Deepsix

by Jack McDevitt

  Zwick was named for a journalist who’d been killed while covering one of the numerous border wars in South America at the end of the century. Its captain was a thirty-eight-year-old former Peacekeeper named Miles Chastain. Miles was tall, lean, quiet. Something in his manner made Canyon uncomfortable. The man always seemed so serious.

  He was, Canyon thought, the sort of person to have on your side if war broke out, but not someone you’d routinely invite for dinner. He had never been able to get close to the captain on the long voyage from Earth.

  Emma had complained that Wilfrid, the AI, was better company. Certainly he was friendlier. Her attitude suggested the absurdity of his earlier suspicion that an affair of the heart was being conducted in the midnight corridors of the Zwick.

  The captain spent most of his time in the cockpit or in his private quarters. He never initiated conversation unless business called for it. And once they arrived in orbit around Deepsix, there was really little for him to do except await the collision.

  His commlink vibrated. It was Emma. “August,” she said, “I just overheard an odd conversation between Kellie Collier and Clairveau.”

  “Really? What about?”

  “Clairveau was wondering why they were late getting started. Kellie Collier told him that Hutchins was resting. That she’d been attacked by a plant.”

  “By a plant?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  XVIII

  Put men and women in the same room and everyone’s IQ drops thirty-six points. Psychologists have recorded it, tests have shown it, studies leave no doubt. Passion doth make fools of us all.

  —GREGORY MACALLISTER, “Love and Chocolate,” Targets of Opportunity

  Hours to breakup (est): 140

  Lori’s matronly image appeared on Nicholson’s command screen. The AI was wearing a formal black suit with a white scarf. That was designed to impress him that the business she wished to transact was quite serious. Of course, he knew what it was.

  “I think it’s a mistake to refuse to help,” she said.

  “My first duty is the safety of my passengers, Lori.”

  “The regulations are a bit murky in this situation. In any case, one of your passengers is in extremis. In addition, you have instructions from Corporate to cooperate with any rescue effort.”

  “That transmission won’t be worth a damn if somebody volunteers and gets killed.”

  “I quite agree, Captain. But I have to point out that if the current situation does not change, and Mr. MacAllister loses his life, you will be in severe difficulty for having withheld assistance.”

  “I know.”

  “The only course that might get you through undamaged is to help where you can and hope no one is injured. If that happens…”

  Nicholson ran his fingers through his hair. He could not see which course was safer.

  “It is not my decision, Captain,” she said. “But it is my responsibility to offer counsel. Do you wish me to contact Captain Clairveau?”

  Marcel had instructed Beekman to continue working on the extraction plan. He intended to have another try at persuading Nicholson to help. But he needed to give him time to think about the decision he’d made. Time to fret.

  The auxiliary screen began to blink. CAPTAIN NICHOLSON WANTS TO SPEAK WITH YOU.

  It was quicker than he’d expected.

  “We also need somebody who can rig a remote pump.”

  “A remote pump?”

  “Listen, Erik, I know how all this sounds. But I don’t have time to go over everything at the moment. We started late and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Please just trust me for now.”

  “All right, Marcel. I’ll make an announcement at dinner this evening.”

  “No. Not this evening. That’ll be too late. Round up whatever volunteers you can get now. I’ll want to talk to them, too. The ones who will help, and that we can use, will come over forthwith.”

  “My God, Marcel, that’s pressing it a bit, isn’t it? Are we talking this minute?”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “At least tell me what you’re planning to do?”

  “We are going to make a skyhook, Erik.”

  “Bill.”

  “Yes, Marcel.”

  “Tomorrow morning we’ll take all four ships out to the assembly. Coordinate with the other AIs.”

  Nicholson got on the Star’s public address system, informed his passengers and crew that he knew everyone was aware of the difficulties that had been encountered extracting the landing party from Maleiva III, but went on to describe them anyway. “We are still endeavoring,” he said, “to mount a rescue.” He gazed steadily into the lens, imagining himself as an old warrior rallying the troops to victory. “To provide insurance that we succeed,” he continued, “we need your help.

  “Let me now introduce Captain Clairveau of the Wendy Jay, who’ll explain what we hope to be able to do. I urge you to listen carefully, and if you feel you can assist, please volunteer.

  “Captain Clairveau.”

  Marcel explained the general plan and made an emotional plea for passengers and crew to come forward, even those who possessed no special skills. “We’re going to have to train people, and we have only a couple of days to get it done. Most of the volunteers may be asked to go outside. That will depend on what happens on the ground.

  “I’d like to underscore the fact that while going outside entails a degree of risk, it is not innately dangerous. The suits are safe. But I wanted you to know that up front. And I’d like to thank you in advance for listening.”

  Within ten minutes after he signed off, Nicholson found himself awash with volunteers.

  “There’s one more thing, Erik.”

  My God. What else could the man want?

  “We both know this operation is going to require extremely close coordination among the four vessels. There is simply no margin for error.”

  “I understand that. What do you need?”

