Was this one rotating?
Aybee fixed his eyes on one point on the ceiling and crouched low. No doubt about it, the kernel was both massive and rotating extremely rapidly. He could feel the inertial dragging as the kernel's spin rotated the reference frame along with it, tilting the local vertical.
He turned his attention to the controls. Most of them were already familiar to him. There were a dozen superconducting electromagnets holding the charged kernel firmly at the center of its spherical shields. They appeared standard, no different from systems Aybee had seen in dozens of other energy-generation facilities.
There was the energy-extraction mechanism itself, clearly identifiable by its plasma injection units. The system was unusually finely calibrated, allowing far smaller changes to the kernel's rotational energy than any that Aybee had seen before, but that was an easy technological refinement, within the power of any kernel user. It was not clear why anyone would want to do it.
The first sign of real oddity came in the sensor leads. They were ten times as big as Aybee had expected, suggesting a high signal-carrying capacity, and they ran to a substantial computer sitting right on the outer shield. A computer to do what?
Inside the shield, the spinning black hole of the kernel was sending out a seething stream of radiation and particles. That random energy emission was a nuisance, and the shields were a necessity to reflect it back on itself. At the same time, the sensors monitoring the outward flood within the shields allowed the mass, charge, and angular momentum of the kernel to be measured to one part in a trillion.
Aybee crouched on the dull black surface of the outer shield, staring at the computer and its connecting cables for a long time. He would have loved to follow those optic bundles a meter or so farther, beyond the shields. It was impossible. There were hatches for robot access, but he would not have survived a moment inside the shields.
He stood up, puzzled, and stared thoughtfully at the sensor leads for a few minutes. When he finally wandered through the corridors back to his own quarters, his head was whirling with ideas and conjectures. He had theories but no way to test them. What he needed was a long spell of quiet thought.
What he found when he arrived at his room was Gudrun. She was sitting on his bed. She had abandoned her silver-blue uniform and badged cap for a brief black exercise suit and purple skin makeup. Gudrun nodded at him and patted the bed next to her.
Aybee eyed her uneasily and remained standing. "I was just taking a look around."
"I know. Sit down, Karl."
He placed himself at the far end of the bed. "I'm doing all right, aren't I?" He cleared his throat. "I mean, no problem with my work."
"Just the opposite." She inched along closer to him. "Karl, you've been doing well, but I'm convinced you could do a lot better. Some of your answers on the tests are so concise and clear, they're better than anything in the training manuals. I'm using them as reference material. Where do you get them from?"
Aybee swore internally and shrugged. "Dunno. I just write what I think of."
"If you can think that way consistently, there's more in your future than a job as a maintenance engineer. I want to do something special with you."
"What do you mean?" Aybee did not like the look in her eye. "I want to take you to meet the big boss—the head of the whole revolution and movement. We have his orders to sift for unusual potential and report it to headquarters." She misread his concern. "Don't worry, I wouldn't send you there alone. We'd go together, just you and me, on one of the special high-acceleration transit ships. I'd be your sponsor."
"When?" The training course had five more weeks to run.
"In a couple of days. Jason and the other assistants can handle the training course easily enough. It's five days travel from here to headquarters in the new ship, but we wouldn't waste the time. You have a lot to learn. I'd give you personal coaching and special training." Gudrun had moved Aybee all the way to the end of the bed, and he could not retreat farther. Her golden-brown eyes were gleaming. She took his hands in hers and stared at him possessively. "And we still haven't done that form-change, have we? The one that we talked about when you signed on. You're still too tall for comfort. We'll work on that. There might be some spare time for a form-change on the journey, too. I want to make you look more like one of us—less like a Cloudlander." She squeezed his hands. "What do you say, Karl? It's a one-time opportunity."
Five days confined to a high-g transit cabin with Gudrun. Five days of "personal coaching" and "special training." What did that include? He had horrible suspicions. Aybee avoided her gaze, but she was very close. Everywhere he looked he saw nothing but bare flesh, plump thighs, arms and shoulders and breasts.
