Espionage (industrial), n: the use of spies by a corporation or the like to acquire the plans, technical knowledge, etc., of a competitor.
Chapter 15 "Ceres Base, this isOdin," Hohenheim said. "We are preparing to take up orbit around Ceres. Please advise us as to any particular orbital vectors you wish kept clear." "The sky's wide open, Odin."That was the easy-to-recognize Australian-accented voice of Bruce Irwin."Just make sure you don't cross over Nobel's path, and you're good. Welcome to the outer system, mates." "Thank you, Nobel, and it's good to be here." "Congrats on how well that mass-beam is working, too. I think we might all have to start changin' over to those. This six-month ferry deal is getting a mite old." Hohenheim laughed. "I admit, Captain Irwin, I much prefer going straight from here to there. Our engineers have been working on a design which might work to retrofitNike. I would not be surprised if it could be adapted forNobel as well." A female voice responded."Really? Dr. Secord speaking. I'd be very interested in looking at those." "I will of course have to clear it with my superiors, but in the current spirit of cooperation between our groups, I feel sure that can be arranged.
Now, on another subject, Ceres. Is Madeline Fathom available?" The unmistakable harmless-sounding soprano voice answered."Fathom here, General. How can I help you?" "Well, let us be completely honest-off the record, so to speak. We at the E.U. are quite sure that you have found some items or data of interest already in your stay-the sudden reassignment of two of Ares' finest engineers was a strong hint, you see. I also am very much aware that there are at least five times as many of us as there are of you, and you haven't the space to house us, let alone maintain security. So I would like to have you give me specifics on where we may and may not go, rather than have us pretend that this really is a totally open and public installation of the U.N. with nothing whatsoever to hide." There was a light chuckle following his speech."I see. And in return we can then feel free to give you the ability to explore other areas with us?" "Joint cooperation and expansion of the base in areas you have yet to reach does sound more interesting than playing a game of shadow-chasing, doesn't it?" "It does, General. Let me discuss details with our staff here, but I thank you for your candor. While I have played that game often, I don't particularly like it." "No more do I. We shall speak later, then." The immediate pleasantries concluded, he cut off communication with the IRI/Ares base and turned to face Horst Eberhart. "I would like an immediate conference with you, Dr. LaPointe, Mr. Fitzgerald, Ms.
Svendsen, and Dr. Meyer," he said. "Please gather everyone in the conference room-meeting to begin in one-half hour." Hohenheim unstrapped and floated himself to the exit, then drifted/slid his way "down" to the habitat section, stopping briefly to use the facilities and then to grab a sandwich from his room. Long experience had taught him to always start a meeting with an empty bladder and a full stomach. That removed all pressures of urgency except those of the actual issues, and-in more competitive meetings-often gave you a small but significant edge over the less prepared.
He entered the room, which had not the one-third gravity of theNike but instead nearly normal gravity. That could be done because ofOdin 's larger radius and the increased rotation speed of the habitat ring. The general saw that the others were already waiting.
Good, no delays. He disliked wasting time in meetings. "Thank you all for coming so promptly. As you know, we are entering Ceres orbit and will be shortly in position to join our colleagues of the IRI and Ares." He saw Richard Fitzgerald give a momentary smile at the wording, but no one else was looking in that direction. "Obviously, they will have things they wish to keep from us, and, eventually, we hope to be in the same position. Right now, however, I am interested in conducting our presence here with the least possible amount of friction. Ceres Base is putting together a list of places we may go and places they prefer we do not go. I intend to accommodate them, even though legally I might be able to argue that we have the right to go anywhere other than, perhaps, life-supporting control areas. The European Union is currently interested in cultivating the friendship of certain people who have, shall we say, unique advantages and resources. "That said," he continued, "I am sure that everyone here knows that one of our major goals is to obtain information which will be of material benefit to the Union-and which, I assure you, will be of material benefit to all of us as well. As I recall, Dr. Meyer," he said, addressing the tall British woman on his left, "you were rather annoyed by the severe information restrictions the United States attempted to impose on theNike expedition." Barbara Meyer nodded shortly. While she had gotten along with most of theNike crew, she had never quite gotten over being shortstopped and silenced by Madeline Fathom. This had eventually led to her leaving the original Phobos crew and signing up with the E.U. once theOdin was clearly well along.
"While I would not encourage any of you to attempt to directly violate the rules," he said smoothly, "I do wish to emphasize that in this case Iwant you to find out everything you can, especially when it comes to new and interesting scientific and technical information.
Anything of real value will be credited to you, of course. Dr.
LaPointe." Anthony LaPointe looked up alertly. "Sir?" "You will be working very closely with Dr. Conley, I am sure. You and Horst Eberhart have shown excellent teamwork already in the development and implementation of our navigation systems. You will continue to work together, although Mr. Eberhart's talents as a programmer and system engineer may of course be requested by other members of the crew as needed. You have what may be the most uncertain, yet potentially most important, mandate. Your main task is to keep an eye out for any trace-however small-of data which leads us toanother alien installation. I will point out that the restrictions we agreed to only apply to this base on Ceres." He turned toward Horst. "Mr. Eberhart, while again I caution you against directly violating any of the guidelines set down by the people from Ares and the IRI, I would like you to devise methods whereby if we are, in fact, the first to find certain information about another Bemmie base, we can eliminate direct references to this information from their systems. At least, for long enough to enable us to reach such a base before our competitors. Is this possible?" Horst frowned. The general knew that the earnest young engineer did not really approve of such maneuvers. It was those same misgivings that had led Hohenheim to see to it that some of the security preparations under Security Chief Fitzgerald's direction were not known to Eberhart, who otherwise had a hand in the software engineering of virtually every system onOdin. But Hohenheim felt that Horst's loyalty would outweigh his personal issues. It was therefore mildly gratifying to see the young man respond with a nod, after a brief hesitation. "Yes, General. Not easy, though, and I'd rather not have to do it if we can avoid it. A.J. Baker's down there, and hiding stuff fromhim isn't going to be easy." "But he is not a programmer like you?" "In his specific area, he's very good. But no, he's not a programmer. If he's not directly watching us-and putting bugs on us would be a direct privacy offense we could take action against-I think I can pretty much hide anything." Fitzgerald's eyes narrowed. "Bugs?
You think he could do that without us knowing?" Horst laughed. "Baker didn't get his reputation for nothing, Mr. Fitzgerald. Sure, hecould.
Those motes he uses are microscopic. But he's also very close to an anarchist in some ways. He might spy on people, if he had to, for his own personal reasons, but he wouldn't ever try to be Big Brother. And if he tries to work through more normal distributed systems, I can detect him." The security chief settled back, looking only partially convinced. "Mr. Eberhart, you and Mia"-the general nodded to Mia Svendsen, sitting just across from Fitzgerald-"will also likely be working withNobel 's engineer if, as I expect I will, I get permission to give them information on upgrading their vessels to mass-beam designs. You are the expert on the control systems while Mia is the actual expert on the engine systems themselves. This will be a profitable exchange for both sides, as the various E.U. corporations involved will be building the driver systems, so you may enjoy full openness on that little aspect of our visit. "Other than that, our people are to explore where they're allowed, find out what we can, enjoy the limited amenities, help expand the working and living areas of Ceres Base, and in general be helpful, friendly, and alert to any interesting tidbits of information. Follow all the directions of our hosts except where I have noted otherwise, and we may find this to be a quite enjoyable little jaunt." "Do we know how long we're staying?"
Mia asked. "That is indefinite at this time. I would expect at least several months." He answered several more minor questions and then, after giving everyone another chance to ask questions, dismissed the meeting. He caught Richard's eye as the security chief stood. "A moment, Mr. Fitzgerald." Once the others had left, he closed the door.
"How are your preparations?" "All set," Fitzgerald said with satisfaction. "Testing the hidden control layers worked fine. Was a little dicey with Eberhart always nosing around, but I don't think he's seen anything." "Well, with any luck, all your preparations will be a waste of time." "We can hope." Fitzgerald's tone was not precisely in agreement with his words. The general gazed levelly at the Irish mercenary. "Please understand that I really do wish to avoid conflict. And that means I want you to work very hard to do that.
Including getting along with your opposite number." A muscle in Fitzgerald's cheek twitched, but his voice betrayed nothing. "Fathom."
"We knew she had been sent out with her husband. It's clear that she's running security here." "Then-meaning no offense, sir-you're a real optimist if you think you're going to pull off something under her nose and not get into a spitting match. She doesn't trust anyone on Earth except her darling boss-I pity her hubby, if he ever gets seen with anything else vaguely female-she doesn't miss the smallest thing, and she lives for the payback if something ever goes wrong."
Fitzgerald shook his head in cynical satisfaction. "No, we'll be needing my 'preparations' before this is all over, you can bet on it.
But you're the boss, General. I'll make nice with her. She's still easy on the eye." And I suspect you just described yourself a lot more than her, Hohenheim thought. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering if Bitteschell had made a misjudgment in choosing Fitzgerald. The man was a professional, good at his job, flexible, and didn't question the goals of his employers. But he seemed a bit too eager to be the one to solve problems with his own personal approach.
And that speech about Fathom didn't make the general at all comfortable; it sounded very much as though Fitzgerald had a score to settle with Fathom. "See to it that you do. Politely, and watch your approach. Don't give her the slightest excuse to complain." Fitzgerald nodded. "I'll be the soul of courtesy, I promise. We don't want to give her any excuses, you're bloody right on that. And I think I'll keep most of my men well out of the way up here. Some of them aren't the best at keeping their mouths shut, at least around someone like her." "That's probably a good idea. Thank you." He watched his security chief exit. And felt his misgivings intensify the moment the door closed and Fitzgerald was out of sight.
Chapter 16 "So, how much power are we talking about here?" Jackie leaned forward, studying the modifications which reflected the wide-flung rings that had been visible behindOdin when the huge E.U. vessel was approaching. "Accelerating a ten-thousand-ton vessel at a hundredth of a g is a million newtons. That's not so much. But I know that building the driver for the mass-beam was a major effort, and it uses a lot more than that." Horst Eberhart smiled. "You know the NERVA drive well, and some others, but I'm guessing not so much the mass-beam?" She glanced at him sharply, but then saw that the smile was a purely friendly one, the smile of one engineer to another, saying: I've got some cool stuff to show you! It was not at all sarcastic or derisive. And that's what he's here for, she reminded herself. Whatever cloak-and-dagger might be going on, here at least they could be straightforward. And that's a really, really nice smile.
"No, I didn't study anything on mass-beams except the basic concept-throw stuff from way over here to hit something there, to push it on its way." "Yes, that's the basic idea. But as you say, the devil is in the details. That million newtons is what has to actually bedelivered to the ship." "Inefficiency in the driver makes that larger in actual cost?" He shook his head. Jackie frowned. "No, I'm missing a fundamental issue, and I know I'm going to kick myself when you tell me." "Probably. I did." He activated a little animation showing a simplified mass-beam driver and a cartoon ship. The driver threw little balls at the ship and bounced them off a plate on the ship's base. "See, I throw the mass at the ship, it bounces off, ship moves forward. Keeps moving forward. Then I have to throw next mass, but ship is moving faster now. The best momentum transfer is when the speed of the mass is about twice the speed of the ship, so to make the best transfer throw my mass must be a little faster this time-" Jackie smacked herself on the forehead. "Of course! When you start the ship going, you only have to accelerate the particles to twenty centimeters per second, but by the time you hit thirty kilometers a second you need to be throwing them atsixty kilometers a second. Basically since you're using them as the ship's fuel, you have to do what the ship would have done if it was carrying them along-spend the energy to first accelerate the fuel to your speed, then give it that extra oomph for the hundredth-g. So that means that you're using…" She did some quick calculations. "Wow! I get over a hundred gigawatts constant?" "Youare good," Horst said, his tone very respectful. "You picked up on the whole thing much faster than I did. I can't tell you the exact numbers for our assembly, because that's restricted information. Which is silly, in my opinion, since if we pushOdin to the limit, you will know the numbers anyway." "So, you could actually get a little more acceleration speed out of it to begin with by cranking up the wattage, though it'd be less efficient." "Not much point, though. Constant acceleration builds up quickly enough. Good for launching things and getting them out of the way, I suppose." "How exactly do you stop, though? It's like a solar sail that way." He shook his head. "Not quite, Ms. Secord." "Please, call me Jackie." He flashed a white-toothed grin. "And please call me Horst. The idea is to build many collectors and accelerators and put them around the solar system, eventually. But if you know where you are going, you can send some slow stuff ahead of you. Catch as much of the regular beam as you can to store for fuel, use that, then-" Jackie laughed. "Oh, that's clever! You can either bounce the particles off, or catch them as fuel. So after you empty your tanks on the first decel, you start slowing down using the slower cloud of stuff sent before you left.
