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?
He unrolled it, and it was the sky from Icepack. The Memphis, with its lights on, glided above the horizon. And Hutch herself, face and shoulders rendered in spectral form, silhouetted against the soft silver light of the stars and the ship, gazed serenely down. It was a gorgeous Hutch, a spectacular vision of herself. She was by no means plain, but she knew she’d never cut that kind of figure.
“Tor,” she said, “it’s breathtaking. They all are.”
“You like it?”
“Yes. Of course.” And after a moment: “Thank you.”
When they were alone, a few minutes later, he commented that the problem out here was that you couldn’t get roses. “This is in lieu of roses,” he said.
She pressed her lips against his. “Tor,” she said, “it’s much nicer than roses.”
Chapter 18
Give me a place in the Andes, safely removed from noisy neighbors and fish markets, relatives, crowds, and low-flying aircraft, and I shall be pleased to retire from the crass delights of this world.
HUTCH DEBATED PUTTING the sketch on the bridge, and had she not been in it, or maybe even had she looked a bit less like a deity, she’d have done it. But in the end she put it up in her quarters. And she luxuriated in it. Her image had come a long way in a short time, from the tomboyish character swinging bats in a Phillies uniform to this mantrap. He’s got your number, babe, she thought.
Meantime, they closed in on the oddball planetary system they had come to think of as the Twins.
The two giants were similar in size. Their equatorial diameters checked in at sixty-five thousand and sixty-three thousand kilometers. The smaller, the brighter one, flaunted belts of silver clouds with blue and gold tones.
The blue was the result of methane slurry and ice crystals on the outer shell of the atmosphere. Cyclonic storms floated deeper down, swirls of yellow and red with golden eyes. It was a jewel of a world.
Its darker companion, folded in October colors, was also sprinkled with storms. They appeared to be larger, less defined, more ominous than those on its companion. The names came automatically: The system would be Gemini; the bright world Cobalt, the dark, Autumn.
Each had its own rings. Cobalt’s was the more complex, threaded with shepherd moons and braiding effects. It had four Cassini divisions. Autumn’s rings were brighter, gold and burnt orange, with only two divisions. An observer could not resist being struck by the balance of light and dark at either end of the system.
Slightly more than 3 million kilometers separated them.
The entire system of worlds, rings, and central cloud was bounded by a vast outer ring, which was highly elliptical, rather like the track around a football field. It, too, had all the features of orthodox ring systems: Cassini divisions, shepherd moons, braiding effects. But it wasn’t as well defined as the other two. Rather than the sharp-edged appearance of the inner systems, it presented itself as a kind of luminous loop gradually dissipating into the night.
The satellites were cratered, frozen, sterile. No atmospheres there. They ranged in diameter from six thousand kilometers, the vertical moon, to twelve hundred kilometers.
The worlds, moons, and the big ring revolved around the center of mass, where the cloud had formed and the gravities of the two giants balanced. The Twins were high-speed bullets, roaring around each other in less than twenty-four hours. Both were considerably flattened by the centripetal forces, and Bill reported that he wasn’t certain, hadn’t been there long enough to get accurate measurements, but preliminary estimates suggested the two worlds were closing on each other. “Gradually,” he said. “The system isn’t stable.”
“They’ll collide?” asked George, already rubbing his hands at the prospect.
“It’s imminent.”
“When?”
“Less than a million years.”
“Your AI,” George told her, “has a vindictive sense of humor.”
The central cloud was lit from within by a constant infalling of dust and particles sucked from the ring systems on both sides. That was the activity causing the twisted necklace effect. The two streams collided within the cloud, exploding into a pyrotechnic display that sent jets millions of kilometers through the night before they were eventually dragged back down.
Bill continued posting real-time images on the various displays in mission control and throughout the ship. Hutch spent almost all her time on the bridge. Below, George and his people were glued to the screens.
They had moved inside the outermost moons when Bill reported another odd feature. “Autumn,” he said, “has a cyclonic white spot on the equator.”