Dark as Day

by Charles Sheffield

  “You mean we’re going to get money?” The explanation had finally reached a point that Philip and Jack could understand.

  “Eventually, but not for some years. The elder brother—that is you, Philip—will have to reach age twenty-three. Moreover, the assets may be used by each of you only in the manner originally described; namely, for such enterprises as will significantly and beneficially affect the future of the human race.”

  “Do our parents know all this?”

  “Not yet. Marcus Tullius Beston envisaged, and wished to avoid, any situation in which individuals might seek ways to leverage in advance a future bequest.”

  Jack asked, “Do our parents have to know—ever?”

  “I see that as inevitable. I do not see it as a problem.”

  Jack said, “That’s because you don’t know what our stepmother is like.”

  Philip said, “Oh shit. We’re not getting money. We’re getting trouble.”

  * * *

  “The way I’ve heard it,” Hannah went on, “Philip and Jack’s parents took their own shot at cracking the terms of the will, trying to get their hands on the kids’ money. They didn’t have any more success than the people seventy-five years earlier. They just made it so that Philip and Jack never wanted to speak to their stepmother ever again.

  “Then Philip and Jack became old enough to inherit. They had a big problem. All that loot, more than they had ever dreamed of having, but they didn’t know how to get their hands on it. They suggested all sorts of things based on their own interests, but the trustees bounced every one. Martha Reid didn’t seem to see the value to humanity of Philip’s proposed hundred kilometer ice rink on Callisto, or Jack’s System-wide space race.

  “Freedom to use the trust fund, but also to do something you’d like: that was the problem, and it was Jack who cracked it. He’d always been interested in the idea that there might be aliens, somewhere out there in space. If you could find some, there was no end to what humans might learn. So why not take the old ideas of listening for signals, and do it right? Propose a big, elaborate facility with the best possible equipment and people. And stick it far away from Ganymede, where Old Mother Reid couldn’t keep too close an eye on how you were spending the money.

  “It was a great idea, and Martha Reid loved it. She agreed to approve it in a hot minute. Jack set to work, planning an L-5 Argus Station. And he was coming along fine, until he applied for permission to build.

  “That’s when he found that there was already an application for a SETI station at Jovian L-5. Philip, without telling his brother, had decided that he would do the same thing, and do it first. Jack went nuts when he found out but there wasn’t much he could do—except win the race. They had always been competitive, now they would be super-competitive. He made his own application for a station at L-4, the other stable Lagrange point. He would do an all-sky survey, whereas Philip Beston was going to concentrate on selected target stars, but otherwise they’d be using the same sort of equipment and analysis methods.

  “And there was one other thing, something that neither brother had expected. Once they got going, Jack and Philip discovered that they were fascinated by the SETI projects. The longer they worked, the more it became an obsession. They’ve being going head to head for the past twelve years, with neither one slowing down and neither showing an advantage—until now, with the Wu-Beston anomaly. You can imagine how Philip welcomed that message from the Ogre.

  “Better be prepared when you reach Odin Station, Milly. It’s odds-on that the Bastard will have a reception planned for you. I wouldn’t like to guess what.”

  11

  ABOARD THE OSL ACHILLES

  Welcome aboard the OSL Achilles.” The blond-haired man in the white uniform stared dubiously at Janeed, and then at the two bags. “Is that all you have?”

  “I’m afraid it is. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “Well, no. But some of the others …” He gestured to a huge heap of luggage. “Most people try and bring the contents of the family home, including the cat. It’s my job to talk them out of it.”

  “I never had a family home, so it was easy.” Janeed examined his silver badge, which offered the cryptic message F. O., MARR P. They were already in Earth-synchronous orbit, and her light-headed feeling was due to more than the micro-gravity environment. Normally she would never have added, to a total stranger, “Is that all you do, handle luggage? And what does your badge mean?”

  He seemed more amused than affronted, and looked hard at Janeed for the first time. “No, it’s not all I do. My name is Paul Marr, and I’m second in command. First officer, sort of a spare captain—I suppose it’s in case we lose one.”