That refills your tanks, so you can doanother stop burn, after already doing one and having the slow cloud slow you up more. Hmmm… and the slow cloud can be more concentrated-massive-because you have the energy to send the stuff faster. So you send more stuff slower.
There'd be a lot of fancy tradeoffs, but I can see that would work nicely. How do you keep the beam focused, though? At a few hundred million miles I'd think it would be, well, alot of kilometers across."
"I thought that, too. But look, here is an image of one of the fuel particles." The image that popped up was surprisingly recognizable.
"Faerie Dust? You're sending tons of Faerie Dust?" "Faerie…? Oh, yes, Mr. Baker's nickname for it. Not nearly so complex. It has to be simple. Tons of fancily designed material would be expensive, and you need many, many tons. There is a special plant dedicated to the whole operation. Very simple overall design, with just enough capability to home on target signal." "Signal? Oh, I see. You use something like a laser pointed toward the driver, and the particles use that as a homing beacon-they can use sunlight and the solar wind to steer themselves toward you. Very nice. And they'll really concentrate down this far?" She indicated the large ring designs, which extended to a maximum diameter of about four timesNobel 's habitat ring, or somewhat over a kilometer across. "Yes. Not a problem. The swarm of particles tries to stay concentrated. Uses very little power and only needs small corrections every few hours." Jackie studied some of the parameters. "It's still going to be expensive. I find it hard to believe so much has happened that makes all this possible." "A few years makes a big difference. You left Mars two years ago for Ceres."
"God. It really has been that long." She shook her head. "If they're making superconductor cable that large, it'll be a great investment.
Right now I guess your accelerator must spend a lot of time idle, so if other people were paying you for it that would defray costs." He shrugged, something very noticeable with his wide shoulders. He seemed far more athletic than the average engineer. That piqued Jackie's interest, which had already been aroused. She was quite athletic herself and always had been. "The money side of it doesn't interest me," he said, "but I would guess so. Do you want to go over installation details?" "No, not right now, Horst. I know more than enough now to be able to inform Dr. Glendale and let him know that I think it'd be a great idea. Until I find out whether we're going for it, details would just be more of a tease than anything else. Besides, we've been at this for five hours." He blinked. "Really that long?"
"Check for yourself." An impulse came to her, which she began to stifle from automatic reflex. Then… Well, why not? "We could quit for the day. Nobel just finished downloading our copies of the new films you brought with you. Would you like to watch one with me?"
She bestowed her own white-toothed grin on him. Which, she knew, was quite a gleaming affair, especially against her complexion. Her mother had been Indian in her ancestry-American Indian, mostly Choctaw.
Judging from the evidence, at least some of that ancestry had been of African origin, too, although that showed in her dark skin, not her features. Horst Eberhart's eyes widened, and for a minute she thought he'd refuse. But then she realized his hesitation was simply the natural shyness of someone who, like herself, was normally cautious in personal relations. She thought of it as the Cursed Wallflower Syndrome. "Well… yes," he said. "I would enjoy that very much."
She shut down the engineering station and floated up, grabbing his arm. "Then let's be off." She felt a delicious pang of self-conscious worry and anticipation she hadn't felt in years.
Chapter 17 "I swear, these guys were animated by the Japanese,"
A.J. growled to himself. "HentaiJapanese animators. Everywhere I go in this ship's design, I find tentacles." "That's your dirty mind reading into things. Just because the control cables are long, slender, flexible things that extend outward from the-" "Bah, Joe. I say again, bah. Just don't blame me if Bad Things happen to our female crewmembers if we get any on board." A.J.'s real annoyance, he had to admit, was due to the sheer volume of superconducting material he kept finding-to a great extent in the apparently extendable field-control and shaping units that lay coiled and quiescent in the alien vessel's hull. Dust-Storm's best new Faerie Dust had performed magnificently, but the job was far bigger than he'd ever imagined, and they had had to ask for a number of additional supplies since. Even the highest technology couldn't fix the superconducting cable if all the materials weren't there to fix it. "And," he muttered, "we're gonna need a buttload of power to run this thing, even if we get her working."
"If?" Reynolds' voice responded from somewhere inside the ship. "You know, that doesn't sound at all like you, A.J. Since when did you start doubting we could do anything?" "He's in a bad mood because he met Jackie's new boyfriend last night." "Joe," A.J. said calmly,
"remind me to kill you after the shift." "Jackie has a boyfriend?"
"Horst Eberhart," Joe answered, ignoring A.J.'s threat of mayhem. "One of theOdin 's crew members," "You'd better not saythat in front of Jackie, orshe 's likely to kill you," A.J. pointed out. Then he added:
"Jackie's insisting they're 'just friends,' Ren. Which is probably true, technically speaking, given that the cramped conditions we're living in make going beyond 'just friends' pretty tricky. My guess, though, is that Jackie would be quite happy to see that status change before too long. So would Horst." "What do think of him?" Ren asked.
"Seems like a nice guy. He's smart, that's for sure." Ren's puzzlement was clear over the link. "But then, A.J., I don't understand why you aren't in a good mood. You aren't jealous, are you?" "It'sJoe saying I'm in a bad mood!" "Well, you are. I heard you cursing at your sensors not long ago." "I'm certainly not jealous." A slight pang of guilt. "Well, no more than I am of any other pretty girl I know well."
"Anyother pretty girl? I really must warn Helen of your approaching midlife crisis." "Killed after the shift, Joe! Remember that!" "Mars couldn't do that-what makes you think you can?" A.J. tried to glare at him, but couldn't really keep it up. He sighed. "I guess it's because I like him, Ren." There was a slight silence. "Youdo know that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, A.J." He sighed and rolled his eyes, putting down the imaging probe he had been using. "Maybe not. But that's the truth." He wasn't even sure he could explain it to Joe. Not without sounding silly, petty, childish, or all three. Helen might understand. The Bakers had invited Jackie and Horst to have dinner and visit with them the prior evening. A.J. had been ready to be suspicious and to even put the fear of God-or A.J. Baker-into Horst if necessary. Instead, just the way the tall, muscular, handsome Eberhart entered, a little bit behind Jackie with a friendly but almost apologetic look on his face, put A.J. off his stride. That was the look of a man meeting his date's parents and worried he might not make a good impression. Given that Jackie was only a little younger than he was, that seemed pretty funny. Of course, Helen was older than Jackie-not that she looked it much-and her real parents were hundreds of millions of miles off, so maybe it made sense. Sort of. Then, during dinner-Joe Dinners, of course-Horst had responded quite openly to any questions they had. He didn't seem to much like the security chief on boardOdin, but other than that he just admitted straight out he was supposed to watch for useful stuff but mostly just work with them. Which was only fair, A.J. supposed. The E.U. had to be going nuts trying to find a way to get what they'd see as their fair share.
Horst was also very impressed by A.J., which made it even harder to be hostile to him. When a man's telling you how much he admires your work, it's awfully difficult to maintain the right level of paranoia and suspicion. So Horst had talked. And they'd watched a movie, and talked some more, played some four-way Trivia, and somewhere in there A.J. had realized that he really did like Horst Eberhart…
Partly, he supposed, that was because Eberhart was like him. Except he was several years younger, taller, probably more athletic and certainly better looking. And apparently without A.J.'s ego problem.
In his entire life, A.J. couldn't ever remember meeting someone who made him feel like he could fade into the background. Eberhart was like… like Glendale. Without knowing it, and that made it worse.
A.J. rolled his eyes, grumbled another curse, and cut off outside communication except for emergencies. "Fine, so I reallyam starting to feel kinda old. Stupid. And anyway, as long as he cares about Jackie, assuming something gets rolling there, that's really what matters." He began to direct the work of a new batch of Faerie Dust motes along the next section. "Helen was right-time for me to stop acting like the brainy kid genius and instead just be who I am. And that's a guy who's got a hell of a lot going for him-not the least of it being that he's married to Helen." He grinned. "And there's one thing Horst can't compete with!"
"What exactly is bothering you, Mr. Fitzgerald?" Hohenheim saw Fitzgerald grimace. "Nothing in particular, General. It's the waiting.
Most of the jobs I've been on in the past, I was the one in charge of the timing. Bloody annoying to be sitting here waiting for one of our eggheads to find what we need." "Other than that, how do you gauge the situation?" "Pretty good, actually, if I look at it from the outside.
I've managed to keep away from Fathom. She knows I'm here, no doubt of it, but I guess she doesn't want to push things any more than we do.
Dr. LaPointe hit it off really well with their astrophysicist, Conley-turns out the two of them have published in some of the same journals and knew each others' work, so they had a common ground. One good thing about the time element is that it's given us a lot of chances for the initial suspicion to die down. Conley and LaPointe are both going over the alien data that they've been getting from the noteplaques. A whole bunch of them turned out to have astronomical-related data on them. That's a big break, I don't think I need to tell you." "Indeed it is." The general nodded thoughtfully.
While it was A.J. Baker who was credited with the first two discoveries, it was Conley who had discovered the third, and in the long run Hohenheim expected that it would be the astronomers and their allied fields that discovered the best leads to new alien finds. They were, after all, the ones most likely to be studying the right material. "I'm more worried about Eberhart," Fitzgerald said. "Didn't mind him getting friendly with the locals. After all, it might make things a lot easier in the long run. But I'm worried about his developing relationship with that IRI engineer Secord, which has the potential to go way beyond 'friendly.' That could cause problems down the road." "Horst is a very loyal and honest man. The latter makes it a bit difficult for him to do anything underhanded, true, but the former makes it so that I can depend on him to do his part when the time comes." Fitzgerald shrugged, running a hand through his short graying hair. "I guess. And it's not like we're going to ask him to hurt anyone." Hohenheim noted that there wasn't a trace of irony or self-persuasion in that last sentence. Richard Fitzgerald honestly did not see that from the point of view of people like Horst Eberhart or Anthony LaPointe they were going to be asked to harm their new friends. Might be, at least. In ways that were probably legal and not physical, and ones that they had intellectually accepted when they took the mission. But it would be harm nonetheless. The general expected the two would still carry through, but he was quite aware of the hard choices he might be asking his men and women to make. It concerned him that Fitzgerald appeared to be totally blind to that.
Granted, it could be argued that Fitzgerald's attitude was the correct one to take for a man in his position. The Irishman was not theOdin 's commander; he was its chief of security-which, being honest, meant that he also doubled as the informal head of whatever industrial espionage was carried out by theOdin 's crew. It wasn't his job to be liked, or to make people happy: it was to make sure that the entire mission succeeded. That said, Hohenheim was still concerned. He was particularly concerned because he hadn't been allowed any say-any input at all-in the selection of the mission's head of security. That was… odd. Normally, a commanding officer on such an expedition, especially one as experienced as Hohenheim, would have at least been consulted in the matter. The fact that he hadn't been led him to wonder if Fitzgerald had been given secret instructions.
By… whomever. Hohenheim was not naive. He knew full well that the power structure of the European Union's space program was complex and involved a number of sometimes antagonistic forces. It was indeed possible that some powerful people or agencies in the EU were using Fitzgerald as a tool. "Secret instructions" was perhaps the wrong way of putting it. Hohenheim doubted very much that Fitzgerald had been told to do anything radically different from the mission Hohenheim had been given. The problem was more a matter of parameters. Two men can both be told to do the same task. But if one of them is also privately instructed to let nothing stand in the way of success, then the task itself can become transformed. Especially if the man involved is someone who has difficulty making distinctions or seeing limits to begin with. He restrained a sigh. There was no point in brooding on the matter. In all likelihood, nothing would ever happen that might bring the underlying problems to the surface. "What about the secrets?" he asked. Fitzgerald grinned. It hadn't taken long for the crew ofOdin to figure out that there were at least two major secrets that theNobel personnel were trying to hide from them-and doing pretty well at it. One of Fitzgerald's priorities had been to find out what those secrets were. From the expression on his face, he'd clearly met with some success. "I know what they're hiding now. Well, not all the details, but I know for sure one of them. Took me a while to figure it out, mainly because, well, they're damn good for civilians. Fathom's work, probably, but what I mean is that someone's briefed them on how to say a lot without actually revealing anything. I had to sort through a lot of nothing and get our analysts to go over the secondary and tertiary material before I could get a handle on what they were doing. "Anyhow, the boffins involved are engineering and hard-sciences people, especially particle physicists and… but you don't need the details. Long and the short of it is that the aliens were melting ice here on a really grand scale for some project of theirs, and they think they've found the generators that let them do it." Hohenheim froze. He could see his own reaction was gratifying to Fitzgerald.
