Code Of The Lifemaker

by Hogan, James

  something they'd already have told me if they wanted me to know?" He hooked his

  thumbs in his belt and stood back. "Anyhow, we've almost got everyone aboard

  now. Soon they'll all be talking, and then the questions will start getting

  asked. I'm not much of a clairvoyant meself, you understand, but I've a sneaky

  feeling it won't be much longer before we get the answers too."

  "Wow! Two hydrogen bombs every second? You're really not joking?" Thelma stared

  wide-eyed across the table at the young NASO captain smartly attired in his

  flight-officer's uniform. Around them, with only two days to go before the

  Orion's departure, the atmosphere in the crowded bar on the Recreation Deck of

  Globe IV was getting quite partylike.

  Larry Campbell, proud of his recent promotion to the staff of General Vantz,

  commander of the Orion, sipped his gin and tonic and grinned reassuringly.

  "Well, they're really only small ones, and completely under control. There's

  nothing to be concerned about. We'll take good care of you."

  "But it sounds so scary. I mean, how can anybody understand how to control

  something like that? You must be very clever. What sign were you born under?"

  Beneath the table, Thelma had pushed Campbell's briefcase back along the wall

  and within reach of the fingertips of one arm, which was draped casually over

  the chair next to her. She shifted slightly and lifted her glass to taste her

  martini while surreptitiously nudging the briefcase under the back of the booth

  behind her.

  Campbell frowned at his glass for a second, then sighed and smiled

  condescendingly. "Well, let's put it this way—my training in understanding the

  physics of thermonuclear processes doesn't have anything to do with when I was

  born, I'm afraid. You don't get these—" he gestured at the captain's tracks on

  his epaulets "—for knowing about birth-signs, you know."

  "You don't?" Thelma said wonderingly. "But you have to know which way to steer

  the ship. How can you do that without knowing all about stars and planets?" At

  the booth behind, Drew West finished his drink, got up, and sauntered out of the

  bar, carrying his jacket loosely over his arm to conceal the briefcase he was

  holding.

  Campbell bit his lip awkwardly. "Look, I, er . . . I don't want to sound like a

  schoolteacher or anything, but astrology and astronomy aren't really the same

  thing."

  "No, of course they're not—everyone knows that," Thelma agreed brightly.

  "Astronomy is restricted to what you can see through telescopes, but astrology

  covers a lot more because it's revealed directly to the mind, right? I read all

  about it in Thinking Woman's Monthly Digest."

  "Er, not quite ... If you want, I'll tell you what the differences really are.

  But I should warn you, you may find you have to change some ideas you might have

  grown pretty fond of."

  "Oh, would you, Larry! Just imagine—a real starship officer taking all this

  trouble just for me! My sister will be so mad when I tell her."

  In the men's room outside the bar, Drew West had picked the lock of the

  briefcase and begun selecting interesting papers which he passed over the

  partition for Joe Fellburg to photograph in the next cubicle. Five minutes

  later, when Fellburg entered the bar carrying Campbell's briefcase inside a

  false-bottomed leather portmanteau, the booth at which West had been sitting was

  taken. So Fellburg edged his way through the throng and stopped partway to the

  bar to count change from his pocket for the cigarette machine, in the process

  putting down the portmanteau next to Thelma's seat. The briefcase stayed behind

  as Fellburg moved on, but the movement of his foot to slide it behind the chair

  toward Thelma's waiting hand was so smooth that Campbell, on the far side of the

  table, didn't even register anyone's being nearby as he extolled the wonders of

  the heavens and expounded on their mysteries.

  Clarissa Eidstadt rapped the end of her pen sharply on the top of Herman

  Thoring's desk in the administrative section of Globe I to emphasize her point.

  "Look, mister, I've got my job to do too. I'm the team's publicity manager,

  okay? That means I need to get information to the public. How am I supposed to

  get information out without proper communications? So do something about it."

  Thoring held up his hands protectively. "Okay, Clarissa, I hear what you're

  telling me, and I'll do what I can. But you have to understand I've got a lot of

  other responsibilities and obligations to think about. This mission is important

  to all kinds of other people too." Thoring looked like a person born to carry

  responsibilities and bear obligations. The tanned dome of his head reflected the

  light inside a semicircle of black, frizzy hair, and his eyes looked like

  poached eggs behind thick, heavy-rimmed spectacles wedged above his fleshy nose.

  He was in shirt-sleeves with cuffs rolled back, vest unbuttoned, and tie-knot

  slipped a couple of inches below his opened collar.

  Clarissa tossed up a hand in a curt gesture of finality. "Well, if you don't

  have the authority to change anything, I'm wasting my time. I thought you were

  in charge around here. Who do I talk to?"

  As it was supposed to, the remark hit a sensitive spot. Thoring's knuckles

  whitened and a vein stood out on his temple. "You're already in the right

  office," he managed indignantly. "I'm the Senior Program Director from Global

  Communications Networking and have full responsibility for media liaison. It's a

  very important position, and I've told you I'll do everything I can."

