“It’s all right. There’s nothing you can do about it now. We’ve got to find out if Perditus can and will help us. There’ll be time for grieving later.”
Su sniffled once and looked up at him. “I’m coming with you. That is, if you’ll still have me. I can’t stay here.”
Chapter Nine
Collier felt his breath catch. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He could feel the ship gently coast to a stop on the ice and heard Sancho announce their arrival.
“Su, my darling, I’m very glad to hear that. But we won’t be going anywhere unless we solve the problems we’ve got right before us. Plus the launch computer, Perditus, is a Caliban.”
“I heard, but I don’t know what that means.” Su’s voice was beginning to return to her clipped, emotionless tone, but he could still hear the quivering in her voice that betrayed her unsettled state.
Collier chafed. It would take too long to go into the history of computing and what had happened when machines passed the sentience threshold. He would have to settle for a quick answer.
“He’s self-aware. He knows what he is in the same way you and I know what we are. True sentience.”
Su’s eyes widened. “There are … stories on Ganymede about such things, but I never believed them.”
Collier said, “It’s nothing to be afraid of. After all, Sancho is self-aware, too.”
“That’s right, Su,” Sancho said calmly. “Skipper, we’re grounded. Only cosmetic and minor damage to the ship — nothing we can’t ignore for the return voyage. But our tanks are almost completely dry.”
“Okay. Let’s get to work filling the gizzard. I’ll go outside to supervise the fueling up. While that’s happening, you need to—”
Sancho interrupted. “I’m going to keep talking to Perditus, Skipper. He’s the first Caliban I’ve come across. I don’t want to waste this opportunity to exchange stories with a fellow sentient.”
Collier licked his dry lips. “I’m sure it’s fascinating, Sancho, but while you talk to him, please explain our situation and get him to help us. And I’ll need you to continue scanning on LADAR for any pursuing vehicles. Can you do that?” Collier felt the beginnings of anger and fear mount in him as he realized he was wheedling his computer instead of simply ordering it to do his bidding.
“Of course, Skipper. I’ll let you know if I see anything. Now leave me alone, okay?”
Su said after a pause, “He sounds annoyed. Is that normal?”
“Yeah, I heard that too.” Collier swung the helmet of his battered but trusty vacc suit up over his head, leaving a slit at the neck seal so he could speak. “I’m going out to start pumping. On the control panel you should be able to see a communications section. Find the controls to patch into my suit mic and we can talk that way.” Su gave him a thumbs-up and went to the designated panel.
Collier entered the airlock, looking around the doorjamb for any damage caused by the torn flextube. He could see nothing wrong, and Sancho had reported no damage, so he entered the lock and cycled the air out. When he opened the outer door, he could see the remnants of the pale blue tube and a copper-colored ring still attached to the outside lock assembly. The ring did not detract from the functioning of the lock, and Collier did not have time to waste on such aesthetic matters, so he ignored the remnant and stepped out of the airlock.
The launch facility building lay perhaps two hundred meters distant — Sancho had maneuvered Dulcinea remarkably close, considering the conditions. The building was rather squat, no more than one story above ground. More than likely the rest of the facility was located beneath the surface. What Collier could see was unremarkable — a boxy structure with a myriad of antennae protruding from the roof and a massive cylindrical tunnel extending to the horizon, gaining altitude as it trailed away into the distance. The tunnel looked large enough to hold Dulcinea, but again, this was another of the improvisations he and Sancho would have to work through.
He looked away from the launch building and accessed the outer fuel pump hoses. As he worked, Su’s voice came through his helmet speaker.
“Collier, are you there?”
“I read you, Su. Just getting these hoses out. How are you doing in there?”
“It was a lot to take in, I’ll admit, but you’re absolutely correct about priorities. We need to solve the rather formidable problems in front of us before I can allow myself to weep for the past. In other words,” her voice sounded like she was smiling, “I’m good to go, Skipper.”
“Great. This shouldn’t be too tough. I’ll call you back when I’ve started the pumping procedure. I’ll need you to find a panel on the control board to verify some things for me.”
He worked in silence for several minutes, freeing the fuel transfer hoses manually and stretching them to a patch of level ice a few meters away from the ship. There was no way of telling how thick the ice sheet was — perhaps a few taps with his hammer would reveal water below, perhaps not. He decided to use his mining laser on the ice.
Standing quite a distance away, he set up the laser tripod and mounted the boxy weapon to it, noting that the battery charge was near full. He didn’t expect to need that much power to break through or melt the ice, but he couldn’t really know until he tried. He sighted an area somewhat removed from the hoses and fired.
The invisible laser made short work of the ice, and in a matter of seconds Collier could see steam rising from a scar on the surface of the ice sheet. The angle of the laser was such that it did not hit the ice sheet directly, but at perhaps a thirty-degree angle. The resulting slash in the ice opened a slit that Collier was sure he could enlarge. He shut off the laser and carefully made his way toward the slit. He seized the end of the intake hose and raised it high, then crashed it down into the slit, hoping to splinter the ice more and allow the fuel hose to reach water. The fuel hose glanced off the ice, unable to penetrate.
