Dark as Day

by Charles Sheffield

  They had been speaking in whispers, but suddenly the woman said, in a louder voice, “Look, this is ridiculous. We’re creeping around like burglars. How important do you think this is?”

  “I can only go by what other people have told me. Bat never gets flustered, and he’s never in a hurry. If he says something’s urgent, it has to be really urgent.”

  “Then we should go outside and shout and scream until somebody comes along who can help us find Sebastian Birch. But let me try something before we do that. I left my talk unit back in the work cubicle. May I borrow yours?”

  “It won’t do any good. If Bat doesn’t answer a call from me, I don’t see why he’d take one from you.”

  “You’re right, of course. But I may be able to cheat. The Puzzle Network employs a special access code. It’s for use by Masters’ level only, and I’m not supposed to know it. But I do. At least we’ll find out how important this is. ’Scuse me.”

  Jan had heard enough to be sure that the intruders, whoever they were, had no right to be in Sebastian’s apartment. And they sounded more puzzled than dangerous.

  She opened the bedroom door and said, “Who are you, and what are you doing in a private apartment?”

  The woman was full-figured and apparently in her early twenties, and she went on talking into a wrist unit. But the man, a few years older, swung sharply around and said, “We’re trying to find Sebastian Birch.”

  Jan heard Paul enter the apartment behind her, and it made her feel a good deal more comfortable. She said firmly, “He should be here—where you have absolutely no right to be. What business of yours is it where Sebastian Birch is?”

  “I’m Alex Ligon. This is Milly Wu.”

  “And where is Sebastian?”

  “We have no idea—this place was empty when we arrived. But we wanted—”

  He was interrupted. The woman, Milly Wu, was holding up her hand. Jan heard a man’s voice, thinned to a faint basso rumble by the wrist unit’s small speaker. The woman interpreted. “Bat’s been speaking to Bengt Suomi. Suomi agrees that it’s absolutely imperative to find Sebastian Birch, and keep him under lock and key.”

  “He was under lock and key,” Jan said. “He just completed a delicate medical procedure, and it could have side effects. Are you sure he wasn’t here when you arrived?”

  “Quite positive. How did you know that we were in this apartment?”

  Jan jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “Monitors. No picture when the room is dark, but audio is always active. I heard voices. How did you get into the facility?”

  The man evaded the question. He said, “We were sent here to find Sebastian Birch, because someone thought that he might be dangerous, to himself and maybe to others.”

  He had hit one of Jan’s hot buttons. She exploded. “Dangerous? Sebastian would never harm anyone else—but he might easily hurt himself. My name is Janeed Jannex, this is Paul Marr, and we belong here. We are responsible for Sebastian’s safety. I’ll get an explanation from you two later. But first—”

  Jan looked straight up at the ceiling and did what she should have done before leaving her own bedroom—except that she had been sure that Sebastian was here. She said firmly, “Surveillance on, and thirty-second reporting. I need tracer output. Where is Sebastian Birch?”

  In the few moments of silence that followed she added, more to Paul than to the newcomers, “Ever since the sluicing operation began he’s had a trace generator on him, with round-the-clock automated surveillance. We should be able to track him anywhere he goes.”

  “Sebastian Birch is in Section eighty-two,” a voice said from midair. “He is at Level Zero.”

  “That can’t be right.” Jan lost any residue of calm. “Level zero is the surface. It’s vacuum. If he’s there, he’s dead.”

  “Or he’s in a suit. But he wouldn’t know where the suits are.” Paul turned on Alex, who felt as though he was in a vacuum himself. “Did you two come in that way, from the surface?”

  “No.”

  Jan had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She said, “Sebastian does know where the suits are. He knows because I told him, after I’d been up to the surface and visited you on the Achilles. Some things he remembers perfectly. I bet he’s up there now, staring at Jovian cloud patterns.”

  Paul nodded. “You’re probably right, but we must go up and bring him back. The surface can be dangerous to a novice. We’ll find him easily if the generator is a body implant. The tracer will tell us exactly where he is.”

