He had closeted himself in his cabin, to get some last rest before starting his duties. Wasn't fourteen hours enough? Chloe had resisted asking that question. She wanted no acrimony with someone who'd be sharing tight quarters for weeks.
Soon, Pascal walked through the hatch. He approached the navigator's port hesitantly, like a child going to the dentist.
The port was a large support chair, enclosed up to chest level. Above it hung a burnished hemisphere studded inside with thousands of thin filaments. Those filaments would be the link between his brain and the ship's computer.
It used to be that navigators had direct physical links, through jackports surgically implanted in their heads. Technical advances now allowed for an interface less invasive, more elegant in design. It had lifted some of the physical and mental burden from navigators. Only navigators could say how much.
Pascal opened the side entrance to the port: the name had outlived the jackport years. The opening faced Chloe. “Um ... could you give me a second, to get settled in?"
Since navigators couldn't leave their stations while in underspace, the port chairs had to handle all human biological needs. It seemed strange to Chloe for him to be modest about this, after five years. Still, she turned her body and averted her eyes.
Finally, there was the snick of the port closing up. She saw Pascal ensconced, lowering the inductance helmet toward his head. He winced at the myriad pinpricks on his scalp. The helmet fastened itself automatically, molding itself to his head. His face showed relief, but not relaxation.
"All right, I'm in contact.” His voice sounded tighter, as though his chest were squeezed. “Course is set. FTL engines powered. Transition in ten seconds ... five ... and now.” The starfield turned to a swirl of gray, slowly flowing past the viewscreen like turbid waters.
Pascal made a sound deep in his throat, midway between a groan and a sigh. “We're underway, Ms. Roberts,” he said. “If you want to go to your cabin, you're free now."
Chloe looked his way, casually, as if his situation were nothing odd. “Hoping to be rid of me that soon, Pascal?"
"Uhh, no, but if you have your own—"
"I have my own post-transition checklist. That'll keep me here a while.” She started on it. “After that, I can still keep you company.” She gave him another look. “And you really should start calling me Chloe."
* * * *
Small ships, with small FTL engines, were invariably slow. This one would need three days to travel the ten light years to Zeta Doradus. Chloe needed the time to establish herself on Pascal's good side.
He might be resentful of her, feeling pressed so soon after one assignment into another one he knew little about. Fortunately, she had a gift for dealing with people in delicate situations: coaxing out information, talking her way into sheltered areas, and a few times convincing people not to arrest, abduct, or kill her.
Chloe probed a little into Pascal's background, letting him tell what he wanted. She learned fast when to give him a break. Sometimes it was those matters he had been shy about when first entering his port in her presence. Sometimes it was the drain of conversing and navigating at the same time. That drain only increased.
The second morning, she walked into the cockpit with a chipper greeting. “Occupied, Ms. Roberts,” he said dully.
"All right.” She sat down, and only then saw his face. He was blank of expression, almost a zombie in his port, a nightmare vision of what became of navigators. “Are you okay?"
Pascal's eye twitched her way. “Sleeping. After a fashion. Another twenty-seven minutes, eight seconds."
Chloe had heard of this. The port induced a few hours of sleep separately in each hemisphere of the brain. Half his mind navigated underspace, while the other half got enough rest to keep functioning. She said no more, and sat still in the pilot's chair, waiting.
Some time later, light returned to his eyes. He let his head roll over to look at her. “Good morning, Chloe,” he said, then rolled his head back and called up a drink from his port's dispenser. Chloe waited for him to take a longer look, but he never did.
It wasn't that her outfit that morning was outrageous: it never was. She had taken care, though, to make it appealing, with soft colors and silky fabrics. It always helped with men, that and showing interest in what they said. Pascal had shown mild interest back at Shastri Station. Now, though, he had bigger things occupying him.
