The physicist shook her head. “No. Never. It doesn’t seem possible. What could have done it? There’s no weather here . . . is there?”
“Perhaps the same phenomenon is responsible that laid a hemisphere bare,” Danzig suggested.
“Or that covered a hemisphere,” Scobie said. “An object seventeen hundred kilometers across shouldn’t have gases, frozen or otherwise. Unless it’s a ball of such stuff clear through, like a comet, which we know it’s not.” As if to demonstrate, he unclipped a pair of pliers from a nearby tool rack, tossed it, and caught it on its slow way down. His own ninety kilos of mass weighed about seven. For that, the satellite must be essentially rocky.
Garcilaso registered impatience. “Let’s stop tradin’ facts and theories we already know about, and start findin’ answers.”
Rapture welled in Broberg. “Yes, let’s get out. Over there.”
“Hold on,” protested Danzig as Garcilaso and Scobie nodded eagerly. “You can’t be serious. Caution, step-by-step advance—”
“No, it’s too wonderful for that.” Broberg’s tone shivered.
“Yeah, to hell with fiddlin’ around,” Garcilaso said. “We need at least a preliminary scout right away.”
The furrows deepened in Danzig’s visage. “You mean you too, Luis? But you’re our pilot!”
“On the ground I’m general assistant, chief cook, and bottle washer to you scientists. Do you think I want to sit idle, with somethin’ like that to explore?” Garcilaso calmed his voice. “Besides, if I should come to grief, any of you can fly back, given a bit of radio talk from Chronos and a final approach under remote control.”
“It’s quite reasonable, Mark,” Scobie argued. “Contrary to doctrine, true; but doctrine was made for us, not vice versa. A short distance, low gravity, and we’ll be on the lookout for hazards. The point is, until we have some notion of what that ice is like, we don’t know what the devil to pay attention to in this vicinity, either. No, first we’ll take a quick jaunt. When we return, then we’ll plan.”
Danzig stiffened. “May I remind you, if anything goes wrong, help is at least a hundred hours away? An auxiliary like this can’t boost any higher if it’s to get back, and it’d take longer than that to disengage the big boats from Saturn and Titan.”
Scobie reddened at the implied insult. “And may I remind you: on the ground I am the captain. I say an immediate reconnaissance is safe and desirable. Stay behind if you want—In fact, yes, you must. Doctrine is right in saying the vessel mustn’t be deserted.”
Danzig studied him for several seconds before murmuring, “Luis goes, though, is that it?”
“Yes!” cried Garcilaso so that the cabin rang.
Broberg patted Danzig’s limp hand. “It’s okay, Mark,” she said gently. “We’ll bring back samples for you to study. After that, I wouldn’t be surprised but what the best ideas about procedure will be yours.”
He shook his head. Suddenly he looked very tired. “No,” he replied in a monotone, “that won’t happen. You see. I’m only a hardnosed industrial chemist who saw this expedition as a chance to do interesting research. The whole way through space, I kept myself busy with ordinary affairs, including, you remember, a couple of inventions I’d wanted the leisure to develop. You three, you’re younger, you’re romantics—”
“Aw, come off it, Mark.” Scobie tried to laugh. “Maybe Jean and Luis are, a little, but me, I’m about as otherworldly as a plate of haggis.”
“You played the game, year after year, until at last the game started playing you. That’s what’s going on this minute, no matter how you rationalize your motives.” Danzig’s gaze on the geologist, who was his friend, lost the defiance that had been in it and turned wistful. “You might try recalling Delia Ames.”
Scobie bristled. “What about her? The business was hers and mine, nobody else’s.”
“Except afterward she cried on Rachel’s shoulder, and Rachel doesn’t keep secrets from me. Don’t worry, I’m not about to blab. Anyhow, Delia got over it. But if you’d recollect objectively, you’d see what had happened to you, already three years ago.”
Scobie set his jaw. Danzig smiled in the left corner of his mouth. “No, I suppose you can’t,” he went on. “I admit I had no idea either, till now, how far the process had gone. At least keep your fantasies in the background while you’re outside, will you? Can you?”