"Fusion." "Fusion. They're virtually certain now, and from some of the work they're doing I think it may be something they'll be able to get working in some reasonable time. Not in weeks or months, but we're not talking twenty years, either. The E.U. or the U.S.A., now, you might be talking even less time. These boys and girls haven't got those kinds of resources, though." He pulled out a data stick. "I've got the outline of an op on there that should let us grab the critical data and send it to HQ. With that as a head start, we'd get working fusion ahead of these guys and could announce it as our own innovation."
General Hohenheim stared at the little data stick. The idea had its temptations. There was no fuzziness about whether such a discovery would be worth the effort. Working, efficient fusion technology would have essentially inestimable value for applications on Earth or in space. And Richard Fitzgerald's assessment was almost certainly correct, in that even with the considerable brainpower they had available, the IRI-Ares consortium simply didn't possess the resources to bring that technology out as fast as the E.U. could. If Fitzgerald's operation worked, the benefits would be immense.
However… Hohenheim shook his head. "No, Mr. Fitzgerald. This isn't the operation we are supposed to perform, and there are huge potential risks. This well exceeds the level of duplicity we were intending to use. And without seeing your plan I can still tell you that there would be a significant risk of people being injured. You cannot be certain of obtaining this critical information without any confrontations." "Very minimal, sir." Fitzgerald looked at him as though he wished to argue, but didn't. In some ways that worried the general even more, as Fitzgerald wasn't usually given to much restraint in speaking his mind. "But if you don't want it, fine. Might be some time before they find anything like what the head office was talking about, though. Going by the odds, looks to me like it might be another year or two. By then, I'm going to be worrying about whether we can count on our staff in a pinch, especially the ones getting really chummy with the locals." He did have a point, much as Hohenheim didn't want to admit it. If they spent another year-or even a few more months-on station, pretty soon a number of his personnel would be seeing the people fromNobel as being as much their comrades as those ofOdin. "What do you want, then?" "Nothing much, sir. Just authorization to have some contingency plans in case I have to push things when we actually do make our move. I know you don't like it, General, but you know as well as I do that if we get loyalty issues, there may be some… incidents. I want to have some time to plan ways to neutralize the opposition without getting anyone hurt, and hopefully without them being able to prove we had much to do with it.
But I can't guarantee that there won't be anyone getting hurt, if by 'hurt' we're including any and all sorts of emotional damage." "Mr.
Fitzgerald, I understand that it's impossible to avoid any type of damage when the interests of two parties clash. But we must avoid anything extreme. Any violence would seriously damage the claims the E.U. might get on our target, even leaving aside whatever disputes might arise from the use of industrial espionage." "I understand that, sir." Hohenheim studied him for a moment. To all appearances, Fitzgerald seemed the very model of obedience. The problem was that a man with his background and experience was inherently a very good actor. What did he really think? More importantly, what did he really intend? There was no way to know. Hohenheim would just have to remain alert. "Very well, Mr. Fitzgerald. Let me know as soon as anything new develops." *** Once he was out of the general's office, Fitzgerald allowed himself a little smile. There was a certain delicious irony here.
Nothing could be more plausible about "plausible deniability," after all, than the person in charge of a project being in fact ignorant of what was happening when his back was turned. True, if and when the discrepancies surfaced, Hohenheim would be furious. But he was just the man in charge of the project. Which is not the same thing as being the man in charge of the payroll. The bonus that had been directly offered to Richard by Goswin Osterhoudt and more subtly implied by Commissioner Bitteschell was more than large enough-way more than large enough-for Richard to be quite willing to risk Hohenheim's ire.
In fact, he was willing to risk a lot more than a mere general's wrath. Withthat bonus, Richard could retire a wealthy man.
Chapter 18 Anthony pushed back his hair, muttering, and then sighed, undid the ponytail, and shoved the escaping and offending strands back into it, tying it tighter. Ceres' gravity was enough to keep most items in one place, but had little effect on hair or other very light materials. "Larry, this plaque, it is for the linguists, not us." Larry Conley glanced in his display, seeing the image Anthony was sending him. "Oh, yeah. About an acre of text and one little diagram that looks like it might be something astronomical. Maybe. Or it could be a Bemmie mating-dance diagram. They loved those little sketch-thingies. Maybe they were just better at figuring out each others' chicken scratches, I dunno. Send that one to Rich and Jane, that's for sure." Larry shook his head. "I swear, it's so totally frustrating. Weknow a lot of this is astronomical data, or maybe astrogation stuff, but anyway it has to do with the actual solar system and the stuff they did in it, but we can't read it. That damn Rosetta Disk is taking them a hell of a long time to crack." "We are better off than we were before, at least," Anthony pointed out, stretching a bit before going on to the next image of a noteplaque.
There were literally thousands of the devices to go through. Why the aliens had chosen to stack that many of them in the one area was yet another mystery. A.J.'s best guess was that it was a repository for spare noteplaques-a place where you'd dump them for reuse by someone else. Why none of them were wiped off-blank-was somewhat confusing, though. Still, no one was complaining, least of all Jake. This was a treasure trove, and he'd been spending the last few weeks carefully excavating the room, cataloguing each plaque's relation to all the others around it, and with Rich and Jane's help sorting them into likely subject categories. Apparently, if A.J. was correct, there had been a lot of work done involving astronomical/solar system navigation or surveying early on, and they were going through the discarded notepaper. Both Larry and Anthony's initial enthusiasm on the vast number of potentially useful plaques had… well, not exactly vanished, but become dampened as it became increasingly clear that it was going to take weeks to go through them and even decide which ones were worth more study by them, rather than by dumping them on the increasingly overworked linguists. Xenolinguistics was a new field, with several universities trying to produce graduates soon, but it would be a while before real help arrived in that area. Anthony blinked, then grinned at the new image. "The Great God Bemmie is once more on this one." Larry laughed. "I wonder if they were really religious?" "Who knows? Maybe that was one of their debates. Wasn't something like that in one of the books A.J. mentioned?" "Oh, yeah, a classic. The Mote in God's Eye. There it was a nebula that looked like a hooded man, though." "The Great God Bemmie" was Jupiter. Apparently, while the Great Red Spot had not existed sixty-five million years ago, similar semipermanent storms had; three of them, to be precise, apparently connected to something on Jupiter's quasi-surface thousands of kilometers below the cloud tops. The three rotated along with the planet and maintained a relationship which was geometrically very similar to the trilateral structure of the Bemmies themselves, and several sketches had indicated that whatever else the alien's perceptions might be like, they could, like human beings, see similarities between themselves and even astronomical phenomena. They often represented the giant planet as having three eyes, and there were sketches of Jupiter as the front end of a gargantuan Bemmie with a fully functional third eye. Exactly what it all meant, of course, they might never know. But it was an amusing thing to find one of the cartoony sketches; some of the Bemmie scientists or researchers actually used the symbol for one of their people as the symbol for Jupiter, along with a symbol meaning "very large"-leading Joe to say,
"Ah, yes. The alien timekeeper of the system." "Huh?" A.J. had replied. Joe had given one of his fiendish grins. "Obviously, Jupiter was Big Bem." This had resulted in Joe being hounded from the room.
Aside from Big Bem and a few notations on what Anthony thought might be Io, there wasn't much on this plaque, so he went on to the next.
Several hours went by. Larry finally got up and stretched. "Well, Anthony, I know you've got more endurance than I do, but I'm going to get myself some lunch." "Oh, is it that time?" Anthony looked at the clock. "I suppose it is. But I started a little later than you, and I want to at least get through this set." "No problem. Just flag anything you think might be worth looking at." "Of course." More plaques. More cryptic sketches and acres of wavelike Bemmie text flowing from outside in, to meet in those upward-sweeping curves. "Oh, there's something…" Anthony said to himself as the next noteplaque image appeared. Pictures of Saturn weren't nearly as common as those of Jupiter, but the few they had found had sparked rather acrimonious debates among the astronomical community, with even Larry and Anthony exchanging some pointed words occasionally on the subject.
The famous rings had existed back then, but the sketches indicated some differences. That the number of clear ring segments would vary wasn't surprising. In fact, depending on exactly how one imaged the rings, from what angle, and in what spectrum, the visible number of segments in the modern era varied pretty widely. It wasn't the fact that the rings appeared to be separated into three clear sections that was the problem, though. The problem was that several of the discovered sections-including the new one he was looking at-very clearly seemed to indicate that the rings were dividedvertically as well-into three or four distinct layers, with clear spaces between. If that were to be interpreted literally, there were a number of models that would have to be totally revised. Most of the rest of the plaque was text, though it appeared that one of Saturn's moons was also marked near the planet. The Bemmies did appear to read from top down, as did humans, and near the bottom was a symbol crossing the centerline, which the linguists had said indicated something like a dash or "continued on next page." Of course, in many cases they were not able to find the next page. Knowing the pattern Jake had excavated in, though, Anthony decided to scout through the ones that were physically nearby this plaque, just to see if the continuation was obvious. Upon viewing the noteplaque found just below and slightly to the right of the first, Anthony suddenly stopped. The top center column contained the inverted symbol, meaning "continued from," and just below this was a large sketch of some celestial body, a circle with various other symbols on and around it. He looked back at the first one, and saw small symbols next to the marked moon-symbols repeated next to this large sketch. A moon of Saturn, then. Or probably so. Which one? Titan would seem to be the obvious target of interest for anyone in the solar system. A moon with a thick atmosphere and all sorts of activity. But… No, even displaying Titan's known characteristics in what Bemmie's range of vision would have given didn't seem to produce a correspondence with the markings.
The symbols weren't too much help, either. While they'd determined a number of simple symbol conventions that allowed Anthony and Larry to read parts of the astronomical diagrams, too many things were still obscure. Still… that set of symbols, there, toward-he checked the symbology-what would likely be the moon's southern pole… that set looked familiar. Very familiar. Anthony became aware that he needed to breathe. He took a deep breath, realizing that he must have been staring without even breathing at that image for a long time. This was it. His first impulse, surprising him, was to call in Larry. He got a grip on himself, already feeling guilty. But this was the reason he'd been brought along. Quickly he checked Larry's status in the on-duty tracker. Still at lunch. He uploaded the application Horst had given him, the last update being only a few days ago. He'd practiced with it many times, but for a minute he froze, unable to remember what he had to do. Then he closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He was feeling intensely guilty. Focus. Focus. It is not as though we will really be hurting anyone. He felt bad that he would have to mislead them, but they already had three Bemmie bases. Besides, this new one was so distant that onlyOdin could possibly reach it anyway. Just a little tweaking. No real erasure. Just some confusion. Erasing data from the systems being used was an extremely difficult task. There were backups that even Horst's slow-viral approach probably would never reach, unless someone were foolish enough to mount them to the same system they were checking on. So the key was to make it so that they wouldn't bother to check correspondences with the backups until it was far too late. Just a minor transposition of relationships and a very small image edit. The tough part, handled entirely by Horst's app, was making sure that the check data was appropriately modified, so that any examination of the image would not indicate that any modification had been made. In essence, the internal "watermark" had to be modified and the records of the authentication data modified as well, so that all aspects of the system agreed that the modified image was, in fact, the exact original image that had been in the system from the beginning. If someone were sufficiently suspicious and had access to the backups, of course, they could find the modification easily enough. But with luck, no one would be until it was too late.
Anthony sighed. It was done. He got up, just as Larry came in. For a moment Anthony froze, certain that guilt was written all over his face, that Larry knew he'd been tampering. "Anything interesting?" the big astrophysicist asked. "Nothing, really." Anthony's voice sounded strained and flat, totally artificial in his ears. "Time to get something to eat myself, I think." If his tone was different, Larry didn't appear to notice. "Have fun. Back to the salt mines for me. See you later." Anthony left quickly, almost bouncing into a wall in his hurry. He had to get this to General Hohenheim immediately. Then, at least, the rest would be out of his hands.
