Питер Филлипс - In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

Wergard, meanwhile, had dug out and copied the Depot record of the item’s history. It had been picked up in the fringes of the cosmic dust cloud of the Pit several years earlier by the only surviving ship of a three-vessel U-League expedition, brought back because it was emitting a very faint, irregular trickle of radiation, and stored in the Unclassified Specimens Depot pending further investigation. The possibility that the radiation might be coming from instruments had not occurred to anybody until Dr. Hishkan took a closer look at the asteroid from the Pit.

“Floating in space,” Danestar said thoughtfully. “So it’s a signaling device. An alien signaling device. Probably belonging to whatever’s been knocking off Hub ships in the Pit.”

“Apparently,” Wergard said. He added, “Our business here, of course, is to nail Hishkan and stop the thieving. . . . ”

“Of course,” Danestar said. “But we can’t take a chance on this thing’s getting lost. The Federation has to have it. It will tell them more about who built it, what they’re like, than they’ve ever found out since they began to suspect there’s something actively hostile in the Pit.”

Wergard looked at her consideringly. Over two hundred ships, most of them Federation naval vessels, had disappeared during the past eighty years in attempts to explore the dense cosmic dust cloud near Mezmiali. Navigational conditions in the Pit were among the worst known. Its subspace was a seething turmoil of energies into which no ship could venture. Progress in normal space was a matter of creeping blindly through a murky medium stretching out for twelve light-years ahead where contact with other ships and with stations beyond the cloud was almost instantly lost. A number of expeditions had worked without mishap in the outer fringes of the Pit, but ships attempting penetration in depth simply did not return. A few fragmentary reports indicated the Pit concealed inimical intelligent forces along with natural hazards.

Wergard said, “I remember now . . . you had a brother on one of the last Navy ships lost there, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Danestar said. “Eight years ago. I was wild about him—I thought I’d never get over it. The ship sent out a report that its personnel was being wiped out by what might be a radiation weapon. That’s the most definite word they’ve ever had about what happens there. And that’s the last they heard of the ship.”

“All right,” Wergard said. “That makes it a personal matter. I understand that. And it makes sense to have the thing wind up in the hands of the military scientists. But I don’t want to louse up our operation.”

“It needn’t be loused up,” Danestar said. “You’ve got to get me into the vault, Wergard. Tonight, if possible. I’ll need around two hours to study the thing.”

“Two hours?” Wergard looked doubtful.

“Yes. I want a look at what it’s using for power to cut through standard static shielding, not to mention the Depot’s force barrier. And I probably should make duplos of at least part of the system.”

“The section patrol goes past there every hour,” Wergard said. “You’ll be running a chance of getting caught.”

“Well, you see to it that I don’t,” Danestar told him.

Wergard grunted. “All right,” he said. “Can do.”

She spent her two hours in Dr. Hishkan’s special vault that night, told Wergard afterwards, “It’s a temporal distorter, of course. A long-range communicator in the most simple form—downright primitive. At a guess, a route marker for ships. A signaling device. . . . It picks up impulses, can respond with any one of fourteen signal patterns. Hishkan apparently tripped the lot of them in those blasts. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing.”

“That should be really big stuff commercially, then,” Wergard remarked.

“Decidedly! On the power side, it’s forty percent more efficient than the best transmitters I’ve heard about. Nothing primitive there! Whoever got his hands on the thing should be able to give the ComWeb system the first real competition it’s had. . . . ”

She added, “But this is the most interesting part. Wergard, that thing is old! It’s an antique. At a guess, it hasn’t been used or serviced within the past five centuries. Obviously, it’s still operational—the central sections are so well shielded they haven’t been affected much. Other parts have begun to fall apart or have vanished. That’s a little bit sinister, wouldn’t you say?”

Wergard looked startled. “Yes, I would. If they had stuff five hundred years ago better in some respects than the most sophisticated systems we have today . . . ”

“In some rather important respects, too,” Danestar said. “I didn’t get any clues to it, but there’s obviously a principle embodied designed to punch an impulse through all the disturbances of the Pit. If our ships had that . . . ”

“All right,” Wergard said. “I see it. But let’s set it up to play Dr. Hishkan into our hands besides. How about this—you put out a shortcode description at the first opportunity of what you’ve found and what it seems to indicate. Tell the boys to get the information to Federation agents at once.”

Danestar nodded. “Adding that we’ll go ahead with our plans as they are, but they’re to stand by outside to make sure the gadget doesn’t get away if there’s a slip-up?”

“That’s what I had in mind,” Wergard agreed. “The Feds should cooperate—we’re handing them the thing on a platter.”

He left, and Danestar settled down to prepare the message for transmission. It was fifteen minutes later, just before she’d finished with it, that Wergard’s voice informed her over their private intercom that the entry lock in the energy barrier had been opened briefly to let in a space shuttle and closed again.

“I wouldn’t bet,” he said, “that this one’s bringing in specimens or supplies. . . . ” He paused, added suddenly, “Look out for yourself! There’re boys with guns sneaking into this section from several sides. I’ll have to move. Looks like the word’s been given to pick us up!”

Danestar heard his instrument snap off. She swore softly, turned on a screen showing the area of the lock. The shuttle stood there, a sizable one. Men were coming out of it. It clearly hadn’t been bringing in supplies or specimens.

Danestar stared at it, biting her lip. In another few hours, they would have been completely prepared for this! The airtruck which brought supplies from the city every two days would have come and left during that time; and as the lock opened for it, her signal to set up the trap for the specimen smugglers would have been received by the Kyth Agency men waiting within observation range of the Depot. Thirty minutes later, any vehicle leaving the Depot without being given a simultaneous shortcode clearance by her would be promptly intercepted and searched.

But now, suddenly, they had a problem. Not only were the smugglers here, they had come prepared to take care of the two supposed technicians the U-League had planted in the Depot to spy on Dr. Hishkan. She and Corvin Wergard could make themselves very difficult to find; but if they couldn’t be located, the instrument from the Pit would be loaded on the shuttle and the thieves would be gone again with it, probably taking Dr. Hishkan and one or two of his principal U-League confederates along. Danestar’s warning message would go out as they left, but that was cutting it much too fine! A space shuttle of that type was fast and maneuverable, and this one probably carried effective armament. There was a chance the Kyth operators outside would be able to capture it before it rejoined its mother ship and vanished from the Mezmiali System—but the chance was not at all a good one.