Hunted Earth - The Ring Of Charon Part 23

Lucian Dreyfuss, however, was not up on his saints. He, Vespasian, and Raphael stood by the viewport, watching the rollout. "I don't get it,"

Lucian said as the probe was rolled out. "The Saint Anthony? Shouldn't that be the Saint Jude? Wasn't she the patron saint of losing things?"

Simon Raphael watched through the viewport as the ma.s.sive cylinder was towed from the thermal lock and into position on the linear accelerator'slaunch cradle. "If I recall my hagiography," he said, "Jude was a man, not a woman, and he was the patron saint of lost causes. But one prays to Saint Anthony if one loses an object. Which would you rather call Earth? A lost cause, or simply lost, misplaced?"

Lucian didn't have an answer for that. Or if he did, he kept it to himself.

Raphael went on. "By naming the probe after Anthony, Mr. Vespasian obviously meant to remind us of Jude-and to remind us that Jude is not appropriate here, that there is hope. I'd call Saint Anthony a subtle and apt name for our little emissary."

It pleased Tyrone to be so honored by such a scholar as Dr. Raphael. He nudged the younger man and chuckled. "Fallen away, Lucian?" he asked.

"Never was a Catholic to start with," Lucian said with a slight edge of irritation. "But I'll be taking a leap of faith soon enough, Tyrone. Maybe Saint Jude can go with me, so long as he's not going to be busy."

The two older men shifted uncomfortably. Lucian had been showing more than a few rough edges as the search for the Rabbit Hole progressed.

Descending forty-odd kilometers below the surface to confront the thing that waited down there. Tyrone Vespasian shuddered. Even for a Conner used to living underground, that idea induced claustrophobia. No wonder Lucian was nervous, Tyrone thought. Going down into the pit of h.e.l.l.

If Vespasian was reading his old friend right, Lucian was treating Daltry's ruling as a draw in the odd rivalry between Larry and Lucian. No one pretended to understand that silent battle completely-not even, Vespasian guessed, Lucian or Larry. But such things were not enough to explain Lucian's odd behavior. There was, in Vespasian'seyes, something else in Lucian's character that explained it.

Everyone knew that someone or something had stolen the Earth. All of them were afraid, and a few even had the nerve to step forward and fight against the unseen enemy, willing to pit a tiny human's strength against such mighty powers. Lucian was of that number-but with him it was different.

With him, it was personal. With sudden inspiration, Vespasian understood Lucian's anger toward Larry. He blamed Larry, directly, personally, for what had happened. Larry had pushed the b.u.t.ton. Because that b.u.t.ton was pushed, Lucian's city was half-wrecked. Lucian's father had all but single-handedly saved that city, years before. In the Dreyfuss family, you inherited responsibilities.

Lucian felt himself responsible for Central City's safety.

Which was, of course, absurd. And completely understandable. d.a.m.n it. Vespasian shrugged. Or maybe he had gotten it all completely wrong.

Wouldn't be the first time.

"Tell me again why we can't just put a radio transmitter up alongside the wormhole and broadcast through it," Lucian said. "I thought that was the original idea."

"It was, and we put some embroidery on it,"

Vespasian said, glad for the change of subject.

"Mostly the problem was that the wormhole only opens once every hundred twenty-eight seconds, and remains open only three seconds. Not much transmission time. Also, we don't know where in the sky Earth will be on the other side. No way to aim an antenna. And suppose the Charonians just close the hole to silence us? If the Saint Anthony can get through, it should be able to lock in on Earth and then broadcast and receive constantly. It's got a ma.s.sive datapack aboard, with everything we know about the Charonians on this end. With luck, it ought to be able to broadcast the whole datasetbefore it gets silenced. It can run some, if they attack it, maybe long enough to transmit the data Earth needs.

"And it will know where the wormhole is, with us on the other side, through its own inertial tracking system. It should be able to send lasergram messages back to us every hundred twenty-eight seconds."

Vespasian glanced at his watch. "Launch in five minutes. And then two days until the Saint Anthony is in position."

"Two days and a hundred twenty-eight seconds until we know for sure if Earth is still there,"

Raphael said.

"Of course, there'll be a fair amount of excitement before then," Vespasian said.

Lucian looked over at the older man. "What do you mean?"

"h.e.l.l, you boys at the North Pole really are out of it," Vespasian said. "Tomorrow, the first of the gee-point asteroids from the Belt drops onto Mars.

McGillicutty, MacDougal and Berghoff should be on station already, waiting for it."

Lucian grinned eagerly. "So things are finally starting to happen."

Vespasian c.o.c.ked an eyebrow skyward. It seemed to him that quite a bit had been happening up to now. Choosing not to reply, he turned toward the viewport and switched on the monitor screens that surrounded it. The Saint Anthony carried its own on-board cameras, and they ought to provide a h.e.l.l of a view during the boost phase.

