The Alien Web (Masters of Space Book 2)

  THE ALIEN WEB

  MASTERS OF SPACE BOOK 2

  Robert E. Vardeman

  © Robert E. Vardeman 1987

  Robert E. Vardeman has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1987 by Avon Books.

  This edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  For Sue Baker

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER I

  Barton Kinsolving worked frantically to override the safeties on the starship von Neumann’s control panel. The owner, Rani duLong, had had the safeguard toggles installed by her brother to prevent sudden shifting into hyperspace and destroying the delicate mechanical and quantum mechanical balance in the superbly powerful engines.

  “I don’t see what the hurry is,” Rani said. She floated upside down, her skirt swirling in a kaleidoscope around her tanned thighs. She spun about to be sure that Kinsolving got the longest look possible at what she considered her best asset.

  Kinsolving worked feverishly to get the von Neumann away from Gamma Tertius 4 and the combat lasers being trained on them from below. The officers of Interstellar Materials Corporation dared not let him escape with the knowledge he had uncovered in their secret files.

  Barton Kinsolving knew of the Stellar Death Plan. He knew how men and women in IM plotted nothing less than the genocide of an entire planet of alien beings.

  He swore as he worked. He understood the frustration so many humans felt at the way the aliens treated them. Humanity was a newcomer among the stars, hardly star-faring for two hundred years compared to the thousands of most other species of intelligent beings. Why accept as an equal a race that had yet to earn that privilege?

  Kinsolving understood and accepted the Earth governments’ view that only by working slowly and diligently could humans be greeted as equals one day.

  But the chairman of Interstellar Materials, Hamilton H. Fremont, had chosen a different, quicker, more vicious path. Why wait to be accepted by the aliens who would always hate humanity and consider them intruders on their domain? Kill the “Bizzies,” the bizarres.

  Kinsolving was not certain that Fremont had authorized the genocide; he had been unable to contact the man directly. But other IM directors were intimately tied to the savage plan. Maria Villalobos, Kenneth Humbolt, Liu, Metchnikoff — those were guilty parties. Those directors had authorized the subversion of company property to further the mad scheme.

  They had tried to kill him at the company-run rare earth mines on Deepdig, they had seduced away his lover Ala Markken, they had sent their assassin to remove him permanently.

  Kinsolving enjoyed a moment of satisfaction. He had escaped Cameron and his robot killers on Gamma Tertius. He had escaped with information about the construction of electronic resonance devices that acted like narcotic drugs on certain alien species. And he would thwart their plan.

  “Got it,” Kinsolving cried. The safety relays were shorted out and now allowed manual operation of the von Neumann.

  “That’s not all you’ve got, if you’ve been around her for long.” Lark Versalles drifted into the cramped cockpit and hooked one slender arm around a stanchion. Her blue eyes burned angrily as she glared at a wickedly smiling Rani duLong. Kinsolving was glad that the two women were friends. He would hate to be on the same planet with them if they were not.

  “He’s not yours, darling,” Rani said with some venom.

  “I saw him first. I rescued him — ”

  “Lark,” cut in Kinsolving. “There’s no time for that.” He did not want her telling Rani about his escape from the alien prison world. The fewer who knew that most of alien-inhabited space hunted for him, the longer he would survive. Getting the information to alien authorities about the Stellar Death Plan concocted by Fremont and the others was too important to jeopardize in a petty argument. If the Lorr police found him before he contacted the aliens on Zeta Orgo, he would fail — and Fremont would triumph.

  “Destination, sir?” asked the ship’s computer. “There are programmed routes to most major starbases already in my data banks.”

  “Zeta Orgo 4,” Kinsolving said. “Optimum course; no need to conserve fuel.”

  “Course is being plotted, sir. Do you wish to depart from orbit? We are within a ten-thousandth of a radian of exact launch.”

  “Do it,” snapped Kinsolving.

  “You broke my ship!” cried Rani when the forward vid-screen flared into eye-searing stars. “My brother’s going to kill me for this!”

  “It wasn’t the override or the course setting,” Kinsolving said, as stunned as the woman over what had happened. “They just lasered the shuttle we came up from GT4 in.”

  “But Dinky and the others…” Lark Versalles’ voice trailed off when she realized that she had just lost friends needlessly. Ruthless people with a vision cared little for those in their path.

  “They’re gone. And we will be, too, if we can’t shift out of here right now!”

  His hand poised above the toggle that would shift the von Neumann into hyperspace. Kinsolving took a deep breath to steady himself. So much had happened to him. All he had ever wanted was to be a mining engineer, to experience something of the wonder of the universe by getting away from an overcrowded Earth and — what else?

  There had been Ala. How he had loved her! He swallowed hard, his thick fingers trembling slightly. How he still loved her. If only they had been able to talk before he had been sent to the prison world. He had to find out the full extent of Ala’s participation in the Death Plan. He could not believe she willingly went along with it; she had been a dupe, like him. Kenneth Humbolt had somehow deluded her into believing genocide was the answer to mankind’s woes among the stars.

