibration: a slow, deepharmonization that pulsed through the ship's giant structure. I wondered if Iwas hearing the deep voices of Ghosts, calling to each other from one end oftheir mighty ship to another. It all served to remind me that everything in myenvironment, everything, was alien, and I was very far from home.
I tried to count my heartbeat, my breaths; Itried to figure out how long a second was. "A thousand and one. A thousandand two . . ." Keeping time is a basic human trait; time provides a basicorientation, and keeps you mentally sharp and in touch with reality. But I keptlosing count.
And all my efforts failed to stop darkerthoughts creeping into my head.
During a drama like the contact with theGhost, you don't realize what's happening to you because your body blanks itout; on some level you know you just don't have time to deal with it. Now I hadstopped moving, the aches and pains of the last few hours started crowding inon me. I was still sore in my head and back and, of course, my busted arm. Icould feel deep bruises, maybe cuts, on my gloved hands where I had hauled atmy knife, and I felt as if I had wrenched my good shoulder. One of my toes wasthrobbing ominously: I wondered if I had cracked another bone, here in thisweird environment in which my skeleton had become as brittle as an old man's. Iwas chafed at my groin and armpits and knees and ankles and elbows, my skinrubbed raw. I was used to suits; normally I'm tougher than that.
The shafts of sunlight on my back wereworking on me too; it felt as if I was lying underneath the elements of anoven. I had a headache, a deep sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, a ringingin my ears, and a persistent ring of blackness around my eyes. Maybe I was justexhausted, dehydrated; maybe it was more than that.
I started to think back over my operationwith Jeru, and the regrets began.
Okay, I'd stood my ground when confronted bythe Ghost and not betrayed Jeru's position. But when she launched her attackI'd hesitated, for those crucial few seconds. Maybe if I'd been tougher thecommissary wouldn't find herself hauling through the tangle, alone, with abusted finger distracting her with pain signals.
Our training is comprehensive. You're taughtto expect that kind of hindsight torture, in the quiet moments, and to discountit-or, better yet, learn from it. But, effectively alone in that metallic alienforest, I wasn't finding my training was offering much perspective.
And, worse, I started to think ahead. Alwaysa mistake.
I couldn't believe that the Academician andhis reluctant gadgetry were going to achieve anything significant. And for allthe excitement of our infil, we hadn't found anything resembling a bridge orany vulnerable point we could attack, and all we'd come back with was a belt offield kit we didn't even understand.
For the first time I began to considerseriously the possibility that I wasn't going to live through this-that I wasgoing to die when my suit gave up or the sun went pop, whichever came first, inno more than a few hours.
A brief life burns brightly. That's whatyou're taught. Longevity makes you conservative, fearful, selfish. Humans madethat mistake before, and we finished up a subject race. Live fast andfuriously, for you aren't important-all that matters is what you can do for thespecies.
But I didn't want to die.
If I never returned to Mercury again Iwouldn't shed a tear. But I had a life now, in the Navy. And then there were mybuddies: the people I'd trained and served with, people like Halle-even Jeru.Having found fellowship for the first time in my life, I didn't want to lose itso quickly, and fall into the darkness alone-especially if it was to be fornothing.
But maybe I wasn't going to get a choice.
After an unmeasured time, Jeru returned. Shewas hauling a silvery blanket. It was Ghost hide. She started to shake it out.
I dropped down to help her. "You wentback to the one we killed-"
"-and skinned him," she said,breathless. "I just scraped off the crap with a knife. The Planck-zerolayer peels away easily. And look . . ." she made a quick incision in theglimmering sheet with her knife. Then she put the two edges together again, ranher finger along the seam, and showed me the result. I couldn't even see wherethe cut had been. "Self-sealing, self-healing," she said."Remember that, tar."
"Yes, sir."
We started to rig the punctured, splayed-outhide as a rough canopy over our LUP, blocking as much of the sunlight aspossible from Pael. A few slivers of frozen flesh still clung to the hide, butmostly it was like working with a fine, light metallic foil.
