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A Peripheral Affair

George R. R. Martin

Copyright ©1973 by George R. R. Martin

First published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1973

Out on the periphery, where the human worlds grew few and far between, a spider's web stretched between the stars.

It was an old web, its strands heavy with stardust. The spiders that patrolled it were fat and rusty, and it had been nearly fifty years since last a fly was snared. But still the web endured, though it had long outlived its purpose.

The worlds the web entwined still bore witness to that purpose, still wore the radioactive scars that told of the ancient struggle that had seared through the Periphery. It had been there, a century earlier, that the expanding globe of the Allied Starsuns of Terra had first come into contact with the rival empire that called itself the KwanDellan BrotherWorlds. It had been there that the long, bitter KwanDellan War had been fought—to no conclusion.

The web had been spun in the uneasy armed peace that came in the wake of that war. Amid a chaotic jumble of Alliance worlds and independent colonies and the home planets of a dozen alien species, the starspiders wove a complex network to catch KwanDellan flies.

The web spinners were the scouts, the swift, lightly armed three-man scouts. They were the smallest starships of all. But they were not small. Each was a quarter-mile long, its decks crammed with sophisticated sensing equipment. In the early days, more than 200 of them prowled the Periphery.

The spiders were the heavier ships, the cruisers and the battlewagons and the dreadnoughts. They were far fewer in number, but they carried the sting. Should a KwanDellan warship venture into the starweb, it would be they who caught and slew it.

But, for fifty years, there had been no warships to slay.

The hostile peace had lasted only a decade. There are many directions in space, and the region called the Periphery was just one frontier. Both Alliance and BrotherWorlds found easier expansion elsewhere.

Trade began as hostility waned. Human and KwanDellan discovered that they had a lot in common and that each had things the other wanted. A profitable business relationship ripened into friendship.

And meanwhile, in other sectors, new wars diverted Earth's attention.

The KwanDellans abandoned their own patrol web as soon as it was no longer needed. But human institutions are not so easily dismantled. The Periphery Defense Force remained. But it decayed.

Some ships were transferred away to fight in newer wars. Others were decommissioned and never replaced. Only a trickle of new ships were sent out to the Periphery to aid the aging starspiders.

The Periphery became a backwater. It remained a turbulent border region where a dozen species met and mingled and fleets of merchantmen plied their trade. But no longer was it the front lines. The explorers and the adventurers had moved on to greener planets and blacker skies.

And then one day a light flashed red at Alliance Sector Headquarters on New Victory. Somewhere out between the stars one of the strands in the web had broken.

Or so it seemed.

* * * *

The monitor room was large and circular, and the holomap in its center was a pit of darkness. From the command catwalk built around the room the men on duty could look down into a mock void where the stars of the Periphery glittered in miniature, and smaller green pinpoints of light scuttled endlessly. The monitor panels themselves lined the walls up on the catwalk; banks of gleaming duralloy and steady green lights.

But now one light had gone red, and one of the pinpoints had blinked out down in the holomap.

Fleet Admiral Jefferson Mandel, the sector commandant, was notified at once, and he strode onto the catwalk almost eagerly. He was a short, bull-like man, with narrow dark eyes and a shining bald head. A row of multicolored ribbons danced on the chest of his dull black uniform while the silver galaxies of his rank spiraled on his shoulders.

His mouth was set grimly when he located the lieutenant in charge of the monitor room. “What is it?” he snapped.

“It's a red light, sir,” the lieutenant replied. He pointed.

Admiral Mandel looked at him sternly. “I realize that, Lieutenant. What does it mean?”

The lieutenant shrugged. “It probably means the monitor computer is out of order. We're checking that now.”

Mandel looked displeased at that. He glared at the red light, glared at the lieutenant, and put his hands on his hips. “Let's assume the computer is functioning properly. In that case, what does this red light mean?”

“In that case, sir, one of our scouts has been destroyed,” the lieutenant answered calmly. “But that's hardly very likely.”

“I'll be the judge of that,” Mandel said. “Is there anything else that could account for this? Besides a malfunction, that is.”

“No, sir,” the lieutenant replied. “Not to my knowledge. The computer on every one of our starships is in constant linkage with our monitor computer here by subspace radio; so we know the location of each ship at all times. When a light goes red here, it means one of our ships has stopped signaling.”

