Cold as Ice

by Charles Sheffield

  The second and more complex phase of the checkout began. And ended even more rapidly.

  "Clear on Two." Wilsa turned to beam at Sandstrom. "Ready for operation. I guess we can go anytime."

  "Well." The man gave Jon and Wilsa a black glare through his suit visor. "Well, I guess you damn well can." He climbed out of the Danae submersible without another word or a backward look.

  The sealing cover came crashing down like an accusing voice aimed right at Jon. It said, "You bastard. Why didn't you tell me you brought a hotshot Jovian pilot with you? Then I wouldn't have made an ass of myself."

  "Wilsa. How the devil were you able to—"

  "Sorry." But she didn't look it, not at all. "They said that this submersible was like the ones used to monitor the Von Neumanns down in Jupiter's atmosphere. I didn't realize until I saw the control board that it would be identical. I don't think they've changed a switch. This one is direct control, and I piloted using a remote. But direct is easier."

  "Well, you didn't have to show off like that. Now Sandstrom thinks I set him up."

  "That's right." Wilsa was smiling. "That's what you get for cutting me out of the conversation. I have feelings, too, you know. I don't like it when people talk around me, as though I'm some sort of animated pumpkin, just because I'm not a trained scientist. Do you want to take over now?"

  "No." Jon wasn't angry. Not quite. "You be my guest. But just remember one thing. This is real. If you're stupid enough to smash into a rock face or take us too deep for the hull, you won't find yourself safe on Hebe Station when it's over. You'll be dead. Now go ahead."

  Jon had three reasons for saying that. First, Wilsa had shown no inclination to move from the pilot's seat; second, he liked the role of observer of this new world; and third, he wanted to see how well she could perform. She had extraordinary physical coordination; he had known that since the first minute of her concert on Ganymede. The dazzling and independent finger speed of two minutes ago had confirmed it.

  But checkout was one thing, routine and standardized. Piloting was another. How would Wilsa handle the hundred little decisions that had to be made in submarine cruising? He could take over if she got into trouble, but he was ornery enough to avoid doing that unless he really had to. Let her stew and find out for herself that there was more to piloting than ten-finger—or twenty-digit—exercises.

  But before he became too cocky, he needed to confirm a few facts for himself about the Danae. This wasn't the Spindrift, designed to wander the deepest of Earth's oceans and with a hull strengthened accordingly. The Spindrift was rated to stand fifteen hundred Earth atmospheres, more than enough to allow it to plumb Europa's farthermost seabed; but the Danae, quickly converted from Jovian atmospheric use, didn't have that strength. The plan, after they returned to the surface, was to modify it to withstand full oceanic pressure, but for the moment its hull was rated at only a meager couple of thousand tons per square meter.

  Jon called the Europan depth profiles onto his observer screen. This was a small, light world, lacking Earth's dense metallic core, but if you went deep enough, you would still meet huge pressures. And in Europa's ocean, you could go deep—a hundred kilometers and more if the bathymetry charts were accurate. He would visit that abyss eventually and be the first being to explore the deep Europan seabed directly.

  Not today, though. He read off the tabulated values. They shouldn't go below fifteen kilometers in the Danae. Fifteen was deep enough to reach a couple of the shallow hydrothermal vents but not to visit the one he really cared about; Scaldino was forty-seven kilometers down, where the water pressure was six hundred atmospheres and the seafloor temperature might rise to within a few degrees of blood heat. For Europa, that was a superheated black smoker, the equivalent of Earth's Hotpot.

  So today stay above ten kilometers for safety and forget any idea of real work. Hilda Brandt had been right. This could be no more than an exercise in familiarization and sight-seeing.

  Jon felt a vibration in his seat, stared out of the curved, transparent screen in front of them, and realized that the sight-seeing had already begun. The Danae was being guided steadily forward along the grooved downward ramp that led into Blowhole. Already the observation screen was dipping below surface level. Jon had a last glimpse of Europa's icy plain, with the four rounded hills of Mount Ararat rising gently in the background; then dark water was lapping at the smooth sides. The stars, visible through the transparent roof of the submersible, were the last to go. They became quivering pools of light, slowly fading as the depth increased and then vanishing instantly as the Danae's searchlights went on.

