“Maybe this is why they came,” said Alyx, her voice barely a whisper.
The Memphis was entering the system from broadside, so the twin worlds, one light and one dark, one bright and warm and brilliantly colored, the other dusky and ominous and melancholy, were opposite sides of a balance.
“Not many moons,” said Bill. “I count nine in the plane of the system, other than the shepherds. Of course, with an arrangement like this, that’s not a surprise.” The moons were all beyond the outer ring.
“In the plane of the system,” prompted Hutch.
“Right. There’s a tenth one. In an anomalous position.” He showed them. It orbited vertically, at right angles to the big ring. A polar orbit of sorts, like everything else, around the center of mass.
Long tendrils rolled out of the central cloud. Bill ran time-set images so they could see them lengthening and withdrawing, as if the thing were alive, reaching squidlike toward the planets they never quite touched.
The vertical moon was big, almost the size of Mars, and it appeared to have been roughly handled at some point in its history. It was moderately squashed on one side, as if it had been hit by something almost as big as it was. Stress lines staggered out of the depression. Elsewhere, the surface was torn up by peaks and chasms and ridges and gullies. It was a rough piece of real estate.
Bill reported that its orbit wasn’t perfectly perpendicular after all. It was actually a few degrees off.
All the satellites were in tidal lock. On Vertical, the depressed side looked away.
Hutch frowned at the picture as Bill traced the circle of the moon’s orbit, a few degrees askew at top and bottom on either side of a longitudinal line drawn down the middle. “I wouldn’t have thought that kind of orbit would be stable,” she said.
“It isn’t,” said Tor. The comment surprised Hutch. How would he know?
“That thing will be ejected or drawn in,” he continued, “eventually.” He caught her looking at him. “Artists need to know about orbital mechanics,” he said, with a cat-that-got-the-cream grin. “This is another major discovery. This is very hot stuff we’re looking at.”
George shrugged. “It’s only a rock,” he said.
Tor shook his head. “It might be something more. That kind of alignment. In a place like this.”
“In a place like what?” asked George.
“A place this glorious.” Tor was looking off into the distance somewhere. “I have a question for you, George.”
George made a rumbling sound, like water going over rocks. “Ask away,” he said.
“Look at the system. Lots of satellites adrift in the plane of the rings. If you were going to live out here, where would you want to be? To get the best view? Where do you think an artist would set up his easel?”
“The vertical moon,” said Alyx, jumping in before George could even think about it.
Tor’s blue eyes found Hutch. Whenever they looked at her lately she knew he was sending a message, maybe one that he wasn’t aware of himself. “The thing is,” he said, “moons don’t assume that kind of orbit naturally.”
They all looked at the images. Hutch thought he was probably wrong. The orbit was unlikely, and temporary, but it could happen. The proof was in front of them.
“Any sign of stealths?” asked Alyx.
“Bill’s looking,” said Hutch. “He’ll let us know. It’s going to take a while to do a comprehensive survey here.”
“You buy into what Tor says?” George asked her.
“No,” she said. “Not necessarily.”
“I think he might be right,” George continued. “Place like this. Vertical moon. I think he might be right.”
Somebody put it there. Somebody who wanted a room with a view.
“Well, for what it’s worth,” she said, “I don’t think anybody’s ever seen one orbiting top to bottom.”
“Makes me wonder,” George continued, “whether this whole arrangement is artificial. Somebody’s idea of a rock garden.”
That sent a chill up her back. She looked over at Tor, who was examining a coffee cup. “That would require a fair amount of engineering,” she said. “No, it’s hard to believe this isn’t all quite natural.”
“Pity,” said Alyx. “I’d like to think there’s something out here with that kind of esthetic sense.”
Hutch didn’t think she wanted to meet anyone, art patron or not, with the kind of power it would take to arrange all this.
George was only half listening. “You know,” he said, “I think we ought to take Tor’s suggestion and go look at the vertical moon.”
The inner system sparkled. A twisted luminous line connected both sets of rings with the central cloud. Like chains. Like a twisted diamond necklace.
HUTCH SPENT THE day on the bridge directing Bill. Pictures of this, gravitational estimates of that, sensor readings of cloudscapes. Launch probes.
She got a string of visitors. George came by to tell her she’d been doing a damned fine job. And to hint that when it was all over, if she’d be looking for work, he had a lot of friends and would be happy to see that she was well taken care of.
She thought that was generous of him, and she said so. “But I’m probably going to retire after this,” she said. “I was ready to quit before we started. After this…”
“How can you say that, Hutch? This is an historic mission.”
She just looked at him, and he nodded, and said, “Yes, I don’t blame you. I’m not sure I’d want to go through all this again either.”
Alyx came in for awhile to tell her that she’d been thinking about using the flight of the Memphis to create a musical. “I just don’t know, though. It’s gotten awfully dark.” She looked genuinely distressed. “I’m afraid they’d stay home in droves.”
Nick was wound up and wanted to talk about experiences in the funeral business. The deceased has a recording played saying things to his widow that he would never have said face to face (and includes a lawyer to ensure that Nick doesn’t forget to play it). The other woman shows up at a viewing. A widow comments in front of the mourners that it’s really just as well because the deceased was only a virtual husband anyhow.
And finally Tor.
“Can I ask you to come down to the common room for a minute?” he asked. He looked good. The color was back in his cheeks, and he was smiling again. But there was something unsettling in his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to talk about his experience, and especially about Kurt.
“Sure,” she said, rising and starting for the door. “What’s going on?”
“I have something for you.”
The others were already there, obviously waiting. Tor asked her to sit, and stood by a table on which lay four tubes, containers for canvases.
Hutch looked around at the others to see if anyone knew what it was about. But they only shrugged.
“Thanks for coming,” Tor said. “You folks got to me when I was in a bad way, and I wanted to say thanks.”
He stood and listened to the comments that one always hears on such an occasion. Not necessary, Tor. We were glad to have been there. You’d have done the same.
He opened one of the tubes and took out a sketch. “George,” he said, “this is for you, with my appreciation.” He unrolled it and held it up for everyone to see. There was George, a heroic figure in the cargo door of the Memphis, the net behind him, the washroom closing in. He had titled it with George’s name, signed and dated it in the corner.
And here was Alyx astride the lander, tying the cable to the forward antenna mount, her aura backlit by a distant sun.
And Nick clinging to the hull of the disintegrating Wendy Jay, the laser cutter bright and gleaming in his right fist.
And finally, Hutch.
She wasn’t sure what she expected.
Stumbling around inside the chamber? Cutting the washroom loose?