Sight Of Proteus Part 13

Wolf winced at the figure.

"If all this works out," he said, "I'll get everything back. Otherwise, I'll be a slave to the USF for the rest of my life. Well, let's worry about that later."

As they spoke, Green led the way through the long corridor that led to the final clearing section before the main living quarters. He was sliding along in the fast, economical lope that all USF people acquired in early childhood.

Wolf, not too successfully, tried to imitate it. The floor of fused rock felt slippery beneath his feet, and he had the curious feeling that the lunar gravity was a little lower than it had been on his last trip to Tycho City, many years before.

"No," said Green in answer to his question. "I think that physics here may be a little ahead of anywhere else in the system, but we still don't have an efficient generator. Gravity's one thing we haven't tamed so far. McAndrew came up with a method a long time ago for using shielded kernels for local gravity adjustments, and that's as far as anyone has been able to go. n.o.body's willing to try even that much, down on a planetary surface. What you're feeling is a change in oxygen content. We put it a fraction of a percent higher about three years ago. You'll find that you get used to it in a couple of days."

"A couple of days! Park, I have no intention of being here in a couple of days. I want to be well on the way to the cl.u.s.ter. When can the ship leave? I hope it's today."

Green stopped and looked at Wolf quizzically. "Bey, you're dreaming. You just don't know the problems. First, there's no way they can get a ship ready in less than seventy-two hours. d.a.m.n it, it has to be equipped to support the two of us on a two-year trip-that's how long the Grand Tour can take. I know we're not really going on that, but they're getting her ready for it. Second-"

"What do you mean, support the two of us? Park, I'm not dragging you on this trip. It's a risky game that far out of the usual system ship routes, and it may all be a complete waste of time. I'm going solo."

Green listened calmly, towering way above Wolf. He shook his head.

"Bey, you're a real expert on form-change, I'll be the first to admit that.

But you're a baby when it comes to s.p.a.ce operations. Oh, don't say it-I know very well that you have your license. That's just the beginning. It means you're toilet trained in s.p.a.ce-not that you're ready to hare off around the system on your own. I'm telling you, no matter how confident you feel aboutyour ability to look after yourself, the owners wouldn't agree. There's no way they'd even let you get near that ship unless I go with you-not once around the Moon, never mind the Grand Tour. It's got to be me, or you'll find they push some other USF pilot on to you-somebody you don't even know."

Wolf looked at Green's calm confidence. It was obvious that the big man was telling the truth. He shrugged and resigned himself to the inevitable.

"It wasn't what I had in mind, Park. I wasn't proposing to drag you into all this when I asked you to help in checking Ling's records up here."

Green smiled slightly and shook his head. "Bey, you still don't understand it, do you? I'm not going along because I'm a kind-hearted martyr. I'm going along because I want to. d.a.m.n it, don't you realize that I've been itching to know what's been going on with John back on Earth since the minute that I set out to come back to Tycho City? You could almost say that it was my fault that John ever got changed to a Logian form. If I'd been a bit smarter and known what was happening, I might have been able to talk him out of injecting Logian DNA into himself. Get rid of the idea that I'm going along for your sake."

Wolf was staring up at the other's earnest face. "Sorry, Park," he said in a subdued voice. "I let my own compulsions blind me to everybody else's. You deserve to come along. I still wish we could beat that figure of seventy-two hours. I didn't plan on spending anything near that long here in Tycho City."

Green was smiling again. "You'll need that much time to prepare. And you still owe me some explanations. Your message from the ship set a new high for being cryptic. We're getting ready to go right out of the System and you still haven't told me why. I heard that John has disappeared, and I know the two things are connected."

"We're not going out of the System, Park, just to the Egyptian Cl.u.s.ter."

"Same thing, to a USF-er. Technically, you're right, of course. The System goes all the way out to the long-period comet aphelia. But so far as anybody in the USF is concerned, when you go to an orbit plane that far off the plane of the ecliptic, you might as well be right out of the System. The delta-v you need is so big, and there are so few things of interest up there. We just don't bother to do it very often. Do you know, I've never even met anybody who has been to a member of the Egyptian Cl.u.s.ter. I've been looking up the facts on it ever since you called me from the ship. I still can't imagine why you want to go there."

They were approaching the big hemispherical chamber that marked the city edge.

Beyond it, slide ways led to the separate centers for manufacturing, maintenance, utilities, and habitation. Agriculture and power were located back up on the surface, 3,500 meters above their heads.

