In the event Maura guessed what he’d done and simply accepted his reassurance the food was safe. They ate silently, both absorbed in their own thoughts, until suddenly Maura threw her knife and fork clattering and spinning onto her silver tray.
‘We can’t allow them to destroy the Thiosh,’ she exclaimed. ‘Humans have ruined the culture of every native life they’ve ever found. They’ve annihilated whole populations and devastated their homelands. We’ve got to stop it happening again. I mean it, Geoff!’
He was fascinated by her green eyes, now as bright as laser pointers. She took his hand and led him under the arch into the shadow of the bedchamber.
‘Am I too emotional, d’you think?’
‘No, I worry more about people who hide their emotions.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I tend to see things in black and white, figuratively I mean.’
‘So you’re good at maths?’
‘Hm, apparently. I usually solve problems by the inspection method.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I look at the problem and see the answer.’
‘Aw, rapid! I wish I could do that.’
‘Huh, I don’t know. I always have trouble explaining how I get to the solution.’
‘But you find it difficult to recognise people’s emotions?’
‘Very often, but I always know how you’re feeling,’ he lied.
‘That’s because I call a tusker a tusker,’ said Maura, laughing.
‘Pardon?’
‘A tusker is a tool for cutting peat. I used to make slabs of the stuff for my grandad’s stove. He was into a primitive lifestyle.’
‘Oh, right, you say what you think. That’s what I like about you.’
‘So you do like me, do you?’ she said, looking away.
‘No, it’s more than that. I love you, Maura.’ She turned and they met each other’s eyes. Geoff analysed what he’d just said. He had surprised himself, but he could find nothing wrong with his words.
Maura slipped off her silk dressing gown and stood silhouetted by the starlight. ‘I’ve made it easy for you. You don’t have to use telekinesis now.’
‘Can you read my thoughts?’
‘I think so, but I don’t need telepathy.’
Geoff walked forward into the darkness. Gentle sensual hands removed his bathrobe. Unseen fingertips stroked his chest and he whimpered helplessly as they slipped down to his waist. Her body felt hot on his skin as she moved against him. Geoff cried out ecstatically, knowing full well he could be heard by OPDEO eavesdroppers.
The following day the delegation assembled in the lobby. Their guide led them into the conference chamber, now reordered with rows of seating in a conventional layout – except for one thing. They were astounded to find a thick glass tank lifted high on hydraulic jacks in the centre of a stage. Inside a dark streamlined shape circled slowly.
Maura gasped when she realised its significance. ‘Mother of God, it’s a feckin’ goldfish bowl.’
‘Did the Saazat know it would be like this?’ Geoff asked. ‘It’s great to see a Thiosh close up, but I don’t like the way he’s been put on parade.’
‘Neither do I. But he’s agreed to be here to negotiate a non-aggression pact. He’ll try to do that no matter what it takes.’
‘How’s he going to communicate? Is he going to write something on their computers?’
‘I suppose he could, but he wants to negotiate through us. The telepathists have agreed Kai should act as the Saazat’s spokesman.’
‘You could do that, couldn’t you?’ Geoff would have liked Maura to have a leading role.
‘Maybe, but it’s better this way. It means I can speak freely in support of the Thiosh. I wouldn’t be able to project to the Saazat without colouring my thoughts with my own feelings.’
General Flannery entered the conference chamber and all the delegates took their places on seats arranged in a horseshoe around the glass tank. The babble of excited voices died away, and the general began to speak.
‘Good morning, Saazat Mettravar, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to express my great pleasure that today we are honoured to have with us the leader of the indigenous life form here on Europa, as well as two leading scientists from our Federation, and three Khitan celestonauts representing the Empire. I’m sure that their presence will lead to an unprecedented interchange of information that will greatly enhance our mutual understanding.