In the sudden shade, Pael was starting tostir. His moans were translated to stark bioluminescent icons.
"Help him," Jeru snapped."Make him drink." And while I did that she dug into the med kit onher belt and started to spray cast material around the fingers of her lefthand.
"It's the speed of light," Paelsaid. He was huddled in a corner of our LUP, his legs tucked against his chest.His voice must have been feeble; the bioluminescent sigils on his suit werefragmentary and came with possible variants extrapolated by the translatorsoftware.
"Tell us," Jeru said, relativelygently.
"The Ghosts have found a way to changelightspeed in this fortress. In fact to increase it." He began talkingagain about quagma and physics constants and the rolled-up dimensions ofspacetime, but Jeru waved that away irritably.
"How do you know this?"
Pael began tinkering with his prisms andgratings. "I took your advice, Commissary." He beckoned to me."Come see, child."
I saw that a shaft of red light, split outand deflected by his prism, shone through a diffraction grating and cast anangular pattern of dots and lines on a scrap of smooth plastic behind.
"You see?" His eyes searched myface.
"I'm sorry, sir."
"The wavelength of the light haschanged. It has been increased. Red light should have a wavelength, oh, a fifthshorter than that indicated by this pattern."
I was struggling to understand. I held up myhand. "Shouldn't the green of this glove turn yellow, or blue. . . ?"
Pael sighed. "No. Because the color yousee depends, not on the wavelength of a photon, but on its energy. Conservationof energy still applies, even where the Ghosts are tinkering. So each photoncarries as much energy as before-and evokes the same 'color.' Since a photon'senergy is proportional to its frequency, that means frequencies are leftunchanged. But since lightspeed is equal to frequency multiplied by wavelength,an increase in wavelength implies-"
"An increase in lightspeed," saidJeru.
"Yes."
I didn't follow much of that. I turned andlooked up at the light that leaked around our Ghost-hide canopy. "So wesee the same colors. The light of that star gets here a little faster. Whatdifference does it make?"
Pael shook his head. "Child, afundamental constant like lightspeed is embedded in the deep structure of ouruniverse. Lightspeed is part of the ratio known as the fine structureconstant." He started babbling about the charge on the electron, but Jerucut him off.
She said, "Case, the fine structureconstant is a measure of the strength of an electric or magnetic force."
I could follow that much. "And if youincrease lightspeed-"
"You reduce the strength of theforce." Pael raised himself. "Consider this. Human bodies are heldtogether by molecular binding energy-electromagnetic forces. Here, electronsare more loosely bound to atoms; the atoms in a molecule are more loosely boundto each other." He rap on the cast on my arm. "And so your bones aremore brittle, your skin more easy to pierce or chafe. Do you see? You too are embeddedin spacetime, my young friend. You too are affected by the Ghosts' tinkering.And because lightspeed in this infernal pocket continues to increase-as far asI can tell from these poor experiments-you are becoming more fragile everysecond."
It was a strange, eerie thought: thatsomething so basic in my universe could be manipulated. I put my arms around mychest and shuddered.
"Other effects," Pael went onbleakly. "The density of matter is dropping. Perhaps our structure willeventually begin to crumble. And dissociation temperatures are reduced."
Jeru snapped, "What does thatmean?"
"Melting and boiling points are reduced.No wonder we are overheating. It is intriguing that bio systems have provenrather more robust than electromechanical ones. But if we don't get out of heresoon, our blood will start to boil. . . ."
"Enough," Jeru said. "What ofthe star?"
"A star is a mass of gas with a tendencyto collapse under its own gravity. But heat, supplied by fusion reactions inthe core, creates gas and radiation pressures that push outward, counteractinggravity."
"And if the fine structure constantchanges-"
"Then the balance is lost. Commissary,as gravity begins to win its ancient battle, the fortress star has become moreluminous-it is burning faster. That explains the observations we made fromoutside the cordon. But this cannot last."
"The novae," I said.
