by John Varley
“All right. I can wait.” Gaby was not that interested in Themis as a spacecraft. To her it was a fascinating problem in observation.
Cirocco again looked at the picture.
“The hub,” she began, then bit her lip. That camera was still running, and she didn’t want to say anything too hastily.
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s the only place you could dock with the thing. The only part that’s motionless.”
“Not the way it is now. That hole in the middle is pretty big. The first time you reach anything solid, it’s moving at a pretty good clip. I can calculate—”
“Never mind. It’s not important right now. The point is, only at the very dead center of rotation could you dock with Themis without a great deal of trouble. I sure wouldn’t want to try it.”
“So?”
“So there must be a compelling reason why there’s no docking facilities visible there. Something important enough to sacrifice that location, some reason for leaving a big hole in the center.”
“Engine,” Calvin said. Cirocco glanced at him, got a glimpse of his brown eyes before he turned back to his work.
“That was my thought. A real big fusion ramscoop. The machinery is in the hub, electromagnetic field generators to funnel the interstellar hydrogen into the center, where it gets burned.”
Gaby shrugged. “Makes sense. But what about docking?”
“Well, leaving the thing would be easy enough. Just drop out a hole in the bottom and get escape velocity for free, plus some to fool around with. But there ought to be some sort of dingus that would telescope out to the center of rotation when the engine isn’t running, to pick up scout ships. The main engine has to be there. The only other way would be to space engines around the rim. I’d want three, at least. More would be better.”
She turned to face the camera.
“Send me what you can about hydrogen ramscoop engines,” she said. “See if you can give me some idea of what to look for if Themis has one.”
“You’ll have to take your shirt off,” Calvin said.
Cirocco reached up and switched off the camera, leaving the sound on. Calvin thumped her back and listened to the results while Cirocco and Gaby continued to study the picture of Themis. They came up with no new insights until Gaby brought up the matter of the cables.
“As far as I can tell, they form a circle about midway between the hub and the rim. They support the top edges of the reflecting panels, sort of like the rigging on a sailing ship.”
“What about these?” Cirocco asked, indicating the area between two of the spokes. “Any idea what they’re for?”
“Nope. There’s six of them, and they run midway between the spokes, from the hub to the rim, radially. They pass through the reflecting panels, if that tells you anything.”
“Not exactly. But if there’s any more of these things, maybe smaller ones, we should look for them. These cables are about—what did you say? Three kilometers around?”
“More like five.”
“Okay. So one that’s just a tiny thing—say about as big around as Ringmaster—might be invisible to us for a long time, especially if it’s as black as the rest of Themis. Gene’s going to be nosing around there in the SEM. I’d hate for him to hit one.”
“I’ll get the computer on it,” Gaby said.
Calvin began packing his equipment.
“As disgustingly healthy as usual,” he said. “You people never give me a break. If I don’t try out that five-million-dollar hospital how am I going to make them believe they got their money’s worth?”
“You want me to break somebody’s arm?” Cirocco suggested.
“Nah. I already did that, back in medical school.”
“Broke one, or fixed it?”
Calvin laughed. “Appendix. Now there’s something I’d like to try. You don’t hardly get busted appendixes anymore.”
“You mean you’ve never taken out an appendix? What do they teach you in medical school these days?”
“That if you get the theory right, the fingers will follow. We’re too intellectual to get our hands dirty.” He laughed again, and Cirocco could feel the thin walls of her room shaking.
“I wish I knew when he was serious,” Gaby said.
“You want serious?” Calvin asked. “Here’s something you might never have thought of. Elective surgery. You folks have one of the best surgeons around—” He paused to allow the rude noises to die away. “One of the best surgeons there is. Does anyone take advantage of it? Not hardly. A nose job, now that’s going to cost you seven, eight thousand back home. Here you got it on the Blue Cross.”
Cirocco drew herself up and gave him an icy glare.
“You couldn’t be talking about me, could you?”
Calvin held out a thumb and sighted along it to Cirocco’s face, squinting. “Of course, there’s other types of elective surgery. I’m pretty good at all of them. It was my hobby.” He moved his thumb lower. Cirocco aimed a kick at him and he ducked out the door.
She was smiling when she sat down. Gaby was still there, the picture tucked under her arm. She perched on the tiny folding stool beside the cot.
Cirocco raised one eyebrow.
“Was there something else?”
Gaby looked away. She opened her mouth to say something, didn’t manage to make a sound, then slapped her bare thigh with her palm.
“No, I guess there wasn’t.” She started to get up, but didn’t.
Cirocco looked at her thoughtfully, then reached up and turned the television sound off.
“Does that help any?”
Gaby shrugged. “Maybe. I would have asked you to turn it off anyway, if I could ever have started talking. I guess I figure it’s none of my business.”
“But you felt you ought to say something.” Cirocco waited.
“Yeah, okay. It’s your business how you run this ship. I want you to know I realize that.”
“Go on. I can take criticism.”
“You’ve been sleeping with Bill.”
Cirocco laughed quietly. “I don’t ever sleep with him. The bed’s too small. But I get the idea.”