  “You mean you’re the first mate.”

  “If you want to put it in the old-fashioned Earth way, I guess I am.” Janeed and Sebastian were the last to board, so there was no pressure to keep them moving along. Paul Marr glanced at Sebastian, who was staring enraptured out of the port at the full globe of cloudy Earth, far below, and added, “The first mate. You sound like you’ve been to sea yourself.”

  “For more than a dozen years.”

  “Really? You don’t look old enough.”

  “Easily old enough. Thank fresh air and early nights if I look younger than I am. It wasn’t on a real ship, though. I worked in the South Atlantic on a Global Minerals’ mining platform.”

  “Even so, it’s a lot more than I’ve ever done. It must be wonderful down there on Earth: the sea breezes, the tides, the storms.”

  “Not just those. Don’t forget the pirates, the grog, the lash, the treasure, keel-hauling and hanging from the yard-arm.” Janeed’s strange sense of freedom—of liberation—would not go away. It was like waking on a spring holiday morning when she was six, with the whole day and the whole world waiting. Perhaps it was unfair to dump her exhilaration on Paul Marr, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was laughing, and it was with her, not at her.

  “Get yourself settled in on Ganymede,” he said, “then you must take another trip on the Achilles. We’ll go down to Earth, just the two of us, and you can show me everything.”

  Was it a come-on, after less than two minutes in each other’s company? It certainly sounded that way. Janeed decided, to her own amazement, that she wouldn’t mind if it were. Paul Marr was part of the mystery, shaking off the surly bonds of Earth and heading into the unknown.

  But Marr was staring at Sebastian, who had suddenly swung away from the port.

  “I’m sorry.” The first officer was looking at Sebastian, although he seemed to be talking to Jan. “The gentleman there. I assumed that you two were brother and sister. But the manifest shows different last names.”

  “We’re together, but we’re not related.” At Paul Marr’s frown, Jan added, “We grew up together, ever since we were a few years old.”

  Paul Marr said, “Good”—which so far as Jan was concerned could mean absolutely anything—and then, to Sebastian, “I’ve been curious to meet you, Mr. Birch. You are the reason that the Achilles will be detouring to Mars, instead of taking a straight run to the Jovian system.”

  Sebastian said nothing. It was Jan who had to ask, “Why? What’s on Mars that involves Sebastian?”

  “Not what. Who. We’ll be picking up a Dr. Valnia Bloom there, who has been recruiting for her science section. She wants to talk to both of you and give Mr. Birch another set of tests on the way out to Jupiter.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve got me. But it will offer you the chance to see a bit more of the System. Of course, you won’t have an opportunity to go down to the surface of Mars. We’ll just do an orbital rendezvous.”

  “Good.” Sebastian spoke to Paul Marr for the first time. “I’ll see cloud patterns.”

  “You’ll certainly be able to do that. Are you interested in the clouds on Mars?”

  “Not very.” Sebastian turned back to the observation port, leaving Paul Marr to stare quizzically at Jan. His expression said
, Is he normal? Jan didn’t want to think too closely about that. She loved Sebastian more than anyone else in the universe, but even she couldn’t deny that he was strange.

  “Come on.” She took Sebastian’s arm. He seemed fixated on Earth again. “You’ll have time to look at that later. Now we have to go to our quarters and settle in.” She picked up the bags, handed one to Sebastian, and moved along the entry umbilical that led through to the ship’s interior.

  At the hatch an odd feeling in the back of her neck convinced her that she was being stared at. She turned. Paul Marr had not moved. He gave her a nod and a little smile, and said, “Enjoy the Achilles. We’re proud of her. I hope I’ll see more of you on the flight out.”