  Marcel looked down from the overhead screen. It struck Nicholson that the man was aging before his eyes. “During the operation, I’ll want you to turn control of the Star over to us. We’ll run everything from here.”

  “I can’t do that, Marcel. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. It’s against the regs.”

  Marcel took a moment before responding. “If we don’t do it this way, we can’t possibly succeed.”

  Nicholson shook his head. “There’s no way I can comply. That’s too much. No matter how the operation turned out, they’d hang me.”

  Marcel stared at him a few moments. “Tell you what,” he said. “How about if we come over there? And run the operation from the Star?”

  An hour seldom passed that Embry didn’t thank her good sense for passing on Hutch’s offer to go on the mission. She had mourned Toni’s death, and she wished she could do something for the others. But if she’d learned anything from this experience, it was that you didn’t undertake potentially lethal assignments on the fly. These things required adequate preparation and planning. The sober truth was that a few people at the Academy hadn’t done their jobs, they’d tried to compensate by rushing Hutchins in, and now poor Hutch was stuck with paying the price.

  During the first couple of days, before things went wrong, both she and Tom had simply been annoyed at the delay. She’d sent messages off to people at home, complaining about having to spend an extra month or so floating around in the middle of nowhere. She’d even told several of her friends that she was considering legal action against Hutchins and the Academy.

  Tom had been more tolerant. He was apparently accustomed to Academy mismanagement and didn’t seem to expect them to be organized. He was not at all surprised that the original survey had missed the presence of ruins on Deepsix. “A planet’s a big place,” he’d told her. If the civilization had been in an early stage of development when the ice age hit, as was apparently the case, there would have been few cities to find. It was no wonder, he argued, that they
hadn’t realized what they had. He’d have been impressed, he said, if they had detected it.

  The turmoil on the ground was reflected in the apprehension onboard Wildside. Embry had experienced pangs of guilt when she realized the implication of the lost landers. She could not see how she was in any way responsible for any of this, and yet she was trying to take it on her own shoulders. Ridiculous.

  She and Tom had from the beginning been sitting by the monitors listening to the conversations between the landing party and the command people on Wendy. When Clairveau had contacted them to let them know that a rescue vessel was on the way, she’d demanded to know how such a thing could be allowed to happen in the first place. He’d apologized, but explained that they simply could not provide for all contingencies. How could anyone have foreseen that both landers would be destroyed?

  She might have replied that the second lander, the vehicle from the Evening Star, should not even have been there. It hadn’t been part of what passed for Academy planning. There’d been only one lander really available, so the risk had been considerable right from the start.

  Circumstances. It all came down to circumstances. After her conversation with the captain of the Wendy Jay, Tom had argued that it just wasn’t always possible to eliminate the element of danger. It didn’t matter, he said, what someone had done or not done twenty years earlier. The only thing that mattered was the present situation. Hutchins had been given a directive, she’d decided the payoff was worth whatever risk might be involved, and she’d consequently chosen to accept the assignment. You couldn’t fault her for that.

  But people had died, and more people might follow. It was hard for Embry to accept the position that nobody was responsible. When things went wrong, in her view, someone was always responsible.

  But something positive was coming out of the wreckage. She and Scolari, left alone and forgotten on Wildside, save when somebody needed medical advice, had taken comfort in each other’s arms.

  They listened to Canyon’s periodic reports on the news link, she with contempt, Tom with his usual tolerance. “He probably feels it just as much as we do,” he told her. “It’s just that for public consumption he has to let his feelings show. That’s what’s distasteful.”

  She didn’t believe it. Canyon was exploiting the disaster, profiting by it, and was probably thanking his lucky stars he’d been sent out here.

  She was sitting with Tom, talking about future plans, how they would handle things when they got home. They lived on opposite sides of the North American continent, and would be forced to conduct a virtual relationship for a while. Neither was quite ready yet to make a permanent commitment. But that was not necessarily a major detriment. In an age of sophisticated technology, there was little even of an intimate nature that could not be carried out at long range.

  Tom was describing how they should get together during their vacations when the monitor buzzed. Incoming.

  “Put it up, Bill,” he told the AI.

  Clairveau’s image blinked on. He looked tired, she thought. Worn-out. “Tom,” he said, “I understand you have some lasers on board? Portables?”

  “Yes. They have some back there somewhere.”

  “Good. I need you to break them out. I’ll send a shuttle for them.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Embry. “Why do you need lasers?”

  “To rescue your captain.”

  “Really?” asked Tom. “How?”

  “Later. I’m on the run at the moment.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “By all means,” said Clairveau. “We need all the help we can get.”

  When he’d signed off, she could feel the tension in the compartment. “Tom,” she said finally, “you don’t know anything about welding.”

  “I know,” he said. “But how hard can it be?”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Nicholson. As you’re aware, the original schedule called for us to leave our present position in two days, on Monday, and to withdraw approximately seventy million kilometers in order to be well out of the way when the collision occurs Saturday evening.

