"You rotten little geek." Lola flopped down into a seat opposite Spook. "That's personal material, from a session that another haldane ran on me as part of my final training. Those are my war memories!"
"I know." Spook managed to think tricky and look apologetic. "But I wasn't after anything creepy and personal—you know I'm not interested in that sort of stuff, 'specially in you. What I hoped to get—what I got—was this."
His fingers stabbed the console on the arm of his chair. The den environment changed. The comet cluster disappeared, and in its place was Earth's Moon. Wan and glaring with pale-blue light, it hovered over them. The Armageddon Defense Line formed a livid scar across its face.
"I saw that," he went on. "And I had to have it. See, I remember it, but the whole time when we were leaving Earth is like a muddle in my head. Your file was like being there in person, all over again. I wish you'd probe me, the way you were probed."
"Never!" Lola told herself that her violent reaction was appropriate: No one fifteen years old should be exposed to haldane sessions except in a medical emergency.
Another part of her mind told her what an awful hypocrite she was. She had been itching to sit Spook down in that special chair since the day she finished formal training. Thanks to the haldane sessions, she had some idea what the loss of Earth, friends, and parents had done to her, at age twenty-two. What must it have done to poor Spook, at ten years old? What was it doing to him now, at fifteen?
She remembered her own adolescence, filled with fears and wants and nameless worries over the nature of sanity, especially her own (according to haldane training, no one became a haldane completely by choice). Spook didn't admit to any worries at all—least of all, to Lola—but surely he had some. And he had no mother or father, infinitely understanding, to discuss things with. He had only a sister preoccupied with her own problems . . .
"Well, all right." Spook had seen the change in Lola's mood, from anger to something else. He didn't know what she was thinking now, but he wanted her to go on with it. He had done one other thing with part of the "Wartime Memories" record, something he didn't want his sister to discover before he was good and ready to tell her. "I know you won't let me be probed. But I don't see any harm if I see something through you that I already saw for myself, in person."
"Maybe." Lola sighed. Her anger had gone, replaced by the usual dull worry. Was she doing what her mother had asked? Was she doing enough? She could not ignore Spook's obsession with the war, but was that abnormal when the destruction of the Inner System was probably the main interest of every teenage boy who lived in or on the Jupiter moons? "Promise me you won't dig any more into my directory, without asking me first. And promise me that you'll never try to get into the locked patient files."
"I promise." It was an easy commitment to offer. Spook had taken a quick peek at some of the haldane stuff, out of sheer curiosity—the keys were easy to crack, for any Puzzle Network devotee. But he was quite willing never to look again. Someday, Lola would learn just how little interest he had in soggy emotional experiences. He held up crossed fingers. "Honest. Fingers cross my heart."
"And don't go into my files, either."
"I won't." That should have satisfied her, but still she was sitting there frowning. And not at him, but at nothing. "I mean it, sis. Don't you believe me?"
"I want to ask your opinion on something. Your sort of thing." She had gone off at right angles, in another direction completely.
Which was fine with Spook. "Ask away."
"I want to see if you come up with the same conclusion as I did. Think of it as one of your puzzles. You have an object, and it's free-falling under gravity. It's going to hit some hard surface. Three seconds before impact, it's traveling at forty-nine meters a second. Two seconds before impact, at fifty-two meters a second. And when it hits, it will be traveling at sixty meters a second. All right?"
"Go on."
"Right. Where in the solar system is this happening?"
Spook looked at her in disgust. For someone who now operated at the Masters' level in the Puzzle Network, the question was like an insult. "Is it important? And there's no tricks?"
"It might be really important. And no tricks, it's a straight question."
"Then it's Mars or Mercury, close to the surface." His shrug showed his disdain for the simplicity of the question. "I mean, from what you said, the object is accelerating at about eleven meters in three seconds. That's three and two-thirds meters per second per second. The only two bodies in the solar system with anything like that value for surface gravity are Mars and Mercury. Neither one has enough atmosphere to change the answer, either."
"I decided the same thing. But which is it, Mars or Mercury?"
"Not enough information to distinguish between them. I assume that your numbers have been rounded off. Mercury's surface gravity is 3.57 meters per second squared, Mars's ranges from 3.56 at the equator to 3.76 at the poles. It could be either one. Does it matter which?"
"It might. I don't see how it could, though. He's never been to either one."
"He? Hey, I thought we were discussing a falling object."
"I can't tell you any more."
"But you know more."
"Why do you think that?"
"Sis, don't play dumb with me. You said, 'It's going to hit some hard surface.' How do you know that? And then you say, 'He's never been to either one.' You have things you're not telling me."
"Things I can't tell you."
"You can't tell me anything personal, if it's from one of your patients." Spook was seeing a glimmer of hope, a possible way to extricate himself from his own rash act with Lola's file. "But couldn't you sanitize it, and then show me? I mean, take away anything that would let me know who the person is, but let me see the record for myself. Maybe I could figure out where the person is, and what's going on."
"How?"
