Donovan gave a low, appreciative whistle. "You"d like the look of her, Chil," he said.

A tiny sc.r.a.pe of metal; a barely audible creak as of a lid opening. A stronger whiff of lavender as the woman bent close. A soft weight settled on Chilson Dawes" shoulder. For a moment, he sat tense, expectant. Then, he felt a creepy scuttling sensation near his neck. He gave a startled cry and lunged from his chair to encounter cool gla.s.s-the window-under his palms. "What are you!..."

Whatever the thing was, it clung to him. Scores of small caterpillar feet clutched his collar, p.r.i.c.kled over his bare neck.

He shot out a hand for Donovan. "Get it off! Get it-" Gripping the Irishman"s arm, he caught his breath suddenly and froze.

Like a black mist, the darkness that had filled his eyes for three years dissolved. Through the reflectedglare of his own face in the gla.s.s, he saw the freighters and gleaming starships in the port yards, beyond those the dark Martian mountains and escarpments, and above the glimmering stars in the night sky with Phobos high as Deimos sank in the west.

Chilson Dawes forgot where he was, forgot the others in the room, the creature on his shoulder. He covered his eyes with his fists, then looked again. Tears began to stream on his cheeks; he wept like a child, confused, shaking. Donovan had hold of him on one side, and Straf on the other. He was barely aware of them as he stared outward at that awesome vista.

Unexpectedly, the room seemed to rotate. Without turning, he saw Straf"s worried face, older than he"d remembered, then another face, very feminine and quite amused. The creature on his shoulder began to purr softly.

Dawes regained a measure of self-control. Donovan hadn"t lied. The woman was indeed something to see, even in her shapeless lab coat. The creature seemed to like her, too, though Dawes wasn"t sure quite how he knew that. He reached cautiously up to touch the thing on his shoulder. His first impression had been right; it was much like a caterpillar, lightly furred, but nearly twelve inches long.

"I don"t understand," Dawes said, half afraid the miracle would end. He stroked the creature with a forefinger; it nuzzled against his ear, and its purring increased.

The woman laughed lightly. "Neither do we," she said. "A team of explorers found it and its kin on a little mud-ball planet in the Mintaka system. They don"t seem to be intelligent, but we"re not sure. They do have a weird form of tactile telepathy-a defense mechanism, we think, against the numerous predators on their world. As long as you"re in physical contact, you can share sight, hearing, sensation. It doesn"t seem to have a sense of smell, though. And when you feed it..." She laughed again. "I"d put it down if I were you and put up with a few moments of blindness."

Dawes looked at Donovan, then back to the woman. "I only have black-and-white vision."

She nodded. "You"re seeing through its eyes, Mister Dawes, not your own. Those are still quite useless."

"I had this flown in for you," Straf said. "There are only a couple in the entire Sol system. I need you, Chil. Not only for my parents" sakes. We can"t let five thousand people just be slaughtered in their sleep.

Even at translight, our nearest ships can"t reach the Via Dolorosa before she enters Burnham s.p.a.ce.

Only the Sabre can."

"Why Chilson, Colonel?" Donovan demanded. "You"ve had nearly two years to locate and divert this ice-this cryo-ship."

Straf frowned and seated himself on the edge of his desk. His voice turned harsh. "Frankly, we screwed up. Because the Via Dolorosa launched so long ago and is moving so slowly, the bureaucrats in Tracking Control forgot about her. On top of that, the Guard"s been distracted with a lot of pirate activity lately." He paused and rubbed his chin. When he spoke again, the harshness was gone from his voice, replaced with an obvious fatigue. "Last week would have been my parents" wedding anniversary. I"m older now than they were when they launched with the other con-gregationalists. I"d just entered the Guard back then. Maybe I"m getting sentimental, Chil, because on a whim, I pulled out an old star chart my father left me outlining their course. I hadn"t looked at it since I was a punk. When I saw the danger, I started pulling strings and bending a lot of rules to arm the Sabre, then trace you down, to..."

Dawes" mind raced as he considered all the angles. An excitement he hadn"t known in three years filled him. "What do you call this thing?" he interrupted, continuing to stroke the creature. It had a strangely soothing effect."We call it a Mintakan mind-worm," Straf answered.

Dawes scoffed. "You would. G.o.d, that"s unimaginative." He thought for a moment, then addressed the caterpillar. "Okay, little fella, from now on, your name"s "Hookah."" The woman in her lab coat still filled his vision; he wondered what his chances would be of getting a date with her, and muttered, "Because if this whole thing isn"t right through the looking gla.s.s, nothing is." He wiped the last traces of tears from his cheeks and turned his shoulder so that Straf"s face came into view. "And you"re tossing in one h.e.l.l of a fat cash bonus."

Even at translight, our nearest ships can"t reach the Via Dolorosa before she enters Burnham s.p.a.ce. Only the Sabre can.