"I'll brief you on all the background as soon as we're settled in here," said Bey. "That won't take me more than a few hours. I don't know what plans you have to spend the rest of the time before we can leave, but I'd like to have another go at the data banks. There may still be things in there that I missed last time on Capman's activities here as Karl Ling."

"You'll have time for that. There will be other things, too." Green pointed ahead of them to where a small group of men and women was standing by a wall terminal. "There's your fan club. I'm sorry, Bey, but I couldn't stop it.

Those are the Tycho City experts on regeneration methods. They want to hold a reception later in your honor, and nothing I've said has managed to dissuade them. You see the price of fame? Now, are you too tired, or shall we be nice to them while you're here?"

CHAPTER 19.

The Explanatory Supplement to the Ephemeris, 2190 Edition lists the mean orbital inclination for the asteroids of the Egyptian Cl.u.s.ter as fifty-eight degrees and forty-seven minutes to the plane of the ecliptic. The cl.u.s.ter's physical data are given at the very end of the reference section, a fair measure of its relative importance in the planetary scheme of things. Allcl.u.s.ter members have perihelion distances of about three hundred million kilometers, strongly supporting the idea of a common origin even though any cl.u.s.tering in a purely spatial sense has long since been dissipated. Pearl, with an almost circular orbit, crosses the ecliptic near the first point of Aries. Unfortunately she was riding high, far south of that, when Wolf and Green finally set out.

"Nearly a hundred and thirty million kilometers, Bey," grumbled Green, hunched over the displays. "It will take more fuel to get us there than it would to take us to Neptune. I hope you're right in all those guesses."

Wolf was prowling restlessly through the ship, savoring the half-g acceleration and inspecting everything as he went.

"You say it would take just as much fuel, Park, if Pearl were heading through the ecliptic right now. All we would save is a little time. If I'm wrong on the rest of it, we'll have wasted a few weeks each."

He paused by the radiation-shielded enclosure, eyeing it speculatively.

"It's a pity that doesn't have a form-change tank inside it," he went on.

"This ship is plenty big enough to carry the equipment, if there were a suitable tank."

Green looked up briefly. "Remember, Bey, C-forms are still illegal here."

"I know. I was just thinking that we could really use one now to slow down our metabolisms a few times. The Timeset form would do us nicely. How's the fuel supply look? Any problem?"

"No. We could do this twice if we had to. I told the provisioners that we might want to do some unusual out-of-ecliptic maneuvers during the trip. They gave us the biggest reserves the ship can hold."

Green finished his final checking of the trajectory and straightened up. He looked at Wolf, who was still eyeing the closed compartment.

"Eyes off, Bey. You know the USF is ultra cautious on the use of C-form experiments. Really, you can't blame us. People are precious out here. We don't have a few billion to spare, the way that you do down on Earth. We'll let you do the wild experiments. It will be a few years before we're ready to play with the form Capman developed in Project Timeset. Meanwhile, we've got our own methods. Did you take a good look yet at the sleeping quarters?"

"A quick look. They're tolerable. I was going there next to look at a few bits of equipment that I didn't recognize. The place looked very cluttered. Why not use one compartment and save on s.p.a.ce?"

"That's what I mean, Bey." Green switched off the display and swung the seat around. The legroom at the trajectory monitor had been meant for someone two feet shorter. He stretched his long limbs straight out in front of him.

"You see," he went on, "back on Earth you've been forced to develop methods that let people live on top of each other, millions of you where naturally there should only be thousands. Well, we have a different problem here in the USF. We have a lot of s.p.a.ce and not many people, but we've still had to worry about the situation where a small number of people live for a long time in very close contact-in a ship, or a mining colony, or an Outer System settlement. It's even worse than Earth, because there's no chance to vary the company you keep. You have to be able to live for months or years without murdering each other."

Green swiveled his chair around to face Wolf and looked at him with a strange expression. "Bey, answer me honestly. Just what do you think of me?"

Wolf, puzzled by the sudden change in subject, pulled up in mid-prowl. He looked at Green thoughtfully for a moment before he replied. "I think I know where you're heading, Park, but I'll play the game. An honest answer, eh? All right. You're good-natured. You're a bit of a worrier. You're not stupid-in fact, you're pretty shrewd-but you're also a little bit lazy. You bore easily, and you hate things that are too theoretical and abstract for your taste.

We're off to a devil of a beginning here for a long trip together, but you did ask me."