"Yes. The explosions, layers of the starblasted into space, are a symptom of destabilized stars seeking a new balance.The rate at which our star is approaching that catastrophic moment fits withthe lightspeed drift I have observed." He smiled and closed his eyes."A single cause predicating so many effects. It is all rather pleasing, inan aesthetic way."
Jeru said, "At least we know how theship was destroyed. Every control system is mediated by finely tunedelectromagnetic effects. Everything must have gone crazy at once. . . ."
We figured it out. The Brief Life BurnsBrightly had been a classic GUTship, of a design that hasn't changed in itsessentials for thousands of years. The lifedome, a tough translucent bubble,contained the crew of twenty. The 'dome was connected by a spine a klick longto a GUTdrive engine pod.
When we crossed the cordon boundary-when allthe bridge lights failed-the control systems went down, and all the pod'ssuperforce energy must have tried to escape at once. The spine of the ship hadthrust itself up into the lifedome, like a nail rammed into a skull.
Pael said dreamily, "If lightspeed werea tad faster, throughout the universe, then hydrogen could not fuse to helium.There would only be hydrogen: no fusion to power stars, no chemistry.Conversely if lightspeed were a little lower, hydrogen would fuse too easily,and there would be no hydrogen, nothing to make stars-or water. You see howcritical it all is? No doubt the Ghosts' science of fine-tuning is advancingconsiderably here on the Orion Line, even as it serves its trivial defensivepurpose . . ."
Jeru glared at him, her contempt obvious."We must take this piece of intelligence back to the Commission. If theGhosts can survive and function in these fast-light bubbles of theirs, so canwe. We may be at the pivot of history, gentlemen."
I knew she was right. The primary duty of theCommission for Historical Truth is to gather and deploy intelligence about theenemy. And so my primary duty, and Pael's, was now to help Jeru get this pieceof data back to her organization.
But Pael was mocking her.
"Not for ourselves, but for the species.Is that the line, Commissary? You are so grandiose. And yet you blunder aroundin comical ignorance. Even your quixotic quest aboard this cruiser was futile.There probably is no bridge on this ship. The Ghosts' entire morphology, theirevolutionary design, is based on the notion of cooperation, of symbiosis; whyshould a Ghost ship have a metaphoric head? And as for the trophy you havereturned-" He held up the belt of Ghost artifacts. "There are noweapons here. These are sensors, tools. There is nothing here capable ofproducing a significant energy discharge. This is less threatening than a bowand arrow." He let go of the belt; it drifted away. "The Ghost wasn'ttrying to kill you. It was blocking you. Which is a classic Ghost tactic."
Jeru's face was stony. "It was in ourway. That is sufficient reason for destroying it."
Pael shook his head. "Minds like yourswill destroy us, Commissary."
Jeru stared at him with suspicion. Then shesaid, "You have a way. Don't you, Academician? A way to get us out ofhere."
He tried to face her down, but her will wasstronger, and he averted his eyes.
Jeru said heavily, "Regardless of thefact that three lives are at stake-does duty mean nothing to you, Academician?You are an intelligent man. Can you not see that this is a war of humandestiny?"
Pael laughed. "Destiny-oreconomics?"
I looked from one to the other, dismayed,baffled. I thought we should be doing less yapping and more fighting.
Pael said, watching me, "You see, child,as long as the explorers and the mining fleets and the colony ships are pushingoutward, as long as the Third Expansion is growing, our economy works. Theriches can continue to flow inward, into the mined-out systems, feeding a vasthorde of humanity who have become more populous than the stars themselves. Butas soon as that growth falters . . ."
Jeru was silent.
I understood some of this. The ThirdExpansion had reached all the way to the inner edge of our spiral arm of thegalaxy. Now the first colony ships were attempting to make their way across thevoid to the next arm.
Our arm, the Orion Arm, is really just ashingle, a short arc. But the Sagittarius Arm is one of the galaxy's dominantfeatures. For example, it contains a huge region of star-birth, one of thelargest in the galaxy, immense clouds of gas and dust capable of producingmillions of stars each. It was a prize indeed.
