Hidden Variables (41 page)

Under a 1000X magnification, it was as though we were hovering a little more than ten kilometers above the surface of the planet. We could see all the rivers and plains of Quake, even the larger of the mines that provided Egg with most of its metals.

Rebka leaned forward and frowned at the screen, while Klaus Wethel did his best not to look at anything—fear of falling was even more intense from ten kilometers than it had been from twelve thousand. It had been a bad thing to do, opening the dome on him. Now I'd have even more trouble than usual to get him to ever come back to Quakeside.

Rebka nodded. "It looks different," he admitted at last. "I have no idea why, but the colors all seem to have changed since we came past it on the way in, more than I would expect from a change in viewing angle or sun angle. How could it have changed so quickly?"

"Did you look at all at Dumbbell's orbit before you came here?" I asked. "I thought not. We're less than six earth-days from perihelion—from midsummer. Our seasons here on Egg, and on Quake, are caused by distance from Eta-Cass A, not by axial tilt the way they are on Earth. Dumbbell sweeps in pretty close—the orbit has an eccentricity better than 0.3. Here on Egg we have good protection from the cloud cover, but Quake doesn't have that. Right now all the vegetation there is getting ready for the summer. The plants die off above the ground, and all the root systems dip deeper for the cooler layers. They go down twenty meters or more."

Rebka was looking sicker than ever. "Are you telling me that the Carmel twins will die of the heat there? What do the native animals do in the summer?"

"They dig deep down, and they estivate."

"Then the Carmel sisters will dig deep down, too. They probably have a good refrigeration pack with them." His expression was now relieved—genocide or not, his first worry at the moment was the survival of his quarry. "They only need to survive a few Earth-days of heat."

"True enough, and they may have counted on that." I hated to do this to him, but he had to know the truth. "It gets really hot there on Quake, but it's not the heat that will get them."

We had seen enough of the other planet, and I cut the transparency of the dome back to full opaqueness. Klaus Wethel drew in a long breath, and began to take an interest in the discussion for the first time in the past ten minutes.

"The heating of the surface goes up like the inverse square of the distance from Eta-Cass A," I went on. "But the tidal forces go up like the inverse
cube.
Quake is smaller and heavier than Egg, and has much more of a liquid core—the radioactives keep in that way. At summer maximum, when the tides hit their peak, the whole surface shakes like a jelly. Why did you think that the first settlers called it Quake? It's the 'quakes and volcanoes that will kill the Carmel sisters."

It took Rebka less than a minute to digest this new information, and factor it into his main objective. The conclusion he drew was one that I was most afraid of.

"So we have very little time before Quake becomes uninhabitable," he said. "We can't leave them there—they obviously don't know any of this."

"But are you sure they
are
there?" I was really playing for time, and Rebka saw right through me.

"I am convinced of it. How difficult would it have been for them to obtain passage along the umbilical?"

"Not difficult at all." I shrugged. "We don't check the outgoing pods, and if a couple of people climbed on board an empty cargo container we would never know it."

"So they are there." He obviously was not prepared to discuss that issue further. "We have six Earth-days to summer maximum, you said. That ought to give a party ample time to go up the umbilical, locate the Carmel sisters on the surface of Quake, and bring them back here. I assume that you have no bad tidal problems here, even at midsummer?"

"Slight tides," I said. "Nothing to worry about."

My mind was still engaged on Rebka's last words. Up the umbilical, cross to Quake, pick up the girls and back over to Egg—just like that! He had no idea what he was proposing. I had been there, and I knew. He saw my expression, but he misinterpreted it.

"We do have sufficient time, don't we?" he said.

"If we start at once, we may," I replied. "Even so, it would be touch and go. Quake gets less and less predictable the closer we get to summertide maximum. This is the busiest time of the year for me, trying to make sure that we get the mining operations all closed down and packed up the umbilical for the summer."

He ignored that, too. "The party ought to be a small one," he said. "It must have an experienced man, someone who has been on Quake before for the summer."

