Starhawk (33 page)

Later, she had a chance to put the same question to McGruder. He smiled. “Are you serious, Priscilla? We're talking about something that was put here by aliens thousands of years ago. Nobody knows who they were or what happened to them afterward. But it changed our whole perspective about the universe. We found out we were not alone. Why would anyone
not
want to come out here?”

“But you're in the middle of a campaign.”

He nodded. Looked amused. “It's an opportunity to remind everyone of the glories around us. And why we need spaceflight. And don't look so surprised, Priscilla. It's what presidents do.”

It's what presidents do.
“A month or two ago, Governor, you were opposed to all this. You were saying we were wasting resources out here. What happened?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I was wrong,” he said. “The country
does
have some fiscal problems, and I went for the easy solution. The obvious one. But I was wrong. I've said as much. The problem is that sometimes it's difficult to change your mind. At least for a politician. You do that, and they call you a flip-flopper.”

“They will,” she said.

“They already have. Within an hour after we made the announcement about coming here.” He was staring at the rings. “Politics is the only career I know of where you're not allowed to profit from experience. Not allowed to learn anything.”

“Well,” she said, “I hope it works for you.” She thought about adding that she'd vote for him. She expected to do that, but saying it would seem too much like groveling.

 * * * 

SHE SLEPT ON
the bridge. Had to, because McGruder and his team showed no sign of retiring. It wouldn't look right if she went back to her cabin while the passengers worked all night. She couldn't make out what they were saying without turning on the commlink, but she wasn't going to do that. They didn't invite her to join the discussion. In the morning, when she woke, the passenger cabin was empty. By then, Iapetus was visible as a small disk. She went back to her quarters, showered, and changed clothes.

When they were still a few hours out, she got on the mike: “We'll start braking in thirty minutes. Everybody up, please. You'll need to be in your seats and belted in when we begin.” It was midafternoon of the second day.

She heard doors opening and closing. And voices. But no footsteps, of course. You never hear footsteps in zero gee. She got up and went back into the passenger cabin. Devlin, the governor, and Vesta were talking about his three Gold Party rivals, how to get rid of them without alienating anybody. Michael and Cornelius were missing. She wondered why they were along at all. Did someone think there might be an alien attack? “Everybody doing okay?” Priscilla asked. “Does anybody need anything?”

“Some gravity would be nice,” said Devlin.

McGruder laughed. “They're working on it. Artificial gravity's just a couple of years away.”

“We still have a few minutes,” said Priscilla, “before we start reducing speed. Once we do, we'll continue for two hours, and you won't be able to leave your seat. After two hours, we'll take a twenty-minute time-out, and you'll be able to wander around again, eat, drink, whatever you like. Then we'll brake for another two hours. That'll put us in orbit around Iapetus. In the meantime, if anybody
needs
to get to the washroom or something, let me know and we can go to cruise. One other thing. Iapetus is not visible from the windows here, but you can put the forward view on your display. Any questions?”

Devlin raised a hand: “Priscilla,” he said, “could you explain again how the shower works?”

 * * * 

VESTA D'AMBROSIA'S DIARY

Andy insisted on getting Hutchins to be the pilot for this misbegotten flight, on the grounds that she had received some recent publicity and people would recognize her name. Unfortunately, what they're also going to recognize is that she's a kid. This trip is going to draw a lot of mockery as it is. I can see the comedians and the cartoonists now, showing Andy standing next to that concrete two-legged lizard on Iapetus talking about having a meeting of minds. They'll kill us. At least, if we had a grizzled tough-looking captain, we might be able to sell this thing. But no, instead we get a high-school kid.

—March 4, 2196

 * * * 

ON THE NET

So the guy who doesn't believe in space travel goes to Saturn and develops an appreciation for alien art. Does he really think that's going to bring in the swing voters?

—CatMan

CatMan, are there any voters at all out there, other than the loonies, who will be impressed by McGruder's going out to Saturn? Maybe he could do us all a favor and stay out there.