Chapter 19 "Enceladus." The general pronounced the little moon's name carefully. "Yes, General," Anthony said. "After I reported the initial find, I did continue my research. Since I knew of the connections, I was able to determine a few more facts to confirm the labeling." Hohenheim nodded. "Very good. I had hoped for something in the Jupiter system, but we are provisioned for Saturn as a possibility. Tell me what makes Enceladus a good possibility, aside from simply finding markings on one of the diagrams?" Currently, only Hohenheim and LaPointe were present, as the general wanted to evaluate the situation himself privately. Anthony activated the meeting-room display. A rotating image appeared of a mostly white sphere, covered with noticeably varying terrain ranging from small craters to faintly blue-striped cracks. "Enceladus has been sort of anenfant terrible for us astronomical types in the past few decades," Anthony said. "It's much smaller than many of the really large moons like Ganymede, Europa, or our own Luna. In fact, at about five hundred kilometers across, it is quite a bit smaller than our Ceres here. According to many theories of celestial body formation, it should therefore be a relatively static body, a dead rock or iceball floating in space.
"Instead, it is one of only a very few bodies in the solar system with known volcanic activity. It has a surface indicating recent resurfacing-in some areas it may have the most recent surfaces in the solar system." He gestured at the faintly striped areas. "The false-color images overlaid here show what are sometimes whimsically called 'tiger-striping,' but what is significant about them is that they include crystalline water ice-possibly less than a thousand years old, or even newer, given our detection of cryovolcanism-and some organic compounds. There are, however, other areas of Enceladus that are much, much older on the surface." A cutaway view of the miniature world appeared. Hohenheim frowned. He was of course familiar with cutaway views of Earth and other worlds, but this one was… odd.
It appeared that the majority of the little moon was cold, but that at one point, near the south pole, it was significantly heated. Totally asymmetric and not at all consistent with anything he had ever seen before. "I see your expression, General, and you're correct. That's called adiapir. The conventional description is that it is lower-density heated material rising to the surface near the south pole. Models of Enceladus have tended to converge on this structure, but what hascaused the structure you see has been a matter of furious debate." Anthony paused. "Until now." Hohenheim slowly turned to stare at the grinning scientist. "Are you saying…?" "Where is the energy coming from, General? That's been the constant debate.
Actually, it's been two debates. First, where the energy comes from, because not all models of the tidal forces active on Enceladus appear capable of supplying all of the energy needed. Second, why it's only apparently active in this one location. One can of course come up with all sorts of theories, and I assure you many have. Enceladus is very small, so perhaps it is not as differentiated as a larger body would be. But other evidence argues against this, such as the geological and chemical makeup. Tidal heating of differentiated magmatic chambers-which being liquid would flex more than the solid material around them-could explain the existence of isolated hot spots… if the tidal heating were sufficient. But many models don't show the tides as being quite sufficient. "Yet there is clearly liquid water present in large quantities on Enceladus. Nearly pure water, in fact, as no ammonia or other materials were detected in many of the plumes.
This is itself quite notable, as this means the liquid is at a temperature in the Earthly range-at least freezing point of zero Celsius or two hundred seventy-three Kelvin. That is a quite drastic departure in both expected temperature and expected chemistry for that part of the solar system. Much larger bodies, such as Jupiter's Europa, are known to have liquid water beneath the surface, but it was really quite unexpected to find evidence of it on Enceladus." Anthony pointed again to the off-center southern heated area, the diapir. "The best models we've been able to make, however, have given us this considerable problem-the tidal forces just aren't quite enough.
They're fairly close on a cosmic scale, but we're missing a terawatt or so." "After all this time?" the general said finally. "That is not possible." "With all due respect, General, itmay be possible. The aliens used self-repairing redundant technology in a number of ways.
If the device or devices in question were intended to operate for some unbounded amount of time, they may have simply continued to do so. Or, as I think more likely, they may have operated for long enough to create the current situation. On an astronomical scale, remember, even sixty-five million years is relatively short. If they had succeeded in creating a diapir or something similar, there is sufficient tidal heating to make it likely that it would still be slowly cooling to this day. We would not notice the change on our timescale. But if they did such a thing, somewhere on Enceladus would be a truly massive installation." Hohenheim stared at the image, trying to envision it.
The distant moon was indeed tiny compared to Earth, but he had spent more than enough time in space to recognize how vast even Enceladus was. Enough power to slowly reshape an entire small world… He nodded sharply. "Very good. We must begin preparations. Subtly, of course. We must not alert the Ares people on Ceres to our new intentions. I believe I will arrange an apparent recall ofOdin to Earth. Obviously we will not go there, but preparations for departure will be similar. Very well done, Dr. LaPointe. I am sorry you have been forced into duplicity with your colleagues, but in the long run I hope you will find it was worthwhile. At the least, you shall be the first on the site." LaPointe managed a smile. "Thank you, General. I appreciate your sympathy. I'd better get back to work, though."
"Indeed. No point in failing to gather any additional data." As the astronomer left, Hohenheim shook his head. Objectively, he was taking quite a risk. The symbols were undoubtedly those of one of the alien bases, and similar to those for Ceres-that is, the markings of the group of aliens who had lost their battle and apparently been evicted from the system. However, if some device capable of producing such power had been left running, it seemed to Hohenheim fairly likely that it could have destroyed the base when it finally broke down-as any devicemust have broken down after millions of years. But he was also paid for his intuition, and his intuition said that this wasit. And, he admitted, there was also the voyage itself. The course would take them through the Jupiter system, the massive planet's gravity well providing them with additional velocity. Hohenheim also knew that in the many months they had been on station, the mass-beam had not been idle. There were more surprises and demonstrations in store for those watchingOdin, and he was looking forward to a bit of showing off. At the very least, the crew ofOdin would be famous as the first human beings to ever visit the outer system. Now, however, he had to have a long talk with Mr. Fitzgerald. There might very well be complications when the time came to leave, and he had to be ready to deal with them all.
Chapter 20 "Looks like theOdin is really getting ready to move out," Jackie said, sounding disappointed. She stared at the image of the huge E.U. ship in the Ares common-room monitor. "Yes," Maddie said. "Why, I wonder?" Jackie glanced sharply at her. "What's bothering you? After all the shadowboxing you've been doing trying to keep our guests from finding out anything, I'd think you'd be glad they were going." Maddie couldn't help frowning. "It just doesn't make sense to me. The cost of sendingOdin out here is… Well, it's actually rather hard to determine, but many millions of dollars, maybe orders of magnitude more than that. They could have hadOdin doing a lot of other things that would have been potentially profitable, or at least a lot less of an apparent loss." Bruce sat up a little straighter. "So what's your take, then?" The former HIA agent shook her head. Being unable to answer Bruce's question in a clear, direct fashion was frustrating and upsetting. "I don't know, Bruce. Instinct tells me there's something wrong here. And I didn't survive some of the things I have by having bad instincts. My evaluation has always been that they came here to see if they could find out something that would give the E.U. a leg up. It only makes sense, given that the IRI and Ares have so far kept in the forefront, with the United States getting the main benefits after that. But… "I know that Fitzgerald's managed to get a handle on what we've been doing in the fusion research-enough that I expected they'd try to suborn our systems or some of our people and send the data onward. With the resources of the E.U., they'd be easily able to develop the Bemmie system to practical deployment far faster than we can, and according to you"-she nodded at Jackie-"and Dr. Vasquez, it's not so far from our own theoretical knowledge that the E.U. couldn't make a good case for having just come up with it independently after the discovery of the Bemmie superconductor, which shook up a lot of theoretical constructs anyway." "But you made sure they couldn't do that, right?"
Maddie rose and drifted restlessly around the break room. Joe, as usual, was absent because he, Reynolds, and A.J. were still working on the dusty-plasma vessel and, in Joe's opinion, were close to making it work. "I actually made sure that they thought theycould do it. And I'm about ninety-nine percent sure that Fitzgerald bought that line, but he ended up not taking the bait. Oh, I'd have shut them down and kicked them out when they tried." She shook her head and gave a faint chuckle. "Maybe I'm just a little full of myself. Richard Fitzgerald might just be smart enough that he saw the trap. I don't think he is, but maybe." Jackie didn't look very happy. "You think all of them are here to, well, do industrial espionage? Really?" Madeline laughed.
"No, no, not all of them. Well, yes, in that I'm sure they were all told to keep their eyes open, but there's a big difference between that and actually stealing secured data. Your boyfriend is probably just fine." Jackie blushed slightly-something barely visible with her dark skin. "Horst Eberhart is not my boyfriend. We went on exactly two dates-if you can even call them 'dates' in the first place. I barely know the man." After two or three seconds, she added a bit plaintively: "Only probably?" "Only probably," Maddie said. "But that's from my paranoid worldview, remember. I get paid to assume everyone's up to something." "So," Bruce said, "If I'm understanding you right, the problem is that you don't think these bastards got anything, so you're wondering why they're leaving?" "Something like that." "They couldn't have just decided you had things locked down too well and, after a while, it's not worth it?" "Maybe." Maddie restrained the impulse to stomp her foot, which would have caused her to bounce off the ceiling. "But that just feels wrong. They're heading back to Earth. Why? Just to drop off people? No special cargo?" She hated feeling this uncertain. It was something so rare for her that it was unsettling. "Or are they even smarter than I thought? Did they get past all our security, including me, and so what they're doing is leavingwith their prize?" "Maddie, luv, you're the best there is. The only way they're getting away with something is if you didn't know there was something to find." She froze. Her mind flew back, fitting together the dozens of pieces of the puzzle she'd encountered in the past year and a half. Maddie turned and propelled herself toward the exit, bringing up her own VRD displays. "Bruce, I think you may be exactly right."
Control. Losing control will do me no good. The general took a deep breath. "Exactly what do you mean by 'insurance,' Mr.
Fitzgerald?" The security chief smiled. "The kind you didn't need to know about, General. It's my job, not yours. Plausible deniability and all that." "I doubt very much if 'plausible deniability' is all that plausible here in the asteroid belt," said Hohenheim, his teeth almost clenched. Fitzgerald shrugged. "Probably not plausible to the Ares people, sure. But that's hardly what matters, is it? What matters is simply what people think back on Earth. And for those purposes, we should be fine. I chose the right sort of men for this little jaunt."
Hohenheim suspected that his notion of "the right sort of men" and Fitzgerald's were kilometers apart. But… He took a deep breath.
What was done, was done. And he was the one who had set this all into motion in the first place, he reminded himself sharply. "We are not… attacking them, I trust? Because that is directly contrary to our directives." "Not attacking, no," Fitzgerald answered.
"Just… making sure they can't do anything to stop us until it's too late. Which was what you wanted, right?" Hohenheim reviewed their prior conversations. Unfortunately, he had said things which could, in their essence, be read that way by someone seeking to push the envelope. And Fitzgerald was nothing if not an envelope-pusher. He'd have to remember that in the future. "What exactly is going to happen, then?" "It's standard CCC technique, General-chaos, confusion, catastrophe. Very light on the catastrophe, of course. Modofori, Salczyck and Zaent are going for the fusion data, just the way I was going to have us do it before, except they think they're doing it as a sort of private side-gig for me. Personal profit, you know, with everyone getting a little cut." "And you've actually framed them?"
"That's really such a cold word, General. If they don't get caught, they'll be rich men. And the paper trail-electronic trail, rather-doesn't even lead to me, let alone the E.U." He smiled cynically. "Of course, my guess is that little Goldilocks has so many tripwires and traps on that data that the first poor bastard who puts a hand on it is going to lose the hand. Figuratively speaking, at least. But that'll be enough to keep them distracted while we're leaving." "Leaving our three crewmen behind?" Fitzgerald nodded. "If that's the way it works out, yes. Their cover is that they're bringing the last of our own stuff back up in theHunin. We're just doing maneuvers to get out of orbit, ready to do a main burn, far away fromNobel, right? So when they finally do make their break, we just let the IRI grab 'em. Sure, they'll guess that we were trying something cute, but they'll have no proof, and the neat part is that what we werereally after they won't have a clue about." "But when we start moving… You do understand thatNobel could catch us early on?" "Right. It's smaller, they don't have nearly the load we do, they could catch us easy over the short haul, even if we can outdo anything else in the system on the long. So I've got something else set to make sureNobel can't chase us." "What?" "Better you don't know. I think it's all covered, but the less you know, the less you can be accused of. Stopworrying, General. No one's supposed to get killed on this jaunt, and I'm not forgetting that. But giving them enough problems to keep them at home, that's not out of the mission parameters, now, is it?" "I… suppose not," the general said slowly. "Then I'd better get going. We're leaving in just a few hours, right?" Fitzgerald snapped a quick salute and disappeared out the door. The commander of theOdin stared at the door, a rising sourness in his stomach.