He turned to Wethel, who was looking at him with horror. "Governor, do you know anyone on the planet who has had summer experience of Quake?"

Klaus Wethel's face turned red—he had never learned how to lie, which is curious when you think that he had reached the position of Governor.

"I'm afraid not, Dr. Rebka," he said, looking anywhere except in my direction. "No one makes summer trips to Quake."

"Thanks, Klaus ,"I said. "But it's not necessary." I thought again of the happy young faces in the ID packs, and the images of the Carmel twins were overlain with Amy's smile. I turned to Rebka.

"So far as I am aware, Councilman, only one person on Egg has made more than one trip to Quake during summer maximum."

I suppose you don't get to be Sector Moderator without a lot of brains, and you don't get on the Species Protection Council without other qualities as well. Rebka was too sharp for his own good, and he had read something else out of my tone of voice that I didn't know had been in there. He gave me a strange look from those steady grey eyes.

"And how many times have you made that trip, Captain Mira?"

"Three." I took a deep breath. I don't think that I looked down at my hands, but maybe I moved them or something. Rebka was staring at them, at the shiny pink of rebuilt skin and scar tissue. I wanted to put them behind my back.

"I was there five years ago," I said at last. "And I also made visits there four years ago and three years ago."

And since then, I felt like saying, with the help of people like Klaus Wethel I have managed to find other ways to control my misery. But I didn't say that—I had never said it to anyone. In Rebka's case, I'm not sure that it mattered. He had such strong antennae for other people's emotions that I felt he was reading everything out of me anyway.

"I think perhaps you have been there too much already," he said after a few moments. He looked across at Wethel. "Wouldn't you agree, Governor?"

Klaus looked at him gratefully. "I agree completely, Councilman. I do not think that Captain Mira ought to risk another trip. Last time he was very lucky to escape with his life."

That was a matter of opinion.

"I'm going," I said. I stood up. "There will be danger on Quake, and I at least have a good idea where it will come from. But the party should be kept small: I, and my second-in-command. He has not been there at midsummer maximum, but he knows Quake well."

Rebka stood up too. I should have known what was coming.

"No," he said simply. "I cannot permit anyone else to usurp my duties. I must go also." He turned to Wethel. "Captain Mira and I will make the trip. I know you are feeling that you must volunteer too, but I will not accept that. When we return, you and I must spend more time together. The fears you felt when Captain Mira opened the dome are curable. I will show you how to do it."

So he had seen that too, despite his own instinctive reaction to the first sight of Quake in the sky. I wondered how much else he had seen that I thought was hidden.

"I will need a few minutes to prepare myself," went on Rebka. "Then we can go as soon as you like. No arguments," he added, seeing that I was about ready to speak again. "It is my duty, remember, to follow the Carmel sisters,
wherever
that may happen to lead."

I suddenly realized that Rebka was also a driven man. Into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell—it didn't matter where, if his duty told him to go there. I nodded without speaking, and he turned and walked quickly from the dome.

Klaus Wethel was still sitting in his chair. He showed no sign of leaving with Rebka.

"No need to stick around here, Klaus." I knew he would rather be back on Cloudside. "Why don't you head back?"

He stood up and came over to stand directly in front of me. "Marco, you have a chance that you may never get again. Don't miss it."

That was a bad sign. Klaus Wethel never called me by my first name unless he was feeling very uncomfortable. I looked up at him—he was about five centimeters taller than me—and tried to look puzzled.

"Chance for what?"

"Don't act dumb, Marco." His face was getting red again. "You'll probably not meet another Sector Moderator—especially one who is on the Protection Council—in your life. If anybody can sort you out, he can."

"Sorry." I turned around and started out of the room. "There's nothing that Rebka can do for me. Nothing that I want him to do for me, either."

I don't think I lie any better than Klaus Wethel. But I'm not the Governor of Egg, so I don't usually need to. And if I do lie, I hope that my face doesn't go red. I wondered how skilled a Sector Moderator had to be at carefully calculated misstatement. From the look of Rebka, he could do anything that he chose to.