"Right." Green sniffed. "I have trouble with that evaluation-it all rings much too true. Now, let me tell you what you're like. You're as smart as Satan, butyou're a bit of a cold fish, and that sometimes throws off your judgment when it comes to people. In fact, you prefer ideas to people. You really love puzzles. You're stubborn, too. Once you get started on something, there's no way of shaking you off it. You're obsessive-but not about the usual human frailties. I'll hazard a guess, but I suspect that you've never formed a permanent link of any kind with either man or woman."

Bey had winced at the accuracy of some of the comments, but he was smiling at the end.

"Park, I didn't realize that you knew me so well-better in some ways than I know myself. So what's the punch line? I presume that you are not proposing that we spend the next few weeks exchanging character a.s.sessments. If so, I'm not impressed with your USF ideas on the way to pa.s.s the time on a long trip."

Green stood up carefully, looking with annoyance at the low ceiling. "Not at all. Here, Bey, follow me." He started forward, stooped over. "This ship wasn't built for somebody my size. You should have no trouble, but watch your head anyway. I want to show you a few features of this ship that you weren't aware of on your first inspection. We just exchanged character comments, Bey, and we weren't complimentary. But we're still behaving in a civilized way toward each other-even though I'm sure neither one of us greatly enjoys having some of our defects pointed out, even though we know them well enough for ourselves.

"Let me a.s.sure you, though, what would happen if you and I were to be cooped up together for six months or a year with no outside contacts and no one else to speak to without a half-hour light-time delay. You may not believe me, but the USF has a couple of hundred years experience on this one. Things would change. Little things about me that you don't like would seem to get bigger and bigger. After three months I'd strike you as impossibly soft and stupid, incredibly big and clumsy, unendurably lazy. And in my eyes you'd be a cold monster, an untrustworthy, calculating madman. Do you find that hard to swallow?"

"Not really." Wolf followed Green through into the separate sleeping quarters, quite large but full of odd pieces of equipment. "I've read about the effects of prolonged small-group contacts, particularly where the people are short of real work to do. Are you telling me that the USF has developed a solution to that?"

"Three solutions. In my personal opinion, none of them is as good as use of the C-forms. Here's the first."

Green reached up above one of the bunks and carefully took down a large padded headgear from its recessed storage area.

"See the contact points, here and here? You attach them to the skin and put the cups over your eyes. It looks similar to the equipment they used in the early form-change work, doesn't it?"

"Close to it." Bey stepped forward and peered at the microelectrodes in the interior of the cap. "It won't permit real biofeedback, though-there's no adaptive control here."

"It's not intended for that. All it does is monitor purpose and wish, just the same as the form-change equipment. But instead of providing form-change feedback, it gives sensation feedback. It's connected to the computer, and that profiles a sensation response for you, maximized for relaxation and peace of mind."

"What!" Wolf was looking at the headgear in disgust. "Park, I don't know if you realize it, but you've just described a Dream Machine. They're illegal on Earth. Once you get hooked on one of these, it takes years of therapy to get you back to a normal life."

"I know. Don't get excited, Bey. This only gets used as a last resort, when somebody realizes that they're going over the edge mentally." Green's voice was grim. "Which would you rather do. Bey? Go under one of these when you start to crack and take a chance that they will get you back to normal-or be like Maniello on the first lapetus expedition, flaying his partner and using Parker's skin to re-cover the seat of the control chair? I'm telling you, theship environment does funny things to people. Are you beginning to see why there's more to flying the System than a pilot's license?"

Wolf was looking chastened. "Sorry, Park. One of the problems of living down on Earth-we tend to get the idea that the USF is still a bit backward. For some things it's just the other way around. What else have you worked out here to help you keep sane?"

"These others are the ones that we prefer to use. The first one I showed you is strictly for desperate cases." Green pulled a large blue plastic cover, shaped like a man, from a panel under the bunk. "This one is an inferior version of a Timeset C-form. It's called a hibernator. We inject a combination of drugs to lower body temperature. It kills you, if you want to sound melodramatic about it. The suit holds you in a stable condition at about five degrees above freezing. The effective rate of aging is about a quarter of normal. You can go into it for about a week at a time, then you have to be revived. The suit does that automatically, too. See the monitors on the inside? After four or five days to get the muscle tone back up, you can go under again."

"I don't like the sound of that. You lose a week out of four, completely, while you're in there. Why not use a cryo-womb and make it really cold?"

