She was looking at him now/then, wondering what perverse universe would have them groveling like this, each trying to appease the hungry ego in the other, only to see that what was really happening was the ultimate Magianic Gift, a folding in upon itself of mechanical, altruistic ineptitude. Still, somehow, she had reached out and stroked his chest when it was over, when he had finished at last. She had been all right. Sore and . . . happy. How could she have been so blind? And what could she give to become blind again?
John experienced the growing emotions in Beth with a sense of relief. It was coming out finally, all that had beensubmerged for so long. The truth. And the truth would bring him, them, back from the void. Or was truth the void itself? Beth wondered.
Polariscame over the horizon, not yet braking from the transfer ellipse that had carried it from Aello. The dim white pinpoint sped ten degrees across the mystery of stars called Berenice's Hair and intruded upon the starkly bright dipper of the Great Bear. Slowly, it became a real thing: a tiny burst of light and it began to fall. Then, a few kilometers up, it began braking in earnest, spearing down as it grew until every detail could be made out. The silent, translucent flame quickly used up delta-v, modifying the ship's velocity so that it nearly matched that of the Ocypetan surface. About half a kilometer up, the flame died and the ship began to fall, as if through pitch. When it was only a few tens of meters up, the engine vented an invisible mist of cold hydrogen gas which swept the ice viciously. No flame would disturb the fragile solidity of the landing area. The ship slowed, stopped dead, and then drifted down, bouncing once in slow motion.
Sealock and Krzakwa strode into the central room of the CM, exhaustion lining their faces, and looked about at the inhabitants and their varieties of boredom. Cornwell, who also looked tired but resolute, stopped them with a peremptory gesture. Brendan stared down at him, eyes glittering, unreadable.
"All right," said John. "You've had your little gadabout. In the time you've been gone we've put the DR
software to good use, and I've come to some conclusions about myself and the nature of our effort here."
"That's fine," said Brendan. A few lines etched themselves at the corners of his mouth, evidence of a sudden tension in the muscles of his face.
"I want you to know that I am not going to be intimidated by your violence anymore."
"John—" Tem began, but he was waved off by Sealock.
"Go on," said Brendan.
"That's all I have to say," said Cornwell.
"Anyone else?" asked Brendan. He glanced around the chamber. Demogorgon was coming out of his room. "Brendan," he said, "we have to talk. Alone." Sealock grinned, giving a little laugh that sounded more like a cough or small sneeze than anything else.
"Don't sweat it," he said. "We will . . . not right now, though." He shook his head slowly, grin broadening and becoming softer. "Tem, why don't you tell them what's going on?" Krzakwa shrugged, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck, looking puzzled. "I, uh . . ." He stopped, cleared his throat, and went on: "This is going to be hard to accept. We found something on Aello ..."
Jana, too, had come out of her compartment and was staring at the two travelers, wondering just what it was that she sensed in their demeanor. "What? What did you find?" He smiled faintly and spread his hands before her, palms up. "Well ... It was a ... thing ... an artifact." There was a moment of silence, a nonreaction that made Krzakwa wonder if they'd heard him, if his statement had somehow failed to penetrate their consciousness. Finally, from his position in the corner, Prynne said, "Huh?"
"What do you mean?" asked Ariane. She hadn't moved and both her face and voice had remained bland, as if she were asking for the time of day.
"Artifact is an understatement, Ari. . . ." He looked at her and thought, Jesus. How the fuck am I going to put this? He tried to come up with a way and realized that, whatever he said, it was going to be outre .
. . . They were going to be talking about something not only outside of human experience but outside of expectability as well. "Hell, why don't I just say it: we found a God damned enormous alien spaceship stuck inside the moon. . . ." He looked at their faces and saw the beginning of incredulity. "I'm not kidding.... It was kilometers across, under the ice of Sayyarrin . . . ." If air could be called dumbstruck, it was this air, now. Jana stood up straight, rising a little into the air. She opened her mouth, as if to speak, then gagged and closed her eyes. She swayed in the air and drifted slowly to the floor.
Demogorgon went to where she had fallen and propped her torso up, saying, "Jana . . . Hey! Jana?" Her eyes opened, and the look inside the lids was not pleasant to see. She did not speak.
"I don't believe it," said John. "Why didn't you radio the information to us?"
"You may not care," said Sealock, "but that thing's ours until we decide otherwise. We decided to avoid the risk of having a signal intercepted, by anyone. I brought the RAW bubble out of Polaris. You can verify everything for yourself."
"But . . ."
"Just tap the fucking thing! We'll talk later. Tem and I have work to do."
They labored and, finally, the rebuilding program was complete. Though they still referred to it as Polaris, it was no longer the same. Where there had been a tall, sleek spaceship form, something that bore a distinct kinship to both the centuries-gone fantasies of a prolonged childhood and the early designs of Sergei Korolyev , there now stood a modernistic girder array, almost the Deepstar reborn. A closer inspection showed the detail of what had been done: the new ship was made of three slim obelisks standing side by side on the ice, encased within a confining structure of beams. In a sense, what they'd built still fitted in with the technological gestalt of their original design. The core of the structure, its middle tower, was the heavy-ion drive unit that had provided Deepstar's principal thrust, encased within its crosshatched metallic housing. The two outriggers, though somewhat differentiated in form, were similar in function. To one side of the engine/drill was one of the Hyloxso matrices that the earlier craft had used, recharged with H2/O2fuel. Beneath it, a high-impulse liquid-fuel rocket motor was secured. On the other side stood Polaris itself, a little longer than it had been, but still largely devoted to being a rocket vehicle, with a module for men to ride in. The added length was necessary, and the story was power. The ion drill/engine was a voracious device, no matter what its intended purpose. Though it used fuel efficiently, it did soat a high cost in electromagnetic energy. It was a pretty little problem for engineers to face, but it had a tractable solution. The ion fuel itself, through its automatic breakdown process, was a form of stored energy, ultimately power-stabilized by the fusion reactor. The complex's Magnaflux generator, intended for attitude control and as an important part of the life-support system, was an em-field manipulation device. Though batteries were no longer a major part of the technological surround, their purpose was still understood, and the generator, by its very nature, could contain stored energy for a certain period of time. It would work, over the short term, recharged from Ocypete via microwave beams, and that was all that they needed to ask of their system. It would work, after a fashion, and accomplish their purposes on Aello. In their haste to return to the Artifact, and what it represented, they had done little to modify the CM
for its enlarged crew. There were four of them now, possessing what passed for physical-science expertise in their little universe on the edge of the void. Sealock, Krzakwa, Hu, and Methol filled the little ship to near overflowing and made the CM into a crowded place indeed. There were two extra couches bolted into the space athwart the top of the lower equipment bay, and Jana and Ariane would ride there, facing into the backs of the upper berths. They would be little more than cargo during the flight, sitting there, watching the bracing struts flex. Because of their presence there would be no room for extra food lockers here, but the already extant ones could be stuffed fuller, and the ship's vaster superstructure invited much external storage. They would use the same airlock, for instance, but the first two to exit could pass in two more worksuits. Aggravations would probably abound in a ship that was even more claustrophobic than it had been previously. With the firing sequences ended, there was little practical to do but wait.