But this stool had nine spindly legs, curving away from the seat like stems from a flower petal. It had been assembled in a flash, molecule by molecule, with the resources the hybrids had available. It seemed to be made of a mixture of metallic and organic compounds.
Parvu shuddered as a thought occurred to him -- could this possibly be an attempt to communicate?
Terrified, Parvu ran out of the observation area.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a rapid motion, as the mass swarmed to the window to get a better look at him. He did not glance back as he pulled open the double doors that gave him access to the NIL living quarters.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Parvu huddled on his narrow bed. He tried to remember ways to calm himself, but they seemed silly and ineffectual. He finally managed to hum to himself, to count to fifty, and reached the point where he could open his eyes again.
Part of him expected to see the escaping mass swallowing the NIL whole, digesting the walls, the windows, the doors to create one enormous hive organism that would engulf the Earth. Instead, he saw the perpetual videoloop on the wall, showing his grandson's birthday party.
The boy laughed and smeared chocolate ice cream on his face. Timothy and his wife applauded. A younger Parvu stood off to one side, looking immensely pleased with himself. Idyllic times, in an unreal universe where nightmares like what he had created in the clean-room could never exist.
Compared to what he had done, Erika's mistake of letting the alien nanocritters infect them was trivial.
He moaned Sinda's name. He had not talked to her in months. She was out of touch, off in the wilds somewhere -- could it be possible that she didn't even know about the Daedalus construction?
Parvu could not face the thought of confessing the magnitude of what he had done -- he had successfully avoided doing that for days. Perhaps if he destroyed everything thoroughly enough, no one would have to know. He had had a full and admirable career. He need not ruin it at the end because of a single mistake, no matter how large.
He had seen colleagues with distinguished credentials follow the wrong ideas, use their long-earned fame to publicize crackpot theories, with the result that their lives' work was dismissed as "lucky guesses." Parvu did not want to leave that legacy behind for his family.
But everything had gotten out of control. He couldn't understand how it had turned so bad. He felt sobs rising up again.
If Parvu informed Celeste McConnell, she would destroy the NIL and its surrounding areas. No question about that -- she would have no other choice.
She would do it without warning, for what good would a warning do? She would send flyers with napalm, or more likely she would drop another of the long-stored nuclear warheads and annihilate the entire site. It was the deepest wasteland of Antarctica -- no one but himself and perhaps a few of those still at the Mars base camp would be killed.
But Parvu couldn't be sure the flyers would do a thorough enough job.
More likely, McConnell would send in a team to arrest him and take his research as evidence, charging him with unleashing the hybrids from whatever meager confinement he had managed to erect.
Perhaps the devastating fail-safe systems could be rigged with a time delay to trigger the x rays after he had fled outside to where he could be rescued. But that, too, would be useless.
With his clumsy precautions, Parvu almost certainly carried some of the first hybrids in his own body, much like Erika's contamination. He had handled Old Gimp after the rat had been infested with the automata. Any number of hybrids could have escaped the first time he breached the nanocore containment
-- which was by far his most appalling mistake.
The worst part was, he could not even check his own blood for infection! All of the analytical apparatus was in the central lab, the quarantine section.
Unlike Erika, Parvu would never come up with a miracle cure to purge himself and erase the thing he had created. He had taken too many inexcusable chances already. He could not afford another one....
Walking on leaden legs, he returned to the observation window. He thought he heard strange buzzing sounds permeating the NIL, and the air seemed oppressively warm. He held his breath before looking into the quarantine chamber.
The reconstructed stool remained standing inside its churning pool of automata and organic matter. Squirming up the legs of the stool, pulsing on the bowed surface of the seat, writhing lumps appeared, hints of something without quite enough information to assemble itself. Yet.
Gnawing his knuckles, Parvu knew exactly what he had to do. Soon. And he was much too frightened to do it.
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PART VII
"He discovers deep things out of darkness and brings to light the shadow of death."
-- Job 12:22
"For those who believe it's time for mankind to leave the cradle, the most exciting promise of nanotechnology will be to build interstellar ships and robotic space voyagers."
-- Grant Fjermedal, Final Frontier, May/June 1990.
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CHAPTER 33
MOONBASE COLUMBUS
"We left the stereochip right there so we could watch every detail,"
Newellen said, paying no attention to where he was driving the rover. "But if somebody decides to trigger those nukes, we won't see a thing. The prompt gamma rays from the nuclear explosions will fry the chip's circuits before we see any of the really cool stuff."
"They aren't supposed to just push the button from Earth," Cyndi Salito objected. "We're the ones in danger up here."
"Uh huh," Bryan Zed said. No one could tell if he intended any emotional undertone to his remark. The rover continued to follow the dim starlit path leading from the hopper's landing pad toward Columbus.
"Wait a second," Jason said, "that's all just a last resort measure, a fail-safe in case the Daedalus thing takes some aggressive action. Nobody's just going to blow it up."
"Uh huh," Bryan Zed said again.
"Jase, who do you think has the say on activating those warheads?"
