Across the Sea of Suns (44 page)

“I was suggesting—”

“You’re always just ‘suggesting’ and ‘advising,’ aren’t you?”

“You’re quite right. I’ll say nothing.”

Carlos hesitated, still fuming. With Nigel having given way so easily, he was left with nothing more to say. He busied himself with the control board and after a while began following the direction indicated by the chem sensors. It was, after all, the obvious thing to do.

Slowly, so that at first they were unsure whether they saw it or imagined it, a faint blur of green formed in the dark. The instruments had picked it up, but only the eye gave form and substance to the mottled glow.

Abruptly, green shifted to burnt orange. Something came at them out of the blankness. It was long and spindly. Disjointed parts flexed and turned as it swept silently by. Trailing strands wove in the turbulent passing. Then it was gone.

“What the—”

“Exactly the question.”

Nikka said softly, “Self-luminous.”

“Yes. Feeding off the free radicals, I’ll wager.”

“No eyes.”

“No reason to evolve them here.”

“What do you figure—”

“Over that way.”

A dim glow. The craft gave off a high-pitched
ping
and
crack
as they descended.

“What’s that?”

“Can’t make it out.”

“Must be far away. No resolution.”

“If it’s that bright—”

“Right. Bloody luminous.”

“Not one of the things we just saw.”

“No. Bigger. A lot bigger.”

It grew. Yellow bars of light moved in the suspended wash of particles. The craft bucked and turned against sudden currents.

“It’s moving.”

“A pattern. Look, see, it repeats.”

“Revolving.”

“Yeah. Spins around in ’bout two minutes.”

The thing swelled. It was huge and pitted with fire. Brownish gold and orange swept across its face. From each bright flare point burst a cascade of bubbles, each working with its own inner fire.

“Damn thing’s more’n a click across.”

“Yes. See those big bags attached?”

“Balloons.”

“To keep it afloat?”

“Must. Spectrometer says that’s rock there. Hot.”

“The free radicals.”

“Dead right.”

“They come from that?”

“Big fat energy source.”

“Samplers out?”

“Yeah, got it. Lots of energetic molecular stuff.”

“Food.”

“For …”

The three humans shifted uneasily in their couches. Their spotlights ebbed away in the silted darkness. They watched the thing that spun slowly in the black and pulsed irregularly, throwing out gouts of orange and burnished green and gold and red, showers of hot bubbles. They strained forward, trying to see farther.

“Lot of radioactivity.”

“Figures.”

“I’m … getting kind of nervous.”

“Yeah. You feel it, Nigel?”

“What?”

“Like … something’s out there.”

“Moving.”

“Beyond our lights? … Yes.”

“We’re in the updraft from it now. Getting a lot more Geiger.”

“Dangerous?”

“No. The gammas can’t get through our skin.”

“Blowoff from that thing.”

“Suppose so. That big rock …”

“Right. A crude nuclear reactor.”

“Duct chemicals through it, they get bombarded—”

“—you get excited molecular forms.”

“What’s the source of organic molecules?”

“Below here? Something’s got to supply them.”

“Right. Tending the fire.”

“Why put it near a vent?”

“Why move to Florida? Warmer.”

“No, wait, that’s the wrong way round. The vent, the vent is here—”

“Because
of this.”

“The whole thing’s artificial.”

“The volcanoes, the lakes, they’re made by things like
this
?”

“Walmsley’s Rule.”

“In spades. Warm currents, food—”

“And an opening to the surface.”

Carlos said, “To do what? I mean …”

“I don’t know,” Nigel said.

“Why are we whispering?” Nikka asked.

Nigel shouted, “Maybe they can hear!”

“Jesus!” Carlos said.

“Then again, maybe not.” Nigel settled back in his couch. “They’ve overheard our motors long before this, if they do. And they must, come to think of it. Acoustics are the fish’s eye.”

Nikka said, “That thing that went by us was luminous.”

“So?” Carlos said.

“There must be a reason for that. To find prey.”

Nigel murmured, “Or lure it.”

Carlos said, “I wonder if I should douse our running lights.”

