This time, Parvu was the one pestering him for conversation, torn between his happiness at having company again and his eagerness to begin checking the samples Kent had delivered.
Kent seemed only politely interested when Parvu kept talking about Erika, describing her activities on the moonbase, the training she had been through, the great strides she had made in understanding the alien automata on the Moon.
Kent was more interested to know that she was working in the Sim-Mars lab where the astronauts themselves would be going in a few months' time.
Parvu thought this indifferent reaction odd, since Kent had seemed to be madly in love with Erika.
Now, Parvu could hear Kent singing in the shower as he gathered up the 45 snowpack samples and took them with him into the inner clean-room. Parvu had to stack the containers in the sample-exchange airlock. It could also serve as an autoclave to destroy foreign bacteria, but right now Parvu just needed the samples melted for liquid processing.
Inside the clean-room, Parvu tried to function carefully while clothed in his facemask, rubber gloves, booties, lint-free body suit, and hood. His own breathing reverberated in his ears. He had forgotten to put music on in his quarters, but after suiting up he would not go back out for such a trivial thing.
On the sides of each tiny container Kent had scrawled -- through heavy gloves -- approximate locations where he had taken the samples. Parvu didn't know what he would do if he needed to find the exact spot again.
He had taped a Thank You note to Kent's spacesuit helmet, then set to work gently melting the snow in each sample, pouring the liquid into analysis vials.
The nano-characterization apparatus was a modified blood-cell counter that had been used to sort mutated red blood cells. In the NIL, it was to have been used to scour the nanocore's nutrient fluid for performing a post-mortem on any failed experiment. If the prototype automata did not self-replicate, just finding them would be as difficult as the analysis itself. Now, the sorter automatically scanned through vial after vial of the samples.
His electronic message center chimed, informing him that a priority letter had just been delivered to his mailbox. By the electronic address he saw it came from the United Space Agency headquarters.
"Complete search of satellite photos turned up no evidence of another alien structure. Your hypothesis was excellent, though. Glad you kept your head and didn't cause a panic. -- McConnell."
He scowled, then stored the message. Did that mean she did not intend to pursue the matter further?
The eighteenth sample turned out positive.
Parvu stared at the micrograph of a nanomachine very similar to those Erika studied at the moonbase. But this one had been picked up in Antarctica.
Squarish, fuzzy at the edges, with numerous armlike flagellae to move about, to pick up things, to build objects -- but this one was motionless, dead or dormant.
Parvu felt a sudden chill pour through him that had nothing to do with the polar winter. If he had managed to find one of the automata so soon, so easily, so close to his own location -- He shuddered to think of the sheer numbers of them that must have come to Earth.
Glad you kept your head and didn't cause a panic, McConnell had said.
Very well, he would say nothing about it. For now. Though it went against all his instincts about sharing his research with his colleagues, he had to gather more information. He could not cry wolf too soon. Not until he could figure out what to do.
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CHAPTER 14
SIM-MARS
Concentrating hour after hour on the nanomachinery was like watching a campfire. The sight mesmerized Erika Trace. She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath of the air in Sim-Mars, hunching over the display. Her shoulders were stiff and sore, but the problem forced extraneous thoughts from her mind: she had to figure out why this change had occurred.
Jordan would have been amazed to see the alien nanocritters firsthand.
In fact, she wished he were here right now. He had not been in contact with the moonbase for days, but she knew that he got an idea into his head and drowned in it for weeks sometimes before finally coming up for air.
Erika kept working at her own studies. She felt no closer to determining what was being constructed at the Farside crater, but she had unraveled a great deal about the nanomachines themselves.
Enlarged in the Sim-Mars holoscopic display, the weirdly shaped automata vibrated with internal energy. The alien critters were versatile, as adaptable as Parvu had said nanotechnology could be. Cures for cancer, immortality, mega-construction, super-microcomputers -- all the things people had called wild imaginings when first proposed. Erika wondered what those critics would be saying now.
Nanocritters shot across her field-of-view, randomly changing directions. Each machine was long, twisted, and lumpy. She could make out no fine detail because she was observing on the Heisenberg scale: the x-ray photons that scattered off the automata themselves caused a distortion of their surface.
Each machine carried a strand of molecules, like ants bearing tiny clumps of dirt to build their homes. The nanocritters used no appendages; somehow they bonded to each strand to carry it away. Others of the same design, the same species -- that word better described what Erika could see
-- connected the strands into some construction only they understood.
The inconceivably small and incredibly efficient Controller substations carried the entire blueprint, the grand scheme of their mission on the Moon.
Tiny Programmers or Messengers flitted from Assembler to Assembler, delivering the next step of instructions. Teams of devices that seemed to serve as quality checkers went over the work, making certain that everything fit together perfectly, molecule by molecule. Other nanomachines, identical but with no discernible purpose, sat motionless.
Big Daddy Newellen had so far lobbed two of his supercameras into the regolith surrounding the construction. Both had transmitted beautifully detailed images of the nanocritters at work for about three minutes before Disassemblers had taken all the components apart.
