However, the guardian field could not have more than a certain intensity. The power plant inside yonder spheroid was limited. Also, the field must be heterodyned to form a shell at a considerable distance from the lens; else it would ruinously interfere with the work. In principle, it was like the screens that deflected charged particles from spacecraft and space stations. Instead of protecting, it was designed to destroy—to scramble, overload, obliterate. But he, flying inert, should pass through in a few minutes.
A galvanometer braceleted on his left wrist, faintly luminous, dropped its reading to zero. He was through.
The golden point ahead had waxed to a tiny disk, rap-fdly growing. Its spiderweb snared stars. He shouldn't strike those antennae. It was time to regain the helm, slow down, and get properly aimed.
No new displays appeared in his helmet. Nor did the jetpack immediately start. Fuel cells and accumulators were unaffected, of course, so he had power, and jury-rigged mechanical switches gave him restricted use of it. Several had already tripped automatically; he heard his air pump going, and suit temperature held fairly steady. Chemicals would blot up excess carbon dioxide and water vapor. Otherwise his biostat was dead: no purification, no recycling. That didn't matter. He'd be back aboard ship before he urgently needed it, or else he'd be dead himself.
He took hold of the improvised manual controls attached to the breast of his suit. The system was clumsy and he'd had only stinted practice with it, a couple of sessions during the voyage when Dagny ceased boost and he could go outside. He'd have to navigate by eyeball and whatever feel for space flying he had developed as a boy around the Habitat. Well, he'd always shown an aptitude.
Lateral thrusts slewed him around. He brought his right arm before his face. Attached was a backward-looking periscope with an objective graduated in phosphorescent circles and radii. When he snugged his wrist into a bracket under his helmet, he could center the spheroid and know he was pointed approximately right and approximately how far he had to go. Not much of a guide, but the best he and Guthrie could make. He activated the jets again, carefully, carefully, though his sole accelerometer was his body and his sole radar his eyes.
A star drifted across the stars, Dagny. She seemed infinitely distant, as if she lay in the sky above Sananton.
His mouth was Mars-dry, his tongue a block of wood. He could have sucked from his water nipple, but dared take no attention from his task. The periscope image kept shifting off the midpoint. He must readjust, over-compensate, readjust, hunting. Sweat soaked his inner garb, stung his eyes, fumed rank in his nostrils.
The spheroid swelled at him. He was coming in too fast. He nudged the boost. Half a minute later he made his guess and switched the motor off.
He struck with an impact that rammed through shins and spine to rattle his jaws. He had already energized his gripsoles, another system bypassing the electronics. Their induction held him fast. He stood upon the metal of his goal.
The daze passed from him. He peered around. The spheroid curved sharply off on every side; stars crowded the rim of vision. Withy-slim members sprouted from it, branches on which grew the argencies that webbed heaven beyond and beyond his head. Sol hung low, a minim of utter brilliance, against the cloudy galactic heart that this lens watched.
Almost as if his aloneness reminded him, he tried turning his communicator back on. A whisper in the earplugs told him it worked. The basic circuitry was simple and rugged. If the more special features were gone, that wasn't important here.
He heard nothing else. Evidently he wasn't acquiring the beam over which Guthrie held the sophotect in argument. Though less soft than he'd wanted, his landing had given the maintenance systems no cause to alert it. Their programs, not written to cover an invasion like his, reacted as they would to a piece of gravel harmlessly impinging.
The ignorance wouldn't last. He could not tap the database as he'd meant to do on Pavonis Mons. A robot could be fooled about that—another event never expected—but not a conscious mind. If nothing else, it would shut everything down to cut off access. No, he must physically rip out the file. And that would disable this whole magnificent instrumentality.
For a second he cringed from guilt. Suppose there truly was no further secret? His deed would be eternally un-forgiveable.
A lifelong rage flared. He would yield no faith to a system that had none in him.
Wrath set as resolution. He would finish what he and Kinna had begun.
