by Paul Preuss
She gave him a hard stare, then forced a sincere if unaccustomed smile. “Sir! I am very honored making your acquaintance, Sir Randolph Mays.”
“The honor is mine,” said Mays, taking her small, muscular hand. “Do I understand that you are the owner of this handsome establishment?” He threw his hands wide, indicating the interior of the Straits Cafe. At the midmorning hour it was empty, except for a girl sullenly mopping the floor.
“Since my husband died almost ten years ago, I am sole proprietor.” She crushed out a half-smoked, lipstick-smeared cigarette that had been perched on a thick glass ashtray on the counter. Smoking was a rare habit in controlled environments, banned in some, but Mrs. Wong owned the air inside these four walls.
“Come, sit down.” Her manner betrayed an edge of impatience. “I will have tea brought. We can talk.”
“Delighted.”
“What kind do you like?”
“Darjeeling,” Mays said. “Or whatever you might recommend.”
Mrs. Wong said something in Chinese to a girl at the charge machine. She took Mays to a round table in front of the aquarium wall. He and the ugliest fish he had ever seen stared at each other; Mays blinked first, and sat down.
Mays’s unannounced arrival at the Ganymede Interplanetary Hotel had thrown the local gossip mongers into a fury of speculation, but they quickly realized he must have traveled on Helios under an assumed name, presumably in disguise. Having registered at the Interplanetary under his own name, wearing his own face, it had taken only hours for the news to circulate throughout the community.
The hotel’s bolder guests approached him for autographs whenever he appeared in public; he obliged them and answered their questions by explaining that it was his purpose—no, his sworn duty—to investigate Professor J. Q. R. Forster and every aspect of the expedition to Amalthea. Word of Mays’s intentions traveled as fast as the news of his arrival.
For show, Mays did make one or two attempts to contact the Forster expedition, who had set up official headquarters in the town’s Indian quarter, but no one answered their phonelink except the office robot, who always claimed everyone was out. As Mays quickly learned from his acquaintances among the interplanetary press corps, Forster and his people hadn’t been seen since their arrival; most of the reporters had come to the conclusion that Forster wasn’t on Ganymede at all. Perhaps he was on some other moon, Europa for example. Perhaps he was in orbit. Perhaps he’d already left for Amalthea.
Mays was unsurprised and unperturbed. His fame was a magnet, and sure enough, people with information to offer soon began calling him…
Mrs. Wong lit another cigarette and held it between fingers that boasted inch-long, red-lacquered nails. “They were sitting right at this table,” she told him, leaning back and blowing smoke at the cod. “Mr. Redfield, I know he works for the professor, he was talking with that Lim person. They were talking in Chinese. Mr. Redfield speaks very good Cantonese.”
Although Mrs. Wong considered this an unusual feat, Mays showed no surprise. “Who is that Lim person?” he asked.
“Luke, son of Kam, Lim and Son Construction. Long hair, dresses like cowboy. No good.”
Mays lifted an impressive eyebrow, inviting more, but Mrs. Wong was either reluctant to give examples of Luke Lim’s bad behavior or had none specific to give. “What were they talking about?” he asked.
“From what they said, I think Lim sold Mr. Redfield their old ice mole.”
“Ice mole?”
“Tunnelling machine designed special for here—where ice is very cold, gravity very low. And they talked about something else the professor is buying someplace. I didn’t hear what. Then two others came in.” Mrs. Wong picked at a tobacco crumb on the tip of her tongue.
“Please go on.”
“A Mr. Hawkins, I think he works for the professor too, and a young girl named Marianne. Just visiting.”
“Ah, Marianne,” Mays said.
“You know her?”
“Not well,” he said. He leaned back in his chair to avoid a new emission of asphyxiating cigarette smoke. “What did the four of them have to say to each other?”
“Mr. Redfield was unhappy, I think. Didn’t want to talk at all. In a few minutes he left with Lim. Then Mr. Hawkins was trying to impress the girl. He said probably the professor wanted to buy an ice mole to explore under the surface of Amalthea. Also a submarine.”