Fitzgerald was too eager, too capable in certain areas and too blind in others. Hohenheim shook his head, unable to fight the growing conviction that things were moving out of his control. Too late now.
Whatever Fitzgerald had planned, at least some of it was beyond any ability to recall. Time to play the hand he was holding. He headed for the bridge.
Chapter 21 Joe drifted in the long, dreamlike strides Ceres permitted, a cross between floating and walking that had taken some considerable getting used to. Usually, you had to guide yourself in mid-trajectory to some extent, because Ceres' puny gravity simply didn't get you back to the floor quick enough. But it wasn't quite puny enough to pretty much ignore. "Jackie, you're sure we have enough capacity for this?" Jackie's voice over the link was amused."Joe, for the third time, yes. Do you think I'd have authorized it if we didn't?
I'm just busy up here getting Nobelprepped. You've been around the power-distribution stuff enough to handle the install, haven't you?"
"Oh, sure, that's not a problem. The setup's modular. I just know we've been using a lot more power lately, what with the research and our guests and all." "Well, most of our guests are gone. All but three, I think, and they're getting ready to leave soon. By the time you have the new main connection set and we can lay down the cable to the project, we'll have megawatts to spare. And if it does work, then we'll have enough reason to get another reactor out here." "Okay. I'll stop bothering you, then." Joe continued along, knowing better than to hurry. In low gravity, hurrying just turned you into a pinball. But part of him stillwanted to hurry. Setting up a major new power line was necessary so that they could test the repairs they'd made to the alien vessel. After what was only about five minutes, but seemed like half an hour to Joe, he reached the control room for the reactor. The main power-connection modules were set on the far side of the room.
Fortunately, setting up a megawatt-capable connection was a lot easier now than it might have been thirty years ago, but he still had considerable work to do, and even following the procedures being projected for him in his own VRD it would take a little while.
Obviously you didn't want to interrupt power to the whole base, so he had to arrange a cutout, install the new connection, then remove the cutout, without interfering with other operations. This would only allow a partial test, of course. To run the ship-if it actually worked, something even A.J. stopped short of asserting as pure fact-would require most of the output of a reactor the size of this one, and of course it would have to be installed on board. But the important test was to see if, in fact, all the work they'd done would permit them to generate the necessary field in vacuum to hold the "dusty plasma" in place. "How's it coming, Joe?"A.J.'s voice sounded in his ears. "Not bad. Another half hour, I guess. By the way, we still need to figure out a good way to mop sweat out of people's eyes in these things." "Yeah, I suppose so. I try to avoid all that sweating, myself." Joe laughed. "You can't really fool us with that lazy-bum act, you know." "It's the image. You know that's… Hey, what the…?" "What's up, A.J.?" "One of Maddie's trip wires just went. Gotta go." "Really? Okay, later, then." Joe went back to work.
There wasn't much he could do in this case, and besides, as both Maddie and A.J. had been gleefully happy to point out in security discussions, there really wasn't anywhere anyone could run. Well, not for long, anyway. There were miles and miles of Bemmie tunnels, rooms, and so on, only a fraction of them explored so far. But those were all in vacuum, so even if you had a shelter you could only last a short time. And in the open, well, you were obvious. Radiating heat energy like a beacon. Them trying to get away with somethingnow, that was a surprise. With theOdin pulling out in a matter of hours, already doing maneuvers to be ready to do a safe burn, who'd be stupid enough to try something? At that moment, God brought a sledgehammer down on top of Joe Buckley.
"The fusion data?" Maddie asked, forehead wrinkled. "That makes no sense at all. Doing itnow? When they were about to leave?" She glanced up at another portion of the VRD display, away from A.J.'s face and toward a data section. "Unless… There are only three members ofOdin 's crew still here, on a last trip to retrieve material. If they're working solo…" "You seemed to be surprised about what they were getting. Why's that?" A.J. could ask that in person now, as he had just come around the corner to the central monitoring area. "I got the impression you were about to call me anyway." "I've found some possible indications that someone might have been tampering with our Bemmius data files, most likely in the astronomical data section. Which makes more sense to me." A.J. nodded.
"Well, you show me the traces, and I'll see if I can verify. Meanwhile you can track down our free-enterprise burglars." Maddie nodded and sent her gathered data to A.J. He'd been correct that she had literally been moments from contacting him before the alert went off.
A subliminal shudder whipped through the room like a whisper of disaster. The lights flickered and went out, then backup, dimmer LED lighting came on. All her monitors blanked, but not before she had seen something to truly worry her. "What wasthat?" "Umm… sensor analysis says… meteoroid impact. Significant one, too.
Location… Oh, shit!" "The reactor?" Maddie's heart seemed to go cold and stop. "But Joe…" "Joe was there in the control room,"
A.J. said, voice disbelieving. "And the power's gone, which means it either took out the reactor itself or the control and distribution, which was what he was working on." Madeline was halfway to the door before she remembered. "A.J., the threeOdin crewmen-they'd gotten access through the bio library. And just before the monitors went out, I saw Helen there." "Hold on, don't goanywhere." A.J. was clearly fighting down his own reaction to this news. "We need to coordinate.
Suits on. The communication's going to be unreliable in here, but better than nothing. And you were right," he said, pulling on his suit, as Maddie did the same, "someonedid mess with our files. It's going to take a while to figure out what they did, exactly, especially now, because I'll have to wait to get back online with the backup copies of our data and do a comparison." The grim expression on his face was visible even through the faceplate in dim lighting. "Ican tell you who did the erasing work." Madeline took another deep breath as she fitted the helmet on. She knew A.J. was probably still analyzing what data he had available for her, even while he was talking. No point in interrupting. He'd known Joe even longer than she had. He was talking for a reason, but all she could really concentrate on was Joe. For the first time in her life, the only thing that mattered wasn't the mission. "Who was it?" "Horst Eberhart. That glad-handing, smooth-talking, son-of-a-bitch Eberhart. He's the only guy they have who's that good-better than either of us-and this cover-up virus thingie he made, it's tailored to our setup. Be almost impossible to do by remote. Either he wrote it himself, or he sent someone else all the details on our setup-that he wormed out of me and Jackie, thatbastard! -to someone else who did it." A.J. made another set of control gestures. "Getting something here, now. I can get some of the independent sensor network up. Getting a low-bandwidth link to one of the satellites-dammit, I forgot. Nobel isn't in LOS right now."
"The timing sucks, you know that, A.J.," Maddie said. "Are you sure it wasn't a bomb?" "Ninety-nine percent sure, yeah. The sensors would'vescreamed if a rocket or something was shot in this direction.
Analysis shows a straight impact event at several kilometers per second, depending on the exact size of the impactor. That was just bad, bad luck on our part. Typical for Joe, of course." Maddie couldn't exactly relax, but one of the many knots in her gut eased a bit. She really couldn't believe that anyone onOdin would be insane enough to start what would amount to war by blowing up the base. She'd gotten to know enough of them by now. General Hohenheim was a military man, and dangerous in that sense. But he was also a sensible man, not one to go off half-cocked. Even Fitzgerald couldn't be that stupid.
She hoped. The three other men, though… She pulled up her own copies of the files she'd managed to accumulate onOdin 's personnel.
As she'd suspected, all three of these were on her red-flag list, which consisted of seven out of the ten people inOdin 's security force, including Richard Fitzgerald himself. All of them had proved to have some nasty histories when she'd used her old HIA contacts to dig on them a bit. "Well, I've got a bit of good news, I think," A.J. said. "Looks like the impact didn't go straight to the reactor-must have hit the controls. But the tentative data left from the sensors in the area, just before they went down, seems to show that Joe was not in the precise point of impact. And I know he was in his suit." He patted her on the shoulder. "You go get the rescue party together.
I'll go get these three clowns and bring them back." She hesitated.
"Are you sure? These people have backgrounds more like mine than yours." "Like we said before, where are they going? Besides, I'm best suited to get the remote stuff that still has its own power working as I go along. I've got you a link to the satellites now-you should be able to get help. Go save Joe. I'll go make sure Helen's okay." "Thank you, A.J." She watched for a moment as he went out. "Just be careful."
"These days, I am." She activated the link. "Nobel, this is Madeline Fathom. Bruce, Jackie, do you copy?" Bruce's voice came back immediately. "Maddie! It's good to hear a voice from you again. All telemetry and communications from Ceres just went dead a few minutes ago. What happened?" "Meteor impact, A.J. says. Took out the control unit for the reactor. We're going to need your help on the ground to put things back together, Jackie." "Ugh. Well, I think we can probably put something together, but it's going to take time." "More importantly, Joe was near the impact site. We need to contact him, or find him. If he wasn't"-her voice threatened to do something humiliating like break, but she overrode it-"wasn't killed immediately, there's a very good chance the suit protected him, but he could be hurt or unconscious." "And the suit can't keep him alive forever. Righto, then, we'll shift orbit around and get a look-see with the Beholders while we're on the way. Backup power working at all?" "Some is, but the priority is of course for life support. And it won't last forever, either. That's why we have only voice communications and slow data links." She allowed her voice to leave the professional groove for a moment. "Jackie, please, let me know as soon as you get a look at the area. We have to find Joe." "Don't worry, Maddie. I will. Why don't you get to the landing area, and as soon as we can getFeynman out the doors we'll come down for you."
"Thank you. I'll do that. In the meantime, I have to contactOdin on another matter."Might as well do my job, she thought as she headed for the other door which led more directly to the landing area. She adjusted the transmission frequency. "Odin, come in. This is Madeline Fathom, Ceres Base. Odin, do you read me?" "This isOdin," came the deep, warm tones of General Hohenheim. "Agent Fathom, is there a problem? We detected a sudden drop in communications." "We have sustained a small meteor impact, General, but one which hit a critical location. One person who happened to be in the area may be injured, but we haven't verified that. I am calling about another matter, however." Hohenheim's voice was puzzled. "Another matter? This seems to be one of considerable urgency-" "If there is anything you can do, I am sure you'll be notified. However, just before this began, I had verified an attempt by three of your crew to obtain restricted information by criminal means. Specifically, James Salczyck, Leo Modofori, and Axel Zaent." Hohenheim's voice hardened. "This is an extremely serious charge. You have evidence of this, I trust?" "Our systems did not erase just because power was lost. And I have my own copies of my investigation. I have a great deal of evidence, and we have someone on the way to take them into custody. I intend to have them sent back for trial onNobel once the immediate crisis is over. Do you have any objection?" This was the first test. If these people were acting under orders, the last thing the general would want is for them to be kept in the custody of others. He would offer to take them back inOdin, which would of course physically make more sense.
"Well… No, no, I cannot object. Obviously if it turns out your charges are of no merit, I-and the European Union-will be extremely disappointed in you, and it will have grave repercussions. On the other hand, if what you say is true, you have every right to charge them, and in the spirit of our cooperation I must allow you that right. Now"-his tone shifted slightly-"these three gentlemen did have one of our excursionary vehicles, theHunin. Could you arrange to have it ferried to us after the crisis is over?" The second test. "I'm afraid not, General. If these people planned it on their own, considerable evidence of what they intended to do with the information may be on board the vessel they were using, and I will not have time or opportunity to examine the vessel fully until after that time."
There was a moment of silence, during which Madeline reached one of the common areas which was now filled with worried people; she held up a hand to still the questions as the general resumed speaking.
"Well… I suppose this is sensible. However, you do realize that the lander is anextremely expensive piece of the E.U.'s property, and that it must be returned to us as soon as is practical? Even our generosity has limits, and I assure you it does not extend to indefinitely giving away such a vehicle." "I fully realize that, General, and as soon as a full forensic examination of theHunin is complete, we will return it to the E.U. by the fastest practical means, even if we must use a considerable portion ofNobel 's capacity to carry it to Earth." "Then," he answered, courteously, "I have no concerns. Your integrity is well-known. I will of course expect a formal document to this effect, outlining charges, actions to be taken, and the disposition of theHunin, but deliver that after you have taken care of your emergency. Good luck, and please let us know if you require anything from us in assistance. Odin out." "Thank you, General. Ceres out." She looked around at the worried faces. Time to explain. And to hope.
