Antonio managed a smile, which didn't quite correspond with the dew of sweat on his forehead. «OK, Jorge. Hell, you're right. We don't have to worry about anything any more. But . . .»
«Now what?»
«I know we can pay off the loan on the satellites, but what about the Crusade council? They won't like this. They might—«
«There's no cause for alarm. The council will never trouble us again. I maintain that I am right about the disaster which destroyed the xenoc ship. It didn't have an accident. That is a warship, Antonio. And you know what that means, don't you? Somewhere on board there will be weapons just as advanced and as powerful as the rest of its technology.»
It was Wai's third trip over to the xenoc ship. None of them spent more than two hours at a time inside. The gravity field made every muscle ache, walking round was like being put on a crash exercise regimen.
Schutz and Karl were still busy by the airlock, probing the circuitry of the cybermice, and decrypting more of their programming. It was probably the most promising line of research; once they could use the xenoc program language they should be able to extract any answer they wanted from the ship's controlling network. Assuming there was one. Wai was convinced there would be. The number of systems operating—life-support, power, gravity—had to mean some basic management integration system was functional.
In the meantime there was the rest of the structure to explore. She had a layout file stored in her neural nanonics, updated by the others every time they came back from an excursion. At the blunt end of the wedge there could be anything up to forty decks, if the spacing was standard. Nobody had gone down to the bottom yet. There were some areas which had no obvious entrance; presumably engineering compartments, or storage tanks. Marcus had the teams tracing the main power lines with magnetic sensors, trying to locate the generator.
Wai plodded after Roman as he followed a cable running down the centre of a corridor on the eighth deck.
«It's got so many secondary feeds it looks like a fish-bone,» he complained. They paused at a junction with five branches and he swept the block round. «This way.» He started off down one of the new corridors.
«We're heading towards stairwell five,» she told him, as the layout file scrolled through her skull.
There were more cybermice than usual on deck eight; over thirty were currently pursuing her and Roman, creating strong ripples in the composite floor and walls. Wai had noticed that the deeper she went into the ship the more of them there seemed to be. Although after her second trip she'd completely ignored them. She wasn't paying a lot of attention to the compartments leading off from the corridors, either. It wasn't that they were all the same, rather that they were all similarly empty.
They reached the stairwell, and Roman stepped inside. «It's going down,» he datavised.
«Great, that means we've got another level to climb up when we're finished.»
Not that going down these stairs was easy, she acknowledged charily. If only they could find some kind of variable gravity chute. Perhaps they'd all been positioned in the part of the ship that was destroyed.
«You know, I think Marcus might have been right about the dish being an emergency beacon,» she datavised. «I can't think of any other reason for it being built. Believe me, I've tried.»
«He always is right. It's bloody annoying, but that's why I fly with him.»
«I was against it because of the faith gap.»
«Say what?»
«The amount of faith these xenocs must have had in themselves. It's awesome. So different from humans. Think about it. Even if their homeworld is only two thousand light-years away, that's how long the message is going to take to reach there. Yet they sent it believing someone would still be around to receive it, and more, act on it. Suppose that was us; suppose the Lady Mac had an accident a thousand light-years away. Would you think there was any point in sending a lightspeed message to the Confederation, then going into zero-tau to wait for a rescue ship?»
«If their technology can last that long, then I guess their civilization can, too.»
«No, our hardware can last for a long time. It's our culture that's fragile, at least compared to theirs. I don't think the Confederation will last a thousand years.»
«The Edenists will be here, I expect. So will all the planets, physically if nothing else. Some of their societies will advance, possibly even to a state similar to the Kiint; some will revert to barbarism. But there will be somebody left to hear the message and help.»
«You're a terrible optimist.»
They arrived at the ninth deck, only to find the doorway was sealed over with composite.
«Odd,» Roman datavised. «If there's no corridor or compartment beyond, why put a doorway here at all?»
«Because this was a change made after the accident.»
«Could be. But why would they block off an interior section?»
«I've no idea. You want to keep going down?»
«Sure. I'm optimistic enough not to believe in ghosts lurking in the basement.»
«I really wish you hadn't said that.»
The tenth deck had been sealed off as well.
«My legs can take one more level,» Wai datavised. «Then I'm going back.»
There was a door on deck eleven. It was the first one in the ship to be closed.
Wai stuck her fingers in the dimple, and the door dilated. She edged over cautiously, and swept the focus of her collar sensors round. «Holy shit. We'd better fetch Marcus.»
Decks nine and ten had simply been removed to make the chamber. Standing on the floor and looking up, Marcus could actually see the outline of the stairwell doorways in the wall above him. By xenoc standards it was a cathedral. There was only one altar, right in the centre. A doughnut of some dull metallic substance, eight metres in diameter with a central aperture five metres across; the air around it was emitting a faint violet glow. It stood on five sable-black arching buttresses, four metres tall.
«The positioning must be significant,» Wai datavised. «They built it almost at the centre of the wreck. They wanted to give it as much protection as possible.»