Newellen asked. "The President, sure, and probably Director McConnell, since she's in charge of all this mess, maybe even General Pritchard. But can anybody tell me why it is that we -- you know, us folks who have our butts right on the line -- don't happen to be in the loop?"
Jason had no answer. He knew only that McConnell had seen fit to sabotage the warhead delivery shuttle -- and he couldn't even complain about it because then she would know they had tried to go behind her back and retrieve the spacecraft.
"Just pay attention to the drive, Big Daddy," Jason said. "It's too dark to see where you're going." It was nightside back at Columbus, and Newellen had already barely missed several boulders large enough to ruin the vehicle.
They had been quiet nearly the whole trip back in the hopper, lifting off from Farside and returning to the landing area twenty kilometers out from the moonbase. It was Columbus's last hopper, and Jason felt uncomfortable using it too frequently.
The crew's silence had been caused by pondering the nuclear noose around Daedalus. Or maybe it had been their last view of that shuttle lying like a beached metallic whale -- intentionally crippled by the Agency just so the moonbase crew would have no chance to escape.
The lights of Columbus shone out from the half-buried modules and the shielded dome of the control center. Jason spotted a spacesuited figure emerging from the main airlock under a mound of regolith. "Looks like we've got a welcoming party."
"Or the bearer of bad news."
"Okay, as soon as he signals, go ahead and switch off LOS
communications, then break radio silence. Cyndi, you keep quiet, though, since you're still not supposed to be with us." Jason was growing tired of line-of-sight transmissions, which required them each to be facing the appropriate receivers just to have a simple conversation.
Newellen slowed the rover to pull under the sunshade near the airlock opening. "Here we are folks, back from saving the world. Pleas
e feel free to throw money, wine, or women," he said.
"Big Daddy, shut up," Salito said, still on the line-of-sight link as she climbed down from the rover. She brushed dust from the vehicle. "You're starting to drive me crazy."
Newellen made a rude noise. "Risk your life for all mankind and look at the respect you get."
As if they had rehearsed the action, the smaller forms of Bryan Zed and Cyndi Salito picked up Newellen's hulking suit in the low gravity and carried him struggling to the airlock station. Jason blinked at their sudden exit, as the other spacesuited figure activated and shut the airlock door for them.
"Hi, Jase."
Jason turned at the voice. The figure now stood next to him, assisting him in wiping black lunar dust off of the rover's more delicate components. He recognized Erika's face through her helmet. He brightened, happy that she would come out to see him.
"Hi yourself."
Erika laughed. "Glad you all are back." She hesitated, then looked around. "It's kind of hard chatting in a spacesuit."
"Especially with everybody listening in." Jason imagined he could see her blush, even behind her visor, lit by status lights inside her helmet.
Line-of-sight optical communication might be private enough, but...
He turned off his radio with his chin control and stepped up to her. He touched his helmet against hers and said loudly, "Turn off your radio." He made a pantomiming sign with his hand.
She looked puzzled, then moved her chin against the lower part of her helmet. Jason took a step back and glanced at her Suit Status Display -- the LED marked RADIO burned red. They clicked helmets again. "Now you've got your privacy."
"You sound like you're shouting from the bottom of a fish tank, but I can understand you fine. Low-tech conquers all."
Jason waited for her to say something, but she remained quiet.
"Anything the matter? Why did you come out here in person? Just to greet me?"
She paused for a long moment. "I guess I needed someone to talk to."
Jason smiled to himself. "Thanks. I guess." He touched a gloved hand to her spacesuited arm. The silver fabric felt rigid even through his padded hands. "So, why don't you give Parvu a call? Might make you homesick, but it'll do you some good."
Erika moved her hand up as if to brush back her hair, but stopped when her glove hit her helmet. "That's why I wanted to talk with you."
Jason felt warm inside that under all this pressure Erika wanted to be close to him, that she could talk to him. They had spent a great deal of time together at Sim-Mars. Why did she insist on being alone all the time? She was so intelligent, attractive, but tough -- her South Carolina accent and her demure attitude sometimes made her appear soft and helpless, but Jason knew better. Being around Erika made his breath quicken.
Compared to her, Margaret was the Wicked Witch of the West. He wondered what his wife, his ex-wife-to-be, was telling young Lacy and Lawrence. Since Jason couldn't be there to show them love on his own, the children had no choice but to listen to her anger and her bitterness. Margaret had obtained an unnecessary legal separation. Just how much more separated could they be, with her on Earth and him quarantined on the Moon? Or maybe Margaret just wanted to keep the legal work nice and tidy so she wouldn't have any complications about seeing her friend "Perry."
He stopped his mind from wandering into more self-pity. Right now Erika was more concerned with her old mentor. "Is something wrong with Dr. Parvu?"
he asked.
She hesitated, seeming to swallow away tension. "I can't raise him, Jase. He refuses to answer any calls."
"Did you try an emergency override?"
"His communications link isn't even up. It's like he turned it off, or maybe something happened to it." She paused. "They're having riots back on Earth, you know."
"He's kind of out of the way for any mob to bother him."
She pulled her helmet back, breaking audio contact. All Jason could hear now was his own breathing. A moment later he could hear the pounding of blood in his ear.
