Treaty at Doona Page 3

  He brightened considerably as he turned over the possibilities for sowing discord. Certainly, if he insisted on discussing grids, he’d disorganize the meeting so that nothing could be accomplished but a venting of temper. He’d have to be subtle, which had never been his best suit, but so much was at stake.

  Just then a stray phrase from Lorena Kaldon caught his attention.

  “Once again, I want to know if this project will be open for tenders?” She looked agitated. “And who will make the final decision?”

  “Why, obviously, that must be decided by the villages,” Todd said, smiling affably as if he’d been following the discussion all along.

  “In this instance,” Barnstable began, joining in with a verbal pounce, “since the matter concerns more than the villages, the parent worlds must have a voice.”

  Todd lifted one eyebrow and gave Hrriss a long look, which Hrriss shrugged off. That annoyed Todd even more. Was Hrriss blind that he didn’t see how eager Spacedep was to get a legal foothold on Doonarrala?

  “Parochial attitudes must give way to interstellar requirements,” Tanarey Smith said, and Lorena nodded hearty agreement.

  “Yes, but with both Earth and Hrruba complaining about costs already, where is the money coming from?” Todd asked.

  “This project will interest independent financial sources . . .” Lorena began.

  “Don’t you worry about the financing,” Tanarey said.

  “All right, I won’t,” Todd said, “but how does the facility manage itself once it’s built?”

  “Tariff, of course,” Fred Horstmann said, regarding Todd with surprise, as if that source was too obvious.

  “Which includes a yearly rental?” Hrrestan asked in a bland tone. Even Todd regarded his co-leader with surprise at that nicely landed bombshell. Hrrestan dropped his jaw in a smile. “You did not think that we Rraladoonans would let you have a whole subcontinent rent-free from us, did you? A percentage of the annual income . . .”

  Todd covered his eyes and bent his head so no one would see his grin. Maybe Hrrestan wasn’t totally lost to common sense in this matter. In Todd’s mind, however, a hefty addition to the colony’s coffers did not quite compensate for the violation of the Treaty. As it was, Hrrestan’ s remarks effectively silenced everyone—except for the jingling bells of Jilamey’s suit as, first he sank back in his chair, then abruptly sat up to cause more chiming.

  “Of course,” the young entrepreneur said, beaming at his sudden inspiration, “Doonarrala must benefit from the project. But I think it’s only a matter of working out an acceptable figure. Think of all that has already been worked out here on Treaty Island so harmoniously.” He gave his arm a hearty shake, grinning at the effect on those seated around the table.

  * * *

  In the small reception room on board the cruiser which was describing a temporary orbit just outside the range of Doona’s most distant moon, a smartly uniformed Spacedep rating awaited the passenger of an admiralty scout ship that had just arrived. The esteemed visitor, a stocky man in his early forties with a commander’s insignia on his uniform, had a broad spread of shoulders, a, strongly drawn jaw, and sharp, brown eyes that made the rating quail inwardly when they momentarily met hers. There was something almost cold about him. His square, handsome face was unlined except for the disapproving indentations framing his molded mouth. The rating waited at attention while the visitor cleared decontam and slipped out of his pressure suit. The glassteel doors slid open one at a time, allowing him to enter the atmosphere lock, and finally to admit him to the lounge.

  “Welcome aboard, Commander,” the rating said, firing off a perfect salute. “The captain awaits you in her office. I’m to take you to her.” Frozen like a waxwork, she held the pose, waiting for the guest’s reply.

  “Thank you,” Commander Jon Greene said, returning the salute promptly, but not too promptly.

  The rating relaxed subtly, as if the precise timing was what she had expected, and Greene smiled inwardly. Without a single glance back at the scout ship now being swarmed over by a crowd of technicians for its courtesy checkup, he strode off behind his guide.

  Greene surveyed the various work stations they passed, glancing first at the hands and then at the eyes of the crew working at them. Each person, as Greene met his, or her eyes, straightened up involuntarily, and went back to the task at hand with renewed energy. As Admiral Barnstable’s personal assistant, Greene represented Spacedep command in the flesh, and expected efficiency and the stiff-backed respect of subordinate officers.