G.o.d, how it must have killed Straf to make that admission. From the beginning he"d been skeptical of Dawes" project. Once a translight pilot himself, the colonel had done his best to delay funding and make himself an obstacle around which Dawes and his research team had had to dance-because, if successful, Project Sabre meant a total retooling, perhaps even a dismantling, of the Stellar Guard as it existed.

Project Sabre represented that kind of a revolution.

Translight vessels were the fastest ships ever developed by mankind. They had given humans the stars, allowed them to explore, to settle new colony worlds, given man frontiers undreamed. Yet, even translight vessels, traversing hyper-s.p.a.ce, required time to journey from one point to another. Sometimes that time factor was a matter of weeks, sometimes a matter of months. Sooner or later, as mankind kept pushing out, it would be years, until even translight travel would become insufficient.

Project Sabre was the answer to that-the next step. With ma.s.sive engines built into the body of a Foss Starfish, the largest ship in the Guard fleet, the Sabre not only folded s.p.a.ce, it creased it. This fold-s.p.a.ce drive system, Dawes" brainchild, made translight travel slow by comparison, obsolete. Practically instantaneous, in Dawes" opinion it was as close as man was likely to come to teleportation.

There were only two drawbacks. The field generated by the fold-s.p.a.ce drive was, as Dawes liked to describe it, gravitationally sensitive. The ship had to be in deep s.p.a.ce beyond the range of any stellar object before it was activated. That meant the ship had to carry a translight drive as well as the fold-s.p.a.ce drive. This required a big vessel like the Foss Starfish. Nor could any other ship be within a pa.r.s.ec"s distance because of the destructive distortion ripple caused by the field.

It was the second drawback, however, that had caused the Sabre"s cancellation after only a single experimental flight, a flight Dawes himself had piloted. Something about the drive system, or about that brief moment in fold-s.p.a.ce itself, destroyed a human"s optic nerve, leaving a person blind.

Now alone, speeding between the orbits of Ura.n.u.s and Neptune, Dawes sat once more at the controls of his one-of-a-kind vessel. He trembled as his thoughts returned to that first flight. Out beyond the range of Pluto he"d sat, the same point toward which he was heading now. Then, his thoughts had been on far Proxima Centauri. He"d triggered the Sabre, experienced a moment of blinding whiteness such as he"d never known, followed by congratulatory voices from his communications console. Voices rising out of darkness.

He"d barely kept it together long enough to make the re-turn flight home. After that-his shot gla.s.s had never been empty.

Through Hookah"s eyes, he stared at the trigger control. The little creature stirred restlessly on his shoulder as if it sensed his nervousness. It wriggled, and the view shifted from the control to his own ear,then to the back of the cabin.

It didn"t matter if his new pet looked around a little. He didn"t need eyes to fly this ship. He tried to settle more comfortably into his seat as he considered his mission and the New Hope congregationalists frozen in sleep in their antiquated vessel. The Via Dolorosa, they had named their ship, the Road of Sorrows.

An agnostic himself, the symbolism wasn"t lost on him. At the end of their journey they hoped for resurrection and a new life on a new world.

He ran a finger along Hookah"s back; the creature began to purr.

Dawes, too, had unexpected hope for a new life. "Port Authority," he said, activating the communications console. "Redesignate Sabre." That had only ever been the project"s name anyway. "Record new designation, Archangel. Register." He waited, pleased with himself. The archangels were heaven"s warrior cla.s.s.

A voice that sounded like Straf"s came back over communications. "Archangel-authorized and registered. "Now get your b.u.t.t moving, civilian." Yep, the old man himself.

At seven-tenths the speed of light, he streaked by Pluto. Beyond the orbit of the Oort Cloud he pushed his vessel into translight.

He continued to pet Hookah, drawing rea.s.surance, even courage, from the contact, and the creature rewarded him by watching the view screen where stars blazed like fiery beacons. Each one called his name; he"d thought he"d never see them again.

His hand hovered over the fold-drive trigger. He was far enough beyond Sol now, and the computer had his destination coordinates. Still he hesitated. Fold-s.p.a.ce had blinded him before. What if it hurt him some other way this time?

And what about Hookah? Doctor Halama-the woman in Straf"s office-theorized that nothing would happen to the mind-worm, that the creature"s biology was too different. Still, it was only theory. What if he lost this second set of eyes? Hookah shivered on his shoulder, picking up on his fear.

Five thousand lives.

Another trip through fold-s.p.a.ce, or another trip to the bottom of a bottle.

He knew which one he couldn"t face again.

He hit the trigger.

With eyes or without, a burning white light swallowed him, a tiny instant spark that went supernova in his brain and expanded to engulf the stars in the viewscreen, the control console, the ship. Everything vanished into whiteness. He fell, fell, blinded by that light. And he screamed.

