CHAPTER 4
Bethany Lindquist made her way briskly along the length of the main concourse at Homeport Spaceport. As she did so, she weaved around slower groups of travelers, trying for a maximum of speed with a minimum of tromped feet. She trailed a single suitcase behind her like a dog on a leash, carried a garment bag slung over one shoulder, and clutched another small case with her free hand.
As she walked, she was struck by the paradox inherent in launching the Helldiver Project from Homeport Spaceport. By rights, she should now be moving through the bowels of some top-secret military installation, walking past stoic guards with lasers topped by fixed bayonets. Instead, she found herself fighting a tide of humanity, pushing her way past mothers holding crying babies as she dodged the moving throngs of businessmen with their ever present briefcase-cum-computers. While there were military men present, like Bethany, they too were en route to destinations beyond the atmosphere. They showed little interest in her, save for their appreciative glances as she passed.
The problem, she reminded herself, was that Altans had never been a warlike people – a fact that owed more to lack of opportunity than any inherent righteousness. In the early days of the colony, the Grand Fleet had kept the peace and Alta had had no need for the paraphernalia of war. Later, with the onset of the Long Isolation, there had been no one to fight. Even the establishment of the Altan Space Navy had been little more than a scheme by Bethany’s ancestor, Granville Whitlow, to keep the three Grand Fleet battle cruisers in working order until interstellar travel could be resumed. For the 125 years that the foldpoint had remained sealed, the Navy had been little more than a police force patrolling the less traveled corners of the Val system.
All that had changed, of course, with the return of Interstellar Expedition One from Sandar. However, despite what the newsfaxes were calling “the largest military buildup in Altan history,” two years had not been nearly long enough to construct the infrastructure of a true military power. To date Altan efforts to fortify the various foldpoints leading from Hellsgate had taken precedence over construction of a new military spaceport. So it was that Helldiver, the most closely guarded secret in the history of the colony, was being launched in broad daylight, at the busiest time of the day, from the largest public spaceport on the planet.
Bethany reached the point where three weeks earlier she had waited for Richard’s arrival on the noon shuttle. As she walked briskly past, she remembered the joy of their reunion and the bittersweet sadness of their parting forty hours later. They had spent the time before launch seated in the departure lounge. Bethany had managed to hold back her tears until the moment the loading of Richard’s shuttle was announced over the public address system.
“Stop that!” he had said after kissing her on both eyelids. “We’ll be back together before you know it.”
“It won’t be the same,” Bethany had replied. “When next we meet, you will have your job to do and I’ll have mine. Neither of us will have a moment alone together until we get to…” She had trailed off into silence, afraid to say the word “Earth” lest someone overhear.
He had smiled that quizzical smile of his and chuckled. “You were the one who decided where we should be married, you know.”
“I know.”
A second announcement from an overhead speaker had caused him to climb to his feet. “Time to go, Beth. I will see you in three weeks. Don’t forget to pack your wedding dress.”
“I won’t.”
Bethany lengthened her stride as the spaceport crowds began to thin out toward the end of the long concourse. As she walked, she shifted the garment bag slightly and heard the rustle of hundred-year-old fabric. She had done as Richard commanded. Inside the garment bag was the wedding dress in which four generations of Whitlow women had been married.
She came to a branching of the public walkway. The main passage turned to the left toward the berths of privately owned ground-to-orbit craft, while a small side passage ran off to the right. Bethany turned into the latter without hesitation. She quickly found herself descending a gentle slope into a brightly lighted tunnel. The tunnel surfaced again a hundred meters farther on. Two armed Marines stood guard at the point of emergence.
“May we help you, Ma’am?”
“My name’s Lindquist. I’m bound for Discovery via Alexandria.” As she spoke, she pulled a message slip from her pocket. Printed on Navy letterhead, it invited her to appear at Gate 27C, Homeport Spaceport, on or before 10:40 hours, 16 Taurus 2639 for transportation to ANC Discovery. The message was signed by First Admiral Dardan.
The Marine took the message, punched a code sequence into a handheld computer terminal, and waited for the machine to emit a quiet beeping tone. When it did, he nodded and handed the orders back to Bethany. “Good to have you aboard, Miss Lindquist. You may proceed to the gate. They’ll be boarding in about fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you, Corporal.”
“You’re welcome, Ma’am.”
* * *
Richard Drake sat in his command chair onboard Discovery and watched an apparition on the viewscreen in front of him. The screen showed the blue-white expanse of Alta’s limb surmounted by the blackness of space. Val was a bright disk at the upper edge of the screen, while the atmosphere of the planet showed as a disconcertingly narrow band of haze above the world’s horizon. And, hovering just above the atmosphere line, silhouetted against the star specked backdrop of open space, was a pattern of blue-white alternating with black; a mirage that changed from one second to the next; a shimmery, ghostlike something! The sight brought to mind ancient legends of ghost ships that had entered foldspace and were never seen again.