“It might well be a good idea,” Nikka said.

He snapped off several switches. The control crescent cast angular shadows in the cabin.

Nigel said softly, “Should call
Lancer,
let them know.”

Carlos did. Before he could explain, Ted Landon came on the line. “We’ve got a solid majority vote on your petition, Nigel. Sorry ’bout that.”

Nigel shook himself from his dreamy state. “What … oh, yes. So?”

“You’ve lost. C’mon out.”

Nigel sighed. Ted was in quite a jovial mood. “Tell him, Carlos.”

Talk continued, but he knew what would come next. He felt a fatigue seeping into him but with it came an old certainty. Ted was a stickler for the rules, especially those rubber-stamped by the consensus mandate of the beloved bloody people.

Carlos spoke with assurance, putting down the facts in steady fashion, orderly and authoritative. He would be more difficult to deal with, the more he clarified his own idea of himself.

Nigel got up and moved casually to the rear of the ship.

“Nature calls,” he said to Nikka. He could not risk a parting wink.

THREE

Their suits were racked in smooth-swiveling braces. He swung one out in an arc until it clipped onto the self suiting platform. He backed into its enfolding grip. He jackknifed forward to get his arms into the sleeves and then worked his head through the neck ring. It enveloped him, an action that to Nigel always carried the quality of shaking hands with a corpse. He straightened and the rack zipped him up the chest. Helmet locks snapped and clicked home. The suit had full thermal insulation and heavy heaters, weighing on him like a blanket.

He shambled into the equipment bay, an ankle protesting the added bulk. A hexagonal frame was resting in the launch pod. It held the six floaters for the next sac. Nigel detached the leaders to the sac so that the frame stood alone. He took the two central floaters out and climbed into the vacant space.

The balance would be wrong. He looked around for something massive. His eye stopped on the medfilter, set down and forgotten hours ago.

Why not? Infernal thing, reminder of countless hours spent in its clutches. This was the last act, but still the thing could perhaps keep him alert, fight off the nausea if it returned. And he needed ballast. He fetched it and clamped it to the midsection of the frame, moving as quickly as he could.

Very well. Time to go.

He turned the manual controls and leaned back. A conveyor carried the frame into the lock. He found a way to clip his suit belt to the frame. Nigel punched in instructions for his suit as the lock sealed behind him. Air fled, pressure dropped, he braced himself—

The outer lock irised open.
Whoomp.
The frame shot off the platform. Air broke into a gush of bubbles and the roar carried him out, tumbling. The floaters popped free and began to swell. He spun, weightless, the fulcrum of vectoring forces as his suit creaked and his ears popped and a shower of bubbles rose around him like a flock of bright birds. Then the dark descended.

He came upright and saw the ship below, glistening. The floaters bobbed and sucked him upward. He had not thought through the balance of buoyancy and now saw he was too light.

What the—Must be a misfire Nikka go back there check the

He was rushing away from the glimmering ball of light. Farther below the smoldering fires of the stony reactor reddened the water. From this perspective they were remarkably similar pieces of technology.

Bags are free? How’d that happen must’ve been

Nikka answered,
No I think wait

Ted says we should back away from this don’t worry about the equipment might be a pressure malf anyway we should get clear fast let ExoBio get in on this

He was rising too quickly. The frame would scoot all the way to the ice skin with so little weight to drag. Nigel suddenly realized that his suit could take extreme pressures, but could not adjust quickly to rapid changes in depth. If he kept rising—

Carlos where is he I can’t

Nigel’s ears popped. He stared upward at the floaters, swelling as they rose. Darkness cloaked him now as the ship fell away below. He did not dare show a light this close but he would need it to free one of the floaters. Now he could scarcely make out the bulk of them.