In half a decade of travel, Scobie’s apartment had become idiosyncratically his—perhaps more so than was usual, since he remained a bachelor who seldom had women visitors for longer than a few nightwatches at a time. Much of the furniture he had made himself; the agrosections of Chronos produced wood, hide, and fiber as well as food and fresh air. His handiwork ran to massiveness and archaic carved decorations. Most of what he wanted to read he screened from the data banks, of course, but a shelf held a few old books—Childe’s border ballads, an eighteenth-century family Bible (despite his agnosticism), a copy of The Machinery of Freedom which had nearly disintegrated but displayed the signature of the author, and other valued miscellany. Above them stood a model of a sailboat in which he had cruised Northern European waters, and a trophy he had won in handball aboard this ship. On the bulkheads hung his fencing sabers and numerous pictures—of parents and siblings, of wilderness areas he had tramped on Earth, of castles and mountains and heaths in Scotland where he had often been too, of his geological team on Luna, of Thomas Jefferson and, imagined, Robert the Bruce.
On a certain evenwatch he had, though, been seated before his telescreen. Lights were turned low in order that he might fully savor the image. Auxiliary craft-were out in a joint exercise, and a couple of their personnel used the opportunity to beam back views of what they saw.
That was splendor. Starful space made a chalice for Chronos. The two huge, majestically counter-rotating cylinders, the entire complex of linkages, ports, locks, shields, collectors, transmitters, docks, all became Japanesely exquisite at a distance of several hundred kilometers. It was the solar sail which filled most of the screen, like a turning golden sun-wheel; yet remote vision could also appreciate its spiderweb intricacy, soaring and subtle curvatures, even the less-than-gossamer thinness. A mightier work than the Pyramids, a finer work than a refashioned chromosome, the ship moved on toward a Saturn which had become the second brightest beacon in the firmament.
The doorchime hauled Scobie out of his exaltation. As he started across the deck, he stubbed his toe on a table leg. Coriolis force caused that. It was slight, when a hull this size spun to give a full gee of weight, and a thing to which he had long since adapted; but now and then he got so interested in something that Terrestrial habits returned. He swore at his absent-mindedness, good-naturedly, since he anticipated a pleasurable time.
When he opened the door, Delia Ames entered in a single stride. At once she closed it behind her and stood braced against it. She was a tall blonde woman who did electronics maintenance and kept up a number of outside activities. “Hey!” Scobie said. “What’s wrong? You look like—” he tried for levity “—something my cat would’ve dragged in, if we had any mice or beached fish aboard.”
She drew a ragged breath. Her Australian accent thickened till he had trouble understanding: “I . . . today . . . I happened to be at the same cafeteria table as George Harding—”
Unease tingled through Scobie. Harding worked in Ames’s department but had much more in common with him. In the game group to which they both belonged. Harding likewise took a vaguely ancestral role, N’Kuma the Lionslayer.
“What happened?” Scobie asked. Woe stared back at him. “He mentioned . . . you and he and the rest . . . you’d be taking your next holiday together . . . to carry on your, your bloody act uninterrupted.”
“Well, yes. Work at the new park over in Starboard Hull will be suspended till enough metal’s been recycled for the water pipes. The area will be vacant, and my gang has arranged to spend a week’s worth of days—”
“But you and I were
going to Lake Armstrong!”
“Uh, wait, that was just a notion we talked about, no definite plan yet, and this is such an unusual chance—Later, sweetheart. I’m sorry.” He took her hands. They felt cold. He essayed a smile. “Now, c’mon, we were going to cook a festive dinner together and afterward spend a, shall we say, quiet evening at home. But for a start, this absolutely gorgeous presentation on the screen—”
She jerked free of him. The gesture seemed to calm her. “No, thanks,” she said, flat-voiced. “Not when you’d rather be with that Broberg woman. I only came by to tell you in person I’m getting out of the way of you two.”
“Huh?” He stepped back. “What the flaming hell do you mean?”
“You know jolly well.”
“I don’t! She, I, she’s happily married, got two kids, she’s older than me, we’re friends, sure, but there’s never been a thing between us that wasn’t in the open and on the level—” Scobie swallowed. “You suppose maybe I’m in love with her?”
