Edward M. Lerner (23 page)

Victorious
swelled in the main holo. At the time of the accident, it had been moving slowly to the outer reaches of the Jovian system. The starship had not changed course since, and its acceleration remained low. Messages had been exchanged, expressions of condolence and puzzlement, but light-speed delay from major settlements had been making consultation with the K’vithians impractical.

Actium
had no difficulty overtaking it. Art struggled for words beyond
Eva is gone
, but he had a job to do. “Foremost, on behalf of the United Planets and for myself personally, I am here to extend deepest sympathies for K’vithian losses in the recent accident. May we come aboard?” Will you order the docking platform despun so we can land?

“There is no need, Doctor. Your message is acknowledged.”

That was abrupt even by Snake standards. Art stared back at the image on screen. “Respectfully, Foremost, there are matters to discuss. Most pressingly, we wish to make arrangements for K’vithian participation in a UP inquest.” And, whispered some insensitive but practical corner of his mind, to discuss obtaining another lifeboat for study.

“
Respectfully
, Dr. Walsh, I see no need to participate in an inquest. The miracle is that such a catastrophe had not already befallen your antimatter program. We have previously shared our misgivings about your … technology.”

What would Chung have made of that response? To Art, the Foremost’s attitude was insulting and sarcastic. “May I ask your plans?”

“We lost crew in the unfortunate accident en route to this solar system. This recent debacle took the lives of more, including technical specialists
Victorious
can ill afford to be without. My plans, therefore, are to rendezvous with our few auxiliary vessels not presently aboard. Then we will depart at once. And before you ask: We can spare no more lifeboats.”

Art tried to put himself in Mashkith’s place: many years from home, after two losses of crew. Yes, he’d be anxious to head for home, but
this
anxious to leave? “If you wait for a while, I anticipate human volunteers could augment your crew.”

“No, thank you.” And with equal abruptness, the connection was cut.

Helmut stared blankly at, or perhaps beyond, the radar display. He was too weary, too shocked, too
mad
, to distinguish. Somehow he needed to focus, though, because the autopilot was never designed to deal with space junk whizzing by at the speeds of most Himalia fragments.

Corinne was dead
.

He was alone in space en route to Ganymede, to another new name and new life. Why did an old life have to end yet again in tragedy?

He was beyond coffee, beyond the stimulants in the autodoc. He knew better than to start with the booze that called out to him.

Corinne was on the Snake lifeboat because she got the pool assignment, and she no doubt got the pool assignment because she was the best. See where it got her.

Deep down, he knew what was eating at him. On this very bridge,
he
had gotten
her
the scoop. Would she have become the star reporter for all things Snake without his timely intervention? His unending paranoia?

Would she still be alive if not for him?

The continuous media coverage whispered softly in the background. Long years as a solo prospector had honed a knack for balancing diversion with distraction; without effort he tuned out the repetitions and uninformed speculations. His ear homed in on the subtle warble that preceded a news alert. The Foremost would be making an announcement from his ship.

He turned it up, more from habit than from interest. The Snakes had declared an end to the first interstellar visit.
Victorious
was seriously shorthanded after two accidents, and the UP at this time of great tragedy did not need the “interruption” of the aliens’ continued presence. Claiming pressing duties associated with preparation for departure, Mashkith took no questions.

Like much the K’vithians had to say, the announcement was short and sweet. And unconvincing. He muted the broadcasts that continued streaming past
Odyssey
. Any further alert tones would override. What was bothering him? What, that is, besides Corinne’s death, and all those other deaths, and fleeing the scene while almost every other ship in the Jovian system converged on what remained of Himalia to render whatever help they could.

Victorious
was the other major exception to the rule. Maybe that was what bothered him. The people of this solar system had greeted these visitors with open arms. Moved nearer to the disaster, the starship with its vast stockpiles would be a natural base of operations for the rescuers.
He
had a reason to run away like a thief in the night, but….

Helmut squeezed weary eyes in concentration, baffled. So the often inscrutable Snakes were inscrutably not helping. Did that surprise him? What could possibly be driving his suspicions?