Drake looked away and chastised himself for letting an overactive imagination get the best of him. In truth, there was a perfectly prosaic explanation for that which lay on the screen in front of him. The “ghost ship” was an optical illusion, an effect that resulted when the hull of a starship was turned into a nearly perfect reflector of electromagnetic radiation. Drake listened to a voice counting down the seconds on Discovery’s intercom. “Five … four … three … two … one … zero.”
At the word “zero,” the apparition dramatically changed appearance. Suddenly, the mirror-sheen was gone and a hull of armored steel took its place. The ship thus revealed was a twin of Discovery. Its central cylinder jutted from the center of a habitat ring. Twelve spokes joined the central cylinder to the ring. A focusing mechanism for the ship’s fusion powered photon engines jutted from the back of the central cylinder, while the business ends of lasers, particle beams, and antimatter projectors jutted from various places on the hull. The outlines of hatches marked the positions of internal cargo spaces and hangar bays in which auxiliary craft were housed.
The Derringer-class heavy battle cruiser was a design that went back nearly two centuries. Designed for speed and acceleration, the ring-and-cylinder design was a compromise between a good thrust-to-mass ratio and an adequate low speed spin-gravity capability. The design was ungainly and fragile looking, but proven in battle. One advantage the cylinder-and-ring ships had over purely cylindrical designs, if a ship were severely damaged, the habitat ring could be jettisoned whole, or in as many as six separate pieces.
“Dagger reports anti-radiation shield test complete, Captain.”
“Very good, Communicator,” Drake said. “Open up a channel to Captain Marston.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Bela Marston had been Drake’s executive officer on Interstellar Expedition One. He had since been entrusted with the command of one of the two battle cruisers assigned to Project Helldiver. Marston’s image formed on Drake’s workscreen.
“Status report, if you please, Bela.”
“All systems are nominal, Captain. Our attenuation factor held steady at ten-to-the-minus-ninth, and our heat rejection level was good. Both backup systems worked perfectly when we switched them on line manually. Our viewscreen compensators are working fine.”
“No problems then?”
“No, sir. I’d say we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
“Right,” Drake replied. “You may begin preparations to receive passengers.”
“We’ll be ready for them, Captain.”
“Make sure that you are. We are running behind schedule and we need to make it up. Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“Flagship, out.”
“Dagger, out.”
Drake turned to a member of his bridge crew. “What about it, Finley? Did you note any weak spots in Dagger’s field while it was on?”
“No, sir. He didn’t even flicker when he switched over from the primary generators. I would agree with Captain Marston. They’re ready.”
Drake nodded and put Dagger out of his mind, leaving only a million-and-one other details to be resolved before the Helldiver Fleet left orbit for the foldpoint.
* * *
The trip to orbit was an uneventful one. Bethany sat next to Calvan Cooper, one of Stan Barrett’s political assistants. Barrett would represent Alta on the coming expedition, as he had done on Interstellar Expedition One. Cooper had been assigned to his staff as political liaison to the Sandarians, and to assist in negotiations when contact was reestablished with the rest of the human race. The nervous glance Cooper had given the ground-to-orbit shuttle when he came onboard was all that Bethany had needed to identify her seatmate as a white-knuckle flyer. She had done her best to take his mind off the coming journey while they taxied into position. Even after the boat’s fusion engines thrust them into the dark blue Altan atmosphere, she had kept up a running commentary concerning the flight. By the time the first of the giant spherical cryogen tankers of the Helldiver Fleet hove into view, Cooper had relaxed visibly.
“Look there,” Bethany said, pointing to where the tanker lay.
Cooper leaned over to look out the boat’s viewport. His gaze followed her pointing finger. “Where?”
“There, near that blue star in the Plowman’s Foot. See it?”
“That tiny thing?”
“Not so tiny,” she replied. “You’re looking at a million cubic meters of cryogen. Without it, we might not get back.”
“I’ve always been under the impression that it didn’t take much fuel to jump between the stars,” Cooper said. “Why all the tankers?”
“Depends on what you consider ‘not much,’” Bethany replied. “A foldspace transition eats up ten percent of a ship’s total fuel supply.”
“Then we should have enough for ten transitions,” Cooper responded. “More than enough.”
Bethany looked perplexed for a moment, and then smiled as she realized his misconception. “You’re forgetting the maneuvering between foldpoints, I think. Remember, a foldpoint can occur anywhere in a star system, and multiple foldpoints are often on opposite sides of the system primary. Getting from one to another eats up a lot of fuel. Since we don’t know precisely how many transitions will be required before we find Earth, we have to take along an ample supply.”
“How do you know so much about it? Surely you aren’t a ship’s officer!”