Ames looked away. Her fingers writhed together. “I’m not about to go on being a mere convenience to you. Colin. You have plenty of those. Myself, I’d hoped—But I was wrong, and I’m going to cut my losses before they get worse.”
“But . . . Dee. I swear I haven’t fallen for anybody else, and I . . . I swear you’re more than a body to me, you’re a fine person—” She stood mute and withdrawn. Scobie gnawed his lip before he could tell her: “Okay, I admit it, the main reason I volunteered for this trip was I’d lost out in a love affair on Earth. Not that the project doesn’t interest me, but I’ve come to realize what a big chunk out of my life it is. You, more than any other woman, Dee, you’ve gotten me to feel better about the situation.”
She grimaced. “But not as much as your psychodrama has, right?”
“Hey, you must think I’m obsessed with the game. I’m not. It’s fun and—oh, maybe ‘fun’ is too weak a word—but anyhow, it’s just little bunches of people getting together fairly regularly to play. Like my fencing, or a chess club, or, or anything.”
She squared her shoulders. “Well, then,” she asked, “will you cancel the date you’ve made and spend your holiday with me?”
“I. uh, I can’t do that. Not at this stage. Kendrick isn’t off on the periphery of current events, he’s closely involved with everybody else. If I didn’t show, it’d spoil things for the rest.”
Her glance steadied upon him. “Very well. A promise is a promise, or so I imagined. But afterward—Don’t be afraid. I’m not trying to trap you. That would be no good, would it? However, if I maintain this liaison of ours, will you phase yourself out of your game?”
“I can’t—” Anger seized him. “No, God damn it!” he roared.
“Then goodbye, Colin,” she said, and departed. He stared for minutes at the door she had shut behind her.
Unlike the large Titan and Saturn-vicinity explorers, landers on the airless moons were simply modified Luna-to-space shuttles, reliable, but with limited capabilities. When the blocky shape had dropped below the horizon, Garcilaso said into his radio: “We’ve lost sight of the boat, Mark. I must say it improves the view.” One of the relay microsatellites which had been sown in orbit passed his words on.
“Better start blazing your trail, then,” Danzig reminded.
“My, my, you are a fussbudget, aren’t you?” Nevertheless Garcilaso unholstered the squirt gun at his hip and splashed a vividly fluorescent circle of paint on the ground. He would do it at eyeball intervals until his party reached the glacier. Except where dust lay thick over the regolith, footprints were faint under the feeble gravity, and absent when a walker crossed continuous rock.
Walker? No, leaper. The three bounded exultant, little hindered by spacesuits, life support units, tool and ration packs. The naked land fled from their haste, and ever higher, ever clearer and more glorious to see, loomed the ice ahead of them.
There was no describing it, not really. You could speak of lower slopes and palisades above, to a mean height of perhaps a hundred meters, with spires towering farther still. You could speak of gracefully curved tiers going up those braes, of lacy parapets and fluted crags and arched openings to caves filled with wonders, of mysterious blues in the depths and greens where light streamed through translucencies, of gem-sparkle across whiteness where radiance and shadow wove mandalas—and none of it would convey anything more than Scobie’s earlier, altogether inadequate comparison to the Grand Canyon.
“Stop,” he said for the dozenth time. “I want to take a few pictures.”
“Will anybody understand them who hasn’t been here?” whispered Broberg.
“Probably not,” said Garcilaso in the same hushed tone. “Maybe no one but us ever will.”
“What do you mean by that?” demanded Danzig’s voice.
“Never mind,” snapped Scobie.
“I think I know,” the chemist said. “Yes, it is a great piece of scenery, but you’re letting it hypnotize you.”
“If you don’t cut out that drivel,” Scobie warned, “we’ll cut you out of the circuit. Damn it, we’ve got work to do. Get off our backs.”
Danzig gusted a sigh. “Sorry. Uh, are you finding any clues to the nature of that—that thing?”
Scobie focused his camera. “Well,” he said, partly mollified, “the different shades and textures, and no doubt the different shapes, seem to confirm what the reflection spectra from the flyby suggested. The composition is a mixture, or a jumble, or both, of several materials, and varies from place to place. Water ice is obvious, but I feel sure of carbon dioxide too. and I’d bet on ammonia, methane, and presumably lesser amounts of other stuff.”