  He was trying to reassure Jan, but it produced an unexpected reaction. The voice from the wrist unit, now amplified enough in volume to be understood, asked, “Is there any possibility that Sebastian Birch might obtain access to a working ship?”

  “Who the blazes is that?” Paul asked.

  The male intruder said, as though it was supposed to mean something, “That is Rustum Battachariya.” The amplified voice continued, “If there is a way for Sebastian Birch to gain access to a ship, he must be stopped. Under no circumstances can he be allowed to leave Ganymede.”

  “There are hundreds of ships up there on the surface,” Paul said. “A whole fleet of them. Hell, surface access here is right next to a major spaceport.”

  “And Sebastian is an expert pilot—a natural, according to the man who gave us lessons.” Jan spoke to the ceiling again. “Surveillance. Priority report. What are Sebastian Birch’s present actions and location?”

  “Sebastian Birch is moving across the surface at seven kilometers an hour. He is now in Sector eighty-four.”

  “The spaceport sector.” As Paul said those words. Jan shivered. She asked, “Surveillance, how close is he to a ship?”

  “Forty-seven ships in operating condition lie within four hundred meters of his present location.”

  “Do they have crews aboard?”

  “That information is not available.”

  Paul said, “Chances are, none of them will have a crew aboard,” as the voice came again from the wrist unit. “Sebastian Birch must be stopped, by whatever method. He must not be permitted access to a ship able to leave the surface of Ganymede.”

  Jan challenged. “Why not? What makes you think you can give orders?”

  “At the moment it would be counterproductive to tell you my reasons for concern. Let me say only that this issue is of paramount importance, and could lead to … many deaths. If you question my credibility, ask Magrit Knudsen of the Coordinators’ Office about Rustum Battachariya—but, I beg you, do it later.”

  Jan made a hard decision. She knew that Sebastian was completely harmless, but—“Paul, we have to stop him.”

  He, thank God, did not question her. He said at once, “Surveillance, couple to spaceport operations. Operations, this is Paul Marr, first officer of the OSL Achilles. We have warning of a potential escapee from quarantine. Any individual found on the surface in Sector eighty-three should be taken into custody and held pending my arrival. Use whatever means are necessary to secure him.”

  Jan thought, And break my heart. She swallowed and said to Paul, “I have to go after him. Myself. I have to.”

  “I know. I’m coming with you.”

  The man, Alex Ligon, said, “What about us?”

  Paul stared at him for a moment. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, or who you are. But I have pilot rating for everything from a one-person hopper to the biggest liners. If you can beat that for space credentials, come along. Otherwise, don’t bother and don’t get in the way.”

  The man scowled and opened his mouth, but it was the woman, Milly Wu, who got in first. “You tell us to look, now you look. We’ve had no sleep for close to a full day. I can’t speak for Alex Ligon, but I’ve had only half a meal since breakfast yesterday. We came running over here because we were told that somebody might be in trouble. We don’t know your friend Sebastian Birch, and we don’t know why he has to stay on Ganymede. But as for me, I’d be just as happy never to meet him. Here.”
She took the wrist unit and tossed it to Jan. “Take it or leave it. If you want to know anything else, don’t ask me. Ask Bat.”

  Jan cut off a developing argument. “Paul, I know your credentials very well and they don’t need to. We have no time for a fight. You two, go back to Battachariya, whoever and wherever he is. Anything needs sorting out about your coming here, we do it later.”

  She left before there could be more discussion. Ten seconds later, Paul had caught up with her. “You were right,” he said. “And I was wrong. I’ve found out where my ego lies. They were just caught in the middle. Mind if I lead the way?”

  Jan didn’t. Once they were out on the surface, Paul’s lead would be essential. She had been outside before, but compared to him she was a tyro. She fumbled her way into a suit at maximum speed and ran the last twenty meters up the surface ramp.