Bethany smiled at the shocked tone with which Cooper had made his statement. Women were a rarity among Altan spacers and there were none at all in the Navy. The attitude was a holdover from the original colonists’ aversion to allowing women to practice any profession they considered dangerous, which itself was an outgrowth of the founders’ need to populate their new world. Even so, there had been half-a-dozen women along on Interstellar Expedition One – mostly scientists – and there would be three times that number on the coming voyage. In addition, the Sandarian fleet was nearly twenty percent female, the result of Sandar having been at war with the Ryall for more than a century.
Rather than rebuke young Cooper for his unintended slight, Bethany merely said, “I know so much about such things because I was aboard Discovery during Interstellar Expedition One.”
“Of course,” Cooper replied. “I remember you now! You’re the hereditary terrestrial ambassador to Alta, aren’t you?”
Bethany shook her head. “My uncle is hereditary ambassador. I am his official representative. I’m a comparative historian by profession; but I have also learned quite a lot about the Ryall over the past two years. I hope to learn more when we get to Earth.”
“I hope I didn’t offend you with my remark,” Cooper said.
“You didn’t,” Bethany replied.
The first cryogen tanker had fallen behind while they talked. It was quickly replaced with another, then another, and another. Finally, when the last of the big ships had disappeared back along their flight path, a large cylindrical vessel appeared in front of them.
They watched the new ship grow larger as the boat slowly approached it. Three interorbit freighters hovered near the stationary ship while small boats flitted about. Suddenly, the acceleration alarm sounded and Bethany and Calvan Cooper were tugged forward against their straps as the boat completed its approach to the space liner.
* * *
Like most commercial vessels, City of Alexandria had been designed on the cylindrical plan so that it could be rotated about its axis to provide spin-gravity at times when thrust was absent. The ship’s rotation had been halted three days earlier to facilitate the loading of personnel and supplies, leaving the whole vessel in a state of zero gravity. There are few operations more confusing to the untutored eye than the transfer of cargo in weightlessness is.
As Bethany entered the passenger liner, the sight of hundreds of packing crates floating between deck and overhead confronted her. Since it is impossible to “pile” things in zero gravity, most of the odd shaped boxes and barrels had been restrained behind large nets until the handlers could move them. A few of the color-coded cartons had escaped restraint, however, and were floating free in the compartment. Other containers were being manhandled toward various open hatchways.
Into this planned confusion trickled the passengers from Homeport. Most had little or no previous space experience. Confused by the lack of gravity, they clung to the guide rope and stared wide-eyed at their surroundings. Clustered around them were several members of Alexandria’s crew. These were the “baby-sitters,” spacers who had been unlucky enough to draw escort duty for the groundlings. Scarlet armbands on their uniforms identified them. Seeing Bethany emerge from the open airlock, one of the escorts kicked off and arrowed to where she clung to the guide rope.
“May I help you, Ma’am?”
Bethany nodded. “You can tell me where I can catch the boat to Discovery.”
“That would be in Hangar Bay Six, port side, just aft of Frame 611. Take Gamma Deck around thirty degrees and head inboard along the main corridor.”
“Port side, Frame 611,” she repeated, nodding. “Got it!”
“I’ll be happy to guide you,” the spacer said.
“No thank you,” Bethany replied. ”I’ve been aboard before. I can find my way.”
“As you see fit, Ma’am.”
Bethany pulled herself to Calvan Cooper’s side. The young political assistant’s face bore the pinched expression of someone on the verge of space sickness.
“Feeling all right?” Bethany asked.
He smiled wanly. “I think I’ll live. Where to next?”
“We have to cross to the other side of the ship to get to Discovery’s boat.”
“You mean this isn’t Discovery?” he asked, letting his free arm flap in an all-encompassing gesture.
“No, of course not. This is City of Alexandria, a converted passenger liner.”
“Hmmm, I thought it looked awfully big for a warship,” he replied.
“Come on. Keep close.”
She led him through the compartment to a hatchway equipped with an emergency pressure door. Once in the corridor beyond, Bethany grabbed hold of one of two guide ropes that ran the length of the corridor. She kicked off and began to make her way toward the main cross-ship corridor. They reached a lower deck to find it alive with activity. It seemed that every spare corner and crevice had been filled with supplies of one sort or another. Especially evident were the blue-coded boxes of foodstuffs. She knew from her previous experience that there would be no showers until Alexandria’s passengers and crew managed to eat their way into the fresher stalls. Likewise, she guided Cooper past a compartment that had been a ballroom in the days when Alexandria had been a passenger liner. The vast space was filled to overflowing with containers whose markings proclaimed their contents to be radiation resistant gravitational detectors.
They passed another department in which spacers sat strapped into chairs in front of electronic consoles.
“Communications center?” Cooper asked as they passed.
“Combat control center, I think.”
“Don’t you know?”
