Antares Dawn E-Book

Michael McCollum

• Herausgeber: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

When the supergiant star Antares exploded in 2512, the human colony on Alta found their pathway to the stars gone, isolating them from the rest of human space for more than a century. When a powerful warship materializes in the system without warning, the commanders of the Altan Space Navy are alarmed. They dispatch one of Alta's most powerful ships to investigate, only to discover the unknown behemoth is battered and helmed by a dead crew. This is disturbing news for the Altans as the defeated battleship would have easily defeated the whole of the Altan navy on it's own. And if that ship was able to stumble into the Altan system, so too could the force responsible for its destruction. Something must be done.

Leseprobe

ANTARES DAWN

Copyright © 1986, 1998, 2019 by Michael McCollum

All rights reserved.

Published as an eBook in 2019 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-625674-31-9

Cover design by John Fisk

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

49 W. 45th Street, 12th Floor

New York, NY 10036

http://awfulagent.com

[email protected]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Foldspace Chart

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

About the Author

Also by Michael McCollum

CHAPTER 1

The landing boat fell in a nose-high/belly-down attitude toward the blue-white orb of the planet below. Outside the hull, the first whisper breaths of the hypersonic wind tugged at the boat’s wings and control surfaces, causing them to be bathed in a nearly invisible envelope of plasma glow. Inside the hull, the keening of the wind was more sensed than heard, and the first gentle tugs of deceleration were but a foretaste of the pressure soon to come.

Captain-Lieutenant Richard Drake, commanding officer of the Altan Space Navy Cruiser Discovery, the landing boat’s sole passenger, lay strapped into an acceleration couch and gazed out the viewport next to him. Drake was of medium height, with a slender build, black hair, and the faded tan of an outdoorsman who has spent the last eight months in space. He was thirty-five but looked younger. His hair, which he wore in the close-cropped style of a military spacer, showed a touch of gray around the edges. His eyes were green, and widely spaced above a broad nose and high cheekbones. A whitish scar ran diagonally across one of his eyebrows – the result of a collision during a secondary school athletic contest.

Drake’s expression was pensive as he gazed at the plasma flow building up on the leading edge of the landing boat’s wing. In his pocket was a message flimsy that ordered him to report to the Admiralty Building in the Altan capital of Homeport immediately. The message was stamped Most Secret and signed by First Admiral Dardan himself.

“What have we done to deserve this high honor?” Commander Bela Marston, Drake’s second-in-command, had asked when Drake showed him the order aboard Discovery.

“You don’t suppose he’s found out about those extra field coils we requisitioned the last time we were undergoing maintenance at Felicity Base, do you?” Drake asked, only half in jest.

Marston shook his head. “No reason to worry there, Skipper. Those old coils should have been junked ten years ago.”

“That won’t save us if Dardan thinks he’s going to have to go back to Parliament for a supplemental appropriation this year.”

“Good point,” Marston said. “Shall I have your yeoman lay out your armor-plated underwear?”

Drake had nodded, laughing. “Not a bad idea. I might need them.”

The landing boat touched down at Homeport forty minutes after it encountered the first tenuous wisps of Alta’s atmosphere. As soon as the craft had parked at the passenger terminal, Drake unstrapped and made his way to the starboard airlock where a nervous crew chief watched intently as a cantilevered loading bridge maneuvered slowly over the boat’s still-glowing wing surfaces.

“What’s the matter, Chief?” Drake asked. “Don’t you trust the port handlers?”

“Trust them fumble fingered goons with Molly here, Cap’n? No, sir. Not as far as I can spit under triple gravs.”

The landing boat had touched down well past local sunset, but the million-candlepower beams of the spaceport’s polyarcs had no trouble turning night into day. Drake watched as the loading bridge sealed itself against the hull. When the Chief signaled that all was secure, he stepped onto the spidery truss work and crossed to the terminal beyond.

Inside, he found Commodore Douglas Wilson waiting for him. Over the years, Drake had served three tours of duty under the older man’s command. He had long since learned to sense Wilson’s every mood. Drake could tell that the Commodore was excited and trying mightily to hide the fact.

“Good to see you again, Richard,” Wilson said. “How was your trip?”

“Rough enough, sir. I have not had to suffer through a maximum performance reentry since my days at the Academy. What’s up?”

“The Admiral will brief you,” Wilson said noncommittally. “Come on, I’ve a car waiting.”

Drake followed as Wilson led the way to an Admiralty limousine. An enlisted driver helped him with his hand luggage, and then slid behind the control panel while the two officers arrayed themselves in the back seat for the ten-kilometer drive to the Admiralty.

“How is that young lady of yours?” Wilson asked as the driver maneuvered the car into the heavy traffic headed for Homeport.

“Cynthia? She’s fine, sir.” Drake gestured at the overnight bag. “I was hoping for a chance to see her this trip.”

Some unidentifiable emotion flashed across Wilson’s features. “Sorry, Captain, but you won’t be on the ground that long.”

“Oh?” Drake accompanied his question with raised eyebrows, but the commodore refused to rise to the bait. Instead, he leaned back in his seat and gazed out the window at the shadowy trees zipping past at two hundred kilometers per hour.

They rode in silence for several minutes until the driver gestured toward the eastern sky.

“Antares is coming up, sirs!”

