[ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ] approval." He rose, bowed, and left the room. Nordli turned to Carey. "General, how do we proceed?" Carey let his eyes sweep the others' faces as he thought. They were all on Nordli's side, he saw: Du Bellay, like himself, only because there was no other choice. How many lives were they planning to snuff out?—innocent lives, perhaps, who may not realize what they were doing? "The trouble, Mr. Executor, is that the Peacekeeper forces really aren't set up for this kind of threat." "You've got nuclear missiles, don't you? And ships to deliver them?" "There are two problems. First, hitting the Intruder would be extremely difficult. A shot from the side would probably miss, alerting them as to our intentions. A head-on shot would hit, all right, but the extremely high magnetic fields it would have to penetrate would almost certainly incapacitate any missile we've got. And second, there's no guarantee even a direct hit would do any good. Just because they don't have FTL drives doesn't mean they're primitives—only that their technology developed along different lines. And don't forget, that ship is designed to bore through the edge of a star at nearly lightspeed." "There's one further problem," Dr. Roth spoke up. "Disabling or even disintegrating it at this point wouldn't help us any. The fragments would still hit the sun, with the same consequences." There was a moment of silence. "Then we have to stop or deflect it." Evelyn suggested. "We have to put something massive in its path." Nordli looked at Carey. "General?" Carey was doing a quick calculation in his head. "Yes, either would work. Slowing it even slightly would sent it through a less dense region of the photosphere. Assuming, of course, that he stays with his present course." "What can we put in his path?" Nordli asked. "Could we tow an asteroid out there?" Carey shook his head. "Impossible. As I pointed out, he's far off the ecliptic Page 27 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html plane. Moving an asteroid there would take months." Even as he spoke he was mentally checking off possibilities. Tachships were far too small to be useful, and the only heavy Peacekeeper ships in the System were too far away from the Intruder's path. "The only chance I can see," he said slowly, "is if there's a big private or commercial ship close enough to intercept him a good distance from the sun. But we don't have authority to requisition nonmilitary spacecraft." "You do now," Nordli said grimly. "The government also guarantees compensation." "Thank you, sir." Carey touched an intercom button and gave Captain Mahendra the search order. There was a lot of traffic in mankind's home system, but the Peacekeepers' duties included monitoring such activity, and it was only a few minutes before Mahendra was back on the intercom. "There's only one really good choice," he reported. "A big passenger liner, the Origami, almost a hundred thousand tons. She's between Titan and Ceres at present and has a eighty-four percent probability of making an intercept point on time; seventy-nine if she drops her passengers first. One other liner and three freighters of comparable size have probabilities of fifteen percent or lower." "I see," Carey said through suddenly dry lips. "Thank you, Captain. Stand by." He looked back up at Nordli. The Executor nodded. "No choice. Have that liner drop its passengers and get moving." "Yes, sir." Turning to the intercom, Carey began to give the orders. He was vaguely surprised at the self-control in his voice. — "Well, Shipmaster?" Lassarr asked. Orofan kept his expression neutral. "I have no suggestion other than the one I offered an aarn ago, Voyagemaster: that we change course and continue at reduced speed." "For six lifetimes?" Lassarr snorted. "That's unacceptable." "It won't be that bad." Orofan consulted his calculations. "We could penetrate the outer atmosphere of the star without causing significant damage to the system. We'd collect enough fuel that way to shorten the trip to barely two lifetimes." "That's still not good enough. I have no wish to join the ancestors before our people are safely to their new home." "That can be arranged," Orofan said stiffly. "You and any of the Dawnsent's crew who wished could be put in the spare sleep tanks. If necessary, I could run the ship alone." For a moment Orofan thought Lassarr was going to take offense at his suggestion. But the Voyagemaster's expression changed and he merely shrugged. "Your offer is honorable, but impractical. The critical factor is still the durability of the sleep tanks, and that hasn't changed. However, I've come up with an alternative of my own." He paused. "We could make our new colony in this system." "Impossible," Orofan said. "We don't have the fuel to stop." "Certainly we do. A large proportion of this spacecraft's equipment could be done without for a short time. Converting all of that to fusion material and reaction mass would give us all that we need, even considering that we would overshoot and have to come back." "No!" The exclamation burst involuntarily from Orofan. His beloved Dawnsent broken up haphazardly and fed to a fusion drive? "Why not?" His emotional response, Orofan knew, wouldn't impress the other, and he fumbled for logical reasons. "We don't know if there's a planet here we could live on, for one thing. Even Page 28 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html if there is, the natives may already be living there. We are hardly in a position to bargain for territory." "We are not entirely helpless, however," Lassarr said. "Our starshield's a formidable defense, and our meteor-destroyer could be adapted to offense. 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