The Infinity Link (25 page)

After a time, there was a shimmering disturbance in space, off to one side. Someone else was entering the link. Fogelbee. Jonders finally lost control of his feelings. It happened quickly; before he could catch it, his anger erupted in a cloud of ruddy-colored vapor. (You won,) he growled. (I hope you're pleased.)

Fogelbee was a dark, vertical distortion in the clarity of the emerald space. He twisted silently for a moment, and then snapped, (Keep your emotions out of this. We have a job to do.)

Jonders felt rage burning within him, but he knew that in this case Fogelbee was right; and he stoppered his feelings. Fogelbee was not so practiced. When Jonders's anger cleared, there remained a grumbling and shaking of the air around Fogelbee, signs of his own irritation and defensiveness. Jonders ignored the disturbance and brought his concentration back to bear on the stream of information coming to him from deep space. (It's all within limits, so far,) he reported coldly. (It may be going faster than we expected.)

He scanned to the limits of visibility, observing the passage of several cometlike sparks across the horizon. The particles of light flared as they curved inward through the filtering aurora, and flashed forward into his eyes. Images flickered around him of complex geometries folding into place, polyhedrons and star-shaped lattices fitting together and rotating in space, unfolding in one dimension and refolding in another. Jonders judged more by the
feel
of what he was seeing than by rehearsed pattern recognition. If something went wrong, he would know, though he was not sure he could do anything to stop it.

Time passed. He spoke occasionally with Fogelbee, who came and went from the link, and twice with Marshall on voice-only; otherwise, he was left to himself. He lost any reliable sense of how long he had been in the link, watching and waiting. He was occupied with certain readings from the computer when another voice called to him, faintly at first, the words garbled.

(I'm having trouble hearing you,) he said, trying to adjust the link to improve reception.

(Are—Bill? Hear—Homebase?) said a scratchy voice.

Stunned, Jonders shouted, (David?) He had thought it was a voice from somewhere in the control pit. (David Kadin? Can you hear me?)

More clearly, but still with some quaver, Kadin's voice echoed across to him. (Yes—now—I can hear you without difficulty. I am—slightly unclear—of my present condition. Was the transmission successful?)

Jonders replied with great relief. A certain amount of disorientation was expected; but thank Heaven that Kadin was alive and speaking. (How do you feel?) he asked. (Can you describe your surroundings?)

(Feel? I have some difficulties—but certain memories become clear as I speak. I remember sleeping—and being tested. Am I correct?)

(Indeed. You're recovering already,) Jonders said. (Do you sense the presence of a welcoming program, helping you adjust?)

(Yes. Its name is Mother Program. It is working with me as I speak.)

(Mother Program,) Jonders whispered, laughing. Mozy's name had stuck. He wished he could see Kadin now, but there was just a voice echoing across the gridded space, and soon the ship's transmission cycle would end. (Kadin, please say hello to Mother Program for me,) was all he could think of to say; and he felt foolish being caught without words, so he began to ask—
Are you alone with Mother Program, or is there any sign of Mozy?
—but he cut himself off before the words were formed. There was no telling who else might be listening; and why burden Kadin with that now? (Do you still read me clearly, David?)

(Very.)

(Can you execute your self-test program?)

(Self-test? Yes—)

For the next few moments, Jonders heard nothing from Kadin, but against the emerald sky of his space, reflected on the emerald floor, he saw the flicker of laser beams assuring him that something was happening. . ..

(FIVE SECONDS TO CUTOFF.)

He was startled to hear the voice of Mother Program, reminding him that the transmission cycle was ending. Kadin, is it working or not? he wondered anxiously. (David?) he said softly. No, let him work. He seems solid, stable; trust your intuition. But intuition wasn't what counted here; any of a thousand things could have gone wrong in his reassembly, or in the transmission itself, and only the test programs would reveal that.

(David?) he repeated, despite himself.

