It was ridiculous. But the odd thing is that I almost believed it myself, the way Danny Shaker said it. Doctor Eileen certainly did. She sighed, and shook her head.
“Jay, I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm. But you should have known better. What now, Captain Shaker?”
“A little breathing space, I think, to let the crew back on board calm down. Jay ought to stay here for a day or two. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask one favor of you.”
“Anything within reason.”
“It’s the men. Part of the reason they’re so angry has nothing to do with Jay’s snooping. He was quite right, you see, the crew have been talking about women—because they’ve got the odd notion in their heads that was why you came here in the first place.”
“That’s more than odd. It’s crazy.”
“I know. But somehow the word’s been going around the ship that this little worldlet has women on it. Living, human women. Young women.”
“Then that rules me out. Your crew certainly entertains some bizarre ideas, Captain.”
“They do. But that won’t change just because you or I wish it. So this is the favor I’m asking: Will you let some of my crew roam around here for a day or so? Then they’ll find nothing, and go back and tell their mates that they saw for themselves and there’s nothing hidden. After that, you and your professors can go on exploring for as long as you like.”
“Which won’t be for more than another hour, the way things have been going. This is an artificial world, no doubt of it, but we’ve found nothing. Nothing to suggest that it was ever a Godspeed Base, I mean, and nothing to hint that it ever had anything to do with one.” Doctor Eileen snorted. “You know, if you hadn’t come down I was thinking of going back to the Cuchulain anyway, sitting down, and going over everything that’s happened one more time to try to make sense of it.”
“Perfect. Do it. The crew would like that, too, knowing you weren’t trying to steer them away from anything.”
“Wait a minute, though. Walter Hamilton says he wants to stay even if the rest of us go back. This place seems to have nothing to do with a Godspeed Base, but it does date back to before the Isolation, and it has its own unique biology. Hamilton wants to study it.”
“Tell him to study away, Doctor, and welcome to it. So long as he doesn’t try to advise my men where to go and not to go. I’ll tell the crew to let him wander where he likes.”
“And I’ll tell Jim Swift and Duncan to get ready. They’re back at the other cargo beetle.”
She pointed up across the thicket of plants. She was too short to see over them.
“What about me!” I said.
“You can come with—” But Doctor Eileen paused and raised her eyebrows at Danny Shaker.
“Not a good idea.” He was shaking his head. “Without me on the Cuchulain—or even with me… why, that’s the whole reason I brought him. Jay should stay here. But don’t worry, Doctor. The men here are the pick of the bunch. He’ll be safe with us. I pledge my life on it.”
I wanted to shout, but what about my life? I didn’t, though. It would have been pointless. Doctor Eileen was convinced that I had been acting like a moron on the Cuchulain, and she thought that Dan Shaker was just worried about my safety.
As she started back along a trail of flattened plants, I hurried along after her. I just had to talk to her some more. But as we went I had another thought.
Suppose she believed every word that I said. Even though Danny Shaker carried no weapon himself, his men all had them. He had told me that Doctor Eileen’s group had guns and knives, too, but I saw no sign of one on her. If Danny Shaker wanted to, he could just order his men (the “pick of the bunch”!—who’d pick Sean Wilgus or Joe Munroe for anything but dirty work?) to kill me, and kill Doctor Eileen, and kill all the rest of our party.
That’s the sort of gloomy thought you have when you’re struggling along head-down through tall leafy plants that catch you as you go, and you know that just behind you there are men who have already said they’d be more than pleased to chuck you out of an airlock into naked space.
I’ll take those thoughts though, anytime, over the ones that I had ten minutes later; I’m talking about the ones that came as I stood at Walter Hamilton’s side with Danny Shaker and his men just behind me, and watched the cargo beetle rise up, ease its way toward the softly glowing shield that surrounded Paddy’s Fortune, and quietly disappear. Doctor Eileen, Jim Swift, and Uncle Duncan were all on board. I had tried one more time to talk to her, and she wouldn’t even listen.
As the ship vanished beyond the translucent shield, my thoughts lurched from uneasiness to cold terror. Even now, I don’t like to recall them.
Chapter 17
I never did like Walter Hamilton. I suppose it all goes back to what Danny Shaker told me: You are defined not so much by what you are, as by the way that you are treated by other people.
Doctor Eileen might occasionally pat me on the head or ruffle my hair, but she did it sort of absentmindedly, without thinking. And although I hated it, in a way she had the right to do it because she had been around me ever since I was born.
Walter Hamilton was different. He hardly knew me, but he acted as though I was a nothing. He didn’t talk to me, he talked through me.
I would ask him a simple question (though not often after the first few days); something like, “Dr. Hamilton, you said that Erin’s contact with other stars was cut off right at the time of Isolation. But Dr. Swift said you don’t need a Godspeed Drive to transmit radio signals. Why didn’t people send those from star to star?”
And he would suck in his pimply cheeks, and sniff, and stare at nothing. Then he’d come out with something like, “Let us not be quite so crushingly naive. An interstellar subluminal communications network may well have preceded the existence of the superluminal Godspeed Drive. However, once the latter had been fully established, the obsolescence of the former was guaranteed. And of course, following the cataclysm of Isolation the presumed problems of basic civilization survival totally inhibited subluminal communications redevelopment.”
And I would think (but not say), Ugh!
Yet both Jim Swift and Doctor Eileen had told me that Walter Hamilton was a serious and competent research worker, someone who really cared about his subject. I didn’t argue. So far as I was concerned she could have my share of him. For most of the trip out to the Maze I had done my best to avoid the man.
But now, on Paddy’s Fortune, he was the closest thing to a friend that I had. I must say, the competition was not great: Danny Shaker, who said he was my friend, and O’Rourke, Doonan, Munroe, and Wilgus, who made it perfectly clear that they were no such thing.
We all stood in silence, watching the cargo beetle lift off. Danny Shaker waited until it had eased its way beyond the atmospheric shield and was out of sight, then he turned to Patrick O’Rourke.
“Well, you asked for it, boyo, and now you’ve got it. You can go anywhere, poke into anything you find.”
The four crewmen laughed, and O’Rourke said, “You can sure count on that, Chief—if I can find anything to poke into.”