Drake turned to follow the driver’s pointing finger. Sixty kilometers to the east was the Colgate mountain range. By day, their snow-capped summits and forested slopes provided a view that was a favorite among the purveyors of scenic holocubes. By night, they were a jagged black wall looming against the horizon. As Drake watched, a single star of eye searing, blue-white brilliance rose from behind the central peak of the mountain range. In that moment, the scenery around them changed dramatically. The scattered clouds, which had reflected the dull orange glow of the Homeport streetlights, suddenly blazed forth with a blue-white fire of their own. The once dark forest on both sides of the highway was suffused with an internal silver sheen, sending long, jet-black shadows leaping westward across the highway.

“Is it always like this?” Drake asked, gesturing to the view beyond the limousine window.

Wilson nodded. “It has been ever since the nova began rising after dark. Before that it wasn’t very impressive at all – just a star bright enough to be visible in daylight.”

“It still looks that way from orbit,” Drake said. He gazed at the passing scene in silence for several seconds. “Who could have predicted that a disaster of such magnitude would be so beautiful?”

* * *

The first person to postulate a rational theory of gravitation was Sir Isaac Newton in 1687. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica established the theory that gravity is a force, one by which every atom in the universe attracts every other atom. Newton’s views on the subject remained essentially unchallenged for nearly two and a half centuries. The reign of Newtonian physics ended in 1916. That was the year Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity. Einstein suggested that gravity is not a force at all, but rather a curvature in the very fabric of the space-time continuum caused by the presence of mass. No one seriously challenged Einstein’s view of the universe until Bashir-ben-Sulieman published his definitive treatise on macro-gravitational effects in 2078.

Sulieman was an astronomer working out of Farside Observatory, Luna. He had spent his life measuring the precise positions and proper motions of several thousand of the nearer stars. After two decades of work, he reluctantly concluded that Einstein’s simple models of gravitational curvature could not adequately explain the placement of the stars in the firmament. The discrepancies were small and exceedingly difficult to measure; but nonetheless, they were there. Try as he would, Sulieman could not explain them away as “data scatter” or “turbulence,” as had earlier astronomers working from deep within the terrestrial atmosphere. The longer Sulieman pondered his data, the more convinced he became that, besides being curved locally in the presence of stellar and planetary masses, space is also folded back upon itself in long lines that stretch across thousands of light-years.

The idea that the space-time continuum is multidimensional is an old one. Classical space-time has four dimensions, three spatial and one temporal: up/down, forward/back, right/left, past/future. However, if four-dimensional space-time is curved (as Einstein postulated), then there has to be at least one additional dimension for it to be curved into. For General Relativity to be correct, space-time must possess at least five dimensions. Bashir-ben-Sulieman’s contribution was to add yet another (or sixth) dimension. He reasoned that if Einstein’s curved space was indeed curvature in the fifth dimension, then his own folded space must be curvature in the sixth. To keep the two separate, he established the convention of “vertically” polarized curved space – indeed, humanity’s very concept of vertical depends on gravity, which is the prime manifestation of curved space – and “horizontally” polarized folded space.

He theorized that the origin of the long, intricately woven foldlines was the massive black hole that occupies the center of the galaxy. He went further. Noting that the foldlines stream outward along the spiral arms, he wondered aloud whether the lines of folded space might not be sweeping up interstellar matter as they rotated; in effect, acting as the catalyst for star formation. The problem of the relative overabundance of stellar births in the spiral arms was one that had long plagued astronomers and cosmologists.

Sulieman spent the remainder of his life improving on his theories. At the age of 92, he proved that the sixth-dimensional foldlines are distorted by the fifth-dimensional curvature that is gravity in much the same way that a lens distorts a ray of light. Sulieman demonstrated mathematically that whenever a foldline encounters a star-size mass, it is “focused” into a restricted volume of space. Usually, the effect is so small as to be undetectable. Sometimes, however, the “focus” is sufficiently sharp that a weakness appears in the fabric of the space-time continuum, and a foldpoint is formed.

Twenty years after Sulieman’s death, scientists discovered a practical use for foldpoints. They positioned a spaceship within one of the two foldpoints known to exist within the solar system and released copious quantities of energy in a precisely controlled pattern intended to warp space even further. The energy release caused the ship to drop into foldspace, thereby instantaneously transporting it to the next weak point along the foldline. One moment the research ship was floating high above the sun; the next, it was in orbit about Luyten’s Star, some 12.5 light-years distant.

There was no holding the human race back after that. The Great Migration began almost immediately. Over the next several centuries, the leakage of population into space became a flood. The pattern of the migration was determined entirely by the shape of foldspace. While some stars were found to possess only a single foldpoint, others possessed two, three, or more. The biggest, most massive stars were discovered to be especially fertile ground for foldpoint production. The red super-giant star Antares was the champion throughout human space. Antares had six foldpoints, a fact that made it the linchpin of a network of star systems on the eastern edge of human expansion.

Since the foldlines were aligned with the spiral arm that contains Sol, humanity found it easiest to expand along the axis of the arm. Distances between colonies were figured, not by the spatial distance between their respective stars; but rather, by the number of foldpoints between them. In order to reach the star next door, it was sometimes necessary to first jump to one five hundred light-years distant, then double back.