But now, as she continued to study the live sample she kept in the Sim-Mars isolation vault, she found a big difference from the images the supercameras had shown from Farside.
Inside Sim-Mars, all of the Disassemblers had vanished.
She withdrew the microwaldoes a fraction and tried to refocus her field of observation. The scanning optical microscope view pulled back, making Erika feel as if she were hurtling backward. Still no sign of them.
Had they perhaps depleted all the usable molecules in the regolith sample? Without resources available, did the Disassemblers shut themselves down? Did the Programmers change them into another breed? None of the answers made any sense.
Erika pulled her head back from the display and rubbed her eyes. She had remembered to eat a granola bar several hours ago, but it hadn't been enough. Newellen kept volunteering to come over to Sim-Mars and keep her company, but she just wanted to work. Erika refocused her attention on the nanocritters.
The sooner she figured this out, the sooner she could go home.
Ten meters away in the rigged-up nanocore sat the regolith sample, still encased in layers of depleted uranium. Erika knew that it was only a matter of time before the nanocritters would attempt to disassemble the container -- if the Disassemblers ever reappeared. Though they did not have enough of the right raw materials to build copies of themselves, nothing would stop the nanocritters from tunnelling through the containment ... if they should decide to escape. None of their protective measures would accomplish that.
Erika glanced at the wall clock, finding it difficult to concentrate.
Another few hours and she would reach the mandated sterilization time limit.
Where had all the Disassemblers gone?
She hoped Jason Dvorak was ready to provide another specimen immediately after the sterilization. As fast as things were altering, she wanted to find a few answers faster than the questions
could change!
What had happened in Sim-Mars to shut off the Disassemblers? In her sample, she now found only nanomachines putting things together, using scraps of material the Disassemblers had already taken apart. But the supercamera images from the Farside site showed the Disassemblers still in full swing. Had she done something during the analytical procedures?
She squeezed her eyes shut. Two days without any real sleep. That was stupid, not a good way to take care of herself. In the darkness under her eyelids, vivid colors danced, afterimages from the bright lights of Sim-Mars.
Sleep washed over her in an exotic ripple of shapes.
Deep within her head, she imagined she saw the imperceptibly perceptible surface of an Assembler....
Her rest lasted only minutes before she forced her eyes open and struggled upright. Even in the reduced gravity field, she was so groggy that it took an effort to stand. Parvu would have chastised her for working in such poor physical and mental condition. She wouldn't be able to trust any of her results.
Back at the NIL, Parvu would have brewed some of his incredibly potent tea to keep them both wired for hours. Here, she had access to bad powdered coffee-substitute. Well, maybe if she added two packets instead of one....
Though she could not complete another series of tests, Erika did have enough time to rotate Sim-Mars's optical link to Earth and make a call. She squinted at the control panel. The nice thing about being on the Moon was that you could contact most spots in Antarctica 24 hours a day.
In the image in front of her, Parvu leaned back in his chair and tapped his teeth. Though the NIL was more than four hundred thousand kilometers away, she could almost smell the odor of his aftershave, some scent named after a windy sea; she had never liked it before, but now she thought of it fondly.
All the air on the Moon was manufactured and smelled like charcoal from the ever-present lunar dust.
Parvu spoke so softly she had to lean forward to catch his words. He seemed very pleased to see her. "Very interesting, Erika," Parvu said. "So, you believe all of the Disassemblers have vanished?"
Erika wondered if she could have missed something that would never have slipped past him. "I've used every search technique without success. I ran the Monte Carlo simulation out to seven sigma. I came up with plenty of all the other types of machines, Assemblers, Controllers, Programmers, Quality Checkers, you name it. Jordan, it just doesn't make sense. The Disassemblers are very distinctive, and it's like they just went into hiding."
"Could they have been modified into a different design? Did the Programmers turn our Disassemblers into Assemblers?"
Erika shook her head. She had gone over this argument too many times in her own mind. "I've identified the roles of the nanocritter species, and they have not deviated one bit. Each machine, once tagged, hasn't demonstrated any different behavior."
Parvu seemed distracted and paused longer than the two-second time lag required. "Erika, you are indeed the very best person for this task. I have watched your reports coming in the past 48 hours. Extraordinary work."
Erika couldn't help smiling. In all the years she had worked with the man, Parvu somehow managed to see a bright spot in every dark situation. He always gave her just the proper amount of motivation and encouragement at just the right moment.
Parvu spoke across the transmission lag. "I have run an analysis of the data you've been sending, and you are quite correct. Nothing even remotely resembles the Disassemblers we observed previously. It seems as if something caused them to switch off, perhaps to be broken down for their own raw materials. Did the regolith sample run dry of useful molecules, so the Disassemblers got, well, 'laid off' as the colloquialism goes?"
She sighed and looked at him across the gulf of space. "I don't have the time or the facilities to do anything more, Jordan. I have to sterilize the sample in an hour. And this lab just doesn't have the diagnostics to ferret out the full details. It's like I'm trying to fix a supercomputer with a Junior Handyman toolbox."