  Greene himself had come up through the ranks. By virtue of sheer efficiency and drive, he became indispensable to his various superiors, working his way up to a position of trust where he was empowered to carry out tasks that required strategy and thought. By making his commanders look their best, he acquired a vicarious importance.

  In time, he had managed to ingratiate himself with the new head of Spacedep, Admiral Barnstable. Greene was an ambitious man, and hoped to go higher still in time. Who knew what might await him in the future? The chairmanship of Spacedep? A seat on the Amalgamated Worlds Admin Council?

  The Admiral was presently on Doona for the purpose of attending a conference to carve a Spacedep niche in the proposed spaceport and negotiate other details of interaction between the two races. The Admiral was an adequate administrator, and spoke only passable Middle Hrruban, but he was a better negotiator than anyone in the Spacedep hierarchy. Greene knew his own talents would be employed there, as an adjunct delegate, speaking for the rights of those governed by the Amalgamated Worlds Council, to facilitate Barnstable’s agenda. Greene himself was not anti-Hrruban except where the goals of the Hrrubans interfered with what was properly due to Humanity.

  Barnstable recognized Greene’s talents, and made use of them on missions like this one. It was ostensibly a courtesy call, allowing Greene to visit the captain of the Spacedep cruiser, which was passing through Doonan space, for the purpose of asking her to join him at the negotiations. His visit had a sub rosa purpose: the Admiral suspected that Hrruban warships would also be in the area, maintaining a discreet distance from the planet, and Greene’s primary mission was to find out what they were doing. If they were behaving in a suspicious manner, the Admiral wanted to be informed as soon as possible so that he could take appropriate measures. Barnstable wasn’t an isolationist, but he firmly believed that good fences made good neighbors.

  Greene and his escort passed into the rear of the bridge area and skirted the main dais, heading toward an alcove facing it on the left. The officers of the current watch on the bridge glanced up only briefly at the visitor and his escort. No inefficiency here. Greene nodded approval. Overt curiosity in a fleet officer was a fault.

  The metal door slid away into a recess as he approached it. The rating stopped at the threshold to announce him. Beyond the door was a utilitarian metal desk behind which sat a short, muscular woman with ice-blond hair and direct brown eyes that arrested Greene on the threshold. She looked up from her desk monitor as the young rating performed the introductions. Greene felt a tingle at the back of his spine as she summed him up with a glance. A most attractive woman and, by her expression, not unpleased by what she saw. By her record, she was also a successful, intelligent officer, on track for flag rank. A good person to get to know. He smiled.

  “Captain Grace Castleton, I bring you greetings from Admiral Barnstable,” Greene began very formally, approaching her. “I am Jon Greene.”

  Castleton stuck a hand out over the desk, clasped Greene’s, then released it and indicated that he should sit down. Her deep eyes were frank and full of concern.

  “Good to see you, Commander. That’s quick work! We only just heard the Alert.”

  “Alert?” Greene gawked blankly, and the captain frowned at him.

  “Yes, Alert! You’ve come about that orbiting monstrosity out there, haven’t you?
” Castleton swiveled her miniature view screen toward him. On it was the image of a hovering hulk. Shock hit Greene in the pit of the stomach. The odd-shaped vessel was huge. “The system perimeter alarms went wild! Can you make anything of it?”

  The outline, a long, irregular cylinder like a tree trunk, was somewhat familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it. Greene made a point of familiarizing himself with all makes of spaceships—naval, civil, and private. And he had seen one like this recently, too. He concentrated on plucking the circumstances out of his memory.

  “Not the usual design of Hrruban warships, is it?” he murmured, struggling to grasp the elusive recall. With a deft tapping, he brought up the computer telemetry statistics and studied the image, trying to identify it.

  “Can’t be Hrruban,” Castleton snapped immediately. “Furthermore, the ship doesn’t answer any communication signal we’ve thrown at it, and I know all the Hrruban codes. It’s heading for a high orbit around Doona. We’ve our weapons trained on it, though it hasn’t offered any overt threat. But then, how could it?” And her grin was ironic. “It’s not carrying any heavy armament.”