Early in the great migration, survey ships searching the systems of the Antares Cluster (those stars associated with the foldline hub in the Antares system) found an Earth-like planet circling an unnamed G3 spectral class star some 490 light-years from Sol. They named the star Napier (after the ship’s captain) and its single habitable planet New Providence. Charter companies were formed and vast quantities of resources were poured into the system. New Providence prospered and attained self-sufficiency in less than a hundred years. As the colony matured, it too began to look around for stellar systems in which to invest its excess capital and manpower.

The Napier system was close enough to the giant Antares to be affected by the larger star’s warping of foldspace. Because of this interaction, New Providence was blessed with more than its fair share of foldpoints. In addition to the foldpoint leading to Antares, there were two additional gateways in the system. Beyond both foldpoints were systems containing prime real estate in the form of Earth-class worlds.

With the New Providence colony firmly established, these additional systems became the targets for two competing colonization drives. The better funded of these concentrated on the metal-rich Hellsgate system. The smaller colonization effort was left with the job of establishing a colony in the system of an F8 dwarf identified only by its catalog number. The New Providence colonists in this latter system gave their new home world the name of Alta. They named their star Valeria, and quickly devolved to calling it “Val.”

The Altan colony grew apace, although more slowly than Sandarson’s World in the Hellsgate system. By Alta’s bicentennial year (2506 AD), it was beginning to look with longing toward the surrounding stars. However, the Valeria system was one of those unlucky enough to possess only a single foldpoint. Altan starships were thus forced to traverse the Napier system to reach either the Antares hub or its sister colony in the Hellsgate system. In 2510, negotiations were begun with the New Providential government to allow Altan ships unimpeded access to the Napier system. Two years later, with both governments largely in agreement as to terms, the question of access became suddenly moot.

For, at 17:32 hours, 3 August 2512 (Universal Calendar), the Altan space liner Vagabond Traveler reported that its instruments could no longer detect the Val/Napier foldpoint at its charted position. Survey ships were immediately dispatched. In a matter of weeks, they had confirmed the extent of the catastrophe. For reasons that no one could explain with certainty, the sole foldpoint in the Valeria system had ceased to exist. Alta was cut off from the rest of human space.

* * *

The Admiralty building was a large, unsightly pile of steel and glass left over from the first years after the founding of the Altan colony. Drake and Wilson exited the limousine in front of the Admiralty’s main entrance, acknowledged the salutes of the guards on duty, and stepped briskly through armor-glass doors into the spacious lobby beyond. The building had originally been constructed by the central government of Earth for use as an embassy and ambassador’s residence. The familiar continental outlines of the Mother of Men were still visible in the marble tile work of the floor.

The guard at the interior desk was less ceremonial than those at the entrance. He sat within an armor-glass cubicle and required both of them to insert their identity disks into a slot in the cubicle wall. A computer in a sub-basement consulted its files, concluded that they were who they said, and flashed a green light on the guard’s control panel. The guard saluted them as they retrieved their identification. Wilson led Drake to an old elevator-style lift and ordered the car to the topmost floor. They soon found themselves marching down a quiet hall between portraits of previous First Admirals. Wilson stopped in front of a heavy door carved from a single slab of onyx wood, knocked, and was rewarded with a muffled order to enter.

Beyond the door was First Admiral Dardan’s private office. The First Admiral was seated at his oversize desk. His attention was focused on a small, white haired man who stood before a lighted holoscreen. At the sight of Commodore Wilson entering through the door, the First Admiral rose from his desk and moved to greet the newcomers. His sudden movement caused the white-haired lecturer’s voice to trail off into exasperated silence.

“Ah, Richard, good of you to come so quickly. May I present Professor Mikhail Planovich, Chairman of the Astronomy Department at Homeport University.” Dardan guided Drake by the arm to where the lecturer stood. “The professor was just starting to review what is known of the Antares Supernova for us.”

“Pleased to meet you, Professor Planovich,” Drake said, shaking hands.

“Likewise, Captain.”

Dardan pulled Drake toward a man who was slouched on the couch opposite the Admiral’s desk. He held a drink in his hand and appeared totally relaxed. “I believe you know Stan Barrett, the Prime Minister’s troubleshooter.”

“Yes, sir. I met Mr. Barrett when I served as Navy liaison to Parliament two years ago. I’m not sure he remembers me, though.”

“Of course I remember you, Drake,” Barrett said, shaking hands without rising from the couch. “Your last job, I believe, was the five year forecast for the cost of fleet operations. We really nailed the lid on old Gentleman Jon’s coffin that time, didn’t we?”

“We were successful, anyway,” Drake replied. The “Gentleman Jon” Barrett had referred to was the Honorable Jonathan Carstairs, leader of the Conservatives, and no friend of Navy appropriations.

Barrett laughed. “Talented and modest, too! I like that, Captain. I think Luis here has picked the right man for the job.”

“Save that for later,” First Admiral Luis Dardan said. “Find a seat, Captain Drake, and we’ll let Professor Planovich finish his talk.”

“Yes, sir.”

Planovich turned to the holoscreen and pointed to a bright red star with a speck of blue-white near it. “As I was saying, Admiral, Antares, otherwise known as Alpha Scorpius, is a supergiant star with a mass twenty times that of Valeria, and a diameter four hundred times as great. Antares is...” Planovich looked up from his notes and smiled sheepishly. “Antares was an M0 stellar class star that possessed a companion of spectral class A3. You can see both stars on the screen. Stars of the “M” class range from red to red-orange in color owing to their surface temperatures of 2600-3500 degrees Kelvin. The name ‘Antares’ comes from the Greek, meaning ‘Rival of Ares.’”