Mandel nodded. “Nothing else that could stop the signal besides an attack on the ship?”

“An attack wouldn't stop the signal,” the lieutenant said. “Nothing short of total destruction would. The ship's computer is in the heart of a starship, heavily armored by duralloy plates and shielded by special force screens. Even the crew would have difficulty getting at it. And there are two independent backups in case of malfunction.

“No, sir,” he concluded, shaking his head. “A ship's computer will continue to function and to signal as long as that ship is intact.”

Mandel looked over at the red light again. “Then it's war,” he said savagely.

The lieutenant looked aghast. “Sir!” he protested. “It's not—I mean—we don't—you can't—”

“Spit it out, Lieutenant,” the admiral said sternly.

The lieutenant pulled himself together. “There's no cause to talk about war, sir. It can't be a KwanDellan attack. It can't be. We've been at peace with the KwanDellans for fifty years, sir. They'd have no reason to attack our ships. Besides, these scouts have elaborate sensors. That's why they're out there. If a KwanDellan fleet—orany kind of unauthorized vessel—had been detected, the crew would have plenty of time to notify us. All we have here is a signal suddenly cut off. Probably a flaw in the monitor computer or the monitor panel itself. We're checking that, sir.”

“You're naive, Lieutenant,” the admiral said. “You haven't seen war. I have. Maybe these KwanDellans disguised their ship as a friendly merchantman until they got in range. Or maybe they've discovered a new gimmick to blank our sensors. All sorts of possibilities, Lieutenant. And this incident stinks of KwanDellan treachery. Those bastards have never forgotten the licking we gave them, you know.”

The lieutenant's mouth was hanging slightly open. “But—but, even so, sir, it might have been some sort of accident. An explosion in the warpdrives, or something. Or maybe the attacker wasn't a KwanDellan. If there was an attacker.”

Mandel considered that. “Hmmmph,” he said. “We'll be playing right into KwanDellan hands, but I suppose we had better check thoroughly first, before mobilizing.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said smartly, looking enormously relieved. He glanced over the catwalk railing, down at the holomap. “We can get a couple of scouts to the last location of the missing craft in an hour, sir.”

“Scouts! Nonsense. The fleet is badly understrength as is, and I can't afford to lose any more ships if the attackers are still lurking out there. Let's send something that can fight back, Lieutenant. Something with a little firepower, like a battlewagon. Or even a dreadnought. Yes, a dreadnought.”

The lieutenant studied the holomap again, his trained eyes making sense out of the tiny dancing lights with practiced ease. “The Durandal is at Last Landing, sir. And the Mjolnir is off Duncan's World. We can get either there in a day.”

“Good,” Mandel said. “Beam the Mjolnir . Give Garris a man-sized assignment for a change. Tell him to use all possible haste. And until we get his report, I want this place on full battle alert. The KwanDellan might be closing on New Victory even now.”

* * * *

In a small conference room on the Alliance Starship Mjolnir , First Officer Lyle Richey handed his captain a thick sheaf of papers. “The reports you wanted, sir.”

Captain John Garris accepted the papers and motioned his stocky, gray-haired second-in-command to a seat. Garris was the younger man of the two, tall and lean with gray eyes and thin lips and jet-dark hair cropped in a military crew cut.

He looked very unhappy at present. “Anything in here I should bother to read?” he asked Richey when the first officer was seated.

“Not much,” Richey replied with a half shrug. “The missing ship was named the Defiance . Standard scoutship in all respects. It was new, though. One of the newest ships in the Periphery. That's unusual, but it doesn't explain anything. It makes instrument malfunction even less likely.”

“Any experimental equipment aboard?” Garris asked.

“None,” said Richey. “There is one thing, though. I don't know what it means, but it's something.”

“Go ahead,” Garris said.

Richey hesitated. “The ship was undermanned. These scouts are all designed to operate with three-man crews. They use eight-hour shifts; so in theory someone is always on duty. But most of the scouts out here on the Periphery have been running on two-man crews for years. We're just not getting the manpower we request, and the ship's computer takes care of most of the routine anyway.

“But this ship—this ship was even more undermanned than usual. Less than a week or so ago, one of its two crewmen got sick. He was detached when the scout neared Last Landing, and the ship was ordered to complete its patrol sweep with only one man, until a replacement could be assigned.”