  The ship was sinking steadily at five or six meters a second. Jon was convinced of that, even without consulting a readout. This was one of the things that he had wanted to test. Back in PacAnt, he had a reputation for possessing his own private inertial navigation system, an internal sense that told him whether he was rising or falling underwater, and how fast. He scanned the dials to confirm his feeling. Five-point-five meters a second. It was nice to know that his absolute positional sense worked just as well on Europa.

  He glanced at Wilsa, gave the control board a more thorough inspection, and relaxed. The Danae had its own warning systems to tell if they went too deep, or were heading for a solid shelf of rock or ice. It was at least smart enough to keep them out of life-threatening trouble.

  But they weren't going to need those built-in safeguards. Wilsa, annoying as it might be to Jon, was as competent as she was confident. She was making instinctively timed sweeps of the main indicators of the environment, both inside and outside the submersible: power level and power reserve; submersible speed, depth, and pressure; internal and external temperature; water turbidity; air supply rate; and air composition. At the same time she had an eye on the ultrasonics that gave the distance in all directions to the nearest solid objects.

  A natural.

  "Well? Satisfied?" She wasn't even looking at him, but she was smiling as though she had seen his expression. "In a few more seconds we'll reach the lower limit of Blowhole. We'll be under the ice shield proper."

  So she could read his mind. He had been all set to give her that same information. But at least she had been forced to read it from the instruments. He had known it, from some internal resource.

  "What do we do then?" Wilsa went on. She was scowling at the screen, where the forward lights showed a vertical ice face maybe forty meters away.

  "Don't ask me." Jon leaned back in his seat. He could be awkward, too. "You're the pilot. I'm just the passenger. Take us wherever you like."

  He closed his eyes to prove his lack of concern and interest, and knew, without a doubt, that Wilsa was staring across at him now, with raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

  Maybe that was the difference between Wilsa and everyone else, man or woman, whom he had ever met. He knew her and she knew him, at some deep-down level, without a word spoken.

  And yet there was no matching physical bond . . .

  Jon's thoughts switched suddenly and uncomfortably to Nell. She would be as mad as hell with him for not bringing her. And it would do no good at all to say that he'd been missing her. She wouldn't waste one moment before telling him off the next time they met. "Actions," she'd say, "not words—that's what makes a video show. You can stuff your explanations."

  Then she'd really chew him up and spit him out.

  She and he were like a pair of chaotically out-of-synch pistons, working against each other with no coordination, wasting energy, canceling forces, missing each other's cycle.

  But here was the mystery, another place where logic could not go: Behind the mental mismatch with Nell Cotter lay some hidden power source, a physical fire that he and Wilsa Sheer, sitting by his side, would never share.

  13

  Sneak Attack

  "I believe that for the first time in our acquaintance, I have caught Rustum Battachariya in an error."

  Yarrow Gobel had been standing at the waist-high counter th
at separated the kitchen from the rest of Bat Cave. Now the inspector-general turned and went wandering off along the length of the room, finally pausing to pick up and marvel at the meter-wide helmet of a combined survival-and-assault suit—one of the Great War's most spectacular failures, a device that had performed neither of its intended functions and had killed almost all of its wearers.

  Bat, busy with half a dozen covered pots and pans, confined his response to a noncommittal grunt.

  "You have told me several times," went on Gobel, his voice echoing along the great cluttered room, "that there is nothing of old Earth that you would wish to have here on Ganymede. Forests, mountains, lakes, grassy plains, blue sky, green expanses of ocean, birds, butterflies, flowers, mist and rain and snow—you yearn for none of those."

  "Quite right." Bat removed the pressure lid of a saucepan, frowned down at the contents, tasted them with a ceramic spoon, and replaced the seal. "I have truffles, I have mushrooms. I have garlic and saffron and fennel and capers, native-grown. Earth has nothing to offer me."