“What’s an Ares?” Barrett asked.

“I believe, sir,” Professor Planovich said, “that it is a reference to the reddish color of Sol IV, as viewed from Earth.”

“I thought Sol IV was named Mars.”

“The Greeks called it Ares, after their God of War. Mars is the Roman name. Now, if I may continue, sir...”

“Sorry,” Barrett said without sounding the slightest bit sincere.

“Two months ago, the appearance of Antares changed rather dramatically.” The holoscreen view changed. In place of the red speck with the blue-white dot beside it, the screen now showed the retina-searing point of brilliance that Drake and Wilson had watched rise over the Colgate peaks less than ten minutes earlier. “The change, of course, is due to the Antares Supernova of twelve decades ago. Since the distance from Antares to Val is 120 light-years, the wave front is just reaching us. Our analyses are not yet complete, but it appears as though Antares is the largest supernova on record.”

“Larger than the Crab Supernova of 1054?” Wilson asked.

“Actually, the Crab exploded in approximately 4000 BC, Commodore. It was, however, observed on Earth by Chinese astronomers on July 4, 1054. It was visible in sunlight for 23 days and for two years thereafter at night. And yes, the Antares Supernova is far larger!”

“I stand corrected,” Wilson growled.

“I do not make the distinction to be pedantic, sir,” Planovich said, stiffly. “The speed-of-light delay between explosion and observation is important. Since we know the distance from Val to Antares, and the precise moment when we first observed the supernova, it is an easy matter to compute the date on which the star actually exploded. That date, it turns out, was 3 August 2512.”

“The same day our foldpoint closed,” the First Admiral mused.

“Yes, sir,” Planovich said. “The correlation is as exact as we can make it, considering that we are unable to pin down the exact moment of foldpoint failure closer than a sixteen hour period on that date. We have long suspected that something catastrophic happened on that day, something large enough to disturb our local foldline sufficiently that the Val/Napier foldpoint lost its focus. Obviously, the Antares Supernova was the culprit.”

“Then we weren’t the only system affected?” Barrett asked.

Planovich turned to face the advisor. The white glow from the holoscreen illuminated half his face, leaving the other half in darkness. “You may rest assured, sir, that we have not been singled out for Divine Wrath. If anything, we have been luckier than some. I greatly fear for the fate of our parent world.”

“Why?” the First Admiral asked.

“Surely, sir, you must know that New Providence is but fifteen light-years from the supernova.”

“So?”

“Even before the explosion, the New Providential poets spoke of ‘the baleful glow of the one-eyed warrior, a-glimmer on the snow fields of a crisp winter eve.’ They were, of course, referring to the brightness with which Antares shines in New Providence’s Southern Hemisphere before the winter solstice.” Planovich strode to the window and pulled back the curtains, allowing the silver glow from outside to flood the room. “Can you imagine what it must be like to have that shining 64 times as bright in the night sky?”

“Are you suggesting that New Providence could have been placed in danger by the supernova?” the First Admiral asked.

“Not ‘could have been’, sir. Was! A supernova throws out all manner of dangerous particles: everything from gamma and X-rays, to high-speed neutrons, protons, and electrons. There will even be a goodly amount of anti-matter in the cosmic wind from such an explosion. In all likelihood, when Antares went supernova, it sterilized New Providence and the entire Napier system!”

“And if their foldpoints were disrupted?”

“Then three billion people died, horribly.”

Drake felt a shiver run down his spine at the university professor’s cold matter-of-fact words.

“How the hell could something like this happen without warning?” Barrett demanded.

“It didn’t,” Planovich replied. “Astronomers have long been aware that Antares is a star well into its dotage. The first explorers of the Antares Hub noted that the red giant’s neutrino production rate was way above normal. That indicated that the star’s core was well into its iron-enrichment phase. We knew that it was only a matter of time until it ran low on nuclear fuel, collapsed in upon itself, and exploded. Only, where stars are concerned, ‘a matter of time’ is usually on the order of a few million years. No one expected it to happen quite so soon.”

“What should we expect now?” Barrett asked.

“A good question,” Planovich responded. ”The radiation from the explosion will be considerably diluted after a century of expansion. Alta’s atmosphere should have no problem filtering out the harmful particles. There will be a measurable rise in the background radiation in space, however; and it may be necessary to equip all exo-atmospheric installations with additional radiation shielding.”

“What about foldspace?”

Planovich shrugged. “The effect on foldspace is anyone’s guess. There are those who believe that our foldpoint might heal itself once the discontinuity of the nova wave front passes.”

“Really?” Dardan asked as he exchanged looks with Barrett and Wilson.

“That is the theory, Admiral. Personally, I have no strong opinions on the subject one way or the other.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“I beg your pardon.”

Dardan took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “It may interest you to know, Professor Planovich, that approximately twenty hours ago, one of our sensor stations picked up an object materializing high in the northern hemisphere of this system. That object is very large and is under boost even as we speak. From its radiation signature, we have concluded that it is a starship from outside the Valeria system!”

CHAPTER 2

A starship!

