Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

Big as a city block, the step-storeyed Lamp of Faith moved through the eternal geodesics of the strat like a glimmering shadow. Riding in support were three escort ships of the destroyer class, designated as expendable in Commander Haight’s despairingly realistic battle plan.

Beyond Node 7 the formation hurtled into the no-man’s-land separating the empire from the Hegemony: a great uninhabited wilderness of over a hundred years’ duration. Once the squadron was futureward of the imperial forward alert posts, the destroyers shot ahead of the larger flagship. It was here, where the entire Earth was a radioactive desert, that the Hegemony’s beta-radar stations would probably pick them up.

Given sufficient warning the Hegemonics might try to set up time-blocks. These installations, though costly and requiring effort and skill, could bring a timeship travelling in excess of a certain velocity to a savage halt, precipitating it into orthogonal time where it was vulnerable. For this reason a timeship usually moved cautiously if it was suspected that a block was being attempted. Yet the Lamp of Faith needed to move fast to arrive at its target with any chance of success.

On the bridge, Commander Haight did not allow himself the luxury of personal feelings. His fatalistic gloom was relegated to the closed corners of his mind as he brought the full force of his attention to bear on the operation in hand.

He had already received the precombat blessings of the Church. The comforter still moved about the bridge asperging each man in turn. As he traversed the room from end to end his cowled figure changed size dramatically due to velocity contraction. In the nose of the ellipsoid he was barely a foot tall.

A gong sounded. The scanman spoke.

‘Enemy approaching. Two items.’

Presently the louvred wedge shapes of the Hegemonic ships appeared on the swirling strat screen. They hovered and turned close by the flagship looking like prismatically cascading towers, showering images of themselves as they kept pace.

‘Release torpedoes,’ ordered Haight automatically.

The torpedoes trundled away without hitting their targets.

‘They are offering tryst, sir,’ the beta operator informed him.

‘Ignore.’

The second beta operator spoke up urgently. ‘Sir, I think Incalculable has gone ortho!’

‘Full speed astern!’ roared Haight.

Their stomachs lurched as the Lamp of Faith decelerated fiercely. The nose of the bridge ballooned in size; the pilot was near normal height.

The three destroyers had been strung out ahead of the flagship in a staggered echelon. Incalculable, the leading vessel, had clearly run into a time-block.

Although the destroyer had probably been annihilated by now, in an instantly withering barrage of fire, the success of his ploy occasioned Commander Haight a grim satisfaction. The two remaining destroyers – Song of Might and Infuriator – had, like the Lamp of Faith, managed to check their speed in time. Slowly the depleted formation cruised through the block region. Instruments on the bridge flicked and pinged as they registered the blocking field, which was designed to retard the c-plus velocity of pi-mesons in a moving ship’s time-drive, thus preventing the passage through time.

The steady thrum of the time-drive changed to a lower pitch. Even at their present speed, too slow for its relativistic field to be efficacious, the block had a damping effect.

Then they were suddenly through it and were picking up speed again.

And now they had passed beyond the Century of Waste and were into the territory of the Hegemony. Their journey now would be short. The Hegemony, unlike the empire, comprised only one node – did not extend over the entire Earth’s surface, in fact. Indeed, as far as was known, only the empire imposed its authority on other centuries. No similar grand design had been detected anywhere in the future.

In terms of history, the Hegemony began at the fringes of the Century of Waste and continued for about a hundred years up to its domestic node, and for a similar period after that. By the time of the succeeding node (Node 10 by imperial reckoning) it appeared to have changed its political character and no longer called itself the Hegemony. What it would call itself after receiving the empire’s attentions was, at this point, a matter of speculation.

‘Several enemy vessels converging,’ said the scanman.

‘Ignore.’

They would be subject to a considerable number of interception attempts from now on. The pilot was busy tracking the Lamp of Faith through the multidimensional continuum in a preplanned zigzag. The manoeuvre had two purposes: to render more difficult any further stopping exercises by means of time-block and to disguise the ultimate target.