by Ben Bova
What chess piece is she? Ignatiev wondered. A queen? Maybe. We’ll see.
“You’re all on the exogeology team?” Ignatiev asked, as he glanced at the menu built into the tabletop.
“Not all of us,” said Corcoran glumly.
“There’s not that much to explore,” Jackson complained. “The planet’s been wiped clean.”
“Deep radar scans haven’t even picked up any building foundations,” one of the others said.
“Isn’t that strange?” Ignatiev asked. “No evidence of this planet’s once being occupied?”
“Very strange,” said Jackson.
“Raj has been selected for the team going down to the surface,” Katherine Mulvany said, with pride in her voice.
“Good,” said Ignatiev. “You can look after an old fart like me while we’re down there.”
“You’re going?” Jackson blurted, obviously surprised.
“Certainly I’m going. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” Nor ALS, he added mentally.
Corcoran, grinning again, piped up. “What’s the point of being a tyrant unless you can do some tyranny now and then?”
“Me? A tyrant?”
Corcoran’s grin disappeared. “I didn’t mean it literally, Professor Ignatiev. It was just a joke.”
Ignatiev smiled minimally. “Yes, of course. A joke.”
Jackson took control of the discussion. “But it is pretty unusual for the head of the expedition to go among the first team to explore the surface.”
“Perhaps,” Ignatiev conceded.
“What do you expect to find down there?” Mulvany asked.
“Expect? Nothing. We’re going into totally unknown territory. We don’t know what to expect.”
Before any of the six could reply, Ignatiev added, “But I can tell you what I hope to find.”
“What happened to this planet,” said Jackson.
“And why,” added Corcoran, entirely serious.
* * *
They spent the whole dinner spinning out theories, suppositions, guesses about what had scrubbed the planet’s surface clean of all life.
Youngsters, Ignatiev thought to himself. Eager. Not content to wait until we start collecting evidence. They have to throw out speculations before there’s enough evidence available to hold a glassful of water.
“Maybe they went underground, dug in, once they realized the death wave was approaching.”
“Or moved off the planet entirely.”
“The whole race?”
“Maybe just a representative sampling.”
“Where’d they go, then?”
Ignatiev watched and listened as he spooned up his soup and then slowly worked his way through the entrée. Six bright young scientists, he thought. They can’t sit still. Their minds are chewing on the problem just the way I’m chewing on this meat. Inwardly he smiled at them.
At last, as they were finishing their desserts, he told them, “It’s like a couplet written a couple of centuries ago:
We dance ’round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
Jackson nodded solemnly. “In three days, though, we’ll go down there and find out.”
Ignatiev nodded back at him. Or die trying, he thought. But he didn’t speak those words aloud.
CHAPTER SIX
It took the commission back on Earth two days to respond to Ignatiev’s report. The chairwoman—a bone-thin, dour, and unhappy-looking Chinese—spent more than half an hour reciting the commission’s conclusions in her toothache-inducing nasal twang.
From the display above the fireplace in Ignatiev’s sitting room, she finally summed up: “In short, Professor Ignatiev, the commission is totally at a loss. BA14753209-04 housed a thriving community of intelligent machines when the Predecessors examined the planet, slightly more than two millennia ago. Now it appears to be quite dead.”
Ignatiev nodded wearily at the holographic image. You’ve spent thirty-seven minutes telling me what I told you. So much for efficiency.
Real conversation over the interstellar distance between him and the chairwoman was impossible. Even with the superluminal speed of communications enabled by the QUE system, it still took several hours for signals to travel between Intrepid and Earth.
With an expression on her face that could curdle milk, the woman at last concluded, “We have therefore decided that your request to send an exploratory team to the planet’s surface is acceptable. Marginally. The team should be composed entirely of volunteers, and it should not include any of your irreplaceable group leaders. Good luck.”
The three-dimensional image went blank before Ignatiev could utter his pro forma “Thank you.”