Richard Drake blinked twice, trying to understand the import of the First Admiral’s revelation. Strictly speaking, the cruisers that formed the nucleus of the Altan space navy were all starships. Twelve decades earlier, Discovery and her two sisters had been part of the Grand Fleet of Earth. Except for the bad luck of having been on a tour of the eastern colonies when Val’s foldpoint disappeared, Discovery, Dagger, and Dreadnought might still have been in the service of Mother Earth. Nor were the three battle cruisers the only starfarers trapped by the Antares Supernova. Two hundred other interstellar craft – freighters, passenger liners, and rich men’s yachts – had been in the system on that fateful day. However, a starship without a foldpoint is a contradiction in terms. With no entry into foldspace, such a vessel is going nowhere.

The appearance of a starship in the Valeria system had far reaching implications. It meant the long isolation was finally over, that interstellar trade would soon be resumed. It meant that Altan society, frozen in near-stasis for more than a century, would come alive once more under the stimulus of a hundred years of new ideas and inventions from all over human space. It meant that his own Discovery would again be free to fly between stars – perhaps even to Earth itself.

Drake glanced at Professor Planovich. The academic’s face was frozen in a look of total surprise. He suspected his own expression mirrored the smaller man’s slack jawed, wide-eyed amazement. In stark contrast were the cool, studied looks worn by Dardan, Wilson, and Barrett.

After several seconds of silence, Planovich cleared his throat and asked somewhat unsteadily: ”Are you sure, Admiral? No mistake?”

“No mistake. Commodore, please brief our guest.”

“Yes, sir,” Wilson said. He got to his feet and strode over to take Planovich’s place at the holoscreen while the professor sat beside Barrett on the couch. Wilson tapped out a code on the screen keypad and the blue-white nova disappeared. A schematic representation of the Valeria system formed in its place. Deep within the cube, a tiny red arrow floated above the golden point of light representing Val. The scale of the scene was such that the orbits of the four innermost of Val’s twelve planets showed clearly.

“The ship materialized high in the northern hemisphere at roughly two hundred and fifty million kilometers from Val. The point is close to the classic position for the Val/Napier foldpoint, but is not coincident with it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, Professor.”

“Then the supernova has disturbed the local shape of foldspace!” Planovich said.

“Yes, sir. That was our conclusion, as well. I see that you grasp the implications. If the disturbance is great enough, then the inter-connectivity of the foldlines may no longer be what it was. The Napier system and New Providence may no longer be at the other end of our local gateway.

“Are you saying that our jump charts may no longer be valid?” Drake asked.

“It’s a distinct possibility, Captain.” Wilson turned his attention back to Planovich. “That is why you are here, sir. It was our thought that you scientists might have the means to remap the foldlines for us.”

Planovich stared at the holoscreen for long seconds, his expression pensive, and his eyes unfocused. After a moment, he nodded. “It may be possible at that! A series of ultra-precise measurements of the gravitational constant around the foldpoint should do it.”

“When can you be ready to leave?” Admiral Dardan asked.

“Leave?” Planovich spoke the word precisely, as though he did not understand it.

“Yes, sir. Leave on an expedition to map the gravitational constant.”

“Oh, I can’t possibly get away until the end of the current semester. As department chairman, I have administrative duties to perform as well as classes to teach.”

“We appreciate your problem, Professor Planovich,” Barrett said, “but this is a matter of utmost importance to the government.”

The white haired man glanced at Barrett and then the First Admiral. Having spent the last two months studying the Antares Supernova, he recognized an irresistible force when he saw one. He looked wistful and sighed. “When will this expedition begin?”

“Hopefully, within the next seventy hours. The Prime Minister has already commandeered a space liner for transportation. We have enlisted a number of other specialists, including some of the top people in multidimensional physics.”

“Who have you got?”

“Doctor Nathanial Gordon has agreed to go.”

Planovich looked more surprised than when he had been told about the ship from outside. “You asked that poor excuse for a lab assistant before you asked me? Why, I’ve never...” he said before trailing into silence.

“Never what, Professor?” Barrett asked.

“Forget it. Just send word where and when you want me and I’ll be there.”

“Excellent.”

“If I’m leaving in three days, I had best begin making arrangements.”

“A good point, sir,” Barrett said, rising to his feet. “My car and driver will take you wherever you need to go. Of course, you realize that news of our visitor from outside is currently classified as a state secret...” The two civilians left the room, leaving the three Navy men alone.

Dardan smiled from his seat behind the desk. “Barrett and I have been working that same routine on scientists since noon. That was the fifth recitation of the history of the Antares Supernova I’ve sat through today.”

“Barrett seems very good at getting them to do what he wants,” Drake said.

“That he is. Thank God we weren’t born to be politicians, eh, Captain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, for your assignment. I am afraid you are not going to have three days to prepare, Captain. Doug, let’s get to the classified data, shall we?”

“Very good, Admiral.” Wilson called up another starfield on the holoscreen, this one bright with the false colors of an infrared photograph. The nova was not in evidence. The central star was peculiar, however. It possessed a faint tail like a comet. “This is a telescopic view of our visitor taken just ten seconds after its appearance, Richard. The plume you see is the drive flare from the ship’s engines.”

“It’s maneuvering?” Drake asked.

Wilson nodded. “Doppler analysis gives us an acceleration of one-half of a standard gravity.”

“Have we plotted its course?”