"Well, Karl, what do you say?" She was whispering, close to his cheek.
Aybee closed his eyes in horror. Do I have a choice?
He took a deep breath. Look at it this way, Apollo Belvedere Smith: You go to headquarters and the chances of finding out if your ideas are right are a hell of a lot better there than they are here. Whatever happens on the journey, you can handle it. So say yes quick, before you decide you can't stand the idea.
He nodded, eyes still closed. "It sounds . . . wonderful."
He felt Gudrun's hand on his thigh. "I'll make sure that it is," she said. "We'll leave tomorrow. I'll put a form-change tank and size-reduction programs on the ship, too. You can use them as much as you want to. But you'd better get some rest now, Karl. You need your rest."
"Yeah." Aybee swallowed. "I think I do."
She was moving slowly away from him. He could breathe again. He looked at her red lips and half-open mouth. She seemed ready to eat him.
Just make sure the form-change tank and size-reduction program is there, Gudrun, he thought. I'll use 'em, all right. In fact, if this trip is anything like I imagine, I'll use 'em over and over. I'm going to arrive at headquarters as a two-foot midget.
CHAPTER 20
"I disapprove of every conspiracy of which I am not a part."
—Cinnabar Baker
Sylvia Fernald had agonized over the decision for a long time. Who should be told what she was planning to do, and how much should they be told?
On the one hand, her attempt to contact Paul Chu was in no sense an official mission. She had not been ordered to do it or even asked to think about it. On the other hand, Bey Wolf and Aybee Smith believed that the rebels were behind the technical malfunctions in the Inner and Outer Systems, and they agreed with Cinnabar Baker that the rebels' end objective might be to instigate an all-out war between the other two parties. If that were the case, and if Paul were part of the rebel group, a dialog with him was supremely important. Sylvia knew of no one else who might be able to open that dialog. Paul had always been secretive and mistrustful, but he would talk to Sylvia.
Wouldn't he? They had been very close, but in the final months she had never known what Paul was thinking or even what he was doing. But surely he would at least talk to her—they had been partners for more than three years. On the other hand, if he had become a rebel himself, she ought not to be talking to him, and if she did meet with him, she should not tell anyone she was doing it.
Sylvia wondered and worried and at last settled for a compromise. Since she would be using a Cloudland ship in her travels, someone in government had to know and approve it. But the fewer people who knew, the less the danger that her mission would be leaked to others.
Sylvia looked at her options. Leo Manx was a good man but pedantic in approach and—much more dangerous—apt to gossip. Bey Wolf would not talk, but he would probably try to stop her. Aybee, her first choice, was off who knew where, and all her other close friends in the harvesters would be overwhelmed by the implied responsibility. They would feel a compulsion to tell their superiors—who might then tell anyone.
In the end, Sylvia called Cinnabar Baker directly and asked for a private meeting. If the information were likely to end with Baker, it might as well begin there.
&nb
sp; The other woman asked her—typically—to come to her quarters that same day, but at one o'clock in the morning. Sylvia spent the next twelve hours making final preparations for her departure and rehearsing what she was going to say to Baker. But when she finally entered the bare-walled apartment, she forgot about her prepared speech.
Cinnabar Baker looked terrible. She had lost fifty or sixty pounds, and her gray-toned skin was lined and pouchy. From time to time she rubbed at her eyes, wheezed deep in her chest, and produced a rumbling cough. Turpin sat blinking on her shoulder. Each time she coughed, the bedraggled crow provided an impressive imitation of the sound. He must have had plenty of time to practice.
"I know." Baker saw Sylvia's dismay. "Don't tell me I look like hell, and don't worry. It's not permanent. I've been overworking, and everyone here is scared to let me near the form-change machines for a remedial session. The machines are so messed up, people are afraid I'll turn into a pumpkin. What can I do for you? We have ten minutes."
