Rogue Powers (19 page)

Nova Sol A

Only southern hemisphere populated: outpost never visible.

Nova Sol B is only visible from the uninhabited northern hemisphere of Capital. Nova Sol B is never visible from the inhabited southern hemisphere of Capital.

Morelles took his pencil again and marked one solar system
Alpha
and the other
Beta.
Then he took the scissors and cut along the orbit of the outer planet in each. He was left with two circles of cardboard, each with a sun marked by a dot in the center and the planetary orbits drawn around the sun. He picked up the system marked Beta in his left hand and Alpha in his right. "Now we work in three dimensions instead of two."

Morelles held Alpha perpendicular to the floor and turned the Beta system this way and that. "You can see that I can put the plane of the Beta
solar system
at any angle to the plane of Alpha's solar system, and this has nothing whatever to do with the plane in which the two
stars
revolve about each other. Now I'm holding the Beta system at ninety degrees to Alpha, now forty-five, now parallel, now one hundred thirty-five degrees. No matter how I turn it, you can still imagine a circle, a mutual orbit, joining the two suns. They can go around each other no matter what, and don't care about the planes of the planets' orbits."

George nodded enthusiastically. "I see it."

"Good!" Morelles said, beaming. "Now, we have one last step. Let me see. Ah! I see the way." He dropped Alpha and Beta on the top of the round coffee table, then ran back to his office for a pair of thumbtacks. He scooped up the Alpha disk and shoved a pin through its center, through the dot that marked the sun. Then he crouched by the coffee table, and poked the pin through the rim of the table, so the piece of cardboard was perpendicular to the tabletop. The table was a lazy-Susan arrangement, and he spun it around on its pivot until Alpha was on the far side of the table from him. He poked another pin through the Beta system's sun, and shoved that pin into the rim of the table as well. He gave the tabletop another push, and it spun round and round.

Two disks of cardboard, directly across the diameter of the table from each other, held perpendicular to the table-top and parallel to each other, whirled around and around.

As each went past him, Morelles reached out his hand and set the disks spinning around their pushpins.

"There you have it, gentlemen, a first crude armillary, a mechanical representation of Capital's star system. The two stars, which are represented by the push pins, revolve around each other in their mutual orbit, the circumference of which is the rim of my coffee table. The planets orbit around the stars, the pushpins, in the planes of motion represented by the two cardboard disks. The orbital plane of the solar systems are, as Commander Metcalf noted, precessed. They are firmly attached to the rim of my coffee table, and move as it moves. As the two stars revolve through three hundred sixty degrees, a full circle, in their mutual orbit, the orbital planes of the two star systems rotate three hundred sixty degrees."

"Hold it," George said, staring at the model. "If I've got this straight, that means the
northern
hemisphere of Capital is always pointed at this other star? The other star is always visible from there? And the southern, populated hemisphere is
always
pointed away from it—which is why we never see it?"

"Right. And the northern lights are like a dawn that never happens—the other sun is just below the horizon, fighting up the sky but never rising," Metcalf put in. He gave the table a spin, and stood up. "Doctor Morelles, I thank you. You might have just solved a big problem."

Metcalf and the astronomer shook hands. "What will you do now?" Morelles asked.

"Start a search through all the catalogs, I guess," Metcalf said. "We'll look for pairs of distant binary stars where one of the stars is the right mass and temperature to support life."

Morelles smiled. "That is
my
proper work. With all due respect, I am sure I could do a far more sophisticated search than a non-astronomer. Please allow me to do the job. I'd be delighted to do so—and before you say it, I know they'll slap a Top Secret on this at least, and that's fine. I have clearance. I'll get started on it right now."

Movement of Capital around the barycenter of the Nova Sol System. Nova Sol B and Outpost are omitted for clarity.

"Doctor, it's urgent but it isn't
that
urgent," Metcalf said. "It can wait until morning."

Morelles smiled. "You're forgetting, Commander. Astronomers always work nights."

"Gee, Doc, all over a sudden I'm feeling much better." Lucy threw the sheets off the stretcher, got to her feet, and produced a gun out of nowhere in one fluid motion.

Dr. Angus Willoughby found himself with the slim barrel of a laser pistol stuck up his nose. Instinctively, he tried to step back, but Lucy tugged on the pistol and he came back to where he was.

Ariadne's
sick bay wasn't much, and neither was her doctor. Willoughby meant well enough, and cared for his charges as well as could be expected, but he was a short, middle-aged, pale, chubby sort of fellow, more given to blubbering than blustering when faced with a crisis.

Lucy knew all that and was glad of it. Pulling her off Outpost hadn't been rough; illness was easy to fake, especially with Gustav to back her up. Getting rushed to the infirmary was straightforward, and Willoughby was easy enough to scare. But if he had been made of sterner stuff, there could have been problems.

And Lucy had problems enough as it was. But one thing at a time. "Okay, Doctor." She pulled a pressure syringe out of her hip pocket. "You get a double dose of some feelgoods, and I’ll be on my way. Roll up your sleeve."

"But I all—all—"

"Do it, or I clean out your nasal passages." Did that sound dumb to him, too, or was he too scared?

Willoughby pulled his shirt sleeve up without further debate. Lucy slammed the hypo down and the powerful narcotic forced itself through his skin and into his bloodstream.

