by Larry Niven
"Yes! It'll tell the others what's wrong, though, and burn up air too. Mph?"
"Inspiration?"
"Molecules of…bits of air move more slowly when they're cold."
The board was already alive with yellow numbers and drawings. The Grad touched an arrowhead on a vertical line, then moved his fingertip slowly toward him. The arrowhead became two arrowheads, and one followed his finger.
"I never even wondered if we could make the cabin warmer or cooler, but it has to be true. That oxygen is liquid. Cold! It'd be freezing our lungs out if something wasn't keeping the cabin warm. Okay, now it'll be cold in here, but we'll live longer. I think you'd better tell Clave what's on and let him make the announcement. They'll have to know now, because we'll have to pass out the extra ponchos. Then we'll try the smoke—"
Lawri spoke. "Just let me at the damn controls!"
Gavving turned from her. Hide the smile. Lawri might want their deaths, but she couldn't let the Grad save them without her help. He asked, "Is it too complicated to tell the Grad?"
"No. But I won't!"
"Grad? Try the smoke?"
"Worst she can do is kill us. Besides, Lawri always wanted to fly the carm. Lawri, the position of Scientist's Apprentice is now open."
Lawri flexed her arms and looked about at her captors. Her hands prickled; her arms hurt. Her urge was to strike out at the mutineers. But the look on Jeffer's face: considering…like Kiance waiting for the right answer to some stupid rote question…
The sky was black as charcoal. The stars were white points, like tiny versions of Voy, but thousands of them. And if they roused fear in Lawri, what must they be doing to these savages? She watched them nibbling on rolled slices of raw meat, and suddenly smiled.
She reached past the Grad and tapped the white key. "Prikasyvat Voice." Hear this you treefeeders!
"Ready," said a voice belonging to nobody in the carm. "Identify yourself."
The lunchtime conversation went dead silent. The jungle giant male cocked his crossbow. She turned her back on him. "I am Lawri the Scientist. Give us your status."
"Fuel tanks nearly empty. Power depleted, batteries charging. Air pressure dropping, will be dangerously low in five hours, lethal in seven. Displays are available."
"Why are we losing air pressure?"
"All openings are sealed. I will seek the source of a leak." Lawri tapped the white switch again. "That's what will kill us. We'll strangle without air. Too bad. It would have been quite a show, but you won't see it," she flashed at the Grad.
"Why did you turn off the display?"
"Voice can't hear us till I tap it again. It can do almost anything if you say the wrong thing, just talking."
"Would it talk to me?"
"You're a…" Her scorn became something else. "It wants you to identify yourself, and it remembers. Hmm. Try it." She tapped the talk button.
"Prikazyvat Voice," said the Grad.
"Identify yourself."
"I'm the Scientist of Quinn Tuft. Do we have enough fuel to get back into the Smoke Ring?"
For a moment the Grad forgot how to breathe. Then, "We have a water supply. Won't it be separated into fuel?"
Voice paused. Then, "If the flux of sunlight maintains its intensity, I will have fuel soon enough to affect a return. I note a mass near our course. I can use it as a gravity sling."
"Would that be Gold?"
"Rephrase."
"The mass, is it Goldblatt's World?"
The Grad tapped the switch before he began laughing. "Go for Gold! If we live that long."
The whispering aft had become obtrusive. With the air turning icy and Voice speaking from the walls, luncheon was sliding over to panic. Jeffer said, "Gavving, you'd better tell them about the pressure. We don't have time to brief Clave."
Lawri asked, "Shall I do it?" She knew more aj,out what was going on.
Jeffer seemed appalled. "Lawri, they'd think you started the leak!"
"Savages—"
"Anyone would."
She couldn't decide if he meant it.
Gavving was telling the rest of the mutineers about the leak. He told it long, including what they planned to do about it. Jeffer tapped the white button. "Pnikazyvat Voice. Have you found the leak?"
"I find no point of leakage. Air is disappearing."
"Will we live long enough to get back into the Smoke Ring?"
