Angelmass. Part 31

the catapult. That's usually the only time problems crop up, come to think of it: when s.h.i.+ps get out of order and the ma.s.s settings are therefore scrambled."

"Interesting." Forsythe looked at the doorway. "I'd very much like to go over more of the operational

details with you later, Mr. Daviee. But first, I should probably go and find Ronyon."

"Actually, I can just-no, I can't," Hanan interrupted himself. "He can't hear the intercom, can he?"

"No," Forsythe said. "I have a call stick, but that won't do any good unless he knows where I am."

"He was making the bed in Ornina's cabin when I left him," Chandris offered. "Shall I go get him?"

Forsythe shook his head. "Thank you, no."

"It's no trouble-"

"I said no," Forsythe repeated; and this time Kosta heard a slight edge in his voice. "It'll be better if

I-".

He broke off as a sound Kosta had never heard came from Ornina's control board. "What was that?"

he asked.

"EmDef ID," Ornina said, turning back to her board. "Someone with high priority is coming

through... oh, G.o.d," she added, very quietly."What?" Kosta asked."It's Hova's Skyarcher," she said in the same quiet voice. "They're bringing it home.""What, only now?" Forsythe frowned, leaning forward as if he would get a better look that way."It wasn't easy to retrieve," Hanan said. "Very close in to Angelma.s.s. They had to send an autobooster in to push it out to where the tows.h.i.+p could get it without frying the crew."

"Can we get a look?" Kosta asked.

"I'm trying," Hanan said. "They're pretty far away and going the opposite direction. Let's see..."

And suddenly, on all the displays, there it was.

Ornina inhaled sharply, and Kosta found himself feeling a little sicker than he already was. The Hova's Skyarcher was a wreck: its shape noticeably warped, its vaunted Empyreal sandwich-metal hull blackened and pitted. "It must have really gone deep to have taken that much damage," he heard himself say.

"Yes," Hanan agreed. He sounded a little sick, too. "Far deeper than it should have. The radiation surge must have scrambled all the control settings before it..." He trailed off.

Before it killed them, Kosta finished the thought silently. With an effort, he tore his gaze from the wrecked s.h.i.+p.

To find Forsythe watching him.

Briefly, he held the High Senator's gaze before turning away, wondering dimly what was going on behind that stolid face. But he wasn't especially concerned about it. For the moment, all his thoughts were tied up in the implications of what had happened to that s.h.i.+p out there.

"Getting out of range," Hanan murmured.

Kosta turned back to the displays. The dead hulk and the sleek EmDef s.h.i.+ps towing it were becoming hazy as they pushed the limits of the Gazelle's telescope and optical enhancement system. "They taking it to the Inst.i.tute?" he asked.

"Probably to a decon center first," Hanan told him. "It's got to be blazing with secondary radiation-you saw the length of cable the tow s.h.i.+p was using."

Forsythe s.h.i.+fted in his seat. "Mr. Daviee, you said you normally only get logjam problems when the hunters.h.i.+ps get out of order," he said. "Do you ever get logjams otherwise?"

"What do you mean?" Hanan asked.

"For the Inst.i.tute's self-focusing theory to be right, hunters.h.i.+ps have to occasionally drop bits of ma.s.s into Angelma.s.s," Forsythe said. "If they drop things there, it follows that they should also sometimes drop things during other parts of the trip, too."

"Which could show up as recalibration problems when catapulting," Hanan said, nodding slowly. "Huh. I never thought of that. Jereko?"

"I don't know if anyone else has thought of it, either," Kosta said, glancing at Forsythe with newly heightened respect. In his admittedly limited experience, he'd never found government types to be exactly br.i.m.m.i.n.g with creative thought. Either Forsythe was an exception, or the Empyrean had found a way to attract a smarter cla.s.s of people into public service than the Pax had.

Or else it had something to do with the fact that Empyreal politicians carried angels.

