The Sardonyx Net Part 46

"See you when you get here."

It took her, as he had known it would, twenty minutes, a fifth of the time that it would have taken him in a sedately paced, planet-bound bubble. He heard the noise, a deeper sound than the city bubblecraft, before he saw it, skin opaqued and gleaming in the moonlight, falling out of the night sky like a meteorite to land at the estate gates. The dragoncats raced to the attack and then heeled to Timithos' whistle; Rhani had already warned him to keep them in.

Lamonica swung from the bubble. Dana and Rhani went to meet her. She wore a silver-and-lavender jumpsuit. "Good evening," she said.

"Domna Rhani Yago, Starcaptain Tori Lamonica."

Lamonica nodded without ceremony. "If anyone's looking for me, they won't have any trouble finding me," she said. "All they'll need to do is follow the wind."

"No one'll look. Did you move _Lamia_?"

"I said I would."

Dana sighed. "Then we're in business. Otherwise, we'd have had to turn around to go right back to Abanat."

Rhani said, "Now what will you do?"

"Now we'll go to the Net. As soon as I know what's happening there, I'll get in touch with Tam Orion. I'll route the call through LandingPort Station."

"I see." Rhani looked at the blond Starcaptain. "Your payment's on record, Starcaptain Lamonica. All you have to do is spend it." Lamonica said, "It's a pleasure doing business with you, ma'am."

Dana said, "We're in a hurry, let's move." He could not wait to be gone.

He felt as if his blood was singeing his veins. Rhani was looking at him as if she wanted to tell him something. He touched her shoulder; she closed her hand over his. Tenderness, regret -- he could not a.n.a.lyze the emotions that traveled like light between them.

Meaninglessly he said, "It'll be all right, Rhani-ka."

She smiled. The bubble door opened. Lamonica swung into the pilot's seat, hands on the ceiling bar. Dana followed her. He folded himself into the pa.s.senger's chair. Rhani waved. Then the bubble s.h.i.+vered and went up.

_Lamia_'s skin was pewter-colored. As they dropped toward her, Dana saw her s.h.i.+ning dully in the starlight. Lamonica had positioned her perfectly, between two hills twenty-five kilometers from the Yago estate.

Once in the s.h.i.+p, Lamonica moved to the pilot's chair. Dana took the navigator's seat. Events were happening very fast, and he made himself slow down, relax, breathe, d.a.m.n it. He touched the control panel with his fingertips.

He wanted to pinch himself hard to make sure that he, at least, was real.

Lamonica was rus.h.i.+ng through the takeoff checkout. "What's going on?" she said. "Am I likely to be stopped?"

"No, Rhani made a s.h.i.+tload of calls. You're clear with LandingPort Station and at Abanat Landingport."

"And we're going to the Net. Are they expecting us?"

"No. That's why we're going out there. No one can reach them; they're not answering their lines. About an hour ago, they sent a distress signal in navigator's code, and it was cut off."

"So someone's on it."

"The Net commander and the chief navigator, and a pa.s.senger."

"What are we supposed to do?"

"_We_ are supposed to do nothing. You're going to take me out to the Net, and I'm going to go in and look. There's a back-up repair crew waiting on the Moon. If I signal you, you'll call them."

"Right. Going under Drive," she said. The s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+vered. Dana closed his eyes. A hum filled the big round room, half-audible, half-subliminal. Gravity increased. Dana slumped in the contoured chair. He was not uncomfortable: he had done this so many times that his body adjusted automatically, not fighting the weight, waiting for it to pa.s.s.... It pa.s.sed. His breathing slowed to its normal rhythm. He opened his eyes. In the vision screen in front of him he saw a swelling darkness, tinged with a red luminosity which, he knew, came from the heating of the outer sh.e.l.l of _Lamia_ herself. The glow faded. On the surface of the swelling planet he saw distinctly one large and three small pinpoints of light. And then, as it always did, the view turned inside out. The swelling began to shrink. The planet's rim appeared in the screen, growing in arc and glowing with a purer and purer radiance. _Lamia_ sped from shadow to sun. With reflex born of practice, Dana reached to cut in the light screens.

"Hey," Lamonica said. He looked at her, and realized that he was weeping.

His eyes burned and his nose was thick. She handed him a cloth; he wiped his face clean of tears. Standing, he went to the water cooler and drew a cupful of water. He bounced a little; Lamonica had set the s.h.i.+p's gravity at two-thirds gee. The screen was dark now, with the edge of the moon in focus: they were going in the same direction but Lamonica had switched the camera readout on the vision screen.

"Thanks," he said, reseating himself.

She kept her eyes on the controls. "Bad time?"

"I've had better."

"It's over now," she said.

"Yeah." He dug his fingers into the chair's resilient foam. "Sol will freeze," he said, "before I come back to Sardonyx Sector." She said, "Don't say that yet, you're still in it."

The words stung like salt on a wound. He could leave it behind, Dana thought, but it would never leave him. The pain and helplessness he had known was etched solidly into its own small corner of his brain.