  Gobel strolled back, to lean again on the counter and watch Bat's cooking rituals. "I am sure that you are sincere in what you say. But still, there is one natural feature of Earth that you would like. One thing that Earth people have, and take for granted, and are even perhaps unaware of, but which you desire." He paused, waiting for Bat's skeptical frown. "You wish that you had, here on Ganymede, the air pressure of Earth."

  Bat gave a startled glance down at the stove, with its array of closed pans. He nodded. "Say no more. I admit my guilt. It is one of nature's mysteries why humans, who certainly did not evolve with a diet of cooked food, should find a water boiling point of one hundred degrees Celsius ideal for the purposes of cuisine. But it is so." He gestured with the spoon at his cooking vessels. "I am glad to see that you, if no one else, understand my predicament. If I cook with open pans, water at Ganymede ambient pressure has its boiling point thirty degrees too low. If I close them and cook under pressure, I cannot taste and stir as often as I should, and continuous tasting is essential in the culinary arts. That and stirring lie at the heart of subtle flavors and textures. The chefs of Earth are uniquely fortunate.

  "However, we do what we can." He began to remove lids and hurriedly transfer the contents of the pans to heated serving dishes. "Five more minutes—of concentrated silent effort—then I leave it to you to tell me whether or not I have succeeded."

  "There has not yet been a failure." Yarrow Gobel took the hint and walked away along the length of Bat Cave.

  Bat returned to his labors. Yarrow Gobel did not know it, but tonight's dinner, regardless of the quality of the food, would not be a pleasant occasion.

  For Bat was finally ready to admit defeat. Through the inspector-general, he had obtained sufficient funds to identify everyone who had worked on the Pallas data banks and been in Pallas at the end of the war. Many had died in the final battle, and most of the others were dead now—it had happened a quarter of a century ago—but Bat had personally contacted and interviewed every survivor. No one could tell him anything about a purge of data involving the asteroid Mandrake. No one recalled even the name of the converted ore-freighter Pelagic.

  Bat's other bright idea had also ended in failure. The calculations had taken forever, but he had finally received trajectories for survival pods ballistically launched from the Pelagic before the Seeker destroyed it. All of the pods had been headed toward the Inner System, with Mars as the closest world and the logical place for distress-signal detection.

  There had certainly been no shortage of distress signals. The war was just over, and vehicles crippled in the final disastrous battles were strewn across space from Earth to the Belt.

  And the records of those distress calls and emergency pickups had not been lost. They were kept in the Ceres files. Bat had examined them all, checking ship ID's and pod positions and survivor profiles. He had found nothing unusual, nothing to suggest that one or more of those rescued from space could have been in a pod sent out from the Pelagic. He had carried forward the computations and search for a full two months beyond the end of the war, to a time when the limited oxygen, water, and food supplies of any pod would long since have run out. And he had found nothing. The survivor pods, wherever they had gone, could have contained no survivors.

  Tonight Yarrow Gobel would be expecting a progress report. He had kept his side of the bargain: support, in return for occasional visits to Bat Cave for dinner and Great War discussions. But there was nothing to report. There had been no progress.

  Bat began carrying filled dishes to the waiting table. "Two more minutes."

  "What's this?" Gobel was down at the far end of the room, examining a flat box about a foot across. "It looks new."

  "It is new, and unexpected. A loan from the Ceres Museum, in appreciation of a little work that I did to trace a missing exhibit. The box contains the control disk for the Pinwheel. It is all that was ever found of the forty-vessel Mars fleet that took part in the Battle of Psyche. The package arrived when I was already preparing dinner, so I have had no opportunity to examine it. According to the label, the disk is in excellent condition, still perhaps capable of being read. Take a look . . . if you are interested."

  The last phrase was Bat's attempt at irony. The inspector-general was obsessed by every aspect of the Great War, and his interest in the Pinwheel's disk was guaranteed. Bat, arranging dishes on the table, heard the immediate rustle of stiff wrapping, followed by the creak of a lid and a faint snapping sound.

