“Ten seconds,” said Bill. “Clear the entry.”
Damned idiot machine. Did it think George was going to stand there and play tag with the box? He listened to the gentle hum of his suit’s power and became conscious of the air flow whispering across his face.
“Five.”
There was a trace of pride in the AI’s precision. At exactly the specified moment the box drifted through the door. It bumped the upper edge of the frame, sailed through the bay, and plunged into the net. Not quite dead center, but close enough.
George ran toward it. “Bill,” he said, “shut the door and give us some life support.”
He told Tor he was inside the Memphis, he was safe now, air in a minute, while he began disentangling the washroom from the net. Tor didn’t answer.
When he got it clear, he pushed it to the deck. “Okay, Bill,” he said. “Gravity up.”
Getting gravity back was not a calibrated business. For technological reasons that he’d heard but never understood, it tended to be on or off, at whatever setting. Bill gave him the standard quarter gee.
The cargo door closed and air returned slowly into the bay. George knelt over the box, waiting for the lights on the status board to go green.
TOR CLAIMED LATER that he never really lost consciousness. If not, he was on the edge during the last few minutes. But it seemed to him that he had in fact been awake the whole time, that he knew enough about what was going on to visualize everything as it occurred, that he wasn’t responding because he was, sensibly enough, conserving his air. He maintained that he understood when his box floated through the cargo door, and was gratified when it hit George’s net. Gratified. That was the way he described it.
In any case, at the end, he was aware of George’s anxious face looking down at him, of George rubbing his wrists trying to restore circulation, of George literally hugging him and telling him he was going to be fine, he’d made it, and he’d appreciate it if Tor wouldn’t scare him like that again.
“WE’VE GOT HIM,” George told her. “He’s okay.”
Hutch and Nick were coming in through the main airlock. “Tor,” she said, “it’s good to have you back.”
“I don’t think he’s quite able to talk yet, Hutch. But he heard you. He’s nodding. Saying thanks.”
“Good show, George,” she said.
After George had gotten Tor clear of the launch bay, Bill decompressed and opened up again. They got rid of the washroom, and Hutch used the go-pack to pick up Alyx.
They left the lander parked about a kilometer away from the ship. They would watch it a while before bringing it back on board. Just in case.
Reluctantly, Hutch did not go after Kurt’s body. He had been awash in whatever had disassembled the Wendy, and the risk involved in bringing him back on board simply did not justify recovery.
Another one lost.
Chapter 17
There is something inescapably sublime about twins. Whether we are speaking of a pair of children, or aces, or galaxies. It may be the symmetry, or it may be a sense of sheer good fortune. I would argue it results from a demonstration of order, of organization, of law. So long as twins exist in the world, we rest easy.
— MARK THOMAS, NOBODY HERE, 2066
THE DISINTEGRATION AND transformation of the Wendy took something more than two days. They watched from more than twenty thousand kilometers, surely a safe range.
The ship melted away, floated off in iron globules and large wispy clouds. What remained when it was over was a new stealth satellite, the diamond core hard and polished in the starlight, dish antennas rotating slowly as if testing their capabilities. A few hours after it appeared, the stealth satellite was not to be seen, which is to say, its stealth capability had cut in. Shortly thereafter it moved into the orbit occupied by the unit Hutch and Tor had disassembled. Its antennas were aimed back toward Paradise. What remained of the ship finally exploded as the fusion engines let go.
And the thing that had jumped the Wendy dropped out of sight.
“What it looks like,” Hutch told George, “is that each set of six satellites comes with a monitor. The monitor maintains the system. If one of the satellites goes down, the monitor is capable of manufacturing a replacement.”
George thought about it and shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. What if there’s no ship around to make a replacement from?”
“No. It just happened that there were ships in the area this time. We got unlucky. The monitor would be programmed to find an iron asteroid. Probably anything that is metal-rich.”
Tor was okay after a couple of days’ rest. They fed him hot soup and kept him quiet.
Hutch communicated with Outpost and the Academy, reporting the loss of the Wendy Jay and its captain. She described her theory about a monitor.
The lander seemed to be uninfected and, shortly after the Wendy exploded, they inspected it and brought it back on board. Even then Hutch directed Bill to keep an eye on it, and was ready at first sight of anything untoward to heave it out the door.
Meantime they debated the big question: Why were stealths orbiting Icepack?
Nobody had any ideas.
“Are you sure,” rumbled George, “that the outbound signal is aimed at that galaxy, what’s-its-name?”
“GCY-7514,” said Bill. “Yes, there really is no question about it.”
George threw up his hands. “It’s crazy. They can’t be sending a signal way out there.”
Hutch wondered if whoever was behind the network might have advanced FTL technology. An intergalactic drive. She asked Bill whether the signal was strong enough to make it out to 7514.
“It would be exceedingly weak,” he said.
And exceedingly old. Surely, if they had that kind of technology, they’d be sending a hypercomm signal of some sort. Something that would get there on this side of a million years.
“Bill,” said Hutch, “would you recheck the target, please?”
George sat shaking his head. It couldn’t be. They were missing something.
