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of bulky suits and helmets, most of them bright with identification
markings of one
kind or another.
Bumping his way along toward his assigned battle station, amid the unfamiliar
noises and pressures of the confined environment, Havot found his imagination
gripped, inflamed, by the idea that he could feel the death machines in space
ahead of him, and on all sides, as they came hurtling past the
Symmetry at unimaginable velocities. He could sense their lifeless
bodies, smell them, just outside the hull-
With an effort he brought his mind back to current reality.
Here was the room just off the bridge where all the passengers were to occupy
their assigned acceleration couches until the all clear was sounded.
Superintendent Gazin and Senior Agent Ariari were in the room already. Their
armored suits bore some insignia of the HO office. Havot wondered if
that would make them special targets for the berserkers, but decided, to
his own private amusement, that this was unlikely.
Meanwhile the ship repeatedly lurched and sounded-hull ringing and
groaning like great gongs-under the continued impact of enemy weapons.
Blended in now were the space-twitching detonations of her own guns
firing back.
Here came Becky, in her suit and apparently unhurt, staggering her way
across the unsteady deck to the acceleration couch beside Havot's.
Inside her faceplate he could see her relief to find him still unhurt and
already well protected.
The commodore's amplified voice could be heard, still calm, still in
control:
"Stand by to repel boarders. I repeat-"
Boarders! Something that tended to happen frequently in the space
adventure stories and surprisingly often in real life as well.
Modern defenses were capable of turning sheer kinetic energy
back upon itself. Fighting ships and machines, each muffled in a protective
envelope of defensive force, were often more susceptible to the slow
approach of a grappling and boarding device than to the screaming
velocity of missiles.
Already the ship's brain, taking over momentarily from the commodore,
was reporting in its dispassionate voice that several small enemy attack units
had rammed themselves in through the flagship's force-field protection.
Havot reached out an armored hand to touch that of Becky in the couch beside
his. Beyond her, the other two Humanity Office agents seemed to be lying there
inertly.
Then the chief of the Humanity Office, as if sensing that Havot was looking at
him, turned his head and glared back, doubtless trying to express his
suspicion that Havot would try to take the berserkers' side now that battle
had been joined.
By contrast, Lieutenant Ariari looked too pale and terrified inside
his helmet to be worrying about the suspected goodlife or anyone else. He
looked in fact like a man about to soil his underwear-if such a thing
was possible in a properly fitted suit of space combat armor, with its
built-in miniaturized plumbing.
In the small room there was one acceleration couch still unoccupied,
this one of drastically different shape. The Carmpan had evidently elected to
remain in his cabin. Definitely against the commodore's orders, but it
seemed unlikely that anyone was going to try to enforce obedience in
the case of Fourth
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Adventurer.
And now an arming robot, having evidently concluded its tasks in the control
room next door, came rolling into the passengers'
compartment.
No doubt Gazin and Ariari, if anyone had asked them, would have strongly
objected to either Havot or the now-disgraced
Agent Thanarat being issued weapons. But apparently no one had yet sought
their opinion. Certainly the robot from the weapons
shop was not about to do so.
Instead it proceeded as it had been programmed, rolling along the short row
of acceleration couches, using its metal arms to issue each passenger
his or her choice of alphatrigger or blink-triggered shoulder weapon.
Gazin and Ariari selected theirs mechanically and the robot moved along. Havot
could see even before it reached him that it bore racked on its flanks
rows of what he took to be grenades, hanging there like ripe
tempting fruit, waiting for any eager Solarian hand to pluck. Havot was no
military ordnance expert, but these looked to him like the type called
drillbombs. Just the thing to use when you got within arm's length of a
berserker machine-or someone you didn't like, whether or not he was
wearing an armored suit.
Accepting an alphatrigger carbine with his left hand, Havot used his
right to quickly harvest three grenades, one after another, from the
handy rack. Three, he thought, would probably be plenty.
The drillbombs fitted snugly, as if the space had been designed for them, into
a belt pouch attached to Havot's armor. He held the carbine cradled in
his arm. It was basically an energy projector, whose beam cracked
and shivered hard armor, but could be safely turned against soft
flesh. The beam induced intense vibrations in whatever it struck; in a
substance as soft as flesh, the vibrations damped out quickly and harmlessly.
In hard material the result was quite different.
Hard surfaces could be protected by treatment with a spray of the proper
chemical composition. The robot as it issued weapons was also treating all the
surfaces of friendly armor with chemical protection. The formula was
varied from one day, or one engagement, to the next, to prevent the
enemy's being able to duplicate it.
The aiming and firing of the blink-triggered weapons were controlled
by the user's eyes. Sights tracked a reflection of the operator's pupils
and aimed along the line of vision; the weapon
was triggered by a hard blink. Sometimes the thing fired
unintentionally-when the system was armed and ready, you tended to
avoid looking straight at anyone or anything you wanted to protect.
Alphatriggering was an alternative and even faster system, one considered [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]