  * * *

  Marr had sounded sincere enough, but for the next four days Jan did not see him at all. It was not for lack of trying on her part. The Achilles was a substantial vessel, a fat ovoid forty meters long and thirty across its round mid-section. The engines that propelled the ship toward Mars at a steady third of a gee were housed in the rear, together with the ship’s instrumentation and control room, all behind a bulkhead that said NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT in large red letters. Jan decided that Paul Marr must be hiding there, because he was certainly not in any other part of the ship. While Sebastian stared first at the starscape beyond the observation port—“Boring,” he said, after half an hour—and then drowsed in his bunk or gazed vacantly at the cabin ceiling, Jan explored the whole vessel.

  There were seventy-one other passengers, bound for the Jovian system as final destination. Jan and Sebastian were the only ones who would head farther out, after the indoctrination sessions on Ganymede. She spoke with a fair number of fellow travelers, but found little in common with most of them. They had worked indoor office jobs on Earth, and they expected to work indoor office jobs somewhere on Ganymede or possibly Callisto. Jan’s life on the high seas of Earth meant nothing to them, though she did swap sea stories with one former sailor. Her own ignorance of what the future might hold in the Saturn system ruled that out as a subject for conversation.

  The captain of the OSL Achilles joined the passengers every day for dinner in the ship’s formal dining room, and different groups took it in turn to sit at his table. When Jan’s turn came, along with Sebastian and three others, she made polite general conversation for awhile, and then—ingenuously, she hoped—said, “Your first officer was very kind and helpful when we came aboard. But I haven’t seen him since.”

  Captain Eric Kondo squinted across the table at Jan. She had the feeling that he was reading her ID badge. “I’m sure that you will, Ms. Jannex,” he said, “as soon as we reach Mars. The first officer has been very busy, overhauling the Omnivores for inspection when we reach Mars orbit.”

  “Omnivores?” The man seated next to Captain Kondo was tall and thin-boned, as though he had already lived all his life in a low-gee setting. “What are they, some kind of pet animals?”

  The captain—short, serious, and very dignified—looked at his neighbor in horror. “Pets, sir? Not in space, sir. I know that back on Earth in the old days the sailors carried goats and guinea pigs and turtles for fresh meat, but we are prohibited. No pets allowed, orders of the Outer Systems Line. Mr. Marr and the engineer are overhauling the Diabelli Omnivores—our main engines, that keep pushing us along so comfortably. If you sit quiet and remain still, you will hear and feel them.”

  Jan already had. Lying in her bunk the first two nights out, she had detected a faint vibration.

  “But if you do feel them,” Captain Kondo went on, “it means that they are not at maximum efficiency. A perfectly efficient engine would make no noise at all, and would not vibrate. That’s what the crew are working on now. Before we get to Mars, all that work has to be over and done with. Then you will have the first officer here at dinner, and less of my dull company.”

  He said it with a smile, as though he didn’t believe that anyone might possibly find him boring; but Jan had the feeling that he was looking at her particularly when he mentioned the first officer.

  * * *

  On the seventh day, the OSL Achilles was nearing Mars orbit rendezvous when a knock came on the door of Jan’s cramped little stateroom, far forward near the bows of the ship.

  She was curled up on the bed dressed only in briefs and a tank top, but expecting it could only be Sebastian she called, “It’s open. Come in.”

  Paul Marr entered, wearing a smile that vanished instantly when he guessed from her clothing that she had been expecting someone else. “I’m sorry. I should have said who I was.”

  “It’s all right.” Jan pulled a bed-cover over her bare legs. “My fault. I thought it was Sebastian, and we’re pretty informal with each other. You get that way if you took baths together when you were kids.”

  She noticed something odd about his appearance. He was dressed in a newly-pressed white uniform, but his hands were dirty and his nails grimy, as though no amount of scrubbing could get them clean. She went on, “I would ask you to sit down, but there’s not room in here to swing a cat.”

  “No pets allowed. Orders of the Outer System Line.” He didn’t smile when he said it, but Jan felt certain that he had been told about her dinner two nights earlier with Captain Kondo. Her conviction was confirmed when he said, “We finished work on the Omnivores just a couple of hours ago. They’re as clean and beautiful and efficient now as they ever will be. I wondered if you’d like to go aft with me and take a look at them before we power down and settle into Mars orbit.”