Chapter 22 Helen was startled as the lights went out just as she entered the room. She'd been about to talk to the three men by the main bio console. They'd been clustered around, looking at something in a way that somehow didn't look right, but the sudden darkness distracted her. A moment later, the emergency lights came on. She glanced around, puzzled. "What in…?" "Damn," said one of the men, a short, whip-thin blond. "Just as well," said the second. His calm baritone voice and athletic build rang a bell. She knew this one somewhat-Modofori, that was it. "We might have tripped something, and-" "Leo!" the third one interrupted, having looked up to see Helen standing there. The three turned to face her. There was something in their expressions she didn't like, although that could just be the sinister tint from the reddish emergency lighting. "Wonder what took out the lights?" she said, figuring that was a relatively neutral topic. "No idea," Modofori said. He looked concerned-and, strangely, a bit angry. "Um, Dr. Sutter-or would that be Baker?" "Either will do, though I use Sutter professionally." "Dr. Sutter, then." He looked around the room. "You know anything about the backups on this base?
How long the air will last?" Thatwas an unpleasant thought. The lights had been known to flicker on rare occasion before, usually when someone was cranking up a high-power experiment or piece of machinery, but not stay out for any length of time. "Not offhand, sorry. If A.J. were here, I'm sure he'd have it down to the second." "Maybe we'd better suit up," the third man said uneasily. He shifted his massive, squat frame to reach his spacesuit's case. People generally carried the suits with them, even though it was much easier to do work with them off in areas that were kept pressurized. "Good idea, Jimmy,"
Modofori said. "But keep the helmets off. If air is going to be an issue, we want to save the stuff in our suits for last." Helen, meantime, had been trying to reach the rest of the base. Her gut tightened. "I can't get through to anyone outside. Communications are down, too." The three men looked at each other. The first man opened his mouth to say something, but Modofori gave a quick shake of his head. "That's… odd," he said. There was a moment of silence.
"Well, we were just about to leave, anyway. Come on," he said to the others. "We've got stuff to take back toOdin before she leaves." The one he'd called Jimmy glanced in her direction again and then whispered something to Modofori. Helen definitely didn't like the way this looked. She turned to the other door. "Nothing much for me to do here, either, not with the power off. Have a nice trip home." The sound of movement behind her gave her a split-second's warning. She tried to move aside, but the reflexes of avoidance were still back on Earth, and she bounced more upward than sideways. Jimmy, his heavy form under more control, caught her leg and then spun, bringing her forcefully against the wall. She felt rather than heard a sort of crunching, cracking noise as her nose hit the flat surface, and blinding pain rocketed through her face. The concussion dazed her, and she wasn't quite clear on what happened next. By the time her eyes properly refocused, they were all in one of the corridors, a furiously heated discussion going on between the three men in a mixture of languages. She'd gotten used to this kind of discussion, and it wasn't that hard to translate. Unfortunately so, in this case, because as it turned out she really wasn't sure she wanted to know what they were saying. "-asshole, we could have just walked." That was the shorter skinny one, dragging her by her right side. "You saw how she was looking. She'd have sounded the alarm, if we hadn't tripped it already. And this can't be a coincidence." That was Jimmy, on her left. Ceres' gravity made her easy to carry, but two people could guide her more easily than one. Mass was not changed by gravity shifts. "You think it's on purpose? How? And why? If it was a setup, what's to gain?" "Shut up," Modofori said. The other two immediately silenced themselves. Helen's communicator beeped. "Helen?" came the muffled voice of A.J. Modofori shook his head. "Why does hers work when ours don't?" "Helen? Answer me, please!" She was tempted to try to answer, but she suspected the result would be painful. Whatever these people were up to, they were serious. Modofori fiddled with his radio. "Nothing on our frequencies. Don't know which one she's on."
A.J.'s tone changed, this time to the sharp, wiseass tone that preceded a truly heroic temper tantrum. "Modofori, Zaent, Salczyck, if you are there, better answer this, or you're not going to like it." At their names the odd trio had stumbled, bumping into each other and jostling Helen. Something just brushed her nose, and she almost screamed in pain. "Damn." Modofori grabbed the communicator. "What is it?" She could just make out A.J.'s face on the little screen. "We know what you were up to, guys. Now it's over. Head to the main lounge and give yourselves up." "I don't think so." Modofori looked like he was thinking furiously. "I'll call you back whenI am ready to talk to you. And in the meantime, you remember whose communicator you were calling on. And stay quiet." He pointed the communicator camera in Helen's direction. "See? Now, I'll call back on this communicator when I'm ready. And if you play along, I think everyone can come out of this okay. If not…" "I understand." A.J.'s voice was as cold as she had ever heard it. "Good." Modofori switched the communicator to off, using the hard-off switch. And pulled the power cell for good measure. "There." He glanced at the others. "Let's move."
"I'm getting a very weak response from Joe's comm, mates."
"Thank God. His suit wasn't destroyed, then." Madeline allowed herself to feel a little hope. "Apparently not. Whatever hit, though, did one scary lot of damage." Bruce's voice was grim. "Scattered debris over miles and miles in this low gravity." His tone shifted. "Okay, Maddie, we'll be landin' soon enough. Then we drop Jackie off at the site so she can assess the damage, and we can search for Joe." "Thank you, Bruce." It occurred to her suddenly that she hadn't heard from A.J. in quite some time. "A.J., are you there?" There was no answer for a moment, and she began to really worry. Then his voice came back, sounding oddly flat. "I'm here." "Is everything all right? Did you get our fugitives?" "It's not all rightyet," A.J. answered. "But it will be." "What's going on, A.J.?" She knew evasion when she heard it.
"Don't try to handle this if you can't-" "Don't go there." The cold reply brought her up short. She hadn't ever heard him use a tone like that, not even when he was furious at her. "I said, itwill be all right. I'm taking care of it. You have my word. You just go find Joe and get things running again." She thought a moment. "Is Helen all right?" "She will be." "Ah. Crazy bastards." She thought she understood now. But… "You're sure?" "Absolutely. I gave you my word." She knew that A.J. did not use that phrase lightly. It was acutely painful to her to not step forward, but… in his position, if she was sure she could handle it… "All right." She offered a short, silent prayer to whoever might be listening that A.J. really knew what he was doing, and then deliberately let the matter drop from her mind. Agent's training was what was needed here. TheFeynman was barely settling into place as she bounded out to meet it. "Let's go find Joe," she said to Bruce as the door opened. "Righto." The impact site was barely a hop away; in fact, usingFeynman would have been overkill if they hadn't intended to use the shuttle as a search-and-rescue vehicle in the area anyway. Maddie sent several of the Locusts, which she could control nearly as well as A.J., on a survey of the area as Jackie made her way into the shattered hulk of the prefabricated building that had housed the control center for the reactor. Part of it had practicallysplashed on impact. "That's bad,"
Jackie said matter-of-factly. "Punched through the main controls like a bullet. A bullet that must've been bigger than my two fists. And with atmosphere present…" "Big boom." Maddie glanced around the room. It was actually startlingly clean in some ways, probably because the blast and air escaping had thrown everythingout. There was still a film of dust here and there-and what wasthat? On the floor, the dust showed a faint, odd pattern: light streaking, then two dark streaks like expanding cones, wide ends pointing toward the wall. The dark streaks, she saw as she bent closer, were really areas with a lot less dust. "Jackie?" The dark-haired engineer saw the pattern, too.
"Joe." "He must have been standing here when the thing hit." Jackie nodded. "Well away from the very center. I think I can getNobel to give me at least an estimate of the force of impact. Hold on." A few minutes dragged by like hours as Jackie set up the parameters for the model. Then: "Maddie? He could have survived. But it was awfully close. Depends on what he hit on the way out, where he landed, how exactly he was standing…" Jackie trailed off. "We'll just have to find him." "Bruce!" Maddie said, pushing her emotions aside. "I've had the Locusts circling the area. CanNobel tie in and compute a fix on Joe's location?" "Sorry, luv, no joy. Signals seem to be bouncing off the base material, getting absorbed, multipath all over. No way of tellin' which of six directions to look in. If we can't narrow it down… well, he's got Buckley's of being found in time." Bruce got a dark amusement out of the fact that Joe's last name was, and had been for years, Australian forhopeless situation. "Then," Maddie said briskly, "we'll just have to narrow them down, won't we?" "We'd better do it quick," Jackie said. "The rest of the base isn't going to last forever without power. We have to get things running again." "How long to replace the controls?" Bruce asked. "Do we even have the parts on hand?" Jackie's gestures showed she was consulting her own database.
"Actually, we do. But it's going to take four, five days at least. And that's longer than the emergency backups will last. We can probably save all the people, but there'll be major losses in other areas if it goes that long. We'll lose infrastructure to frozen pipes and all that kind of thing. We need to get at least minimal power flowing faster."
She shook her head, gazing down at the immense hole punched through the area the consoles had occupied. "I might be able to rig something up, but I'm not sure. The reactor itself may have shut down when the controls went, which means I'll need the controls before I can start it generating again." "How much juice do we need?" Bruce asked. "To keep things moving along until you can fix 'em?" "More than a portable generator," she said reluctantly. "For everything, we probably want a hundred kilowatts or more. That won't run any of the heavy stuff, of course." "Right, then. No worries-Nobel's got that and to spare."
"Yes, but-" She cut off. "No, Bruce, you're crazy!" "Hey, it's a fair sight better than losin' half the base, now, ain't it? And won't it be something to add to my resume?" "And what about Joe?" Jackie demanded.
"We're talking about saving the base, but what about him?" "We have to narrow the search area," Madeline said. "And Jackie, I think you can do that." "Me? How? Maddie, you know I'll do what I can, but I don't see what I can do." She pointed to the tracks in the dust. "You were able to do a quick model to see how hard he was hit. But we assembled all of the stuff here. It's all in the engineering database. If you can get a good handle on the force of the explosion from A.J.'s sensor readings, can't you model what happened to Joe and find out where he went?" Jackie froze, clearly struck by the idea. Slowly she straightened up. "Yes. Yes, we could do that. We can't get an exact answer, not even close… But if we can even get a good sense of direction and distance…" "Then do it fast, Jackie." She looked at the clock in the upper left of her field of view, a phantom row of numbers projected on her retina by the miracle of laser light. "If I guess right, Joe has maybe four hours left."
Chapter 23 "But… Look, Leo, what're we going to do?" For the first time since Helen had seen him, Leo Modofori smiled. "A.J. Baker can get us past any of their security. He runs it, along with Fathom.
With his help, we get what we came for. Then he gets us toHunin.
They'll have to let us back on board if we get close toOdin, and then, well, okay, they'll put us in jail for a bit. But if we've got what we're after, we'll be out and rich before you know it." Jimmy Salczyck grinned back. "So, I did the right thing." Modofori snorted.
"Sometimes impulse and luck works, Jimmy, but we still should've talked. Anyway, it's over now. First we have to get somewhere we can hide out. Which isn't here. Baker knew where we were with the comm. We have to lose him so he can't set up an ambush, keep moving until he comes through." "Won't he just have us nailed when we get toHunin?"
"Not if we rig it right. He saw that we have his wife. We just make sure we get access to the monitors around theHunin first. If it's all clear, fine. If not…" He didn't look at Helen, but it was obvious what was implied. "We need to cut through the unpressurized areas and come up somewhere else-the third lab, I think. There's a terminal we can use there, when the time comes. But we want to leave no trail for him to follow." Zaent glanced about him uneasily. "These corridors seem narrower." He gave a nervous cough. "This is not the time to develop claustrophobia, Alex," Jimmy said. He sniffed at the air.
"Does feel kind of stale, though… Now you have me thinking it!"
He grabbed at his helmet with his free hand. Modofori growled in his throat. "Exactly. Don't go putting ideas into your heads-or mine, for all that." He cleared his throat and then took a deep breath. "There's air enough down here to last us for quite a while. Hours of air.
Houdini managed hours in something the size of a coffin, and we've got a mansion's worth, so cut it out. No, leave the helmets off until we get to the lock. Hold up a minute." He moved in front of them with the smooth action of someone completely accustomed to the low gravity; even in her pain, Helen had to admire that. She wasn't that good, and she'd been here a lot longer. "Sorry about the rough handling, Doctor.
Can I trust you to not try anything stupid on us? Because I promise you that if you do try anything, it will end up hurting a lot worse."