He pulled her toward him, touching helmets again. "Hey, I'm sorry for even suggesting that. Only a joke. It's just that sometimes people get tired of interacting with the outside world. Sometimes they shut themselves off from it if they're really under pressure. Other people go and take walks alone on the Moon. Like someone I know, for example."
She snorted. "Yuk, yuk."
"Come on. Let's get inside. They're going to get a new IR scan of the crater." He tugged at her arm. "After that, I'll help you raise Parvu."
They were alone in the ready room as they hung up their gear, going through the meticulous motions of detaching all the suit-component interlinks,
"dismounting" from the main body core. Air whooshed around them, trying to remove lunar dust that might have escaped the electrostatic curtain. As they left for the main corridor, Jason glanced up at the SAFETY FIRST sign that glowed above the inflatable airlock. He shook his head -- the quiet reminder seemed ironic with everything that had happened.
Making their way to the control center, Jason felt clammy in the moonbase's air conditioning. His powder-blue jumpsuit was sweaty. When they stepped into the central dome, Chu nodded to them. He said nothing about the sabotaged shuttle. Chu turned his attention back to the holotank and said,
"We've got an estimated TOA of three point six minutes for the next javelin."
It took a full two seconds for the reply to come back from Earth, confirming the javelin's journey to the Daedalus crater. "Rog, Columbus. This flyby will serve as a benchmark and doublecheck to see if anything's happened since deploying the safeguard ring. Have you initiated your diagnostics?"
Chu swung his gaze around the control center. Two of the crew manning the seismographs, radiation detectors, and rest of the monitoring equipment gave a thumbs up. Chu said, "All diagnostics seem to be working."
Seconds passed. Albert Fukumitsu, the Earthbound Mission Control supervisor, responded on the audio-only channel. "Very well, Columbus. We read you in at two minutes. Please switch to the javelin's IR display."
Chu stood stiffly. Jason could see how much he resented having Earthbound Mission Control directing his every action. What ever happened to the Agency's all-important local command philosophy? he thought. That's what happens when the bean-counters get control.
The holotank blinked, then displayed the image of the lunar surface speeding underneath the javelin's trajectory. The long tungsten projectile was still relatively high above the Moon's surface, broadcasting images up to the L-2 relay station where they were bounced toward Earth. Soon, the IR images would arrive in a super-high-resolution mode, enabling detailed playback as the javelin passed over the alien artifact.
Chu sidled up to Jason and Erika, speaking in a low tone outside the broadcast locus for Agency mission control. "Glad you could make it for the fireworks."
"Thanks."
Chu nodded to Erika. "It's going to be interesting to see how active your little nanotech machines have been, Dr. Trace. They could just march out and dismantle those warheads."
Jason saw her eyes widen at the reference to her nanomachines -- as if the entire Daedalus construction were somehow her fault. He said, "I was just out there, Bernard. From what I could see, the artifact looks about finished."
Chu glanced to the holotank, then lowered his voice. "If that's true, then Celeste isn't going to wait terribly long to detonate those nukes."
Erika stared at the IR javelin's transmissions as she spoke. "We can't say for sure whether or not the construction is finished if we don't even know what it is."
"Thirty seconds," came the voice from the holotank.
Chu turned away, focusing his attention on the activity again. "Max magnification." He rubbed his hands together. "Enhance surface-temperature contrast. Use false-color imaging."
In the holotank, the ground below the javelin rushed by, a strange dark gray with patches of barely discernible light. Sudden splotches of primary colors burst
in, showing subtle differences of the sun-washed regolith.
The crater lip appeared, roared behind them, then left the huge alien construction glistening in reflected sunlight, smeared by faint color changes of temperature fluctuations. But otherwise the structure remained at ambient temperature. The hot zone that had previously been glowing in intense colors from the nanocritters' waste heat, now slumbered in the same gray calibrated to the average dayside lunar temperature.
The dipole antennas of the Very Low Frequency array appeared on the floor of the crater as the javelin continued its flight. A good fifteen seconds passed before the holotank turned fuzzy white on gray as the signal went dead. "Gone," said Newellen.
From Mission Control, Fukumitsu's voice said, "Looks like we didn't get good data on that one, Columbus. Malfunction in the IR instruments?"
Chu frowned and spoke to the crew in the rear of the control center.
"How does the javelin check out?"
"Infrared instruments functioning normally."
"Okay." Chu fell silent, then turned and searched the room. "Newellen, get on the playback controls and try the backup camera. Run back those last fifteen seconds -- pump it as low out of the visible as you can."
"Right." Newellen waddled over to the side and slid behind the panel.
"I think I can squeeze near IR out of that filter."
A minute later they watched the ghostly image of the Daedalus artifact, fuzzed out by the hampered resolution of infrared in the blazing sunlight. The alien structure showed no temperature differential from the surrounding regolith.
"Well I'll be dipped," Newellen said. He twisted around in his chair.
"Ambient temperature. If I didn't know better, I'd say the artifact is stone cold."
"What's going on?" Jason asked. "How could the nanomachines stop radiating heat? Is it something in response to our planting the defensive ring?"
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