Radiant (19 page)

Festina looked sour. "Kill a starship's computer systems and the people inside won't stay healthy for long."

"True," Cohen admitted, "you couldn't go shooting indiscriminately. Still, an EMP weapon would be nice to have in the arsenal—to give more tactical options. Too bad the cannons weren't practical at normal space-engagement distance. We needed something with a range of one hundred thousand kilometers; EMP guns that big took way too much power. The idea's been shelved a few decades, till we get better energy-production technology."

"So maybe," Tut said, "the Fuentes had solved the technical problems in building EMP guns. Maybe they built an automated EMP defense system. And even though it's been sixty-five hundred years, maybe the systems still work. They could have been dormant, but somehow the Unity reactivated them. Next thing you know, zap: the survey teams are EMP'd to rat shit. Their equipment went into meltdown, but the people are all just fine."

Cohen turned toward him. "You think that's why they've gone incommunicado? Their communicators have just gone dead?"

"Could be."

"How'd they get out a Mayday?" Cohen asked.

"Someone might have cobbled together a distress signal from spare parts—bits and pieces untouched by the EMP. No weapon is one hundred percent effective, right? Especially if the EMP was tightly focused. And the newest camp would have the most spare parts on hand, so it makes sense they'd be the quickest to build a makeshift signal."

Tut had a point. I didn't honestly believe the threat on Muta was as simple as leftover EMP guns... but Tut's scenario
was
possible.

While I pondered the point, the vidscreen came back to life: a still shot of the mess hall interior. The table and empty chairs. Apparent smoke in the air. "All right," Festina said. "I've backtracked
Pistachio's
record of the probe's data. This is the visual a moment before the probe went dead."

With the image frozen on the screen, we could notice more details. On the table, plates and bowls contained half-eaten portions of food: fruit, fiber-mush, and protein power-crunch. (The Unity loved to combine nutrients into artificial concoctions with the texture of gruel or hardtack.) A cup of juice had toppled over; after thirty-six hours on the tabletop, the spill looked dry enough to be sweet and sticky, but no insects were taking an interest. No insects on the food either. Why? Because the mess hall had been shut up tight and insectproof until our probe went through the window? Because Mutan insects didn't like the taste of Earthling food? Or because something had killed all the insects that should have been swarming over a meal left out for a day and a half?

One thing was sure: the picture showed no people. I looked at the empty chairs, half expecting to see little heaps of clothing—as if Team Esteem had been vaporized between one bite and the next. But no. The twelve chairs were pushed back from the table, the way they'd be if all the surveyors had run outside. Maybe the Unity folk had heard a noise; they'd thrown down their knives and forks, then raced to investigate.

At least, that's how it looked. Suppose that was how it happened. Then what? If the Unity teams just got EMP'd into radio silence, why did the mess hall still look like the
Mary Celeste?
If the people of Team Esteem had survived, wouldn't they come back to the mess hall eventually? Wouldn't they finish their breakfast, or at least clean their dirty dishes? Unity surveyors loved routine. If something unexpected happened, they'd deal with it as quickly as possible, then try to get back to their normal schedule. But it looked like they'd abandoned the mess hall the previous morning and hadn't been back since.

"What's the smoke?" Ubatu asked, looking at the picture. "Is something on fire?"

"Could be," Festina said. "The IR readings showed a large heat source in the mess hall. If someone left a stove burning in the kitchen—a gas stove, unaffected by EMPs—it could have been blazing away for thirty-six hours. Eventually, all that heat might have set fire to something. Hence the high IR readings. And the smoke."

But she didn't sound happy with the explanation. I didn't like it either—I didn't trust pat answers.

Li had said nothing through all this. His life force suggested he was trying to invent ways to turn this business to his advantage. "So what's the decision on this?" he asked. "Go for a landing? Send more probes?"

"Don't have more probes," Tut said.
"Pistachio
only stores four. We could manufacture new ones, but that'd take hours." He shook his head. "Can't waste that kind of time on a Class One rescue mission."

Festina gave him a look. "A few hours building new probes is nothing compared to the time we might waste searching blindly on the ground." She sighed. "But if we sent more probes, they'd probably just get EMP'd again without telling anything new."