But that is where the Silver Ghosts live.
When it appeared that our inexorableexpansion was threatening not just their own mysterious projects but their homesystem, the Ghosts began, for the first time, to resist us.
They had formed a blockade, called by humanstrategists the Orion Line: a thick sheet of fortress stars, right across theinner edge of the Orion Arm, places the Navy and the colony ships couldn'tfollow. It was a devastatingly effective ploy.
This was a war of colonization, ofworld-building. For a thousand years we had been spreading steadily from starto star, using the resources of one system to explore, terraform and populatethe worlds of the next. With too deep a break in that chain of exploitation,the enterprise broke down.
And so the Ghosts had been able to hold uphuman expansion for fifty years.
Pael said, "We are already choking.There have already been wars, young Case: humans fighting human, as the innersystems starve. All the Ghosts have to do is wait for us to destroy ourselves,and free them to continue their own rather more worthy projects."
Jeru floated down before him."Academician, listen to me. Growing up at Deneb, I saw the great schoonersin the sky, bringing the interstellar riches that kept my people alive. I wasintelligent enough to see the logic of history-that we must maintain theExpansion, because there is no choice. And that is why I joined the armedforces, and later the Commission for Historical Truth. For I understood thedreadful truth which the Commission cradles. And that is why we must laborevery day to maintain the unity and purpose of mankind. For if we falter wedie; as simple as that."
"Commissary, your creed of mankind'sevolutionary destiny condemns our own kind to become a swarm of children,granted a few moments of loving and breeding and dying, before being cast intofutile war." Pael glanced at me.
"But," Jeru said, "it is acreed that has bound us together for a thousand years. It is a creed that bindsuncounted trillions of human beings across thousands of light years. It is acreed that binds a humanity so diverse it appears to be undergoing speciation.. . . Are you strong enough to defy such a creed now? Come, Academician. Noneof us chooses to be born in the middle of a war. We must all do our best foreach other, for other human beings; what else is there?"
I touched Pael's shoulder; he flinched away."Academician-is Jeru right? Is there a way we can live through this?"
Pael shuddered. Jeru hovered over him.
"Yes," Pael said at last."Yes, there is a way."
The idea turned out to be simple.
And the plan Jeru and I devised to implementit was even simpler. It was based on a single assumption: Ghosts aren'taggressive. It was ugly, I'll admit that, and I could see why it would distressa squeamish earthworm like Pael. But sometimes there are no good choices.
Jeru and I took a few minutes to rest up,check over our suits and our various injuries, and to make ourselvescomfortable. Then, following patrol SOP once more, we made our way back to thepod of immature hides.
We came out of the tangle and drifted down tothat translucent hull. We tried to keep away from concentrations of Ghosts, butwe made no real effort to conceal ourselves. There was little point, after all;the Ghosts would know all about us, and what we intended, soon enough.
We hammered pitons into the pliable hull, andfixed rope to anchor ourselves. Then we took our knives and started to saw ourway through the hull.
As soon as we started, the Ghosts began togather around us, like vast antibodies.
They just hovered there, eerie facelessbaubles drifting as if in vacuum breezes. But as I stared up at a dozendistorted reflections of my own skinny face, I felt an unreasonable loathingrise up in me. Maybe you could think of them as a family banding together toprotect their young. I didn't care; a lifetime's carefully designed hatredisn't thrown off so easily. I went at my work with a will.
Jeru got through the pod hull first.
The air gushed out in a fast-condensingfountain. The baby hides fluttered, their distress obvious. And the Ghostsbegan to cluster around Jeru, like huge light globes.
Jeru glanced at me. "Keep working,tar."
"Yes, sir."
In another couple of minutes I was through.The air pressure was already dropping. It dwindled to nothing when we cut a bigdoor-sized flap in that roof. Anchoring ourselves with the ropes, we rolledthat lid back, opening the roof wide. A few last wisps of vapor came curlingaround our heads, ice fragments sparkling.