“It’s shaping an orbit directly away from Val.”

“Away from Val? Where’s it going?”

“We think it might be searching for a second foldpoint.”

“A survey ship?”

“Could be.”

“But surely they must know we have only the one.”

“Haven’t you been listening, Captain? That explosion...” he jerked his thumb toward the silver glow that was still flooding in through the open curtains. “... has messed up the structure of foldspace. It is possible that there has been considerable reshuffling of the foldlines. That is why we are pushing so hard to get the survey expedition launched. No telling how many foldpoints Val currently possesses until we go look.”

“Our visitor from outside may know. Has anyone tried to communicate with him yet?” Drake asked.

“We’ve been trying to establish contact since this time yesterday,” the First Admiral replied. “So far our visitor has failed to respond to either radio or laser. That is the reason I ordered you down from your ship, Captain.

“Your orders are to plot a maximum performance intercept and rendezvous with the outsider. You are to make contact and get them talking to us. Use your own judgment as to how you manage that feat, but don’t get trigger happy!” Dardan reached into his desk and pulled out a sealed pouch. He tossed it down on the desk and gestured for Drake to take it. “Your detailed operational orders are in there, along with some preliminary rendezvous data. Don’t remove them from the security pouch until you’re back onboard Discovery.”

“Yes, sir. Why all the security?”

The First Admiral looked grim. “Premature release of this information could destroy several major industries, Captain Drake, not to mention the effect on the stock market. The Prime Minister wants to withhold the news until we can find out more about our visitor.”

“I understand, sir. What about support?”

“You won’t have any. Neither Dagger nor Dreadnought can be in position to support earlier than three hundred hours from now.”

“Understood, sir. I am on my own. Thank you for your confidence, Admiral.”

“Just don’t make me regret my choice. One other thing. Stan Barrett will be going along with you as the Prime Minister’s personal representative. Show him the proper respect, but never forget that you are in command of this expedition. Barrett’s advice will be just that – advice. You are not bound to take it.”

“Mr. Barrett’s going, sir?” Drake asked.

“You sound dubious.”

“You did say maximum performance, didn’t you, Admiral?”

“He did!” a voice called from behind Drake. He turned to see Barrett striding across the office. “Don’t worry about me, Captain. I may be developing a paunch, but I am still healthy. Pile on all the acceleration you need to complete your mission.”

“I will, Mr. Barrett,” Drake said. “I just hope you’ll be alive at the other end.”

The political assistant laughed. “No more than I, Captain. No more than I.”

“Now, then,” Commodore Wilson said, “you’ll both find a car standing by to take you to the spaceport. Your landing boat is refueled and ready for launch, Richard. It’s going to be a long stern chase, and the numbers aren’t getting any better while we stand around jawing. Do not let us delay you any longer. Good luck.”

“Thank you, sir.”

* * *

Richard Drake lay strapped into the copilot’s seat of the landing boat and watched ANS Discovery slowly grow in size through the forward windscreen. When the ship had first come into view, it had been a sparkle of light that hovered above the pale blue crescent of Alta’s horizon. As such, it had been indistinguishable from a star. Over a span of several minutes, it had grown, first into a toy spacecraft suitable for a young child to clutch in one pudgy hand, then into a finely detailed scale model. Finally, the battle cruiser had swelled until it filled, and then overflowed, Drake’s field of view.

The landing boat overtook Discovery from below and behind, giving Drake a good look at his ship. The battle cruiser consisted of a torpedo-like central cylinder surrounded by a ring structure. The central cylinder housed the ship’s mass converter, photon drive, and jump engines – the latter needing only an up-to-date jump program to once more hurl the ship into the interstellar spaceplanes. In addition, within the cylinder were fuel tanks filled with deuterium and tritium enriched cryogen; the heavy antimatter projectors that were Discovery’s main armament; and the ancillary equipment that provided power to the ship’s outer ring.

The surrounding ring was supported off the cylinder by twelve hollow spokes – six forward and six aft. It contained crew quarters, communications, sensors, secondary weapons pods, cargo spaces, and the hangar bay in which auxiliary craft were housed.

 Unlike the interplanetary vessels built during the years of isolation, which all tended to be haphazard collections of geometric shapes, the battle cruiser’s shape was streamlined. Its sleek form was more concerned with the need to keep the jump charge from bleeding off the hull before a foldspace transition than to any requirement for the ship to transit a planetary atmosphere.

Drake listened to the communications between the landing boat and the cruiser all through the approach. As they drew close, he noticed the actinic light of the ship’s attitude jets firing around the periphery of the habitat ring. When in parking orbit, the cruiser was spun about its axis to provide half a standard gravity on the outermost crew deck. The purpose of the attitude jets was to halt the rotation in preparation for taking the landing boat aboard.

Drake was well pleased with what he heard on the intercom during the approach – mostly silence punctuated by a few terse exchanges of information. The complete absence of chatter was evidence of a taut ship and a good crew. He was suffused with a warm feeling of pride as he watched hangar doors open directly in front of the hovering boat just as the cruiser’s spin came to a halt.

“Landing Boat Moliere. You may secure your reaction jets!” came the order from Discovery approach control.

“Securing now,” the pilot said as he reached down to throw a large, red switch next to his right knee. The message ‘REAC JET SAFE’ flashed on a screen on the control panel.

