Death Sentence (20 page)

They lost more time checking the outsides of the ships. Hannah used the external cameras to inspect as much of both ship's exteriors as she could. Both had suffered scrapes, dents, and dings from cable strikes. Nothing bad enough to threaten the hull structure, but certainly bad enough to foul up both vehicles' aerodynamics. It was just as well they weren't expecting to fly either ship in an atmosphere. While it was entirely possible that there was severe damage just out of sight of the cameras, Hannah ruled and Jamie agreed that the dangers of doing an inspection space walk were far greater than the chance of discovering significant damage that they could actually repair.

But even with all those distractions out of the way, Jamie was far from enthused about continuing the search. He felt himself to be every bit as intent a hunter as Hannah, every bit as eager and determined to track down a clue, a lead. But part of that talent consisted of listening to one's own instincts--and Jamie's instincts said they were on the wrong track. They had missed something. Somewhere, somehow, all their logic and searching had taken them off course. He was finishing up searching under one deckplate when he finally decided he had to say something. "Hannah?"

"Yeah?"

"Whatever it is we're looking for--this isn't the way we're going to find it."

Hannah sighed and looked up from her own searches inside a breaker panel. "No, we're not. This isn't working. Unless it does work, and we do find it. But I agree. The odds are against us. The trouble is I don't know what
else
to do. Do you have any ideas?"

"No," he said. "But what worries me is that under the flight plan we've chosen, we light the candle on the
Sholto
in eighteen hours, and we have to cut the
Adler
loose ten hours after that, and let her do her independent burn. And we have to eat and sleep, and get the
Adler
configured for auto and external control and probably about half a dozen other things as well. Even if this search was worth doing, we don't have time to finish it."

"I agree with all of that," said Hannah. "This is probably a complete waste of time. Unless you find the decrypt code under the next deckplate. We just don't know enough to do anything else--and we won't learn anything more until we get on-planet. So until we have to cut the
Adler
loose, or until one of us comes up with a brilliant solution, we're going to keep on searching through this haystack for the needle that's probably not here." And with that, she turned back to the interior of the breaker panel, slowly and carefully studying each section of it before moving on.

Jamie shut his eyes and allowed the sense of weary frustration that he had been holding back to wash over him, just for a moment.
Slogging is part of the job,
he told himself.
It's the only lead we've got, so it's the lead we're going to follow.
That sounded like the sort of thing Commander Kelly would say. And if there was anyone who was right more often than Hannah Wolfson, that person was Commander Wilhelmina Kelly.

Jamie opened his eyes, shook his head to clear it, and moved on to the next deckplate.

Everything went according to plan. Unfortunately. They searched until they were flat out of time for searching, did all the preps on the
Adler
, retreated to the
Sholto
, and lit her engines to start the initial braking maneuver to start trimming their ferocious velocity as they entered the Metran star system.

Hannah insisted on running at five gees for a full four hours, watching every sensor and strain gauge all the time, before she grudgingly agreed to throttle up--very slowly and carefully, over a period of two hours--to twelve gees, but she flatly refused to risk their much-abused spacecraft at anything higher than that, even though all the boards showed solid green. There had been enough surprises.

Hannah brought the main navigation plot up on the largest of the screens on the
Sholto
's control panel. On the left of the screen, slowly creeping toward the right, was the double dot that represented the current position of the
Sholto
and
Adler
. Along the right side of the screen was the bright reddish-gold circle representing the local sun, and, much closer to it than to the incoming ships, the present position of Metran itself.

Hannah didn't bother to display any of the other planets or satellites or other bodies in the Metran system. None of them were going to enter into their problem, and she didn't want to be distracted by them. However, there were two other elements visible in the display: a blue and a red arc, both centered on Metran. They represented the approximate maximum range of ship-detection equipment watching from the planet for a ship under high-gee reactionless thrust. The blue one was far closer to the planet.

It showed what human equipment could do. The red represented the best current estimate for what Elder Race detection systems could do. It was about three and half times farther out from the planet. Anything they wanted to conceal was going to have to be accomplished well outside that range. Inside that radius, they would have to rely on the much trickier task of maneuver-masking, of constantly keeping the
Sholto
between the planet and the
Adler
. On the plus side, spotting a ship with its engines off was a far more difficult task. Once the
Adler
was in her concealment orbit and had shut her engines down, she would be essentially undetectable to anyone's sensors.

"The thing I don't understand," said Jamie, leaning over the pilot's chair and staring at the display, "is why are they only three or four times better than us?"

"Hmmm?" Hannah asked absently as she checked her status boards again.

"The detection range for the Elder Races. Why isn't it a lot better than it is? They've had thousands or millions of years' more time for technical development."

Hannah grinned and raised a conspiratorial finger to her lips. "Shhh," she said. "UniGov doesn't want people asking that question. It could lead to trouble."

"What are you talking about?"