  "Yeah? Phooey. Important? Who says so? What's 'media liaison' anyway? I wanna

  talk to the captain."

  "What captain?"

  "Vent? Vant? . . . whatever. What's the driver called?"

  "You mean General Vantz?" Thoring looked appalled.

  "That's him. Where do I go?"

  Thoring shook his head and moaned despairingly. "Look, Clarissa, believe me—you

  can't go raising something like this with General Vantz. He wouldn't know

  anything about it anyway. This would come under the mission's Communications

  Director, and I report directly to him. Okay?"

  "Then I wanna talk to the Communications Director."

  Thoring raised a hand to his brow, closed his eyes and fiddled with the bridge

  of his spectacles for a few seconds, then shook his head again and looked back

  at Clarissa. Before he could say anything, one of the women from the secretarial

  pool in the outer office called, "I'm through to New York, Mr. Thoring. They're

  sorry, but Hepperstein is in conference at the moment. Can he call you

  tomorrow?"

  Thoring sighed, stood, and walked round the desk to the open doorway. "No, it

  can't wait until tomorrow," he said, sounding agitated. "He has to get back to

  me today. Make sure they get a message to him, and that he knows it's from me

  personally."

  "Okay."

  "Who are you trying to kid?" Clarissa asked as Thoring came back to his desk and

  sat down. At the same time she allowed a hint of doubt into her voice, and

  marshaled an expression that was a shade more respectful. "I bet you don't even

  know who the Communications Director is. Why would your job in
volve dealing with

  someone like that?"

  Thoring lifted his chin and allowed himself a quick smirk of satisfaction.

  "Well, you'd be surprised, lady. For your information, my level of

  responsibility on this mission requires a working familiarity with all kinds of

  confidential material that you don't know about. That's why you have to trust me

  when I say I'll do as much to help your interests as I can. But that's all I can

  say. Just accept for now that I have a lot more to worry about than you think."

  Clarissa's belligerence evaporated. She leaned forward, glanced furtively across

  at the open doorway, and hissed in a conspiratorial whisper. "What?"

  Thoring's voice lowered itself instinctively. "Come on, Clarissa—you know better

  than that," he muttered, tapping the side of his nose.

  "But I wanna know," Clarissa insisted, her eyes wide with excitement. "Is it

  gonna be a group-sex experiment in space? Or maybe we're going into another

  dimension. You can tell me. Do I look like somebody who'd go spreading things

  around—especially something said in confidence by a Media Liaison Director."

  Thoring frowned, bunched his lips perplexedly for a second, and then whispered,

  "I can't do that ... but if I told you it's big, would you stay off my back and

  let me get on with my job?"

  "But of course. I wouldn't wanna interfere with something that might endanger

  the national interests or something."

  "Well, you're pretty close to the mark," Thoring said, nodding somberly. "That's

  just what it is. You could help us a lot by backing off a little."

  "How big is it?" Clarissa asked, covering the side of her face with a hand and

  murmuring out of the corner other mouth. "Have they found cosmic energy pyramids

  on Mars? Are we gonna fight the KGB for them?"

  "Nothing like that. But I'll tell you this—the Mission Director is Daniel

  Leaherney, deputy head of the U.S. National Security Council. His

  second-in-command will be Charles Giraud, who's connected with the French

  government. They and their senior staff are on board now, shuttled up yesterday

  without any publicity. That should tell you enough."

  "Never heard of them, but they sound important," Clarissa said. "This is

  exciting. What else?"

  Thoring sat back in his chair suddenly and shook his head. "That's more than I

  should have mentioned. I can't say any more, Clarissa . . . but will you stay

  outta my hair from now on, please?"

  "I never realized . . . You must have a lot on your mind."

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you."

  "Okay, I get it. Don't worry—the secret is safe. You can count on me. You know,

  I always wanted to be an espionage agent with the CIA or something. I figure I'd

  be good at it. Do you, er . . . do you have people like that working for you?"

  Clarissa looked at Thoring hopefully.

  "Uh? Oh no, I'm afraid not."

  "Too bad. Oh well, maybe if you want a secret message taken to the

  Communications Director, or something like that, you could let me know."

  "What? Oh yes, sure. If anything like that comes up, I'll give you a call."

  "Okay, well, I guess I'd better let you get on." Clarissa got up and crept

  furtively over to the door. She opened it a fraction, peered out, and then

  looked back over her shoulder at Thoring. "I'm sorry I bothered you over

  something so trivial."

  "Oh, think nothing of it. We get it all the time ... but we have to keep up our

  cover, you understand."

  "That's what I thought." Clarissa nodded a final, solemn reassurance, made an O

  in the air with her thumb and forefinger, and disappeared. Thoring stared

  disbelievingly at the door for a long time after she had gone. Then he blinked

  himself back to reality, shook his head, and returned his attention to the

  papers on his desk.