“Prepare to be winched aboard.”

“Hook extended.”

A torpedo-like mechanism exited the open hatch and jetted across the dozen meters of open space to where the landing boat hovered. Attached to the torpedo was a single cable. The torpedo disappeared from view for several seconds, then the approach controller said, “All right, Moliere. Stand by to be reeled in!”

There was a barely perceptible jolt as the cable took up slack, then the landing boat slid smoothly forward. The curved hull of the cruiser and the open maw of the vehicle hatch swelled to fill the windscreen. The boat passed out of Val’s direct rays and into shadow. The dark was short lived, however. As soon as the bow passed into the hangar bay, the windscreen fluoresced with the blue-white glow of a dozen polyarc flood lamps.

There was a harder bumping sensation as the bow contacted the recoil snubber inside the bay. Then the boat was being pulled completely inside by giant manipulators and lifted to its docking area while a steady stream of orders issued from the bulkhead speaker.

“Close outer doors. Stand by to repressurize.”

Drake unstrapped, complimented the pilot on the smoothness of his approach, thanked the copilot for the use of his couch, and then levered himself through the hatchway leading from the cockpit to the main cabin. He collected Barrett and his luggage, and then pulled himself hand over hand to where the boat’s crew chief was waiting for him at the airlock.

“Any complaints about the docking this time, Chief?”

“Not a one, Cap’n. Could not have done better myself. Course, I never worry about Molly in the hands of our own winch crew.”

There was a muted rush of air beyond the hull. The crew chief studied his readouts, and then opened the airlock. A blast of frigid air entered the lock, bringing with it a swirling mass of condensation fog. Drake shivered involuntarily as he grabbed onto a safety line and pulled himself across the hangar bay to a second airlock leading into the interior of the ship. He helped Barrett into the lock then cycled through just as a voice announced, “Prepare to resume spin!”

Bela Marston met him in the corridor just beyond the airlock. The exec’s gaze went first to Barrett and then to the security pouch chained to Drake’s right wrist.

“We didn’t expect you back so soon, Captain,” he said. “Productive trip?”

“You might say that,” Drake replied. He gazed at his executive officer with his best “official duty” expression. ”How long will it take you to prepare the ship for space, Mr. Marston?”

“For space, sir?”

“That’s the order, Mister.”

“Well, Captain,” the exec said, rubbing his chin. “The auxiliary engine room computer began reporting a hardware error right after you left for the surface. The chief engineer has its guts spread all over the power pod looking for the problem.”

“What kind of error?”

“Improper baud rate setting to the plasma injectors.”

“Fatal or precautionary?”

“The error message was precautionary, sir.”

“Then tell the chief engineer to button her up and prepare for space. Now, how long until we can launch?”

“An hour, sir.”

“Make it forty-five minutes. I will be in my cabin with Mr. Barrett. Notify me when you’re ready to light her fire.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

* * *

Richard Drake maneuvered through several long gray corridors, past busy crewmen who moved through the zero gee ship with the ease of long practice. Stanislaw Barrett followed close behind Drake. The political assistant’s movements were noticeably more awkward than those of the spacers, yet he managed to keep up without too much difficulty. By the time they had reached the innermost deck in the habitat ring, sufficient spin had been restored to the ship to provide a spin force equivalent to one-tenth of a standard gee.

“Just enough to keep our feet on the floor while we prepare for departure,” Drake explained as he and his guest walked the last few dozen meters to his cabin.

Drake opened his cabin door, stood back, and gestured for Barrett to precede him. Barrett did so and quickly emitted a low whistle.

“Very nice, Captain! I had no idea the Navy did this well for themselves.”

Drake wondered momentarily whether the First Admiral hadn’t committed a tactical error by allowing this minion of the Prime Minister’s aboard. Not wishing to affect the size of next year’s appropriation, he was quick to explain: “The decor, Mr. Barrett, is traditional. This cabin is the same as it was when Captain Krueger, the last terrestrial commander, turned the ship over to our colonial forces.”

Barrett, who had been staring at an oil painting showing a square-rigged warship of a wet navy of the past, turned and said, “Oh, I’m not criticizing, Captain. Just impressed.”

Drake’s response was noncommittal. Instead, he gestured for Barrett to take a seat next to his desk cum workstation. “Shall we break open our official orders, sir?”

“By all means.”

Drake seated himself behind his desk and unlocked the chain that secured the security pouch to his right wrist. Rubbing his wrist where the handcuff had cut into it, he laid the pouch on the desk, and then pressed his thumb against the pale-green surface of the pouch’s lock plate. The pouch responded with an audible click and split open lengthwise. Inside was a small domino-like block of glass that reflected the overhead light in a rainbow of holographically induced color. Drake reached for the block with suddenly nervous hands, slipping it from beneath the elastic bands that held it in position within the pouch.

He dropped the record tile into the desk reader and engaged the ship’s computer. There was a momentary whine, followed by a beeping signal. Drake responded by keying in his name, serial number, and authorization code. There was a momentary delay, then the screen cleared and displayed the message: READY FOR SECURITY ACCESS. Drake typed in a twelve-digit string of alphanumerics known only to himself and the Admiralty master computer. The screen blanked once more. After a second’s wait, words began to scroll up the screen:

TO: Captain-Lieutenant Richard Drake, Commanding Officer, ANS Discovery

FROM: Admiral Luis Dardan, Admiralty, Homeport, Alta

DATE: 14 Hermes 2637

SUBJECT: ORDERS

MOST SECRET * MOST SECRET * MOST SECRET

1.0 – At 21:37:42.16 12 Hermes 2637, fleet sensor stations Alpha-7134 and Alpha-9364 detected an artificial artifact at coordinates 3615/+2712/250E6.

