Something else has changed: They don’t call it T’Klot anymore. The Hole. It’s become instead T’Elan. The Thing. The Nameless.
— Digger Dunn, Journal
Thursday, December 4
chapter 36
On board the Hawksbill.
Friday, December 5.
KELLIE COLLIER WASN’T comfortable with Dave Collingdale. He never laughed, never eased up. He sat beside her on the bridge, staring at the images of the cloud in stony silence.
“We never took the clouds seriously,” she said finally, trying to start a conversation. “People who think we can just ignore them and they’ll go away should come out here and take a look at one close up.”
“I know.” And he just sat there.
She asked him an innocuous question about the flight out, but that didn’t go well either.
He turned aside every effort to lighten the atmosphere. Ask him how things were going, and he told you the position of the cloud. Ask how he was feeling, and he told you how he was going to enjoy doing it to the cloud.
Doing it to the cloud.
She got the sense that he would have used stronger terminology had she been a male.
But however he might have said it, it carried the clear implication that the cloud was alive.
“I am going to get it,” he said.
Not decoy it.
Not turn it aside.
Get it.
THERE WAS AN industrial-sized projector mounted on the belly of the Hawksbill and a twin unit housed in the shuttle. Hutch, who had apparently thought up this whole idea, had warned her that the Hawksbill was the wrong shape for working around omegas, and she was sorry but they’d needed to pack so much stuff on board there’d been no help for that. Keep your distance, Hutch had said. Watch out.
She intended to.
The jets boiling off the cloud’s surface raced thousands of kilometers ahead of it. The omega was coming in from slightly above the plane of the system, so most of its upper surface was in shadow. She’d arced around and come in from the rear. They were three hundred kilometers above the cloud. The mist stretched to the horizon in all directions. It was quiet, placid, attractive. And there was an illusion, quite compelling, that there was a solid surface just beneath. That one could have walked on it.
“How big is it, Bill?” she asked. “Upper surface area?”
“Eighty-nine billion square kilometers, Kellie.” Seventy-five hundred times the size of the NAU, which combined the old United States and Canada. “This is a good time to launch the monitors.”
“Do it.”
There were six of them, packages of sensors and scopes that would run with the cloud and keep an eye on it.
Collingdale stood behind her, watching, grunting approvingly as the lamps came on, indicating first that the units were away, and then that they had become operational. “Dave,” she said, “we’ll be ready to go in about ten minutes.”
“Okay,” he said. He took his own chair and brought up an image of the shuttle, waiting in the launch bay with its LCYC projector. The LCYC was a duplicate of the one bolted to the ship’s hull.
Dead ahead, slightly blurred by mist, she could see Lookout. There was just the hint of a disk. And the two moons. Permanently suspended in the omega sky, as though they were just rising.
“When this is over,” he said, the tension suddenly gone from his voice, “I’m going to push to get this problem taken care of. If we organize the right people, make some noise in the media, we can get funding and get the research under way.”
“To get rid of these things, you mean?”
“Of course. Nobody’s serious. But that’s going to change when I get home.” He looked down at the cloudscape.
They were moving faster than the omega, and as she watched they swept out over the horizon, and it fell away. But it was still braking, and the vast jets thrown forward by the action rolled past her.
“Okay, David,” she said. “Let’s line up.”
She took them down among the jets and set the Hawksbill directly in front of the cloud.
“Electrical activity increasing,” said Bill.
She saw some lightning. “That coming out of the main body?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Bill.
“Directed at us?”
“I believe it is random.”
Collingdale got up again and stood by the viewport. Man couldn’t stay still. “It knows we’re here,” he said.
More illumination flickered through the cloud.
She felt chilled. Wished Digger were there.
“It’s okay,” he said soothingly, apparently sensing her disquiet, but not understanding the reason. “We’re going to be fine.” His eyes were hard, and a smile played at the corners of his lips. He’s enjoying this.
“I need you to sit down and belt in, David,” she said. “Maneuver coming up.”
He tapped the viewport as if, yes, everything was indeed under control, and resumed his seat.
She didn’t like being so close to the damned thing. She could very nearly have reached out the airlock and stuck an arm into one of the jets.
“Range approaching 250,” said Bill.
“Match velocity.”
