Bruce Bethke - Maverick

Wolruf cocked an ear at Derec, but kept flying.

“It can’t work. The angles of incidence are all wrong. If someone’s behind that asteroid, all he has to do is use his maneuvering thrusters to keep the rock between him and us. The asteroid’s too small for us to enter a gravitational orbit; at this range, there’s no other way we can fly around it faster than he can maneuver around it. ”

Wolruf kept flying. Mandelbrot, back in the corner, spoke up. “Mistress Wolruf has already thought of that. I have all ship’s sensors locked on the asteroid. If the unknown vessel emits any form of radiation or hot gasses during maneuvering, we will detect it. ”

“ ‘sides,” Wolruf growled, “ ‘aven’t ‘u ever ‘eard of spookin’ ‘im out? If ‘e’s got some kind of remote sensor watching us, ‘e now knows we know ‘e’s there. No point in ‘im staying ‘idden any more. ”

As if in confirmation of Wolruf’s statement, Mandelbrot said, “Contact. A stream of superheated boron-11 has just been emitted by a source behind the asteroid. ”

Wolruf’s mouth opened in a toothy grin, and her tongue lolled out. “We got ‘ im. ’, She fired a last round of maneuvering thrusters and stabilized the ship’s course. “Now let’s see-”

“More contacts,” Mandelbrot said. “ Additional thruster exhaust; I am projecting

“Cancel. Visual contact. I am putting it on the main viewer. ” The stars swam, blurred again, and resolved into a much closer look at the asteroid than Derec had had before.

A ship was creeping out from behind the right edge of the asteroid. At first glance it looked like a fairly conventional Settler design. Then Derec realized that he was just looking at the foremost piece of it.

The ship came out from behind the asteroid, and kept coming. It wasn’t just large, it was enormous. And yet the design had a curiously improvised look about it, as if someone had decided to build a supervessel by simply welding together a dozen randomly selected hulls. Sleek trans-atmospheric hulls nestled in with ungainly cargo pods, and a hodgepodge of angular bracing and spaghetti-like tubing connected the whole lot. Bits of it looked like standard Spacer equipment, or Auroran pleasure yachts, while other segments looked utterly alien, like nothing Derec had ever seen before.

Then he felt the touch of an icy ghost finger on his shoulder, and the hairs on the nape of his neck stood straight up. He had seen a ship like that before.

Derec glanced quickly at Wolruf. Her hackles were standing up, and she’d bared her teeth. Derec suddenly knew he didn’t need to ask what she was thinking.

“The approaching vessel has opened fire,” Mandelbrot announced. “Primary armament appears to be phased microwave lasers. ”

As one, Derec and Wolruf looked at each other. “Aranimas!”

Wolruf became a flurry of action. She slammed her fists down on controls, jabbed buttons, and barked terse, almost hysterical commands at the ship. In response, the ship yawed hard and pitched wildly as the main drives erupted into life.

“This is impossible,” Derec said. “We destroyed Aranimas in Sol system. I saw his ship explode. ”

“ ‘u saw ‘im jettison second’ry ‘ulls. ” Wolruf punched up some kind of intersecting curve display, peered at it anxiously, and resumed hitting controls. “On my world there’s a small liz’rd called a skerk. ‘u grab its tail, th’ tail breaks off. Skerk gets away, ‘u get its tail. ” She glanced up at the screen again; the flying junkyard was still closing. “ ‘u must ‘ave got a piece of Aranimas’s tail. ”

. Derec just stared at the viewscreen and shook his head. “But how in the universe did he find us again?”

“Don’t know,” Wolruf growled. “Matter of fact, don’t care. Just know we need to get away now. ” She leaned back to survey the control board settings and then thumbed the intercom button. “Arr’el! Dr. Av’ry! Stand by for jump!”

“Jump?” Derec shouted. “We can’t jump! We’re too far away from the programmed jump point. ”

“Direct hit on the stem,” Mandelbrot announced.

“Wolruf! You didn’t have time to calculate and enter a new course!”

Wolruf punched more buttons. “ ‘u care about details at a time like thiss?”

“ Another hit,” Mandelbrot said. “Hull breached in Section 17D. ”

“But where will we go?” Derec wailed.

“Someplace Aranimas issn ’ t!” Wolruf took one last glance at the control settings, and then grabbed the jump control handle and yanked it down hard.

A shift, a spin, Derec felt a rolling disorientation in his inner ear: Enormous energies were expended, and the Wild Goose Chase squeezed through a hole in the space/time continuum. A moment later, it was somewhere else.

Wolruf engaged the autopilot. With’ careful and precise thruster bursts, the ship stabilized its tumble. The viewscreen blanked, cleared, and displayed a binary star consisting of a yellow giant and its white dwarf companion.

With obvious effort, Wolruf relaxed her grip on the jump handle and sagged back into the acceleration couch.

“Where are we?” Derec asked softly.

Mandelbrot spoke up. “I am working on that. We will have a rough navigational fix within six hours, and coordinates precise enough to begin programming another jump in twenty-three. ”

“Twenty-three hours? But what if Aranimas follows us?’

“Then we are caught. ” Mandelbrot exchanged a stream of bits with the data terminal. “Given the availability of free hydrogen in this system, it will be a minimum of ninety-one point five hours before we have accumulated enough hydrogen to fuel another hyperspace jump. ”

. Derec frowned. “Well, if that’s it, then, it’ll have to do. Deploy the ramscoops, Mandelbrot. ”

“I have already done so. ”

“Thanks. Wolruf?”

The small alien rolled over and looked at Derec with eyes that had gone past fright and were now simply exhausted.

“Wolruf? You were his navigator once. How did Aranimas find us again?”

Wolruf brought a foot up and scratched her ear thoughtfully. “Don’t know. ”

“But his sensor technology-”

“Iss whatev’r ‘e can steal. No tellin’ what ‘e’s got now. ’;

. Derec frowned again. Then his face brightened. “Well, there’s no point in worrying about it. As Mandelbrot pointed out, if he can follow us, the Goose is cooked. ” He turned to Wolruf and smiled. “But I don’t think that’s a real issue. We got away clean. I mean, every schoolboy knows that it’s physically impossible to track a ship through hyperspace, right?”

Wolruf got up on one elbow, reached across the couch, and rested a furry hand on Derec’s shoulder.

“. Derec,” she whispered, “I don’t think Aranimas went to ‘ur school. ”

Old LifeCrier, spiritual leader of the kin of PackHome and self proclaimed First Believer in SilverSides, sat at the mouth of the cave, watching the milling throng in the clearing below. “Do you hear that, daughter?” he said proudly, using the informal words of KinSpeech. “They’re all speaking my name. ”

From somewhere inside the cave, WhiteTail answered, “That’s sweet, Father. ”

He ignored the humoring tone in her voice and looked back out over the crowd. “ ‘LifeCrier,’ that’s what they’re saying. ‘We’ve traveled for days to hear LifeCrier. ’ “ He let his tongue loll out and smiled clear back to his fourth bicuspids. “You never thought your old father would be heard beyond the pack. ”

WhiteTail carried a few old dry bones up from the darkness and deposited them in the rubbish heap near the opening. “Of course I did, Father. ” She turned to head back into the darkness, but he reached out a paw and gently stopped her.