Green shrugged. "This is safer. The fail rate on cryo-revivals is up near two percent."

"More like one percent, with the latest systems."

"All right, one percent. This thing is just about foolproof. I admit, it's the poor man's version of a Timeset C-form. I expect we'll be using that in a few years. Meanwhile ... " Green shrugged.

Bey slid open the suit fasteners and looked at the array of sensors running along the whole inside. "Any reason why we shouldn't both use it on this trip?

We could cut the subjective time down more if we were both under at once."

Green coughed. "Well, when I said just about foolproof, I only meant that. I would rather that we weren't both under at once. Once in every few thousand times there's a problem with the revivication process. It's nice to have somebody who's awake, waiting around to see if the suit does its job properly and helping out if it doesn't. With both of us under, there's a very small chance that we'd find ourselves on a much longer trajectory than we're planning. Unless we apply the correct thrusts when we get to Pearl, we'll drop back into the Solar System in about seven hundred thousand years. I'd rather not rely on whoever is around at that time to come along and get us out of our suits."

Wolf looked at him closely and decided that Green was only half joking. He looked at the suit, then began to fold it up. "What else do you have? So far I'm not too enthusiastic."

Green shrugged. "I told you, none of these methods is as good as a working C-form." He reached up again into the recess above the bunk and pulled down another helmet, this one smaller and lighter than the first. "This has similar connections to your 'Dream Machine,' but it has a different working principle."

He turned it over. "See these leads? They link to the computer and also to the helmet in the other sleeping area. It still provides a sensation feedback, but in this one it's modulated by what the other person in the system is thinking and dreaming. The computer is programmed to modify those thoughts, before the feedback, to make our impressions of each other more favorable. All the time that we have the helmets on, we are sharing each other's thoughts and emotions. It would be much harder for us-so the theory goes-to develop any hatred for each other. It would almost be like hating yourself."

"I do that anyway, sometimes." Wolf was looking at the helmet with a good deal of distaste. "Speaking personally, Park, I find this device disgusting. It's no reflection on you, but I don't like the idea of somebody else sneaking in on my dreams. Some of the things I think just don't bear to be shared. Whoever thought up this one had a diseased mind-worse than mine."

Green nodded sympathetically. "It's odd that you should say that. Most peopledon't seem to mind the idea, but I have an instinctive dislike of it. It must feel like a two-way computerized seduction, creeping into each other's hidden territories. Anyway, which one do you want to use on this trip-or would you rather not try any of them?"

Bey looked at the helmet he was holding. "It's not much of a choice, is it? I suppose the hibernator is least bad. I don't mind sleeping for a week, provided we don't feel too bad afterward."

"All right. We'll take it in turns to go under. Really, though, for this trip we don't have to use these things at all. They're not even recommended for trips under a month, and they don't become mandatory until you're going to be six months between stops. Want to skip it completely?"

"Let's see if we get bored at all. You know, Park, I wish the USF was more broad-minded about form-change work. For a start, I feel sure I could set up a system that would work with somebody in the hibernator and use biofeedback to keep good muscle tone. That has to be easy. In fact"-Bey was beginning to sound enthusiastic-"I'll be willing to make a bet with you. I'll wager that I can take a Dream Machine helmet and a hibernator and make a system from them that will do just what I said-and I'll have it finished before we get to Pearl. What's the capacity of the on-board computer?"

"Ten to the tenth directly addressable. About a hundred times that as low-speed backup."

"That's ample. Even if we don't find what I'm looking for, maybe we can take something back with us that will interest the USF."

Green looked at Bey warily and shook his head. "Experiment as much as you like. There's a spare set of helmets and a spare hibernator. But I don't like that mad-scientist look in your eye. I'm telling you now, you don't have a volunteer as a test subject if you think you have it working. When I hear you talk, I sometimes think you're as bad as Capman must be-form-change is the most important thing in the world to both of you." He was silent for a moment, then he sighed. "I only hope I still have a job when I get back. The USF government doesn't take kindly to sudden extended absences without a real explanation. But I'll tell you one thing, Bey, your obsession with Robert Capman seems to be infectious. I just can't wait to get to Pearl."

CHAPTER 20.

