Timemaster

by Robert L. Forward

  Randy, after purging himself and filling his empty gut with a fiber filler and antigas medicine, carefully scrubbed himself down and put on the high-gee pressurized tank suit.

  Next came the contact lenses that would allow him to see the display console through the liquid that would surround him in the tank. Finally, the soft helmet with the hard faceplate that would allow only newly filtered fluid to get to the tender tissues in his lungs. He climbed into the tank and closed the door.

  The worst part was the first inhalation of the thin, oxygen-loaded liquid. The membranes in his nose, mouth, and throat had been desensitized by the spray he had inhaled a few minutes ago, but his vivid imagination more than made up for the lack of actual feeling as his nose, throat, and lungs filled with fluid. He was drowning—but he must not panic.

  Deep breath, he thought to himself. He watched the bubbles from the bottom of his lungs drift upward past his eyes, where they were scavenged by the exit hose on his helmet. Deeper, he admonished himself, and his chest muscles expanded even more, sucking the fluid deeper into the alveoli, where tiny air bubbles were displaced and sent outward as he exhaled.

  After a few minutes, Randy was ready. He looked in the submerged videoscreen at the worried face of Bull. Bull's red patches of skin were now scarlet with stress.

  "I wish you would call this off," said Bull. "I've done everything I can to make it safe, but I can't make any guarantees when we're pushing the margins so close ..."

  Unable to speak with his vocal cords full of fluid, Randy was reduced to typing out his reply.

  YOU MAY FIRE WHEN READY, RICHARDSON.

  The countdown proceeded smoothly as the long thread of the cable catapult slowly became aligned with the direction to Hygiea. At the proper instant, the acceleration started as the linear motor surrounding Randy's capsule absorbed the rf power pumped down the center of the cable. The acceleration rapidly grew stronger until it reached thirty gees. Despite the protection of the fluid surrounding and inside him, Randy was pushed heavily into the acceleration couch. The clock on the console ticked slowly down. He would have to endure thirty gees for sixteen full minutes to get up to speed. Normally Randy flew first class. This time he was going steerage.

  Finally it was over. Randy was on his way out to the asteroid belt at three hundred kilometers per second—and the rest of the trip was in boring free-fall.

  RANDY kept himself busy on his three-week journey to the asteroid belt by trying to run things over the laser link to Earth. What bothered him the most was the long time delay between messages. At first it was only seconds, but as he approached the orbit of Mars, the round-trip delay took good fractions of an hour and he would forget what he had been talking about when the person finally got around to answering his question. He soon gave up trying to run the company at a distance and let Alan Davidson take over. Instead, he spent his time talking with Philippe Laurin on Hygiea and watching the daily videos being taken as the crew on Hygiea tried to figure out exactly what they had found.

  Chapter 2

  Silverhair

  "WE ARE learning more about the Silverhair each day," said Philippe's image over the tight laser communication link. The video image switched to a camera showing the alien creature with its thousands of fine silvery threads. Near the creature was a small, slender figure in fluorescent-red outeralls with the name "Siritha Chandresekhar" printed across the back. The figure was using its jetpack to sway back and forth in front of the creature, which responded by swaying its threads in synchronism.

  "What is she doing so close!" exclaimed Randy. "That creature is dangerous. Look what it did to Jim Meriweather." There was a long pause as the message made its way across the millions of kilometers of space and back again.

  "The Silverhair is not really dangerous," replied Philippe calmly. "It was hurt as much as Jim, and since then, it has been careful not to let any of its threads get too close to a human. It is curious about us, however. It seems to enjoy its dances with Siritha every day."

  "Dances!" exclaimed Randy, not quite believing what he had heard.

  Philippe, not yet hearing Randy's reply, continued. "Siritha is our medic. When she was taking premed at U.C. San Diego, she used to work summers at the San Diego Sea World. She's trying a number of her animal training tricks on the Silverhair and they're working. She has gotten it to respond to her motions as she 'dances' in front of it using her jets. She noticed the Silverhair became agitated when jet exhaust came near its threads, as if it were trying to collect as much of the exhaust gases as possible. She is now trying different 'baits' to see which one works best. Any questions?" He paused.