Mays’s expression stiffened for a moment—“Ahh?”—then he nodded judiciously. “Submarine, of course. Then what?”
“Then they ate. Talked about sightseeing, other things. About you and your video programs.”
“Really.”
“Mr. Hawkins did not like your programs. He talked so much about how you are wrong and the professor is right, after a while he bored the girl. I think he is not very successful with girls.”
Mrs. Wong went on a few minutes longer, but Mays soon realized he had gotten everything she knew worth repeating. When he left the Straits, a pile of well-worn, old-fashioned North Continental paper dollars—in denominations of hundreds and thousands, untraceable through the credit net—stayed on the table behind him.
A Buddhist festival was in progress in the corridors. The town seemed to hold a festival of some sort every other day, and most were not for tourists; the place crawled with religionists. Mays made his way through passages echoing from strings of exploding firecrackers, through air thick and blue with acrid smoke; wreaths and garlands of smoke were sucked into the laboring exhaust fans. Excited children coursed past his long legs. He reached the central square. A sea of saffron-robed monks parted before him, and suddenly there was the fake stone facade of the Interplanetary, bristling with finials and encrusted with ponderous statuary, an imitation Angkor Wat.
The lobby was a cooler, quieter place, but not by much. He ducked past the concierge and into the lift, dodging a pride of businessmen with autograph-lust in their eyes to seek the privacy of his room. But no sooner had he let his door lock itself behind him than his phonelink chortled.
“Randolph Mays here.”
“Mr. Von Frisch, sir, of Argosy Spacecraft and Industrial Engineering. Shall I put him through?”
This Von Frisch person had called twice before, but he was as elusive as Forster, and they had not yet made contact. “By all means put him on.”
The voice on the phonelink was distorted by a one-way commercial scrambler; the screen remained dark. “We meet at last, Sir Randolph.”
“Under the circumstances that’s putting it rather strongly, Frisch… I beg your pardon, Mr. Von Frisch.”
“Yes, well. A hard world, Sir Randolph. Better safe, and all that.”
“What’s your business, sir?”
“Argosy are equipment brokers, among other things.”
“With me. Your business with me.”
“I’ve lately participated in a rather interesting transfer of property to someone who is planning an expedition to Amalthea. I think it might be worth your while to learn more about it.”
“Let me guess. You’ve sold the professor a submarine.”
Von Frisch, obviously no amateur, managed to contain whatever surprise he may have felt. “Guess if you like, Sir Randolph. If you want facts, we should talk.”
“All right, then. Where and when?”
The arrangements made, Mays keyed off. He leaned back on the bed and lifted his large feet onto the cover. With his long fingers knitted behind his head, he stared at the ceiling and considered his next move.
From Mrs. Wong, Mays had learned that Hawkins had been told to take a room in this very hotel. It wouldn’t be long before the mediahounds got hold of that. Indeed, Forster and friends had very likely thrown Hawkins to the hounds deliberately—the professor’s people evidently didn’t have a lot for him to do, except deflect attention from themselves. Mays was a few hours ahead of his, mm, colleagues with these tidbits, but he was playing a deeper game than they were. And he was after bigger game than Hawkins.
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Nothing he knew suggested that Hawkins was any but the least important member of Forster’s team, a former student of the professor’s who’d most probably been recruited primarily for his family’s wealth and connections—and perhaps secondarily for his strong back—but only incidentally for his knowledge of the language of Culture X, which he’d learned to read from Forster himself. Hawkins, naturally, believed that his linguistic ability and scholarly acumen were the reasons for the honor his former teacher had conferred upon him.
He was a bright enough young man, but he was mightily opinionated and, as was often the case with such people, fundamentally shy. He didn’t so much talk as lecture; if he were wound up in his subject, he could even be rather charming at first. But he didn’t know when to stop talking—or how to stop, once he’d run out of things to say. Thus what social advantages he had often turned into liabilities. He was vulnerable.