  "The figures for on-board fuel-pellet manufacturing capacity, emergency reserves

  of chemical propellants, and the range corrections factored into the radar

  calibration procedures all point to a distance much greater than that of Mars,"

  Theuna said to the rest of the team, who were holding a cramped afterdinner

  conference in the cabin that Zam-bendorf shared with Abaquaan, West, and

  Fellburg. She gestured at the photo prints lying among other papers on the bunk

  beside her. "And the flight-profile from Campbell's duty roster gives a voyage

  of something nearer three months than fifty days."

  "I still think the Asteroids is a possibility," Drew West said, lounging on one

  of the upper bunks. "There's been a lot of talk in recent years about our

  vulnerability in strategic minerals—in fact, right back to the last century.

  There's no end of just about everything out there."

  Silence reigned for a few seconds. Joe Fellburg made a face. "Too many things

  don't fit," he said. "Why all the secrecy? Why the military?"

  "Protecting our eternal interests," Abaquaan answered, sitting on the floor with

  his back to the door.

  "Who from?"

  "Well, it could only be the Soviets," West said.

  "Out at the Asteroids?" Clarissa looked inquiringly at Theuna and Fellburg. "Do

  they have anything that could match the Orion at that range?"

  Fellburg shook his head. "Not yet. They've been concentrating on near-Earth

  applications. The Japanese are more interested in Venus and Mercury."

  "The Soviets did develop a series of fusion drives as part of their Mars-base

  program," Theuna said. "But if they'd gone a long way in scaling them up to

  anything like the Orion, we'd know about it."

  Clarissa nodded as if that confirmed what she already thought. "And besides,

  Leaherney and Giraud don't fit into that either," she said. Leaherney used to be

  chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Economic Affairs and is a onetime

  U.S. ambassador in Brussels; Giraud was a member of the French cabinet. You

  wouldn't pick guys like that to head up a prospecting expedition."

  The cabin fell quiet again for a while. Everybody looked at everybody else.

  There were no new suggestions. At last Zambendorf stood up, stepped over

  Abaquaan's legs to get to the coffee pot by the washbasin, and poured himself a

  fresh cup. He stirred in a spoon of sugar and turned to face the others again.

  "Then it has to be as I've been saying," he told them. "No other hypothesis

  explains all of the facts nearly as well. A low-gravity, low-temperature, icy

  environment ... It has to be a moon of the outer planets."

  "With not only an atmosphere, but a high-pressure one at that," Thelma agreed,

  nodding.

  Fellburg rubbed his nose between thumb and forefinger for a few seconds, and at

  last nodded slowly. "I can't fault it ... And you know something?—the European

  probe that arrived there two years ago and sent down those surface landers that

  were all supposed to have failed soon after they reached the surface—that story

  has always sounded strange to me too."

  Abaquaan looked up and turned his head from side to side. "So what are we

  saying, then—it has to be Titan? We're agreed?"

  "It appears extremely probable at least," Zambendorf said. "But the more

  interesting question, by far, is why."

  Why would the Western powers equip an elaborate mis
sion, heavy with scientists

  from every discipline and experts from many fields, to such a destination,

  provide it with military protection, and go to great pains to conceal its true

  purpose from—as in all probability it had to be —the Soviets? Why would they

  place such a mission in the charge of senior political figures experienced in

  international negotiation and diplomacy? And why—perhaps most significant of

  all—were there linguists and so many psychologists among the professionals being

  taken along, specialists at understanding and communicating with thinking

  intelligences? In short, just what had the landers from the European probe found

  under the murky, impenetrable cloud canopy of Titan, Saturn's mysterious moon,

  equal in size to the planet Mercury?

  And, of particular interest to the people gathered in Zambendorf's cabin, why

  was it considered highly desirable for someone like Zambendorf to be there?

  10

  IN THE HEART OF THE ORION'S COMMAND GLOBE OVERLOOKING the Central Control

  Deck—the ship's control and operational nerve center—Don Connel, the senior

  reporter on the GCN news team assigned to accompany the mission, watched on his

  monitor the view being transmitted live into Earth's communications net from

  camera 1. The camera panned slowly across the activity at the crew stations, the

  colors and formats of the data displays changing and flashing to report

  condition changes and status updates, and the computers silently marching

  regiments of bits through their registers, and then came to rest on the image of

  Earth being presented on the main display screen above the floor. Connel nodded

  to acknowledge his "ready" cue from the director on the far side of the raised

  tier of consoles from which General Vantz and a trio of senior officers were

  monitoring the final-phase countdown operations, and turned to face camera 2. A

  moment later its light came on to indicate that he was on the air again.

  "Well, you've just been looking at the view of Earth that we're getting here on

  the Orion, and seeing what you look like from ten thousand miles up, right at

  this moment," he resumed. "You know, even I have to admit it's a real problem

  finding the right words to tell you folks just what it feels like to be up here

  at a moment like this. Personally I'm still having trouble convincing myself