Can you turn it back on again?
Oh yes. The dark section flared white again. The codes work for the doors as well; just hold your block over the dimples.
Be quicker to use the dimples.
For now, yes.
I wasn't complaining, Karl. This is an excellent start. What's your next step?
I want to access the next level of the cybermice program architecture. That way I should be able to load recognition patterns in their memory. Once I can do that I'll enter our equipment, and they should leave it alone. But that's going to take a long time; Lady Mac isn't exactly heavily stocked with equipment for this kind of work. Of course, once I do get deeper into their management routines we should be able to learn a lot about their internal systems. From what I can make out the cybermice are built around a molecular synthesizer. He switched on a fission knife, its ten-centimetre blade glowing a pale yellow under the ceiling's glare. It scored a dark smouldering scar in the composite.
A cybermouse immediately slipped towards the blemish. This time when the composite softened the charred granules were sucked down, and the small valley closed up.
Exactly the same thickness and molecular structure as before, Karl datavised. That's why the ship's interior looks brand new, and everything's still working flawlessly after thirteen thousand years. The cybermice keep regenerating it. Just keep giving them energy and a supply of mass and there's no reason this ship won't last for eternity.
It's almost a von Neumann machine, isn't it?
Close. I expect a synthesizer this small has limits. After all, if it could reproduce anything, they would have built themselves another starship. But the principle's here, Captain. We can learn and expand on it. Think of the effect a unit like this will have on our manufacturing industry.
Marcus was glad he was in an SII suit, it blocked any giveaway facial expressions. Replicator technology would be a true revolution, restructuring every aspect of human society, Adamist and Edenist alike. And revolutions never favoured the old.
I just came here for the money, not to destroy a way of life for eight hundred star systems.
That's good, Karl. Where did the others go?
Down to the third deck. Once we solved the puzzle of the disappearing exoskeletons, they decided it was safe to start exploring again.
Fair enough, I'll go down and join them.
•••
I cannot believe you agreed to help them, Antonio stormed. You of all people. You know how much the cause is depending on us.
Jorge gave him a hollow smile. They were together in his sleeping cubicle, which made it very cramped. But it was one place on the starship he knew for certain no sensors were operational; a block he'd brought with him had made sure of that. The cause has become dependent on your project. There's a difference.
What are you talking about?
Those detector satellites cost us a million and a half fuseodollars each; and most of that money came from sources who will require repayment no matter what the outcome of our struggle.
The satellites are a hell of a lot cheaper than antimatter.
Indeed so. But they are worthless to us unless they find pitchblende.
We'll find it. Victoria says there are plenty of traces. It's only a question of time before we get a big one.
Maybe. It was a good idea, Antonio, I'm not criticizing. Fusion bomb components are not easily obtainable to a novice political organization with limited resources. One mistake, and the intelligence agencies would wipe us out. No, old-fashioned fission was a viable alternative. Even if we couldn't process the uranium up to weapons quality, we can still use it as a lethal large-scale contaminate. As you say, we couldn't lose. Sonora would gain independence, and we would form the first government, with full access to Treasury. Everyone would be reimbursed for their individual contribution to the liberation.
So why are we fucking about in a pile of xenoc junk? Just back me up, Jorge, please. Calvert will leave it alone if we both pressure him.
Because, Antonio, this piece of so-called xenoc junk has changed the rules of the game. In fact we're not even playing the same game any more. Gravity generation, an inexhaustible power supply, molecular synthesis, and if Karl can access the control network he might even find the blueprints to build whatever stardrive they used. Are you aware of the impact such a spectrum of radical technologies will have upon the Confederation when released all together? Entire industries will collapse from obsolescence overnight. There will be an economic depression the like of which we haven't seen since before the invention of the ZTT drive. It will take decades for the human race to return to the kind of stability we enjoy today. We will be richer and stronger because of it; but the transition years, ah ... I would not like to be a citizen in an asteroid settlement that has just blackmailed the founding company into premature independence. Who is going to loan an asteroid such as that the funds to re-equip our industrial stations, eh?
I ... I hadn't thought of that.
Neither has the crew. Except for Calvert. Look at his face next time you talk to him, Antonio. He knows, he has reasoned it out, and he's seen the end of his captaincy and freedom. The rest of them are lost amid their dreams of exorbitant wealth.
So what do we do?
Jorge clamped a hand on Antonio's shoulder. Fate has smiled on us, Antonio. This was registered as a joint venture flight. No matter we were looking for something different. By law, we are entitled to an equal share of the xenoc technology. We are already trillionaires, my friend. When we get home we can buy Sonora asteroid; Holy Mother, we can buy the entire Lagrange cluster.
Antonio managed a smile, which didn't quite correspond with the dew of sweat on his forehead. OK, Jorge. Hell, you're right. We don't have to worry about anything any more. But ...
Now what?
I know we can pay off the loan on the satellites, but what about the Crusade council? They won't like this. They might
There's no cause for alarm. The council will never trouble us again. I maintain that I am right about the disaster which destroyed the xenoc ship. It didn't have an accident. That is a warship, Antonio. And you know what that means, don't you? Somewhere on board there will be weapons just as advanced and as powerful as the rest of its technology.
•••
It was Wai's third trip over to the xenoc ship. None of them spent more than two hours at a time inside. The gravity field made every muscle ache, walking round was like being put on a crash exercise regimen.
Schutz and Karl were still busy by the airlock, probing the circuitry of the cybermice, and decrypting more of their programming. It was probably the most promising line of research; once they could use the xenoc program language they should be able to extract any answer they wanted from the ship's controlling network. Assuming there was one. Wai was convinced there would be. The number of systems operatinglife-support, power, gravityhad to mean some basic management integration system was functional.
In the meantime there was the rest of the structure to explore. She had a layout file stored in her neural nanonics, updated by the others every time they came back from an excursion. At the blunt end of the wedge there could be anything up to forty decks, if the spacing was standard. Nobody had gone down to the bottom yet. There were some areas which had no obvious entrance; presumably engineering compartments, or storage tanks. Marcus had the teams tracing the main power lines with magnetic sensors, trying to locate the generator.