What difference? he thought. They’ve given their blessing. We’re going down to the planet’s surface. That last instruction about not including any irreplaceable leaders in the exploration team was a minor obstacle. Ignatiev decided he could get around it by declaring that no one is irreplaceable. Especially me.
* * *
It took another day to finish checking out the suits and equipment the team would use. Raj Jackson assumed leadership of the six-person group quite naturally, as if he’d been born to it. None of the others seemed to object; they turned to the lanky black geochemist quite easily—Ignatiev included.
He noticed, though, that Katherine Mulvany was at Jackson’s side at every moment. Whether they were testing the excursion suits or studying the details of the sensor scans of the surface, the redhead was always with him.
She was a very lovely woman, Ignatiev thought. Almost as tall as Jackson himself, with the figure of an entertainment star, her skin milky white, her eyes as green as her native Ireland, her bright red hair cut short and spiky. She hardly spoke a word as she hovered near Jackson. And he barely spoke to her, except for an occasional smiling comment.
Lovers, Ignatiev realized. She’s reviewing everything he does, every step he takes, and every piece of equipment he touches. If anything goes wrong down on the surface, it won’t be because she missed something up here.
That’s what Sonya would do if she were here, he knew. It’s what she did do when we were on Mars together, and out in the Asteroid Belt. Sonya. Sonya.
He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the painful memory.
The six members of the excursion team—plus Mulvany and a handful of technicians—were in the workshop where the excursion suits had been generated from the ship’s additive manufacturing system. Each suit was sized to fit an individual team member: Jackson’s suit was nearly half a meter longer than Ignatiev’s. And noticeably slimmer.
The suits were hanging in a row, limp and empty. Ignatiev thought they looked flimsy, little more than plasticized fabric. The leggings ended in gleaming boots; the sleeves and gloves were so thin that Ignatiev could see through them.
Jackson noticed Ignatiev staring worriedly at the suit that was to be his.
“Nanofabric,” the black man said. “Much more protective than anything else we know how to create. And much easier to move around in.”
Ignatiev nodded, but doubtfully.
“Suits like this have been used all over the solar system,” Jackson went on. “They’ve never failed.”
Forcing a smile, Ignatiev said, “You sound like a salesman.”
Utterly serious, Jackson responded, “You look as though you have your doubts.”
One of the technicians standing nearby said, “I’ll test the suit in the vacuum chamber, sir. That’ll show you how good they are.”
Ignatiev countered, “No, I’ll test my suit in the vacuum chamber.”
The tech suddenly looked uncertain. “You don’t have to do that, Professor Ignatiev. I can—”
Ignatiev waggled an accusing finger at him. “Aha! You’re not as confident as you try to appear.”
“It’s not that, sir. I—”
With a chuckle, Ignatiev tousled the young man’s hair. “Not to worry, friend. I want to try th
e suit for myself.”
With a worried glance at Jackson, the technician gestured to Ignatiev’s suit. “You climb in through the back, sir.”
It took an effort for Ignatiev to raise his legs high enough to step into the suit. Then he had to duck his head through the neck ring and worm his arms through the sleeves. The gloves felt slightly stiff, new, unbroken. Of course, Ignatiev told himself. This is the first time this suit’s been used.
As he wiggled his fingers inside the gloves, Ignatiev saw that all the other team members and techs were staring at him. Waiting for the old man to make an ass of himself, he grumbled inwardly.
The technician sealed the suit’s back and then took the suit’s bubble helmet from the shelf on which it rested. He turned to Ignatiev with it. Ignatiev brusquely took the helmet from him and lowered it onto his own head. Like Napoleon crowning himself emperor, he thought.
The helmet’s lower rim latched onto the suit’s neck ring with a solid click. The suit had a faint odor to it. Not unpleasant: somewhat like the smell of the shampoo Ignatiev used in the shower.
He stood in the midst of the little crowd while a pair of technicians hung the life support and communications rig onto the clips on the back of his suit. He heard a faint hiss and felt the softest of breezes blowing across his face. I’m breathing the suit’s oxygen, he realized.