«Agreed,» Katherine replied. «They obviously considered it important. After a ship has suffered this much damage, you don't expend resources on anything other than critical survival requirements.»
«Whatever it is,» Schutz reported, «it's using up an awful lot of power.» He was walking round it, keeping a respectful distance, wiping a sensor block over the floor as he went. «There's a power cable feeding each of those legs.»
«Is it radiating in any spectrum?» Marcus asked.
«Only that light you can see, which spills over into ultraviolet, too. Apart from that, it's inert. But the energy must be going somewhere.»
«OK.» Marcus walked up to a buttress, and switched his collar focus to scan the aperture. It was veiled by a grey haze, as if a sheet of fog had solidified across it. When he took another tentative step forward the fluid in his semicircular canals was suddenly affected by a very strange tidal force. His foot began to slip forwards and upwards. He threw himself backwards, and almost stumbled. Jorge and Karl just caught him in time.
«There's no artificial gravity underneath it,» he datavised. «But there's some kind of gravity field wrapped around it.» He paused. «No, that's not right. It pushed me.»
«Pushed?» Katherine hurried to his side. «Are you sure?»
«Yes.»
«My God.»
«What? Do you know what it is?»
«Possibly. Schutz, hang on to my arm, please.»
The cosmonik came forward and took her left arm. Katherine edged forward until she was almost under the lambent doughnut. She stretched up her right arm, holding out a sensor block, and tried to press it against the doughnut. It was as if she was trying to make two identical magnetic poles touch. The block couldn't get to within twenty centimetres of the surface, it kept slithering and sliding thr
ough the air. She held it as steady as she could, and datavised it to run an analysis of the doughnut's molecular structure.
The results made her back away.
«So?» Marcus asked.
«I'm not entirely sure it's even solid in any reference frame we understand. That surface could just be a boundary effect. There's no spectroscopic data at all, the sensor couldn't even detect an atomic structure in there, let alone valency bonds.»
«You mean it's a ring of energy?»
«Don't hold me to it, but I think that thing could be some kind of exotic matter.»
«Exotic in what sense, exactly?» Jorge asked.
«It has a negative energy density. And before you ask, that doesn't mean anti-gravity. Exotic matter only has one known use, to keep a wormhole open.»
«Jesus, that's a wormhole portal?» Marcus asked.
«It must be.»
«Any way of telling where it leads?»
«I can't give you an exact stellar coordinate; but I know where the other end has to emerge. The xenocs never called for a rescue ship, Marcus. They threaded a wormhole with exotic matter to stop it collapsing, and escaped down it. That is the entrance to a tunnel which leads right back to their homeworld.»
Schutz found Marcus in the passenger lounge in capsule C. He was floating centimetres above one of the flatchairs, with the lights down low.
The cosmonik touched his heels to a stikpad on the decking beside the lower hatch. «You really don't like being wrong, do you?»
«No, but I'm not sulking about it, either.» Marcus moulded a jaded grin. «I still think I'm right about the dish, but I don't know how the hell to prove it.»
«The wormhole portal is rather conclusive evidence.»
«Very tactful. It doesn't solve anything, actually. If they could open a wormhole straight back home, why did they build the dish? Like Katherine said, if you have an accident of that magnitude then you devote yourself completely to survival. Either they called for help, or they went home through the wormhole. They wouldn't do both.»
«Possibly it wasn't their dish, they were just here to investigate it.»
«Two ancient unknown xenoc races with FTL starship technology is pushing credibility. It also takes us back to the original problem: if the dish isn't a distress beacon, then what the hell was it built for?»
«I'm sure there will be an answer at some time.»
«I know, we're only a commercial trader's crew, with a very limited research capability. But we can still ask fundamental questions, like why have they kept the wormhole open for thirteen thousand years?»
«Because that's the way their technology works. They probably wouldn't consider it odd.»
«I'm not saying it shouldn't work for that long, I'm asking why their homeworld would bother maintaining a link to a chunk of derelict wreckage?»
«That is harder for logic to explain. The answer must lie in their psychology.»
«That's too much like a cop-out; you can't cry alien at everything you don't understand. But it does bring us to my final query. If you can open a wormhole with such accuracy across God knows how many light-years, why would you need a starship in the first place? What sort of psychology accounts for that?»
«All right, Marcus, you got me. Why?»
«I haven't got a clue. I've been reviewing all the file texts we have on wormholes, trying to find a solution which pulls all this together. And I can't do it. It's a complete paradox.»
«There's only one thing left, then, isn't there?»
Marcus turned to look at the hulking figure of the cosmonik. «What?»
«Go down the wormhole and ask them.»
«Yeah, maybe I will. Somebody has to go eventually. What does our dear Katherine have to say on that subject? Can we go inside it in our SII suits?»
«She's rigging up some sensors that she can shove through the interface. That grey sheet isn't a physical barrier. She's already pushed a length of conduit tubing through. It's some kind of pressure membrane, apparently, stops the ship's atmosphere from flooding into the wormhole.»