She nodded, trying not to look scared-although she definitely was.
This was about as bad a situation as she could think of. The crash on Mars had been worse in some ways, but that was an accident. What might happen here wouldn't be. "Good. Now, hold still a moment. This will hurt, but it will help in the long run." He glanced at Jimmy. "Hold her head still." Helen closed her eyes. There was a moment of terrible, sharp pain, a twist, and suddenly much of the pain was fading away and she felt she might be able to breathe through her nose again. "Thank you," she said faintly. "You're welcome. If your husband is half as smart as I have heard, we should all come out of this quite well. Hedoes care about you, I hope?" "Yes," she said. It was one of the things she had no doubts on. "Good thing for us all, then. Now please get into your suit and don't give us any trouble. We have to move fast, and I can't afford the time to babysit you." Modofori apparently had a VRD with a system that included a detailed layout of Ceres Base, because he led them onward with barely any hesitation, occasionally gazing into empty air before taking a particular turn.
Shortly they came to an airlock, where he had them all appropriate additional air bottles. Once through the airlock, there followed a bewildering series of twists and turns through alien-designed tunnels, the only signs of human passage being occasional marks in the eons-old dust and temporary markers on walls. Many of these tunnels actually had never had a human being pass through them, only one of the unmanned probes. And there were still many miles of corridors left unexplored. A.J. had once compared it to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
"Except that we have to wear our scuba gear all the time here, and we probably won't have to wiggle through washtub-sized holes too often."
Helen tried to think of some way she might help out-get away from these guys and get somewhere she knew-but it didn't look hopeful.
Impulsiveness aside, Jimmy Salczyck was as alert as a Doberman watchdog, and she already knew from personal experience how fast and strong he was. Despite the training both A.J. and Madeline had been giving her on the side, she doubted she could take on any of these guys, even the diminutive Axel Zaent. Her own VRD didn't have the extensive maps that Modofori's did, and with the main base systems apparently still down-something that clearly worried Modofori almost as much as it did her-she couldn't get any additional data out to guide her. So even if she did somehow give them the slip, she might end up wandering deeper into the base instead of getting out. Finally they came to another airlock. Modofori brought out a small case and performed some complex set of operations on the controls and around the door seal. "What are you doing?" she asked impulsively. He apparently didn't mind the query. "Making sure that it appears that this door does not open. It would be rather dense of me to spend this time in unmonitored corridors only to announce myself as I enter.
Emergency power, while limited, does extend to keeping the door systems active and monitored, even if the full-scale hallway systems are down. I have no idea why power is still off, but for the moment it is an advantage I intend to exploit fully." The airlock opened, and they passed through-Modofori first, then Helen, followed by the others. "Good. The lab I want is this way. The air's good, so unlock your helmets and save the tanks." A few minutes later they were in one of the alien labs that had been used for what A.J. referred to as "bioforming" and which had been undergoing intense analysis. With whatever emergency was on, though, obviously no one was here now. And if the power came on, the remote location would give them plenty of time to get away before anyone else could possibly arrive. "Good enough. Time to get out of here for good." Modofori took out Helen's communicator. Jimmy looked apprehensive. "Hey, Leo, won't he track us through that?" "Probably. Almost certainly, in fact, since to make sure we could communicate with him no matter where we go he's probably had to key up low-power repeaters everywhere. But it took us a while to get here. Even if he can track us right away, he can'tget here right away. If he's as good as I am at moving around, it'd take him at least half an hour to get here unless he just happened to set up in the area-and since I know where he was working, that'd be really unlikely. More like an hour away." He put the communicator on one of the workbenches and put the power cell next to it. "Besides, I'm not exactly a slouch at this stuff. I don't doubt he can outdo me, but I can slow him down." From the little case he took another device which linked into his suit's datalink. "Mmm… yes, repeaters up. Not as secure as the normal link. I know this model-low power, self-contained, but only basic security on the ID. I can spoof them-make it look like our signal is coming from another location. If he gets suspicious, he'll be able to break through, but I think I'll catch that happening. Anyway, I don't intend to talk too long."
Satisfied, Modofori inserted the power cell, switched the communicator on, and spoke. "Mr. Baker, are you there?" The little screen lit up immediately. "Yes." A.J.'s eyes were chips of blue-green ice. "As I respect your abilities, I will not spend much time in conversation. I will talk, and you will listen. Currently you do not know where we are, and if you did you will not reach us before we move elsewhere.
You are going to assist us in obtaining the information on fusion technology. You are then going to help us get to theHunin unmolested.
So that we may assure ourselves that we are not being ambushed, you will ensure that we have access to the sensors around theHunin. While I am not your equal at sensors, I also assure you that I am capable of telling if you interfere with the actual data coming from the sensors in question, especially with the entire base apparently shut down.
Once we are in theHunin and ready to launch we will release your wife.
Any deviation from this plan will result first in harm and finally in death for her. You must understand that while I have no interest in harming anyone, I can and will carry out my threats. We are in control in this situation, and you will do precisely as I instruct, unless you do indeed wish me to carry out those threats. Do you understand?"
A.J.'s expression had been impassive. Then it all of a sudden shifted, into a broad grin that somehow had very little humor in it. Even in the small screen, it gave Helen an involuntarily chill. "What I understand is that I don't think I have ever heard anyone manage to be more completely wrong more often in a single speech, even our current president." One of the larger screens over the nearest research station flickered, causing all of them to jump, and abruptly A.J.'s face, twice life-size, was glaring at the three; even Modofori couldn't restrain a slight gasp. "Ido know exactly where you are, and it will take me precisely three more minutes to get there. You will find you cannot go anywhere else. I will not assist you in obtaining any information, you are not getting to theHunin, I'm giving you exactly zero access to anything except a jail cell, you wouldn't be capable of telling whether or not I was inventing anything if I told you I was doing it ahead of time, and most importantly"-his voice dropped to a low tone that still somehow carried with it a snarl-"you cannot, and will not, touch Helen, becauseI am in control of this situation, and you will do precisely as I instruct, or else I promise…" and suddenly he smiled with just a touch of actual humor as he quoted, "… 'You will know pain… and you will know fear… and then you will die.' " At a gesture from Modofori, Jimmy grabbed her arm, forcing it up behind her back. "A nice speech, and I see we have less time than I thought. But I can carry out my threat."
A.J. raised an eyebrow. "I find your lack of faith… disturbing."
His hand raised and gave a small gesture. Helen felt Jimmy suddenly go rigid behind her. He gave a strangled cry and clawed at his throat.
Helen knew she was staring, but doubted that her expression was any more dumfounded than Modofori's. Alex Zaent, his face pale, pulled out a knife and started for Helen. "You cut it out, you son of a-" Another gesture-a rippling gesture, the one she knew well from A.J.'s use of virtual controls-and Zaent screamed and collapsed, the knife falling from a hand that seemed limp and useless. Suddenly Helen understood.
Yanking off her glove, she looked down at her hand. Her engagement ring glinted dully next to the bright gold wedding band, its oversized setting empty of anything except air. Modofori recovered slightly, but his voice shook as he spoke. "How are you…?" "Ever wonder why a lot of the Faerie Dust technology is restricted? Now maybe you know,"
A.J. said. "The dust I'm using isn't meant for medical implantation, of course, so it won't last long-but it'll last long enough. It's actually going to take me another few minutes to get there, but I want you to know that I will knoweverything that is happening in that room.
If any of you so much as twitches in Helen's direction again, I'll stop your god-damned hearts." The screen went blank. Jimmy, now able to breathe, slowly rolled to hands and knees-away from Helen. The others backed away from her as well. By the time the door opened a few minutes later, Helen was alone in the center of the room, with the three men against the wall as far away as they could manage. A.J. didn't even look at them; he ran to her and hugged her tightly. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Helen, I thought I was going to lose you…," he whispered. It was such a total change from the lethal man she'd seen on the screen just minutes ago that she just stood there, blinking stupidly, before hugging him back. "I was pretty scared myself," she said quietly. "And you scared the hell out of me just now, too." "I scared the hell out of myself," he confessed. "I never knew what losing you would do to me until now." Without looking over at the others, he said, "Turn on the dataports on your suits, the three of you." Over his shoulder, Helen saw Modofori's suit suddenly go rigid as steel. "There, that'll hold you for a while. Someone will come down and pick you up in a little bit." He stood slowly. "C'mon, Helen."
"Wait," Modofori spoke. "The Faerie Dust in us?" "Mostly nonreactive materials. I had to do major tricks to get it to the right places in you so it could do a few one-time zaps to the right nerves. I think your body's defenses will clean it all out just fine in a few days.
I'll tell the docs to keep an eye on you until they're sure it's all right." He suddenly met Modofori's eyes. "I didn't want to hurt anyone, you know." Modofori nodded, about the only movement the locked Tayler suit allowed. "I believe you. Thank you." "Don't thank me. I'm still hoping someone else wants to hurt you later." As they left, Helen caught at his arm. "What's going on with the base?" "The base will be okay," he said. "If Bruce doesn't crash."
Chapter 24 Blackness slowly lightened to dim gray shot through with red pain. For a few moments he didn't even attempt to open his eyes, didn't even know who it was that would be doing the opening.
Joe. I'm Joe Buckley. Joe tried to take a breath, felt knives in his chest and barely restrained a cough. The air was heavy, and cold. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn't open at first. Working his face, squinting and frowning and moving all the muscles, he felt something rough and sticky slowly giving. Finally, reluctantly, the eyelids came open, first the left and then the right. Stars. Stars and dark roughness. Another squint, and he realized the roughness was rock. A lot of rock. What the hell happened? He could remember working on the power line for their lab; that was it. Thenboom -nothing. There were actual scratches across his visor, now that his vision was clearing. Something had hit himhard. Not that his body wasn't already informing him of that. He managed to move enough to get the self-diagnostics running. The suit was a mess, low on power, low on air, and some systems just plain not running. He wasn't in great shape, either. Broken ribs, possible minor internal injuries, concussion… The comm unit was still active, at least partly. The antenna had been torn away. Where the hell am I? "Hello? Anyone there?" Something suddenly moved in the circle of sky above him, a huge boxy shape of girders, cubes, and angles blazing with sunlight on one side, gliding with slow majesty across and, it seemed, downward.
That was ridiculous, though. Nobel would have no business down that low, not even on a search-and-rescue for him. He closed his eyes, shaking his head to clear it even though that hurt. When he peeked again, there was no sign of the ship. No one answered his call. He tried to get the suit to boost the power and tried again. "Hello, anyone there, this is…" He almost coughed again. "Joe. Joe Buckley." Faint but sharp in his ears was the abrupt reply. "Joe? Joe!
Thank God!" "Dunno about thanking him, I think hedid this to me."
"Bloke's right, act of God and all that." Bruce sounded distracted, though happy. "Glad to hear your voice, mate. Getting on a little eleventh-hour for you, if you know what I mean." "What happened, anyway?" "One hell of a lot," Maddie answered, unable to quite keep a teary-sounding edge from her voice. "For you, what happened was that a meteor smashed the reactor-control area and blew you… somewhere.
We think we know the general location now, thanks to Jackie. Can you tell us anything to help narrow it down? Where are you?" "Meteor? Now I'm getting hit bymeteors? What, crashing in spaceships isn't good enough? Jesus!" Another breath did cause coughing, which definitely wasn't good. Once he could finally breathe again, he answered the question. "I'm in a hole. Pretty deep. I'm down at least fifty meters, I'd guess." "That'd explain the diminished signal. And I'll bet there are side passages giving us multipath." That was A.J.'s voice. "Still, now we know to look only in holes. Can you see the sky from where you are?" "Yeah, I'm lying on my back looking just about straight up.
Can't figure the constellations, though." He hesitated. "Um, the air's getting awfully thick." There was silence for a moment. "How much air do you have left, Joe?" "The recycler was kinda damaged, according to the readouts. I guess I have ten, twelve minutes before the stuff gets really unbreathable." When there was no response, he sighed. "Guess you don't have that good an idea where I am, huh?" "No," Madeline said quietly. "No, Joe, I'm afraid we don't. But we might get lucky." "I'll be prayin'," Bruce's voice said, seriously. "But I'll have to cut off, gents, because this last part is going to be very, very tricky." "We understand, Bruce," A.J. said flatly. Joe bit his lip. Ten minutes, and-"Wait a minute. Last part ofwhat?" "Of landingNobel," Madeline answered. "We can't get the reactor back online right away, and we need power very soon." "Maddie, look, I sawNobel pass right over me.