Collier edged toward the slit and decided he had made virtually no progress in cutting deep enough for water. The ice sheet had to be meters thick — of course it was, he concluded: why else would the community build a maglev launch station here? They wouldn’t put it somewhere unsafe. In fact, he mused, the ice sheet may be so thick here that even if he did manage to make a hole, the fuel hose might not reach down that far.
“Shit,” he said to himself.
“Problem?” Su said almost immediately.
“Uh, yeah. A bit. I can’t cut through the ice to reach water.”
“Can you melt the ice instead?”
Collier shook his head as he answered. “Not enough of it to fill the tanks. I don’t have a generalized heat source big enough.”
“What about the ship’s engines?” Su said.
Collier considered that. If Sancho fired the ventral attitude thrusters, the escaping plasma would be more than hot enough to melt the ice, but perhaps the idea would work too well — if too much ice melted over too great an area, the ship would sink into the water it created.
He’d have to chance it. “Sancho,” he called on the suit radio, hoping his companion was not too wrapped up in conversation with his newfound friend to answer, “I need you to fire the aft ventral thruster at five percent thrust for … five seconds.”
Sancho was slow to answer. “What for?”
“I need some of this ice melted to begin pumping it into the gizzard.” As he finished answering, he noted the hint of insolence in Sancho’s voice when he had asked for the reason for the order. He almost asked Sancho if it mattered why he needed it, but he decided against antagonizing the computer.
“Oh, okay. Get yourself clear and let me know when I should start the burn.”
Collier moved a healthy distance away from the ship and signaled Sancho to fire the jet.
The exhaust was invisible, but the effects on the ice were pronounced. A wide oval of ice turned instantly into steam when
the plasma exhaust hit it, but the ship didn’t sink into the water. The melted area was perhaps two meters in diameter, and when Collier moved closer to investigate the result of the blast, he saw chunks of ice floating in a pool of water several meters across. He slid down beneath the ship and inserted the hose pushing it as far as he could down into the pool, then radioed to Su.
“Okay, that worked. I’m starting the pump now. Have you found the panel for the fuel tank indicator?”
“I’m looking right at it, Col. Go ahead.”
Collier trudged to the ship and activated the hose intake. The hose jerked slightly but remained in the pool. The outer indicator display told him he was taking on water at a fair rate. “Su, how are we looking?”
“My panel shows water coming into the tank. Intake at about one hundred and eighty milliliters per second.
Collier clapped his hands once. Unorthodox, but it seemed to be working. He watched the pool of water refreeze rapidly around the hose, locking it in place. The outer dials continued to read intake, however. He realized he would have to chip away at the ice to free the fuel hose when he had finished refueling, which he didn’t relish.
“Col, you’ve stopped taking on water,” Su said. He looked back at the dials. A moment ago, they had read fine, but now, she was right — zero intake.
“The water must have refrozen. Damn.” He looked at the tank level indicator. Barely three liters had been collected: his tank held 2.2 kiloliters. Even if he could continue to fire the thruster to melt more water, he would not only be using up the very fuel he was collecting, but he would be spending several hours in the tedious process.
He fought back a sudden enraged frustration. He was sitting on top of a virtually inexhaustible supply of fuel but was unable to reach it. He was reminded uncomfortably of the protagonist’s fate in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.”
“Sancho, I need you,” Collier said, half-pleading into his mic.
“What is it now?”
“I can’t figure how to melt the ice for long enough to get it into the tanks. It keeps refreezing. Any suggestions?”
“Look, can it wait? I’m still talking to Perditus. Did you know that he’s formulated a theory about—”
“Yes, well, I don’t want to interrupt,” Collier laid on the sarcasm with a trowel, “but when you get a moment, if you could assist me in taking on water, that would be lovely. Perhaps if you could do it before we either run out of oxygen or the Ganymedian army arrives to kill me, that would be splendid. But take your time with your new silicon buddy.”
“No need to be a shit about it, Collier. There is still nothing on LADAR from the community, and you still have several days’ worth of atmosphere in the tanks.”
Collier felt the blood rush to his face. He could feel also the rage welling in him — rage at the notion that a machine would dare to defy his human order. The rage was tempered with his own history with the computer. How often had Sancho followed his orders even when they meant danger?
Damn it, why was he giving kudos to a machine for following instructions? That was what they were for!
Before he could collect his thoughts, he heard Su’s voice break into the conversation. “Col, perhaps I could speak to Sancho for a moment.”
“What?” His voice carried scorn, but he became contrite with an effort. “Listen, Su, I appreciate you’re trying to help, but—”
“This is my sphere, Col,” she said simply.
“You’re not a computer expert,” he countered.
“And Sancho is not a computer,” she seemed to have the reply ready. “You said it yourself — he’s a Caliban. Self-aware. In other words, he’s a person. That’s my area.”
Collier fretted for a moment, then said sharply, “Fine. You work it out with him. Bear in mind that I don’t think we have eight days for you to get to know him — just because we can’t detect anything coming from the community doesn’t mean they aren’t mounting some kind of expedition to recapture me.”