I resolved to watch myself very closely in the Days ahead.

There was more preparation than Rebka had expected. It took nearly two Days—fifteen Earth hours—before we were ready to go over to the foot of the umbilical. Even on Quakeside, the heat was steadily rising. Not enough to be more than slightly uncomfortable, but it was a taste of what was coming.

We took a hover-car over to the umbilical. It would have been quicker to use an air-car, but I wanted Rebka to get used to piloting the hovercraft. I didn't think he would need that skill when we were on Quake, but it's better to prepare for everything.

As we were on our way, noon of the third Day arrived. Rebka watched in fascination as Eta-Cass A swept behind Quake for the midday eclipse, then back out again about forty minutes later.

"Why doesn't it get dark?" he asked. "There can't be much refraction from Quake's atmosphere. It ought to be like another night, but a short one."

"Not at this time of year." I pointed over to the west, which was the first side of Egg to come back to sunlight after the noon eclipse. "You can't see it now because of the cloud cover over there, but Eta-Cass B is above the horizon. Almost ten billion kilometers away from here, but it gives off plenty enough light to throw a shadow when the weather is clear. It never gets dark on Quakeside at this time of year. It won't be dark on Quake, either—there's not much cloud there, except for ash and smoke at midsummer max."

Rebka nodded and continued his tentative manipulation of the car controls. While he did so, I had a chance to look over the records that he had handed to me. They showed the reconstruction of the sequence of events on Delta Pavonis Four that had led to the deaths of the last two lodges of Zardalu—part facts, part Rebka's own deductions.

The more I saw, the less likely it seemed that the Carmel sisters had committed an intentional crime. The Zardalu were big, slow amphibians. They looked like scaly beavers, and they spent their whole lives down by the rivers, damming them and making their complex lodges. From the look of some of the structures, they had a good claim to intelligence. I could recognize cantilevered bridges, all made from the native wood.

That seemed to be part of the problem. With its high silicon content, the xylem of the trees of Delta Pav Four was more like tough, sandy rock than the woods we have on Egg. To chew through that, the Zardalu had developed big, strong teeth, which from the position in their heavy jaws gave them an aggressive, savage look. All human experience with them suggested that they were gentle and herbivorous. But they certainly looked fierce.

According to Rebka's analysis, the Carmel twins had landed very close to the Zardalu colony, and settled in for the night. The Zardalu had come over to look at them, out of sheer curiosity. That was the other problem. The Zardalu were nocturnal—and the Carmel sisters must have awakened to the sight of a circle of grinning jaws, with those grey, razor-edged teeth.

I could imagine that might produce a strong reaction in anyone, even if they had been assured by the life-forms directory that Delta Pav Four had no species dangerous to humans. But it ought not to have led to a blind use of the construction laser, blamed by Rebka as the instrument for the killing. I rubbed at my chin and laid the report down on the hover-car seat.

"I can see how your reconstruction might work, but I still don't understand what put the two women into such a blind panic. Surely they would have come to their senses after a second or two?"

Rebka did not answer for a moment. He was staring out of the front of the car, to where the umbilical was now rising ahead of us. I have grown used to it, but I can still remember my own first sight of it. From the pole of Egg, it rose vertically upward like the trunk of a giant metal tree. Up to infinity, to the point where it became invisible against the sky. At the base it was about forty meters across, and there was no perceptible taper to it as it disappeared from view. Actually, only the load-bearing cable was tapered, and the drive mechanism and power cables dominated the appearance. Above our heads, at the exact center of the rising umbilical, Quake hung in the sky. I noticed that even at noon eclipse the surface was not dark. Already there were the first signs of volcanic activity there, as the tides rose in strength.

Rebka finally managed to get his attention back to the business of driving the hover-car. He gunned the forward motor and took a second to glance around at me.

"I couldn't understand why the women would have been so panicked, either," he said. "Look farther back—go on through the records, all the way to their childhood. That ought to give you some idea why I'm confident that we are looking at pure accident—and panic. But I can't prove that unless we can get them back to Earth for trial and deep testing."