Chloe didn't let it bother her. She kept up pleasant conversation, recounting incidents from the Hartford clone bank story and the Quaoar peace talks when he seemed interested. Sometimes, though, she would alter her pose a little, shift her leg just so. Pascal never took notice.
It was late that afternoon when Pascal finally asked the question Chloe had been awaiting. “Do you know what you're going to find on this chase?” he said. “Of course, if you aren't sure of the system, how sure could you be of what might be there?"
"I'm not sure,” Chloe admitted. “My earliest working theory was that navigators were dying of some link-related malady, and it was being covered up. But that wouldn't require getting so many of the vanishing navigators to pass close to a particular patch of space. They're gathering somewhere, or being gathered."
"Oh.” Pascal's face looked like it did during pseudo-sleep. “Gathering for what?"
"I can only speculate. Maybe they're being conscripted into some secret military force, a fleet of FTL warships being mustered for an attack on ... who knows?"
"But you said this began decades ago. The first navigators they took would be dead or decrepit today. Doesn't make much sense, even for the military."
Chloe didn't take Pascal's bait. “It could also be a secret exploratory corps, but it's difficult to imagine what they could be exploring that would need such secrecy. Except, maybe, aliens."
Pascal gave a drawn-out “Oh,” and smiled. “That's a secret I can see the authorities trying hard to keep. Worries about culture shock, unauthorized contacts, even belligerent acts. But they'd maintain limited contacts, and skim away some navigators to make the runs to and from alien space. That makes sense."
Chloe nodded. “And they'd take older navigators because it'd be easier for outsiders to believe they had died natural deaths."
"What's this?” said Pascal. Chloe explained the statistics to him. “No, that doesn't add up. Older, more experienced navigators have the highest profiles among us. We'd be losing our best people—we are losing them—so we'd notice."
He sank back into his chair. “So why haven't we made a bigger fuss?” he said. “Do we know what's happening, why it's happening? I sure don't."
"Perhaps you don't qualify as needing to know. Not experienced enough, for one thing."
"Oh. Still, it doesn't really tally. Why wouldn't they take some younger navigators, just as they're coming in? They'd get much longer service from them."
"Maybe they are,” Chloe said, “and I haven't found that piece of the pattern."
Pascal fell into a study. Chloe waited for him to share whatever he was thinking. In time, she realized he wasn't pondering their theories, but navigating some difficult stretch of underspace. He didn't come out of it for almost an hour, by which time he was pale and needed a ration of water much more than a chat.
He never resumed that discussion. He was losing interest in all conversation, turning inward by visible degrees. Chloe kept up her side, but as his answers and his attention grew shorter, she soon accepted the inevitable.
Still, she wore another eye-catching outfit the next day, for whatever submerged part of him might appreciate it.
* * * *
"Transition ... now.” The gray churn on the viewscreen went black, and the stars came out. A bright white one dominated the view.
Chloe heard Pascal's gasp, and politely ignored it. She ran her post-transition pilot's checklist, as Pascal ran his own. When she heard him shift inside his port, she raised a hand to shield her eyes. A minute later, he was out of the port, though a little un
steady on his legs.
"Might I ... get a little shut-eye? Unless you need ... me here."
"Go, Pascal. You've got at least six hours.” She shooed him out, then got working on scans.
They were ten light hours from the primary, twenty degrees below the system's ecliptic plane. All the planets were visible on line-of-sight, and Chloe ran preliminary sensor sweeps on them, working outward. The third planet stopped her dead.
"Pascal, I need you back here.” She ran the protocol again, and got the same readings. She checked the ephemeris again, but the contradiction remained.
"What is it?” Pascal called petulantly from the corridor.
"The third planet doesn't match the catalog."
He trudged onto the bridge. “How doesn't it match? Different orbit? You get that sometimes with older surveys."
"Would an older survey ship miss an oxygen atmosphere?"
"What?” He peered over her shoulder. The catalog listed Zeta Doradus III as a habitable-zone world, with a Venusian atmosphere choking off its chances to bear life. The planet they were scanning had oxygen-nitrogen air, the oxygen partial pressure being almost an exact match of Earth.