It was quiet inside the sealed-up suit. Ignatiev could see Jackson’s lips moving, and one of the techs speaking back to him, but all he could hear was a low murmur.
Then, “Communications check,” sounded wincingly loud in the helmet’s microphones. “Can you hear me, sir?”
“Loud and clear,” Ignatiev replied, making a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The glove felt much more flexible now.
Two technicians walked alongside him, to the hatch of the vacuum chamber. One of them touched a stud on the hatch’s side and the metal door slid open. Ignatiev allowed them to hold his arms as he stepped over the hatch’s coaming.
Inside, the chamber was a blank metal cylinder, round and featureless.
“Closing the hatch now,” he heard a technician’s voice.
“Very well.”
A dim reddish light illuminated the vacuum chamber. No sounds from outside. Ignatiev was alone now. He turned 360 degrees, shuffling slightly in the stiffish boots. Nothing to see but blank curving metal walls.
It’s like returning to the womb, Ignatiev thought. He knew the suit was automatically sending his medical readouts to the monitor outside. He felt completely normal. All right, maybe his pulse rate was a little high.
“We’re starting to evacuate the chamber,” a technician told him.
“How low will you go?”
“Zero pressure. Unless…” The tech left the rest unspoken.
Unless I collapse in here, Ignatiev finished for him. Or worse, I panic.
But he did neither. He simply stood in the dimly lit chamber while a female technician counted off steadily decreasing numbers until she reached zero.
“This is what it would be like in space?” he asked.
“Yessir. You’re a space cadet now, sir,” came the woman’s voice.
Ignatiev bit back the response that immediately came to his mind: I’ve been on Mars, young lady. I’ve been in the Asteroid Belt. I led the mission to Gliese 581. I wasn’t always a doddering old fogey.
But he remained silent as the technicians brought the pressure back up to normal and at last slid the hatch open again.
Ignatiev stepped out of the vacuum chamber unassisted. Everyone in the workshop, team members and technicians, broke into applause.
Grinning from ear to ear, Ignatiev made a stiff little bow.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next day the six of them gathered in the hangar bay where their excursion ship waited for them. The bay was the largest open space on Intrepid, big enough to house four landing vehicles and the assembly and checkout areas for donning and inspecting the excursion suits used for exploring planetary surfaces.
The hangar bay reminded Ignatiev of the cathedral in his childhood hometown. No stained-glass windows, of course, but its ceiling was high and shadowy. Voices were swallowed up in its vastness.
A team of nine technicians helped them into their individual suits and checked them out. Ignatiev noted that there was very little talk among them, no banter, no foolishness. Strictly business.
We’re going down to Oh-Four’s surface, he told himself. Heading into the unknown, seeking answers to the mystery. Then he h’mmfed at himself. You’re getting grandiloquent in your old age, he grumbled silently. We’re going to do a little walkabout on Oh-Four’s surface. Don’t get ponderous about it.
Still, the question kept nagging at him. What happened to this planet? What destroyed its civilization?
They went through the communications check with the blue-suited technicians, then heard Aida’s calm voice pronounce that the medical sensors built into the suits showed each of them to be well within the allowable parameters for an extravehicular excursion.
“You are cleared for excursion,” Aida pronounced. Ignatiev pictured her smiling.
“Let’s go,” Jackson said, pointing to the landing vehicle. It was a gleaming sleek metallic aerodynamic shape, with swept-back wings that bore a pair of egg-shaped pods beneath them. Oxygen, Ignatiev knew. The lander had been designed to fly in Oh-Four’s oxygen-rich blanket of air, but when the sensors reported that the planet had been stripped of its atmosphere, the ship’s technicians added the oxygen pods so that they could fly, land, and take off again as a rocket.
“She’s beautiful,” Jackson said as they headed single file toward the craft’s hatch.
His excursion suit was quite comfortable, Ignatiev realized. No stiffness; the suit felt more like a lightweight topcoat than a bulky, heavy uniform. I only hope it’s as protective as the engineers claim it to be, he thought.