  “Dressed like this?”

  “Dressed any way you like.” He hesitated, then added, “You look pretty good to me. But I’ll wait outside.”

  Which left Jan with a small problem. She wanted to be at her best, but she had brought with her exactly one stylish dress. She had been holding it in reserve, waiting for a night when Paul Marr finally appeared for dinner. She didn’t want to waste it on a tour of the ship’s engine room, and anyway it didn’t feel right for that. Engines, if they were anything like the methane power drives on the Global Minerals’ platform, made you dirty if you so much as glanced at them.

  She scanned her minimal wardrobe and settled for a dark green top and cut-offs, with flat-heeled pumps. At their first meeting she had noticed that Paul Marr was no taller than she was. She didn’t care, and hoped that he didn’t. You would think that by now no one would worry about a woman’s height, but she knew for a fact that some men did, just as they worried about age differences. She suspected that Paul was at least five years younger than she was.

  At the last moment she changed into high-heeled open-toed sandals. If he had old-fashioned hang-ups on height or age, she might as well find out about them now.

  He was leaning against the wall of the narrow corridor when she emerged. His scan of her, from toes to head—five centimeters taller than him—produced a delighted smile. “So far as I was concerned,” he said, “you could have gone as you were. But I must say you look better now. In fact, you look just terrific.”

  So did he. Jan wondered what she might be getting herself into. The strange feeling of exhilaration had not left her. To depart Earth was to enter a zone of space and time where anything was possible.

  He didn’t take her arm, nor did she expect him to. This was a member of the crew, suitably polite and formal with a passenger. But he did walk very close, guiding her along the spiraling corridor that wound its way aft. Since the ship was decelerating into Mars orbit, the way aft was all “downhill.”

  At the rear bulkhead they paused. Jan pointed to the sign. NO PASSENGERS BEYOND THIS POINT.

  Paul shrugged. “You wouldn’t want it to welcome just anybody, when the ship’s control room is back here. The sign ought to add, ‘Unless accompanied by a ship’s officer.’ That’s me.” He slid the hatch open and waved her through.

  Since the area also contained the living quarters of crew members, who spent far more time aboard than any passenger, Jan expected the rooms to be bigger
and better furnished than her own cramped area. Just the opposite seemed to be the case. Rather than the bright blues and yellows she had become accustomed to, the walls aft were painted in dingy khaki and a hideous lurid green. The passages were even narrower than the spiral that had brought them here, more like tunnels for rats than corridors for human beings.

  “A couple of reasons for that,” Paul said in answer to her question. “First, the crew are at home in any acceleration from free-fall to two-gees—that’s emergency only, by the way. We’re used to wriggling our way along, and wider corridors wouldn’t make that any easier. Also, you are seeing the worst part, the way back to the engines. The captain’s quarters are big and pretty plushy, off to the left. Mine don’t match up to his, but they’re comfortable. Maybe you’d like to take a look at them sometime.”

  That sounded like another hint, and not a particularly subtle one. Jan glanced at Paul Marr, but his eyes stared straight ahead as he added, “Not today, though, we don’t have enough time.”

  Enough time for what? His expression remained serious, and that was fine. The last thing she wanted was a leer or a sly wink.

  They had reached the hatch leading down to the engine room. Paul said, “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you that it’s all right,” and slid through onto a tight spiral staircase of open metal rungs.

  Jan followed him down, glad that she had chosen cut-offs but with second thoughts about the heels on her sandals. She didn’t know what she had expected to find—flaming rockets, or a ball of nuclear fire?—but the reality was not impressive. The engine room contained no people, and no furnishings of any kind. She and Paul Marr stood on a small flat platform, less than two meters across, in the middle of the room. On each side, arranged in a hexagon and within touching distance, stood six upright bulbous blue cylinders.