  "What does it eat?" asked Randy, finally getting used to the long delays.

  "Practically everything," replied Philippe some seconds later. "As long as it's in gaseous form. It actively avoids anything solid or liquid, as if it hurts to touch it, but it positively dotes on any kind of fine dust or gas. It especially likes iron—and there's plenty of that in the asteroid belt."

  "Is that why it's there?" asked Randy. "Feeding on the nickel-iron asteroids?"

  "Probably so," said Philippe. "We took a close look at the asteroid where we found the Silverhair. It had obviously been feeding on it for a long time, because there was a large, hollow, bowl-shaped depression in the surface of a nickel-iron knob. The surface of the depression was crisscrossed with fine scratches where the threads had somehow torn up the surface. Although it can eat solids, it much prefers its iron in a finely divided form. The engineers modified a plasma-cutter torch for Siritha so it emits plasmas of different metals. That's how they found it prefers iron."

  A chime came from the control console in Randy's capsule.

  "I'm a few hours away from landing," said Randy. "Got to go into my preconditioning routine for the deceleration tank."

  "I'll have a lot more information for you when you arrive," said Philippe.

  After purging himself (in the process making a mess of the backup zero-gee toilet), Randy got into his suit, climbed into the tank, and started the distasteful task of breathing the protective fluid. To keep his mind occupied, he thought about Rose, and the first time he had taken her to see the stables ...

  "I'VE NEVER been to this part of your estate before," Rose said. "I didn't even know it was here."

  "Mom bought one of the prime lots in the Princeton Enclave," replied Randy. "A one-by-five-mile plot right in the center, with one end adjoining the golf course. You haven't seen the half of it. Mom had a nature trail set up around that wooded hill over there. She and Dad took walks to the top, had lunch at the little fake castle there on the top, and walked back."

  "Say," said Rose brightly, "that sounds like fun. Why don't you and I go on a picnic someday, Randy?"

  "Nah!" said Randy, maneuvering his powerful Mercedes at high speeds over the narrow bridge. "I get enough exercise every morning in the gym." The car burst out of the forest onto a large, flat meadow area. There were a number of barns with adjacent office areas, a long row of stables, and, next to the forest they had just left, a long line of small duplex homes for the workers. The yard was busy, with six people, three yard robots, and five beautiful thoroughbred horses in evidence. In the background, on the other side of the exercise yards, was the curved railing of a racetrack. There was even an empty grandstand on the far side of the track.

  "Here're my stables," said Randy, jumping out of the car and running around to open Rose's door.

  "Looks more like a full-up racecourse to me," said Rose.

  Randy looked around. "I guess you could call it that," he said. "The foreman once told me that except for the parking lots this place is as big as Belmont."

  Randy took Rose over to a large, dark horse tied to a ring held by a life-sized statue of a jockey.

  "Rose," said Randy, "I'd like you to meet Winter Winds and Willie Shoemaker, my hero." He stood in front of the statue and compared heights with his hand. "We're both the same height, four feet eleven inches. I only wish I coul
d ride half as well as Willie did."

  The thoroughbred whinnied and Rose rubbed its nose.

  A big, burly black man with a bald head came over.

  "Hi, Curly," said Randy. "Is Winter Winds ready?"

  "Waiting for you to get your practice silks on and weigh in," said Curly. "I'm going to put extra weight on him so the other horses can give him a challenge."

  "Good," said Randy, grinning. "We want him in good shape for the Belmont Stakes on the fifth of June. I've been able to clear my calendar for a few days before that. Pencil me in as jockey, with Billy Fraser as backup in case you don't think I've gotten into proper shape before the race."

  "You're not going to ride in a real race, are you?" Rose asked with concern.

  "Why not?" Randy replied nonchalantly. "I'm certainly built for it. Besides, as Howard Hughes once said when someone asked him why he test-piloted his own airplanes, 'Why should I pay someone else to have all the fun?'"