Bill’s virtual image materialized in the chair beside George. Looking at George. Looking embarrassed. “Something’s happened,” he said.
“What’s that?” grumped George.
“The signal is no longer directed where it was.”
“You mean it’s not aimed at the galaxy any longer?”
“That’s correct.”
George turned to Hutch, as if she would have an explanation. “Where is it aimed, Bill?” she asked.
“It appears to be tracking the two gas giants. In this system. Apparently it was directed at them the whole time.”
George frowned. He was still hurting from the fight with the angels, and Kurt’s death, on top of everything else, had hit him hard. He’d confided to Hutch that he was tired, that he felt responsible for so many people dying, and that getting all the way out here and then finding nothing was just too much to bear. The enthusiasm that had carried him through the early weeks had finally vanished.
“I assumed—” said Bill.
“—It was aimed out of the system,” finished Hutch.
“We should go take a look,” said Nick.
Tor was sitting at a table with Alyx, drinking coffee, apparently completely recovered from his experience. “It wouldn’t do any harm,” he said.
“How far are they?” asked Hutch. “The gas giants?”
“Roughly 100 million klicks.” Bill put them on-screen, and there was a collective gasp.
Two cloudy disks, a pair of Saturns. Each with rings. And a third set of rings, wispy and ill defined, circled the entire system. “They are approximately 3 million kilometers from each other. Quite close. Especially for objects of this size.”
The room had become very quiet.
A cloud floated midway between the worlds, at the center of mass. It was enormous, big enough to envelop either of the giants. Lightning bolts rippled through it. It looked like a third planet. Broad bands of clouds lined bo
th worlds, autumn-hued on one, blue and silver on the other.
“I’ve never seen anything remotely like it,” said Hutch, breaking the long silence.
Ice tinkled in someone’s drink.
THE TWINS WERE 1.1 billion kilometers out from the central luminary. And they were a long run for the Memphis, which would have needed two weeks to reach them with her fusion engines. Hutch opted instead to make a short jump, which could be done, at this range, with pretty good accuracy. Within an hour, they completed the transit and soared out into a sky filled with spectacle. Chains of glowing worldlets and gas swirled through a night dominated by the twin globes. Both worlds were flattened and misshapen by the gravity dance. “I’m surprised it all holds together,” said Pete.
They were in the common room. Bill activated the main screen, killed the lights, and lit everything up for them, so they had the impression of standing outside on a veranda where they could gawk at the spectacle.
“Maybe this is why they came,” said Alyx, her voice barely a whisper.
The Memphis was entering the system from broadside, so the twin worlds, one light and one dark, one bright and warm and brilliantly colored, the other dusky and ominous and melancholy, were opposite sides of a balance.
“Not many moons,” said Bill. “I count nine in the plane of the system, other than the shepherds. Of course, with an arrangement like this, that’s not a surprise.” The moons were all beyond the outer ring.
“In the plane of the system,” prompted Hutch.
“Right. There’s a tenth one. In an anomalous position.” He showed them. It orbited vertically, at right angles to the big ring. A polar orbit of sorts, like everything else, around the center of mass.
Long tendrils rolled out of the central cloud. Bill ran time-set images so they could see them lengthening and withdrawing, as if the thing were alive, reaching squidlike toward the planets they never quite touched.
The vertical moon was big, almost the size of Mars, and it appeared to have been roughly handled at some point in its history. It was moderately squashed on one side, as if it had been hit by something almost as big as it was. Stress lines staggered out of the depression. Elsewhere, the surface was torn up by peaks and chasms and ridges and gullies. It was a rough piece of real estate.
Bill reported that its orbit wasn’t perfectly perpendicular after all. It was actually a few degrees off.
All the satellites were in tidal lock. On Vertical, the depressed side looked away.
Hutch frowned at the picture as Bill traced the circle of the moon’s orbit, a few degrees askew at top and bottom on either side of a longitudinal line drawn down the middle. “I wouldn’t have thought that kind of orbit would be stable,” she said.
“It isn’t,” said Tor. The comment surprised Hutch. How would he know?
“That thing will be ejected or drawn in,” he continued, “eventually.” He caught her looking at him. “Artists need to know about orbital mechanics,” he said, with a cat-that-got-the-cream grin. “This is another major discovery. This is very hot stuff we’re looking at.”
George shrugged. “It’s only a rock,” he said.
Tor shook his head. “It might be something more. That kind of alignment. In a place like this.”
“In a place like what?” asked George.
“A place this glorious.” Tor was looking off into the distance somewhere. “I have a question for you, George.”
George made a rumbling sound, like water going over rocks. “Ask away,” he said.
“Look at the system. Lots of satellites adrift in the plane of the rings. If you were going to live out here, where would you want to be? To get the best view? Where do you think an artist would set up his easel?”
“The vertical moon,” said Alyx, jumping in before George could even think about it.
Tor’s blue eyes found Hutch. Whenever they looked at her lately she knew he was sending a message, maybe one that he wasn’t aware of himself. “The thing is,” he said, “moons don’t assume that kind of orbit naturally.”
They all looked at the images. Hutch thought he was probably wrong. The orbit was unlikely, and temporary, but it could happen. The proof was in front of them.