  He hit the drive-authorization toggle and felt the von Neumann shudder as the powerful engines twisted the fabric of space and contoured new geodesic lines among the stars. A concussion rocked him away from the control panel and sent him flying off into the room, crashing into both Lark and Rani. The three ended up in a pile of tangled arms and legs. Kinsolving struggled to get free. Neither of the women seemed inclined to move.

  “Don’t fight it, Bart darling,” said Lark. “This is fate.” She giggled, then kissed him squarely on the lips.

  “I knew there was a reason I didn’t like you,” said Rani duLong. “You’re trying to keep him all for yourself. I always did think you were a greedy bitch, Lark.”

  Kinsolving twisted and got away from the women. The pseudogravity of hyperspace did not afford him the same weight as on an Earth-sized planet, but it was sufficient for him to gain his footing and scoot free. He spun around and stared at the two women, the blond and thin Lark and the dark-haired, lush Rani.

  “How can you do this?” he asked, more angsty than confused at their behaviour. “Friends of yours just died. They were lasered into plasma by the GT Landing Authority. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  Lark Versalles sighed and shook her head. “Bart, dear Bart, what is death? We all dance around like small chil
dren, reaching out and trying to touch it without really touching it because that means the end of the game. The only thrill life offers is getting closer than everyone else to dying — and bragging about it.”

  “That’s not all there is,” he said.

  “No,” Lark said. “There can be more.” Her blue eyes misted over, and for an instant Kinsolving thought he saw a hint of the real person lurking within the shallow, hedonistic bitch that was Lark’s usual facade.

  The expression faded: But what had she remembered for that brief instant? Who had she remembered?

  The von Neumann shuddered and threw Kinsolving back across the cabin. This time he collided with Rani duLong. The woman looked increasingly angry.

  “Are you sure you didn’t glitch up my ship? My brother’s not ever going to speak to me if you did. Not after I wrecked the von trying to — ”

  Her words were abruptly cut off when all internal power failed, plunging them into total darkness. Kinsolving panicked. Never had he known such total and unexpected isolation. He reached out and grabbed, finding nothing. Robbed of sight, he had the sensation of floating aimlessly, falling down an infinite well, spinning around and around like a particle caught within a black hole’s Schwarzchild radius. The omnipresent illumination in a starship served the purpose of orienting the passengers. Vision allowed them to maintain their sanity in a universe of twisted dimensions and no other sensory clues.

  Kinsolving yelled. His own words echoed inside his skull, but he did not think anyone beyond arm’s reach could hear. Flailing, he tried to find either Lark or Rani. He succeeded only in smashing his hand into a bulkhead — hard.

  Cursing, he forced himself to calm. Panic gained him nothing. Something disastrous had happened to the von Neumann, and panic would only seal their deaths.

  “Calm,” he told himself. “Stay calm and find out why the power failed.” He had often made his way through mine shafts as dark as the ship. He had lived underground, enclosed, crushed into claustrophobic quarters, and had not panicked. Kinsolving’s fear faded and determination replaced it.

  He edged around the cabin until he came to the well-padded contour couch in front of the command console. Kinsolving slipped into it. He tried to picture mentally where the controls had been. Each ship was slightly different, and he had never been aboard the von Neumann before their abrupt take-off from Gamma Tertius 4. But he knew this space yacht could not be too dissimilar from Lark’s Nightingale, left in orbit around GT4.

  Cool plastic toggles marched in solemn lines across the panel. He had to guess what they controlled. The largest one he knew — that had launched them into hyperspace. To toggle it back now without knowing what had gone wrong might destroy the ship completely. Remembered stories of hyperspacial disasters sent icy jabs of fear through his chest. Even in an era when star travel was routine, accidents happened.

  And they were usually catastrophic.

  “This one must be the control for the lighting,” he said to himself. He moved the switch slowly. The pneumatic couch sighed and lost rigidity. Kinsolving cursed anew. He had discovered the acceleration couch control. But the toggle next to the couch control returned a wan light to the cockpit.

  Kinsolving swivelled around and found Lark standing in one corner of the cockpit, her face a pasty white. The chemicals she had injected beneath the surface of her skin lent an ever-changing pattern of colours that only accentuated her paleness.

  “Bart,” she said in a low, shaky voice. “I was alone!”

  “We both were. We all were. Where’s Rani?”

  “I don’t know I…the lights went out and I lost you and her and I was so alone. I don’t ever want to be alone like that again. Never!” Lark stumbled forward and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing as she buried her face in his shoulder. He held her, understanding a part of her terror.

  “We have emergency lighting only,” Kinsolving said, his dark eyes flashing across the scanty readouts. Pleasure yachts ran automatically, with most troubles handled without bothering those humans aboard. “It looks as if we have a major power failure.”

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. He could not discount the chance that the Gamma Tertius Landing Authority had gotten in a lucky shot with their combat laser and had damaged the von Neumann. But they had shifted without trouble. If there had been any malfunction before reaching hyperspace, he knew, the automatics would have aborted the shift. All starships were equipped with such emergency protection.

