There were coveralls in the lockers, and spaceboots; and a hot drink from the robot galley added to their rising spirits. They had escaped a force of the best the Thirty Suns Government could throw against them and they were free of Atmion IV. Their ship was damaged, but serviceable ... and they were together.
Deve cut the energy shield and Aram took star-shots to reckon their position. If the Greens had chased them in spacecraft, their long flight under the shield had certainly lost the pursuit, for the space behind them toward Atmion IV was clear. The three stars of the system blazed below them and Aram pointed the ship at the spot where the yellow Kaidor Sun lay just under the range of visibility, shifting into second-stage flight. The three suns of Atmion streaked into a polychromatic blur, and the Serpent plunged through the interstellar night toward the Thirtieth Decant and the unknown.
It was a star-system of ten planets. Aram Jerrold could see clearly that, as was generally the case, one of them was a ringed giant. Under planetary first-stage drive, he brought the small starship down into the system's ecliptic plane. At a distance of one light day, as the Serpent passed the outermost planet, the energy shield was reactivated.
During the days of the trip from the Twenty Ninth Decant and the Atmion Suns, no word had come from Kant Mikal and his party aboard the Star Cluster. Both Jerrold and Deve Jennet had pondered the advisability of trying to establish contact with the larger ship, but finally they decided to maintain radio silence. Aram felt it inadvisable to risk detection of the Serpent so close to Santane's stronghold.
Instead, they resolved to stick to the original plan as outlined by Kant Mikal back on Atmion IV—landing on the third planet of the Kaidor Sun and there awaiting word from the Star Cluster. Meanwhile, Aram could attempt to repair the damage caused the Serpent by the ramming of the locks.
On a dead-reckoning course, Jerrold guided the small spaceship sunward. The peaceful pleasure of the days in space was forgotten now, forced out of his mind by the nearness of Kaidor V and its hellish spawn of destruction. Thinking of the poor creature he had seen in the tunnels back on Atmion IV, Aram was taken with a sick chill. Here, under the alien light of Kaidor Sun, the virus that had degenerated what had once been a man lay quiescent in the sleek shells of uncounted interstellar missiles, ready to leap out and away and carry its mind-destroying power to all the inhabited worlds of the Thirty Suns. Jerrold knew that the use of such a weapon would mean disaster. If war came, it would be a war of stellar giants, smashing planets and minds alike in a hideous carnival of death and savagery. The spawn of the Kaidor Sun meant ruin....
As yet, Aram reflected with faint hope, there had been no break. Provincial Governor Santane was still, as far as anyone outside the Thirtieth Decant knew, a loyal civil servant of the Thirty Suns bureaucracy. The Special Intelligence reports that clicked methodically through the Serpent's subspace communicator gave no hint of rebellion against the banner of the Spaceship and Sun in the Kaidor system. It was possible, too, thought Jerrold, that the Group under Kant Mikal could convince Santane of the folly of open defiance. But even as the thoughts formed in his mind, doubt grew. Kant Mikal had said that Santane had already stopped weapons shipments to the rest of the Thirty Suns. He had no such authority. It would take some time for an investigation to be activated through the ponderous bureaucratic procedures of the Tetrarchy, but investigation there would definitely be ... and Santane could have nothing in his mind but war with the Thirty Suns Government to have taken such a risk. Kaidor Province was the scientific arsenal of the Tetrarchy, and as such strategically valuable beyond its intrinsic worth. It would not be too difficult, Aram realized, to imagine that the man who ruled Kaidor could rule the Tetrarchy. Only it wasn't so. No one system could muster enough power to crush the Thirty Suns without being smashed to rubble itself in the process. A man who had served in a galactic Fleet could understand that. But a man who had served only as a governor could not, and that was the danger....
As a naval officer, Aram Jerrold knew something that Santane did not. He knew that vast navies will fight and destroy long after the hope of victory has gone.
If war came, there would be no victory. There would be only galactic disaster....