  "Bring it with you to the table," he said. "Quickly, if you please." There was a rare urgency in his voice. "This sauce is most delicate. Any delay could ruin its bouquet."

  There was no reply. No sound of approaching footsteps. Bat, sauce boat in his hands and poised above the dish, gave an annoyed glance down the room. One of the reasons that he could tolerate Yarrow Gobel's visits was that the inspector-general possessed, most unexpectedly, a sensitive palate and an appreciation for fine food.

  Gobel stood bending over the open box. His face was not visible, but there was something odd about the man's total stillness. Bat set down the sauce boat, gave the laden table a regretful look, and started toward the other end of the room.

  Halfway there, he paused. The association of events was too clear to ignore. The unexpected package. Its opening by Yarrow Gobel. And now, the silence and frozen posture.

  "Inspector?" Bat came no closer, but he moved sideways and crouched so that he could get a look at the downturned face.

  Gobel was moving again, letting the open box in his hands fall to the floor. Bat felt a sense of relief that vanished at once when he saw the other man's face. It was blank, utterly lacking in expression.

  "Where am I?" The words were puzzled, delivered in the bewildered voice of a child. "What happened?"

  "You are quite safe." Bat retreated a couple of steps. The top of the box was still ajar. "Sit down on that chair, over to your right. Do you know who you are?"

  "Of course I do." The voice was stronger. "I'm Yarrow Gobel. Who are you?"

  "I am Rustum Battachariya. Please sit down." Bat had reached his communications console and now he was speaking into it. "An emergency. At once, and in suits. No, I cannot tell you if there is still a danger, to me or to anyone else. But I have to assume that there might be." He turned again to the inspector-general. "Now, Yarrow Gobel, I want you to do just as I tell you. First, sit down, and don't move. We're going to have a visitor in just a moment."

  "Yes, sir." Gobel finally sat down and stared around curiously at the cluttered contents of Bat Cave. "This is a very strange place."

  "You don't remember being here before?"

  "Oh, I never have. I'm sure of that. Why am I here now—and not in school?"

  * * *

  Eight hours later, Bat slid the cave door closed, headed for his favorite chair, and sank quivering into it.

  It had been a night of multiple indignities. He could enumerate at least four of
them.

  First: Someone had had the temerity to invade the sanctity of Bat Cave with what could only be regarded as a dangerous weapon. Admittedly, the medical staff of Ganymede had found no physical damage to Yarrow Gobel. They had identified the synthetic neurotransmitter released from the package and were now working on the molecule that had piggybacked that transmitter into the inspector-general and across the blood-brain barrier. They also insisted that over time—say, five or six months—Gobel should recover his memories and his adult mind, and no longer be the eight-year-old child who had greeted them tonight in Bat Cave.

  But the offense had not stopped there.

  Second: Bat himself had been dragged protesting from the cave and subjected to a demeaning battery of physical and mental tests. That had ended only when, to prove his memory of recent events, he had recited a few parts of the private data file of his chief tormentor.

  Third: To divert attention from himself, Bat had been obliged to offer a deliberate lie. He had told the security officers that the box had been intended for inspection by Yarrow Gobel. Gobel himself was in no position to disagree, and no one could be found on Ganymede who admitted to delivering, or even to having heard of, the package. But it was a lie nonetheless, and therefore unworthy of Rustum Battachariya.

  Fourth: Bat's peace of mind had been permanently affected. For years he had thought of the cave as a totally safe retreat. Now that was no longer the case. Should he then run away? But if so, to where? He could think of nowhere safer than the cave, nowhere whose exits, entrances, blind spots and hideaways he knew better. At the same time, if he stayed in Bat Cave he had to admit that he might be a sitting—literally—target for a new attack.

  Bat stared around at his home of many years, noted the dining table, and added a fifth offense against his person: sacrilege. A culinary masterpiece had been ruined, before he or Yarrow Gobel had taken a single bite. If only he had told the inspector-general to wait until after dinner before opening the package . . . but then Bat would more than likely have been close enough to share its contents.