"That can't be right,” Pascal said. “No sensor suite could make a mistake that large."
"Then it wasn't a mistake,” said Chloe. “Somebody falsified the records, either the Exploratory Commission, or the original surveyor himself: Mr. Shastri, forty-two years ago."
"No. He couldn't have. Besides, the second surveyor would have found the mistake."
"Unless she was in on it. That was Ursula Bosch, twenty-five years back.” Chloe scrolled through one of her complates. “And she went missing thirteen years ago."
"Oh boy.” Pascal leaned against the navigator's port. “Whoever falsified this had to do it immediately, either Shastri or the Commission. A habitable world—and this one sure seems habitable—would be too valuable to go unexploited for any length of time. It couldn't be a false record patched into the files after the fact.” He blew out a breath. “Anyway, congratulations."
"For what?” Chloe asked.
"You found it, first place you looked."
"I guess we did. But what have we found?"
Pascal snatched some sleep while Chloe let the sensors tackle that question. Data trickled in slowly at that range, but the picture soon took shape. Moderate temperature range, slight axial tilt with two sizable moons to prevent excessive precession, and an orbit almost perfectly circular—at least according to the records, which apparently hadn't falsified that astronomical fact. The planet seemed perfect.
It also seemed empty. The ship picked up no transmissions, and there were no sizable artificial objects in orbit. If this was the base for a secret project, it remained secret for now.
Chloe waited for sensors to catch something more, but it only delayed her decision. She touched the intercom panel, then switched it off. She left the bridge, went to the door of her navigator's cabin, and knocked.
"Pascal? Pascal, I need your help."
It took a minute for Pascal to open the door. “What's the problem?” he mumbled.
"How soon after coming out of underspace could this ship go back in? If it had to leave in a hurry?"
Pascal perked up. “This is after a short, ten light hour jump, I assume?"
"Yes.” She stepped aside to let Pascal past, and followed him back to the bridge.
"The FTL engines would have some residual charge, especially after a mini-jump. They could power up faster than if they were starting cold.” He sat down at the pilot's station to pull up some specs. “I'd say ninety seconds, if we weren't picky about where we were going."
"We wouldn't be. I assume we wouldn't get lost, or anything.” His look answered the question. “Okay, I was just asking. You know your business."
"I do,” Pascal said. “So, are we visiting the mystery planet?"
"Of course. We have to. It's only given us more questions, not answers."
Pascal left her seat, and opened up the port again. “How close?"
"Depends on how accurate you can be bringing us out."
"At this range? Within three thousand kilometers."
"Then make it good and close. Inside the lower moon's orbit."
"Aye aye.” He nearly smiled, but something weighted down his mouth. He winced as the helmet made its connections, and his eyes focused somewhere beyond the cockpit.
They went into underspace again, the gray whorls creeping past. When they popped out, Chloe went right to the sensor readings, looking for anything that spelled danger. She found nothing. “All quiet,” she said hopefully.
Pascal had his long stare again, but this time it had a focus, the planet filling most of the screen. Wisps of white drifted over expanses of blue, brown, and—it wasn't quite chlorophyll green, but closer to the aqua of clear, shallow seawater. “Lovely, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes. Let's give it a closer look.” She set commands to enter a polar orbit, so they could scan the whole surface. “I'll need you to stay ready for a quick escape. I'm sorry."
"I understand."
Five minutes after swinging beneath the south pole, the sensors got a hit. “Detecting metals,” Chloe said. “Significant concentrations—those are ships on the surface. Three, I count. And buildings nearby. Mostly small, but at least a hundred. We've found it!"
"Whatever it is,” Pascal noted. “And if we can see them..."
"Gotcha. I'll raise our—"
The ship's radio crackled to life. “Unknown orbiting vessel,” said a firm female voice, “please identify yourself."