"No. The course I've programmed would take twenty-eight hours. Air pressure will have dropped to lethal levels in ten hours. Times are approximate."
Lawri couldn't remember how long an hour might be. Still…ten hours? It had been seven before the cabin got so cold. She wondered why Voice hadn't taken it into account. Sometimes Voice could be such a fool.
She said, "Display the areas where you have looked for a leak."
The yellow line diagrams of the cabin sprouted green borders along two-thirds of the interior. Red dots blinked elsewhere. "Those are sensors that have died," Lawri told Jeffer. "Voice, implement your course correction."
Jeffer added, "Pnikazyvat Voice. Do not use the main motor at any time!"
"I will fire as I have fuel," Voice said. "First burn in ten seconds. Nine. Eight."
"Everybody grab something," Jeffer called.
Mutineers were pulling the extra ponchos over their clothing. They stopped to strap themselves in. The jungle giants moved against the aft wall and grabbed fixtures. "Two. One."
But only the attitude jets lit. The carm's nose swung toward the
Smoke Ring and stayed there while the aft motors fired. It lasted several tens of breaths. They would pass closer to Gold…which had become huge, a spiral storm seen edge-on, whose rim was already below them.
If Mark weren't tied, Lawri thought, and as the main motor fired, nobody would be able to move except Mark It was something to keep in mind. Jeffer didn't seem to realize that the thrust could be controlled, by touching the top or bottom of those rectangles to raise or lower the fuel flow.
Meanwhile…how could the leaks be blocked? If there was a way, Lawri was damned well going to find it before Jeffer did.
Chapter Twenty-one
Go For Gold
"KENDY FOR THE STATE. KENDY FOR THE STATE. KENDY FOR the State."
The response came almost instantly, sharp and crisp through nearvacuum and dwindling distance. The CARM was out of the Smoke Ring. Kendy had clear sending for the first time since the mutiny. He sent: "Status?"
The motors were functional, all of them. Fuel: a few teacupaful.
Water: a good deal. Solar power converters: functional. Batteries: charged, but running down as they changed water into liquefied hydrogen and oxygen. Sunlight flux from T3 would be steady in vacuum. There would be fuel.
The CARM was on manual. CO2 flux indicated a full load of passengers. The carbon dioxide was accumulating slowly; the life support system could almost handle it…and the cabin was leaking air. Oh shit, they were dying!
"Course record since initiating burn."
It came. The CARM was rising. It would have passed near the L2 point-Kendy's own location, the point of stability behind Goldblatt's World-were it not for Goldblatt's World itself. And were it not for
Goldblatt's World, the CARM would presently fall back to safety… but the core of an erstwhile gas giant planet was pulling the CARM's orbit into a tilted near-circle entirely outside the Smoke Ring.
"Switch to my command."
Massive malfunction.
"Give me video link with crew."
"Denied."
And the cabin pressure was dropping. Something had to be done.
Kendy sent, "Copy," and waited.
The CARM computer thought it over, slowly, bit by bit; geared up; and began beaming its entire program. It took twenty-six minutes.
Kendy looked it over-a simplified Kendy, patched with subsequent commands and garbled by time and entropy-while he sent, "Stand by for update programming."
"Standing by."
&n
bsp; Kendy didn't believe it. The long-dead programmer would have embedded protect commands. He simply hadn't reached them yet…unless they had deteriorated too? Kendy didn't have an update program, he'd been so sure. He'd have to assemble it from scratch.
The speed with which a computer can think was Kendy's triumph and tragedy. Always he was freshly surprised by the boredom of his evenfless life. It stayed fresh, because Kendy was constantly editing his memories. The storage capacity of his computer-brain was fixed. He was always near his limit. He had edited his memory of the mutiny, deleting the names of key figures, for fear that he might later seek vengeance against their descendants. He regularly deleted the memory of his boredom.
Once he had examined the solution to the Four-Color Problem in topology. The proof submitted in 1976 by Appal and Haken could not be checked except by a computer. Kendy was a computer, he had experienced the proof directly and found it valid. He remembered only that.