"I can't tell you that, can I, if I don't see it for myself? There might be all sorts of subtle clues in a visual record." Now was the time to make the stretch. "In fact, even if I couldn't give you a precise location, I bet that someone else could, someone who's been around the system more. This would be just the sort of thing to throw at the Puzzle Network."
Not a smart move. He had gone too far, and the steam was coming out of Lola's ears. Spook backed off fast.
"Not the whole Puzzle Network, of course, I didn't mean that. But I'd like to help, and it would really make things easier if I had somebody else to bounce ideas off of. And you're busy, you don't have time to spend on this."
"Forget it. I'm not that busy, and I never will be."
"But I have more spare time than you do. One other person, then? Just one. That's all I would really need to work with me."
Spook crossed his fingers again—but, this time, out of sight—while Lola hesitated.
"Who is this other person?" she said at last. Lola didn't want Spook to know it, but she was feeling a terrible need to show that she cared about him, that she trusted him.
"He's one of the top Puzzle Network people." What else did Spook know? He had some idea how the other's mind worked on problems, but that was not going to impress Lola. "He calls himself Megachirops."
"That's his real name?"
"No. Hardly anybody on the Puzzle Network uses his or her own name. I certainly don't. Megachirops is taken from Megachiroptera. That's the name of the Order of Great Bats."
"I hope that tells you more than it tells me. What's his real name?"
A good question. "I'm not sure he'd want me to tell you that."
"Well, he'd better be prepared to tell me that. In person. I'm willing to make a heavily edited version of the record for the two of you to work with, but I want to meet him. Soon. You arrange for us all to have dinner. All right?"
"No problem."
Spook stared at the ceiling, where the war display had continued and Earth's Northern Hemisphere was dying under a silent rain of radioactive dust. Now all he had to do was pe
rsuade the reclusive Megachirops—who had so far shown no interest in meeting anyone, not even a soul mate from the Puzzle Network—that he would enjoy nothing better than a cozy dinner with Lola and Spook Belman. "No problem" was right. No problem for Lola.
8
Five years after the end of the war, traffic within the solar system was at last creeping back to planned schedules. With regular traffic came systemwide traffic monitoring, but there was one major difference: Before the war, the transportation nerve center had been on Earth; now and for the foreseeable future, it was on Ganymede. The populated Southern Hemisphere of Earth was too busy struggling for its own survival to control or direct anything anywhere.
The deep space radars of Ganymede and Callisto had readily picked up the silvery exploration vessel when it appeared on their perimeter. Its trajectory suggested an origin farther out, almost certainly in the Saturn system, but the computers were not sure.
Transport computer talked to ship's computer, and made the confirmation. This was the explorer ship Weland, returning with the Seventh Saturn Expedition to its home base on Lysithea after two months away.
At that point the Ganymede dispatch computer lost interest. Lysithea was far from Jupiter's main moons and off the beaten track for all major transport routes. The probability of conflict with other trajectories or competition for docking resources was zero. The Weland was turned loose, free to determine its own rendezvous. It moved on toward Lysithea under minimal power, the Diabelli Omnivores barely sustaining their fusion reactions.
The ship would not dock on the outer surface of the planetoid. No human facilities were there, or ever likely to be. The surface communications and control stations were staffed entirely by machines, designed to operate with an ambient temperature that never went higher than seventy-five degrees above absolute zero.
These machines did not merely tolerate the cold. They depended on it. Their components would fail if the temperature ever rose as high as the boiling point of nitrogen, a "hot" seventy-seven Kelvin. In the event of a supersized solar flare or other anomalous heat, the machines would estivate, tunneling down through the volatiles of Lysithea's surface like crabs into sand, until they reached a colder level a few tens of meters beneath.
Lysithea was all right for machines, but what about humans? Three hundred years earlier, people would have argued that any form of life was unthinkable on anything as cold and small as Lysithea. A hundred years ago, "unthinkable" might have changed to "undesirable." Today, a machine could tolerate—even be programmed to relish—surface conditions on Lysithea. A human could survive on the surface with special equipment. But why would one choose to, when the interior was cool, quiet, and safe?
The Weland eased up to the landing circle on the icy shield of Lysithea's surface and entered a broad entry shaft that slanted steeply down through rock mixed with a slush of nitrogen and methane. The ship descended nine kilometers vertically, until it finally docked on the three-hundred-meter metal globe of the central habitat.
Jeffrey Cayuga and Alicia Rios, suitless, emerged into an icy vacuum and moved to the entrance of the air-filled and heated interior. A monitor confirmed their identities by half a dozen tests before it permitted them to enter.
Lenny Costas was waiting for them within. A stranger would have remarked on the musty and unpleasant odor that permeated the habitation bubble. Neither Costas nor the newcomers seemed to notice it.
"I arrived here two days ago." Costas spoke in his usual dry monotone. "There have been no significant problems during your absence. I will bring one small oddity to your attention in due course. I assume that the trip went according to plan?"
"Construction continues on schedule. Three more months, and it will be complete." Cayuga moved on past Costas, drifting through the habitat toward the main lounge and message center. He offered no form of ritual greeting, any more than the other had said a word of welcome. "There was one small complication, which is why we arrive one day later than our original return date. We saw evidence that a smart probe recently performed a Helene flyby. However, when we investigated further we decided that it was not necessary to send a message here."