She shook her head. “It must have been added during the overhaul. City of Alexandria did not use to be armed. Wonder what they put into her?”
They continued to the port side of the liner and then moved aft until they came to Frame 611. Bethany led Cooper through an emergency door into a large compartment filled with a number of small spacecraft. Bethany recognized several armed scouts tucked in among a collection of two-man scooters and other ships’ boats.
A spacer made his way past the stored ships to where they clung in the hatchway.
“Ah, Miss Lindquist, we’ve been expecting you!”
She looked at him, vaguely aware that she should know his name.
“Chief Nelson, Ma’am. I served aboard Discovery last trip.”
“I remember you now,” Bethany replied. “Good to see you again, Chief.”
“We’re glad to see you, too, Ma’am.”
“Who is ‘we,’ Chief?”
“Practically every spacer in the fleet, Ma’am. The captain has been running us ragged these past three weeks. We figured that now you’re here, the old man might let up a bit.”
Bethany felt her cheeks redden at the implications of Nelson’s remark.
“Where’s the boat?”
“We’re attached to the after personnel lock. We have one other passenger. As soon as he arrives, we’ll be on our way.”
“I think you’ll find this gentleman is your other passenger.”
“Mr. Cooper, sir?”
Cooper nodded. From his look, he was still trying to decide whether weightlessness agreed with him.
The chief grinned, seemingly oblivious to his guest’s discomfort. “In that case, if you two will get onboard, we’ll be heading out for the flagship immediately.”
* * *
“Attention, All Ships. It is now T minus ten minutes, and counting!”
Richard Drake sat in his command chair on Discovery’s bridge and listened to the announcement on the fleet command frequency. Around him, the cruiser’s bridge crew was busy with the myriad last minute details that always preceded a launch. He watched their quiet professionalism and thought of similar scenes on the seven other ships of the Helldiver Fleet. Two minutes after the ‘All Ships’ announcement, department heads began relaying their status to the ship’s executive officer. As Drake eavesdropped on the command circuit, he felt a sudden rush of pride at the caliber of people he had working under him. When the roll call was complete, Commander Rorqual Marchant, his exec, buzzed him on their private circuit.
“All departments report ready for space, Captain.”
“Very good, Rorq. Tell Engineering they can start bringing the reactor up to maneuvering power.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Drake keyed for the fusion reactor’s status screens to be displayed at his command console. The graph showed Discovery’s primary power plant well above the level needed for station keeping. He waited for the reactor’s output to stabilize at intermediate power before keying for the communicator-on-duty.
“Activate the fleet command circuit, Mr. Haydn.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Report your status, gentlemen,” Drake ordered the other captains of the fleet.
“Dagger ready for space, Captain,” Bela Marston immediately responded.
“City of Alexandria, ready for space, sir.” Rolf Bustamente, commanding officer of the converted liner, replied.
“Phoenix is ready, sir.”
“Likewise Tharsis, Captain.”
“Vellos?” Drake asked, turning his attention to the CO of the largest cryogen tanker in the fleet.
“We’re ready, sir.”
“Alcor V is ready, Captain,”
“Summa Warrior is straining at the leash, sir,” the final starship captain reported.
Drake nodded. “All right, you each know the flight plan. Discovery will lead off at precisely 12:00 hours, with each successive ship following at one-minute intervals. As soon as you have completed your turn away from the ecliptic, move to your assigned positions in fleet formation. We have not had as much time for fleet maneuvers as I would like, so let’s get in all the practice we can on the trip out. Are there any questions?” There were none. “Good luck to you all.”
As soon as his screens were clear, Drake keyed for Discovery’s astrogator. “All right, Mr. Cristobal, you have the conn.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Having temporarily relinquished command of his ship, Drake pulled tight the straps that would keep him from floating out of his acceleration couch and lay back to observe the departure. As he did so, a graph showing Discovery’s proposed orbital track was flashed on the main viewscreen.
Since Valeria’s foldpoint was situated high in the system’s northern hemisphere, the fleet’s departure orbit had the appearance of a bent fishhook. At the appointed time, Discovery’s engines would nudge her away from Alta. At first, the ship would move along a carefully computed path in the plane of the ecliptic. However, as soon as the cruiser cleared the near-Alta orbital zone and its hundreds of satellites and space installations, it would turn toward the foldpoint.
The astrogator busied himself at his console for a few seconds, and then triggered the raucous buzzing of the acceleration alarms.
“Attention, All Hands. T minus one minute! First warning. Prepare for prolonged acceleration, one-half standard gravity in one minute.”
An expectant hush fell over the ship as the voices on the intercom tailed off into silence.
“Final warning! One-half standard gravity in thirty seconds. I repeat. Five meters per second squared in thirty seconds.
“Fifteen … ten … five, four, three, two, one, Boost!”