Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4) (17 page)

“Was
she warning us about Toby?” Red asked.

“No.
She ran them together in pairs. I believe the message was for him.”

Facing
the storage room, Zeiss said, “Toby, was Yuki helping you with any projects?”

“Not
since she hooked up with Park. I don’t think he trusts me around her,” the
nanobiologist replied.

“Duh,”
Red whispered.

The
commander shushed her.

Park
pointed out, “Technically Yuki is alone with him now, and even that makes me
nervous.”

Auckland
sighed. “I suppose we can move the patient to
recover in the sick bay tonight. You and Lou can lift her. I’ll guide him.” The
two men rushed to the storage area to assist.

Zeiss
asked, “Does the word hypothalamus mean anything to you? It seemed very
important.”

“The
hypothalamus is a junction box in the brain. Among other things, it handles
reproduction, parental bonding, and insulin,” Toby recited.

“What
about invisible zero?” Zeiss probed.

“No
clue,” Toby replied. “Sure it wasn’t double naught? Those are the files I’ve
been researching.”

The
volunteers lifted the entire cot, with Yuki strapped onto it, and shuffled out
of the storage area into the zero-g region.

Zeiss
grew excited. “Yuki only knew about one double-naught file—the Heisenberg
adapting panels.”

“Invisibility,”
Red echoed.

“Show
me the armor,” Zeiss demanded.

“We
brought it up in the elevator. I chained it to the railing.”

The
available planners and Nadia all rushed out to the patio, while Auckland shut the door to the storage area behind him. “We’ll be right back,” he assured
Toby.

Yvette
followed Nadia, eager for more information.

When
Zeiss saw the pyramidal armor, he said, “It’s just like the ceramics in the
docking bay. We’ll need Risa’s material tester to be certain. This material is
observer interactive. Do you know what this means?”

“The
Magi are picking off people who get too close?” Yvette said grimly.

Red
said, “We have a way to hide from the aborigines we’re designing pages for.
Something in this armor would be effectively invisible. The hand must not be
seen.”

“This
could be the source of the fuel drain I’ve been tracking,” Zeiss said.

“The
deck is stacked,” Yvette insisted. “All along, the Magi have been hiding things
we need and stealing from us so we can’t succeed. Now they’re actively
attacking us. When are you people going to wake up?”

Holding
out his hands to calm the nurse, Zeiss said, “Don’t rush to conclusions. We
have to verify this scientifically. Yuki said she had a detector that she gave
to Mercy. Where is that now?”

Park
stopped midway through the room to answer the question. “In her wristwatch.
Yuki got that back the night of Mercy’s fit.”

Lou
shook his head. “I don’t like this. If there’s any chance they did this to
Mercy on purpose, I say we confront the Magi. No honesty means we don’t take
their bloody test. We’re smart people; we can find some way home. If nothing
else, we can strap four of the Icarus generators to
Ascension
and drop
Sanctuary
into one of these suns in protest.”

“Where
is the wristwatch now?” asked Zeiss, stepping back into the main room. The
others followed the commander in his pursuit of clues.

“Um
. . . I didn’t see it on the dresser. I’m guessing she put it back on her left
arm. Where is that?” Park asked Nadia.

“The
robot chewed it to pieces,” Nadia said.

Blanching,
Park leaned against the wall. “Boss, it dropped my girl off a mountain and ate
her arm before it fried her memory. We can’t sit still for this. I’m with Lou.
We draw a line.”

Zeiss
said, “Everyone is a little emotional right now.”

Lou
shook his head. “No. We have two of the three pilots voting to confront. Red,
what do you say?”

“There
has to be a reasonable explanation,” Red said feebly. “We should ask Snowflake
first.” Addressing the dome on the ceiling, she said, “Snowflake, have you been
listening to our debate the last few minutes?”

“Yes.”

“Why
have you been interfering?”

“The
test is sacred. The test must be completed. No virus shall pass. The hand must
not be seen. All else is subordinated.”

Red
raised her voice. “No. The rule about the hand is for those being uplifted, not
us. When we are in the role of uplifters, we must be treated as equals.”

“The
test will continue.”

“Screw
you. You can’t make us,” she snapped.

Suddenly,
the wide, golden airlock door to the patio shut tight, and the light in the
room changed from dim white to a bright orange tinge. Yvette heard a tell-tale
whoosh and experienced a moment of dizziness.
It couldn’t have happened in the
command room
, she thought. Nonetheless, the lens display now showed a
close-up view of planet Daedalus.
In zero g, no one would fall. If all
electrical activity ceased, how would we know?
Yvette asked, “What time is
it?”

With
fear in his voice, Park announced, “Guys, the time counter has advanced sixty
days.”

Yvette
announced, “Snowflake just froze us all and flew us to the test against our
will.”

Red
said, “Yeah. I stand corrected about that force thing. Why is there an
exclamation point on my screen?”

“Radiation
levels are unacceptably high. Please correct your approach,” said the computer.

Yvette was terrified
that the tantrum of the alien computer would be the end of them.

Red
was livid. “You’re the one who brought us here against our will. You change
course.”