Lore than ninety-nine percent of all the ma.s.s in the Solar System lies close to the plane of the ecliptic. Of the remainder, the Halo of kernels accounts for all but the tiniest fraction, and that Halo is at the very outer edge of the system, never visible from Earth or Moon with even the most powerful optical devices. For all practical purposes, Pearl and her sisters of the Egyptian Cl.u.s.ter swim in a totally empty void, deserted even by comparison with the spa.r.s.e population of the Outer System.

The ship climbed steadily and laboriously up, away from the plane of the ecliptic. Finally, the parallax was sufficient to move the planets from their usual apparent positions. Mars, Earth, Venus, and Jupiter all sat in constellations that were no part of the familiar zodiac. Mercury was cowering close to the Sun. Saturn alone, swinging out at the far end of her orbit, seemed right as seen from the ship. Bey Wolf, picking out their positions through a view port, wondered idly how the astrologers would cope with such a situation. Mars seemed to be in the House of Andromeda, and Venus in the House of Cygnus. It would take an unusually talented pract.i.tioner to interpret those relationships and cast a horoscope for the success of this enterprise.

Bey turned the telescope again to scan the sky ahead of them, seeking any point of light that could be separated from the unmoving star field. It was no good. Even though the computer told him exactly where to look and a.s.sured him that rendezvous would be in less than an hour, he could see nothing. He was tempted to turn on the electronic magnifiers, but that was cheating as he had been playing the game."Any sign of her yet?" said Green, emerging from the sleeping area.

"No. We should be pretty close, but I can't see anything. Did you pick up your newscast?"

"Just finished watching it. It was a terrible picture, though, the signal-to-noise ratio was so bad. I don't understand how they can pick up those broadcasts all the way out to Ura.n.u.s with a receiving antenna no bigger than the one we have. We're only a tenth of that distance, but the signals seem to be right at the limit of reception."

"We're just picking up one of the power side lobes, Park. Nearly all the real power in the signal is beamed out along the main lobe, in the ecliptic. It's surprising in a way that we can pick up anything at all here. Anyway, what's in the news?"

"What I heard didn't sound good." Green's voice was worried, and he didn't want to meet Bey's eye. "It's Earth again. All the social indicators are still pointing down. I know old Dolmetsch is a prize pessimist, but I've never heard him sound so bleak before. He was being interviewed in Lisbon, and he's projecting everything going to h.e.l.l before the general coordinators can damp out the swings in the social parameters. He looked as though he was going to say more and tell us the swings couldn't be damped at all, but the interview was cut off short at that point."

Wolf looked out of the viewing port, back to the brilliant blue-white point of light that was Earth. "It's hard to make yourself accept that there are fourteen billion people back there on that little speck. Did you catch any hard facts?"

"Some-but I'm sure they are censoring heavily. Tremendous riots in South America, with the biggest death rate in Argentina. Power blackouts all over.

Hints at something really bad in China. It sounded like widespread cannibalism. The general coordinators are even talking of putting a kernel down onto Earth's surface; that gives us a good idea how bad the energy shortage must be."

"It does." Bey looked back at Earth as though expecting to see it wink out of existence like a snuffed candle. "If they lost the shields on a kernel, it would be worse than any bomb in the stockpile. All the Kerr-Newman holes they're using in kernels radiate at better than fifty gigawatts. They'd be mad to take one down to the surface."

"Mad, or desperate. Maybe Dolmetsch has a right to be a pessimist-after all, he invented the whole business. The famine in South Africa is getting worse, too. They are talking now about cutting off all supplies there and using them where people may be salvageable."

Green had joined Bey Wolf at the port, and they were gazing together at the star patterns, each seeing his own personal specter. They stood in silence for several minutes, until Green frowned and looked about him.

"Bey, we're turning. It's not enough to feel yet, but look, part of the star field seems to be rotating. The computer must be tuning us for final rendezvous. Do you remember the setting?"

Bey nodded. "One kilometer surface distance, exact velocity match. I thought we ought to take a look from close in before we get any ideas about a landing on Pearl." He swung the viewer into position and switched on the screen.

"Well, there she is, Park. We've come a long way to see that."

The asteroid appeared on the screen as a small, perfect circle. It glowed softly, but not with the highlights of a reflection from a polished gla.s.s surface. Instead, there was a diffuse uniform glow, a pearly gleam with a hint of green in the white. Green frowned and turned the gain up higher. The image seemed to swell on the screen.

"Bey, that's not the way I expected it to look. It's scattering and absorbing a lot more light than it should. It really looks like a pearl, not like a hollow gla.s.s ball. Why isn't it just reflecting the sunlight?"