Enigma

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Dove’s last transmission was first received by the survey ship Edmund Hillary, some twelve light-years away in the same octant. The transmission was not a plea for help, for Commander Lapedes had known, and Hillary was forced to acknowledge, that Dove and its passengers were beyond helping. All Hillary could do was speed the news of its destruction to A-Cyg, Unity and the rest of the fleet.

  By that time Munin had finished its work at 29 Sagittae and was more than halfway to its next destination. Deafened by the craze, Munin did not catch Hillary’s dispatch. Consequently, it was not until they regained their senses inbound to the next system that they learned of Dove’s fate.

  The news came in a Priority command dispatch, which Cormican shared over the shipnet a half-hour after it was brought to him:

  * * *

  To: Russell Cormican, Commander

  USS 3 Munin

  From: Berylina Maggis, Director

  Flight Office, Unity

  Classification: Commander’s Discretion

  You are hereby directed to discontinue your current operations and effect the return of Munin to Advance Base Cygnus. Your immediate acknowledgment of and compliance with this directive is required.

  The Technology Office evaluation of the circumstances surrounding the loss of USS 4 Dove concludes that said incident was related to catastrophic failure of AVLO-D drive S.N. 101-044. This failure has been judged to be non-anomalous and all similarly equipped vessels are considered AT RISK. All due discretion is recommended for your return, including restricting drive output to 30 degrees or less and continuous monitoring during the acceleration and deceleration phases.

  Appended find copies of the relevant accident report, accident inquiry, and technical evaluation.

  * * *

  “Personally, I don’t see any reason we couldn’t complete a survey of this system,” Cormican concluded, “but the orders don’t seem to leave any room for that. I’ve asked the gravigation and engineering staff to conduct a full diagnostic test of the drive. They have advised me that will take most of the rest of the day, so I am tentatively scheduling us to begin the acceleration phase of our trip back to A-Cyg for ten tomorrow morning.

  “I’m as sorry about this as you are, but it does seem the prudent thing to do. I haven’t been told how your contracts will be handled, but be assured I intend to make a case with the Flight Office that our return be considered end-of-tour and that everyone receive a full payout. Thank you for your attention.”

  Thackery was alone in the survey lab when the announcement began, and afterwards headed upship to find someone to talk to about it. He found that a half-dozen of the crew had already gravitated to the edrec deck, and a loud and multifaceted discussion was already underway. Thackery joined the gathering and listened.

  “But, good Christmas, a thirty-degree slope—,” one of the awks was saying, “It’ll take us ten days just to craze.”

  “Ron’s already worked it out—fifty-seven days back to A-Cyg.”

  “See? That’s got to be the slowest leg anybody’s run since Pride of Earth went out.” Connolly said, “It’ll make it tough on Amy—running that long in the craze with an iffy drive to think about.”

  “I heard that,” Koi called as she stepped off the climbway to join them. “Don’t listen to him, folks. I happen to know he’s been holding a tranq pump in reserve for himself.”

  There was laughter, and she came and stood by Thackery, close but not touching, friendly but reserved, just as she had been since moving out at 29 Sagittae. “What do you think?” she asked quietly.

  “I really don’t know yet.” He expected her response to be You should be happy—here’s your chance to go home early, or how did you arrange it? I don’t want to go home, he was ready to answer. Not now. Not alone.

  But all she said was, “I feel bad for Dove’s crew. They had a little more time to think about what was coming than I’d like to have.” And then she moved off to sprawl in an empty chair opposite from where Thackery stood.

  Thackery did not, in fact, know how he felt, which was why he was listening, and not talking. He was somewhat surprised that most of the others seemed to be taking it as an interruption, a bureaucratic annoyance, rather than as a respite or an early furlough. Gwen Shinault, the senior tech. was actually angry.

  “This is totally unnecessary,” she proclaimed loudly. “If they would just let us program the controller to shut the drive down instead of trying to juggle an unbalanced flux, there’d be no need to recall us. If Dove’s controller had been wired that way, I’d wager she’d still be in one piece.”

