The Voyage of the Star Wolf (26 page)

Hardesty nodded. “And how large an interval would you recommend in this case?”

“I would recommend, sir, that we accelerate for several days at full power, then decelerate the same length of time to burn off the extra kinetic energy. Two reasons. First, it will allow us to check the performance of the rebuilt mass-drivers under the most rigorous conditions; and second, it will place the Stardock well outside the range of probable loci if we're detected going into hyperstate.”

“A sensible suggestion,” said the captain. “Now, let me postulate something else, Mr. Korie. Tor, I want you to hear this too. You too, Hodel. Suppose—you're the enemy. Suppose you know our standard operating procedure is to move away as far as possible before initiating hyperstate. Knowing that, what would you think if you detected a ship going FTL?”

“I'd think there was a starbase somewhere nearby, within a radius of at least a light-day. If I could search for it undetected, I would. Not being able to search for it undetected, I'd sweep the area as thoroughly as I could, hoping to brush the base with my envelope and destroy it—or at least cripple it.”

“Mm-hm. And is there a flaw in that logic?”

“Not really.”

“You don't see the loophole?” Hardesty glanced to Tor and Hodel. “Either of you?” They shook their heads.

Korie said, “I suppose . . . in one sense, as soon as the enemy knows that's your standard operating procedure, and allows for it, then it doesn't matter whether you move off or not.”

“Right,” said Hardesty. “If they see you, they're going to search. At that point, the least likely place to look for the Stardock is your point of initiation and its immediate radius.”

Korie thought about it for a moment, considering the implications. “Okay, but what if the enemy is just lurking and observing. If more than one ship departs from the same area of space, he'd be stupid not to assign that area a very high degree of probability.”

“But what if every ship departing from your Stardock were to move off to the exact same departure point before initiating hyperstate? That would look the same to a distant observer too.”

“It's too easy to check,” put in Hodel. “You rig for silent running and drift in as close as you can to see what you can detect. If there's no Stardock in the area, it's a ploy. Then you start looking for where the ships are coming from.”

Tor agreed. “It's too dangerous. We're better off having ships move to random positions before putting up the envelope.”

Hardesty had been listening quietly. “All right,” he said. “Game that out. Suppose the enemy is lurking and observing ships departing at random. After he sees two or three or ten ships arrive and depart, he's going to start projecting a sphere of possibility. After observing enough departures or arrivals, he should be able to predict the location of the Stardock as being somewhere in the center of the sphere described by these events, don't you think?”

“But it'll take a lot longer to locate the Stardock that way, and he's at greater risk of detection,” said Hodel.

Korie was studying the captain carefully. “All right,” he said. “Neither procedure is perfect, but one has significant advantages over the other. What's your point?”

“
That's
my point, Mr. Korie. These procedures
aren't
perfect.” Hardesty pointed at Korie's chest. “That was Captain Lowell's mistake. He assumed that following procedure was enough. It isn't. I'm not interested in procedure, I'm interested in results. Your enemy is going to be analyzing your procedures. He's going to understand them better than you and he's going
to understand why you do them. That's your weakness. Your only strength is to have the same perspective, to look at yourself as the enemy does—and sometimes break your own rules, specifically to confuse him.”

The captain let his officers consider that thought for a while. “Chief Leen?”

“Engines are clean, sir. No anomalies.”

“Thank you. I'm boosting to one-fifty now.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Hodel. Go to one-fifty.”

“Yes, sir. One hundred and fifty gees.” A moment later, Hodel called out, “Confirmed.”

Hardesty's expression remained unreadable. “You think that's too much strain on the engines, Mr. Korie?”

“No, sir.”

“What would you think if I ordered a boost to three hundred?” Korie tried to visualize the strain relationships in his head. He couldn't. “Uh, I'd prefer to ask HARLIE what he thinks before I form an opinion of my own. But—”

“Yes?”

“I do think it's a good idea to know what a ship is capable of, in case you need to use that ability.”

“That's a safe answer,” Hardesty said. “Very academic.”

“I'm sorry if you don't—”

“I didn't say I did. Don't presume. Let me remind you again that part of the captain's responsibility, Mr. Korie, is to train his replacement. As I've said, I don't think Captain Lowell did a very good job. You're still thinking in textbook terms. Now, before you object—” Hardesty held up a hand, cutting off Korie's interruption, “—you need to go back and look carefully at what I said as opposed to what you think you heard. I
said
that you're still thinking in textbook terms. I did not say that the textbooks are wrong. As a matter of fact, most of your textbook simulations were written by the very same people who discovered the
right
ness of what they wrote by direct experience. I know those books and I know some of the authors. You could not have had a better education.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But—” continued Hardesty, “the very best that a textbook simulation can give you—even the best textbook simulation—is still only simulation. It's the experience of the concept of the situation, not the experience of the situation itself. Simulations give you simulated experience. It remains outside the domain of actual experience. What am I telling you?”

Korie understood perfectly. “There is a difference between an officer who can run a perfect simulation and a blooded warrior.”