The details he had deleted.
He had used a simplified program for the CARM computers, then deleted it. But now he had the CARM's program as a template. He ran through it, sharpening everywhere, correcting where suitable, updating his own simplified personality…leaving intact the CARM's own memories of the time of mutiny, because he was determined to ignore them. He looked for a way to plug the leak in the cabin. It was hopeless: the life support sensors had failed, not the program. He almost deleted the command that barred use of the main motor. The main motor was more efficient. He didn't understand that command…but it was input, and recent. He left it alone.
Now: a course program to bring them here, to study them
He barely had time to hope. Kendy apprehended orbital mechanics directly. He saw instantly that the fuel wasn't there, nor the sunlight to electrolyze enough water in time. His own pair of CARMS, which fed him power via their solar collectors, didn't have fuel to meet and tow the savages' CARM even if he were willing to risk them both.
Forget it and try again…He could get them back into the Smoke Ring via a close approach past Goldblatt's World. In fact, the CARM's computer had already worked out a course change. It didn't matter.
They'd be dead by then.
He left that part of the program intact. He deleted the barriers that barred him from communication. He beamed the revised program to the CARM at the snail's pace the CARM could accept.
The CARM filed it.
It had worked! At least he could look them over, get to know them a little, before they were gone. After five hundred and twelve years!
The cold had gotten to the jungle giants. Anthon and Debby and Ilsa were curled into a friendly, cuddling, shivering ball, with the spare ponchos pulled around them.
The other passengers were taking it better. There were ponchos for everyone but Mark, and two to spare. One they tore into scarves. Jinny wound a scarf around Mark's neck and tucked the ends into the collar of the silver suit. "Comfortable?"
The silver man seemed cheerful enough, despite the lines that held him immobile in his chair. "Fine, thanks."
"Is that suit thick enough?"
"Damn it, woman, you're the one who's shivering. This suit keeps its own temperature, just like the carm. If anyone needs my scarf. you want it?"
Jinny smiled and shook her head.
"Of course, I'd be even better off with my helmet closed," Mark said, and they laughed as if he'd said something funny. It didn't need saying: if they couldn't plug the leak, or if Lawri chose to kill them somehow, Mark would die with the rest.
The Grad had made a torch from one of the scarves plus fat scraped from the skin of the salmon bird. He was about to light it when he noticed mist before his face. He blew…white smoke. Everyone save Horse was breathing white smoke, as if they were all using tobacco.
"If you think something's leaking, breathe on it!" he announced.
"Watch your breath. No, Jayan, forget the doors. Voice has sensors there."
Lawri did something to the controls "I'm turning up the humidity-the wetness in the air. More fog that way."
Citizens took their turns at the control panel to find the blank spots in the yellow diagram. The Grad began the uncomfortable job that others might miss: he crawled between the seats, edging around the cold corpse of Gavving's friend, blowing mist where the floor joined the starboard wall.
Merril called, "I've got it. It's the bow window."
A crowd of citizens crawled around the rim of the bow window, blowing, watching the pale smoke form streamlines where the window joined the hull. The window was loose around the ventral-port corner.
"Keep looking," Lawri ordered. "There may be more."
She herself made her way aft. The Grad joined her at the back wall. "What have you got in mind? Is there a way to plug the leaks?"
Voice began a countdown. Lawri waited while small jets fired. The cluster of jungle giants sagged against the aft wall without falling apart. Ilsa giggled. She must be still floating from the spitgun drug.
The burn ended. Lawri said, "Maybe. Have we got something to hold water?"
The Grad called, "We need squeezegourds!"
They found three. Merril collected them and brought them back. Jayan and Jinny were blowing on the side windows, which seemed all right. Gavving and Minya moved along the rim of the bow window, blowing and watching. Mist formed outside and vanished immediately, along a curve of window as long as the Grad's arm, shoulder to fingers.
Lawri turned a valve. Brown water oozed from the aft wall, formed a growing globule.
"It's mud!" Merril said in disgust.
