“Good night!” he exclaimed. “What have you done? Is that safe?”
“The fire?” she asked, following his gaze. “Oh, sure, perfectly. It’s a broad-spectrum holographic panel. I thought it was a little cold in here anyway; the temperature control loops for life support were fairly primitive.”
“We were in a hurry.”
“I’m sure. But this is nicer, don’t you think?”
Thinking about it for a moment, he found he had to agree. “It is, yes.” He walked over to it, careful not to lose his balance or step on poor Hugo. He held his hands out. “The heat is unevenly distributed. It seems to come from the coals and flames themselves.”
“Oh, sure,” she agreed, “the hologram includes thermal IR in the five to twelve-micron range, where it radiates best through air. It’s distinguishable from a real fire—you can’t open the glass, for one thing—but it’s just as nice for our purpose. You’ve never seen one before? There used to be a folding variety you could carry in your pocket. You’d charge it up with sunlight and set it anywhere you liked.”
“Carry in your pocket? Without being burned?”
She smiled. “The heat-emitting surfaces activate when you open it, silly. Wouldn’t you design it that way?”
“I suppose so,” he allowed. As if he’d ever stoop to designing something so inane. But life was long, as he’d said. With eternity stretching before him, perhaps he’d do all manner of silly things. Perhaps he’d be known, in future times, as an immensely silly man who once invented a few big things, in his overly serious youth. What a thought! Then again, perhaps he’d be killed in the next few hours. Perhaps the Queendom would fall, and save history the trouble of remembering him at all.
“I need food,” he observed. He walked to the fax and demanded a walnut-and-celery sandwich, which it surrendered readily enough. A glass of milk soon followed, and an apple, and a Venusian plibble, and a basket of sliced potatoes fried in pork grease. Gods, he was hungry.
“With any luck,” he said when he was done eating, “Tamra has already been rescued, and we can turn our attention immediately to the Ring Collapsiter.”
“Unlikely,” Deliah answered seriously. “The last communications I overheard were a good five days ago, but there was a lot of complaining among the spaceship captains and crews. They kept dying, or being ejected from the solar system like me. There were just too many mass anomalies slinging around, on chaotic trajectories. No way to navigate, no safe place to rest. Maybe it’s improved since then…”
“But probably not,” Bruno concluded. Probably, a lot of collapsium had been ejected, and he supposed some of it might have overcome the odds and collided with a planet or other body, perhaps the sun itself. Indeed, they might already be too late! But the bulk of it would still be down there in interplanetary space, interacting chaotically but nonetheless trapped in gravitational contours.
He glanced up, expecting to see the pinpoint of Sol through the window. No such luck: the view was dim, dappled with stars he couldn’t immediately identify.
“We’ve turned around already? We’ve crossed Neptune’s orbit?” he asked, surprised.
“Uh-huh,” Deliah said, surprised by his surprise. “I’m pretty sure we cross Uranus‘ orbit in a few minutes. You really have been in a trance, haven’t you?”
“So it would seem.”
“Grappling the sun is a felony, by the way. If you didn’t know. What’s our deceleration anchor? I’ve been wondering. I suppose we’re simply attached to my station?”
“Correct,” Bruno said, nodding distractedly. “Yes, we’re pulling on it pretty hard. In spite of its mass, it may well have been dragged below solar escape velocity by now. Perhaps it’ll fall back into the inner system as a comet someday.”
“Oh, what a charming thought! It wouldn’t have a tail, though, would it?”
“No. Not unless it picks up some volatiles between now and then. And I can’t imagine where it would find any. I was referring more to the shape of its orbit. Highly elliptical, like a comet.”
Bruno looked over at Muddy’s trajectory display, still an engraved plaque of wellstone bronze. Indeed, the orbit of Neptune was hours behind them, with the orbit of Bruno’s own former world several hours beyond that. And the ship really was about to cross the orbit of Uranus. In fact, on the scale of the display it looked like they’d cross the actual planet itself.
“Er, ship,“ he said mildly, ”how close are we going to come to the planet Uranus?”
“Eight hundred twenty thousand kilometers,” the ship replied immediately.
“I see. That’s within the gravitational sphere of influence, isn’t it?”
“Affirmative,” the ship agreed.
“Hmm. Probability of striking paniculate matter in the vicinity of the planet?”
“Eleven percent, for objects one microgram or larger.” The ship’s voice was cheerful, gender neutral, unimpressed.
“I see. And when, exactly, will we be crossing the planet’s ring plane?”
“Five minutes, nineteen seconds.” It paused. “Danger is minimal, sir,” it then offered. “Probability of damage to the impervium is two point six times ten to the minus eleventh percent. Is that acceptable?”
Relieved, Bruno snorted. “It sounds like the least of our problems. Indeed, yes, it’s acceptable. Will we be passing close to any other planets?”
“Negative,” the ship replied.
“Good. Excellent. Keep it that way. Oh, and ship?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Your name is Sabadell-Andorra.”
“Excuse me, sir, library search. Sabadell and Andorra are geographic localities in northeastern Iberia, European continent, planet Earth.” It paused for a moment, then cited a reference: date, Greenwich Mean Time, latitude and longitude of epicenter, and then a series of geological measurements intended to convey a sense of the magnitude and manner of the associated shock and vibration. “My library contains no other reference to a Sabadell-Andorra. Am I named for this event? An earthquake?”
“Uh, yes. Indeed.”
“Acknowledged. Thank you, sir.”
Deliah cleared her throat. “There’s a library on board, Bruno?”
“Evidently. I mean, Muddy put the thing together; you’d have to ask him all the details, but it isn’t the sort of thing I’d leave out. One needs these things sometimes.”
“So I can watch movies? Read books? Peruse technical articles?”
“Er, well, old ones, yes. Was that not clear to you?”
Her annoyance, fortunately, was cheerful. “No, Declarant, it wasn’t.” Then, catching his own grumpy look, she said, “Serves me right, does it? Well, if I’m too much trouble, you can always put me back where you found me.”
“Later,” he said, in mock warning. “There isn’t time for it right now.” He grew more serious. “There really isn’t. Marlon sent Muddy to me almost three weeks ago, and it was a taunt he expected me to answer. Or hoped I would, at any rate. If my network gate had been functional when Muddy’s image was transmitted, I’d ve had time to build some more conventional means of transport. Three weeks isn’t a long time to travel fifty AU, not in a fusion-powered ship that has to lug its own fuel along, but it certainly could be done. So he must have had some schedule in mind that would prevent my interference. Whatever grand finale he has in store, it can’t be very far off.”
Deliah sobered as well. “You lost more than half a day to come get me, going away from the sun rather than toward it.”