Ignatiev noted that Jackson led the group, quite naturally, without a word of command or discussion. Katherine Mulvany was no longer at his side. She was watching from the observation balcony on the hangar’s rear bulkhead. The hangar’s floor was for those who were flying to Oh-Four’s surface and the technicians who were aiding them. No one else.
Ignatiev fell into the line’s end. Technicians stood at both sides of the ship’s ladder, ready to help the crew boarding. Ignatiev made it a point of honor to climb up the ladder without assistance, although he gripped the handrails on either side of the ladder in his gloved hands.
As soon as he stepped inside the ship, the ladder folded up into the hull and the hatch slid shut behind him.
With the five others, he made his way forward to the crew’s station and sat in the rearmost chair. Jackson had already taken the front chair, as if it were his by right.
Maybe it is, Ignatiev conceded. He seems to be a natural leader. Competition? Perhaps not, he told himself. We’ll see.
Aida was in control of the ship, of course. There were flight controls in the compartment, a sop to human vanity, but Aida was in charge of this flight. The AI’s avatar appeared on the forward display screen, smiling slightly like a protective mother.
“Is everyone strapped in for takeoff?” she asked.
“Yes,” Jackson replied immediately.
“Protocol calls for each individual’s personal response,” said Aida.
The team members—four men and two women—answered in turn. Ignatiev was last. “Ready for takeoff,” he acknowledged.
He sensed the ship sliding across the hangar bay’s deck. On the display screen Aida’s face was replaced by an image of the bay hatch sliding open. Blackness and stars, Ignatiev saw. He swallowed hard. We’re on our way.
A single mild shove against his back and they went through the hatch and into orbital space. The screen showed a glimpse of the planet before them, burnt black, dead.
Is this a fool’s errand? Ignatiev asked himself. No, he answered immediately. There are no fool’s errands whe
n you’re exploring the unknown. We’ve got to learn what happened to this planet.
He realized his arms were floating up from the seat’s armrests. Zero gravity. His stomach felt queasy, his sinuses seemed stuffed almost painfully.
All these years of spaceflight, he complained silently, and no one has yet come up with a way to combat the symptoms of zero-g.
“Descent on course,” Aida’s voice reassured them. “All systems operating within nominal limits.”
Inside his suit’s helmet, Ignatiev nodded. And immediately regretted it. He felt a wave of nausea sweep over him.
“We’re approaching the surface,” Jackson said. Needlessly, Ignatiev thought.
Suddenly the ship began to shudder, as if an invisible giant hand were shaking it.
“What the hell is this?” one of the crew cried out.
“Buffeting!” Aida said. Ignatiev thought she sounded surprised.
Rattling inside the crew compartment, glad that he was strapped into his seat, Ignatiev called, “Aida, what’s causing this buffeting?”
“Unknown,” came the AI’s reply.
“There’s no atmosphere to cause turbulence,” Jackson yelled, his voice a couple of notches higher than normal.
We’re being rattled like dice in a cup, Ignatiev thought. It was hard to keep his eyes focused on anything, the compartment was blurry, shaking badly. The whole ship seemed to be shuddering, buffeting, quivering.
Ignatiev’s helmet earphones sounded, “This is mission control. Our sensors show you are undergoing considerable buffeting. Aida hasn’t been able to identify the source of the turbulence.” The voice sounded alarmed.
Aida’s voice came through, calm as ever. “Analysis shows that the buffeting is similar to what would be expected during entry into an atmosphere.”
Great, Ignatiev thought. He called out, “But this planet has no atmosphere!”
“It’s puzzling,” Aida replied.
The stupid AI is puzzled while we’re having our guts shaken into pudding, Ignatiev complained silently as he squeezed his eyes shut. How long can the ship hold together when it’s being pummeled like this?
And suddenly the buffeting ended. Disappeared. Everything went back to normal. Opening his eyes, Ignatiev looked past the other crew members to the display screen at the front of the compartment.