  Looking off to her right as they emerged onto Level Zero she again saw a spiky city of gantries and scaffolds, glittering in reflected sunlight. Their layout had changed since last time. Ships by the dozen—by the hundred—lay scattered at the feet of the construction rigs, everything from bulbous freighters to spindly-legged singletons. High above everything hung the familiar ball of Jupiter, swollen and striated. To Sebastian it might be an object of infinite fascination, but she could imagine how others saw it: only a madman would leave Ganymede and fly closer to Jupiter, just to stare at atmospheric cloud patterns.

  Jan heard a crackle on the wrist communications unit, then Milly Wu’s voice. “Rustum Battachariya is still on the line. He wants to keep in touch with you. I’ll try to patch him in to local video and audio.”

  The voice that sounded in Jan’s suit, however, was not that of Rustum Battachariya. A musical contralto said, “Janeed Jannex? This is spaceport operations. We are taking over from automated surveillance. We have tracked your man, and he is entering a Mayfly-class single-seater.”

  Paul broke in. “This is Paul Marr, first officer of the Achilles. Can you stop him taking off?”

  “Oh, hi, Paul. Tess Walkabie here. Prevent him? How?”

  Jan said, “Override the ship’s controls.”

  “Come on, you ought to know better than that. Manual controls can always override remotes.”

  Paul said, “What I had in mind was sending someone out to the ship.”

  “Who? We have only three people on duty. Cargo arrivals and departures are automated, and no passenger ships are scheduled. We weren’t expecting emergencies, or much of anything. Don’t you people ever sleep? It’s the middle of the graveyard shift.”

  The woman was right. To Jan, it seemed no particular time of day or night. She would do better to leave things to Paul, who knew what he was doing.

  The woman went on, “If this Sebastian takes it into his head to fly, he’ll be gone long before we could get there. In fact, you are closer to him than we are.”

  “Close enough to reach him in time to stop him taking off?”

  “No. But I can direct you to another ship, Paul—a Flyboy scooter, two-person. Lots of volatiles already onboard.”

  “That would be perfect. A Flyboy is faster than anything in the Mayfly class. No matter where he goes, we’ll be able to follow and catch him. Is it ready to lift?”

  “Ready as you are. Do you want it?”

  “Yes!”

  “It’s yours. Bear twenty degrees left of your present heading. Keep moving and I’ll steer you to it.”

  Jan needed steering. Lack of sleep, her over-rich meal, and the strange surroundings combined to remove her from reality. Her previous experience on the surface of Ganymede had been an unhurried stroll. Now she struggled to keep up with Paul, following him across a gritty plain of water-ice crystals a hundred and fifty degrees below their freezing point. It was not a run. It was not a walk. It was a rapid, unsteady shuffle past looming insectile derricks and through the long black shadows cast by squatty cargo hulls.

  A flash of blue on her right made Jan turn that way. “There goes the Mayfly,” said the contralto voice. “He’s away. Don’t worry, you have less than a hundred meters to go.”

  Neither Paul nor the chief of operations, Tess Walkabie, had said anything about the size of the scooter they would fly. Jan, climbing after Paul up the short ladder, found herself apologizing as she squeezed in beside him. Paul didn’t even acknowledge that he had heard her. He had taken the controls, and was flicking through a lightning status check.

  Jan said, “I thought this was supposed to be ready to fly?”

  “I’m sure it is. You just don’t skip your own checkout, ever. We’re in good shape. Operations? We’re ready to go, but I don’t have visual contact.”

  “He’s out of your line-of-sight and range. Don’t worry about that. I’ll feed you the Mayfly’s ID and you or your autopilot can do the rest. Wherever he goes, your scooter can follow. You are faster, and you will catch up. Better set collision avoidance.”

  “Doing it.” Paul flipped a switch. “Prepared for take-off.”

  For Jan that was insufficient warning. Even after her earlier experience, she was unprepared when the scooter reared to a vertical position and accelerated upward—hard. She could not fall, because the seats were gimballed to follow the direction of acceleration, but the change in attitude brought her to an uncomfortable fore-and-aft posture, knees crunched tightly into the narrow space in front of her seat. Her view of the world outside the scooter became a flickering display, with beneath it a slit of transparent panel that looked ahead to an alien field of stars.