The ma.s.sive, heavily armored probe was in place on the launch cradle now, in the hands of the automatic launching system. For reasons that he would have found hard to explain, Vespasian decided not to watch the countdown clock on this one. Instead he stared fixedly at the probe itself. Somuch was riding on this-more than any of them were willing to admit. Larry Chao's work seemed to prove that Earth had been moved, not destroyed.

But Vespasian was not quite ready to believe that.

Yes, he wanted to believe Earth had survived.

Maybe the Saint Anthony would give him the proof he needed.

Unless the probe was destroyed in the wormhole, or arrived on the other side to find no sign of Earth, or somehow failed to send back any data. None of those outcomes would settle the point. Even if the probe functioned perfectly but did not locate Earth, that would mean nothing. They were merely a.s.suming that this worm-hole-if wormhole it was-was linked to a piece of s.p.a.ce near Earth on the opposite end. Anthony might well arrive light-years away from Earth.

Unless it found a rubble cloud identifiable as Earth's remains, it could not demonstrate irrefutably that Earth was dead. They might send probes out forever and never confirm that. s.p.a.ce was vast.

And the Anthony was probably their one shot.

Surely whoever controlled the wormhole would spot the probe coming through and attempt to destroy it. Surely they would find ways to prevent any other probes from making the trip.

Suddenly the probe seemed to quiver on the launch cradle as the linear accelerator was brought up to power. The launch computer activated the system, and the Saint Anthony vanished in a flash of speed.

Vespasian shifted his gaze to the monitor displaying the on-board camera view. The body of the Anthony was visible at the bottom of the screen.

On either side, the Lunar landscape was whipping past at incredible speed, a sharp-edged blur of grays and whites. Vespasian barely had time to spot the end of the launching rail on the horizon beforethe probe reached rail's end and leapt from the launch cradle, arcing gracefully up into s.p.a.ce.

"On the wings of Saint Anthony ride all our prayers," Vespasian whispered.

If either of the other two men heard, they did not respond. Each was alone with his own thoughts.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

The Eye in the Stone They had come a h.e.l.l of a long way just to look at a rock, Sondra thought. Out the forward viewport, Mars hung aloof and enormous, a battle-scarred globe of orange, red and brown. Spectacular though the view of Mars was, none of the pa.s.sengers had eyes for anything but the asteroid that was rapidly approaching.

As if to emphasize that thought, Hiram McGillicutty quite abruptly shoved his way in front of both the women, so as to get a better view of the rock for himself. "Surely we should be able to see some detail by now," he objected.

"Not just yet, Doctor. After all, it's not very big,"

Sondra said, speaking politely and resisting the temptation to swat this little man out of her way.

Sondra glanced over at Marcia, who seemed to be working hard to suppress a smile. Sondra had learned a few things on the sprint flight from the Moon to Mars. First, that Marcia MacDougal was capable of putting up with a lot. Second, that McGillicutty was a lot to put up with. And third, that she had had enough of rush s.p.a.ceflights. Even without McGillicutty's abrasive personality aboard, the endless vibration of the engines and the cramped quarters did not make for a pleasant trip.

Well, at least this flight was near its end. "Anyidea which asteroid this is yet?" Sondra asked.

"No, and there won't be, either," Captain Mtombe said in an irritated voice. Clearly he was getting d.a.m.n tired of the question. "It could be any of hundreds that moved out all at once. Tracking was not very accurate. We can pick up an Autocrat's Beacon signal from it-but the beacon is encrypted, and the Autocrat has refused to provide us with the encryption key. We know the rock was registered at one point, but nothing else. Besides, what difference could it make? A rock is a rock."

Captain Mtombe, a rather dour and poker-faced dark-complexioned man with a slight West African accent, checked his displays. He seemed to be making a point of ignoring the image of the asteroid and concentrating on his instruments. "We should have a velocity match with the asteroid in twenty minutes. The asteroid is behind us and moving at speed, coming up on us, but decelerating.

I've set our course so that it will match our present velocity as it comes alongside.

"Once the rock is alongside, I will be firing our engines to match its deceleration. We should be able to stay alongside it for several hours at least."

"How long precisely will we have to observe, if we stay alongside as long as possible?" McGillicutty asked.

Mtombe shrugged. "You tell me. If this d.a.m.n rock does what the objects targeted for Venus and Mercury did, it's going to soft-land on Mars.

Somehow. No one's seen how they do that yet.

Magic, I guess. My ship isn't rated for magical landings, just orbit-to-orbit constant-boost flight.

You want to follow this rock all the way into atmosphere, then blip out at the last minute, boost to orbit? It might work. Unless maybe we crash a little bit, and get dead. Or else maybe we slide into orbit and keep alive after the flyby. Then we stay alive here, get a look at asteroid number two coming in eight hours behind, and the next comingfour hours behind that, and the whole fleet coming down our throats next day. And we don't even get killed, not one little bit. Which do you want?"

For once, McGillicutty knew when he was being needled and shut up.

"Too bad we can't blow the d.a.m.n things out of the sky," Mtombe muttered. "I know we don't have enough nuclear weapons, and that we don't want to risk their revenge. I've heard you people talking. But wiping out invading aliens-what better use for nuclear weapons?"