Marianne Mitchell was also staying at the Interplanetary. In managing an effective introduction to a woman more than two decades younger than he was, it helped Mays to know that she was already among his fans. And that she had a thirst for knowledge.
It was essential that he approach them together. Mays staked out the hotel bar, making no attempt to hide; as a consequence, for most of one day and a good part of the next he signed books and cocktail napkins, even stray bits of lingerie, until the current crop of autograph seekers was sated. His patience was rewarded: late on the second day of his watch, Hawkins and Marianne entered, sat down, and ordered cocktails. He gave them ten uninterrupted minutes. Then…
“You’re Dr. William Hawkins,” he said, looming suddenly out of the shadows, wasting no time on subtlety.
Hawkins looked up from what did not seem a happy conversation with Marianne. “Yes … oh! You’re…”
“If one were to count the number of people who can even begin to read the infamous Martian script, one would need only one hand to do it. And there you would be,” Mays said, sounding immensely pleased with himself. “But sorry, my name’s Mays.”
“Of course, Sir Randolph”—Hawkins almost knocked his chair over, standing up—“won’t you sit down? This is my friend, Miss…”
“Terribly rude,” Mays said. “You will forgive me.”
“…Mitchell.”
“Marianne,” Marianne said sweetly. “It’s an honor to meet you, Sir Randolph.”
“Why, really.”
“Really, yes. Bill and I have talked about you a great deal. I think your ideas are so fascinating.”
Mays threw Hawkins a quick look; upon hearing this from the woman he’d been trying to impress by cataloguing Mays’s follies, Hawkins suddenly realized how incongruous were his own obsequious noises. Abruptly he straightened his chair and sat down.
“How good of you to say so… Marianne?” A quick nod of her glossy brunette head confirmed that Mays had permission to use her first name. “If there is any secret to my success with the public, it is simply that I have managed to focus attention on some great thinkers of the past, too long neglected. Toynbee, for example. As of course you know.”
“Oh yes. Arnold Toynbee.” She nodded again, more vigorously. She’d definitely heard of Toynbee—mostly from Bill Hawkins.
“You’re suggesting, Sir Randolph,” Hawkins suggested for him, “that like Newton, if you have seen farther it is because you stand on the shoulders of giants?”
“Mmm … well…”
Hawkins was all heavy humor and undisguised resentment. “I’ve heard that Isaac Newton intended that remark to insult his rival, Robert Hooke—who was a dwarf.”
“In that case, apparently I am even less like Hooke than like Newton.”
Marianne laughed delightedly.
Hawkins flushed; she was not laughing with him. “I’ll find a waitress.” He jerked his hand up and looked about.
“Bill says you’re here to investigate Professor Forster’s expedition to Amalthea,” Marianne said to Mays.
“That’s right.”
“Bill says they aren’t doing anything except making an archaeological survey.”
“Perhaps the professor hasn’t told Bill everything,” said Mays.
She persisted. “But do you really think the professor is part of a conspiracy?”
“I say, Marianne,” said Hawkins worriedly, his hand still in the air.
“I’m afraid my views on that subject have not been accurately reported,” Mays replied. “I haven’t accused Professor Forster of being part of a conspiracy, only of knowing more than he’s telling the public. Frankly, I suspect he has discovered a secret that the Free Spirit have jealously guarded for centuries.”
“The Free Spirit!” Hawkins exclaimed. “What could some centuries-old superstition possibly have to say about a celestial body that was unknown until the 1880’s?”
“Just so,” Mays said amiably.
The waitress appeared, dressed in an elaborate Balinese temple dancer’s costume.
“What will you have?” Hawkins asked Mays.
“Ice tea, Thai-style,” said Mays.
“Two more here,” said Hawkins, indicating the tall rum drinks he and Marianne had been sipping.
“Not for me,” Marianne said. Her glass was still more than half full. The waitress bowed prettily and left.
