Robert Heinlein - Variable Star

“My grandfather is with your own Captain this very minute, trying to—”

“Your grandfather is lying his aristocratic ass off at this minute,” I said, “trying to persuade Captain Bean he’s ever going to see him again after the Mercury leaves. That way he can consign more than four hundred people to death with an absolute minimum of harsh words or other unpleasantness. And we can all depart without Alice Dahl having to hold a gun on anyone.”

“You’re insane!” Jinny snapped.

“If he really wanted to help us, all he’d have had to do was order his grandson-in-law to unship his DIS drive from the Mercury … and install it in the Sheffield ! Andrew just got finished telling us the silly thing doesn’t believe in mass .”

Jinny gasped in shock—but not as loud as her husband. “Coventry, what was I thinking of?” Andrew said, his face stricken. “I… I… I’d have to destroy the Mercury in the process, I guess that’s why it simply never occurred to me, but—yes, damn it to seven hells, there’s no real reason in the universe why I couldn’t recalibrate and ramp it up to make the field large enough to enfold even a ship this large. I could have it done in a few weeks! I think…”

“Don’t destroy the Mercury, ” Herb advised. “Just bring it aboard. It’s about the size of one of our landing craft.”

“That would work—”

“I heard earlier it took you five or six subjective weeks to overtake and match orbits with us,” I told Jinny. “The Mercury was a private yacht on its shakedown cruise when Sol exploded. Even given Conrad family paranoia, I’d be surprised if she carried more than a couple of months’ worth of provisions for a crew of seven. My guess is your ship’s just about out of food, water, and air by now .” Andrew’s groan told me my guess was accurate. “ That’s why the old bastard really let himself be talked into picking us for his first destination! He needs to be fully reprovisioned before he reaches an established colony planet, so he can deal from a position of strength. To him, we’re no more than a supplies cache en route, disposable. We’re the smallest number of people that stand between him and self-sufficiency.”

“And the easiest to con,” Herb said. “Because we’re scared and tired and vulnerable. And we have evidence other than Conrad’s word that Sol has been destroyed and hellfire is coming.”

“Oh, Grandfather ,” Evelyn groaned. “Oh, this is awful!” She started for the exit. “Joel, you’re absolutely right: we have to—”

Rennick reached into his blouse and produced the smallest hand weapon I had ever seen, the size of a stylus, waved it across us all once. “You have to stay right where you are,” he barked. “Evelyn, I mean it! Don’t! ” He aimed his weapon at her, and I gathered myself to leap into the line of fire, and his head exploded into red mist, most of which boiled out of existence even as it formed. A few tiny drops made it all the way across the room and spattered my face and hands. His little weapon flew from his hand and started caroming off things.

Dorothy Robb had something even smaller in her hand. It looked like the smaller half of a stylus, with the pocket clip on it. As I saw it, she released it like a soiled tissue and let it drift from her. “I thought I’d get all the way out of this life without ever using that,” she said thoughtfully, as if to herself, in the sudden ringing silence. “But it was worth carrying it, all these years.”

I wondered how she’d gotten it past the Gurkhas back home. But then, Rennick had managed with a larger one. Maybe the Gurkhas had known—and just figured they could deal with it. “Thank you, Dorothy,” I managed to say, wiping my face with my sleeve.

“You may always leave these little things to me,” she said, making it sound like a quote. Then she brushed a hand across her face and made a sound of revulsion. “I would not have thought his brain was large enough to make that much of a splash.”

Herb was instantly at her side with a pack of tissues. She thanked him gravely and accepted one.

The heat of the explosion had briefly been so intense, Rennick’s massive wound had cauterized itself. Most of the red mist had already been dealt with by the Sheffield ’s intensive zero-gee airflow, and the rest would be soon.

“They’ll be here any minute,” Herb said to me.

“I know,” I said.

“You understand the problem. You’ve seen her.”

I wished I didn’t. “Yeah. I’ve seen Alice.”

We shared a wordless glance that lasted ten seconds or more. He smiled suddenly. “I don’t see another way. Do you?”

I thought as hard as I know how. Finally, reluctantly, I shook my head no. “Not with the tools at hand.”

He nodded.

I retrieved Dorothy’s weapon, glanced at it briefly, and tossed it to him.

“It’s empty,” Dorothy said urgently. “It was a single-shot.”

Herb held it up. “Could you tell it’s empty by looking at it?”

She made no reply, but her face said she understood now, and that the answer to his question was no.

A bounce took Rennick’s weapon past me and I picked it out of the air. I looked around at the scene, studying it closely. Just behind me, beside the airlock hatch, was a large display showing data of several kinds. I found the right switch and powered it off. Then I stepped back, measured angles, and said, “What do you think?” to Herb.

“Good as it’s liable to get,” he said. “This is what a long time ago used to be called a Hail Mary play.”

I nodded. “I really wish it was better,” I said.

With infinite kindness in his eyes, he said not “Me, too,” but “I know.” Then he moved, to position himself just beside the hatch out to the Sheffield . Dorothy began gathering the p-suits we hadn’t finished donning, and stowing them out of the way.

“What are you doing?” Jinny asked dangerously. “Damn it, what is going on?” Andrew couldn’t decide which of us to gape at. He wore a look I could empathize with—a man rearranging the entire contents of his brain, and heart.

“Can you handle her?” I asked Evelyn.

She looked me in the eye and said not “I think so,” but, “Yes.” Everybody was being very helpful to me today. I nodded thanks, and she left my side, jaunting over to dock beside Jinny.

“Cousin Jinny,” she said clearly and firmly, “zip it.”

Jinny was too shocked to respond, and before she could regroup, we all heard the sound of the party approaching the antechamber from outside.

“Joel—” Dorothy began.

“I think it’ll be all right,” I told her. “But stay alert.”

She shut up, chose a spot well away from the hatch, near the air outflow, and tugged Rennick’s body there. She held onto the grille with one hand, and held Rennick near it with the other. “Evelyn, over here, dear.”

Evelyn looked to me, I nodded, and she joined Dorothy.

Herb and I shared one last long look. Nothing to be said.

The hatch irised open.

Alice Dahl entered first, and she was as good as I had presumed she must be. The instant she cleared the hatchway she sensed that something was wrong—body language? Blood scent the airflow hadn’t finished flushing yet?—and went hyperalert well before she could have seen Rennick’s body. She didn’t actually kill anyone, but she was very ready to. And it was me she focused on.

Failing to notice, Conrad came in behind her, followed by Solomon Short. “All right, everyone,” he was saying, “thanks to Captain Bean’s insights, and Relativist Short’s gift for lateral thinking, I think we’ve come up with a plan that will—”