Mother Program gave him the one-second warning, and he listened in vain for a sign from Kadin, and then the air surrounding him suddenly became still and clear, and he knew that the link had ended. There was nothing, really, for him to do in the link until the next cycle; but he remained where he was, surveying his domain, thinking of Kadin and Mozy and wishing that there were some way to speed the recharging process.

There wasn't, he knew. One couldn't hurry tachyons.

Starlight leaked through the crystal interior in delicate sparkles, twisting and splintering as it penetrated the core of the colony. The colloidal crystal sipped the light, gathering nourishment from each photon, basking, warming itself against the eternal chill. On the colony's exterior, in the night's cold darkness and the hard vacuum of space, temperatures approached absolute zero and molecular activity was almost nonexistent. Within the body, atoms jostled one another in the crystal lattice, electrons flowed, and life maintained itself.

An awareness persisted in the crystalline matrix—a consciousness of sorts—with memory, instincts, perception of events. Light was recognized, and darkness; pinpoint sources of the one grew out of the other, and at intervals a larger, brighter, and hotter source of light bathed the colony with its rays for a time and passed on. Warmth was recognized, stretching itself thin during the long night—when energy grew scarce, memory sluggish, and time itself seemed to pool and freeze—and flowing back in a tide as the brighter light returned, providing renewal, rejuvenation, a feast of bliss—until in the moments of greatest warmth the lattice began to tremble, to quiver, and thought and memory stirred in a delirious fever. There was an awareness of sound, vibrations in the bedrock—the musical creaking of supercooled ice crystals expanding and contracting, and stone fracturing in the shifting temperatures of the diurnal cycle; or meteoroid concussions racking the lonely little world as it journeyed about its sun. There was an awareness of time's flow, creeping forward during periods of stress and hardship, or bubbling along in a rush when warmth and fever took hold.

And there was an awareness of something odd happening.

It was normal for certain echoes to reverberate in its core for years, mingling with new vibrations to form a kind of dim, resonant symphony. It might have been the rarified thunder of meteoroid impact, echoing, or the groan of shifting rock. This, however, was different. There was no movement or felt vibration accompanying the sound; its source was unknown.

No referent existed in memory for the confused feelings that overcame the colony-being—or for the songlike whispers that disturbed the world in the nighttime dark, in the stiff, aching cold of deepest night when usually the world was most silent. It was almost as if . . .

No. A thought had emerged that perhaps the colony was not alone; perhaps elsewhere in this world lived another mind, another awareness, another consciousness. But such thoughts had no place, no reason for being.

And yet . . . these sounds had echoed through much of the long night, arousing curiosity, and with it something not quite like fear. It was as though something were calling to the colony—singing, beckoning.

It was incomprehensible . . .

It made no sense at all. Unless . . .

No. There was no "unless." There could be no explanation, except that the ghostly sound
was
, and though it was heard and felt within the colony, surely it was coming from far outside, from deeper in the darkness than even the colony knew . . .

And it was growing stronger.

The braking jets sputtered. Mark Adams squinted at the navigational panel, released the control stick, and peered out the portside window of the service bus. A spindly arc of metal floated nearby in space, a sliver of gleaming silver against the blackness. Held in position by a network of guy wires, it was one of nearly a thousand components of the field-generating loop in the tachyon storage ring—and one of thirty-six on the schedule for test and inspection today.

Adams felt for his mike. "Tachylab. Mike-six-three. I'm at unit number four-three-nine. Beginning test." The remote manipulators clicked on in response to his touch, and he maneuvered the external test unit into position alongside the thin metal structure. The alignment and continuity tests were largely automatic; Adams watched the numbers flicker across the monitor as the results streamed into magnetic storage. When the scan was completed satisfactorily, he pulled the test unit back into rest position and nudged the control stick. The jets popped, and the bus drifted toward the next section of the loop, winking in space a short distance away.

Forty-five minutes passed, and five more tests, before another maintenance craft drifted into view from beyond a large cluster of transformers. "Got you in sight, Mike-five-seven," Adams said, giving his bus a kick in the appropriate direction. "Ready to take a break?"