He dropped a little faster than Lucy had figured. Maybe he just fainted.

That was square one. She stood in the tiny room, waiting for long moments. No sound. She opened the door a bit and peeked out into the corridor. The stretcher-bearers were gone, back at their regular duties. There had been enough cases come up from Outpost, cuts and burns and carbon-dioxide shock, that it was all pretty routine to them. Pull the casualty off the lander, get the stretcher to the doc, and then back to work.

She locked the door, shoved the laser pistol into her belt, and checked on dear old Doctor Willoughby. He was folded up in the corner, gently snoring, out of the game for quite a while.

Now started the scary part. The sick bay had a standard terminal station, hooked into
Ariadne's
computer systems. The CIs had been working over that computer system for quite a while now. Lucy powered it up, requested the calculator, tried to figure the square root of negative 43, then asked for the base-8 equivalent of her parent's phone number back on Earth. Then she typed in:

Operate Gremloid

There was a brief delay, and then the computer responded.

EXPOSE YOURSELF

Sydney Sally

ALIAS?

Ned Fine

PROVE IT—WHERE WAS YOUR FATHER BORN?

Liverpool, Pommieland

WE'VE GOT YOU LINED, SAL. WHAZZUP?

The whole Gremloid system was like that, with the computer handing out and expecting slang and inside jokes. Gremloid was buried deep inside the computer system, and only after one of several cuing routines would the computer system even admit it existed.

But even if Gremloid was buried deep, he could reach into lots of places.

Lucy typed in:

hooper Snooper Straitslace Sue

SHE BE LINED.

Good. Straitslace Sue—more commonly known as Cynthia Wu—was at a terminal somewhere, working. Now to get Gremloid to send her a message. So far no one aboard
Ariadne
knew who had been aboard that medical shuttle. Lucy had to let Cynthia know what was up.

Gremloid, C.Q. Straitslace Sue

ITS IN THE HOPPERS-COOL YOUR JETS

There was a brief pause, and then a new line popped on the screen

S. SUE RESPONDS: WHO AND WHAT IS IT?

Gremloid had cut into the regular operations of Cynthia's terminal, told her someone on the Gremnet wanted to talk to her, and sent her reply back.

Lucy had no time to jigger around with the usual jargoned-up lingo of the Gremnet. She had to get some very precise information across.

Cyn
—
this is Lucy. No time to explain why, but I came here to steal a ship and land it on Outpost. Once there, I will use a beacon set at a frequency equal to your birthdate, Earth calendar, divided by three. No time for questions. I'm in sick bay. Where is closest prepped lander and can you create diversion to draw sentries from same?
There was a longish pause. It might have been Cynthia thinking, or a Guard asking her what was going on, or Cyn carefully checking the computer files to see what landers were where. Lucy didn't know or care. She just prayed for Cyn to hurry.

Cynthia Wu felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. The Gremnet always had that effect on her, as if she was talking to a ghost, a disembodied voice, but this was worse than usual. Lucy was supposed to be a thousand kilometers away, straight down, on the planet's surface. Cynthia was at her regular post in the radar room, monitoring the comings and goings of ships. It was a lonely post, especially during the night watch. No one else was on duty, just Cynthia and her keeper, a Private Wendell.

She glanced up at him, then looked back at her console screens. What the hell was Lucy doing here? But it wasn't time for questions. She used Gremloid to call up the sabotage and surveillance files. The s&s files were the most carefully hidden part of the CI's underground computer net. The names, the call-up procedures, the security techniques, were constantly being changed. That was part of how they maintained its security. Lucy had been away far too long to know how to use the current incarnation. Come on, come on—ah, there we go, a lander nice and close in Bay Three. Cynthia keyed in her reply, willing that her sentry stick to his comic book for another five minutes.

THERE IS A HERO-CLASS LANDER AT LOCK 6, BAY THREE FUELED AND AT GO. I WILL INSTRUCT COMPUTER TO WARN OF FUEL LEAK AND EXPLOSION DANGER IN THAT COMPARTMENT IN TEN MINUTES. GO NOW. GOOK LUCK.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief.
That
was why she had tried Cynthia first. No gush of questions to slow things down, she was just ready with what was needed when it was needed. Levelheaded common sense taken to an extreme state.

God bless you, Cynthia. I'll explain some day, if I can,
Lucy typed.

I KNOW YOU WILL. GO NOW. HURRY.

Lucy cut the power on the terminal and slipped out into the corridor. It was the night shift on
Ariadne
—all the corridor lights dimmed, the constant background noises of the station's machinery subdued. All was gloomy and still. Quietly, quickly, going by side corridors and ducking out of sight whenever she heard a noise, she made her way toward the docking bays in the zero-gee section.

A Hero-Class in Bay Three. And the sentries ought to be scared out of there in about seven more minutes. That only left a few problems—like operating the Guard controls—she had seen them, but never run them—and making a landing someplace where C'astille's people could find her. And convincing the Guards that she was dead and not worth going after. There was a way, but it was tricky. Dangerous. But grabbing a Hero would help. The Guard pilots had nicknamed them Neros, because the ships had a tendency to bum. No doubt that was part of why Cynthia had chosen a Hero for Lucy.