  He swallowed hard at the thought that he had somehow circumvented the safety circuits when he had rushed their departure. Kinsolving dived under the control panel and spent long minutes tracing the override circuitry. He came back up, shaking his head.

  “I don’t think I caused the problem. Everything appears to be doing its job at nominal.”

  “What happened to Rani?” asked Lark in a pitiful voice. She hugged herself tightly and swayed restlessly. The colourful dyes swirling on her cheeks made her look sickly.

  “No one’s abandoning you,” Kinsolving said as soothingly as he could. “Let’s go find her. Together.”

  The flare of fear in Lark’s eyes died. A weak smile danced on her sensuous lips. How like a small child she was in many ways, Kinsolving reflected.

  “I’m photonic, Bart darling,” she said. “Really and truly. Everything took me by surprise. I can deal with my emotions now.” She straightened, pulling her shoulders back. “I’ve had to before.”

  He did not ask when. She had shown him only one facet of her personality, and it was not one that he appreciated. She had rescued him from the prison world by chance, doing it only to bring a quantum of excitement into her jaded life. Every action Kinsolving had seen Lark Versalles take had been directed toward-one thing: her personal amusement.

  He took her arm and gently led her from the cockpit into the starship’s main salon. The lavish furnishings of the von Neumann rivalled those on Lark’s abandoned yacht. Kinsolving could not comprehend their gypsy lives, roaming from one party to another, seeking only pleasure, any more than he could the vast wealth it took to maintain such a life-style. A recreational ship such as the von Neumann would cost a thousand times what he might hope to earn as an engineer over a lifetime, even with off-Earth differential pay and danger bonuses.

  “Rani?” he called. “Are you all right? Rani?”

  Lark clutched his arm until she cut off the circulation. Kinsolving did not protest. He strained to detect the smallest sound that might give a clue to their problems.

  “Those are the staterooms?” he asked Lark, pointing to a series of closed doors. She bobbed her head up and down so quickly that a long strand of her blond hair fell into her eyes. She did nothing to replace it; Kinsolving knew then how distraught Lark had to be.

  He walked on, not bothering with the sleeping quarters. The galley functioned on low power, a simple meal sitting in the serving area.

  “Is this automatic? Why did Rani fix food?”

  “She didn’t. She wouldn’t,” Lark explained. “She eats only plant proteins from Zenncon 1.” Lark wrinkled her nose at the food. “She’d never even consider serving slop like this.”

  Kinsolving examined the galley computer, tracing back the leads to a junction box hidden in a bulkhead. Several connections inside the box had been fused.

  “It looks as if someone ran a welding laser over this section,” he said. “Or an overload came along the power feed from the engine room.” For an instant Kinsolving stood and considered what he had said. “Damn!” he shouted. Pulling free of Lark, he spun and dashed down the corridor leading to the engine room.

  He reached the outer door of the sealed chamber before he saw it.

  Lark ran into him when he stopped suddenly. Kinsolving held out his arm to keep her back.

  “What is it?” she asked. He silently pointed. She repeated her question.

  The silvery blob clinging to the top of the door leading to the sealed engine chamber shivered as if col
d, then extended tiny metallic probes and pulled itself a few centimetres up. A humming noise filled the narrow passage and the heavy, acrid odour of burning metal made Kinsolving’s nose wrinkle.

  “It’s a robot. Very powerful from the way it’s lasering into the engine room. Unless I miss my guess, another robot has already gotten inside and sabotaged the engines.”

  “What? How?”

  “It can only be Cameron’s doing. Robots like this are his specialty.”

  “Stop it, Bart! You can’t let it ruin the engines. We…we’d be marooned between shifts!”

  Kinsolving had no idea what that really meant. He’d never had the head for the abstruse mathematics describing faster-than-light travel. In ways that caused his brain to itch, the notion slipped around more than Einsteinian space-time considerations. It warped both space and logic. He had been content to be a mining engineer and nothing more. Now he was sorry for this decision on his part.

  “I need something to stop it. A welding laser?”

  “Bart, I don’t blow where anything is. Rani might know, but I doubt it.”

  “There’s no telling where she is,” he said, briefly wondering how the woman had managed to disappear on the small ship.

  “Would any of this help?” asked Lark. She pried open a wall panel to reveal a variety of tools clipped into place.

  “No power tools. Wouldn’t want the ship’s captain hurting herself,” he said sarcastically. Sometimes the designers of such luxury yachts went too far in efforts to protect the owners. Kinsolving hefted a small hammer. In the pseudogravity he might not be able to direct as much force onto the robot as he would have liked.

  Kinsolving braced himself against the bulkheads, pulled back and drove the rounded hammer head directly down onto the robot’s silver beetlelike back. The light hammer slithered to one side, not even scratching the surface.

  But Kinsolving provoked a reaction he had not anticipated. Like the insect it so closely resembled, the robot rolled over, wiry tendrils holding it in place. Kinsolving got a good look at the potent laser muzzle on the underside and realized that the robot had switched from offense to defence.