—Big Joe

I wish I could go.

—Marcia43

Kosmik has two days to issue a statement terminating its terraforming program on Selika unless and until it finds a way to continue without harming local life. If it fails to do so, I will terminate the Wheel.

—Adam11

JAKE, SAMANTHA, AND
Tony rode the lander down through clear skies, tracking the transmission from the radio Jake had left with the wreckage. They were at about a thousand meters when Samantha caught her breath. “Look!” she said.

Jake looked, but saw only the opaque, snow-covered landscape.

“No question,” said Tony. “They have to be artificial. No way that could happen naturally.”

They were talking about the symmetries. They were hard to make out in the darkness, but they were there, surface features that were almost but not quite polygons, ovoids, cones, and cubes. A thousand assorted shapes. Lost in the blowing snow, they were easy to miss. Literally
buried
in snow. But they were there, arranged in grids and circles and abstract dispositions that might have been chaotic yet nevertheless suggested a kind of order.

Mountains might have been oddly shaped bubbles. A canyon cut through snowfields like a lightning bolt. Then it all went away, and they were over an area in which nothing unusual could be distinguished. “They're incredible,” said Samantha. “Seeing them like this is a little different from just looking at the record—” She took a deep breath. “That settles it for me.
Somebody's
been here. Or still is.”

There was more. Directly ahead, they could make out a cluster of parabolic hills.

 * * * 

“WHERE DO YOU
plan to put the base?” asked Jake.

“Originally,” Samantha said, “I thought locating it near the downed lander would be as good a spot as any.”

“But—?”

“It probably wouldn't hurt to set it up near one of those grids.” She took a deep breath. “Jake, you know what we're dealing with here, right?”

That took him by surprise. “I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Whenever you referred to the presence, you always used plural pronouns. As if it were a species of some sort.”

“What else could it be, Samantha?”

“I think we're about to give new meaning to the term
living world
.”

Jake grunted. “That's crazy. You're saying the planet's
alive
?”

“Not exactly. I doubt that's possible. But I think there's something alive in the atmosphere. More or less the atmosphere itself, maybe. It takes a lot of air to support a falling lander. If we were looking at an ordinary world, with sunlight and oceans, I doubt I'd even consider the possibility. But out here—” She shook her head.

“That's hard to believe.”

“Jake, we're just beginning to look around outside the solar system. Before we're finished, I'd be surprised if we don't discover that a lot of what used to be basic dogma is really pretty narrow. So yes, let's recover Otto first. Then we try to send a message to the occupant any way we can. Meantime, we can talk about where to locate the base.”

“What do you think the grids
are
?”

“An art form. It's hard to see what else they could be.” Jake couldn't hide his skepticism. “Look,” she continued, “if there
is
something here, it's been here a long time. What else would it have to do other than carve designs?”

“Using
what
?”

“The wind. Snow, dust—”

 * * * 

THE NIGHT WAS
absolutely still.

Jake followed the signals, a steady beep-beep-beep, through the darkness. They were at about three hundred meters when Samantha tapped on her display. “There it is.”

“Okay,” said Jake. “So what's the plan?”

“Let's see if we can find that missing wing. The scanners can penetrate a couple of hundred feet of snow and ice. So even if it's buried, we should be able to see it.”

“Why do we care?”

“I don't want any loose ends.”

“All right,” said Jake.
Waste of time, though.
He activated the scanners, turned on the searchlights, dropped lower, and began to circle the area. They saw nothing they hadn't seen before.

“All right,” Samantha said finally, “let's go pick up Otto.”

 * * * 

JAKE STILL DIDN'T
like the landing area, but it was all they had. He bounced down and rolled toward the rocks. His passengers were clinging to their seats, and he heard a few gasps. But they stopped where they needed to, and he tried to act as if it were routine. “Thank God,” said Denise.