The
interface gleeped a negative. “I can only follow paths plotted by others and
only when that path is safe.”

Growling,
Red asked, “What’s the source of this radiation?”

“Rapid
rotation of the planet Daedalus combined with a liquid metallic hydrogen core
generates more energy than it receives from the suns—”

“Synchrotron
radiation, like Jupiter,” Zeiss finished. “Show us a 3-D chart in rads per
twenty-four hour period. Four hundred rads and above exceeds 50 percent human
fatality. Overlay the screen in transparent yellow and taper off exponentially,
stopping at five rads for eventual chromosomal damage in white.”

The
screen filled with a pulsating yellow torus. The first three moons were lethal,
and the fourth could still dip into the danger zone periodically.

Zeiss
examined the projection from all angles. He floated up to touch the bubble.
“Snowflake, increase resolution here, labeled in powers of ten. Use the entire
rainbow down to visible violet.”

Red
said, “The envelope is thinner on the daylight side. We might be able to use
the blast shadow from either of the two outermost moons to—”

Whispering
to Park, Yvette said, “Let’s finish moving Yuki.” Together they floated the
patient to the sick bay. By the time they settled Yuki onto the monitored bed,
Park was sweating and radiating panic. Hoping to soothe him, she asked, “What’s
wrong with Daedalus?”

“It’s
like a microwave oven with X-rays thrown in,” the Korean drive specialist
explained. “It will damage our scientific equipment and cook any biological
materials—like us. We thought all the moons would be habitable or at least
tolerable this far from the suns, but the radiation level on the Icarus moon is
over a million rads a day.”

“Just
use shielding,” she suggested.

“We
haven’t invented anything that can shield that much. A few kilometers of
atmosphere forms the best buffer, but solid rock will also do. It takes about
8.5 centimeters of steel to reduce X-rays by a factor of ten. To fly by that
moon, we’d need half a meter of steel casing or four meters of water. We
wouldn’t be able to survive in suits in the landing bay. Our original course
takes us too close to Daedalus.”

“This
sort of shoots holes in the theory of Ideal Planets making the best colonies,”
she complained. “I guess the Magi didn’t tell us everything we need.”

Park
shrugged. “The theory is still a good one because inner planets are usually
much denser. Unfortunately, we can’t see how fast a planet is turning on its
axis until we’re in the same system. By then, we’re committed.”

“How
can this be more dangerous than passing by a sun?” Yvette asked.

“That
was with the lens closed. Good idea.” Floating into the control room, Park
said, “Red, close the lens and the shutters while you’re figuring. It’ll buy us
time.”

Red
did so.

Then
Zeiss took a frantic radio call from the Hollow. After a private discussion, he
relayed information to those in the command center. “The campers down below
weren’t frozen like we were for the last two months. They only knew about the
radiation danger when the shutters closed and lights went out with no warning.”

Auckland
said, “I’ll investigate the rest of Olympus and see how far the stasis effect extended. I’ll also check up on Mercy.”

“Why
not stay sealed up like this?” Yvette asked in the dim glow of the instrument
panels.

Talking
about an area of expertise seemed to calm Park’s nerves. “Long term, we have to
open the lens and the windows to survive. If visible light can get in, so can
the bad stuff. The team has a few hours to plan an orbit around Labyrinth that
we can maintain indefinitely because once we’re circling in the holding
pattern, we won’t have the fuel to change much. Then, Z needs to determine a
minimum radiation entry to that orbit, which we can do with our shutters closed
some of the time. We’re four days out from our intended intercept. During the
dark times, Lou would need to fly by gravity sense with no depth perception.”

“Because
of Mercy,” she recalled.

“He
can still do it with a good gravity map, but our expert for that is laid up
with brain damage and stab wounds.”

“Yuki.”

“Yep.”

“We
are so screwed,” Yvette concluded.

Lou
concluded, “The use of profanity shows that you understand the scope of the
problem.”

Park
crawled under his control hood to help define the radiation-safe zones around
Labyrinth. The resulting oval looked like an eye, with the moon buried in the
tear duct. “When we’re closest to the gas giant, we’ll hide in the moon’s
atmosphere. That deep, we can release a probe or the shuttle. The rest of the
time, we can take shelter in the shadow behind the moon, preferably the
trailing edge. We might still have to shutter the big windows briefly during
extreme fluctuations.”

Red
used her Quantum Computing abilities, borrowing mental power from Park and
Nadia to plot the optimum irregular orbit. The three remained silent during the
process.

Meanwhile,
Auckland reported back. “Mercy is still immobilized. Everything in the
kitchen is rotten except the freeze-dried stuff. The water quality is still
good, so we won’t starve. It seems only the command room was frozen.”

“Toby!”
Yvette burst out, surprising several of the others with her intensity. “He was
in the storage area.”

They
unlocked the cell only to find it empty. Lou sniffed the air. “Excess ammonia
because he couldn’t reach the toilets, but no decomposition odors.”

Distracted,
Zeiss said, “Sorry, Herk’s been talking to me this whole time. Toby escaped
after eight days.” Listening a bit longer, he added, “He managed to remove one
of the patches on the landing ramp and squeeze out. Then he used one of the
antigravity tiles as a parachute to slow his descent to the swamp.”

