THE GHOST

    The United Nations Starship de Cuellar was in parking orbit, awaiting permission to land its complement of treaty inspectors.  It was time for me to finish my preparations.
     I did a final equipment check:  chameleon suit, gas grenades, and the computer-aimed grenade launcher.  I knew that my powered armor was ready; the fussiest armorer I had ever worked with issued it that morning.
     The de Cuellar was the first vessel the UN had built especially for inspection duty.  Like the Peacekeepers, it was something the UN had clearly needed permanently since its foundation, but was only now building.  The current mission was to check compliance with disarmament treaties.  Given an entire world, it was easy to hide anything, including prefabricated components to build mile-long dreadnoughts.  So each team included a specialist in snooping around.  One man to check an entire world wasn't much; but it was better than nothing, which was what the UN had in the 20th Century.
     As the commander sounded the landing alert, I sealed my visor, shouldered my pack, and stepped into the cocoon.
     The de Cuellar wasn't built with smooth landings an important consideration.  Her hull shuddered and creaked as we streaked through the upper atmosphere.  The ship wobbled in a semi-random pattern as we plunged lower into the atmosphere.  The cocoon sealed itself around me as the ship's sensors scanned the planet's aerospace detection systems to find the safest release point.
     As usual, the de Cuellar did two complete orbits at the right altitude to leave contrails.  Exactly where this was varied from world to world; on most worlds, it also depended on weather conditions.  On the second orbit, the ship kicked me out at the release point.
     I watched my sensor display as I fell.  The de Cuellar had given my suit's computer the data it had compiled on the approach before releasing me.  The suit continuously compared this data with its own sensors as I fell.  There were no indications of active sensors likely to detect me.  Of course, there are many varieties of passive aerospace defense sensors, but they are all considerably less sensitive than active sensors.  And all my equipment was as close to undetectable as possible.
     I punched up the map and plotted my trajectory, then selected the location to blow my cocoon.  While I waited, I compared sensor data with the suit's preprogrammed maps.
     This was, indeed, a sparsely defended area.  Eleven different radars - five laser and six radio - swept the air around me.  All were of well-known export varieties, and none could detect a modern ceramo-plastic non-ablating reentry vehicle, which was a good description of my cocoon.  My personal equipment consisted, as much as possible, of extremely low-return materials.  All told, an adult pigeon had a greater radar cross-section than I did.
     My greatest risk of detection came from someone on the ground hearing or seeing me.  The area was, as far as I knew, as deserted as a wildlife sanctuary.  The military radar sites were the only known exceptions.  Of course, a corps of light infantry could be hiding in the trees I was hurtling above, but it didn't seem likely.
     The cocoon blew.  Its component pieces, now catching a several-kilometers-per-second wind on the fragile inner side, quickly crumbled to dust.  Only a sophisticated chemical analysis could distinguish the dust from ordinary dirt.
     My suit's gravitic drive started, bringing me to a gradual stop.  I scanned the night-blackened terrain, the visual processor integrating sensory input into a coherent whole.  Satisfied that it agreed with my map, I plotted a course to my first stop and set the autopilot.
     As I flew over hostile terrain, my sensor-enhanced eyes scanning for threats, I noticed how the terrain resembled my boyhood home on Neu Prussia.  The same rugged mountains ringed by fertile lowlands, the same ice-capped peaks, the same deep gorges with swift-running rivers.  I settled in for the flight, the autopilot in charge as I remembered my last day at home.

     I clicked my heels and bowed as my father frowned down at the papers strewn across his desk.  A hidebound traditionalist, he kept a secretary to work his computer for him, and only interfaced using pen and paper.  It was less efficient and slower, but only the eccentric would travel fifty light-years to revive the throne of Frederick the Great.
     "Sit down, Joachim," my father said.  He looked up, taking the reading monocle from his eye.  He felt that a pair of glasses was an extravagance when only one eye needed help; besides, it made him look more like a traditional Junker.
     I sat at attention, as custom demanded.  I thought I knew why he had sent for me, but it wouldn't do for me to begin the interview.
     "My son," he began, "I heard a disturbing rumor.  Some of the household staff claim that you will not accept your commission."
     "Not entirely true, Father," I said.  "I intend to seek a commission in the United Nations Armed Forces."
     A look of rage passed across his face.  After a second it cleared, but I noticed that the artery in his left temple throbbed as he continued.
     "Why, son?" he asked.  "Why will you betray the Fatherland this way?"
     "I don't intend to betray it, Father," I said.  "My analysis of the strategic situation shows that the UN is our first line of defense."
     "We Prussians defend ourselves!" he exploded.
