To sip tea with you.
"I like it," she said.
His dark eyes found her. "I know it's not on a level with yours," he said. "But it's true."
Delta. Tuesday, May 17; 1535 hours.
The comer was almost a perfect 90 degrees. The problem was that the ice was brittle, and tended to crumble. But it was good enough. Carson called it a victory, cut power to the 1600, and accepted a handshake from his partner. "That's it, Angela," he said. "We're done for now. Let's go."
She acknowledged, and laid power to the engines.
They wheeled overhead and admired their work. Not bad for amateurs.
Angela spent the evening looking at the data coming in from Ashley. She kept moving files around, switching images, talking to herself.
"What's wrong?" asked Hutch.
"These things" she said. "There's no way to explain them. And I'm thinking where we're going to be if we let them get away and another one does not show up."
"Looking dumb?" suggested Hutch.
"To say the least. We've got a major discovery here. Whatever it is. They violate physical law. The one that's approaching us will pass the sun and apparently keep going. I mean, this thing is really traveling." She was quiet for a moment. "I don't know what holds them together."
"What are you suggesting, Angela?"
"I think we should arrange to take a close look as it goes by."
"Is there time?"
"We can arrange an intercept. We won't have much time alongside, because the ship can't begin to match the object's velocity in the time available. But we can get a quick glimpse, and maybe the sensors will be more effective up close." She looked at Carson. "What do you think?"
"Can't we catch it later if we have to?" He directed the question to Hutch.
She considered it. "Hazeltines are notoriously poor for pinpoint work. We did pretty well at Beta Pac, but that's the exception. Usually, you pick a star system, and land somewhere in the general neighborhood. With something that's moving trie way this thing is, if we let it get away, we might never see it again."
"I don't think running after it right now would be prudent," Carson said.
Angela frowned. "I can't see any problem. Terry's a good pilot. And he will keep a respectful distance."
"No," he said.
"Frank," said Angela, "the real risk is in not going."
He rolled his eyes and opened a channel to the ship. "Let's talk about it," he told her.
Janet appeared on the main display. "How's the Neighborhood Improvement Group doing?"
"Not bad," said Carson. "Where's Terry?"
"Right here." The screen split.
"What would you think about intercepting the object? Go out and take a close look?"
He consulted his display and blew unhappily through his fingers. "We'd need to move pretty fast. I make it about two and a half days at max to lay in alongside it."
"Can you wait for us?"
"Frank, this ride is already going to hurt."
"How do you feel about doing it?"
He looked over at Janet. "You game?"
"Sure."
They could see his reluctance. "I don't know," he said.
"Terry," pleaded Angela, "we might not get another chance."
Hutch looked at her. She wanted this badly, and it was clouding her judgment. "It would leave us without a ship," she pointed out. "I don't know whether that's a good idea either."
"Don't need one," said Angela.
Janet shrugged. "Don't hesitate because of me."
"I can't see," said Angela, "that there's anything to lose."
Carson wanted to go. That was obvious. But the assorted shocks on this expedition had taken their toll. Hutch could see his natural instincts struggling with his newfound caution. And she saw them win. "Anybody else with an objection?"
Drafts looked sidewise at his partner. "If Angela wants it, and Janet has no problem, I'd like to do it."
"Okay." Colonel Carson returned. "Let's go."
There were a few last-minute technical conversations. Drafts entered flight requirements into the navigation systems. They would use Flickinger fields to help negate some of the effects of acceleration.
Within thirty minutes of making the decision, the Ashley Tee lifted out of orbit into an acceleration that mashed its crew into their seats.
"You okay?" asked Drafts.
"Fine," she said breathlessly.
"It'll be a sixty-two hour run."
In the screens, Delta, the orange ice world, diminished rapidly to a small globe, and then to a point of light. After a while, only the gas giant remained. Soon it too was only a bright star.
LIBRARY ENTRY
Dragon in the dark,
Your eyes move across the stars,
Your breath warms the moon.
— April 24, 2203 (Found in unassigned file on Ashley Tee)
29
Delta. Wednesday, May 18; 0930 hours
The operation on the small mesa had gone so well that they hoped to finish by the end of the day.
They sliced and buffed until they had three smooth rock walls set at (almost) right angles to each other. Then they turned to the task of straightening the fourth side, with its massive notch. Carson regretted not having the capability to fill the indentation rather than have to pare off the walls on either side. But never mind: he would manage.
They had developed reasonable facility with the 1600, and were now enjoying themselves. Whenever possible, they stationed themselves on the ground. But for the most part it was necessary to take to the air, and work from above the mesa. Angela pointed out that they were in violation of a wide variety of safety procedures. But she swallowed her reservations, took them up, and, on signal, rolled the shuttle onto its side. In back, restrained by his tether and Hutch's makeshift harness, Carson rode the 1600, looking straight down. "You're perfectly safe," Hutch assured him.
After about an hour, they changed places. Hutch enjoyed aiming the big cannon, and they learned how to employ the sensors to see through the steam, and so became more proficient. By the time they broke for lunch, a substantial portion of the rear wall lay in rubble. But they had a rectangle!