“Right. You gave me a textbook answer a moment ago. It's complete, it's perfect, and you'll never be court-martialed for following the book. But it's missing that something that makes all the difference between being a statistic and being the kind of an officer who brings his ship back with a broomstick tied to her mast. Did you ever hear of a captain named Ling Tsu?”

“Who hasn't?”

“I met her once,” Hardesty's said. His voice was surprisingly soft.

Despite himself, Korie was impressed.

“Yes,” the captain agreed. “It was that kind of an experience. I was very young at the time, and she died only a few months later; she was a very fragile old lady by then, but you could still tell who she was by looking at her eyes. She was officially retired, but she still served in a consulting capacity. The story was true, you know—she refused to consult unless she got some time in space every year. She said that decisions about ships had to be made inside ships. She was pure fleet all the way.

“Anyway, I was a junior trainee on a new cruiser. They wheeled her onto the Bridge of our ship for the shakedown cruise and let me tell you, our captain was sweating blood, as were we all. But she didn't say a word. She just watched and listened and somehow she became invisible. For a while. The captain was so scared he was following every procedure in the book. We might as well have been automated; but it was along about this point, while we were moving out to the local horizon, that she leaned forward and poked the captain in the ribs. ‘You got lead in your ass?' she said. ‘Let's open her up and see what this baby can do.'”

Hardesty smiled as he remembered. “She almost got applause—except we were too shocked. We'd been thinking of her as a great lady, but we'd forgotten why she was great. Do you know what her job was as a consultant? To remind young captains to not take anything for granted. Test everything—your crew, your ship, and especially yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” said Korie.

“And my point is . . .?” prompted Hardesty.

Korie looked for the right words and couldn't find them. Instead, he turned forward and blurted, “Mr. Hodel. We worked hard rebuilding this ship. I want to hear her scream. And so does the crew. Go to three hundred gees.”

Hardesty looked at Korie. And
grinned
.

“Mr. Hodel, are we clear?”

“One hundred and three-point-five giga-klicks.”

“Thank you. Stand by for injection.”

“Standing by.” Hodel spoke to his headset. “All stations, prepare for injection.” A moment later, he confirmed. “Ready for stardrive.”

Hardesty referred to his own screen and then gave the order. “Initiate envelope.”

Hodel set his controls and passed the order on, “Engine room—initiate envelope.”

In the engine room, the order was received eagerly. These crewmembers had been too long in Stardock. Leen stood impatiently at the main console. All of the men and women on his crew were wearing safety goggles. Leen couldn't help himself, he punched up a last-check program, waited till his screen flashed green, and then ordered, “Initiation.”

Beside him, two crewmembers inserted their keys into their keyboards and turned them one half-turn clockwise. The board was armed. Leen flipped the cover off the red switch and threw it.

Space warped.

There was a place—a pinpoint hole in the stress field of existence—where the laws of physics transformed from one state to another.

In a moment of time, known as a
quantum second
, that space was grabbed, stretched, englobulated in a moment of pure irrationality, and turned inside-out. Now, it was infinite. Mathematically, at least. At its center hung a silver needle containing ninety-four men and women. The three hyperstate fluctuators on its hull held it firmly in the center of the bubble.

The bubble shimmered and glowed and
held
.

Hodel's board flashed green. He reported it calmly. “The envelope is stable. We have stardrive.” He began to punch in a new course, then he grinned at Tor and added, “Just like a real starship.”

Tor held up her two crossed fingers.

“Belay that chatter!” Hardesty said from the Bridge, but his usual ferocity seemed muted. “Flight engineer—lightspeed times five. As soon as we're clear of the local deviation, boost to three-fifty.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Hodel echoed. “Lightspeed times five and three-five-oh when we clear.”

Hodel tapped out a command and the bubble around the starship quivered. Imperceptibly, it shifted its shape, stretching itself just a little bit farther along one axis. The ship hung motionless within its center; but in real space—in the stress field—the location of the hyperstate blip, or the place where it would be if it were in normal space, began to stretch, began to slide, began to move, became a beam of light and then something faster than that.

And then it was gone. It wasn't anywhere at all.

But inside, in that place where it
wasn't
, Hodel was satisfied. At five times the speed of light, it would take just a little less than an hour to clear the locus of immediate detectability for the Stardock.

“Lightspeed times five,” Hodel confirmed. He sat back in his chair and felt good. On the forward screen, a simulated view showed a grid of demarcation lines slipping past. An actual view forward would have been meaningless. It couldn't exist. It was an irrational concept. Nonetheless, had the sensors been activated, they would have reported a blurred sensation of
something
. Most people found it hard to look at for very long.

Hardesty glanced up. He spoke crisply, “All right. Staff to the table for mission briefing. Oh, and have Chief Leen join us.”

The captain stepped down to the Operations deck, followed by Korie and Brik. They seated themselves around the holographic display table. Tor and Hodel only had to swivel their chairs to be in place. Jonesy took a chair uncertainly, but Tor nodded at him and he allowed himself to relax. One of the Quillas began laying out coffee mugs as Chief Leen stepped up through the Ops bay from the keel.