Tubb, EC - Dumarest 32 - The Return (v1.0) (html).html by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter Nine

Lief Chapman was as hard as a rock, his body angular, his mouth like a trap. A laser had burned out his left eye and half his face during an old raid. Though surgery had replaced the eye and repaired the ravaged cheek and temple a certain oddness remained which gave the impression he stared at things others could not see.

To Dumarest he said, "Have you any idea where these coordinates will take us?"

"To Earth."

"Almost to the edge of the galaxy." Gampu Niall scowled at the almanacs which littered the surface of his desk. The navigator was younger than the captain, but matched him in physical hardness. "It's a long way."

"So?" Dumarest looked from one to the other. "Are you saying you can't handle it?"

"I can guide a ship to anywhere in the universe," snapped Niall. "I'm saying it won't be easy. Stars are thin so far out and so are planets. If anything should go wrong we'll have nothing to rely on but ourselves. I'll have to plot a safe course and it'll have to be done in stages. One mistake could be our last."

The ship burned, seared, twisted by invisible forces created by the death and disintegration of suns. Falling into the maw of a vortex, a warp, a black hole. Caught in local regions of intense strain which could crush a hull or turn a vessel into a ball of incandescent vapour. To freeze it in an eternal stasis or to rotate it into an alien dimension.

Dangers of which Dumarest was aware and he watched as the others frowned over a cluster of charts.

"Once we leave the Drift we'll head to the Solloso," said the captain. "Then to Quegan and the Myrm Cluster."

Niall disagreed. "Not the Myrm. We can avoid it by first going to Sabela then on to Stark. That area is pretty safe. A longer flight, but in the right direction."

Dumarest left them to it, moving through the ship on a routine inspection. The vessel was different to others he had known. One built for a specific purpose now adapted for another. The holds had been partitioned into sections holding tiered bunks to accommodate the enlarged compliment. All personal weapons had been locked away. Life would be cramped, restrained, far from comfortable. Only the officers had the privacy of their own cabins.

Zehava was in the communications shack. She turned as Dumarest entered.

"Earl?"

"We'll be off soon. Check the compliment is settled."

"Nadine —"

"Has her duties. Get on with yours."

As she left Dumarest looked at the operator busy with his equipment. Sending final messages back to Kaldar and among them would be the coordinates he had given the captain. Figures which would take them into the area he wanted to reach, but not those giving the true position of Earth. An elementary precaution against probable betrayal. Later it wouldn't matter. For all he cared the entire galaxy could know where Earth was to be found. But only after he had reached it. Only when he was home.

The firing control was unique to vessels designed for combat.

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