  “And stranded way the hell out in Ursa Major.”

  “I’ll make you a bet you won’t take that Dove’s crew’d have been glad to have that choice if someone’d offered it.” The loudest part of the conversation shifted to another part of the room. “What do you think they’ll do with Munin?”

  “You mean if we get it back?”

  “Oh, hell, we’ll get back,” said one of the awks cheerily. “I’m with Gwen. I wouldn’t have second thoughts about ignoring the directive and just continuing on.”

  “You’re not smart enough to have second thoughts” was the response, to general laughter. “They’ll scrap her, of course. What else can they do?”

  “Why not replace the drive?”

  “If you ever wondered why you’re still an awk, it’s because of bone-headed statements like that one. Why do you think the Pathfinders still have AVLO-D drives? They’re building Cygnus with an AVLO-M, for crissakes. If replacement was a workable proposition, it’d have been done a long time ago. Bennie’s right. The only thing to do is scrap her. She’s expendable.”

  No, no, ho—not if I have anything to say about it, Thackery thought with sudden elation. He tried to catch Koi’s eyes, but she was looking in another direction.

  Just as well, he thought, catching himself. It’d be wrong to say anything. She’s made clear she’s not interested in being won back—not that I ever “won” her in the first place.

  With a nod of acknowledgment to those who noticed him leaving, Thackery slipped away and headed downship, his thoughts still racing.

  She’d only think you were doing it because of her, anyway, and there’d be nothing gained from that. That’s not the reason. That never was the reason. I have to do it for myself.

  He reached D deck and hastened along the short corridor to his cabin, where he took up his slate and curled up in the only chair.

  No. That’s the wrong reason too, he thought as he accessed the ship’s library. I have to do it because I’m the only one who can. I’m the one who knows. I’m the one who sees. If I don’t do it, no one will—which just maybe is what she was trying to say.

  There was no desk in the putative office of the Cygnus liaison of the Committee on ReCreation of First Colonization Planning, making Thackery wonder briefly if he had been led merely from one waiting room to another. Then a short, slender man swathed in a silky amber wrap rose from a chair facing the greatport and turned toward Thackery.

  “Mr. Thackery. I’m Eloi Zamyatin. I’m very pleased to have the chance to meet you.” The liaison extended his hand palm-up in the Daehne gesture of greeting that was current at A-Cyg, then settled back in his chair.

  “Why is that?” Thackery asked, choosing a seat opposite the director.

  The question both surprised and discomfited Zamyatin, suggesting Thackery had broken a rule of etiquette either by questioning the compliment or by not responding in kind. “Well, of course, your name is all over the contact records for this octant,” Zamyatin stuttered. “You have quite a reputation here.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “That’s a matter of some disagreement,” Zamyatin said, regaining his poise. “You seem to polarize opinion rather sharply. As a matter of fact, your Sennifi Contact is the model for a decision-making simulation in the Command training curriculum, and it almost always generates an animated discussion. I would have known you in any event, o
f course—you fairly papered this office with your proposals and theses during your last tour.”

  “Have you read any of them?”

  “Why, yes, one or two.”

  “Then you already have a pretty good idea what I’m here for.”

  “Your argument, as I understand it, is that we need experience with a selective search mode before we are forced into such a strategy by the sheer numbers of candidate stars in Phase 01.”

  Thackery nodded emphatically. “Let me put some specifics on the table. The census of the galactic disk tells us we’re looking at over four thousand stars in the Phase III, 50-to-75 light-year, shell. That’s two and a half times as many systems as in Phase II. Even with the forty survey ships we’ve been promised by the Procurement Office, it’ll take a minimum of four and a half centuries to complete a comprehensive survey.”

  “And so you are arguing that we should give up our commitment to a comprehensive survey.”