Then, he was looking at himself screaming, his mouth wide open, jaw straining. Sweat beaded on his pale face. The muscles in his neck stood out tight as cords, veins bulged.

He looked foolish. Ridiculous. Hookah scuttled to his other shoulder and nuzzled his ear. Dawes thought he looked just as" silly from that side and shut his mouth. Hookah began to purr again.

"I think you"re laughing at me," Dawes said, drawing a finger along the creature"s furry back.

His trembling slowly ebbed as did the adrenaline fear-rush. He marveled that, even blind, he hadexperienced the white light phenomenon, and he wondered again if it was even light at all, or some property of fold-s.p.a.ce itself. It suggested a new direction for his research.

Archangers computer voice reported their position in Burnham s.p.a.ce.

"Scan for the Via Dolorosa" he instructed.

The computer answered: Two point four pa.r.s.ecs to starboard. Just crossing the border into Kaxfen-claimed territory.

Through Hookah"s curious eyes, Dawes watched himself scowl. While he congratulated himself for the pinpoint accuracy of the fold-s.p.a.ce jump, he cursed Straf, who had a.s.sured him the New Hope congregationalists were two days from Burnham s.p.a.ce. Dawes had hoped for time to turn around, reach the Via Dolorosa, and reprogram its course computers to skirt the region.

"Archangel" he addressed the computer, "scan for approaching vessels, known or unknown."

A pause. Archangel answered: Five vessels of unknown configuration approaching at maximum translight.

Kaxfen ships. It took only a moment more to determine that they were heading straight for the defenseless Via Dolorosa. Dawes considered that he might do the Stellar Guard a favor while he was out here and instructed the computer to backtrack probable trajectories for those ships. If they were flying a straight course for the congregationalists, perhaps he could discover the location of their home world, or at least one of their bases.

Meanwhile, he ran some hasty calculations and weighed his options. Six ships, and no idea of the a.r.s.enal he faced. But then, the Kaxfen knew nothing about him either. They had to be wondering where the Archangel had come from. Better, he decided to engage the Kaxfen out here as far away from the congregationalists as possible.

"Archangel." The computer answered Dawes promptly.

"See if the Via Dolorosa"s computers will respond to a hailing signal."

The computer responded: Affirmative. Contact established.

Dawes relaxed a little. Hookah, growing restive, crawled down the front of his shirt and gave him a glimpse of his own knees. He picked the little creature up and returned him to his shoulder. He gave his attention back to the computer.

"Archangel," he called again. "Transmit a continuous recognition signal to the Via Dolorosa." Dawes"

mind raced. He had to a.s.sume that since some form of contact had been established with the Kaxfen, the aliens could read his transmissions. "But piggyback an encoded Stellar Guard priority override command with that signal. If the Via Dolorosa"s computers acknowledge, seize control of that ship. Then re-program its course computers so that it exits Burnham s.p.a.ce as quickly as possible. Determine a new course to its destination, and inform me the instant the ship begins to turn."

That left Dawes to deal with the aliens. At sublight speed, there was no chance the Via Dolorosa could exit Burnham s.p.a.ce before the faster Kaxfen reached it. His fingers danced over control panels. Even blind he could have piloted this vessel; he"d designed every circuit, programmed every data crystal.

He directed Archangel straight for the approaching Kaxfen.Five of the alien ships turned to meet him. One broke formation with the others. Dawes cursed; he didn"t need a computer to guess that lone ship"s intent. In the view screen, through Hookah"s eyes, he watched its energy wake, sizzling like a burning lance across the dark of s.p.a.ce.

The remaining five also changed formation. One took point and came straight for him; two moved to attack from the port side; two more from starboard.

Archangel"s computer addressed him. The Via Dolorosa had accepted the encoded priority override.

Archangel now controlled the ice-wagon, and the lumbering vessel was turning.

"Get it the h.e.l.l out of here!" Dawes muttered as much to himself as to his computer. He thought of the five thousand people whose lives depended on him, of Straf"s sleeping parents, all unaware of the danger unfolding.

He drew a deep breath, and stroked a finger along Hookah"s back. "Okay, little fella," he said, "it"s you and me." And, he added silently, the finest ship ever designed. He resisted a laugh. For the first time in three years he felt alive!

He raced toward the aliens" point-ship. It fired on him, but from a distance beyond the effective range of its weaponry. On the Archangel"s instrument panel, an energy spike registered, then dropped off sharply. Archangel was untouched.

"My turn." He brought the Kleinowskis on-line and counted down ten seconds. Ever closer he drew to the alien point-ship. Then, "Archangel, fire!"