2.0 – Analysis of sighting records by Admiralty leads to following conclusions:

2.1 – There is again an operative foldpoint in the Val system at the above noted coordinates.

2.2 – The detected artifact is a starship from beyond the Val system.

2.3 – The subsequent movements of the vessel suggest that it may be a survey vessel searching for a second foldpoint.

3.0 – The target vessel is under its own power. Current course data follows: 3615/+8865 true from previously noted position.

4.0 – The target vessel has not responded to Admiralty attempts to communicate with it.

5.0 – In light of the above, the commanding officer of ANS Discovery is hereby ordered to take the following actions:

5.1 – You will intercept the target vessel as quickly as is practical without endangering your command.

5.2 – You will identify the origin and nature of the target vessel by any reasonable means at your disposal.

5.3 – You will communicate such information as you may learn to the Admiralty on a priority basis.

5.4 – Insofar as such action does not interfere with your other objectives, you will prevent the subject vessel from leaving the Val system via foldspace transition.

6.0 – You will exercise a degree of caution regarding the safety of your command that is consistent with the successful completion of your mission.

7.0 – You will seek the advice of the Prime Minister’s personal representative regarding the subject vessel, if and when circumstances warrant.

8.0 – Good luck, Discovery!

(Signed)

Luis Emilio Dardan

First Admiral

ATTACHMENTS

MOST SECRET * MOST SECRET * MOST SECRET

Drake glanced up at Barrett. “Are you aware of the contents of my orders, sir?”

Barrett nodded.

“Including Paragraph Seven?”

This time the political assistant laughed. “Especially Paragraph Seven, Captain. I wanted a more definite statement regarding my presence aboard your ship, but the Admiral refused to give it to me. He even stood up to the Prime Minister. Still, I hope you will seek my advice ‘when circumstances warrant.’“

“So long as it is understood that there can only be one captain onboard ship, Mr. Barrett.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.”

“Excellent,” Drake said. “Now that we understand each other, shall we get to work?”

Drake called up the attached technical data and began to review it. There were several telescopic views of the intruder similar to the one he had seen in the First Admiral’s office. He keyed through a series of course projections based on a variety of optimistic/pessimistic assumptions. A few quick calculations by the ship’s computer convinced him that rendezvousing with their visitor would be no easy task.

“Why not?” Barrett asked.

“The starship has been accelerating directly away from Val for the past twenty-two odd hours, Mr. Barrett. Worse, it has a quarter-billion kilometer head start. At the moment, its velocity has reached 388 kilometers per second, and will get a lot faster when we finally catch it. We’re going to have to make up for lost distance and lost time, exceed its maximum velocity by a considerable margin, turn end-for-end, and then decelerate to match velocities once we’ve caught the damned thing. Then, assuming it will maintain its acceleration, we will have to continue boosting to keep from falling behind again. In addition, we will have to do all this while keeping a large enough fuel reserve to get us home afterwards!

“Now, this particular problem revolves around only two parameters: Discovery’s total delta velocity capability and the tolerance of my crew for sustained acceleration. The two are mutually exclusive, naturally – too little acceleration and we’ll run our tanks dry before we catch the starship; too much and we’re liable to kill someone.”

“And the answer, Captain?” Barrett asked.

“It’s going to be close,” Drake said, punching additional data into his workstation. “I make it 33 hours to turn-over; then another 21 hours to decelerate for rendezvous. Call it 54 hours at three-and-a-half gravities. That will get us to the same point in space as the starship at

approximately the same velocity and leave us with perhaps a dozen hours of station keeping reserve before we have to turn for home.”

“Three-and-a-half gravities for fifty-four hours?” Barrett moaned.

“You said you could take it,” Drake reminded him.

“That I did,” Barrett agreed, and then looked sheepish. “Oh, my aching back!”

CHAPTER 3

There is a common belief among the uninitiated that a spaceship’s control room is located somewhere near the ship’s bow. In truth, that is almost never the case. Discovery, with its cylinder-and-ring design, was particularly unsuited to such an arrangement. Like most warships, the cruiser’s control room was located in the safest place the designers could find to put it – at the midpoint of the inside curve of the habitat ring.

Actually, Discovery possessed three control rooms, each capable of flying or fighting the ship alone should the need arise. For normal operations, however, there was a traditional division of labor between the three nerve centers. Control Room No. 1 performed the usual functions of a spacecraft’s bridge (flight control, communications, and astrogation); No. 2 was devoted to control of weapons and sensors; and No. 3 was used by the engineering department to monitor the overall health of the ship and its power-and-drive system.

“Begin your countdown, Mr. Cristobal,” Drake ordered as he buckled himself into his command chair in Control Room No. 1. It had been less than an hour since he had arrived back aboard Discovery and five minutes since he’d strapped Stan Barrett into one of the cruiser’s acceleration tanks two decks aft. The ship’s rotation had been stopped, and the interior of the habitat ring was again in zero gee.