"Explain this to me," Lamonica said.

"Explain what?"

"You were a slave when we met in the bar. Tonight you call me and you're free."

"This trip to the Net is the price of that freedom."

"Is it on a contract?" Lamonica said.

"Yes, of course."

"I wondered...." Her forefinger made little circles on the arm of her seat. "Any contract involving slavery is only good in Sector Sardonyx, right?"

"Yes." His throat muscles tensed.

"So what are we doing here?" she said. "Say the word, and I'll change _Lamia_'s trajectory, shoot us past this big silver prison, and Jump. Two weeks in the Hype and we land on Nexus. You'll never have to hear the name Yago again."

He gazed at the moon. Already he thought he could see the Net, a spark of constant brilliance against the satellite's mottled surface. He imagined the screen changing, brightening to a rainbow nimbus, and then darkening to the stygian darkness of the Hype.... _Lamia_ was Tori Lamonica's. Hers was the course choice, hers the responsibility. All he had to say was yes.

But Rhani Yago would know that he had broken a promise; left a contract unfulfilled. Tori Lamonica would know it. And he would know it himself. It would be, he reflected, supremely ironic if he freed himself from Sector Sardonyx by "rescuing" Zed Yago from the Net. Seen that way, this whole expedition turned into a joke, an expression of the universe's, or the luck's, cosmic and comic sense of justice.

The universe cared nothing for Dana Ikoro's pain, or for the memories that corded the muscles of his neck, dried his mouth to cotton, and gave him stomach cramps.

"Can't do it," he said.

Lamonica splayed a hand in the air. "It's up to you."

As they neared the stars.h.i.+p, Dana dug the computer cube out of his pocket and held it up to Lamonica's view. She pointed at the console. "You do it." Dana turned the cube (blue, three-by-three-by-three centimeters' dimension) till he found the side with a small visual/tactile symbol. He matched the symbol to one on the console. That second symbol marked a sliding panel. He slid it aside and fit the cube, symbol-side first, into the opening there, and pulled the panel closed. The blue cube contained, as Rhani had promised, blueprints of the Net.

"Let's see it," said Lamonica. Dana instructed the computer. Diagrams began to march across the compscreen.

Lamonica said, "That cube is worth a fortune."

Dana smiled. "It's not recordable, and it's programmed to self-erase."

"Too bad."

Dana leaned back in the chair to study the diagrams. Despite the superstructure of cells, corridors, and storage s.p.a.ces, the great wheel of the Net contained recognizable and familiar elements. The Drive Core and the s.h.i.+p's computer sat in the inner rim of the torus. Entrance locks were set at s.p.a.ced intervals along the outer rim. The Bridge, with its observation windows, was located on what Dana arbitrarily (and temporarily) designated the Chabad-side of the wheel. Fusion thrusters decorated the opposite "side." The protruding jets gave the wheel, in diagram at least, a slightly lopsided appearance. He wondered why Isobel Yago had chosen to make her prison s.h.i.+p a torus, when a sphere would have been easier to construct and a more efficient use of s.p.a.ce. Corridors traversed the doughnut. He asked for an enlargement of the section containing the Bridge. The computer obliged. The maps were detailed, labeled, and color- coded. Rhani had given him all the information she had.

He wondered where the emergency was, and what it was, and how much time he had to find it. He said, "Let's see if we can reach them."

"Right." Lamonica keyed a message. If the computer communications were alive on the Net, the message would be picked up and responded to automatically.

There was no response. "I'll call them," Lamonica said.

Dana caught her hand as she reached for the radio switch. "No. Wait."

"Why?"

"Moon Base has been calling them steadily since they got the distress signal. Call Moon Base."

Lamonica called. "LandingPort Station Communications, this is _Lamia_, Starcaptain Tori Lamonica, are you there?"

"_Lamia_, we hear you."

"Any sound out of the Sardonyx Net?"

"Zilch, Starcaptain. Do you want us to keep trying?"

"Yes," Dana said, interrupting. "Don't break."

"Understood. Will you engage?"

"Yes. I'm going in."

"Good luck, _Lamia_ and captains."

The Net was very close. Lamonica said, "Where do you want to enter, Dana?

We're in matching orbit now."

Dana grimaced. He stared at the computer's projection. If something were wrong with the Drive Core, it would be a waste of time for him to enter the s.h.i.+p on the lock nearest the computer. "Someone started to send a distress call." He tapped the plastic screen. "Maybe that someone's still trying. Engage at Hole Four. I have to start somewhere. I might as well try the Bridge." In the vision screen, the big wheel was no longer smooth. k.n.o.bs and strings and struts decorated its silver skin.

Lamonica tipped their seats. "Decelerating," she said. Gravity increased.

_Lamia_ sang, tail extending, thrusting, vision screen pointing outward once again to the brown and white and blue world they had just left.

*Chapter Twenty*

Dana suited up to go into the Net.