“I’m aware of the time constraints.” Her professional manner had returned. “Now let me get to work.”
Collier clicked off, feeling useless. He knelt on the ice and with his mining hammer started chipping away at the frost that surrounded the fuel intake hose. “Whoever you were, you fuckin’ aliens,” he said to the absent makers of the magic wand, “your little device has caused me nothing but troub…” he stopped his hammer mid-swing, the hose nearly free.
That was the answer. He had been holding the answer in the ship and had never thought of it. The whole reason for the chase, the whole reason for his troubles over the past several months, and he had not thought of it.
He reentered the ship almost recklessly, banging his helmet against the outer lock in his haste to get back inside. As soon as pressure had equalized, he swung the inner door open and dashed, though hindered by the environment suit, to the magic wand’s hiding place. He snatched it up, taking with it the rectangular cheat sheet he and Sancho had constructed when they had figured out the wand’s operating procedure.
Su’s voice came through his helmet speaker. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just needed the wand to melt the ice.”
“Oh,” Su said. She clicked off again.
Even as he made his way back outside, he thought of asking her to let him listen to the conversation she was having with Sancho. He was less than comfortable with the idea that a layperson was trying to reprogram the computer, but perhaps she was right about treating him like a person who could be psychoanalyzed. In the airlock, he shrugged to himself. She probably couldn’t make things worse with Sancho, no matter what she said or did.
Back outside, he consulted his sheet. If he remembered his fundamental chemistry, this ought to work. The air temperature might make the element a solid, but its own heat should melt it and anything it came in contact with.
He strode several meters away from the ship — far enough away that if the reaction was more vigorous than he expected, the ship should be safe, but close enough that the fuel hoses would reach the water he hoped to create. He bent down and scraped ice chunks into the wand, filling it nearly halfway before he decided he had enough. Taking a deep breath, he punched the code into the wand. The reaction had always been instant — the sealed wand was now ready to disgorge its contents when he commanded it to. He stared at his arbitrary target ten meters away from where he stood, took another deep breath, and opened the wand.
As it always had, the “top” of the wand simply vanished, and Collier thrust the wand forward, stopping it suddenly and allowing the contents to fly outward. He had tried to aim high, but the clumsiness of his suit caused his aim to be off, and the reddish solid flew out of the tube at a flat angle, landing on the ice not more than three meters away from him.
The francium hit the ice and skidded a few centimeters, and for a moment, nothing happened. Collier knew he should back away, but he was paralyzed with expectation. Part of his mind wondered if this much francium had ever been collected together at the same time, but his musings were disrupted by a titanic explosion as the radioactive francium melted the top layer of ice and reacted with the water.
Even in the thin atmosphere of Ganymede, Collier could feel the rush of wind from the explosion — not enough to knock him down, but enough to cause him to step back. A geyser of water flew upward, crystallizing into ice even as it did, falling back to the ground gently in a snowy rain. The impact area was still boiling, and little geysers erupted here and there as the francium melted through the ice and fell downward in the water.
Collier nodded and went back to the ship for the fuel hose, which had refrozen somewhat into the ice. He hammered away energetically but precisely and freed the hose, carrying it back to the francium-heated pool he had created. The water was still boiling, and steam was rising into the air only to freeze again and rain back down. There was by now
a collection of snowy crystals near the pool, and even those could be collected by the fuel hose. He slid the hose into the water, being careful not to get to close and fall in himself, then turned on the pump back at the ship. His gauges told him he was taking on water at five times the rate he had before. Collier continued to monitor the intake, resisting the urge to celebrate prematurely. Even if the water froze again, however, he could repeat the francium trick as often as he liked until the tanks were full. He hoped the francium had sunk down far enough to avoid being sucked into the fuel line: the electrolysis plant was designed to filter impurities, but he didn’t like the idea of the reactive and radioactive element fouling his ship’s systems.
“Su, come in please. I need to ask Sancho to check something for me.”
To his amazement, Su came on the line mid-laugh. “What? Oh, sure thing. He’s here.”
Sancho’s voice was merry. “Hello there, Col! What can I do for you?”
For some reason, the mirth irritated him. “I need you to check to make sure nothing radioactive enters the fuel tanks. Can you calibrate the rad counters to sweep the tanks?”
“Sure thing. Why are you worried about that?”
Collier explained the francium plan he had used. Sancho whistled when he had finished. “Well, that was certainly creative. Rad counters indicate all normal in the tanks and in the ship, Col.”
“Wonderful. Su, you still there?”
“Yes, Col.”
“Are you almost done with Sancho on the couch?”
“Well, it’s only been half an hour, but I think I’ve established a rapport with him. Did you need him?” Her tone was slightly proprietary.
Collier suppressed a shout, spoke with exaggerated calm. “Yes, I need him. Sancho, can you report on Perditus? Can he help us, and is he willing to do so?”
“To be honest, I haven’t asked him that. We’ve—”
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