‘The Unidome was constructed some ten years ago, initially by robots. Each had been meticulously sterilised to ensure that no biological organisms were brought from Earth. As you may know, Hesperian law prohibits contamination of the natural habitat or possible life forms at extraterrestrial locations. The Federation has an unparalleled record for undertaking research and exploration of celestial bodies, while minimising any conceivable side effects arising from our presence. Moreover, before any project to relocate resources from a planet or asteroid is authorised, it must first be demonstrated that there is a strong positive cost benefit for the Solar System as a whole.
‘It is with this background that I sincerely apologise to the Saazat that a Thiosh machine was inadvertently damaged when it was involved in a collision with a Hesperian high-speed vessel. Please accept my assurance that this was a pure accident. We would be most honoured to carry out repairs to this machine if he were to forward the design details to us. We would regard this as a sign of trust and friendship, and an opportunity for us to demonstrate our goodwill. Could I ask the translator please, if the Saazat is able to agree to this symbolic gesture?’
Geoff felt uneasy. It was as if his skin had become shrink-wrapped. He watched Kai as he sat with his head in his hands. Minutes passed. The tension in the air was palpable.
At last Kai stood up to speak. ‘The Saazat thanks you, General, for making your intentions so clear. But he would like to ask a question, please. Why did you deliberately torpedo a Thiosh maintenance machine?’
The assembly erupted in uproar. Flannery signalled to a commandant standing on the balcony and about a hundred Securopa paramilitary troops rushed into the conference chamber brandishing ion guns. They surrounded the Thiosh delegates and closed in. Huang crouched low and then charged. He released a volley of punches and kicks, and the leading Securopa troops were scattered like fragments from a grenade. Whump! Whump! The blasts resonated through the dome. A Securopa trooper holding Leona crumpled to the ground, shot by his own side.
Geoff saw a group of oversized soldiers come forward to seize Kai and Maura. If they want a roughhouse they can have it. A hundred kilograms up the scrotum – that’ll teach ‘em. ‘Take that, you mother fuckers!’
Maura looked hard at Geoff as she stepped over the soldiers’ bodies. Was she pleased or shocked by his actions and language? He couldn’t tell, and had no time to think. He put his arm round her and hastened her to the side of the conference chamber. With their backs to the wall it would be easier to defend themselves.
Mettravar was swimming in circles at increasing speed. The lights flickered and switched to emergency LEDs. The air became very cold and wreathes of fog rolled over the floor of the dome. Then the hydraulic rams on one side of the tank collapsed. The structure toppled and disintegrated, creating a pressure wave of water filled with shards of glass.
‘We’re splitting up – we’ve got to get to the quay!’ shouted Maura, pointing towards a fire door. A Securopa trooper was grappling with Chen. Geoff socked the soldier under the chin with an invisible punch and pulled the Khitan towards the exit.
‘The Thiosh have cyberattacked,’ Maura told Geoff. ‘Come on, let’s go. The others have gone another way.’
The door was locked at the entrance of the OPDEO Operations Building, but Geoff opened it in seconds. They stopped at the entrance of the cage down to the quay. ‘Can you make the maglev work, Geoff?’ Maura asked.
‘No, not if there isn’t any power. But we can take the stairs. It’s only a kilometre down.’<
br />
They were breathing heavily by the time they reached the entrance to Port Authority quayside. The guards were sitting in the security lodge, staring at the interference pattern on their viz-box screens. They saw Geoff, leapt up from their desks and grabbed their ion guns, only to drop them immediately as if their hands had been burnt.
‘See that – I’ve learnt a new skill,’ said Geoff. Maura shook her head and smiled.
Geoff stared hard at the lock on the lodge door until smoke curled from the door jamb, locking the guards inside. ‘Go through now,’ he told Maura and Chen as he operated the turnstile leading to the water’s edge.
They hurried along the quayside pier but all the berths were empty. Then, without warning, the waters swirled and a structure resembling an extinct biological order on Earth appeared from the depths.
‘Jaysis, they’ve sent a mechanical whale,’ said Maura.
‘Get the uni-net back on line, for fuck’s sake!’ Flannery shouted to his IT chief as he struggled to reboot the system servers.