Costas froze. "A probe. That is surprising and disturbing."
"It is not as bad as it sounds." Cayuga was at the computer console. "We determined that there have been no recent lease-monitoring probes sent to the Saturn system. The trajectory of this one indicates that it was launched decades ago, before the First Expedition. My guess is that there was some flaw in its navigation program. It traveled way out, beyond the Kuiper Belt, and finally swung back toward Sol. Helene was no more than a target of opportunity for its return journey. We confirmed that the probe did not penetrate or explore the Helene interior. I doubt if any analysis facilities on Earth or Mars are in a position to accept its findings, whatever they may be. However, this proves that our decision to make Helene modifications as inconspicuous as possible was a wise one. We also need to make sure that no anomalies have been reported locally."
"I feel sure that they have not. I talked to Polk and Dahlquist yesterday, and everything is perfectly normal on Ganymede." But Costas offered no objection when Alicia Rios joined Cayuga, and they shunted a large fraction of Lysithea's computing facilities to augment the standard search routines.
Within a few seconds the first results were appearing. They did not constitute a real-time message analysis, since although the communications net of the Jovian system was under scrutiny—constant and automated—by the Lysithean monitors, its message load was too vast and variable to permit instant analysis. However, within twenty-four hours any chosen subject could be queried.
In this case there was no need to wait. Helene, the tiny moon of Saturn in its libration point orbit with Dione, was a permanent key word for query in the Lysithean computers. Any mention, for any reason, would have been flagged.
The three watched impassively as a scant handful of references were played out.
"Good enough," said Cayuga at last. "Reports and standard catalogs for natural bodies within the solar system. No mention of a probe flying close to Helene. You said that you had an anomaly of your own to report?"
" 'Anomaly' may be too strong a word." Costas took over the panel. "Polk came across this four days ago. It was generated by the search routine that we have been using for singular events related to life and death. This record was part of a data transfer taking place on Ganymede."
"Open line?"
"No. It was on one of the closed pathways that we have been able to tap. One of the oddities is that the transfer destination wiped itself automatically from the records. Someone has gone to great trouble to make sure that no one can track them to their physical location. That's another reason why Polk believes this may be significant. I am skeptical. In view of your impending return I decided to wait before taking action. Get ready. Any second now you will enter derived reality."
The warning was necessary. The sequence began at once, as a disconcerting fall through space. Cayuga and Rios found themselves accelerating toward a dark surface. A ghostly clock, overlaid on the scene but not part of it, was ticking away the seconds. Lights, steady but dim, shone far off toward a distant horizon. The drop continued for hundreds of meters, until the surface beneath resolved to the flat roof of a building, marked by skylights and antennas. Their body position had steadied so that they fell feetfirst. They could see where the landing would occur, on a dark flat area of smooth metal. Down, down, down, faster and faster, moments from final impact.
And then, without warning, the sequence ended.
"I don't see why this was worth noting." Cayuga remained impassive. "Where is the rest of it?"
"You've experienced the whole thing. For some unknown reason, that file has been cropped. It lacks subject identifiers. That's why I think it is no more than a clever simulation."
"Rios?" Cayuga turned to her. "You are the specialist."
"It is not a simulation." Alicia Rios shook her dark head and ga
ve the instruction to repeat the last few seconds of the record.
"Definitely not," she went on, as the sequence again ran its course to the final dizzying moment of the fall. "Too much detail for a straight simulation. That's the real thing. Some person experienced that fall—and it didn't kill them. It should have. I am not sure that any one of us would survive it. And someone else was able to tap the person's memory record. This is a haldane product, it has to be."
Cayuga nodded. "I'm beginning to see what Polk is making a fuss about. A haldane product would explain the use of the closed pathway, but it doesn't account for the big problem: survival."
"I agree. Any normal human who experienced that fall must have died on impact." Alicia Rios turned to Lenny Costas. "What do you say to that?"
"It may not be a real-time sequence. Maybe it was a fall in a low-gee environment, speeded up."
"Not unless the clock overlay was false. Time was passing at a standard rate."
"Even if we can produce an explanation for everything, I still agree with Polk." Cayuga requested the header-record descriptors. "It is something to be taken seriously. We must have answers to some basic questions. Who is this? Where did it happen? When did it happen?"
"Polk says he can answer one of those," said Lenny Costas. "If that is a real-time sequence, and if the clock is right, then the motion indicates a fall on either Mars or Mercury. And there are no large buildings on Mercury. So it is Mars."
"Mars again." Cayuga was scrolling through the header record, frame by frame. "I thought we were finished with Mars when we disposed of Neely, and then for sure when Barker got rid of that reporter. But perhaps not. Maybe someone else managed to become a Club member, and we don't even know about it." He paused, freezing the frame display. "Look at this. We may not have a subject identifier, but at least we know who initiated the transfer. Here is the name. Spook Belman. Rios, would you—"
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