"So you're landing?" Cohen asked.

Festina took a deep breath, then nodded. "I don't see any alternative. If the problem is just some automated EMP system left over from the Fuentes, there'll be survivors down there to be rescued. I doubt if it's that simple..." She glanced in my direction—maybe thinking about the Balrog and why it wanted to hitchhike inside me to Muta. "...but we have no excuse to give up the rescue, and no way to see what's going on without sending someone in the flesh."

"Once you're down there," Ubatu said, "how do you get back up? Won't your equipment get EMP'd too?"

"Presumably," Festina replied. "But we'll go down by Sperm-tail, and that can't be disrupted by EMPs. The Sperm-field is its own little universe, impervious to outside forces. Once it's in place, a nuke couldn't budge it."

Before Tut and I said anything, Festina gave us a warning look. What she'd told Ubatu was technically true—a Sperm-field like the one around
Pistachio
was indeed a pocket universe immune to electromagnetic pulses and most other natural energies. But Festina had skipped past an important step with the phrase "once it's in place."

Here's what she didn't say. The Sperm-field around
Pistachio
had a long flapping tail—a
very
long tail, stretching as much as ten thousand kilometers.
Pistachio
could plant that tail in the middle of Camp Esteem, like the bottom of a long thin tornado. We Explorers could ride down inside the tail, sliding safely through the funnel cloud all the way to the ground. Just one problem: we needed to plant the tail where we wanted to go. We had to anchor the lower end at our desired destination... and the only way to do that was with a small electronic "anchor" that grabbed the tail like a magnet and locked the Sperm-field in place. Once the tail latched onto the anchor, the anchor became part of the pocket universe and therefore safe from EMPs... but until that time, the anchor device could easily have its innards turned to slag by a single modest-sized pulse.

How could we send down an anchor when we'd lost our four probe missiles? Each of the probes had carried an anchor that could be deposited where we wanted to land; but with the probes knocked out, and their anchors probably ruined, what did Festina think she was going to do?

The look on her face said she had a plan. I tried to read her life force, but couldn't get anything definite. Either I didn't have enough experience interpreting auras, or Festina was better at hiding her thoughts than people like Ubatu.

"Captain," Festina said, shutting down the Explorer console, "it's time the landing party got suited up. Please prepare to drop the tail."

"And the anchor?" Cohen knew perfectly well there could be no landing till the tail was locked in place.

"I'll notify you when it's ready." Festina stood up. "Come on, Explorers. Let's get this done."

Dukkha [Pali]: Literally "out of kilter" like an unbalanced wheel, but used symbolically to describe "out of kilter" emotions: anything from acute suffering to persistent dissatisfaction to a vague but gnawing sense that things aren't right. The Buddha's first truth is that our lives are filled with dukkha. Even if we are sometimes happy, the state is only temporary—no one dodges dukkha forever.

I could say that getting into a tightsuit is a complicated process: the heavy fabric must be pulled into place, the seams must be sealed perfectly, the interior must be inflated to an exact pressure, seventeen tests must be performed on air supply, temperature regulation, comm units, heads-up displays...

Or I could say that getting into a tightsuit is a simple process: you stand on two raised foot blocks in a robing chamber while eight robotic limbs assemble the suit around you and perform diagnostics as they go along. Once that's finished (including triple checks on known points of vulnerability), you get bombarded with selected wavelengths of radiation aimed at exterminating all terrestrial microbes on the suit's exterior. This mass kill is important when visiting unexplored worlds, to avoid contaminating the biosphere with Earth-born bacteria. For landing on Muta, however, the sanitizing rad bath was superfluous—Unity humans had lived on the planet for years, and throughout that time they'd lived in direct contact with the environment. Muta was already irreparably tainted with whatever microorganisms the survey teams had carried on their skins, in their lungs, and along their digestive tracts.