‘They’ve split up, suh,’ Breckenridge reported. ‘Some of ‘em got away in the Aquila. A Securopa sentry saw it take off. The rest got down to quayside. They overpowered the Port Authority staff and disappeared. They must have been picked up by a Thiosh vessel.’
‘How the hell did they manage that? There was a complete power blackout. How did they operate the airlock? How did they power the cage? What was Securopa doing? Christ, they’re armed, aren’t they?’
‘We’re talkin’ to Securopa now, suh. Quayside Security say they were attacked by a Khitan and two Hesperians, a man and a woman. The officers’ guns became too hot to handle, and then they found themselves locked in. I think they were hypnotised in some way.’
‘Check all the sound recordings from the underwater navigation beacons and launch the hunter-killer subs. And get after the Aquila. Launch the destroyers into sun orbit. They’ve probably gone prograde to get away as far as possible. I want these terrorists – all of them – preferably alive. And I want a full enquiry. What a balls-up!’
Attachment Disorder
Kai felt paralysed by depression. Now Mettravar was dead, he was no longer able to telepathise, either with humans or Thiosh. Conscious of his rank, he couldn’t share his mental distress with Huang. It was only the presence of Leona that kept him going. She instinctively understood his disappointment and gave him encouragement. But she was not an engineer. She could not solve the technical problem which was threatening to bring their escape to an ignominious end. Soon they would be out of fuel, unable even to manoeuvre.
There had been no time for preflight checks when they’d stolen the Aquila from OPDEO’s maintenance bay. Kai had ignited the thrusters for blast-off, burning chemical propellant mixed and vaporised in the combustion chamber. But the liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks were small, only designed to accelerate the ship enough for the main propulsion unit to be brought into service. They’d exceeded the ignition velocity but still the main drive wouldn’t start.
Huang had been studying the system diagrams. ‘I have an idea. There is a heater to vaporise a carbon catalyst, but its supply tank is empty. I think we took the ship before OPDEO had completed its maintenance.’
Kai clasped his forehead. ‘Leona, see if you can track down any comets in the vicinity. They are coated with hydrocarbons.’
She nodded and began to compare recent time-lapse images of stars to look for comets, but without success. After a while, she put that task on hold and began a routine instrument check. She moved around the cabin, gliding without effort with only a faint rattle of her jewellery. But she came to a sudden halt at the Skyscanner. ‘Hey, that’s interesting, there’s a gap where there should be stars. I think something’s blocking the light.’
Kai set the picosecond timer, fired a delaser pulse and watched for a reflection. ‘It is still a long way off,’ he said, checking the delay time. ‘Let us take a closer look.’
Eight hours later they could make out a faint elongated shape on the viz-box screen. ‘It looks like an asteroid,’ said Kai. ‘One of the Trojan family in the same orbit as Jupiter. It has very low albedo, so dark it hardly reflects any light. Perhaps that is why no one has identified it before. But it must be large – it already has a significant gravitational pull. It could be dark because of organic material. We may be in luck.’
Kai put the Aquila in orbit around the asteroid while they scanned the surface for a landing site. ‘Huang, can you take the shuttle down and scoop up some of that surface tar?’
‘It would be my pleasure,’ Huang said, grinning, and he went to change into his flying suit.
Huang reported he’d landed safely. As instructed, he operated a probe to sample the surface material, and relayed the spectrograph to Aquila. The area where the shuttle had landed was coated with a layer of hydrocarbons of surprising complexity. Long polymers, complex cycloalkanes and even proteins were evident.
‘Scoop a few kilograms into your storage bay,’ instructed Kai over the intercom ‘We only need a little as a catalyst. Then come and show us what treasure you have found.’
His task complete, Huang relayed each step of the launch procedure over the intercom. ‘T five and counting; scoop stowed and locked; bay doors closed; launch configuration set . . .’
Leona ticked off each completed activity on her viz-box screen.
‘. . . aux power go; main engine start; 10% power . . . 20 . . . 30 . . . 40 . . .’
Kai felt his pulse quicken.