Lawri said, "We put pond water in. The carm breaks the pure water into hydrogen and oxygen, but it leaves the goo behind. Every so often we have to clean it out. That's why there's an eject system, and you can be damn glad of it."
"We can't drink that stuff. We should have picked up Minya's water supply."
"Say that if we live long enough to get thirsty." Lawri took the gourds and filled them from the brown globule. Merril winced, watching each of their water gourds become fouled.
Lawri went forward with the gourds. Would she plug the leak with mud? He could do it himself, now, if Lawri balked; but he wanted her on his side, as far as that was possible.
Lawri squeezed muddy water along the rim of the bow window.
Mist showed outside. The glass began to frost. The water stayed where she put it, in a long brown bubble. Over the next several minutes-while Lawri alone watched the controls-the water dwindled and thickened to a darker brown. Presently it began to turn hard.
Clave said, "Grad? Is it working?"
The Grad had read of ice. It was no more real to him than the liquefied gases in the tanks. He looked to Lawri.
Lawri met his eyes and said, "I will not accept the position of Scientist's Apprentice."
After such a performance, was she quitting on them? Clave spoke first, and in haste. "I'm certain there's room in Quinn Tribe for two Scientists. Especially under the circumstances."
"I've saved you. Now I want to go home to London Tree. That's all I want."
She's earned it, the Grad thought, but— Clave said, "Point to it."
The carm was nose-down to the Smoke Ring. Closest was the storm pattern that surrounded and cloaked Gold, a turbulent spiral of cloud, humped in the middle. The whole pattern drifted west at a speed that looked sluggish, but must be quick beyond imagination. The arms of the Smoke Ring reached away in both directions. They could see the flow of cloud currents, faster toward Voy, drifting backward near the carm. Minor details-like integral trees-were invisibly small.
"You're the Scientist," Clave said. "Could you get us back to London Tree?"
Lawri shook her head. She began to shiver; and once begun, she couldn't stop. Minya got her the last of the ponchos and they wrapped it around her, then tied a strip of cloth round her head and throat. She said, "We're not losing air anymore. Leave the humidity up and we won't get thirsty so fast. Jeffer, I'm cold and tired and lost. I can't make decisions
. Don't bother me."
They weren't human.
Kendy had watched them for a bit. They had the temperature turned far down. Kendy was going to fix it, until he realized that the lowered temperature had slowed the leak.
They must have kept some of the old knowledge. But the cold was killing them too. He watched the really strange ones succumb first and crawl into a ball to wait for their deaths.
The CARM's medical sensors indicated a corpse and twelve citizens, not one of them quite normal. One had no legs. If lethal recessive genes were appearing in the Smoke Ring, it might point to inbreeding. Otherwise they seemed healthy. He saw no scars or pockmarks, no sign of disease-which was reasonable. Discipline had carried none of the parasites or bacteria that had adapted over the millions of years to prey on humanity. They didn't even show the sores that came with insufficient bathing.
The abnormal height, the long, vulnerable necks and long, fragile fingers and long, long toes, must be evolution at work, an adaptation to the free-fall environment.
He would have his problems, bringing these back into the State. In its way this small group was a perfect test sample. He could make his mistakes here and never pay a penalty. In time the CARM would be found by other savages.
Time to make his appearance.
Lawri was eating raw salmon bird, clearly hating it, but eating. Jayan and Jinny had gone aft to join the clustered Carther States warriors. It looked like fun, the Grad thought wistfully; but he was needed here.
Something was happening to the bow window: a pattern like a colored shadow, occluding the view.
"Lawri? Have you done something?"
"Something's wrong…I've never seen anything like…" she trailed off.
The carm was silent. A ghostly face filled the bow window. It took on color, huge and transparent, with the storms around Gold showing through.
It was brutal, with bushy brown hair and brows; thick brow ridges and cheekbones; a square, muscular jaw; a short neck as thick in proportion as a man's thigh. A face that resembled Mark's or Harp's. A gigantic dwarf. It spoke in Voice's voice.