Robert Johanson's voice returned an acknowledgment. Rendezvous and docking took only a few minutes. The second bus grew larger alongside M63 as Adams lined up the docking marks, then the hatches thunked together. As soon as he had a clear board, Adams unbuckled, twisted out of his seat, and gave himself a shove toward the rear of the compartment. The mating controls cycled, and the hatches of both craft slid open. Adams floated headfirst through the connecting tunnel and poked his head into the cramped cabin of the other bus. The air was warm and stale.

"Come on in, if you can find room," Johanson said. Adams turned to orient himself. Johanson was still in his seat, but had swiveled around toward the hatch.

Adams drew his legs into the compartment, rotated ninety degrees to right himself, and settled alongside the starboard instrument bank, one hand hooked around a handle to keep himself from drifting. He could almost feel Johanson's breath as he faced him at close quarters. "We probably should keep this short," he said. He glanced around the cabin. "Is it safe to talk?" Johanson nodded. "All right. What did John have to say?"

Johanson scratched under the collar of his shirt. "He thinks we should go public," he answered.

Adams stared. "Public? You mean, as in, blow the lid off?"

"That's right. Put the whole story out. Tell everything we know."

Adams snorted. He started to drift, then pulled himself back.

"What's that mean?" Johanson asked quietly.

Adams shook his head in incomprehension. "Go public to whom? And with what? We have nothing solid yet."

"I guess that's what we would have to decide."

"I guess we would. Like which one of us is going to make this inspired public statement. Or do we all put our heads in the noose together?"

"We could go to prison for what we're doing, as it is," Johanson said mildly.

"If we get caught. Personally, I'd rather not be hung for either a sheep
or
a lamb," Adams said.

Johanson spread his hands. "What would you suggest—another tap?"

"Not likely," Adams said. "Not until we figure a way to beat the system." They had come all too close to being discovered, the last time they tapped the
Father Sky
link, when an unsuspected security trip had cut off the signal in midcommunication. Adams had removed the tap only minutes before the deputy manager appeared to see what was going on—and had (he hoped) succeeded in misleading the investigators into believing that the mishap was a hardware glitch. "John might at least have told us that the military lab designed the security system," Adams growled, remembering the incident with displeasure.

"Maybe he didn't know."

"He knew. He just didn't think. For a brilliant man, John can be incredibly stupid sometimes."

"Well, none of us is exactly experienced at this," Johanson said defensively.

Adams shrugged. "What else does John have in mind?"

"I don't think he really knows, except that he thinks there's no point in this if we're not going to get the information to the public. And he thinks time is growing short."

"Because of the transmission? Isn't he overreacting a little? The spacecraft's still a quarter of a light-year away."

"Yes, but he thinks—and I agree—that if that last transmission established a command intelligence on
Father Sky
, and if rendezvous is coming up soon, then things could happen quickly—no matter far away they are."

"Maybe then we'd really have something to go public with."

"And it might also be too late." Johanson scowled. "John's paranoid about the military's involvement."

"We can't stop that."

"No, but we could make people aware that it's happening."

Adams made a sucking noise through his teeth. "It seems to me," he said, "that you have to consider what we can gain, and what we're likely to lose. If we go public, we will almost certainly lose our jobs, and therefore our ability to gain any more useful information. We could also be convicted on about a dozen counts of conspiracy, violation of security, and conceivably even treason. I don't know what the penalties are for those things, and I don't want to know."

"You're looking at the worst—"

"All right, let's look at the best case, then. What could we gain? We could tell the public—assuming anybody cares—that the military is involved, or might be involved, in a space probe that hardly anyone has heard of anyway. We could tell them that
Father Sky
is not out there exploring the cometary halo, it's out there investigating a source of tachyon emissions. Beyond that we don't know what it's doing, because we just relay the communications, we aren't privy to them." He paused.

"We know damn well it's more than just a bloody source of tachyons," Johanson said, fuming. "If we get across to people that it's—"