The retros fired. The same technology that provided artificial gravity served to damp the effects of maneuvering. But they still existed, and for about twenty seconds her body pushed against the forward restraints. Then the pressure eased.
“Done,” said Bill.
The problem for Kellie was to find adequate operating space away from the plumes. He waited with studied patience while she did so.
“Bill,” she said, “begin relaying data to Jenkins.” Just in case. Bill confirmed, and she turned to Collingdale. “Dave, we are ready to launch the shuttle.”
THE LCYC PROJECTORS were industrial units with a variety of uses, ranging from entertainment to environmental and architectural planning. They were configured, when used in tandem, to create a larger, more clearly defined image than either could have done alone.
The shuttle left the ship and moved out to a range of seven hundred kilometers, where it assumed a parallel course with the Hawksbill.
“In position,” said Bill.
“Bill,” she said, “take direction from David.”
“Confirmed.”
“Bill,” said David, “start the program.”
The AI, looking about twenty-two, dashing and handsome, appeared near the viewport. He looked out and smiled. “ Program is initiated,” he said.
Midway between the Hawksbill and the shuttle, a giant hedgehog blinked into existence. It looked real. It looked like a piece of intricately carved rock. Gray hard spines rose out of it, and it turned slowly on its axis.
Beautiful.
“How big is it?” Kellie asked.
“Five hundred thirty kilometers diameter.”
“A little bit bigger than the original.”
“Oh, yes. We wanted to be sure the bastard didn’t miss it.”
It glittered in the sunlight, gray and cold. She’d never seen a hologram anywhere close to these dimensions before.
Collingdale smiled at the cloud. “Okay, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Come get it.”
More lightning off to port. They’d wandered too close to a jet. It was a flood, a gusher of mist and dust, streaming past. “At the rate the cloud’s coming apart,” she said, “maybe there won’t be anything left by the time it gets to Lookout.”
“Don’t count on it,” said Collingdale.
Another bolt rippled past. A big one. They both ducked. So did Bill. His image vanished.
Maybe they were drawing the dragon’s attention. “I think we should get started,” she said.
Collingdale nodded. “Yes. I was just savoring the moment.”
Right. She was glad somebody was enjoying it.
“Bill,” Collingdale said, “let’s go left three degrees.”
Bill complied. The Hawksbill, the shuttle, and the virtual hedgehog all turned to port. Images of the cloud played across four screens.
The bridge fell silent, save for the muffled chatter of electronics. Collingdale sat quietly, watching the monitors, calm, almost serene.
Off to starboard, the hedgehog sparkled in sunlight. From somewhere, lightning flickered, touched the image, passed through it.
“It’ll probably take a while,” said Collingdale, “for it to react. To start to turn away.”
She’d become aware of her heartbeat. “Probably.”
The shuttle was an RY2, lots of curves, no sharply drawn lines, nothing to attract the lightning. Only the oversize Hawksbill needed to worry about that. Target of the day. Maybe they should have ridden in the shuttle. Suddenly it struck her that they should have thought things out better. Of course they should be in the shuttle.
Collingdale’s gray eyes drifted toward the overhead.
Digger would have thought of it in a minute. Never ride in the target vehicle, he’d have said.
“Bill?” said Collingdale.
“Nothing yet.”
“Maybe we need to wiggle a little bit,” he said. “Do something to get its attention.”
“Maybe.” Why don’t you lean out the airlock and wave? “Bill,” she said, “down angle three degrees.”
“Complying,” said Bill.
The face of the cloud was torn by fissures and ridges. One dark slice ran jagged like a gaping wound across the length of the thing. Gradually, the cloud was retreating from the center of the screens as the Hawksbill continued to pull away from it.
THEY WAITED SIX hours. The Hawksbill and its shuttle and the virtual hedgehog drew steadily away from the cloud, which continued on course for Lookout. Collingdale’s mood had darkened. He sat smoldering in his seat. When he spoke at all, it was to the omega, calling its attention to the hedgehog. “Don’t you see it, you dumb son of a bitch?”
“Hey, you’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re here. Over here.”
For the most part, though, he watched in stricken silence. Finally, he literally threw himself out of the chair, a dangerous move in the low gravity of a superluminal. “Hell with this,” he said. He brought the AI up onscreen. “Bill, go to the next one.”
The hedgehog vanished. A city appeared in its place. It was on the same order of magnitude.