The limiting factor in getting to the rendezvous point and laying in alongside the cloud was not the capability of the ship, but that of its crew to withstand prolonged acceleration. They would arrive with aching joints and sore backs, and they would have only a few seconds before the target sailed past and left them hopelessly behind. To ameliorate these effects,
Drafts programmed in frequent breaks in the acceleration, during which they could get up and move around. It would not be a comfortable ride, but it would be livable.
Hutch distrusted hastily planned maneuvers as a matter of instinct. She wondered at the necessity for this trip. Angela's logic made sense: there was probably another one coming. Why not go after it at their leisure? She was annoyed that Janet had not supported her. Instead, she'd allowed herself to get caught up in the general enthusiasm. They were making snap decisions again, without considering all the consequences. She wondered whether they had learned anything at Beta Pac.
She derived some satisfaction from knowing that Janet was now pinned in her webchair by the acceleration. Served her right.
They inspected their work on the south mesa. Seen from the air, it was a child's block, an orange rectangle. "I wish we could change its color," said Carson. "The Oz-structures were highly reflective, and they stood out from their surroundings."
"You think that matters?" asked Hutch.
"I don't know. It might."
It occurred to Hutch that the pumpkin-colored block below might be as hard for some future mission to explain as Oz had been.
The eastern mesa was next. It was three times as big as the one they had just worked on, less regular, heavily scored. Moreover, when they started on it, they discovered it was brittle. Its walls shriveled at the touch of the energy beam, and whole sections crumbled away.
They experimented with intensity and angle, and discovered that overhead shots with low power worked best. "Like everything else," Carson said as they sliced and polished, "the only thing that succeeds is finesse. The light touch."
Communication with Ashley was becoming difficult. After twenty-four hours, the ship had traveled approximately fifteen million kilometers. At that distance, laserburst signals required almost two minutes to make a round trip. Conversations became slow and frustrating, and the two groups began to feel their isolation from each other.
The ground team slept through the night-phase. But all three were up early, anxious to get started. They treated themselves to a substantial breakfast, and went back to the eastern plateau.
They hoped to finish the wall they'd started the previous day, and fashion the corner. Hutch liked doing comers. They were a break from the routine.
Because much of the work was done from the air, Angela was usually alone in the cockpit. There, she watched the visuals coming in from Ashley, pictures of the oncoming object. Of the cloud, tiny and purple and utterly impossible.
Sometimes she had to draw back, remind herself where she was, remember to keep her mind on the mission, on the people who were hanging out the cargo door. But My God, this was a magnificent time.
The only downside was that she was not on board Ashley.
On the other end, Drafts was by turns ecstatic and depressed. The sensors still gave them only superficial readings. "What I'd like to do," he told Angela, "is put our money where our mouth is and lay Ashley right in front of it. Let it run over us, and see what happens." That got her attention, even though she didn't believe he meant it. But she stabbed the Transmit key anyhow and told him to forget anything like that, that she would have his career if he even so much as raised the suggestion again. But he added, long before her threats could have reached him, "Of course I won't. I don't think the probes will do much good, but we'll try to insert one."
Later, when they were back on the ground, Carson came forward for lunch. Hutch remained in back because the cockpit was too crowded for all three. He was munching on a sandwich, and Angela was planning the next day's flight, when, between mouthfuls, he said, "What's that?"
He was looking at the overhead display.
The object had developed fingers.
And despite all her training, the intellectual habits of a lifetime, the unshakable conviction that the universe is ultimately rational and knowable, Angela suffered an uneasy twinge. "Don't know," she said, almost angry, as if it were somehow Carson's doing.
Extensions. Not really fingers, but protrusions. Prominences.
"Seven," said Angela. "I count seven."
"One of them's dividing," said Carson.
They grew long and narrow. Hutch thought they looked like the fingers of the wizard in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
"Have we got measurements?" asked Carson.
Angela checked the status board. "The longest is twenty thousand kilometers, plus or minus six percent. We don't have a reading yet on the expansion rate."
"They're contrails," said Hutch.
Yes. They were. Angela felt relieved, and then foolish, as if she had not known all along it would be something prosaic. "Yes," she said.
The contrails began to lose their definition. They drifted apart, overlapped, bled together. The illusion dissipated. It might have been a wispy comet with a multitude of tails. Or an airship that had exploded.
Got to be enormous disruptions to throw all that off. "I think it's coming apart," Angela said.
The chime sounded, and Drafts's image blinked on. "Take a look at the target," he said.
Carson held up a hand. "We see it." Drafts did not react, of course. His image was delayed by several minutes.
Angela was caught up in a swirl of emotions. "Lovely," she said. Nothing in her life, which had been reasonably full, had prepared her for what she was feeling now. Unable to restrain herself, she let go a cheer, and jabbed a fist skyward. "Good stuff," she said. "But what is that thing?"
It looked as if it were unraveling.
Long smoky comets rolled glacially away from the object.
"What the hell's going on?" Drafts's voice again.