He started running, clump-clump-clump over the golden-hued metal. Sol rose before him, and the mysteries it lensed. Likewise did the hemispherical bubble precisely beneath it. Through that hyalon Fenn saw an assemblage of instruments and ancillaries. He had studied the plans and the published images again and again. Nevertheless, in the middle of his haste he felt a dim astonishment at how ordinary the array looked.
He halted at the access port and reached around his shoulders. Couplings unsnapped between his fingers. He put a rack of tools down at his feet. Its gripper took hold. He broke out a cutting torch and cradled it in his arms: tank, accumulator, nozzle, trigger. He squeezed.
Atomic hydrogen attacked the latch module. His helmet stopped down its blue-white glare.
The synthetic voice tolled: "You are committing sabotage. Since the previous attempt at violation, I have been armed against direct assault. Cease at once or I shall have to eliminate you."
Somehow the single thought in Fenn was: It's as desperate as I am.
The entrance was not built for resistance. He cut the warder loose. It wobbled off into space amidst a swarm of hot gobbets. He reached for the hole where it had been and hooked the port open.
Guthrie, a shout, on a beam that he must have redirected: "Fenn, don't! I think he means what he says. Backoff!"
I will do what I will do.
Fenn's action had him, was him. He entered the dome. No gun would be emplaced to shoot inside. The warnings and pleas in his ears had no more existence. He crouched before the database cabinet, punched control plates, saw a door retract. Before him rested a black box forty or fifty centimeters long, ten or fifteen wide and deep. Not much for what it held. But when your digitals are the quantum states of single atoms, you don't need much.
A steely swiftness and precision had come upon him. In a few movements, his fingers disconnected the database. Tucking it into a safe corner, he played his torch around the dome. That just might take out enough capability to allow his escape. Sparks danced through the glooms and the starlight. Housings gave way; circuits fell apart.
"When you emerge, I will destroy you," said the voice, "unless you and your associate promptly surrender."
What did "surrender" mean to a mind that had never known enmity and strife? If they yielded, what would it know to do? The questions barely crossed Fenn's awareness, and were gone. He'd blast off and hope that whatever weapons the mind had wouldn't catch him before Guthrie opened fire.
With the straps that had held the tool rack, he secured his prize against his breast. He went to the port, stepped out, kicked free, and shoved down on the jet control.
Force and thunder seized him. His viewfield filled with stars.
He hardly felt the bullets when they struck.
A screen at high magnification tracked him.
Guthrie's hands and voice cracked forth a command. A projector took aim and unleashed its laser. The dome on the spheroid glowed red and went to ruin.
Sorry, thought Guthrie. I didn't want to kill you. But you were shooting my friend.
Meanwhile, he was directing aloud, "Make ready for EVA from Airlock Two!" Why did he bellow? A download shouldn't get this emotional. Should it? "Sickbay, set up for emergency life sustenance."
He flung his body down the passageways. One of the ship's robots was at the lock with a jetpack. It helped him don the rig. He issued an order that sent him straight through, sliding the outer valve open immediately after the inner shut. Air billowed, a fog, and vanished. Well, an ample reserve was aboard. He sprang
forth. With the senses and computational power of a machine, he didn't need instruments to plot a course. Boost. Acceleration slammed savagely.
He couldn't enter the guardian field. However, Fenn had left at full thrust, which his manual switch maintained. The problem was to reach him, matching not just velocities but their time derivatives, and get that motor turned off.
Rushing masses, straining forces, ship and lens quickly lost in the dark. Fenn was shadow, dim highlights, lumps. Guthrie closed in and groped. His free arm he laid around the man's waist. When he stopped Fenn's jets, the impetus of his own nearly tore his grip loose. He quenched them too. Their load unbalanced, they had put a spin on him and his burden. Constellations gyred crazily. All we need is music, he thought, and this'11 be a dance, a dead man and a download. But when he had halted the rotation and floated free, it was into an absolute silence.