The Kleinowski planet-killers drew on the translight engines for their power. That had no effect on the vessel"s present velocity, however. Across s.p.a.ce twin beams of searing light stabbed. The Kaxfen ship exploded in a t.i.tanic fireball. Archangel sailed through the heart of its vaporizing debris. Dawes watched it all in grim black-and-white.

He placed his palm on the communications console. "Attention, Kaxfen ships," he said with a calm he didn"t feel. "Break off your attack. The sublight vessel you came for is under my protection. Break off now!" He grinned suddenly as Hookah gave him an exploratory view of the in-side of his left ear. He took the creature in one hand and pointed it at the view screen.

Archangel"s computer informed him-the four alien ships continued to close. One of them fired, still too far away to effectively harm him. He touched the communications console again.

"Final warning," he said. "Break off. Or I will seriously f.u.c.k you where it hurts the most." He shrugged, wondering where that might be on alien anatomy.

Though he kept the communications channel open, no response came from the Kaxfen ships. They plunged toward him, drawing their squeeze play tight. An energy beam lanced across the bow.

A clean miss. However, Archangel estimated the aliens were now within weapons range to inflict damage.

"Looks like they need another demonstration," Dawes instructed the computer. "Target the vessel that just fired on us and destroy it."

A second time the Kleinowski planet-killers lanced outward. To starboard, a Kaxfen ship went nova in a horribly beautiful twinkling of disintegrating debris. But unlike the first time, the Archangel shuddered as its lasers fired."What was that?" Dawes demanded. His vision reeled suddenly with rapid views of the console, the view screen, the back of the cabin, his own nervous face. Hookah squirmed in Dawes" too-tight grip. He forced himself to relax; he returned Hookah to his shoulder and stroked the creature to calm it. "Sorry,"

he apologized.

Archangel was speaking. The planet-killers were offline-cause undetermined.

Dawes slammed his fist down on the instrument console. At the same instant, another energy spike registered there. Laser beams danced just beyond the view screen as the Archangel took automatic evasive action. He couldn"t dodge them forever, though, he knew that.

"Computer," he called, "where"s the Via Dolorosa now?"

Just exiting Burnham s.p.a.ce, it answered.

"And the pursuing alien ship?"

Still in pursuit.

"Try the planet-killers again!" he ordered. He cursed Straf and himself; so confident had they been in the big guns they hadn"t installed any secondary armaments. With the Kleinowskis off-line, he was as defenseless as the ice-wagon he"d come to save.

The Archangel rocked under a glancing laser blast. On his shoulder, Hookah quivered. Through the creature"s anxious eyes, Dawes did his best to watch the view screen. The Kaxfen ships drew near. He could almost feel the heat of their beams on his face.

Unexpectedly, two of the enemy ships slowed and hung back, covering him. The remaining ship came on.

An electronically distorted voice crackled across his communications console. "You have invaded our territory," it stated coldly. "Surrender your vessel, human, and prepare to be boarded."

Chilson Dawes experienced a moment of dread and an almost overwhelming sense of failure. He saw himself reflected in a bottle of despair as five thousand corpses tumbled through s.p.a.ce amid the ruptured ruins of their cryo-ship, never to achieve their sought-after miracle of a new life in a new world. Through it all came Donovan"s condescending cluck and Straf"s accusing eyes burning in his brain.

He shook himself and forced himself to think. Planet-killers be d.a.m.ned-his brain was his best weapon.

He couldn"t let the Archangel be boarded, couldn"t let its revolutionary technology fall into the hands of hostile aliens.

Abruptly calm, he sat back down in his chair and placed his hand on the communications console. "I warned you," he said angrily. "Our two species might have been friends, but you forced this debacle. The result is on your heads, you b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

He triggered the Sabre drive system. In the split-instant before the white light blinded him, he saw the resulting fold-s.p.a.ce ripple, strike, and shatter the three Kaxfen vessels.

When the white light subsided, he took a moment to a.s.sure himself that he was all right, and that Hookah was all right, too. Then, by touch alone, he examined the controls. Archangel"s computer spoke up to tell him what he already knew.

He was back where he"d started from, beyond the Oort Cloud, just at the edge of Sol"s diminishing gravitational influence. He"d programmed the ship to bring him home in case of an emergency, or as closeto home as the Sabre drive system allowed. He turned Hookah toward the view screen. Sol winked in the center of it, only a little brighter than the surrounding stars.

Home. How good that sounded now that he knew there were wolves in the outer reaches.

He wasn"t ready, though, to return home. His job wasn"t finished.

"Archangel." He waited for the computer to acknowledge. "Calculate another jump. Estimate the Via Dolorosa"s current position and program coordinates for a fold-s.p.a.ce exit just outside the minimum pa.r.s.ec"s distance with an added five-percent safety zone."

He waited impatiently. Placing Hookah on his lap, he stroked and stroked the creature until it purred loudly. "Good baby," he murmured softly. "Good baby."