The others, he realized suddenly, were still waiting. "I don't know if the mathematics would work out, either," he added, forcing his mind back to the question. "It could be that the amount of ma.s.s necessary to start a self-focusing surge is still within catapult tolerances. Worth checking out, though."

"I've got a list here of all the catapult delays we've been involved in over the past year," Ornina spoke up.

"How do I get it?" Forsythe asked, fingers hovering over the control board in front of his seat.

"Allow me," Kosta said, unstrapping and stepping carefully in the low gravity to the High Senator's seat. He keyed for an echo of Ornina's screen, gave it a fast once-over. "I don't see anything obvious," he said.

"Me, neither," Hanan agreed. "Though that may not mean anything. One hunters.h.i.+p for one year isn't much of a sample."

"Let's try anyway," Kosta suggested. "If you'll allow me, High Senator...?"

"Certainly." Forsythe swiveled the panel around to where Kosta could more easily operate it.

The Gazelle's computer library contained two different statistical packages. Kosta called them up for a quick look. "I don't think either of those can handle a sample this small," Hanan said, watching the echo of Kosta's work on his own display.

"No," Kosta agreed. "But I know of one that might be able to. Let's see if I can remember how it works."

It was a highly esoteric program he'd learned in his first year at the university, and he wound up with two false starts before he got it right. But finally it was ready. Feeding in Ornina's data, he set it running. "Interesting program," Forsythe said. "How long until it's done?"

"A couple of minutes," Kosta told him. "Speed is not its primary virtue." He let his eyes drift around the room, relaxing from the close-focus work of the display screen.

Chandris's seat was empty.

He glanced surrept.i.tiously around the room, heart suddenly thudding in his ears. She was gone, all right. Sometime in the last few minutes, without anyone noticing, she'd just slipped away.

He opened his mouth to announce his discovery; bit down gently on his tongue instead. She'd probably just gone to find Ronyon, that was all. Or something equally innocent.

Except that Forsythe had already told her not to go after Ronyon. If she was up to something else...

The program beeped notice that it was done. Reaching to the board, Kosta keyed for the results.

He might as well not have bothered. "You're right," he said to Hanan as he dumped the screen. "One s.h.i.+p and one year just aren't enough."

"The catapult itself should have complete records, though," Ornina pointed out. "Perhaps you could ask them to send us a data copy, High Senator."

"I'm sure I could," Forsythe said. "However, as I told Mr. Daviee, I'm here on a strictly unofficial basis. I'd like to keep it that way."

"I see." Ornina looked at Hanan, and in her face Kosta could see that that bit of information had somehow missed getting pa.s.sed to her. "I'm sorry. Ah-"

"The Inst.i.tute should also have them," Kosta spoke up quickly. "When we get back I'll get Yaezon to look them up for me."

"There might be another way to get the information now, though," Hanan said, an odd tone to his voice as he tapped keys. "If they happen to have a new trainee or two on station at Control..."

He cleared his throat; and he was launching into a very official-sounding speech as Kosta quietly slipped out of the room.

He went first to Hanan's and Ornina's cabins, not from any real expectation of finding Chandris there but merely as a reasonable place to start his search. To his surprise, however, he heard the faint sound of running water as he approached. Someone inside Ornina's cabin was apparently taking a shower.

For a long moment he hesitated outside the door, a half dozen scenarios-some of them decidedly discomfiting-scrambling through his mind. But if Chandris was up to something underhanded, it was his duty to intervene. Bracing himself, he opened the door and went in.

No one was in the main living area, but there was a neat stack of clothes on the bed-Ronyon's, Kosta tentatively identified them. At the back of the room, through the open bathroom doorway, he could see back to the shower.

The shower door was only slightly translucent, but that was enough. The size and shape of the shadow showed that it was Ronyon in there. Alone.

Quickly, Kosta backed out into the corridor, cheeks hot with embarra.s.sment and annoyance. The Chandris Effect, all right: give him half an hour with her and he'd make a fool of himself somehow. But at least she wasn't pulling some scam on Ronyon.