’50 . . . 60 . . . 70 . . . 80 . . . 90 – engine shut down. Shuttle to Aquila, I am stuck. Please advise me how to get off this lump of shit!’
‘Shut down as many systems as you can to conserve power,’ said Kai, speaking calmly, in accord with his pilot captain training. ‘We will review options and advise.’
He turned to Leona. ‘The surface crust must have given way. The shuttle has either sunk into a gluey compound or something has combined chemically with its support legs. We dare not risk trying to land the Aquila down there. Help me. What are the options?’
‘Could we attach a cable and haul him off?’ she asked.
Kai checked the inventory. ‘It is technically possible, but there is nothing on board with a breaking strain as great as the shuttle’s thruster, and we know that was not strong enough. We have rope, but it is too weak to be of any use.’
‘Is there a way of detaching the landing legs?’
‘Yes, but Huang is not properly equipped for extravehicular activity. Perhaps he could risk it in his flying suit, but he would have to stand on the surface. He could get stuck like the shuttle itself.’
‘Can he blast off with extra power?’
‘He has already tried five times more thrust than he should have needed. If he tries any more he will use up all the fuel he has on board.’
He sat with his head in his hands. I cannot do this anymore. I have lost Chen, and now I have sent Huang into danger. I thought I was infallible but my intuition is as dead as Saazat Mettravar.
Danger in the Deep
Geoff stroked Maura’s hair, his shirt wet where it had absorbed her silent tears. They sat huddled together on a hard bench towards the bows of the robot whale, in an area of living space that looked like a ship’s wardroom. Even though they were travelling underwater, the Thiosh vessel rocked up and down as if it were passing over surface waves. Geoff wasn’t sure if it was the craft’s undulation or his reaction to OPDEO’s attack that was making him feel sick. At least Maura seemed to be soothed by the motion; before long she was fast asleep. To keep his mind off his turbulent stomach, Geoff went to explore the rest of the ‘whale-bot’, as he’d chosen to call the vessel.
He found Chen in a small control room above the bows or, in nautical terms, a bridge. He was studying the instrument data on the viz-box screen in the centre of a console. Geoff looked at the desks and had a strange feeling of déjà vu. Their layout was exactly the same as those in OPDEO’s baths. The screens sho
wed they were currently on auto-control, but Geoff noted they would revert to manual after ten hours. That would give them plenty of time to inspect the whole craft. After that, he would consult Maura about setting a new course.
The whale-bot had evidently been designed as a transport vessel, either for equipment or small robots. As Chen pointed out, there appeared to be many recent modifications, presumably made for the sake of human occupants.
‘Thiosh make whale-bot ready before conference,’ said Chen. ‘How they know we escape?’
‘I wondered about that myself,’ said Geoff. ‘They must have done it as a contingency.’
Chen pointed to the illuminated wall panels. ‘Why do Thiosh need lights? They are blind, I think. They live at bottom of ocean.’
‘You’re right,’ said Geoff. ‘But there may be benefits for their robots to be able to see. It would help them locate and manipulate equipment. Presumably they could have built-in light sensors and interpretation software.’
‘I see small domes on front of boat when we board,’ said Chen. ‘They are like eyes maybe.’
They’d entered the vessel through an airlock at the top of the bot’s head. Chen led Geoff down a ladder and showed him an entrance gate similar to the front of a car ferry, or possibly a mammalian lower jaw. It extended the full width of the whale-bot’s head, providing access for large objects, machines, creatures – Geoff couldn’t guess what the whale-bot’s usual cargo might be.
‘All entrances sealed by two doors, like airlocks,’ said Chen. ‘It is strange Thiosh make whale-bot full of air.’
‘I doubt they did. I think the Thiosh could fill the hold with different gases, or perhaps water,’ said Geoff. ‘There are argon generation units in the service compartment. They’re probably to keep equipment free from corrosion. But, if you look, there are air rebreathing units next to them. My guess is the Thiosh installed them just for us.’
The Hesperian Dilemma Page 8