Garris leaned back in his swivel seat and considered that, looking thoughtful. “You're right,” he said finally. “It's something, but it doesn't provide any answers. And there are an awful lot of questions.”

He began to tick off questions on his fingers. “Number one,” he said, “—if the scout was attacked, why didn't the crew report it? The computer would have detected an attacker. Number two—why didn't they, or he, or whatever, run away? A scout is faster than any warship. Number three—why would anyone attack a single scoutship anyway? To save a war fleet from detection? But they'd have to knock out more than one ship for that. Number four—if it was an attack, who did it? The KwanDellan? But why? That doesn't make sense. Number five—if it wasn't an attack, why did the ship stop signaling? What else could possibly destroy an armed and shielded starship in deep space? Number six—”

“Enough,” Richey interrupted, scowling. “I see what you mean. A lot doesn't fit together.”

Garris nodded. “Admiral Mandel has a theory,” he said, but his expression made it perfectly clear what he thought of the admiral's theory. “He thinks the KwanDellan hailed our ship openly, acted friendly, and then crept up into range and attacked. That answers some questions—like why the crew didn't run or call. But it doesn't explain the motivation for the attack. And theories that explain that don't explain the other things.” He frowned.

After a pause, the captain leaned forward again, and flipped through the papers until he found the crew roster. “Which one of these men was aboard?” he asked.

“Hollander,” Richey replied. “Craig Hollander, junior crewman.”

“Request a facsimile of the file on the man,” Garris ordered. “Maybe that will tell us something. And have someone locate his next of kin and inform them that he's missing.”

The first officer nodded, rose, and saluted briskly. After he had left, Garris continued to turn the puzzle over in his mind.

The captain knew full well what Mandel expected him to find—evidence of a KwanDellan attack. Nothing would please the admiral more. It was common knowledge around the fleet that Mandel was an aging incompetent who had been sent to the Periphery to keep him out of the way. But a war—with him in the front lines—might wipe out some of the admiral's past mistakes and catapult him back into Earth's good graces.

Garris, on the other hand, didn't need a war. He was already indecently young to be wearing a captain's star clusters. And the Mjolnir , although a battle-scarred relic, was still a dreadnought, with awesome firepower and a crew of more than a hundred. Every captain in the fleet who didn't command a dreadnought wanted to—and Garris already had one. The Periphery wasn't exile for him. It was another step on the way up.

But there were still things in his way. Like Mandel, who despised him for his youth and his success and was doing everything in his power to block Garris’ further advancement.

If he could crack this thing—and crack it in a way that made the admiral look foolish—it could only help, Garris figured. Mandel would probably be sent off to still more distant exile. And he, Garris, would get a promotion. Perhaps a transfer to one of the new dreadnoughts, engaging in real exploration.

The captain smiled faintly and began to pore over the papers that Richey had left. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.

* * * *

The service file on Craig Hollander was delivered to Garris hours later while he sat on the bridge supervising the Mjolnir 's methodical sweep through the last known location of the Defiance . He turned to it with interest.

There was a color photograph of Hollander on the file cover, showing a young man of medium height with a dark sun tan that spoke of birth under a sun harsher than Earth's. His hair, so blond that it was almost white, was worn long and combed forward so it fell across his forehead to his eyebrows. His eyes were bright blue, and he was grinning crookedly at the camera, which was rather unusual for a fleet mug shot.

Garris studied the picture briefly, then flipped open the file to begin going over its contents. But he had hardly glanced at the first paper when he was interrupted.

“We've got something, sir,” the crewman manning the sensory monitors reported from across the bridge. “Not a ship. Debris of some sort.”

Garris laid the file atop his command console and promptly forgot about it. “Hook on with tractors and pull it aboard,” he ordered. He turned to the communications officer. “Get me the landing deck.”

“Yes, sir,” the comm man replied. The huge viewscreen that filled the entire forward wall of the bridge flickered, and the starscape it had been showing vanished. Instead, the tired features of the third officer took form.

“We've got some debris that might be from the Defiance ,” Garris told him. “They're bringing it aboard now with tractors. When they get it inside, spread it out on the landing deck and go over it carefully. Check for radioactivity and laser damage. And for any remains of the crew, of course.”

The man nodded. “Right, sir. Will do.”

“I'll be down short...