Now he could let go, draw back a little, and see what he had. The helmet shimmered blackly; it must be full of blood. No doubt bits of flesh and bone drifted thick, for the suit was nubbled up and down its length where it had sealed holes. Some were too large for perfect closure. Air oozed out, thin evanescent mists. They left drops that bobbed glistening and in a brighter light would have gone crimson. Before the tank could empty and the body fluids boil, Guthrie had pulled adhesive patches from the repair box and slapped them on.
Straps held a larger box to Fenn's chest. It appeared to he undamaged. An organometallic casing like that was tough, and his body had absorbed most of the energy in the bullets that hit there. So they'd hashed his heart and lungs instead.
"Come and get me," Guthrie broadcast. "Pronto." He kept the transmission going, a beacon, and opened a valve in the suit to bleed off drinking water. Its sublimation should cool the interior and slow the onset of irremediable brain decay.
One evenwatch on the voyage Fenn had gotten drunk and told him something about what went on in the cave on Pavonis Mons. Too bad that Martian skinsuits didn't have a similar provision. But it wouldn't work very well there, and in that particular case, wouldn't have bought enough minutes anyway. They were precious few.
The ship hove in sight and orbited alongside. Guthrie jetted into an open lock.
Again he didn't stop to conserve air, nor did he remove his space gear. In long, weightless arrowings he carried Fenn to sickbay. The master medical robot and its panoply were ready.
"One-half g toward Proserpina," Guthrie said to the ship. He didn't want to impose stress, but what was to come would be plenty messy without debris floating everywhere around.
He had guessed right. Stripped, Fenn was red rags and wreckage. Though the slugs had penetrated and exited cleanly, in their numbers they chewed him up like an old-time harrow in soil. The head seemed intact, but the face, swabbed off, idiotically gaping from the matted beard, was chalky blue.
Guthrie helped lay those remnants that hung more or less together in the subzero fluid tank. "Do what you can, run your tests, and report to me," he directed. "Be prepared for high boost soon."
He took the box off to clean it and himself. For a while afterward he stood holding it. You'd better be worth this, he thought. Worth what you've cost everybody.
He stowed it and returned to the command center. "Five g, destination Proserpina," he said.
"We have insufficient delta v left," the ship answered.
"Sure, I know. But we need to get well clear of this neck of the woods before the cybercosm's reinforcements arrive. I'll find out for certain whether a Proserpinan force is on its way to meet us, or can be persuaded to start. I expect so. We'll keep whatever fuel reserve is right for whatever terminal maneuvers we'll be making. But we want a high velocity and plenty of space around us before we go on trajectory." A huge emptiness, in which pursuit would probably despair of finding him. Ships under boost were far easier to detect and track.
Why was he explaining to a robot?
Well, it was the closest thing he had to company now, and it bore Dagny's name.
Thrust heightened. His mass became very heavy. He sat looking out at the stars.
Presently the medical center spoke on the intercom. "The brain has been biochemically stabilized, along with surrounding vital tissue. Nothing else is in condition to salvage."
Guthrie felt heavier still. "Can you bring the brain to full operation?" he asked.
"Yes, in due course. It is not recommended. No sensory input is available on board."
"And without any, a human quickly goes loco. Uh-huh. Robotics—"
"Prosthesis could only be temporary. In addition to pervasive radiation damage, the brain has suffered trauma from hydrostatic shock. In its present state, as close to suspended animation as feasible, it will remain potentially viable for possibly a year. But once chemical activity resumes, deterioration will be rapid."
"Fenn wouldn't like being just a b'rain in a box anyhow," Guthrie said. Understatement of the week, he thought.
"Well... no harm in keeping things as they are for as long as we can, while we see what might turn up. He never was a quitter either. Do that."
The machine acknowledged and ended communication. Guthrie sat alone. Dagny sped onward.