  “As someone who has been out there, I can testify that there’s no need to survey most of those systems. We’ve already surveyed more planets than we can reasonably exploit in the foreseeable future. The Analysis Office has a tremendous back—, log of Phase II data, and even the most interesting discoveries aren’t yet scheduled for a follow-up visit. Use of high-probability search criteria is incomparably more realistic.”

  Zamyatin nodded thoughtfully. “These are Planning Office decisions, of course, not Committee decisions. Nevertheless, I agree completely that to conduct Phase III the way we’ve conducted Phase II would be either unacceptably expensive or take unacceptably long. You may not be aware that the Planning Office is already leaning toward another solution. We now have a compact AVLO drive. More importantly, we have the Kleine. Those two facts mean that robot probes are now feasible. The Kleine makes the necessary remote monitoring and teleoperated systems possible.”

  “So the decision has already been made?”

  “Tentatively. We’ll build perhaps a hundred robot probes with teleoperated landers, and only a few additional survey ships. The robot probes will perform the comprehensive search, and the crewed survey ships will follow up on the most promising finds, be they colonies or organisms or something else of significant scientific interest. The result should be a more efficient search in a substantially reduced time frame. You see, technology has changed the strategy.”

  Thackery was dismayed but undaunted. “Have any robot probes been field-tested yet?”

  “No. I believe the first ones are under construction now at Advance Base Lynx.”

  “Then there’s no assurance that they’ll be able to perform as required. You’re talking about an extremely complex system and an extremely difficult task.”

  “That is why the decision is still considered tentative,” Zamyatin admitted, “and why none of the Cities-series survey ships have been cancelled. But I have no doubt that our engineers will eventually be able to make the probes perform as required.”

  “Eventually, I agree. But the fact is that if you’re only just getting around to building the first operational probes, there’ve been problems already. And there’s a real possibility that you’ll be looking at starting Phase III with survey ships alone.”

  “I admit to some finite possibility that may happen. But the point is moot. I strongly suspect that your high-probability strategy consists of educated guesses hidden by a smokescreen of interpolation. And even if I felt differently, there are no ships available to test your theories.”

  “There’s Munin.”

  “Munin is to be deactivated. The Flight Office has decided that the risk of continued operation doesn’t justify the gains. Cygnus is ready, so there’ll be no loss of coverage in this octant. Arid the cost of the kind of thorough overhaul that Munin needs is so close to the cost of building a new ship that there’s no sense to it. Look, the ship is a bloody Pathfinder, for goodness’ sake. Let her rest.”

  “Who owns Munin?”

  “Well—the Service, of course.”

  “Not the Flight Office specifically?”

  “No—the Procurement Office assigns each ship to one command or another as they’re completed.”

  “So what the Flight Office is saying is, this ship has no utility for us in our present search strategy.”

  “They haven’t scrapped it, no, if that’s what you mean. But it’s only a matter of time.”

  “Requisition it.”

  “What?”

  “How did you get the deepyachts the Committee uses for colonial visits?”

  Zamyatin bobbed his head. “We do operate a few ships for our own purposes, you’re correct. We prefer not to depend on the Flight Office for transportation. But what makes you think that we would be any more willing to assign valuable personnel to a ship as unreliable as Munin?”

  “I have it on good authority that the drive controller can be modified to assure that a Dove—type failure doesn’t result in the loss of the ship.”

  “I’ve heard some discussion of that option. But it doesn’t meet the Flight Office’s safety criteria. The crew could be stranded for twelve to fifteen years until a rescue mission reached them.”

  “The Flight Office won’t be operating Munin.”

  “You’re still asking us to assign valuable personnel to a highly speculative and unnecessarily risky enterprise.”

  “There’s no need to assign anyone. She can be crewed by volunteers—starting with me. My tour contract has been fulfilled. I can go where I please.”

  “I understand Flight would like very much to have you for Cygnus.”

  “They’re not going to get me, regardless of your decision.”

  “Um. A commander doesn’t make a crew, though.”