  IT WASN'T always fun. Riding thoroughbred horses and high-speed machines could sometimes turn out to be very uncomfortable. Winter Winds had taken a tumble at Belmont last year. Randy had broken an arm and Winter Winds had broken a foreleg. The vets had wanted to shoot the horse, but Randy wouldn't let them. He flew in the emergency team from the Veterinarian Prosthetics Center in Moscow, Idaho, and they pinned an external brace across the break. Winter Winds was now on Earth, at stud and having fun, while Randy was out in the asteroid belt, drowning and uncomfortable.

  No, it wasn't always fun ... but it sure was exciting. Shortly he would be hitting the end of the Hygiea cable catapult at three hundred kilometers a second. That would be like riding a needle being shot down a straw!

  The distant sphere of Hygiea started to show on the screen of the submerged tank console. Stretching out from the south pole of Hygiea was a long cable, the shorter end pointing at Randy. As they drew closer, Randy could see the long linear motor module start accelerating toward the south-pole power station from its resting point at the end of the shorter portion of the cable. It accelerated at a hundred gees and in five minutes was matching the velocity of Randy's capsule.

  Attitude jets flashed on Randy's capsule as it moved between two of the six cables that made up the catapult. The capsule took up a position just behind the rapidly moving hollow linear motor. Slowly the capsule inched its way into the hollow interior of the massive machine, riding the six nearly invisible cables. There was a ripple of clanks as the grapples brought the two machines together. For a few seconds, nothing happened as they continued on their way to the power station. The power-station building flashed by in the display, and the deceleration started as he moved onto the longer section of cable stretching out away from the inner solar system. Within a few seconds Randy was decelerating at thirty gees. He had experienced the acceleration before back in the solar system, and now knew the most comfortable position to take on the couch. The pressures from the high acceleration went on and on—the sixteen minutes seemed like an eternity—then it was over. He had come to a stop near the end of the cable.

  "Are you OK, Mr. Hunter?" came the concerned voice of Philippe Laurin through Randy's headset. Unable to answer because of the liquid in his vocal cords, Randy typed out his answer on a keypad.

  OK. NO FUN.

  "We're going to bring your capsule back up the cable to the south-pole station," said Philippe. "It'll take about two hours, one hour accelerating and one hour decelerating, but it'll be at one gee this time. I'll sign off for now. You can call me when you get your voice back."

  Good, thought Randy as he unstrapped himself and opened the door to the acceleration tank. At least I'll have good footing while I cough my lungs out. His uncomfortable bladder reminded him of something else. I'd also better use the head while I'm still under one gee. Once I get on Hygiea, it'll be back to those damned zero-gee toilets again.

  AFTER changing from his tank suit to a jumpsuit, Randy passed through the airlock from the capsule to the power-station building for the cable catapult. There he had a light meal with Philippe, going over the business aspects of the mining operations on the asteroids around Hygiea.

  "Production has slowed down since we found the Silverhair," apologized Philippe. "Jim Meriweather is still nursing his arm, and I have reassigned Bob Pilcher from prospecting duties to the job of backing up Siritha Chandresekhar and Kip Carlton as they try to learn more about the creature."

  "Don't worry about a small loss in production," said Randy. "We're bound to learn something of more value studying the alien. Can I go see the Silverhair myself?"

  "I was sure you'd want to do that," said Philippe. "So I had Bob bring the 'Silverhair Special' back to the base before you landed. They're ready to take you to see it."

  The two floated down the sealed corridors tunneled through the rock of Hygiea to the spacecraft port. There, Randy put on the custom-made space suit a technician had brought over from his capsule. The inner vacuum-protection portion of the space suit was a one-piece woven electrolastic tightsuit. The technician had the relaxer voltage at maximum and the tightsuit looked like a floppy, oversized set of long Johns with built-in booties and gloves. Randy stripped down, then adjusted the molded-plastic combination codpiece and antibind protector between his legs until it stayed there by suction.

