Starliner(13)

"The Empress is special, Mr. Colville," Kneale continued. "And I don't mean that she—she and the Brasil—are valuable artifacts, though they're that as well. We can be quite sure there are men on Grantholm and Nevasa today calculating how many troops they could pack aboard either superliner for a lightning invasion of the other planet."

Kneale didn't know how to explain to the stiff-necked young officer across the desk from him that Colville had already succeeded. The very falseness of Colville's beginnings made the man Colville's will created more real—and therefore more useful to Trident Starlines—than a fellow who'd simply walked up the path of success which his birth laid out for him.

"But she's more than that, our Empress," Kneale continued softly. "She's a symbol of all that's best of civilization. She mustn't be perverted from that course."

Kneale read poetry in the silence of his suite during placid moments, Millay and Donne and Vergil. He had never found in verse quite the solemn beauty which the Empress of Earth represented to him.

"I don't entirely follow you, sir," Colville said, cautiously. He was as obviously tense as a cocked trigger spring—afraid that his new superior was mad, and afraid that this was some lengthy charade to inform him that he'd been found out at last . . . which of course he had. He would never believe that it didn't matter that Kneale knew or suspected the truth.

"Were you ever a soldier, Colville?" Kneale asked abruptly.

"I . . ." the younger man said, "haven't been, no. My—"

The pause was to find the right words, because it was already too late to burke the statement "My father was a, a soldier, sir. He didn't talk about it much, but when he died I found a batch of chips from his helmet recorder. I . . . watched them when I found a playback machine."

Kneale's smile was as grim as a granite carving. "From Svent Istvan?" he asked. Thirty-five years ago, Grantholm had intervened on behalf of its nationals trading on Svent Istvan. Several of the battalions had come from Bifrost, one of the worlds already under Grantholm hegemony.

"No sir," Colville said in a colorless voice. The question told him that Kneale suspected—or knew—the truth about his new Third Officer's background. "From Hobilo. During the Long Troubles."

"Right," said the commander, a place-holder while he considered his next words. "Then you have a notion of what I mean when I say that war is the greatest evil that man has had to face since before he was human. Because it's a perversion of skill and creativity; because it focuses all his abilities on destruction."

Colville licked his lips. "Yes sir," he said in the same flat voice.

"Starships are the means of bringing help and communication between worlds, Colville," Kneale went on. "In a war, it's troops and weapons and violence instead. Those of us who understand that evil have to prevent it from happening here on the Empress."

"But Earth isn't going to take sides in a war between Grantholm and Nevasa, is it?" Colville said, shocked into more openness than he'd permitted himself since entering his superior's suite. "Surely not!"

"No," Kneale agreed, "not that. But we have passengers from both planets, going home ahead of the crisis, and we'll be touching down on both planets unless war actually breaks out. It was tense on the run back from Tblisi, but it's going to be a great deal worse on the outbound leg. We—you and I and Lieutenant Holly—are primarily responsible for keeping the cancer from affecting the Empress."

"I wonder . . ." said Colville, turning his keyed-up brain to a problem that involved him professionally rather than personally."—If it wouldn't be a good idea to take both Nevasa and Grantholm off the route now, before the shooting starts?"

He looked up at the ceiling again and continued, "Because as you said, sir, there are a lot of people looking at the military use they could make of the Empress. Both planets have national-flag fleets, but none of their ships has a quarter of our capacity, and—ships can't keep formation in sponge space. Having a large force on one vessel rather than spreading it out in packets on four hulls or more . . . that might be the difference between a beachhead and a disaster."

Kneale nodded appreciatively. "You're quite right, Randall—do you go by Randall?"

"Huh? Ah, Ran, sir. Actually. Though—" Colville smiled in a not-quite-calculating manner. "—I've answered to shithead a time or two. Anything you please. But Ran for choice."

"Staff Side officers traditionally don't stand on ceremony when we're alone," Kneale said, smiling also. "I'm Hiram—unless you screw up royally. Just don't make the mistake of calling Captain Kanawa 'Sam'—or anything else but 'Sir!'"