  “There are others who’d be willing to go. Post a notice of opportunity. Put Munin’s name and mine in it.”

  “And I’m sure there’d be many applicants—I said you had a reputation. But most of them would be kids eager for any billet and not really equipped to evaluate the risk.”

  “I wouldn’t object to restricting the notice to vets.”

  “Of course not—that’d put you in a position to coax your crewmates into going out with you instead of Cygnus. That’d make us popular with the Flight Office.”

  “If I had the right people, I wouldn’t need the full complement of twenty.”

  “How many do you need?”

  “If they were the right people—twelve. A three-person Strategy Team under my direction, and a seven-person operations crew under a competent Exec like Gwen Shinault.”

  “I see.” Zamyatin rested his chin on his steepled fingers. “Concom Thackery, there remains a rather delicate issue I was hoping to avoid getting into—”

  “Say it plainly.”

  “As you wish. Even if we were agreeable in principle to this kind of exercise, nothing you’ve said argues very strongly that this is the right time or, to be painfully blunt, that you’re the right person.”

  Thackery gazed steadily at his host. “Mr. Zamyatin, what year were you born?”

  “Why—’24.”

  “Do you mean 424?”

  “Well, of course.”

  Thackery laughed lightly and smiled tolerantly. “Mr. Zamyatin, when you’re talking to a vet, you automatically give the century as well. I was born in A.R. 163. I’ve been a contact linguist, an aide to Committeewoman Alizana Neale, and a contact leader. I’ve completed two survey tours and taken part in sixteen landings. I’ve been in the middle of the first Contact with the Gnivi and the first productive Contact with the Sennifi. Now, who do you think has a better perspective, someone who’s lived Service history, or someone who’s read about it?”

  “That’s not relevant—”

  “It’s the only thing that’s relevant. You have no concept of how badly the Service needs to begin finding final answers. Why do you think we’ve been so compulsive about a comprehensive search? Why do you think pushing back the frontier has been given priority over everything else?�
��

  “But look at how successful that policy has been.”

  “Successful?” Thackery snorted. “There hasn’t been a single fundamental discovery in two-hundred fifty years, not one. And the way we’ve gone about it has something to do with that record of failure. We’ve been so single-minded, we ended up narrow-minded as well. We need to break out of the sterile thinking that’s dictated strategy up till now and try something else—anything, so long as it creates new possibilities and lets us start thinking in new patterns.”

  “In essence, you’re asking for a ship and a free hand.”

  “And I’ve given you more than enough reason to approve the request.”

  “Concom Thackery, I don’t have the authority to make that requisition.”

  Thackery exploded out of his chair. “Then why am I talking to you?” he demanded. “Tell me who does so I can get on with this.”

  “The Chairman of the FC Committee has authority over all nonstandard research and flight activity related to the colonies.”

  “So who is it, and where can I find them?”

  “The Chairman is on Liam, in the Lynx octant. But surely you know who it is.”

  “If I did, would I ask?”

  “Why, I assumed since you served under her—the present Chairman is Alizana Neale.”

  Thackery stared and his face went slack. He dropped heavily back into his chair, covered his eyes with one hand, and let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Of all the—”

  Unexpectedly, Zamyatin broke into a broad grin. “I can’t take this any further. Concom Thackery, please relax. Munin is yours.”

  Thackery shot the Director a poisonous look. “Then what—”

  “In truth, you had it when you walked in,” Zamyatin said quickly. “Someone else filed this same request yesterday, so I had already run it up through channels to find out what the policy would be. Chairman Neale contacted me personally with the answer. She said that if you were involved, you were to be allowed to have Munin, but to make you sweat a little first. She said to make sure you really wanted it. There’s a message, too—” he paused and glanced down at the slate lying beside him. “ ‘I’ve been unable to prove you wrong. Now see if you can prove me wrong.’ ” He hesitated, then added timidly, “Does that make sense? I hope I didn’t take this too far—”