31
LONG MONTHS LATER, refueled and rearmed, she swung in orbit about Mars. A Proserpinan crew stood watch. Companion ships circled with her, a configuration changeable but always battle-ready. Those aboard looked out upon strangeness. They had never before seen the actual planet like this, never been so near the sun. Their homes were strewn through the realm of the comets.
Nothing came to trouble them in their vigilance, not so much as a word after the dry-spoken arrangements for their harboring were complete. Mars dominated heaven, big and silent. Eyes over its dayside saw wastelands ruddy or darkling, tawny storms, mountains sprawling and rearing, polar caps agleam. Passing above its midnight, they saw a black shield bordered with stars, and a few stars below, which were the lights where humans .dwelt. Slowly, tension lessened.
Guthrie had foreseen that. It was the Selenarchs who insisted he arrive at his last parley with an escort prepared to fight. He finally gave in and agreed. If soft-played, not unduly provocative—and Lunarians weren't given to bluster—the move might even be of some slight use as a demonstration of resolve.
But when the tightly encrypted messages had gone back and forth and those whom he wanted to see were awaiting him, he went down alone, riding a jetpack. At a certain landmark, a rock spire in the middle of a desert, he met the flitter that took him where he wanted to go.
For a while after they left the house they stood mute, he and the two humans. Nobody knew quite what to say.
The sky was pale rose, bright with morning. Land lifted steep and stony to north, streaked with mineral hues, until it broke off at the edge of Eos Chasma. Elsewhere it rolled more gently and plantation softened much of it, shrubs and vines and boles, mostly ebony and russet at this season but with gauzy iridescence rippling around some. Sparkles among them betokened animal life astir. The house rambled low beneath roof and dome, viewports shining in walls that the Martian weather had had centuries enough to mark for its own.
An aircraft was already on the landing strip, the youngsters already inside. They and their parents planned to spend the next two days camped in the Valles. Skinsuited, David and Helen Ronay paused at the door with Guthrie, who needed merely his machine body.
He took the initiative, speaking more diffidently than was usual for him. He did not consciously will that his image-face show concern, but by now he generated expressions almost as naturally as when he was alive. "I still feel... odd about this. Making you leave your home. Especially when you've been so kind to me."
David Ronay inclined his gray head. "We are honored that we can help you, captain. We know quite well how important it is for you to have privacy today. Important to all of us."
"And you—you have been kind to us," Helen Ronay said. A tear on her cheek caught sunlight. "Oh, very kind."
She hugged him. D
avid Ronay shook his hand. They walked off to join their children.
Guthrie watched the aircraft leave. It climbed, bore west, became a spark high aloft, was gone. He remained standing, looking out over these wide lands. His tactile sensors felt the breeze strengthen until it was a wind. He heard it thinly skirling. Here in the daylit tropics it wasn't lethally cold. But no one would ever smell what odors it carried, unless the planet in some future century arose to resurrection.
A robotic radio voice: "Requesting permission to set down."
"Granted," Guthrie said. "You're right on time." Tautness thrummed in him. He hastened back to the front airlock. As he stepped into the chamber, he heard the flyer whirr, and the shadow of its wings fell over him.
Hangaring it for a short stay wasn't worth the bother when no dust storm was predicted. It landed on the strip and the house extended a gangtube for its solitary passenger. Meanwhile, Guthrie cycled through and strode back to that area. Reaching the entrance, he decided to switch off his face. That might seem unfriendly. On the other hand, Chuan might feel a bit less uncomfortable confronting a blank turret, a pure machine.
The synnoiont entered. He stopped and bowed. Guthrie returned a naval-style salute. "Welcome, sir," he greeted. "Good of you to come."
True. The preliminary negotiations had been lengthy and complicated, not simply because of transmission lag. They had reminded him of hagglings about armistice terms in ancient wars. But none of that was Chuan's fault. The most powerful man on Mars had raised no objections and set no conditions. He just went where he was asked to go, in secret and unaccompanied.
The Fleet of Stars Page 39