The process continued, almost too slowly for the eye to follow. Bursts of conversation passed between the pod and the ship. Drafts thought the object was disintegrating, dissolving as it should have done earlier amid the fierce tides of the gravitational fields.
"But why wow?" demanded Angela. "Why not yesterday? Why not last week? It's not as if local gravity has changed in any significant way."
"The other one got through," said Hutch. "Why would this one explode?"
"I don't think it's really exploding," Angela said without taking her eyes from the screen. "It's hard to see clearly, but I think all that's happening is that some of the outer cloud cover is peeling off."
"What would cause that?"
"I don't know," she said. "This thing doesn't seem to obey physical law."
She took to replaying the entire sequence at fast forward. The object opened slowly and gracefully, a blood-red flower with blooming petals offering itself to the sun.
The ground team continued with their efforts at block carving. They wielded the 1600 and shaped and molded the ice, and took pleasure in their growing skills. And they watched the numbers coming in on the dragon.
Toward the end of the day's operations, Angela called Carson's attention to the screens. But Carson was riding the saddle. "Neither of us is in a position to look right now," he said. "What is it?"
The object might have been a comet whose head had exploded. "It's turning" she said. "I'll be damned. It's changing course. That's what all the earlier activity was about. It's been pitching material off into space."
"Isn't that impossible?" Hutch asked. "I mean, natural objects don't throw turns, do they?"
"Not without help." Outside, the land looked empty and cold and inhuman. Soaked in ruby light, where anything could happen.
"Where is it going?" Carson asked.
"Don't know. We won't be able to tell until it completes the maneuver. But it has turned inside Ashley's projected course. Toward us, actually." She tried to keep the sense of melodrama out of her voice, but it was difficult not to scream the words.
"You sure?" That was Hutch.
"I'm sure that it's turning in our general direction."
Nobody said anything for a long time.
Hutch's face appeared on one of the screens. That was good. They needed to be able to see each other now.
"Son of a bitch," said Hutch. "Is it possible the thing knows we're here?"
"What the hell," said Carson, "is that thing?"
"That's the question," said Angela, "we keep asking, isn't it?"
"You'd better let Ashley know," said Hutch.
"I've got a call in."
They stared at one another for a long moment. "Maybe we ought to think about getting out of here," said Hutch.
Carson put a hand on her shoulder but said nothing.
Angela had the same thought. But they needed to avoid jumping to conclusions. Celestial bodies do not chase people. "I don't know whether you two are aware of it," she said, "but we've got the daddy of all anomalies here. We are all going down in the history books."
"Just so we don't all go down," said Hutch.
"Angela." It was Drafts, looking confused. "I don't know where it's going, but it sure as hell isn't going to the same place we are. It's swinging inside us, and we can't brake quickly enough to adjust to its new course. Whatever that turns out to be. We'll have to loop around and try again. This is going to become a marathon. We'll need several extra days now to make a rendezvous. Can't really be specific until the thing settles down." He shook his head. "This can't be happening. I'll get back to you as soon as we know what's going on."
Angela was a study in frustration. "That can't be right," she said. "They had just enough time to get out to it before. Now he thinks he can take
a couple of days to turn around, and catch up to it?"
"He just hasn't thought it out yet," said Carson.
"Maybe. But he might know something we don't."
"If he did, wouldn't he mention it?"
"Sure. Unless he assumed we all had the same information."
"Ask him."
"Maybe there's no need." Angela looked at the numbers again and started her subroutines. Meantime, she noted that her power cells had dropped inside safety margins. "That's it, kids," she said. "Saddle up. We're going home."
Nobody talked much on the way back, but once they got inside the shelter she told them what Drafts had known: "It's decelerating. It's thrown on the brakes."
"That's why it's coming apart," said Hutch.
"Yes, I would say so. Despite appearances, it's apparently pretty tightly wrapped, considering what it's able to do. But this maneuver is a bit much even for the mechanism that holds it together."
Carson asked the question that might have been on everyone's mind: "Is it a natural object?"
"Of course it is," said Angela. But she was speaking from common sense, not from knowledge.
"How can it change directions?" asked Hutch. "And what sort of braking mechanism could it have?"
"Maybe there's something out there exerting force on it," Angela said. "A superdense object, possibly."
"You think that's what's happening?" asked Carson. He had thrown off his jacket, and was making for the coffee pot.
"No." There would have been other effects, advance indications, orbital irregularities. There was none of that. "No," she said. "I have no explanation. But that doesn't mean we need to bring in malevolent agencies."
"Who said malevolent?" asked Hutch.
They exchanged looks, and Angela let the question hang. "It's reacting to something. Has to be. Magnetic fields, maybe. Maybe there's been a solar burp of some kind. Hard to tell, sitting down here." She shrugged. "We'll just have to wait and see."
"Angela," said Hutch, "Is this thing like a cloud? Chemically?"
"Yes," she said. "It's constructed of the same kind of stuff as the big clouds that stars condense from: particles of iron, carbon, silicates. Hydrogen. Formaldehyde. And there's probably a large chunk of iron or rock inside."
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