“Methane? Could that stay solid at ambient temperatures, in a vacuum?”
“We’ll have to find out for sure. However, I’d guess that most of the time it’s cold enough, at least for methane strata that occur down inside where there’s pressure on them.”
Within the vitryl globe of her helmet, Broberg’s features showed delight. “Wait!” she cried. “I have an idea—about what happened to the probe that landed.” She drew a breath. “It came down almost at the foot of the glacier, you recall. Our view of the site from space seemed to indicate that an avalanche buried it, but we couldn’t understand how that might have been triggered. Well, suppose a methane layer at exactly the wrong location melted. Heat radiation from the jets may have warmed it, and later the radar beam used to map contours added the last few degrees necessary. The stratum flowed, and down came everything that had rested on top of it.”
“Plausible,” Scobie said. “Congratulations, Jean.”
“Nobody thought of the possibility in advance?” Garcilaso scoffed. “What kind of scientists have we got along?”
“The kind who were being overwhelmed by work after we reached Saturn, and still more by data input.” Scobie answered. “The universe is bigger than you or anybody can realize, hotshot.”
“Oh. Sure. No offense.” Garcilaso’s glance returned to the ice. “Yes, we’ll never run out of mysteries, will we?”
“Never.” Broberg’s eyes glowed enormous. “At the heart of things will always be magic. The Elf King rules—”
Scobie returned his camera to its pouch. “Stow the gab and move on,” he ordered curtly.
His gaze locked for an instant with Broberg’s. In the weird, mingled light, it could be seen that she went pale, then red, before she sprang off beside him.
Ricia had gone alone into Moonwood on Midsummer Eve. The King found her there and took her unto him as she had hoped. Ecstasy became terror when he afterward bore her off; yet her captivity in the City of Ice brought her many more such hours, and beauties and marvels unknown among mortals. Alvarlan, her mentor, sent his spirit in quest of her, and was himself beguiled by what he found. It was an effort of will for him to tell Sir Kendrick of the Isles where she was, albeit he pledged his help in freeing her.
N’Kuma the Lionslayer, Bela of Eastmarch, Karina Far West, Lady Aurelia, Ol
av Harpmaster had none of them been present when this happened.
The glacier (a wrong name for something that might have no counterpart in the Solar System) lifted off the plain abruptly as a wall. Standing there, the three could no longer see the heights. They could, though, see that the slope which curved steeply upward to a filigree-topped edge was not smooth. Shadows lay blue in countless small craters. The sun had climbed just sufficiently high to beget them; a Iapetan day is more than seventy-nine of Earth’s.
Danzig’s question crackled in their earphones: “Now are you satisfied? Will you come back before a fresh landslide catches you?”
“It won’t,” Scobie replied. “We aren’t a vehicle, and the local configuration has clearly been stable for centuries or better. Besides, what’s the point of a manned expedition if nobody investigates anything?”
“I’ll see if I can climb,” Garcilaso offered.
“No, wait.” Scobie commanded. “I’ve had experience with mountains and snowpacks. for whatever that may be worth. Let me work out a route for us first.”
“You’re going onto that stuff, the whole gaggle of you?” exploded Danzig. “Have you completely lost your minds?”
Scobie’s brow and lips tightened. “Mark, I warn you again, if you don’t get your emotions under control we’ll cut you off. We’ll hike on a ways if I decide it’s safe.”
He paced back and forth, in floating low-weight fashion, while he surveyed the jokull. Layers and blocks of distinct substances were plain to see, like separate ashlars laid by an elvish mason—where they were not so huge that a giant must have been at work. The craterlets might be sentry posts on this lowest embankment of the City’s defenses. . . .
Garcilaso, most vivacious of men, stood motionless and let his vision lose itself in the sight. Broberg knelt down to examine the ground, but her own gaze kept wandering aloft.
Finally she beckoned. “Colin, come over here, please,” she said. “I believe I’ve made a discovery.”
Winners! Page 31