"Actually it's not just the United Human Government. It's
all
the human governments, and
all
the spy agencies. That question gets them nervous. People are starting to notice that the Elder Race xenos are just way, way, ahead of us, instead of way, way, way,
way
ahead. Some people even think
we're
ahead of
them
in some fields. Remember how the Reqwar Pavlat had to call in human genetics experts?"

"Hard to forget," said Jamie. "But what's so bad about us not being so far behind?"

"Because it might make people start to tell themselves that human civilization isn't as weak or vulnerable or insignificant as the Elder Races keep telling us. The trouble is that, even if their detection systems and data systems and star drives are 'only' twice or three or ten times better than ours, when you'd assume that a million years of technology would make them a hundred or a thousand or a million times better--they still
are
three times better than our stuff. And there are a lot more of them than there are of us. If we humans started feeling our oats too much, and started to make nuisances of ourselves, it might just make a few of the old races--like the Xenoatrics on Metran--wake up from their nice long naps and decide to do something about it. And if they wanted to take the trouble, they could render the human race extinct inside of a week. So better not to rock the boat when you don't need to."

"Yeah, I guess," he said doubtfully. "But why
aren't
they a million times better than we are?"

"Pick your theory. Maybe there is some sort of inevitable plateau. Maybe there is some mental block that is innate to all intelligent life--a wall inside the mind that no race can get past. The Elder Races reached it long ago, but we just haven't gotten to it yet.

"Or else there are explicit, objective limits to possible technical achievement, the way they used to assume there was no way to exceed the speed of light. Maybe there
are
limits to what can be done with electronics, computers, chemistry, and so on. The Elder Races have bumped up against them, and rightly assume that sooner or later, we'll hit them too. Or maybe it's all about attitude. Maybe the spirit grows tired. Why go to huge effort to get something that's utterly amazing when you already have something that's splendid? They don't need better than what they have, so why bother?

"They're always so condescending and amused about how hard humans and the Kendari are trying to catch up, trying to buy or steal or create or surpass all the inventions they've had since we were duking it out with the Neanderthals. They pat us on the head and roll their eyes because they know we'll grow out of it, and maybe catch up with them sooner or later--but never, never go beyond.

"Or else you could listen to the people who do technical projections for UniGov.
They
say that if current trends continue, in another century or two, humans
and
Kendari will blow right past what the Elder Races can do." Hannah stared silently at her displays before she spoke again. "And if the tech projection people are right--then you'd better pray that humans and Kendari learn to get along with each other before then--or there's going to be nothing but smoking ruins left where the Galaxy used to be." She drummed her fingers on the control panel and glanced up at Jamie. "But catching up with the Elder Races is a dream--or maybe a nightmare--to worry about later. Right now all we have to do is keep them from spotting the
Irene Adler
. Let's get started."

"Okay, engine stop," Hannah announced. "Confirming hatches sealed on both ships. Closed hatches confirmed."

"Now who's doing call-outs?" Jamie asked, raising his voice to be heard from his seat on the lower deck.

"Hey, you're a bad influence. Now let's see if the docking system really did come through unscathed."

"What do we do if the docking rings
are
jammed together and we can't undock the two ships?" Jamie asked.

"I have no idea," Hannah said. "Let's just hope that thirty seconds from now, we won't have to worry about it." She flipped a switch. "Undocking commenced."

There was a comforting series of rattling
bang
s as the capture latches released. "Okay, that's a good sign," Hannah said. "I'm showing all latches fully released. We're at soft dock now. Disengaging soft seal connections. Stand by for the champagne cork."

There was a loud cartoonish
pop
as the air in the tunnel formed by the two docking hatches suddenly escaped into space, gently pushing the two ships apart. Hannah gave the smallest of taps to the attitude jets and pushed the
Sholto
clear of the
Adler
.

"Okay, we're clear," said Hannah. "You can unstrap."

Jamie did so and scrambled up the ladder to the upper deck to get a better look at the
Irene Adler
as the
Bartholomew Sholto
backed away from her. "Well," he said. "So much for the idea of taking advantage of all that extra search time because we brought her with us. We looked everywhere. It wasn't there. But it
has
to be there."

"Agreed on all counts," said Hannah. "For all the time we spent, all we bought was a whole lot of nothing. And I'm starting to worry that we're going to get another dose of the same down on Metran. What could anyone down
there
tell us that would help us find where Trevor hid it?"

"That's the first time you've called him by his first name."

"Hmmmph. You're right. It is. I
knew
you were a bad influence. Come on, we've got an hour to kill before it's time to relight our engines. Let's grab some dinner."

FOURTEEN

NEW IS OLD

Learned Searcher Taranarak rose from her sleeping pad and prepared to start the next day of her endless house arrest. "Preventive detention" had shifted smoothly into "Protective detention" without any intervening step. What difference was there between being locked up because she might harm others and because others might harm her--especially since both claims were little more than implausible excuses?