To hell with the Snakes and his personal situation. Spacers helped spacers. A hi-gee course correction re-vectored
Odyssey
toward Leda, where one of the improvised evacuation flotillas was converging. Leda, Lysithea, and Elara: all basically co-orbited with Himalia, sharing the same oddly inclined orbital plane. All four were thought to be fragments of a large asteroid long ago captured by Jupiter. Now Leda, Lysithea, and Elara basically shared their orbit with a meteor shower, soon enough another ring for the great planet.

His ongoing struggle to understand the Snakes could wait.

Visualizations in holo tanks, files on the ship’s tactical network, downloads to his implant, even strata of hardcopy scribbles burying the wardroom tables … information in countless forms surrounded Art. Sensor data from the surviving near-in picket ships. Crew depositions from the same. Simulations of blast dynamics, inferred from radar tracks of selected fragments. Contemporaneous measurements from observatories and ships across the solar system.

Why, Art wondered, can’t I pull it all together?

Carlos and Keizo took turns looking in on him. It must be first watch again, because now both colleagues appeared.

“Jesus,” Carlos said. “You’re
still
up? You have
got
to get some rest.”

“Morning.” Standing to get more coffee, Art almost fell. The only positive thing about
Victorious
and its slo-mo departure was that
Actium
was keeping pace for now. Acceleration meant drinking coffee from a cup, not a squeeze bulb. “Oops. My leg was asleep.”

Keizo reached across the table for Art’s mug. “Just walk it off. I’ll refill this.”

“This isn’t very ambassadorial, you know.” Carlos peered into the graphics in which Art kept trying to organize the data into something—anything—meaningful. “I’ll explain again, in short sentences. You need sleep. It’s okay to sleep. The Snakes don’t want to talk. Mashkith responds the same way to all queries: He’s too busy readying his ship for departure to chat. With Lothwer gone, he’ll stay busy. And uncommunicative.”

So, Art, stop being stubborn. “I’m convinced there’s a big picture here we’re not seeing. Somehow, this whole situation makes sense.” It
must
.

Carlos slapped the table. “You want the big picture? Fine. Our Snake buddies had a close call, a major scare, on their way here. A few months later they were up close and personal with Himalia for refueling. A few days later it blew. That second brush with disaster is what spooked them, not the few casualties they took on the lifeboat.”

“I don’t believe that,” Art said. “I can’t imagine anything rattling Mashkith.”

“Perhaps not. I don’t delude myself that I can think like him.” Keizo looked at the refilled mug in his hand. “Regardless, more coffee is not what you need now.”

Art allowed himself to be led to his cabin, but sleep refused to come.

Actium
was neither smaller nor more crowded than on his previous visits. Somehow, it was more oppressive. Art paced its corridors, hoping the change of scenery, at least, would do some good.

The clear blue sky above the azure Mediterranean might have been a lifetime ago. Jupiter growing and growing and growing, until there was nothing else in the universe but clouds and the thunderous roar of the scoopship’s hypersonic plunge—that had been a few short weeks ago. It, too, might as well have been another existence.

Big scenery. Big picture. Both eluded him. “Complexity is nature’s way of saying: ‘You’re asking the wrong question.’”

Judging from the passing crewman’s double take, he had said it aloud. Talking to yourself had to be bad form from the head of mission, even an acting head. Still, the statement was true. Understanding things sometimes involved details, but details should
refine
understanding, not obscure it.
Titanic
: arrogance amid fog and ice.
Challenger
: O-rings turned brittle by cold. Barsoom dome: decades of wind-born dust abraded the anti-UV coating and accelerated aging of the plasteel material.

The long-ago sightseeing rocketplane: a fuel pump rebuilt with a substandard pressure-reduction valve.

What simple statement explained Himalia?

Thirty minutes on a treadmill, warm milk, or total exhaustion—at last one of them kicked in, and Art didn’t care which. He slept. When he eventually awoke, it was well into the third watch. Fortified by twelve hours sleep and a long shower, he ordered a huge breakfast delivered to the wardroom he had commandeered for his office.

