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Whale . In one sense, that was precisely what they were going to do.
Mark had initially resented being assigned as Vasloff s babysitter. Being the dissident s liaison had
proved less odious than he had feared. Save for his paranoia on the subject of colonizing the stars,
Vasloff was a good man to be around. He was an interesting speaker and raconteur, with a wealth of
ready stories concerning his life as a young boy on the Kama River. He was also a quick study. He had
shaken off his reaction to news of the Broan Sovereignty in less than a day, approximately three times
faster than average. Moreover, having recovered from the shock, he had studied the alien with an
intensity that reflected his antipathy. He had studied long hours, absorbed scientific reports that even
senior members of the technical team found difficult, and kept his political opinions largely to himself. In
fact, his behavior had been so good that the Project Security Officer wondered what Vasloff was up to.
It had been Director Bartok s fear of a premature public announcement that had caused him to make his
devil s deal with Vasloff in the first place. So far, the head ofTerra Nostra had kept his bargain. Whether
he had done so honorably and willingly, or because he could find no way to transmit a message, Mark
was not sure. Whatever the reason, the secret had kept far longer than Mark thought possible. However,
no secret lasts forever and this one would not either. Luckily, it did not have to.
The public announcement was already scheduled. Two weeks hence, at an hour guaranteed to glean a
huge audience, the World Coordinator would go on holovision and reveal Sar-Say s existence to the
waiting Solar System. The more sensational aspects of Sar-Say s story would be de-emphasized, but
none of what they had learned would be held back. Even couched in the most benign terms, the
announcement was expected to spark a reaction ranging from riots to religious revivals.
However, the reaction to the coordinator s message was not a concern to those aboardParthenon .
They would not be around to see it. If all went well, by the time Coordinator Halstrom spoke to the
assembled masses, they and several thousand others would be embarked on the longest journey ever
attempted.
Thirteen starships, humanity s entire fleet, would make the 7000 light-year journey to the Crab Nebula.
By the time the rioters and the revivalists flooded into the streets of every major city on Earth, the fleet
would be moving superlight through the deep black. Once they slipped Einstein s leash, no power in the
universe could recall them.
CHAPTER 26
The space dock at Lomonnosow Crater resembled nothing quite so much as one of those sports colossi
of the 20thand 21stcenturies, the domed football stadium. The old Space Navy base had been built to
overhaul large exo-atmospheric craft that lacked both landing gear and the structural integrity to survive
terrestrial gravity. Had the captain of any such craft attempted to touch down on the Mother of Men, his
hull would have cracked like the shell of an egg. However, most ships of deep space were sufficiently
strong to survive Luna s gentle one-sixth gravity.
The space dock s original purpose was to maintain the big Space Navy blastships, weapons-festooned
globes more than 150-meters in diameter. Eighty years of peace had taken its toll on the Space Navy.
Most of its blastships and cruisers were in high Earth orbit, mothballed against the day when they might
again be needed. Lomonnosow Base now eked out a meager living overhauling planetary transports and
the Stellar Survey s starships.
The dock had an unobstructed internal volume of four million cubic meters. Its designers had started with
an impact crater, excavated a hollow bowl, and then roofed the bowl over with a multi-segmented dome.
The dome was normally closed, allowing the working volume to be pressurized with a thin atmosphere of
pure oxygen. While the pressurization and pumping systems had added mightily to the expense of the
dock s construction, the shirtsleeve environment it provided had paid for itself through increased
efficiency. Whenever a new ship was due or a job complete, the atmosphere in the enclosed dock was
pumped into storage tanks and the dome opened. Its eight segments lay flat against the Lunar plain,
allowing ships to enter or depart. When open, the dome had the appearance of a sunflower growing out
of the grey-black soil of Luna.
Mark Rykand, Lisa Arden, Mikhail Vasloff, and Sar-Say entered the dock through a tunnel that pierced
the crater wall high up one side. Entering the giant manmade cavern, they streamed to the edge of an
observation platform and gazed down at the activity below. The cold air of the dock had a metallic taste
to it and exhalation fog surrounded their heads as they breathed. The distant throbbing sound of pumps
was more felt than heard. Unlike the humans, Sar-Say s exhalation fog came in short pants. Whether the
alien s rapid breathing was caused by excitement or the thin atmosphere was not readily apparent.
TheRuptured Whale lay at the bottom of the pit that had been hollowed out of the lunar landscape,
perched on a work stand cobbled together from one of the mighty docking frames that had once held
Space Navy dreadnoughts. Overhead, multiple banks of million-candle-power polyarc lamps illuminated
the dock interior, turning its entire volume into a brilliant island of white light. This latter feature completed
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