“You were asking about centuries-old superstitions, Dr. Hawkins,” Mays said suavely, turning his attention full on Hawkins. “Before I address your question, let me first ask if you can tell me why the underground temples of the Free Spirit cult have the southern constellation Crux depicted on their ceilings—when at the time the earliest of them were built no one in the northern hemisphere knew the configuration of the southern sky? And just what secrets were those two astronomers on the moon trying to keep when they plotted to destroy the Farside radiotelescopes, which were then trained upon Crux?”
“That the aliens are from Crux, and they’re coming back,” Marianne said with satisfaction.
“Oh, Marianne,” Hawkins groaned.
“A very reasonable hypothesis,” Mays said, “one among several.”
“Including coincidence, which in a probabilistic world is not only possible but inevitable.” If Hawkins had not been so flustered, he would have stopped there—“And what clues could Professor Forster have concerning these living aliens … that he wouldn’t share with the rest of his team?”—realizing too late that there were all sorts of things someone in Forster’s position would want to keep secret from his academic rivals.
But again Mays declined a frontal attack. “As to that, I really don’t know. I assure you, however, there will be no secrets when I discover what the professor is keeping to himself.” Mays knitted his furry brows, but there was a kind of mockery in his challenge. “Perhaps you should consider this fair warning, sir. I intend to follow every clue.”
“There won’t be many clues to a nonexistent secret.”
“Dr. Hawkins, you are such a … straightforward man, I’m sure you would be surprised at what I have uncovered already. For example, that Professor Forster has acquired both a small ice mole and a Europan submarine—tools that give your expedition capabilities well beyond the scope of its stated survey goals.”
Hawkins was indeed surprised, and failed to hide it. “How did you know that?”
Mays answered with another question. “Can you offer a straightforward explanation for these rather odd acquisitions?”
“Well, certainly,” said Hawkins, although he was unsure how he’d been maneuvered into defending himself. “Amalthea is obviously a different place than it seemed when the professor wrote his proposal. The subsurface geology…”
“…could be understood with conventional seismographic imaging techniques. Perhaps already is understood. The Space Board has kept watch on Amalthea for more than a year,” Mays said. “No, Dr. Hawkins, Professor Forster wants more than a survey of Amalthea’s surface or a picture of its interior. He is looking for something … something beneath the ice.”
Hawkins laughed. “The buried civilization of the ancient astronauts from Crux, is that it? Quite imaginative, Sir Randolph. Perhaps you should be writing adventure viddies instead of documentaries.” It was a juvenile retort. To Hawkins’s evident dismay, Marianne did not bother to hide her contempt…
Days later, Mays could still smile triumphantly at the memory of that moment. When Hawkins left the table a few moments later, he’d recovered just enough of his dignity to avoid making false excuses. “It’s clear that you have more to talk about with Sir Randolph than with me,” he’d said to Marianne. “It would be churlish of me to interfere.”
And indeed they did have more to talk about. Much more.
PART
2
GANYMEDE CROSSING
8
Two weeks earlier…
“You were right. I can’t leave Blake and the others out there floundering. I’m probably the only one alive who knows what to do.”
“I was right?” Amusement touched Linda’s calm features. “Did I tell you all that?”
“You got me to think it, and then to say it. Which is the same thing.”
Linda nodded. “I suppose so.” The faint smile remained.
Sparta nervously paced her end of the room, her boot heels knocking softly on the bare polished boards. “Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I’m not here for our regular session.”
“Somehow I sensed that. For one thing, you haven’t sat down.”
“I wanted to tell you what I’ve decided.”
“And I’d like to hear it.”
“Yes… Yes.” Sparta stopped pacing and stood at something resembling parade rest, her feet spaced apart, her hands clasped behind her. “I’ve made arrangements to join Forster. A fast cutter will take me to Ganymede. Planetary alignments are almost ideal. It should take a little over two weeks.”
Linda said nothing, only sat upon her plain pine chair and listened. The light from the window was fitful, brightening and dimming with the swift passage of clouds before the sun, causing Linda’s and Sparta’s shadows to shrink and swell on the polished floorboards and enameled walls.