Most pressure suits were brightly colored, on the same principle that made mountaineers use fluorescent, orange gear. Lamonica's suits -- she carried four of them in storage besides her own -- were maroon-and-silver striped. They were one-piece suits, from crown to crotch to boot-soles; they contained an air supply and a moisture recycler. They were designed to withstand pressure and temperature extremes of both hot and cold, but you could not wear them for very long; once in one, you could neither p.i.s.s, s.h.i.+t, nor eat.

Hole Four would not engage with _Lamia_'s extensible lock. Dana swam through and fastened it by hand. The lock walls stiffened as atmosphere hissed into it and it acquired gravity.

The outer lock door was jammed. Dana went back to _Lamia_. "I need tools." Tori pointed him at the tool locker: he took a variety, including a cutting laser, hooking them to the suit's magnetized patches. None of them were especially heavy. The outer air gauge appeared to be functional; at least, it claimed there was air in the inner lock. Dana unjammed the door. Whoever had jammed it had done a hasty job. It slid up. There _was_ air in the inner lock.

The inner lock door, luckily, was harder to damage and the vandal had left it alone. Dana closed it behind him but made sure before he moved that the outer lock door stayed up.

"I'm in," he said through the suit communicator.

"Clear, Dana. If you need anything, yell." "You'll hear it," he said. He stepped into the Net. Gravity was normal.

He was standing in an unadorned, white-walled corridor. He flipped through the pictures in his mind of the Bridge, fitting labels to s.p.a.ces; this was Transverse Corridor Four: the Bridge was reachable through the corridor which would be coming up to meet this one on the -- left. The Net was very quiet. He remembered his first impression of it as a Moebius strip or a giant treadmill.

Now he felt it to be something alive, sensing him as he moved, an interloper, through its gut; a metal-and-plastic intelligent worm. In the neutral confinement of the pressure suit, the hairs lifted at the back of his neck.

He d.a.m.ned his hyperactive imagination, kicked the wall, and went on.

At the entrance to the Bridge, he stopped, wary. The huge wraparound vision screens were blank. s.h.i.+elds covered them, the cameras were off. The room was just a big control room, filled with com-units, screens, computer panels, b.u.t.tons, dials, gauges, and pilots' and navigators' chairs. It curved. Portions of the room were separated from other parts by waist-high part.i.tions. Dana walked toward the communications units. Three meters from them, he saw what the part.i.tions had hitherto concealed. The body of Jo the Skellian was lying on the floor. She was wearing a silver-and-blue uniform with the Yago "Y" on the shoulder. He started, with difficulty, to turn her over. She weighed, he guessed, one hundred thirty kilos, and dead weight she seemed to weigh a ton.

She was limp and rubbery; finally he got her on her side and saw what had killed her. There was an odd-shaped hole under her left armpit; about fifteen centimeters long, and about two centimeters wide, it was horizontal, and as precise as if it had been cut with a surgical knife. Dana wondered how far in it went. Far enough to touch something vital, lungs or heart. It had been made with a laser gun; he wondered if he should return to _Lamia_ for a laser or stun pistol. He had been thinking in terms of an engineering emergency, not a human one.

Unsealing the seam of his pressure suit, he peeled it open, and let it fall down his back like a hood. He needed all his senses; and the pressure suit dimmed both taste and smell, though it left sight, hearing, and balance -- the important ones. Now he could smell what his imagination had been trying to explain away: excrement, the death smell. He stood. Adrenalin speeded his heartbeat. He needed to find Zed Yago. He started once again toward the com- units, and again stopped. a.s.suming the s.h.i.+p's intercom was working, and it might not be, he still couldn't use it, not with someone with a laser pistol loose in the s.h.i.+p.

As he walked back to the doorway through the maze of part.i.tions, he tripped over legs.

It was Zed, slumped in a contoured chair, head lolling, eyes closed, his breathing deep and even. He was out, not hurt, but drugged. The slackness of his facial muscles made his face look heavier. His big hands hung limp, nearly to the floor. The someone had a laser gun _and_ a stun gun. Dana knelt and levered Zed's body across his back. As he pulled on the dangling arms, Zed s.h.i.+fted and muttered something. Dana almost dropped him. But the Net commander did not wake.

Dana tried to estimate his weight. Eighty kilos? Eighty-five? He was heavy. The Starcaptain tensed his stomach muscles and straightened his legs, the unwieldy burden hoisted across his shoulder.

A cold voice said, "Put him down."

Dana turned his head. Stooped as he was, he could see very little by just turning his head. He saw a woman in a pale green jumpsuit, reddish hair, brown eyes, right hand holding a laser pistol pointing at him.... He let Zed's body slide back into the pilot's chair. Slowly he straightened, palms out and away from his body.

"Move away from him." The pistol moved a centimeter to the left. Dana stepped in that direction. He was out in the open now, directly in her line of fire, with neither chair nor part.i.tion to hide behind. His back ached and he wanted to p.i.s.s.

"Which did you get first?" he asked.

"Zed," said Darien. "The Skellian hit the distress signal key. I couldn't risk the stun pistol on her; it might not have worked. Skellians metabolize drugs differently than other people. I had to kill her."

"Why?"