  “None at all?” Greene demanded. “Ridiculous.”

  “Look there.” She pointed at another shape on the screen, so far in the background that it could have been painted on the starry backdrop. Statistics, expressed in hot yellow numbers, inscribed themselves on the screen around it. “See? There’s the biggest registered Hrruban ship, armed to the nines, right where the Admiral thought it’d be. That one set off my weapons sensors all right. High-grade radiation, well-shielded but still detectable. Bastard’s not supposed to be there, but I guess they don’t trust us completely either, with one of their High Council members down there. The way they’re hanging off the stranger, they don’t know where it came from, either.”

  As if in corroboration of Castleton’s assertion, the intercom rang through. “The commander of the Hrruban ship,” a voice said.

  “Put him through.”

  The images faded, to be replaced by the face of a middle-aged Hrruban. “Zis is Captain Hrrrv. Your other ship refuses to answer our hails.”

  “Captain Castleton here. It’s not one of ours. Can’t you identify it for us?” she asked pointedly.

  “One cannot identify what one has never seen beforrre!” the Hrruban said, snapping his jaw shut.

  “Then, something new? A Doonan dreadnought built in secret? It would be within their philosophy to build a ship without guns,” Greene murmured softly, knowing he was not in the intercom’s audio range. The instant he realized that Captain Castleton had heard it and was glaring at him, he gave her a facile smile as if he’d meant to be facetious. Castleton was not stupid and, while she couldn’t express political opinions, from her expression it looked as though she might entertain pro-Doona leanings.

  “I doubt that very much,” she said drily. “Doona has no heavy-metals resource to produce a ship that big, much less a space dock that could construct one.”

  “Then where is it from?” Greene asked. His inner agitation increased.

  Of all the possibilities he could have anticipated in coming to Doona for this conference, the incursion of another alien race was not one of them. Another race of aliens becoming involved in the already complicated political dance between the Humans and Hrrubans would not please Admiral Barnstable. A new variable in the equation would be the last thing he wanted. And the faint familiarity Greene felt for the ship on the screen plagued him.

  “I’d sure like to know,” the captain replied, staring at the screen, “but I’m rather short on answers, and I’ve initiated all the approved procedures for contact. Captain Hrrrv, shall we pool our readings?”

  “You have obtained some, Captain?”

  “I’m seeing the same thing you are, Captain.” Castleton shook her head slowly from side to side. “Science Officer, have you anything to report?”

  “Proceeding with routine scans, sir.” Even over the intercom, his voice held little expectation of success.

  The outline of the massive ship, Greene decided, attracted the eye. It was such a peculiar shape. A central tube pierced through an almost globular center section. From the upper and lower parts of the tube, smaller clusters sprouted, almost like tumors in a tree. It looked harmless, but then so did a land mine, he mused.

  “We have life-form readings, sir,” the science officer reported. “But, sir,” he added, “I think there must be something wrong with our instrumentation or the stranger is somehow scrambling them.”

  “How so, mister?” Castleton asked.

  “Too big. Neither Humans nor Hrrubans grow ’em that size, sir.”

  “Captain Hrrrv, do your life-form readings concur with ours?” Castleton asked. “Patch readings through to Captain Hrrrv.”

  The next moment Hrrrv nodded solemnly.

  “Let us report the presence of zis vehicle and its anomalies to our superiors immediately. Over and out.” As soon as the Hrruban’s image had faded, Castleton called for her communications officer. “Get Admiral Barnstable on the horn.” She frowned as Greene raised a hand for her attention. “Belay that. Yes, Commander?”

  “He’s in the middle of a conference with a number of civilian officials, Captain.”

  “Noted, Greene,” she said crisply, but she smiled to take the sting out of her brusque reply. “Use Command Code, Barnet.”

  * * *

  “Admiral Barnstable,” the Treaty Island aide said in a low voice, bending down to the Admiral. “Message from Captain Castleton, Command Code.”

