Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Destiny

The Spooks figured the Slugs cloned themselves. But I always figured the Slug hatchery would be some giant hospital with rows and rows of zoomy-looking beds hooked up to life-support hoses, or something. “Slugs just grow in a giant fertilizer tub?”

“Simply put, yes.”

“If this isn’t the power plant, where do we go to blow up the ship?”

Howard punched up Jeeb’s holotank and his miniature, diagrammatic Troll floated in front of us again. Howard pointed. “Based on Jeeb’s explorations, I’ve revised this.” Howard cleared his professorial throat.

I raised my palm. “Does this story end with useful information?”

He nodded. “Both long-term and for our immediate predicament.”

“If we don’t solve our immediate predicament, there is no long-term.”

“We infer that this ship doesn’t move by reactive propulsion.”

“Because Slug ships can approach light speed.”

Howard nodded. We began to climb back up the catwalk with the green-glowing Troll holo floating above the generator Howard held in front of him, like a town crier’s lantern.

“The Pseudocephalopod manipulates gravitons.”

“Goddammit. Tell me what that means.”

“Gravity is the universe’s dominant force. It’s everywhere, tugging on everything. We hypothesize it’s a manifestation of particles. We can’t observe them. Gravitons.”

Leave it to Howard to chalk up Slug success to particles no one could see. I panted harder as we climbed. “So get these pesky gravitons off my shoulders.”

“You’re closer to the truth than you know. The Pseudocephalopod does keep the gravitons off its ships.” Howard pointed at the stinger on the holo Troll’s back end. “I think this assembly, and this boom along the left side, generate an umbrella that shields the ship from gravity behind the ship.” He wheezed. “It’s as though the ship was attached to two rubber bands, stretched in opposite directions. A combination of force tugs equally from all sides on you and on me and on every atom in this galaxy. If you disturb equilibrium by cutting the rear rubber band—”

“The gravity of the entire half of the universe that’s in front of the ship pulls the ship forward.” I managed a thin whistle. If Slugs could harness half the universe in order to shoot themselves through it, the little worms had impressed me again.

Howard nodded once more. “No fuel required, except to power the gravity-block field generator.” He punched the holo generator control and a little Firewitch materialized. He pointed at the arms spread from the smaller ship’s front. “These form a basket that scavenges incoming gravitons and converts them to usable energy. Like a Scramjet scavenges oxygen. Elegant.”

Howard raised a hand and paused, puffing.

I asked, “Where is this elegant death machine vulnerable, then?”

Howard shrugged. “If we could damage the machine, and if we could get through the interdicting warrior forces I underestimated at one hundred thousand—”

“Howard, where?”

He popped the Troll holo back up and pointed again. “Ten miles from here as the crow flies. But by the most direct route through the passages Jeeb mapped, forty-two miles.”

I looked up. The light rectangle of the open hatch showed far above us. We climbed back above the rollers and heard Brumby calling for us. He would love the news as much as I did. We returned to Brumby fifteen minutes later.

He paced back and forth along the hatch lip, weapon at port arms, glancing back down the passage every other second. “I dunno how long the block will hold, sirs. I don’t understand why they haven’t busted in already. Is there a fuel tank or something? Maybe I can improvise an explosive—”

I shook my head. We had sealed ourselves in the Troll’s nursery, not its power plant. This ship’s vulnerability lay forty-two miles away from us. One hundred thousand Slugs would make it a nasty forty-two miles. Our break-in was like a holotoon where the convict tunnels out of prison but comes up in the warden’s backyard. No wonder the Slugs were no longer suicidal about getting to us. If Slugs laughed, they must be roaring.

FORTY-FIVE

I DISPATCHED JEEB TO PATROL so we could circle our wagons.

The three of us sat cross-legged in the dim passage while Brumby laid out the contents of his minipack. A few sausage coils of Megatex, drilled at intervals to take an electric detonation cap or, in a pinch, old-fashioned light-and-run-like-hell detonation cord fuse. We had a tubful of Thermite sticks, great for burning holes in spaceship hulls, not so good for blowing spaceships to pieces. A roll of high-temp, magnesium-impregnated det cord, great for setting off Thermite, overkill for detonating Megatex.

Brumby surveyed his meager arsenal and sighed. “Sirs, they say you can make a bomb out of almost anything. But we need a big bomb. If we can’t blow this ship, shouldn’t we just leave? Do we leave?”

It was a fair question. If we returned to the hull breach and called Mimi to return and pick us up, there was the slimmest chance we could get back to Earth and die like infantry with our boots in homeworld mud. Otherwise, eventually the Slugs would breach our barricades or infiltrate a significant force through their door slots. We would buy the farm actively or they could starve us or suffocate us, passively. If they assaulted, taking lots of them with us was little satisfaction, because down below us the Slugs were replicating faster than bathtub scum.

But cutting and running wasn’t my style.

I looked at Brumby. “What would you do?”

Brumby tipped his head. “Not much waiting for me back home, sir. I’d just as soon buy it here as in a jail or a VA hospital.”

I turned. “Howard?”

“If there were a reason to return to Earth, a chance to win the war, I’d take it. What we’ve learned here about near-light-speed propulsion would have incalculable impact if mankind could survive. But once this vessel disembarks troops on Earth. ”

It was unanimous. We would go down swinging, right here. I reached for my M-60 and began to field-strip it for the last time.

Two hours later, Brumby and Howard dozed, Brumby tortured and thrashing, Howard serene. I ran and reran holo’d Troll diagrams, looking for something, anything.

Behind me metal scraped metal. I stiffened. The little bastards had found a way in that we hadn’t thought of. They always seemed to be a jump, a nanosecond ahead of us.

My machine gun was laid out on its bipod, loaded and ready, aimed down the passage, the most likely axis of Slug approach. Too far from me.

I reached for Ord’s Colt.45 automatic holstered on my chest. Ancient, but reliable and with stopping power to drop an armored Slug.

I drew the Colt, spun, and squeezed off the grip safety.

Jeeb reared back. Not that a bullet would have fazed him.

I relaxed. “Any luck?” Talking to a ’bot about luck was as silly as talking to a ’bot.

But I swear Jeeb nodded.

Howard opened one eye, then sat up and stretched. “Let’s download him.”

Twenty minutes later, the Chipboard in Howard’s hands trembled, as did the leads that hardwired it to Jeeb’s belly.

Howard said, “Precognition! That’s the key!”

“Precognition? Fortune telling?” I shook my head.

We were surrounded by enemy legions bent on killing us. Yet the professor in Howard took over. “We believe the Pseudocephalopod originated outside the Solar System.”

I nodded.

“Any other planetary systems are light-years away.”

“Yeah.”

“So interstellar travel is infeasible. Because nothing can travel faster than light.”

“My fist can, if you don’t get to the point, Howard.”

He rolled his eyes. “The Pseudocephalopod has solved the puzzle of interstellar travel. We’ve thought for decades that there are places where space and time as we know them curve back on themselves, touch.” He folded a ration wrapper, then pointed to a place where it touched. “Quick hop from here to here.” Then, he traced around the wrapper with his finger. “Compared to the long way around.”