“Actually,” said Jake, “I'm getting better with practice. That's the best one I've done.”

“Glad I wasn't here for any of the others,” said Tony.

He turned the spacecraft around and assured them that the departure would be less exciting.

They pulled on air tanks and activated their Flickinger units. Jake liked the slight tingle that always accompanied the process. It reminded him that this was what he lived for. The sensation was a built-in characteristic of the field to alert the user that it had turned on. Jake recalled the story of Alan Jarvais, who would probably be featured in every pilot-training program for years to come. Jarvais had not been aware of a defect in his unit. When he pressed the activator, the field had not formed. He hadn't noticed and went into an air lock and started to depressurize. When he discovered that breathing was becoming a problem, he could have reversed the process, but he apparently hadn't known how, or he had simply panicked. In any case, it was exit Jarvais.

He trained the spotlights at the top of what he had come to think of as Vincenti Hill, and the lander came into view. “We'll leave them on for now,” he said, “and shut them down when we're coming back, so they don't blind everybody. It'll be slippery out there, so be careful.”

The air lock opened, and Jake stepped down onto the ice. The others followed, and they pulled the pallet out of storage. Tony insisted on carrying it.

Samantha wore a blue jumpsuit. She was rotating her shoulders. “I see what you mean about the gravity,” she said.

Mary's voice broke in from the
Venture
:
“Be careful, guys.”

“We will,” said Samantha.

Jake switched on a wrist light and took the lead. The darkness was oppressive. Midnight World. Priscilla had it right. “This way,” he said, starting the uphill trek. A mild breeze sprang up behind them and pushed him gently, as if urging him forward.

 * * * 

THE LANDER GLOWED
in the spotlights. Samantha circled it, looking for damage. She didn't find much they didn't already know about. Then she opened the hatch and, followed by Tony, went inside. Jake heard Tony react when he saw Otto. Jake preferred the wind to the grisly interior, so he waited where he was.

Lights moved around inside. After a few minutes, Samantha came back out. She stood looking at the lander, then lifted her eyes to the sky.

Jake went in. He and Tony picked up the body and carried it out. Tony lost his footing coming through the air lock, staggered against the hull, and almost went down. Samantha, fortunately, grabbed his shoulder and steadied him. “Careful,” she said.

They laid the body on the pallet.

“Pity,” said Samantha. “He was a likable kid. With a bright future. Now all he gets is his name on a wall.”

Jake's footprints from the earlier mission were still visible. “Doesn't snow much here, does it?” said Samantha.

“I guess not. At least not in this area.”

“What's really odd,” said Denise, “is that, if nothing else, the wind would have filled them in. We've got some wind now, and it's moving the snow around. Does it only blow when somebody's here?”

“The snow has a crust,” said Samantha. “That might have been enough to keep it in place. When you got here before, Jake, did you see any prints of any kind? Anything to indicate anybody else,
anything
else, might have been here?”

“No,” he said. “I didn't see anything unusual.”

“Okay.” She looked down at Otto. “I guess that's all we can do here. You guys ready to roll?”

The spotlights atop the lander were in their eyes now. Jake turned them off. He and Tony picked up the pallet, and they started back down the slope. The cabin lights looked warm and comfortable.

 * * * 

JAKE HAD A
hard time keeping his balance while he helped carry Otto. Moreover, a sudden wind that blew up behind them didn't make things easier. “Maybe,” he said, “your buddy is trying to help.”

Samantha let the remark pass without comment.

The steepest part of the descent came during the first ten minutes. Samantha led the way, testing the ground as she went, warning Tony and Jake where the going was especially slippery. About halfway down, Tony's feet went out from under him. Denise grabbed hold of him and the pallet but only became part of the general spill. All three plus the body went tumbling.

“What happened?”
asked Mary, speaking from the
Venture
.
“You guys okay?”

“Just a minor accident,” said Samantha. “We're fine.”

They put Otto's body back on the pallet and started again. And they got a break: The wind eased off.