The tray made better time to the office than he did. Sipping piping-hot coffee, he found the status displays little changed.
Victorious
was a little farther from Jupiter,
Actium
tagging along like a servant or supplicant. Evacuation fleets swarmed Leda, Lysithea, and Elara. Conjecture and data, their boundary indistinct, swamped the infosphere.

One thread of infosphere speculation had been flagged by an aide, “for your amusement.” Rather than laugh, what Art read made time stand still as his thoughts turned some heretofore unseen corner….

Unification
: the long-sought physical theory that would conjoin gravity with the other three fundamental forces: electromagnetic, weak nuclear interaction, and strong nuclear interaction.

Cosmologists have long believed that for a very brief interval following the Big Bang, the four forces were, in fact, indistinguishable. Unification of three forces into the so-called Grand Unified Force under early-universe conditions has been experimentally validated. The energy density at which gravity separates from the other three is not reproducible, nor has it existed since approximately 10-43 second after the Big Bang.

—Internetopedia

The sanctum sanctorum of any ship is its captain’s cabin, reason enough to hold a top-secret summit here. Aaron O’Malley, skipper of
Actium,
was another. O’Malley was among the youngest masters in the UP Navy,
the
youngest to hold command of a cruiser. He was renowned throughout the fleet for tactical brilliance, intuitive leaps, and wild idiosyncrasy. His face (or as unsubstantiated whispers would have it, his skin from head to toe) was lined with nanornaments. It was not hard for Art to guess the mood that went with today’s lightning-bolt tattoos.

All sides of the captain’s study were holos, and surprisingly mundane: darkly paneled walls; oils of seascapes, storms, and ships under sail; an illusory blaze in a virtual fireplace; bookshelves of cloth—and leather-bound classics. The chairs were real and genuine leather; there was no disguising the squeaks. Four seats were occupied: Art and the captain, Carlos, and Keizo.

Art took a deep breath. “There’s a big question I cannot get out of my mind. Why are the Snakes so determined to leave
now?
I’ll be honest—I have a theory. If I’m right, it’s pretty damn horrifying. I asked everyone together because we all approach problems differently. Nothing would please me more than being shown the error of my ways.

“The stated reason is simple caution. They’re shorthanded. Mashkith wants to leave before he suffers any further mishap. Captain, does that work for you?”

O’Malley leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, fingers interlaced. “The navy ferried the Snake crew to the lifeboat, and there were only four aboard. Losing
any
crew is tragic, but is it a big risk? We’ve never gotten straight answers about the size of the ship’s complement, but look at
Victorious
. It’s enormous. Deep radar scans show just what you’d expect: It’s a warren of caves and tunnels and decks. The supplies they took aboard likewise imply a large population. We’ve seen up to a dozen aux ships flying around at the same time, maybe a hundred individuals playing tourist.

“I agree with your suspicions, Ambassador. Four casualties do not justify the unseemly haste with which they are suddenly leaving us—especially since their return flight will take them … what? Roughly twenty Earth-standard years?”

“Just Art.” I’m no diplomat. “Anyone else? Keizo, you look unconvinced.”

“Our visitors were very disparaging of our technology. They emptied and returned our antimatter transfer canisters very quickly. They imply our technology caused the disaster on Himalia. Perhaps they fear another such incident, and a worse outcome the next time.”

“Crap,” Carlos snorted. “There’s nothing left to endanger them. Our only antimatter program was on Himalia. No one at UPIA has figured out how the Snakes penetrated our security and
found
Himalia, but having done so, they must know we have no other program. Art, you’re killing me here. What other reason is there?”

Another deep breath. “Complicity in the disaster. They want to be gone before we think of that.”

Seconds went by without anyone calling him crazy. “Okay, let’s explore this scenario for a bit. If Snakes were involved, when would the Himalia explosion have occurred? Not before
Victorious
was fully refueled, of course. That leaves only a small window. Not as the lifeboat first approached, nor as it landed, nor as it sat locked and waiting for passengers to arrive for the demo trip.” If I’m not imagining all this, Art thought, how convenient my skepticism was for the Foremost. It helped justify keeping the lifeboat off-limits and unexamined. “Had the factory blown up at any of those times, we would certainly have seen a connection.