  “We have, however, offered to assist in the rescue effort. That means we’ll be staying in the immediate area somewhat longer. I want to stress that the Evening Star will at no time be at hazard. Let me repeat that, there will be absolutely no danger to this ship. We’ll be away long before anyone need be concerned.

  “You may wonder what part the Evening Star will play in rescuing the stranded scientists. We’re making a detailed explanation available on the ship’s net. Simply go to the Rescue site. A specially produced and embossed copy of the plan, which you may wish to keep as a souvenir of the occasion, will be distributed later today.

  “We also intend to present everyone on board with a skyhook pin as a special memento.

  “Ship’s meals this evening will be served compliments of Inter-Galactic Lines. Happy hour will begin, as usual, at five. If you have any questions, my officers will be available throughout the ship.

  “Thank you very much for your patience during a difficult period. Be assured we will keep you informed as matters develop.”

  Within minutes after the captain’s address, Marcel arrived with several people in tow. They were the team of mathematicians and physicists who were planning the backup mission. They were escorted to the temporary command center Nicholson had set up.

  Nicholson sat quietly while they talked of releasing the asteroid, detaching a shaft and the net from the rest of the assembly, rotating it almost 360 degrees, and putting it on a trajectory for Deepsix. They traced the anticipated changes in stress on the shaft when the rest of the assembly was removed. They calculated how they could use four superluminals to rotate the shaft without breaking it.

  The ideal length for the shaft, they determined, would be 420 kilometers. The shaft would be removed from the asteroid end, said a tall, athletic-looking man introduced as John Something-or-Other, smiling at his feeble attempt to make a joke.

  When they’d finished, there were several questions. Nicholson himself asked one: “Are we sure that a weld between the shaft, which must be made of a substance none of us has ever heard of, and the hull of a starship, will take?”

  “It’ll work,” said a small, waspish young man. “We’ve already tried it.”

  The conversation became sufficiently technical that Nicholson couldn’t follow it any longer, and after a while he slipped out. They all seemed to know what they were doing. Maybe there’d be a reasonably happy ending at that. Maybe he could even emerge as a hero.

  They sent a shuttle for Tom, and he hadn’t been gone twenty minutes before Embry discovered she did not like being alone on Wildside. The ship was full of echoes and voices. Of systems clicking on and shutting off. Of the sound of warm air flowing through blowers and ducts. Of the onboard electronic systems talking incessantly to themselves. Bill the AI inquired whether she was okay, and she had to say yes or he’d want to diagnose her problem. She couldn’t even ignore him because he would simply repeat the query, and he had endless patience.

  It had endless patience. Best to keep the details straight.

  She was not among those people who could entertain herself carrying on a conversation with an AI. Bill was, after all, only a simulation, not a real person. A lot of people tended to lose sight of that fact, and she’d had to refer several of them to the shrinks.

  She was up front on the flight deck, seated in the pilot’s chair. Deepsix lay below her, a mass of oceans and glaciers save for the narrow green-brown belt along the equator. A huge snowstorm blanketed the continent they called Northern Tempus.

  None of the other three ships was in the sky. She felt utterly alone. They’d invited her to move over to Wendy, but she’d declined. Packing was inconvenient, and anyhow she’d have to come back here if the rescue was successful. After all, it would only be a matter of a few days.

  If things went badly, on the other hand, God knew when she could expe
ct to get home. She didn’t want to seem indifferent, or cold-hearted, but she also didn’t want to spend the winter out here. If Hutch and the others were lost, another long delay would be likely, lasting probably several more weeks, while a new pilot came to Maleiva to recover Wildside.

  Her link vibrated. She was grateful for the interruption. “Yes?” she said.

  “Embry.” Marcel’s image popped up on one of the auxiliary screens. “How are you making out?”

  “Okay.”

  “I need a favor.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “If we have to go to the backup operation, we’ll need all four ships. And we have to get set up so we’ll be ready to launch if needed. What I’m trying to tell you is that Wildside is going to be doing some maneuvering.”

  “There’s no pilot over here, Marcel.”

  “I know. We’re going to have Lori operate her.”

  “Who’s Lori?”

  “The Star’s AI.”

  “The Star’s AI? What’s wrong with Bill?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll be happy to tell you about it when we get time.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Sure. Now, can I get you to punch a code into the command console? It’s right in front of the pilot’s seat.”

  “The black panel with the blinking lamps?”

  “That’s it.” He gave her a string of numbers, and she dutifully entered them. “That allows me to talk directly with the AI,” he said. His eyes narrowed somewhat. “Now, you’re sure you’re doing okay?”

  “I’m fine, Captain.”

  “Good. So you know: Tomorrow we’re going to take Wildside out of orbit. You’ll be going out to the skyhook assembly with the rest of us. There’ll be a lot of activity when we get there, and we’ll be putting some people aboard your ship. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit tight. There’s no danger.”

  “You mean to me. What about Hutch? What are her chances?”

  “The truth?”