The hide babies convulsed. Immature, theycould not survive the sudden vacuum, intended as their ultimate environment.But the way they died made it easy for us.
The silvery hides came flapping up out of thehole in the roof, one by one. We just grabbed each one-like grabbing hold of abillowing sheet-and we speared it with a knife, and threaded it on a length ofrope. All we had to do was sit there and wait for them to come. There werehundreds of them, and we were kept busy.
I hadn't expected the adult Ghosts to sitthrough that, non-aggressive or not; and I was proved right. Soon they wereclustering all around me, vast silvery bellies looming. A Ghost is massive andsolid, and it packs a lot of inertia; if one hits you in the back you knowabout it. Soon they were nudging me hard enough to knock me flat against theroof, over and over. Once I was wrenched so hard against my tethering rope itfelt as if I had cracked another bone or two in my foot.
And, meanwhile, I was starting to feel a lotworse: dizzy, nauseous, overheated. It was getting harder to get back uprighteach time after being knocked down. I was growing weaker fast; I imagined thetiny molecules of my body falling apart in this Ghost-polluted space.
For the first time I began to believe we weregoing to fail.
But then, quite suddenly, the Ghosts backedoff. When they were clear of me, I saw they were clustering around Jeru.
She was standing on the hull, her feettangled up in rope, and she had knives in both hands. She was slashing crazilyat the Ghosts, and at the baby hides that came flapping past her, making noattempt to capture them now, simply cutting and destroying whatever she couldreach. I could see that one arm was hanging awkwardly-maybe it was dislocated,or even broken-but she kept on slicing regardless.
And the Ghosts were clustering around her,huge silver spheres crushing her frail, battling human form.
She was sacrificing herself to save me-justas Captain Teid, in the last moments of the Brightly, had given herself to savePael. And my duty was to complete the job.
I stabbed and threaded, over and over, as theflimsy hides came tumbling out of that hole, slowly dying.
At last no more hides came.
I looked up, blinking to get the salt sweatout of my eyes. A few hides were still tumbling around the interior of the pod,but they were inert and out of my reach. Others had evaded us and gotten stuckin the tangle of the ship's structure, too far and too scattered to make themworth pursuing further. What I had got would have to suffice.
I started to make my way out of there, backthrough the tangle, to the location of our wrecked yacht, where I hoped Paelwould be waiting.
I looked back once. I couldn't help it. TheGhosts were still clustered over the ripped pod roof. Somewhere in there,whatever was left of Jeru was still fighting.
I had an impulse, almost overpowering, to goback to her. No human being should die alone. But I knew I had to get out ofthere, to complete the mission, to make her sacrifice worthwhile.
So I got.
Pael and I finished the job at the outer hullof the Ghost cruiser.
Stripping the hides turned out to be as easyas Jeru had described. Fitting together the Planck-zero sheets was simpletoo-you just line them up and seal them with a thumb. I got on with that,sewing the hides together into a sail, while Pael worked on a rigging oflengths of rope, all fixed to a deck panel from the wreck of the yacht. He wasfast and efficient: Pael, after all, came from a world where everybody goessolar sailing on their vacations.
We worked steadily, for hours.
I ignored the varying aches and chafes, theincreasing pain in my head and chest and stomach, the throbbing of a broken armthat hadn't healed, the agony of cracked bones in my foot. And we didn't talkabout anything but the task in hand. Pael didn't ask what had become of Jeru,not once; it was as if he had anticipated the commissary's fate.
We were undisturbed by the Ghosts through allof this.
I tried not to think about whatever emotionschurned within those silvered carapaces, what despairing debates might chatteron invisible wavelengths. I was, after all, trying to complete a mission. And Ihad been exhausted even before I got back to Pael. I just kept going, ignoringmy fatigue, focusing on the task.
I was surprised to find it was done.
We had made a sail hundreds of meters across,stitched together from the invisibly thin immature Ghost hide. It was roughlycircular, and it was connected by a dozen lengths of fine rope to struts on thepanel we had wrenched out of the wreck. The sail lay across space, languidripples crossing its glimmering surface.