     "If we can, Father," I said.  "We have a minuscule navy, really no more than a close orbital defense force.  Our ground and air forces are well-trained and well-equipped, but our only veterans are generals who last fought as lieutenants.  If we wished to attack an enemy, we would be forced to rent a navy."
     "I see," he said, his eyes slitted.  "How does the UN enter the analysis?"
     "They try to prevent worlds from invading each other," I said.  "When the UN is insufficiently powerful in its own right, it arranges for national militaries to help.  While it has not always managed to punish the guilty, it is usually capable of restoring the prewar situation."
     "If that is your analysis of the strategic situation," he said, "then I cannot object."  He nodded dismissal.  I stood, bowed again, did an about-face and marched out of his office.

     That night I had trouble sleeping.  After spending an eternity tossing and turning, I dressed and went out for a walk.
     My father believed that night air caused illness, and insisted on the family staying indoors from sunset to sunrise.  Knowing this, I dressed in feldgrau, the semi-chameleon suit issued to all cadets in the Junkerschule.
     I slipped out of the house with practiced skill; this wasn't the first time I had taken an unauthorized stroll after dark.  I slipped from shadow to shadow with unconscious ease.  The only time the family retainers ever spotted me was when they used thermal detectors; even to image-enhancing goggles, I could vanish into the night.
     I took a long stroll, a couple of kilometers or so.  As I returned, well-drilled reflexes told me that something was wrong.  I dropped and rolled under the bushes, looking around to see what the problem was.
     With a shock I realized that my room lights were on.  I crawled forward, close enough to see and hear what was happening.
     Father glared as two household servants searched the room.  A pair of heavy, homemade manacles dangled from each of Father's hands.  I didn't know what his plan was, but I was sure I didn't want to find out, either.
     "Not here, mein Herr," the older retainer said.
     "Search the house!" Father exclaimed.
     "His feldgrau is missing," said the other servant.  A chill ran down my spine as I realized that it was Hans, my valet, who volunteered that information.
     "Turn out the house!" Father exclaimed.  "Search the grounds!  I will call Erwin for his dogs."
     I scuttled backward as silently as I could.  I might sneak past the retainers, even with thermal imagers.  But I couldn't sneak past the neighbor's dogs.  Erwin Wagner was a canine gene-splicer, and his scent-hounds had a fame that was as wide as human-colonized space.
     I broke into a slow jog, trading a little of my stealth for speed.  I knew the grounds better than any of the family, better than most of the family retainers.  Perhaps the groundskeepers knew their areas better, but I doubted that any had the intimate knowledge I had of the entire area.
     I vaulted a fence - after years of calisthenics in artificially high gravity, it was easy on a low-gravity planet - and left the garden around the house for the woods beyond.
     Father owned all the land for a dozen kilometers in any direction.  I ran far enough past the woodline to be undetectable, even to thermal imagers, and slowed to a walk as I thought.  I remembered the hills, the streams, the field fortifications I had built as a child.  I knew many potential escape routes.  I could vanish into the woods to any human tracker.  But I had never before considered being tracked by scent.
     I glanced up as a vehicle screamed by overhead.  It was the family's truck, used for the monthly trip to Neu Koenigsberg, half a continent away, for what groceries the grounds didn't produce.  It could easily have the hounds here in half an hour.
     I briefly considered going back for a car, then dismissed the idea.  If I took a car, even my own, Father could have me arrested for theft.  But if I left home with nothing but the clothes on my back - even if they were expensive feldgrau - then he couldn't legally block me.
     I stopped, looking up at the trees.  They were native hardwoods that grew almost as thickly as a tropical rain forest.  I grinned as I realized that most of the trees had interlocking branches.
 I walked to the base of a tree, jumped and caught a branch.  I pulled myself up and began climbing from branch to branch toward the nearest monorail station.

     An alarm beeped, interrupting my thoughts.  I punched up the sensor screens.  The radiation detectors had found a new emission source.
     No matter how well-shielded a reactor was, it still leaked some radiation.  I had a battery of sensors designed to detect these leaks, and the suit's computer could determine the type of reactor by analyzing sensor data. If it was a mass-market model, the systems could even identify reactors by brand name.
     The computer's initial conclusion was worrisome:  a fission reactor, dormant since the de Cuellar had entered the system, had just started up.  Since it had been turned off, but the fissionables had been present, the automatic systems had registered the plant as part of the planet's normal background radiation.
     As the computer further analyzed the radiation pattern, I checked the rest of the background radiation file.  Sure enough, there were at least a dozen possible fission reactors.  Ordinary enough on some worlds, particularly those with large deposits of fissionables and little water, but most unusual on a world with several operating gigawatt-range fusion reactors.