Cirocco had hoped to put Gaby at ease, but apparently it hadn’t worked. Gaby stood and paced slowly, even though she could only go four steps before she reached the wall.
“Captain, sex is no big thing to me.” She shrugged. “I don’t hate sex, but I’m not all that crazy about it, either. If I don’t have sex for a day or a year, I don’t even notice it. But most people aren’t like that. Especially men.”
“I’m not like that, either.”
“I know. That’s why I wondered how you … just what your feelings are toward Bill.”
It was Cirocco’s turn to pace. It was even less satisfactory to her, since she was bigger than Gaby and could only take three steps.
“Gaby, human interactions in confined environments is a well-researched field. They’ve tried all-male ships. Even all-female once. They’ve tried it with all-married crews, and with all singles. They’ve had rules forbidding sex, and they’ve had no rules at all. None of them worked well. People will get on each other’s nerves, and they’re going to have sex. That’s why I don’t tell anybody what to do in private.”
“I’m not trying to say that you—”
“Just a minute. I said all that so you’d know I’m not unaware of potential problems. I should hear about specific ones.”
She waited.
“It’s Gene,” Gaby said. “I’ve been making it with both Gene and Calvin. Like I say, it’s no big thing for me. I know Calvin’s got this thing for me. I’m used to that. At home, I’d just cool him off. Here, I fuck with him to keep him happy. It makes very little difference to me either way.
“But I’m fucking Gene because he … he has this … this pressure. You know?” She had balled her hands into fists. Now she opened them and looked to Cirocco for understanding.
“I’ve had some experience with it, yes
.” Cirocco kept her voice even.
“All right, he doesn’t satisfy you. He told me that. It bothers him. That kind of intensity scares me, maybe because I don’t understand it. I’ve been seeing him to try to ease his tension.”
Cirocco pursed her lips.
“Let me get this straight. Are you asking me to take him off your hands?”
“No, no, I’m not asking you anything. I told you, I’m just making you aware of the problem, if you weren’t already. What you do about it is up to you.”
Cirocco nodded. “All right. I’m glad you told me. But he’s going to have to live with this. He’s stable, well-adjusted, a bit of a dominating personality, but he’s got it well under control or he wouldn’t be here.”
Gaby nodded. “Whatever you think best.”
“One more thing. It’s no part of your duty to keep anyone sexually satisfied. Any burden you feel in that direction is self-assumed.”
“I understand that.”
“Just so you do. I’d hate to think you thought I expected it of you. Or that you expected it of me.” She searched the other woman’s eyes until Gaby looked away, then reached over and patted her knee.
“Besides, it’ll take care of itself. We’re all going to be too busy to think much about screwing.”
Chapter Three
From a ballistic standpoint, Themis was a nightmare.
No one had ever tried to orbit a toroidal body. Themis was 1300 kilometers across and only 250 kilometers wide. The torus was flat along the outside, and 175 kilometers from top to bottom. The density of the torus varied radically, supporting the view that it was composed of a thick floor along the outside, an atmosphere about that, and a thin canopy arching overhead holding the air inside.
Then there were the six spokes, 420 kilometers tall. They were elliptical in cross-section, with major and minor axes of 100 kilometers and 50 kilometers, respectively, except near the base where they flared out to join the torus. In the center was the hub, more massive than the spokes, 160 kilometers in diameter, with a 100-kilometer hole in the center.
Trying to cope with a body like that was tantamount to a nervous breakdown for the ship’s computer, and for Bill, who had to make a model the computer would believe in.
The easiest orbit would have been in the equatorial plane of Saturn, enabling them to use the velocity they already had. But that was not possible. Themis was oriented with its axis of rotation parallel to the equatorial plane. Since the axis passed through the hole at the center of Themis, any Saturn-equatorial orbit Cirocco might assume would have Ringmaster passing through areas of wildly fluctuating gravitational attraction.
The only viable possibility was an orbit in the equatorial plane of Themis. Such an orbit would be expensive in terms of angular momentum. It had the single advantage of being stable, once achieved.
The maneuvering began before they reached Saturn. During the last day of approach their course was re-calculated. Cirocco and Bill relied on Earth-based computers and navigational aids as far away as Mars and Jupiter. They lived in CONMOD and watched Saturn grow larger in the aft television screens.
Then the long burn was initiated.
During a lull in her work, Cirocco turned on the camera in SCIMOD. Gaby looked up with a harried expression.
“Rocky, can’t you do something about that vibration?”
“Gaby, the engine function is, as they say, nominal. They’re just going to shake, that’s all.”
“Best observing time of the whole fucking trip,” Gaby muttered. In the seat next to Cirocco, Bill laughed.
“Five minutes, Gaby,” he said. “And I really think we ought to let them burn as long as we planned. It would work out so much nicer that way.”
The engines shut down on the tick and they watched for final confirmation that they were where they wanted to be.
“This is Ringmaster; C. Jones commanding. We have arrived in Saturn orbit at 1341.453 hours, Universal Time. I’ll send up the prelims for a correcting burn when we come out from behind. Meanwhile, I’m going off this channel.”