You mean you think he

The suit was bulky and awkward in the water and he had to search for the tabs on his left arm. He uncapped the spike and raised the arm. The third button should be—

A bright blue line sliced the water. He fanned it, leaving behind curling wisps of steam. The laser cutter boiled away a thin column and found a floater. The bag crinkled, turned brown—

Broke. Air gushed out. Nigel fired again, at the opposite floater. The beam churned the water soundlessly. It ate a thin, straight path, ghostly blue, haloed by steam. If the power ran out before—

That’s crazy!
Mierda seca,
the old bastard’ll That suit can take it but listen to me damn it turn on the spots we can trace him

The second floater burst. The beam leaped across the inside of it and punched a hole through the top. Nigel felt himself falling and then the frame slowed, still dropping. Equilibrium.

I’ll call Ted he’ll.

Later. See anything? There might be a suit light. Try the tracer.

Something wrong no pickup I can see

He can’t be beyond range this soon

Look for yourself his code shows nonoperational. He doctored it before he left must be

Floating, in an absence of space and light and weight. It was like the time on the slab, disconnected from the wearing of the world. Being in the high dark emptiness of space was much like the blank absorbing blackness here. His movements were sluggish, blunted by the unseen waters. No sound. When his boots struck the piping there came not a ringing but a muffled thud. He hung loosely to the frame and waited for something to come.

Look Ted’s on the line says he’s too busy to worry about this old fart there’s news from Earth-side looks bad new assembly starting in a few minutes

They can’t leave him out there call the teams on the surface get some more subs down here and

Nikka, this is Ted. Admittedly Nigel was right about one thing looks like—I mean his Walmsley’s Rule and all that. That must be a Watcher and Operations tells me it’s showing signs of life now, probably in response to our ground teams so

Then send down some submersibles damn it

Look there’s too many things happening at once Nikka I don’t have time to hunt for that bastard right now let him stew

He did it to stall for time don’t you see that

Stupid move just makes us more pissed up here

Ted I appeal to

He’s acting like a horse’s ass over nothing. I’m through with all this shit of his! Maybe he thought he’d get some sympathy support this way but it won’t cut up here, I can tell you that in spades

He sensed the running current taking him farther away from them. This was the farthest he had ever been, the natural tether. It was better to do it this way, in pursuit.

I’m pulling you people out soon as I can and if he’s gone he’s just gone that’s it

It will take hours

Okay you can search for a while the assembly starts in ten minutes anyway but I warn you—look, if he’s patched in still he can hear this. Nigel, this is it man, the last

He ignored the barking voice. Something more immediate disturbed him.

Rippling currents. He ignited a small helmet phosphor. The bars of the frame leaped into being around him, yellow and stark.

Nothing nearby. A tug, a fresh direction—

Something glimmered. It grew. A ball of ruddy clouds. Swelling toward him, coming fast—

Things moved inside. Specks in the clouds. Drifting dots. He tried to judge size but without perspective—

The color. A smoldering red, dying embers—

He held onto the pipes of the frame as the cage jiggled and surged sideways. Where had he seen—?

The specks did not drift aimlessly. The clouds were in fact hillsides and the dots walked on them, slowly, amid swirls of dust. They were large, stately, with four smoothly articulating legs—

EMs.

But not the huge-headed beasts he knew. These were slim, tall, graceful in their grave pacing.

Not EMs, not without the radio-dish heads and the awkward carapace that housed the reworked guts.

These were what the EMs had been before.

Before the asteroid rain crushed their biosphere. Before they had to remake themselves into something the Watchers would pass as perhaps machinelike.

They were inside a vast ball, fully five kilometers across. Inside were hills, streams, dusty clouds, high forests of blue and brown. It reminded him of those childhood toys which, shaken, show a winter scene with descending snow. Only here the liquid was outside, and within moved a trapped world of air and growth. The sphere’s shell glowed, casting ruddy light inward. Above it, dark masses. Ballast? Stabilizers?

It began to dwindle, The currents were sweeping him past, taking him away. He fired his laser beam over his head, making a blue arc. One of the tall moving figures seemed to pause, to look outward.

Had they seen him? Did they know what had happened to their race back on the home world? Deformed, beaten down but still going on—

Of course they knew something. They must be the remnants of an earlier age, a time when their world sent out ships and explored the nearby stars. They had taken shelter inside this moon.