     The locals had apparently assumed that we would search for reactors only with de Cuellar's sensors.  Even given that assumption, it was brazen to run a reactor they were trying to hide with inspectors on the planet.  I sighed as I programmed a new course for the autopilot.  If the locals had reactors lying dormant until the de Cuellar was on the ground, what other camouflaged sources of excitement existed?
     I scanned all my sensors as the suit flew me toward the reactor.  This flight was more cautious, flitting through a dense forest.  The speed was more than I could have handled manually, but slow enough to allow the suit's automatic systems to avoid trees, bushes, fences, and other obstacles.  My course zigged and zagged to avoid what might have been sentries, but probably were just large animals.
     The suit stopped just outside a sensor perimeter.  I checked with my passive sensors, then risked a single burst of ultrasound.  The computer was unsure, but it looked to me like a body capacitance wire.  I traced the wire's faint magnetic emission to detection range to the left, then toward the right.  Sure enough, it ended in a junction box two hundred meters to my right and five hundred meters forward.  Another burst of ultrasound, this time aimed at the junction box, and the computer was still undecided.
     My hunch was a complete perimeter of body capacitance lines, and set the suit to continue near treetop level.
     I flew farther in, until the suit detected another ring of sensors.  They were set high in the treetops, and the suit determined they were probably sound- or motion-detectors.  I took its advice and set the suit to fly slow, just centimeters above the ground.
     Another minute of flight, and the suit pulled behind a particularly thick tree and stopped.  I extended a passive sensor cluster on a monofilament stalk, let them scan for ten seconds, and brought it back.  Replaying the data, I resisted the impulse to turn back.
     A hundred meters past my position, the woods vanished abruptly.  Past the woodline was a cleared space half a kilometer wide around a cluster of buildings.  The space was dotted, at seemingly random intervals, with multi-sensor domes.  These domes included cameras - whether image-enhancing, thermal, or both was impossible to even guess - arrays of microphones, and other sensors that couldn't be categorized with passive data.
     I thought a moment about the woodline's location.  Most rifles, in the hands of soldiers of average skill, had maximum effective ranges of five hundred meters or so.  This had been the case for centuries, due to limitations in human abilities.  Given the cameras and microphones, I doubted that I could get more than ten meters past the woodline before I was detected.  Without the chameleon-cloth layer over my armor, I would probably have already been detected.
     I realized that sneaking any farther was impossible.  I extended the sensor stalk again, this time focusing on the buildings in the center of the clearing.  They included a domed reactor chamber and concrete blockhouse, typical of any reactor complex.  But the radiation leaking out was neutrons, not neutrinos. That meant nuclear fission, not fusion.  The only explanation that made sense was that weapons-grade fissionable manufacture was underway.  I wondered why this reactor complex wasn't seen from orbit.
     Aiming the sensors higher, I saw why.  Stretched over the clearing was chameleon cloth.  A huge circle of it, probably programmed to appear like the forest around it, covered the clearing.  It wouldn't stand up to close examination, of course, but it was good enough to fool the casual glance it had received from de Cuellar's sensors.
     I retrieved the sensor stalk, then had the computer plot a map of the facility.  The map was incomplete, and I filled the gaps with guesses.  I marked several positions on the map and sent the coordinates to the grenade launcher's computer.  Then I stepped from behind the tree and told it to begin firing.
     The grenade launcher chattered for perhaps ten seconds like an old-fashioned machine gun, but each grenade was as perfectly aimed as an unguided ballistic trajectory could make it.  On impact, each grenade spewed its load of sleep-inducing gas in a small cloud.  The small clouds merged to become a large cloud that covered the reactor complex.
     Of course, if the locals had gas masks, it was a wasted effort.
     I took manual control of the suit's gravitic drive and charged across the cleared space.
     Hypervelocity slugs from turreted coilguns flew all around me.  I felt the beginnings of ugly bruises as shells bounced off my armor.  If any of them hit my armor squarely, it would doubtless penetrate the armor.
     Then I was into the complex.  I crashed through the door of what I took to be the control building, letting the armor absorb the kinetic energy as the solid steel door collapsed inward.
     I tossed a grenade ahead of me as I changed from gravitic drive to my own feet.  The gravitic drive might have been faster, but I lacked the precise skill to use it effectively in such tight quarters.
     I ran down the hall, thermal imagers compensating for the red cloud my grenade had made.  I casually knocked aside two guards - they were fumbling with gas masks when they had a clear shot at me - and kicked open the door at the far end of the hall.
     I ducked and rolled as I entered the room.  Bullets from several pistols flew where I had been, some of them hitting the guards outside.  I tossed several grenades - smoke, sleep, tear and vomit - as I sought cover behind an instrument station.