She slapped the appropriate switch.
“Anybody who wants to take a look outside, this is going to be your only chance.”
It was tight, but August and April and Gene and Calvin managed to squeeze into the cramped room. After checking with Gaby, Cirocco turned the ship ninety degrees.
Saturn was a dark gray hole, seventeen degrees wide, covering 1000 times the area of the moon as seen from Earth. The rings were an incredible forty degrees from side to side.
They looked like solid, brilliant metal. Ringmaster had come in north of the equator, so the upper face was presented to them. Each particle was being lit from the opposite side, presenting a thin crescent, like Saturn. The sun was a brilliant point of light in the ten o’clock position, approaching Saturn.
No one spoke as the sun drew nearer to eclipse. They saw Saturn’s shadow fall across the part of the ring nearest them, cutting it like a razor.
Sunset lasted fifteen seconds. The colors were deep and changed rapidly, pure reds and yellows and blue-blacks like those seen from an airliner in the stratosphere.
There was a soft chorus of sighs in the cabin. The glass depolarized and everyone gasped again as the rings grew brighter, bracketing the deep blue glow that outlined the northern hemisphere. Gray striations became visible on the planetary surface, illuminated by ringlight. Down there were storms as big as the Earth.
When she looked away at last, Cirocco saw the screen to her left. Gaby was still in SCIMOD. There was an image of Saturn on the screen above her head, but she didn’t look up at it.
“Gaby, don’t you want to come up and see this?”
Cirocco saw her shake her head. She scanned the numbers marching across a tiny screen.
“And lose the best observing time of the whole trip? You’ve got to be out of your mind.”
They first assumed a long, elliptical orbit with a low point 200 kilometers above the theoretical radius of Themis. It was a mathematical abstraction because the orbit was tilted thirty degrees from Themis’ equator, which put them above the dark side. They passed the spinning toroid to emerge on the sun side. Themis lay spread out before them as a naked-eye object.
Not that there was a lot to see. Themis was nearly as black as space, even with the sun shining on it. She studied the huge mass of the wheel with the triangular solar absorption sails rimming it like sharp gear teeth, presumably soaking up sunlight and turning it into heat.
The ship moved over the interior of the great wheel. The spokes became visible, and the solar reflectors. They seemed nearly as dark as the rest of Themis, except where they mirrored some of the brighter stars.
The problem that still worried Cirocco was the lack of an entrance. There was a lot of pressure from Earth to get into the thing, and Cirocco, despite her cautious instincts, wanted to as badly as anyone else.
There had to be a way. No one doubted Themis was an artifact. The debate concerned whether it was an interstellar space vehicle or an artificial world, like O’Neil One. The differences were movement and origin. A spaceship would have an engine, and it would be at the hub. A colony would have been built by somebody close at hand. Cirocco had heard theories that included inhabitants of Saturn or Titan, Martians—though no one had found so much as a flint arrowhead on Mars—and ancient space-faring races from the Earth. She didn’t believe any of them, but it hardly mattered. Ship or colony, Themis had been built by someone, and there would be a door.
The place to look was the hub, but the constraints of ballistics forced her to orbit as far from the hub as she could get.
Ringmaster settled into a circular orbit 400 kilometers above the equator. They traveled in the direction of spin, but Themis turned faster than their orbital speed. It was a black plane outside Cirocco’s window. At regular intervals one of the solar panels would sweep by like the wing of a monstrous bat.
Some details could now be seen on the outer surface. T
here were long, puckered ridges that converged on the solar panels, presumably covering huge pipes to carry a fluid or gas to be warmed by the sun. Scattered widely in the darkness were a few craters, some of them 400 meters deep. There was no rubble scattered around them. Nothing could stay on the outer surface of Themis that wasn’t fastened down.
Cirocco locked her control board. At her elbow, Bill nodded in his couch, asleep. The two of them had not left CONMOD in two days.
She moved through SCIMOD like a sleepwalker. Somewhere down there was a bed with soft sheets and a pillow, and a comfortable quarter gee now that the carousel was turning again.
“Rocky, we’ve got something strange here.”
She stopped with one foot on the ladder of D Spoke, stood very still for a moment.
“What did you say?” The edge in her voice made Gaby look up.
“I’m tired, too,” she said, irritable. She palmed a switch, and an image appeared on the overhead screen.
It was a view of the approaching edge of Themis. There was a swelling on it that seemed to grow larger as it caught up with them.
“That wasn’t there before.” Cirocco’s brow furrowed as she tried to shake off the exhaustion.
A buzzer sounded faintly and for a moment she could not place it. Then things became sharp and clear as adrenalin ate the cobwebs. It was the radar alarm in CONMOD.
“Captain,” Bill said over the speaker, “I’ve got a strange reading here. We’re not getting closer to Themis, but something’s getting closer to us.”
“I’ll be there.” Her hands felt like ice as she grabbed a stanchion to swing herself up. She glanced at the screen. The object exploded. It looked like a starburst, and it was growing.
“I can see it now,” Gaby said. “It’s still attached to Themis. It’s like a long arm or a boom, and it’s opening out. I think—”