So where was she?

He looked up and down the corridor, wondering if there was any point in continuing the search. She'd probably left on some perfectly innocent s.h.i.+p's business, after all. For all he knew, Ornina or Hanan might even have openly sent her away while he was preoccupied with his statistics program.

Then, from down the corridor, he heard a faint grinding sound.

The sound came and went three more times before he located its source: the machine shop. Inside, hunched intently over a grinder, was Chandris.

"There you are," Kosta said, stepping inside. "What are you doing here?"

She didn't jump in her seat or spin around or do any of the other things people were supposed to do when they were caught doing something wrong. But it seemed to Kosta that she took a fraction of a second too long before turning her head to look at him. "What does it look like I'm doing?" she countered mildly. "I'm working."

"Now?" he asked, moving to her side and leaning over to look at the grinder. Held snugly in an electronics clamp was a small lens-shaped piece of crystal. "With the s.h.i.+p about to hit the catapult?"

"Why not?" she said with a shrug. "Hanan and Ornina can handle the s.h.i.+p without me. Anyway, it felt a little crowded up there."

"Uh-huh," he said, frowning down at the crystal. There was something about the size and shape that seemed familiar somehow...

"Don't you have some work of your own to do?" she interrupted his musings. "Calibrating your equipment or something?"

"No, everything's done," he said absently. He had seen something just like that crystal-he knew he had. Recently, too. If he could just chase down the memory...

"Okay, then, to h.e.l.l with politeness," Chandris said. "Go away and let me work."

"Fine," Kosta said, straightening up. "You don't have to get huffy." He gave the crystal one last look- And suddenly the mental picture he'd been searching for dropped neatly into place. High Senator Forsythe, outside the Gazelle, offering his hand for the respect gesture. And fastened to a chain around his neck, the delicate gold filigree and crystal of- Kosta focused sharply on Chandris; and in her face he could see she knew he'd figured it out. "Okay," she growled. "So?"

"So?" Kosta hissed. "Are you crazy?"

"They need the money," she said. "They need it for the s.h.i.+p; they especially need it for Hanan. He's got a degenerative nerve disease, in case you haven't bothered to notice."

"That was unfair," Kosta said coldly. "I was the one who carried him down to the medpack,

remember?"

She looked at him a moment... and for a wonder, nodded agreement. "You're right," she acknowledged. "It was a cheap shot."

"Yes, it was," Kosta nodded back, some of his anger draining away. "Look, I'm sorry about Hanan. I'd like to see him get fixed up, too. But this isn't the way to do it."

She gazed evenly up at him. "How are you going to stop me? Without getting me in trouble, that is?" Kosta grimaced. So she thought that it was her he was trying to avoid getting into trouble. If she only knew. "I'll tell the Daviees," he said, turning back toward the door. "I'm sure they can find a way to keep you away from Forsythe's angel."

"Forsythe doesn't have the angel," Chandris called after him. "Ronyon does."

Kosta turned back. "What are you talking about?" he demanded. "Ronyon isn't wearing an angel."

"No, he's carrying it in his pocket," she said. "That's why I spilled machine oil on him and sent him

to the shower. So I could find it and get a close look."

Kosta frowned at her. Could they be issuing angels even to High Senators' aides now?

No-ridiculous. "They don't give angels to aides," he told Chandris. "Just to the High Senators themselves.""Well, then, he's got Forsythe's angel," Chandris insisted. "Maybe he stole it.""But Forsythe's wearing-""He's wearing a fake," Chandris said. She gestured to the unfinished crystal in the clamp. "Just like this one."

A cold chill ran up Kosta's back. A High Senator, with a fake angel? "There has to be a mistake," he said between suddenly stiff lips.

"Not a chance," Chandris said. "I know what an angel feels like up close."

Kosta thought back to his own first encounter with one of the Inst.i.tute's angels. He hadn't felt a