     Apparently the electronics I had chosen for cover were nonessential; several bullets crashed through the panel and embedded themselves in the wall behind me.  For at least the hundredth time, I questioned the UN's wisdom at sending survey technicians out with only non-lethal weapons.  While the battalion of infantry aboard de Cuellar was my backup, it did me absolutely no good now.
     I was trying to convince the grenade launcher's computer that it wouldn't hurt people if it punched holes in them when I heard the gas take effect.  If they were wearing their masks, at least the vomit gas had penetrated the filters.  More likely, they had shot when they should have donned their masks.
     I poked a sensor cluster around the control station and smiled.  I was the only person in the room still functional; the others were either unconscious or incapacitated, depending on which gas had gotten to them.  A few gas masks had been vomited in, while the rest hadn't made it near to the men's faces.
     I stood and crossed to what looked like the central control station.  While the controls were unfamiliar, they weren't too difficult to figure out.  I aimed a visual sensor at the screen as I punched up an operation report.
     It seemed that it was an unusual type of breeder reactor, which purified uranium and created plutonium simultaneously.  While I didn't understand the physics, the computer cooperatively displayed a summary of the theory for the recorder.  I called up statistics for previous operations and recorded them, too.
     It was scary.  This reactor, alone, had created enough weapons-grade fissionables for hundreds of warheads.  Possessing just one nuclear warhead was enough for the UN to invade a sovereign planet.
     I shut the reactor down, taking care to record everything.  Then, after I locked the reactor in non-operative condition, I took a pistol from the nearest man and shot at the control panels.
     Not being an expert, I probably didn't do the most efficient job of destroying the controls possible.  But each panel took enough bullets to let an impressive shower of sparks fly.  I must have cut at least several main power leads; it doesn't take much power to run chips based on single- or fractional-electron transistors, and I doubted that the circuits were more primitive than single-electron chips.
     I placed the last pistol aside - I'd emptied all the pistols into the controls - then paused.  They were strangely familiar.  I looked them over, and then it hit me.  They were an old, familiar type:  Mauser-8, standard issue personal defense weapons on Neu Prussia.
     I looked over the controllers closely.  Most wore a familiar uniform:  the same uniform I'd worn as a cadet in Junkerschule, over a decade ago.
     I called up my suit's data on the planet.  Sure enough, the planet's name, indeed all names, was missing.  I had been so lax and preoccupied in my pre-survey reading that I hadn't even noticed it.  I was furious with myself.
     I called up the data again, giving an override command to all data-skip instructions.  Of course, the data just might not be there . . .
     It was.  The planet was my home, Neu Prussia.  The de Cuellar had landed at Neu Koenigsberg, the capital.  I replayed the recorded display data.  It was in German, not the English that the suit's equipment used.
     I hesitated.  I had joined the UN to protect my home from fierce, warlike neighbors who were waiting for an excuse to sweep the Prussian monarchy back into the dustbin of history.
     But I had just come from those neighbor worlds.  They were rich, comfortable worlds.  Most had no thought of fighting a war.  The most warlike had contingency plans to issue rifles to civilians if attacked.
     Then I remembered the pattern:  a fierce, warlike world, trained into paranoia by its own government, boiling out in a war of conquest.  Unprepared worlds overrun by devastating assaults.  Victory followed victory as unready worlds were gobbled up.  Most conquered worlds even lacked the military resources to mount effective resistance campaigns without outside support.
     Some worlds had gotten away with it.  A few were defeated after running into some multi-stellar government.  The United States, with forty worlds incorporated as "states"; the Second British Empire; the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere.  But most of those who had been beaten back were targets of the UN's own armed forces.
     Bitter experience had taught the UN one fact, which even the politicians in the General Assembly now understood.  There was much less bloodshed if the UN prevented a war than if it reacted to one.
     Where did my loyalties stand?  With my homeland?  As I thought, I realized what had happened.  A generation after first settlement, my home's society was modeled on Prussia just before it unified all the German states into one.
     I decided.  I set the transmitter to broadcast both on UN military and diplomatic frequencies.  After a moment of thought, I added the frequencies used by the local government, too.
     "Probable treaty violation detected," I said.  "Nuclear non-proliferation treaty.  Material for at least one hundred nuclear weapons has deliberately been created at my position.  Several other possible breeder reactors in existence.  Recommend de Cuellar run for safety.  This world will require invasion to ensure compliance."  Then I repeated it in German, just to ensure the Junkers got the message.
     I stuck the pistols in my suit's sample pouch.  I searched the men for more ammunition, and pocketed it, as well.  It wasn't much, but I would need all the firepower I could muster.
     It would be a long war, and I didn't intend to be captured.  Perhaps Father knew what he was doing when he accused me of betraying the Fatherland.  I had made my choice:  I valued all of humanity over the nation of my birth.  A Nockengost backs up his loyalties with action.
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