  The old man looked around for the audio pickup. “Can you pipe it in here, son? Don’t care to leave present company even for a Command Code!” He gave a snort. “Whatever is up Castleton’s nose now?”

  “Admiral?” A woman’s voice, sounding agitated, echoed from the satellite feed. The pickup was audible only to those nearest the Admiral.

  “Yes, Captain. Nice to hear from you. Something go wrong between you and my envoy?”

  “There’s a matter of extreme importance . . .”

  “Well, Grace, spit it out,” the Admiral ordered.

  Her words pinged crisply from the speaker. “There’s an intruder, a huge ship beginning entry into distant orbit around Doonarrala. I’ve never seen anything like it in space before. It’s seven times the size of Spacedep’s largest flagship! Captain Hrrrv can’t identify her, either. I’d appreciate it if you’d come upstairs and take a look, sir.”

  With this information, those who heard erupted into surprised protest and consternation. In a few seconds, everyone knew the substance of the message. Second Speaker glared nervously around him, as if expecting the intruder to appear in the room. A young Hrruban wearing the single bandolier belt of a Treaty Island employee ran into the room and slid to a kneeling position on the polished wooden floor beside Hrrestan. The aide began to whisper urgently in the leader’s ear. Hrrestan’s eyes narrowed, and he rose to address the gathering.

  “That was confirmation, my frrriends, if we needed it. An unknown ship of great size entered our system over three hours ago, and it has made full orbit. Ze space centers are on rrrred alert. Until we know more, I think we may consider zat we are being invaded.”

  “Why do we have to assume,” Todd asked in a low, angry voice as he and Hrriss ran for the nearest comlink terminal in the corner of the room, “that we’re being invaded just because it’s a strange ship.”

  “Because it’s big,” Hrriss murmured, inserting his sleek body into the chair before Todd could, “and no one recognizes it.” His long fingers flew over the keys, his partly bared claws clacking. Using an entry code, Hrriss hooked directly into the computer net used by the three Doonan space centers. Panting, Ali Kiachif peered over his shoulder.

  “That,” Todd exclaimed with awed respect as the scan started, “is truly one big mother!”

  Castle
ton hadn’t exaggerated: the stranger was approximately 7.4 times the size of a Spacedep flagship, and of no configuration Todd had ever seen before.

  “Do we classify zis scan?” Hrriss asked, his talons flexing slightly in and out over the keys.

  “Let’s just hope that we’re not too late,” Todd said, “and that someone isn’t linking into the net right now. We don’t need a panic. Classify it, need-to-know clearance only.”

  “Just what I was about to suggest,” Admiral Barnstable said, dropping a hand on Todd’s shoulder.

  “Hrrestan?” Todd looked up from the screen to his co-leader. Barnstable might suggest but he was outside his jurisdiction right now. Hrrestan nodded agreement, and pulled Barnstable back a little way.

  “Ze knowledge will become common soon enough,” Hrrestan said with a little sigh of regret. “It is for ze leaders to preparrre others to receive it. In ze meantime, we will be gearrring ourrselves frrr whatever may follow.”

  “And if the intruder is hostile! Who will protect us?” other delegates demanded. Kelly stood, watching, her arms wrapped around herself but showing no sign of fear.

  “Zere is no need to assume ze worrst,” Hrriss said resolutely, echoing Todd’s feelings, “before all facts are known, is zere?”

  “We don’t have to assume,” Todd added, supporting Hrriss, “that a stranger, any stranger, comes only with hostile intent.”

  “That big?” Tanarey exclaimed. “What else could it have?”

  “I’ve got a fully armed ship on alert upstairs,” Barnstable was saying at the same time. “It’s ready in case of any emergency.”

  “We don’t know if we have an emergency yet, Admiral,” Todd said. “We have a visitor, not a proven enemy. Hell, it isn’t shooting at us, is it?”

  “Enough of this,” Barnstable said firmly. “I want to see this mystery visitor”—he shot Todd a sardonic look—“with my own eyes. I’m going up to the Hamilton immediately. As head of Spacedep, I need to be where I can make informed decisions as soon as sensor data are received and analyzed.”