Sylvia jumped into her description of how she had found a trail that should lead to Paul Chu. Half her explanation proved unnecessary—Cinnabar Baker knew more about the relationship with Chu than Sylvia had dreamed. Baker waved her on past that, then listened in a silence broken only by her coughs and hoarse breathing.
At the end of it Baker sniffed and pinched the end of her nose between her fingers. "I've heard your reports, and the ones from Leo Manx. Do you agree with him that the rebels are behind Bey Wolf's problems with the 'Negentropic Man'?"
"I think so."
"You've saved Wolf's life at least once, probably twice. Do you know what the ancient Chinese, back on Earth, used to say if you saved a man from drowning?"
Sylvia shook her head in confusion. Cinnabar Baker had lost her.
"They would say you are then responsible for the welfare of that man for the whole rest of his life. Let me ask you, how much of what you're proposing to do is for the sake of the Outer System? And how much are you doing to help with Wolf's personal problems?" The suggestion floored Sylvia.
She had acted to save Bey on the transit ship and on the space farm without thinking for a moment about her own motives. She would have done as much for anyone. And as for sitting beside the form-change tank while Bey Wolf was in it . . .
"Don't bother to answer that." Cinnabar Baker was moving on. The allotted ten minutes had passed. "Tell me this instead. You're proposing to leave at once. What's the hurry? Why not wait a few more days?"
"More days?" Turpin repeated.
Sylvia shook her head. "I daren't. Paul Chu is at that location to perform a facility conversion, adding a low-g drive—probably to a cometary fragment. That means he'll be working alone except for machines. We'll be able to talk freely. But that will last only another couple of weeks, then he'll be leaving. I don't know where he'll be going next."
"Does he know anything about this?"
"Not a thing. I didn't suggest to anyone that I might try to visit him. You're the only person who knows I'm even thinking of it." She saw the slow nod of Cinnabar Baker's head. "You will approve it, then?"
Baker grunted. "Fernald, I never did like Paul Chu. I remember him, and I don't believe he'll do one thing to help you." She held up her hand. "But before you begin to argue, let me tell you I'm going to approve your request. You ought to have this job for a day. You'd approve anything that might give you a toehold on our problems. The Cloud's technology is all going to hell, people daren't go near the form-change machines, we've been receiving communications from some of the other harvesters that suggest the populations there have all gone crazy, and I just had a report from the other side of the Cloud about a bad accident on another of the space farms. To top that off, one of our inbound cargo ships was destroyed yesterday, and the Sunhuggers are blaming us for it—saying we blew up one of our own vessels!"
She sighed. "All right. You've heard enough of that. Of course I'll approve it. Go do it, and use my authority if you need it to get your ship. But one other thing," she added as Sylvia stood up. "This has to be a two-way street. You won't tell anyone where you're going. And I won't tell anyone, not even the Inner Council, what you are trying to do. If you get into hot water, I'll have to disown you. I'll even deny that you had my permission for a transit ship. We have a firm policy, you see: We don't deal with the rebels in any circumstances. Understood?"
Sylvia bit her lip, then nodded. "All right."
Cinnabar Baker reached out and took her hand in an unexpected gesture. "We never had a meeting tonight, Fernald, and you leave by the other exit. I have another group of people waiting outside. Good luck, and good hunting. You'll be a long way from home."
"From home," Turpin echoed hoarsely. The crow wagged his head. "Way from home."
That had been eight days earlier. Eight days of silence and solitude. Sylvia had maintained strict communications blackout all through the journey, even when the ship's drive was inactive and it was easy to send or receive signals.
But as she slowed to approach her final destination, the rendezvous only a few minutes away, her nervousness increased. The urge to send some kind of message back to Cinnabar Baker grew stronger. Sylvia had been provided with an ephemeris for a body in an orbit skirting the outer part of the Kernel Ring; she was told that Paul Chu should be there. But the positional data had come with an admonition to strict secrecy—and nothing else. She had not been told the nature of the object to which she was traveling, or whether it was large or small, man-made or natural, a colony or a military base. She had assumed a cometary fragment—why else would he be installing an add-on drive unit—but suppose that was wrong?