  "That's a pretty big codpiece for such a little guy," remarked the technician.

  "It's only my calcium bones that are small," replied Randy nonchalantly.

  The tech then helped him step through the large-diameter relaxed neckband.

  "Stand with your arms and legs straight out," said the tech. "Like the da Vinci drawing."

  Randy spread his legs and arms and fingers out while the tech slowly lowered the relaxing voltage on the electrolastic. The suit tightened up on Randy.

  "Set your fingers deep in the gloves," said the tech. Randy shoved his fingers together until the gloves were on tight, then reached down to smooth out some wrinkles in his crotch and under his armpit.

  "Feel smooth?" asked the tech.

  "Squeeze away," replied Randy.

  The tech removed the relaxing voltage, and the electrolastic tightsuit squeezed on Randy's skin while the segmented neckband shrank and assembled itself into a hard collar with built-in seals and locking grooves for his helmet. Now, with his air pressure maintained by his skin, supported by the tightsuit, Randy put on the fluorescent-red Kevlar-armored protective outeralls, gauntlets to protect the back of his hands, black stiction boots, and the chestpack and backpack harness. He donned the plastiglass globe helmet, locked it in place in the tightsuit collar, and hooked the air-hose to the backpack. Finally he strapped his cuff-comp onto his wrist.

  "Say! That's a terrific-looking cuff-computer," said the tech, admiring the sparkling gems set in the jet-black plastic clasp. Randy turned his wrist over so he too could see the clasp.

  "It was a gift from my father for my fifteenth birthday," Randy said. "Terahertz parallel-processor optical chip, gigabyte of RAM, touch-screen display, ten-year battery, and continuous satellite linkage to Worldnet." He undid the clasp and handed the thin, flexible band over to the tech.

  "That is some collection of stones," said the tech.

  "All the major stars in the sky are represented by diamonds, graded in size and color to match the size and color of the stars," said Randy with pride. "Custom-made. It's the only one like it." The tech handed the cuff-comp back to Randy, who strapped it back on his wrist.

  PHILIPPE suited up with Randy and they went through an airlock out to the surface of the tiny planetoid. After loping a short distance across the grey dust, they boarded a cramped prospector's flitter. Once inside, Philippe introduced Randy to the engineer-pilot Bob Pilcher, medic Siritha Chandresekhar, and materials scientist Kip Carlton. They were all stripped down to their tightsuits and boots, with their helmets, outeralls, and packs stowed in the locker next to the exit.

  Siritha was tiny and thin, with dark-brown skin, lively dark-brown eyes, and black hair i
n short ringlets. She had a scarlet caste mark in the center of her forehead and two nose rings. One was from an engineering school Randy didn't recognize, and the other was the medic's caduceus. Randy's eyes skipped past Siritha's tightsuit-covered body and instead focused impolitely on the caste mark. The mark really bothered him. No self-respecting woman wore any makeup of any kind ... but then again, a caste mark was not really makeup.

  Siritha bore the long stare with a Mona Lisa smile. She knew exactly what was bothering her boss. She was far from religious, and would never have bothered with a caste mark if she were in India, but here she took advantage of the heritage that allowed her to apply that socially permissible but very provocative dab of bright red makeup to her face. She enjoyed the attention it brought her.

  Bob Pilcher was a typical space pilot, with the rugged face of a video tough-guy, a brown Paul Revere tied back with a no-nonsense rubber band, and no jewelry on his face. His well-worn tightsuit had two circular smudges in the fabric, one on his left forearm and one on his back, spray patterns from micrometeorites that had been fragmented to harmless dust by the Kevlar armor of his outeralls. The smudges were only noticeable because Bob had painted large bull's-eyes around them.

  Kip Carlton's curly black hair was cut into a pillbox flattop, while his chocolate-brown face was almost hidden by a full black beard and large, owlish sports-spectacles. His ears seemed covered with golden 'rings from various schools and professional societies.

  After shaking hands all around, Randy said eagerly, "If you're ready, I'd like to go see the Silverhair."