«Another billion-fuseodollar gadget. Jesus, this is getting too big for us, we're going to have to prioritize.» He datavised the flight computer, and issued a general order for everyone to assemble in capsule A's main lounge.
Karl was the last to arrive. The young systems engineer looked exhausted. He frowned when he caught sight of Marcus.
«I thought you were over in the xenoc ship.»
«No.»
«But you . . .» He rubbed his fingers against his temples. «Skip it.»
«Any progress?» Marcus asked.
«A little. From what I can make out, the molecular synthesizer and its governing circuitry are combined within the same crystal lattice. To give you a biological analogy, it's as though a muscle is also a brain.»
«Don't follow that one through too far,» Roman called.
Karl didn't even smile. He took a chocolate sac from the dispenser, and sucked on the nipple.
«Katherine?» Marcus said.
«I've managed to place a visual-spectrum sensor in the wormhole. There's not much light in there, only what soaks through the pressure membrane. From what we can see it's a straight tunnel. I assume the xenocs cut off the artificial gravity under the portal so they could egress it easily. What I'd like to do next is dismount a laser radar from the MSV and use that.»
«If the wormhole's threaded with exotic matter, will you get a return from it?»
«Probably not. But we should get a return from whatever is at the other end.»
«What's the point?»
Three of them began to talk at once, Katherine loudest of all. Marcus held his hand up for silence. «Listen, everybody, according to Confederation law if the appointed commander or designated controlling mechanism of a spaceship or free-flying space structure discontinues that control for one year and a day then any ownership title becomes null and void. Legally, this xenoc ship is an abandoned structure which we are entitled to file a salvage claim on.»
«There is a controlling network,» Karl said.
«It's a sub-system,» Marcus said. «The law is very clear on that point. If a starship's flight computer fails, but, say, the fusion generators keep working, their governing processors do not constitute the designated controlling mechanism. Nobody will be able to challenge our claim.»
«The xenocs might,» Wai said.
«Let's not make extra problems for ourselves. As the situation stands right now, we have title. We can't not claim the ship because the xenocs may or may not return at some time.»
Katherine rocked her head in understanding. «If we start examining the wormhole they might come back, sooner rather than later. Is that what you're worried about?»
«It's a consideration, yes. Personally, I'd rather like to meet them. But, Katherine, are you really going to learn how to build exotic matter and open a wormhole with the kind of sensor blocks we've got?»
«You know I'm not, Marcus.»
«Right. Nor are we going to find the principle behind the artificial-gravity generator, or any of the other miracles on board. What we have to do is catalogue as much as we can, and identify the areas that need researching. Once we've done that we can bring back the appropriate specialists, pay them a huge salary, and let them get on with it. Don't any of you understand yet? When we found this ship, we stopped being starship crew, and turned into the highest-flying corporate executives in the galaxy. We don't pioneer any more, we designate. So, we map out the last remaining decks. We track the power cables and note what they power. Then we leave.»
«I know I can crack their program language, Marcus,» Karl said. «I can get us into the command network.»
Marcus smiled at the weary pride in his voice. «Nobody is going to be more pleased about that than me, Karl. One thing I do intend to take with us is a cybermouse, preferably more than one. That molecular synthesizer is the hard evidence we need to
convince the banks of what we've got.»
Karl blushed. «Uh, Marcus, I don't know what'll happen if we try and cut one out of the composite. So far we've been left alone; but if the network thinks we're endangering the ship, well . . .»
«I'd like to think we're capable of something more sophisticated than ripping a cybermouse out of the composite. Hopefully, you'll be able to access the network, and we can simply ask it to replicate a molecular synthesizer unit for us. They have to be manufactured somewhere on board.»
«Yeah, I suppose they do. Unless the cybermice duplicate themselves.»
«Now that'd be a sight,» Roman said happily. «One of them humping away on top of the other.»
His neural nanonics time function told Karl he'd slept for nine hours. After he wriggled out of his sleep pouch he air-swam into the crew lounge and helped himself to a pile of food sachets from the galley. There wasn't much activity in the ship, so he didn't even bother to access the flight computer until he'd almost finished eating.
Katherine was on watch when he dived into the bridge through the floor hatch.
«Who's here?» he asked breathlessly. «Who else is on board right now?»
«Just Roman. The rest of them are all over on the wreck. Why?»
«Shit.»
«Why, what's the matter?»
«Have you accessed the flight computer?»
«I'm on watch, of course I'm accessing.»
«No, not the ship's functions. The satellite analysis network Victoria set up.»
Her flat features twisted into a surprised grin. «You mean they've found some gold?»
«No, no fucking way. The network was reporting that satellite three had located a target deposit three hours ago. When I accessed the network direct to follow it up I found out what the search parameters really are. They're not looking for gold, those bastards are here to get pitchblende.»
«Pitchblende?» Katherine had to run a search program through her neural nanonics encyclopedia to find out what it was. «Oh Christ, uranium. They want uranium.»
A Second Chance at Eden nd-7 Page 37