  “He’s heading inward.” Paul was studying the information panel that ran across the upper edge of the viewing screen. “We’re trailing him, and our path is toward Jupiter. You were right, Jan. He’s back to his old fixation with cloud patterns.”

  There was a sudden and surprising interruption. The voice of Rustum Battachariya, so faint and garbled by interference as to be almost unidentifiable, broke in from the wrist unit that Milly Wu had given to Jan. “A fixation with clouds would be acceptable. Regrettably, that may not be the case.”

  The unit was not designed for such long-range operation. Bat was fading in and out as he went on, “If Sebastian Birch merely desired to observe … disturbance in Jovian atmosphere … would not have encouraged such immediate action. Unfortunately …”

  Jan said, urgently into the tiny unit, “What is he doing? I have to know.”

  “I fear that he seeks … atmospheric entry.”

  “Why?”

  “My apologies … I cannot discuss this. However, you must stop … seek to summon other forces …”

  The rest of Bat’s words were lost in a wash of static.

  “He’s going,” Paul said. “The wrist unit’s beyond the limit of its range.”

  “He says Sebastian is going for Jupiter atmospheric entry.”

  “Yes. Again.”

  “Paul, we have to stop him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. If someone can help us …”

  “Not feasible.” Paul had turned on a signal detection system to scan the sky ahead of the Flyboy scooter, and a single red speck flashed on the screen. “That’s Sebastian’s ship. There’s no other vehicle in space between us and Jupiter. Europa and Io are on the other side of the planet, they can’t do us any good. Amalthea is in the right position, but it only has cargo vessels ready to fly. It’s up to us.”

  “What can we do?”

  “So long as he keeps accelerating, not much. We have no way to change his course, no way to disable his ship without killing all of us.”

  Paul adjusted a setting, and the broad arc of the Jupiter terminator appeared on the screen next to the flashing speck of red. “It’s going to take a while to catch up, but we’ll be alongside him long before he’s close to the planet. Then I can blanket him with emergency frequency radio signals, and he’ll have to listen—he can’t switch that unit off. It will be up to you, Jan. You have to talk to him. Persuade him to turn his ship around and head back to Ganymede.”

 
Persuade him? You don’t know Sebastian. But it would be pointless to say that to Paul. Who did know Sebastian? Certainly not Jan, though she had spent every waking hour with him for many years.

  She sank back into her seat, staring at the blinking red dot on the screen. It was slowly brightening, but the arc of Jupiter seemed to grow more rapidly. “How much time do we have?”

  “Hours and hours, before we are close to Jupiter. But we’re within emergency signal range. You can talk to him now.”

  Paul sounded calm and sane. Jan felt neither, but she had to pretend. “Sebastian? Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t expect a reply, but the answer came at once. “Yes, Jan. I hear you.”

  The words were rational, but the tone was of someone talking in a dream. She felt Paul’s encouraging pat on her suited arm. “Sebastian, the ship that you are flying doesn’t belong to us. We must return it.”

  “I know. I’m not stealing it, Jan. I’m just borrowing it.”

  “It’s time to give it back. You have to turn around now.”

  “Not yet, Jan. Not until I’ve finished.”

  “What do you mean, finished? Where are you going?”

  “I need to fly close to Jupiter. I need to go to the clouds.”

  “Sebastian, if you fly back to Ganymede you can have the use of telescopes that will show you all kinds of cloud details. A swingby may sound easy, but it isn’t. You need to have an expert in charge of it.”

  “You don’t understand, Jan. I have a job to do. I must do it.”

  “What job? Nobody gave you a job—certainly not one like this.”

  “They did, Jan. I know what I must do. I’ve always known it.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Sebastian. We’ve spent almost our whole lives together, and you’ve never talked to me about a job. What is it you have to do?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. Jan, I hope you won’t mind, but I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m not going to talk anymore.”

  “Sebastian …” Jan felt Paul’s hand on her arm.

  “You’re not getting through to him,” he said quietly. “Admit it, Jan. He’s crazy. I said that you had to persuade him, but you can’t persuade a crazy man.”