Sondra shook her head. "It's a tempting thought.

But we might end up with nothing more than a bunch of very angry radioactive Charonians.

Besides, there aren't any nukes available. Not on Mars, anyway. I'm sure the Martians could build some out of reconfigured fusion engines, if nothing else. But we have to come up with a better tactic than blasting these things-and to get that we need more data."

Sondra started working with the image-enhancement routines, peering into a smaller monitor. "Dammit, we're practically down to a resolution of centimeters here," she said. "If there was anything to see, we'd have seen it by now.

There's nothing to be seen, that's all. That's a rock, plain and simple. Nothing there."

"Unless whatever it is we're looking for is on the other side..." Marcia suggested.

Mtombe took the hint. "Hang on to something, then," he said. He skewed the ship over to do a flyaround, moving in a slow, careful arc, staying at a respectful distance from the asteroid.

"There!" McGillicutty called out, and leaned forward, eager for his first glimpse at utterly alien technology.

A tiny, white, lozenge-shaped form hove into view over the rock's short horizon. Sondra worked the enhancer and the image leapt upward in scale untilthe white shape filled the screen. McGillicutty giggled with nervous excitement, and immediately went to work, trying to identify what he saw. "That is obviously a fuel tank of some sort," he said. "I would suggest that it contains at least some fraction of the propellant used to accelerate the asteroid.

Note the smaller structures cl.u.s.tered around the tank. Perhaps those are a.s.sociated with guidance of the asteroid. I note some sort of patterns on the tank. Could you perhaps boost the contrast a bit so we could get a look at that."

There was a flash of light. A strobe light? An idea came to her. Sondra worked the controls and zoomed the view in closer.

Lettering. It was lettering, a serial number of some sort, on the side of the cylinder. And the strobe lit again. A standard tracking beacon bolted to a hab shed.

"That's our stuff, McGillicutty," Sondra said, delighted at the chance to give him a good swift kick in the ego. "A miner's habitat shed, real old model, at least twenty years out of date. That's its ID number. Captain Mtombe, can you give us anything based on that number, or is that going to be an Autocrat's secret too?"

"Stand by just a second. I need to stabilize our course here." Mtombe took up stationkeeping alongside the asteroid, a half kilometer off. As soon as the computers were happy with the course, he ordered the comm system to link through to Mars for the most recent version of the Belt Community's claims list. "That's a current number," he reported.

"Matches asteroid AC125DN1RA45, claimed and being worked by one Coyote Westlake, solo miner.

Full specs on equipment and claims coming through."

"Wait a second," Sondra said. "A current number? That thing is still being worked? This Coyote person, he's supposed to be there now?""She. It's a woman, but yes."

"Dammit, why hasn't she radioed in, sent a Mayday in all this time?"

"With what?" Marcia asked. "I don't see any high-gain antennas down there. Look at her equipment manifest. Her only long-range radio was aboard her ship, the Vegas Girl-and I don't think the ship came along for the ride this time. Any sign of the Vegas Girl's beacon, Captain Mtombe?"

"No, we would have picked that up hours ago.

But Westlake should be reachable on her short-range radio. If she is still alive."

"But should we try and radio her?" McGillicutty asked. "Suppose she is part of the conspiracy?

Suppose that she is actively controlling that asteroid?"

"And the other thirty thousand that are bearing down on our worlds?" Sondra said snappishly.

"That would be one h.e.l.l of a remote-control problem for a woman without a long-range radio.

We've known right along that some of the asteroids that moved were being mined by live crews. It's just sheer chance that we happen to be trailing one of them."

Mtombe looked up from his controls. "Should I make the call?"

Sondra glanced at McGillicutty, and then nodded. Mtombe sent a series of hailing signals.

He got no reply. "No signs of life at all," Mtombe said. No signal lights, no activity.

Sondra watched the autohailer repeat the call over and over again. Probably the hab shed had started popping rivets as soon as it was accelerated.

Instant pressure loss.

Sondra imagined a vacuum-shriveled corpse huddled inside the shed and shivered. "There's proof for you, Dr. McGillicutty. How can she be controlling the asteroid when she's dead?"? ? ?

The eye. The big eye. The really big eye. Coyote West-lake sat at the bottom of her tank, wrapped up in a fetal crouch, rocking slowly back and forth.

The playback on her helmet camera had proved it wasn't a hallucination. She couldn't bear to view it again, but it proved she wasn't completely mad.

Which was not much of a comfort at the moment. Crazy she would prefer right now, rather than accept that there was a tentacle-eyed monster the size of a blue whale sharing this asteroid with her.

And all it truly proved was that she hadn't been insane then. In the days that had pa.s.sed since, Coyote had been able to feel reality sliding away from her, slipping through her fingers even as she tried to cling harder to it.

Would the monster come after her? Could it extrude some dreadful pseudopod of itself down the tunnel she had drilled, track her back to her habitat shelter?