“Any sign of stealths?” asked Alyx.
“Bill’s looking,” said Hutch. “He’ll let us know. It’s going to take a while to do a comprehensive survey here.”
“You buy into what Tor says?” George asked her.
“No,” she said. “Not necessarily.”
“I think he might be right,” George continued. “Place like this. Vertical moon. I think he might be right.”
Somebody put it there. Somebody who wanted a room with a view.
“Well, for what it’s worth,” she said, “I don’t think anybody’s ever seen one orbiting top to bottom.”
“Makes me wonder,” George continued, “whether this whole arrangement is artificial. Somebody’s idea of a rock garden.”
That sent a chill up her back. She looked over at Tor, who was examining a coffee cup. “That would require a fair amount of engineering,” she said. “No, it’s hard to believe this isn’t all quite natural.”
“Pity,” said Alyx. “I’d like to think there’s something out here with that kind of esthetic sense.”
Hutch didn’t think she wanted to meet anyone, art patron or not, with the kind of power it would take to arrange all this.
George was only half listening. “You know,” he said, “I think we ought to take Tor’s suggestion and go look at the vertical moon.”
The inner system sparkled. A twisted luminous line connected both sets of rings with the central cloud. Like chains. Like a twisted diamond necklace.
HUTCH SPENT THE day on the bridge directing Bill. Pictures of this, gravitational estimates of that, sensor readings of cloudscapes. Launch probes.
She got a string of visitors. George came by to tell her she’d been doing a damned fine job. And to hint that when it was all over, if she’d be looking for work, he had a lot of friends and would be happy to see that she was well taken care of.
She thought that was generous of him, and she said so. “But I’m probably going to retire after this,” she said. “I was ready to quit before we started. After this…”
“How can you say that, Hutch? This is an historic mission.”
She just looked at him, and he nodded, and said, “Yes, I don’t blame you. I’m not sure I’d want to go through all this again either.”
Alyx came in for awhile to tell her that she’d been thinking about using the flight of the Memphis to create a musical. “I just don’t know, though. It’s gotten awfully dark.” She looked genuinely distressed. “I’m afraid they’d stay home in droves.”
Nick was wound up and wanted to talk about experiences in the funeral business. The deceased has a recording played saying things to his widow that he would never have said face to face (and includes a lawyer to ensure that Nick doesn’t forget to play it). The other woman shows up at a viewing. A widow comments in front of the mourners that it’s really just as well because the deceased was only a virtual husband anyhow.
And finally Tor.
“Can I ask you to come down to the common room for a minute?” he asked. He looked good. The color was back in his cheeks, and he was smiling again. But there was something unsettling in his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his experience, and especially about Kurt.
“Sure,” she said, rising and starting for the door. “What’s going on?”
“I have something for you.”
The others were already there, obviously waiting. Tor asked her to sit, and stood by a table on which lay four tubes, containers for canvases.
Hutch looked around at the others to see if anyone knew what it was about. But they only shrugged.
“Thanks for coming,” Tor said. “You folks got to me when I was in a bad way, and I wanted to say thanks.”
He stood and listened to the comments that one always hears
on such an occasion. Not necessary, Tor. We were glad to have been there. You’d have done the same.
He opened one of the tubes and took out a sketch. “George,” he said, “this is for you, with my appreciation.” He unrolled it and held it up for everyone to see. There was George, a heroic figure in the cargo door of the Memphis, the net behind him, the washroom closing in. He had titled it with George’s name, signed and dated it in the corner.
And here was Alyx astride the lander, tying the cable to the forward antenna mount, her aura backlit by a distant sun.
And Nick clinging to the hull of the disintegrating Wendy Jay, the laser cutter bright and gleaming in his right fist.
And finally, Hutch.
She wasn’t sure what she expected.
Stumbling around inside the chamber? Cutting the washroom loose?
He unrolled it, and it was the sky from Icepack. The Memphis, with its lights on, glided above the horizon. And Hutch herself, face and shoulders rendered in spectral form, silhouetted against the soft silver light of the stars and the ship, gazed serenely down. It was a gorgeous Hutch, a spectacular vision of herself. She was by no means plain, but she knew she’d never cut that kind of figure.
“Tor,” she said, “it’s breathtaking. They all are.”
“You like it?”
“Yes. Of course.” And after a moment: “Thank you.”
When they were alone, a few minutes later, he commented that the problem out here was that you couldn’t get roses. “This is in lieu of roses,” he said.
She pressed her lips against his. “Tor,” she said, “it’s much nicer than roses.”
Chapter 18
Give me a place in the Andes, safely removed from noisy neighbors and fish markets, relatives, crowds, and low-flying aircraft, and I shall be pleased to retire from the crass delights of this world.
— ALICE DELMAR, LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE, 2087
HUTCH DEBATED PUTTING the sketch on the bridge, and had she not been in it, or maybe even had she looked a bit less like a deity, she’d have done it. But in the end she put it up in her quarters. And she luxuriated in it. Her image had come a long way in a short time, from the tomboyish character swinging bats in a Phillies uniform to this mantrap. He’s got your number, babe, she thought.
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