 * * * 

FOR THE LOCATION
of the shelter, Samantha picked a strip of flat land along the edge of a grid on the opposite side of the planet, not far from the south pole. “Denise,” she said, “you stay with the ship.”

The grids themselves did not seem to be laid out in any discernible pattern. There were hundreds of them, scattered randomly around the globe. The one Samantha chose was not special in any way. It was about average size, a square block of ground approximately ten kilometers on a side. She'd based her decision on two factors: It was an easy place to bring the lander down. And they had visibility in all directions.

Moving the shelter down required three flights. The first two carried the exterior shells and interior necessities for four cubicles. Brandon Eliot took over, with Samantha to assist, and the four structures were assembled and connected when Jake got back with the final load. “How'd you get it done so quickly?” he asked.

Brandon shrugged. “All you have to do is attach a generator to the packages. Turn it on and the modules assemble themselves.” Two would provide sleeping quarters, and the third one gave them a pair of washrooms. All three connected to the fourth—the largest—which functioned as an operations center/common room/dining area.

The third shipment brought chairs, tables, cots, and general supplies, much of it packed in plastic containers. Brandon, assisted by Jake, connected air and water tanks, an AI, and installed the mechanicals. Tony filled the water tanks. They placed a radio antenna on a nearby hilltop and an imager on the roof of the operations center. And they added some outside lights, so the base would be visible. “We want to be sure nobody gets lost,” Samantha told Jake.

When they finished, they staggered inside, closed the hatches, pumped air into the structure, turned off their Flickinger fields, stacked a few empty containers, and collapsed into the chairs and cots. The ops center had two large windows. The grid outside glittered in the starlight. It was just after 8:00
P.M.
ship time, and Brandon's automated kitchen provided a round of meals.

They congratulated Brandon on the quality of the food. But Jake suspected that what really fueled a generally happy mood was being sheltered from the cold, dismal climate. “All we need,” said Tony, “is a fireplace.”

“What's next?” asked Mary, as they finished eating.

Samantha could barely contain her excitement. “We have the same pattern of signals that Jake thinks got a reply from whatever's out there. We're going to try to take that a step further.”

“In what way?” asked Brandon.

“Let's talk about it tomorrow when we're awake. But I think right now it would be a good idea to crash—”

 * * * 

JAKE HAD TROUBLE
sleeping. He kept waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, he got up and wandered into the ops center. Light snow was falling. Someone was seated in the dark. He wasn't sure who it was. “Awake?” he whispered.

“Hi, Jake.” It was Samantha.

He sat down beside her. “I wonder how much snow we'll get?”

She smiled. “We don't care now. The shelter's up and running.”

He watched the flakes drifting against the Plexiglas. “I've been thinking about your theory.”

“That the atmosphere is alive?”

“That it's a global creature of some sort. Is that really what you meant?”

“I think that's a possible outcome.”

“Just one of its kind?”

“Yes. Probably.”

“How does it reproduce? Like an amoeba?”

“My guess would be that it doesn't.”

“It would have to, wouldn't it?”

“Not really. The thing might not age.”

“That can't be right.”

“Why not?”

“That would mean it's been out here alone for millions of years.”

“Maybe hundreds of millions.”

“My God, Samantha. If that were true, it would be deranged. This thing actually seems pretty friendly.”

“Jake, if we're right, it's probably always been alone. Even when it had a sun. It's not hard to understand why it might appreciate some company.”

 * * * 

HE WOKE IN
absolute darkness. There was a window, but he couldn't see it. Where the hell were the stars? He got up and turned on a light. The window was covered with snow.

Samantha was gone. He checked the time. Four hours had passed.

He sat back down and stared at the window.

What the hell was going on?

He pulled on the Flickinger gear, let himself into the lock, and closed it. The lights came on. He activated the field, and, when decompression was complete, pushed on the outer hatch. It moved slightly. But there was resistance on the other side.