Well, she would know soon enough. At last the body was visible. From a distance of five kilometers it was like an irregular, granular egg, shining by internal lights. Sylvia turned the high-magnification sensors onto it. She was confused, and her nervousness had increased. The object was about three hundred meters long, too small to be a harvester, a colony, or a cargo ship, and the wrong shape for a transit vessel. That fit with the idea of a small comet nucleus, still rich in volatiles. Yet the pattern of ports and lights implied an inhabited body, and two docking ports and air locks were clearly visible on the surface.
If it were a natural body, then it was one that had already seen some internal tunneling and modifications. The newly installed drive unit was easily recognized, gleaming at the thicker end of the lumpy body.
Delay would not help, and she had not come so far for nothing. Sylvia was already in her suit. She allowed the transit ship to dock itself gently against the bigger port, opened the cabin, and went straight to the lock.
It was open, contrary to standard safety regulations. And the inner lock was open, too, which meant that the interior of the body was airless. If Paul Chu were inside, he was wearing a suit or he was a corpse. Sylvia noticed how loud her own breathing sounded in the helmet. She set her suit receiver to perform a frequency sweep and passed on through the inner air lock.
The first chamber had been carved from the water ice and carbon dioxide ice of the cometary interior, and it was clearly intended as a workshop and equipment-maintenance facility. There were plenty of signs that it had been recently inhabited, with cutting torches still attached to their fuel bottles in a tool shop chamber and an electrical generator in standby mode. Three or four construction machines were waiting patiently against one of the walls. Sylvia regarded them with irritation. They were obsolete models by Cloud standards. If they had been made just a little bit smarter, she could have asked them what was going on. As it was, they had been designed with a specialized vocabulary and understood nothing but mechanical construction tasks. If no one came along to give instructions, they would wait contentedly for a million years.
She passed on through a sliding partition, deeper into the interior. The scan on received signals had produced nothing, so she switched to an all-frequency broadcast. "Paul Chu. This is Sylvia." Her suit repeated the message automatically, over and over, and liste
ned for any reply.
She had reached the temporary living quarters built by the machines near the center of the body. He was not there, but she saw many signs of his recent occupancy. That was definitely his computer link, the one he had used for ten years. No Cloudlander, no matter how long he was away from the Outer System, would ever leave metal objects strewn so casually around unless he knew he would be coming back soon or had been forced to leave in a great hurry.
Or dead, her mind said insistently.
She pushed away the thought. Perhaps Paul was somewhere on the other side of the body, or perhaps he had been temporarily called away.
But called away to what? And to where? She had seen no sign of other bodies in her approach, and her suit radio had an effective range of many thousands of kilometers.
The suppose that he did not want to meet her and was hiding away to avoid an encounter? That thought rejected itself. How could he be hiding when he had no idea that she was even coming? He thought she was back in the Outer System.
Almost against her will, Sylvia set out to explore the desolate interior. Sometime, far in the past, it had been a human home for a long period. There were kitchens, bedrooms, even chambers set up for entertainment and exercise. Those rooms held harnesses, stretch bars, and workout machines, each with dials to measure effort level and progress. But over all the equipment and instruments lay a thin layer of sublimed ice. No one had touched anything there for years, maybe for decades.
In less than half an hour she was convinced that there was no one anywhere on the hollowed-out comet. She was alone. And only a few moments later she felt a strange vibration beneath her feet and sensed a slight pressure on the front of her suit. She knew at once what was happening. The air locks had been closed on the body's surface, and the interior was filling with air.
She set off, hurriedly retracing her steps toward the lock through which she had first entered. When she was halfway there a flicker of movement appeared at the end of a corridor.
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