About… call it three to five seconds before you answered me."
"Bruce! Jackie! Did you hear that?" "I'm on it," Jackie said. "Hold on… Got it! Depending on exact angles and times, that gives us… this area." "I see it." A.J.'s voice was energetic once more.
"Concentrating all Locusts in the vicinity. Ignore any radio outside of that area. Maddie?" "Combining with the maps… there. It's one of those three." The faceplate was slightly fogged now, and the air was sharp. He had to fight to prevent himself from gasping. Talking wouldn't be a good idea. "Joe, hold on. We're-" The radio went dead at that moment, and all that remained was the very dim lighting of the controls inside the helmet, and the stars, smearing into a mist of fog. And the pain, and breathing thickness… and despite all efforts, the world going even darker… He was falling into pain, redness, cold, more pain… sharper pain, as though he was struck, but his chest still ached. But the ache was fading, fading like everything… almost gone, into warmer gray nothing…
Suddenly light blazed through closed eyelids and there was a hissing sound… Pain screamed back into existence with consciousness, but he forced his eyes open, looking through a clearing faceplate into the airlock ofFeynman and the tear-streaked face of the most beautiful woman in the solar system. "Joe?" she said, voice almost breaking. He managed a grin. "Hey, it's like I always say. Seeing you is like a breath of fresh air."
Richard Fitzgerald entered Hohenheim's office. "You sent for me, Gener-" With barely a shift of expression, Hohenheim grabbed Fitzgerald and slammed him against the wall, forcing a grunt of surprised pain from the Irish mercenary. "You complete fool. Do you realize what you have just done?" Fitzgerald was too startled to reply immediately. He had not expected this violent a reaction, at least not once the operation was over. The general's vehemence had caught him unawares. So did his strength. Hohenheim was tall and broad, but much of that could have been the uniform. Richard realized now that he'd misgauged the man. His immediate impulse was to disengage and counterattack, but that would be very foolish. Careful, Richard, old boy. Just the overenthusiastic employee. "General, please, calm down.
We're getting underway now, and they haven't accused us of anything we didn't expect. It's all working out, so what's to be so angry about?"
The general slowly let him down, his fury seeming to ebb away a bit.
"They have accused us of nothingyet, Mr. Fitzgerald. But you could have easily committed murder. Are you so callous and reckless you don't understand that? Furthermore, if they realize-" "If they suspected us, they'd have said something right away, sir. Fathom isn't the sort to hold back. I tell you, the only chance they had to realize what was really happening was when it happened, unless someone spills the beans to them about our other capabilities, and that's not possible. Even Modofori wasn't in on that little part of the operation." "He can cast suspicion on you, can he not?" Fitzgerald shrugged. "I suppose he could try to say I sent them to do it, but he hasn't got a shred of evidence, and the others got slightly different conversations. They'll never match up. Oh, Fathom knows I sent them, and I think she's probably already guessed why. But withNobel stuck on Ceres, they've got no chance of stopping us-and there's nothing in the system to catch us once we have a day or so running time, am I right?"
"True enough." The general turned away. "Mr. Fitzgerald…" "Sir?"
"I thought I made it clear that I did not want them attacked. I consider this to have been an attack, however one may be able to argue otherwise. You did not-quite-disobey my direct orders, in letter, but in spirit I feel you have. In the future, I want you to understand that I will not look kindly on that kind of latitude. I will expect you to obey both the letterand the spirit of my orders, or I will have you relieved of duty, arrested, and sent back to Earth." Hohenheim's deep voice was as hard as iron. "And had Mr. Buckley died, Mr.
Fitzgerald, I would have stopped this vessel, turned you over to them, and testified against you, no matter what that might have done to my career. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Fitzgerald?" "Crystal clear, sir."
"Dismissed." Richard paused once he had gotten some distance from the general's office. The back of his head throbbed where it had hit the wall. He'd also underestimated the general's ethical hang-ups, he now realized. That could be a problem in the future. But there wasn't much point worrying about that now. Unless another emergency came along, there wouldn't be any reason to get into a pissing match with the general. Now, if all went as planned, it was going to be a matter of long routine and long-distance travel. Without Fathom or the others to bother them, he wouldn't need to worry.
Chapter 25 "A.J., you are such a geek. Going to your wife's rescue and youstill couldn't keep from making cheap jokes?" A.J. looked embarrassed. "That's how I keep from losing it, Joe." Madeline nodded.
"We all have our own methods. I'm… impressed, to say the least."
Internally, she shivered. There were very few things that scared her, but the thought of the insidious way in which A.J. had dealt with the three renegadeOdin crewmen gave her the creeps. She was seated next to Joe's bed, where monitors were tracking his health. Dr. Brea didn't think Joe was in any danger, but he was to be monitored for the next day or so. A.J. and Helen, her nose bandaged, were in seats at the foot of the bed. "Well," A.J. said, "I'm sure you knew the Faerie Dust could do stuff like that." "Sort of," she admitted. "It's not as though no one ever thought of it before, but no one's quite gone ahead and weaponized it until now. And I had no idea you knew enough anatomy to do that so accurately. Especially using only the stuff from Helen's ring." That had been a point that was bothering her. There were an awful lot of the motes in the sparkling ring, but the power output and other aspects of the stunt A.J. had pulled didn't seem to jibe with what she knew of the Faerie Dust capabilities. "Oh, I didn't just use that. I was able to get her ring to shed the stuff and get it on my targets before they suited up-as soon as Modofori answered, in fact, and I knew there was real trouble. If Helen had been wearing her suit then, it would've taken longer-I'd have had to work the things out of the suit when she had the helmet off, and so on. Anyway, once the stuff was all over them I was able to track them using occasional pulses from the marker beacons in the tunnels-had to override their power-conservation schemes, but that wasn't hard. "Once I knew where they were going, at least in a general sense, I could spread a bunch more Dust in the area. When they took off their helmets, the first set from Helen's ring were able to guide the rest to the right points. It really doesn't take much if you're going to be triggering nerve and muscle impulses, but like I said, the stuff wouldn't last long. I had to move as soon as I was sure it was all set. The human body's aterrible environment for my little Faerie Dust motes." He gave an exaggeratedly sympathetic look. "As far as anatomy, well, I don't know all that much, but the library files do, and Dust-Storm has been producing prototype medical motes, so I had to know something about it. And to be honest, I thought about these kind of techniques years ago, so finding the necessary nerve and muscle junctions was something I didn't have to work on just off the cuff. Guiding the motes to the right place, getting them to stay there, and hoping they'd all keep working long enough, that was the real pain in the butt." "Now, alas, I have to start figuring out a defense against that kind of thing,"
Maddie said. "That really is quite frightening, even to me." A.J. nodded. "To me, too. And the only defense I know of for sure is to alreadyhave stuff like that around, on, and maybe even in you that will intercept and kill off anything that doesn't belong there. That's how the human body works, you know. It's biological nanotech, and diseases are the attacking nanotech." Maddie winced. "I think you and I are going to have to sit down and do some design brainstorming sometime soon. But not right now." "Odin?" Joe asked. "Odin," she confirmed. "They're definitely heading for the outer system." Her communicator buzzed. "Fathom." "Larry here, Maddie." The voice of the astrophysicist was grim, angry, and-through the tiny speaker-slightly tinny. "I went through the backups like you said, and I found it.
Wasn't hard with the clues you and A.J. had turned up. They're headed for Enceladus. Judging by the course they're taking, probably going to use Jupiter for a course-correct and slingshot to push them to maximum controllable speed-and incidentally let them visit the big guy for publicity points." "You're sure it's Enceladus and not somewhere in the Jupiter system?" "Dead sure. That's the stuff that was hidden from the main systems, and the label on the Enceladus diagram is clearly for a major base-even if what we know about Enceladus didn't already tell me that." He summarized the peculiarities of the little Saturnian moon. "So yeah, I'm sure." "How long beforeNobel can't catch them?" she asked, trying to sound casual. A.J. shook his head. "Too late already, even if we could spareNobel. If we'd caught on right away, maybe, but they've gotten out into their mass-beam now. They'll be making eight kilometers a second already and accelerating every second. Judging on what our network's seeing on their course… Larry, can you give me a likely course-speed breakdown? I don't think they can crank it up much past one hundred sixty kilometers per second, based on what I've been able to figure out about their mass-drivers, plus they have to be able to make the corner and stop when they get to Saturn. It's going to be tricky." "I can get you a rough guess… here." A.J. stared into apparently empty space as he surveyed the data and imported it. "Yeah… they're full loaded. Rough guess, they'll be into Jupiter system in eighty days or a little less, then heading on to Saturn. Not sure what we'd do, anyway. They've got the right to make the claim, and there's no one else in the solar system who could get there." Maddie almost said something, then stopped. There probably wasn't much point in it, at least not now. Then Joe said, "But there is." A.J. looked at him.
"What are you… Of course!" "You haven't eventested that thing yet!" Helen snapped, picking up on their meaning a split second after Maddie did. "And you'd have to stock it up for the trip, and figure out how you were going to get back, and…" Joe opened his mouth to argue, and then-to everyone's astonishment-A.J. said: "She's right, Joe. It's crazy. We've got more stuff to work on with three bases-one of them, the one we have right here-than we'll manage to get done in a lifetime. Why the hell should we take off and try to beat them to another one? I'm just glad we're all still kicking." Joe's mouth slowly closed. Then opened again. "I'll be totally damned. A.J. Baker, Voice of Reason. What happened to the real A.J., you alien impostor?"
The blond sensor expert reached out and took Helen's hand. His gaze met Joe's, and Maddie saw Joe's eyes widen slightly. "Oh. Yeah, I guess that might do it. You just gotta stop this growing up, A.J. It's freaking us out." "I'll do what I can." He glanced at Maddie. "Anyway, we've hung out here enough. I think me and Helen need to get some rest." "Yes, let's leave you two alone for a while," Helen agreed. The two left, their drifting walk as close together as was practical. Joe took her hand. "Thought they'd never leave." She gave a slight laugh.
His glance told her that he'd noticed something. Why she couldn't hide things from Joe now was a mystery. "What's wrong, Maddie?" She was silent for a minute. "Joe… When am I justified innot saying something, do you think?" "Huh?" Joe stared at her. "I guess it depends on the things you aren't saying. Something about A.J. and those killer tricks? That scares the hell out of me, too. And A.J., if I don't miss my guess." "I'm sure you're right. But that's not it, really." She tried to think of some way to put the question that didn't immediately lead to the next question and the inevitable answer. "I guess it's more a question of which right course of action I should take." Joe thought about that for a minute. "You mean, if you have two courses of action that you can justify, but they each have something really bad as a potential result?" "Something like that."
She tried to keep her gaze level and unrevealing. Joe was silent and thoughtful for a long time. She waited patiently. In some ways she'd learned to trust Joe's judgment more than just about anyone else's.
Glendale or Hughes would have been good to ask, too, but not by remote; not by transmissions that took hours per exchange.
"Well… without more specifics, it's kinda hard to say, Maddie.
But I guess I'd say that you have to look at what the costs are to you. You're almost always worried about other people, so I don't think you look at yourself as much. If one choice is going to costyou more than the other, maybe that's the only way you can tell them apart. Is one of them going to hurt your career? Your friends? Our marriage? Is one of them legal and the other not? I really don't know, Maddie. I know you don't ask me stuff like this lightly. And I could tell something's bothering you. But I know you don't make these decisions lightly, and you've always made the right ones before, so I think whatever you decide is probably the right one." He grinned suddenly.
"It's like a test, Maddie. Keep your first answer-don't second-guess yourself-unless you have a real honest-to-god reason that youknow you were wrong with the first one." Maddie shook her head in bemusement.
Joe's suggestions were simple stuff-direct, obvious advice that any agent already knew. But they were the kind of thing that any agent could often forget, and shehad forgotten. Forgotten that it's not just your paranoid instincts, but your warmer ones, that you had to follow.
You had to remember that you needed the support behind if you were going to face the danger in front. Sometimes that meantnot protecting the people you were responsible for, if the protection would be to lie and lose trust. And what she knew, or guessed, was something that would certainly do that, if she was right. "You're right… as usual, Joe," she said slowly. Then… there's something I have to tell you. Tomorrow. After you and A.J. rest. Because there'll be no rest afterward.
PART V: