Larry Niven - Fate of Worlds - Return From the Ringworld

Sigmund and Amelia dallied in a break room until someone in an orange moiré uniform came in. The large type on the mechanic’s badge declared JOE. “How are you doing?” Sigmund asked amiably.

“Fine,” Joe muttered. He turned away to consider the synthesizer menu. Short and wiry, his uniform would not have fit Sigmund or Amelia.

A chop to the back of the neck dropped Joe to the floor. “Sorry,” Sigmund said. With tape brought from home, Sigmund bound Joe’s hands and feet and covered his mouth.

With his pocket comp — not a commercial model — Sigmund scanned and captured Joe’s handprint. He peeled back Joe’s eyelid to take a retinal print. Quick swipes on the touch panel transferred the biometric data to Sigmund’s programmable contact lens and to the programmable film on his own hand.

Other than weaponry, Sigmund’s cupboard of spy gear was getting perilously depleted.

“Uniforms,” Sigmund said as he donned the mechanic’s ID badge and tool belt.

Amelia, turned ashen, complied.

Glancing at Joe, Sigmund decided their jumpsuits would pass if no one looked too closely. “Grab his feet.” They dragged the bound and unconscious mechanic to a janitor’s closet and shut him inside.

“I’m going to be sick,” Amelia said. She promptly was.

“Sorry. We have to move now. ” Grabbing her elbow he guided her from the break room.

Joe’s badge and handprint got them through a locked door and onto the tarmac. Two small ships sat nearby. “Which one?” Sigmund asked.

“The ships take turns. Elysium was assigned as backup on the most recent servicing run. Arcadia had no problems, so Elysium should remain fully stocked and fueled. Arcadia may not have been serviced yet.”

“ Elysium it is,” Sigmund said. “Lead on.”

Joe’s badge and retinal scan got them aboard a ship.

“Hello?” someone called as the inner air-lock hatch cycled shut. An athletic-looking young woman, maybe forty, emerged from a side corridor. She did a double take at seeing them. Her badge read LORRAINE and she was orange-clad, too.

Murphy was enforcing his tanj law again, and Sigmund improvised. “Periphery sensors report a fuel leak. Everyone off the ship while we check it out.”

“It’s just me aboard,” Lorraine said. “I’m running routine diagnostics on — ”

“It can wait.” Sigmund pointed to the air lock. “Out, now. Run, don’t walk, to the terminal.” That was a half mile away. “Let us do our job.”

“If you’re safe here then so am I.”

“Have you ever seen a hydrogen-gas explosion?” Sigmund asked. “Deuterium goes boom just like ordinary hydrogen.”

Lorraine squinted at Sigmund’s badge. “You’re not Joe. Get off the ship immediately.”

As Lorraine reached for her pocket comp, Sigmund stepped behind her, forcing her to the deck with a quick yank and twist on her right arm. It was a desperation move: he was too slow and frail to wrestle, and putting an armlock on anyone standing was tricky. If she had had any self-defense training, she would have slipped free and tied him into a pretzel.

He had gambled that she wouldn’t.

Wrestling, boxing, karate … Puppeteers had kept such skills from developing among their slaves. Sigmund had brought martial arts to this world, had taught the original trainers as he formed the Defense Ministry. A random mechanic was unlikely to have had the training.

For once, things had broken his way.

Things were going too fast, too improvised. He had not thought to give Amelia an alias. He had not planned an op in … he didn’t dare to remember how long it had been. Lorraine might not have read Amelia’s ID. “You,” he barked over his shoulder. “Get her comp.”

“Me?” Amelia said, confused.

“Yah.” He yanked Lorraine’s arm as she squirmed. “Lie still. Look, I’m sorry about this. Once we let you go, I suggest you run like hell. We’re launching immediately. ”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lorraine hissed. “This ship doesn’t have the range to take you anywhere. It’s only for servicing the array.”

He knew that. If these ships had had interstellar range, they would have been much better secured. “Let me worry about where I’m going.” Because I’m worried enough for all of us.

Gingerly, Amelia extracted the comp from their captive’s pocket.

“Now get the roll of tape from my pocket. Lorraine, when I ease up bring your arms together. My colleague will tape your wrists together behind your back. Do you understand?”

Lorraine nodded.

“Try anything,” Sigmund warned, “and I’ll dislocate your shoulder.”

Amelia, paler than ever, sloppily taped together Lorraine’s wrists.

Sigmund released his hold, took the roll of tape, and did a proper job binding Lorraine’s arms. “You can get up now.”

Shrugging off Sigmund’s helping hand, Lorraine struggled to her feet.

He led the mechanic to the air lock. “Again, I’m sorry about this. If it makes a difference, this is done in a good cause.”

“You can tell yourself that,” Lorraine snarled.

He shoved her out the hatch. “Come with me to the bridge,” he ordered Amelia.

From a hundred feet above the field, in an infrared view as he tipped Elysium ’s bow skyward, Sigmund glimpsed Lorraine. She ran awkwardly, arms bound behind her, already halfway across the tarmac.

He opened up the ship’s main thrusters.

MINUTES LATER, while Planetary Defense dithered over what to do about a receding object, Elysium shot beyond the edge of New Terra’s singularity and then vanished into hyperspace.

AS THE MASS POINTER LIT, its one long line indicating New Terra, Sigmund turned toward Amelia. He wondered which of them was more upset.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“ No, I’m not all right!” she shouted. “Thanks to you, I’m a mugger, a thief, a traitor, and a fugitive.”

He was all those things — and ancient and exhausted. His skin crawled from the knowledge he was once more in space, and on a ship before it could be fully checked out.

But he was also the professional here. Suck it up, he told himself.

Great advice, but he found himself lost in the view port’s hyperspace-denying images of a stormy, rockbound coast.

Koala could pop up within days and everything now depended on Amelia. He had to get her moving, engaged, fired up — and fast. The question was: how? For the love of her daughter? Patriotism? The lure of long-lost Earth.

No, Sigmund decided. Her pride.

“It’s time,” he told Amelia, “to prove you’re as smart as you think you are.”

“I HADN’T DARED not to believe,” Amelia said. Though her face was drawn and her eyes had grown puffy with exhaustion, she gazed with satisfaction upon her handiwork. Around her, Elysium ’s photonics shop was awash in cannibalized probes: sensor platforms, hyperwave-radar buoys, and defensive drones. Two extensively modified probes sat side by side on a workbench. “But actually to have done it…”

Sigmund rubbed his eyes, as weary as she. He could contribute nothing to the effort beyond fetching spare probes from the nearby cargo bay and coffee from the relax room, but if he had gone off for much needed rest, Amelia might have slept, too. The hell of things was, he had no idea how much time they had. He had to assume, very little. With a gung-ho captain, Koala could appear any day.

What were the odds Louis Wu’s grandson was a slacker?

Sigmund said, “Then the probes will work?”