Parvu waited two seconds, then smiled. "So, how do you propose to solve this difficulty?" He always approached any difficulty as a problem to be fixed.
Erika remained quiet for a long while. This was the core issue, the one she had been afraid to mention before. The prospect of admitting defeat was behind her now. She no longer cared about what others might think. Parvu himself had run up against his share of stone walls in the past; he would understand falling back to regroup, to start out fresh, better prepared, with more realistic expectations.
She said, "I need better facilities. More people. It all comes down to whether the Agency is serious about unraveling this mystery or not. Whatever the alien technology turns out to be, there is no way we can adequately uncover its purpose until I get hold of more sophisticated diagnostics."
"Such as?" He was still listening attentively; that was a good sign.
She ticked off points on her fingers. "Gamma-ray lasers for full tridimensional holography. Dedicated access to a gigaprocessor to assist with a more realistic realtime simulation. How about a reproduction facility for what we've found so far? And how about some plain old help -- "
Parvu held up a hand. "Yes, I get your point. I know what it is to work with no assistant, especially right now, okay?"
She swept her hair back with one hand. The words came out in a rush, but she did not want to appear to be begging. "Can you arrange for me to come back to Earth?" Her reasons suddenly sounded like lame excuses to her. "If I can gather up some more people and sophisticated diagnostics up here, I'll have a better chance analyzing just what it is I'm seeing."
"Why must you return to Earth? It is expensive to ferry people back and forth."
"Not this time. They've supplemented the regular supply shuttle run that goes up to the Collins. I can deadhead as cargo on one of the Japanese transfer vehicles back to near-Earth orbit. I've already checked into it.
Pretty much a free return. Besides, it would work best if I were back to hand pick the equipment ... and personnel."
Parvu mulled it over, then he grinned. He seemed to want to bring her back home, but was having trouble convincing himself. "Your requests seem reasonable enough. I would have asked for the same things. But by the time everything is assembled, shipped up to the Moon, and set up at Sim-Mars, it will take over a month. The alien construction could be nearly finished by then, at the rate it is going now."
Erika nodded. She had suspected as much. "We can project what might happen on Daedalus, but we have no idea what it is, so we can't extrapolate when it'll be finished. But -- and this is important -- we've seen no evidence that the nanocritters are spreading from the three-kilometer radius. They're diligently working on their own little project. Our first survey crew just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Parvu waited longer than the delay to respond. "If it must take this long, it will have to do. I will see if Director McConnell will bring you back home. Temporarily. To arrange everything for your return trip with a full complement of researchers."
"Thanks -- "
"I am not promising Director McConnell will agree. But if their supply shipment coincides with bringing you back down, I see no problem."
Erika nodded, already feeling the excitement bring her back to life.
"I'd like to head out to Stanford when I get back, see Compton-Reasor and her coworkers. That will help me prepare for coming back to the NIL." She hesitated. "I'd hit MIT, of course, spend some time at the Drexler facility."
She thought for a moment. "You know, I was swept up here so fast that I never had a chance to really prepare myself, to run though the labs, talk with some of the researchers. You know as well as I do that consulting over a holotank is just not the same as meeting face to face, interacting. And the only people we ever spoke to were the group directors. It's the worker bees I need to have some face time with -- and not just over a holoscreen."
Parvu nodded. "Yes, I do know, Erika. The research assistants usua
lly make the real advances." He smiled once again. "That is the true reason I sent you to the Moon instead of myself."
Erika moved her hand over the light array. The holotank blinked; the receiver in Newellen's Winnebago was already open. She saw the back of the man's head. Just visible in the background was a tiny lap-table strewn with torn-open food packages. It looked as if Big Daddy had been sitting there the whole time, eating and waiting for her to call.
"Big Daddy?" she said.
He rotated his chair. His eyes looked puffy, as if he had not had any sleep either. She wondered if he had been nervous waiting so close to the nanotechnology research. He glanced at something outside the view of her holotank. "You done already?"
"No."
"You've got another half hour before I was going to warn you -- "
"I know. I've done as much as I can with this sample. The sterilization order, you know. Not enough time to start any other major tests."
Newellen straightened in his chair. "You look tired. I can move in and get you right now. Catch some sleep while they're fetching another sample."
She shook her head. "Please notify Mr. Dvorak I'm coming back to Columbus Base. There's no need at this time to get another sample."
"But you've gotta keep going, lady. What if those things are eating their way through the Moon right now?"
Erika drew in a breath and tried to keep from raising her voice. "There has been a change of plans. Please just come and pick me up."
Newellen shrugged. "Okay. None of my business." He reached forward to switch off the holotank. Seconds later Erika found herself staring into a swirling speckled gray-green mash of interference.
When Director McConnell agreed to the request -- after heavy lobbying from Jordan Parvu -- Jason Dvorak had not argued against letting Erika return to the Collins. She felt no pangs about leaving the moonbase behind, but Dvorak had made a rather embarrassing show of thanking her for her work.
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