Pael showed me how to work the thing."Pull this rope, or this . . ." the great patchwork sail twitched inresponse to his commands. "I've set it so you shouldn't have to tryanything fancy, like tacking. The boat will just sail out, hopefully, to thecordon perimeter. If you need to lose the sail, just cut the ropes."
I was taking in all this automatically. Itmade sense for both of us to know how to operate our little yacht. But then Istarted to pick up the subtext of what he was saying.
Before I knew what he was doing he had shovedme onto the deck panel, and pushed it away from the Ghost ship. His strengthwas surprising.
I watched him recede. He clung wistfully to abit of tangle. I couldn't summon the strength to figure out a way to cross thewidening gap. But my suit could read his, as clear as day.
"Where I grew up, the sky was full ofsails . . ."
"Why, Academician?"
"You will go further and faster withoutmy mass to haul. And besides-our lives are short enough; we should preserve theyoung. Don't you think?"
I had no idea what he was talking about. Paelwas much more valuable than I was; I was the one who should have been leftbehind. He had shamed himself.
Complex glyphs criss-crossed his suit."Keep out of the direct sunlight. It is growing more intense, of course.That will help you. . . ."
And then he ducked out of sight, back intothe tangle. The Ghost ship was receding now, closing over into its vast eggshape, the detail of the tangle becoming lost to my blur vision.
The sail above me slowly billowed, filling upwith the light of the intense sun. Pael had designed his improvised craft well;the rigging lines were all taut, and I could see no rips or creases in thesilvery fabric.
I clung to my bit of decking and soughtshade.
Twelve hours later, I reached an invisibleradius where the tactical beacon in my pocket started to howl with a whine thatfilled my headset. My suit's auxiliary systems cut in and I found myselfbreathing fresh air.
A little after that, a set of lights duckedout of the streaming lanes of the fleet, and plunged toward me, growingbrighter. At last it resolved into a golden bullet shape adorned with ablue-green tetrahedron, the sigil of free humanity. It was a supply ship calledThe Dominance of Primates.
And a little after that, as a Ghost fleetfled their fortress, the star exploded.
As soon as I had completed my formal reportto the ship's commissary-and I was able to check out of the Dominance's sickbay-I asked to see the captain.
I walked up to the bridge. My story had gotaround, and the various med patches I sported added to my heroic mythos. So Ihad to run the gauntlet of the crew-"You're supposed to be dead, Iimpounded your back pay and slept with your mother already"-and wasgreeted by what seems to be the universal gesture of recognition of one tar toanother, the clenched fist pumping up and down around an imaginary penis.
But anything more respectful just wouldn'tfeel normal.
The captain turned out to be a grizzledveteran type with a vast laser burn scar on one cheek. She reminded me of FirstOfficer Till.
I told her I wanted to return to active dutyas soon as my health allowed.
She looked me up and down. "Are yousure, tar? You have a lot of options. Young as you are, you've made yourcontribution to the Expansion. You can go home."
"Sir, and do what?"
She shrugged. "Farm. Mine. Raise babies.Whatever earthworms do. Or you can join the Commission for HistoricalTruth."
"Me, a commissary?"
"You've been there, tar. You've been inamongst the Ghosts, and come out again-with a bit of intelligence moreimportant than anything the Commission has come up with in fifty years. Are yousure you want to face action again?"
I thought it over.
I remembered how Jeru and Pael had argued. Ithad been an unwelcome perspective, for me. I was in a war that had nothing todo with me, trapped by what Jeru had called the logic of history. But then, Ibet that's been true of most of humanity through our long and bloody history.All you can do is live your life, and grasp your moment in the light-and standby your comrades.
A farmer-me? And I could never be smartenough for the Commission. No, I had no doubts.
"A brief life burns brightly, sir."
Lethe, the captain looked like she had a lumpin her throat. "Do I take that as a yes, tar?"
I stood straight, ignoring the twinges of myinjuries. "Yes, sir!"