Chloe and Pascal met each other's eyes nervously. “I think,” Chloe said, “they'd react better to a navigator responding than a reporter. Call them back, and stay ready for transition."
Pascal sent the reply, giving the ship's name and registry number, and his name and navigator's license number. “Stand by,” the planet said.
Pascal did not wait easily. “I think we should get away now."
"Not yet. I'll tell you when.” She saw his hands tremble and hoped it was his built-up fatigue affecting him.
When the voice returned, his fingers moved toward the transition controls before he heard a word. “Pascal, your identity's confirmed. Welcome. You can set down at the field, pad five. A beacon will guide you in."
Pascal was a little stunned. “Copy that. Out.” He turned to Chloe. “Do we—"
"Absolutely. I'm not walking away now.” She cut off his protest. “We won't walk in blind, either. Can you handle the approach? I'm going to set up some precautions."
She didn't need long, and she was able to retake control at the edge of the troposphere. They approached over an uneven forest with patchy clearings. Near the horizon ran a wide silver-blue band, a slow river bordered by flatlands, then rolling meadows.
The forest resolved to individual trees as they passed below two kilometers. Thick dark boles supported leafy canopies that spread out like flattened mushroom caps or huge sea-green nail heads. Thinner layers from seasons past flashed through the gaps.
The trees gave way to ground cover, which yielded to a checkerboard of tans, beiges, and other earthy colors. Narrow roads led back to a small town, its streets laid out like spokes through concentric wheels. Off to one side lay a belt of tarmac, lined into six sections, half of them occupied by small FTL ships. A hangar stood nearby, close to the riverbank.
Chloe stayed attentive. Sensors had shown nothing resembling active weapons systems during approach, but now was the best time for a quick power-up and ambush. It never happened, as she settled their ship gently onto pad five. She ran her landing checklist, then rechecked her safeguards.
Pascal tottered out of the navigator's port. “If you expect me to be point man here,” he said, “and you probably do, I should tell you I still don't know what this place is."
"Neither do I,” Chloe admitted. “And you're the one they welcomed."
Pascal nodded. “So you'll be staying inside?"
The airlock hatch opened, letting in a bracing draught of outdoor air. A short ramp extruded down to the tarmac. As Chloe hung back, Pascal walked out, looking for a welcoming committee.
It came from the side, two men dashing over to grab Pascal. While one pinned his arms, the other made for the hatch. Chloe hit the button too fast for him. The hatch slammed shut.
She fumbled to activate the hull camera and the outercom. Pascal was protesting as the two men, both gray-haired but wiry and strong, thwarted his attempts to tear loose. “What is this?” she heard him shout. “What did I do?"
"You weren't passed to come here,” one of them answered in a growl. “Who gave you our location?"
"No one!"
"You didn't find us by accident,” the other said. “You'd better come clean. Who told you about us?"
"I did!"
The toughs turned toward the ship, still holding Pascal tightly. “Who are you?"
She summoned all the authority she could put into her voice. “Chloe Roberts, Inter-Info Network. Nobody had to tell me about your hideaway. I uncovered it myself."
One of the men groaned out a curse. The other shouted, “Captain! We need you here!"
From out of Chloe's camera angle, probably from the hangar, walked an older woman, her thick hair almost wholly white. She ignored the ship for the moment, concentrating on what her musclemen told her, then on their captive. Pascal returned the scrutiny, and his eyes went wide.
"I know you. You're Zhang Mei-zhi."
"That's right, Pascal,” she answered with a faint smile.
"I didn't know you had disappeared. I thought you just retired."
The smile grew. “I did.” She turned toward the hatch, spotting the camera effortlessly. “Ms. Roberts, I'm Zhang Mei-zhi. I run this place, to an extent."
Chloe studied the face. It showed no threat, for the moment. “Pleased to meet you. What is this place?"
Analog SFF, November 2006 Page 15