So our suits would do nothing to keep Muta pristine—that was already a lost cause. The suits wouldn't help
us
much either... not if they got EMP'd. One good pulse, and the suits' electrical circuits would stop working. Would anything stay operational? Yes. The air tanks were purely mechanical, working with simple valves rather than sophisticated gadgetry; they'd be good for six hours, EMP or no EMP. All other systems depended on electronic controls. We might find ways to jury-rig workarounds, but that wasn't something to count on. We had to expect a completely unpowered mission.

Then again, if losing our electronics was the only thing that went wrong, we'd be getting off lucky.

Pistachio
had only two robing chambers. Therefore, Festina and I got suited up first. When we emerged, Tut had stripped down to his underwear and was attempting to dress a chair in his uniform. He asked, "Do either of you carry matches?"

As a matter of fact I did—I'd stuffed my belt pouches with every emergency supply I could think of. But I just said, "Get suited up, Tut."

"Yes'm, Mom." He slid off his shorts, laid them carefully on the seat of the chair, and walked naked into the robing chamber.

Festina watched him go. After he disappeared, she murmured, "It's gold."

"Yes," I said. "I noticed in Zoonau."

"I made a point of not looking." Festina took a breath. "Gold is an excellent electrical conductor."

"True."

"If he goes down to Muta and gets hit with a big electromagnetic pulse... do you think..."

"Ooo. That's a thought I didn't need inside my head." For some reason I added, "I'm a virgin. I don't think about such things."

"Oh. Sorry." Festina's life force colored like a blush—the first time I'd seen anything in her aura except strength and composure. "Well, no point standing around. Let's get ready."

She left the room almost at a run.

Usually, sperm-tail landings start in a ship's rear transport bay. This time, however, Festina escorted me to the shuttle bay, where Li's shuttlecraft had been rolled into takeoff position. A crew member was putting away a power cord she must have used to top up the shuttle's batteries. "We're going down in this?" I asked Festina.

"That's the plan," she said.

"What happens if the shuttle gets EMP'd?"

"You mean
when
the shuttle gets EMP'd." She smiled. "Fortunately, Technocracy shuttles are flightworthy even without power—one of those safety features required by the League of Peoples. So no matter what our altitude when we get pulsed, we can glide the rest of the way. I've already plotted a course that takes us to Camp Esteem."

"Gliding is one thing," I said. "Landing is another. Without power, a shuttle can't VTOL. We'll need a landing strip—long, straight, and flat."

"Or else we'll need parachutes." Festina grinned. "We'll jump when we're over the camp. The shuttle will keep going at least another ten kilometers before it crashes." She patted the craft's hull affectionately. "It'll make one hell of an impact, but we don't have to worry about explosions. These things just crash without burning—another nice safety feature."

"Have you told Ambassador Li you're going to sacrifice his pride and joy?"

"I've informed him that pursuant to regulations covering Class One missions, I can commandeer any resources I consider essential for the mission's success... including civilian shuttlecraft."

"When he heard that, Li must have hemorrhaged."

"Actually, he took it pretty well. He just gaped for a second, then said, 'Very well, if you think it's necessary.' " Festina rolled her eyes. "When we get home, the greedy bastard will bill the navy twice what the shuttle's worth. Then the navy will charge the Unity three times more. Rescue missions for alien governments are big moneymakers for the fleet."

"I don't suppose we Explorers see any of that money."

Festina laid her hand on my arm. "Glad you're keeping your sense of humor. Let's go inside."

The shuttle's interior was still large and luxurious, with seating for twelve and what I assumed was a gourmet galley at the back (though the door to that area was closed). Each of the twelve seats now held a shimmering mirror-sphere the size of a soccer ball. I recognized the spheres as stasis fields: pocket universes like the Sperm-field surrounding the ship, except that the mirror-sphere universes only had three macrodimensions instead of four. Time didn't exist in a stasis field. The outer universe might age a billion years, but anything in stasis would remain as it was, caught in an instant that never advanced so much as a nanosecond.

Stasis fields couldn't take much physical damage; a strong sharp blow from the outside would pop them like a soap bubble. But they
were
immune to EMPs, which simply washed past the surface of the field without affecting the contents. Stasis was perfect for protecting equipment we didn't want to get zapped during our descent to Muta.