The
doctor snorted. “We put him in our highest security cell, and it only took him
a week to get out when he wanted to. That’s comforting.”

“Actually,”
Zeiss replied with his hand cupping one ear, “he only took that long because he
wanted to finish Mercy’s treatment. I’m tired of playing telephone. Let him
tell you himself.” The commander hit the high-tech equivalent of a speakerphone
button.

Over
the speaker, Toby said, “I left vials in the refrigerator, along with
instructions for the injection sites of each. I figured out the hypothalamus
part on my last guinea pig. If I hadn’t fixed the brain component, production
of certain hormones would have continued to increase in order to compensate.
Without the warning, we might not have caught the escalation in time.”

“Good
job,” said Lou, humbly. “We owe you.”

“Thank
Yuki. She’s the one who bled for it,” Toby insisted.

“You
may have just saved our ship by giving Lou his senses back,” Yvette said, awed
by the feat.

Zeiss
asked, “Herk, how has the prisoner behaved?”

“I
keep him locked in the caves at night,” Herk replied. “Oleander stands watch.
He was able to haul the medicine fabricator down with him but not all the
chemicals. He spends most of his time gathering naturally occurring compounds
to feed it. His room reeks of sulfur.”

“That’s
my Hades,” Yvette mumbled.

The
doctor said, “Even after we inject Mercy with the next phase, the talent
suppressants will take a few days to flush out of her system.”

Zeiss
sighed. “Thaw her now, and Lou might be able to sense well enough.”

“Give
me back my lighthouse, boss, and I’ll carry you all on my back if I have to,”
the pilot promised with a huge grin.

“First,
we’ll double-check Toby’s work and give Red a chance to plan the route,” Auckland said. “Rushing things only gets people dead.”

“Like
trusting the Magi,” Yvette said.

Zeiss
rubbed his face. “Yeah. We still need to address that issue.” Turning to the
central controls, he said, “Snowflake, I suggest a compromise. You warn us
verbally before we get too close to something we can’t know, and you stop
stealing fuel from us. If you need to send out a robot or something sensitive,
just warn us, and we’ll avert our eyes.”

“Nadia
can detect them without eyes. The hand must not be seen.”

“We
will send her to Labyrinth’s surface if she can take the captured armor with
her,” Zeiss promised.

“We
would like that. Hiding from Nadia has been inconvenient.”

Lou
stuck out his lower lip and wiped his eyes to mime crying. Yvette smacked his
arm. They lost months and ended up in another crisis the last time they annoyed
the ship’s computer,.

“Can
you assist us in repairing the armor?” the commander asked.

“The
pages you have been given are sufficient for the task.”

“That
would be a no,” Lou translated.

Zeiss
continued. “Snowflake, we will continue with the mission, but only if no more
crewmen are attacked and no more of our data is destroyed.”

“The
test must be completed.”

“Then
I need a yes or a no for your promise,” Zeiss said.

“Mercy
will speak to me again?” Snowflake asked.

“Only
by verbal instructions until after she has the baby,” Yvette cautioned.

“Then,
yes,” the computer replied.

Pushing
the envelope, Zeiss observed, “You could have eliminated Yuki before she left
the message, or destroyed the evidence sooner. You let us have a few words.
Why?”

“A
calculated risk. Mother Mercy could be saved only at the boundaries of the
law.”

“Mother?”
Lou echoed.

“The
first person to enter the ship . . . contributes to the interface so that we
can adapt to a new species.”

Yvette
pulled the conversation back on topic. “Snowflake, can we have back the pieces
you stole from Yuki?”

“These
minerals have already been recycled.”

“That’s
unjust interference with our test,” Zeiss complained. “It took us a year to
make that arm.”

The
computer paused. “The same effect can be achieved with less effort by tools
already provided.”

“Which
Magi tools can be used to make a prosthetic?” Yvette asked.

“None.”

“But
you said . . .” Yvette halted and tilted her head. Quietly, she whispered, “Do
we have tools to regrow human bone and muscle?”

“The
answer you seek has already been demonstrated.”

Lou
guessed, “The pods? The first time through, they rewrote Mercy according to her
genetic template, erasing the copy errors that could cause breast cancer. Z
healed from stroke damage.”

“Yuki
passed through after the incident,” Yvette said. “Her scars and the skin
covering her stump improved, but nothing else. Although, that happened before
we took the final measurements for the prosthetic, so we can’t be absolutely
certain.”

“Maybe
there’s another cycle on the washing machine. Every other device in this place
has at least two settings for ‘on’,” Lou pointed out. “Mercy proved that. A heavy
soil setting might clean deeper.”

“That
could help with several of Yuki’s current injuries, your eyes, and even with
Herk’s burns from his coat catching fire. I see no harm in trying,” Auckland said. “We might need Mercy’s assistance with Snowflake to sneak up on the
details.”

Zeiss
sighed. “I wish this ship came with an instruction manual. I’ll authorize the
experiment, but only after we make orbit. We’ll send a couple regeneration
candidates up to the pods when we launch the first probe.”