“Not always. The Saints have managed to integrate technology into a religiously limited society.”
“They stopped being a viable society a millennium ago.”
“They’re still there.”
“You argue well, Liam.” Tomas laughed again. “You’re right. But there’s been a change over the centuries. They used to be able to expand their influence into other systems and cultures. Now, those who can’t accept a more open culture, technology, and lifestyle retreat to the Saint worlds.”
I couldn’t argue that.
After Tomas left, I looked at the latest data from Danann. I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before they were able to gain access to the enigmatic towers. I couldn’t help but worry that the Sunnis—or someone—might appear out of the void and that I would never descend to Danann. In the meantime, all I could do was study what was being relayed to the Magellan.
35
Goodman/Bond
Once the Magellan was in orbit, Chief Stuval established a routine. The operations officer was sending out surveillance torps daily. When they returned, we had to retrieve them from the boat deck and cart them down to the armory. They had to be inspected, repaired as necessary, and returned for another run. Torps weren’t designed to be returned, not time after time. Doing the repairs was a real chore, but it kept us busy. It also made more of the parts I needed to assemble an AG signaler available. I could remove a directional bloc and test it, fail it, and install a new one. The old one still worked. I’d certify it as junk, but slip it aside.
A week in orbit passed, and a second.
I had the signaler in sections, hidden in various parts of the aft bay. I had to, because it would have been close to the size of a torp warhead altogether. Once I managed to get three more components—and the power module—I could assemble it and get it up to the boat deck, hidden in the slider’s large tool bin. Then I could stash it in one of the shuttles in the cargo compartment, marked as replacement equipment to be sent down to Danann. The timer would be triggered by any grav shift, and the signal would go out, and would keep going out. Even if someone disassembled it on the surface, there’d be no real way to tell where it had come from, not for certain—and that was if anyone even recognized what it was.
On fourday of the third week after we’d reached Danann, I was working on replacing the nose assembly on a surveillance torp. One of the recovery mechs had bashed it with something. That was what it looked liked, in any case.
Chief Stuval appeared. He watched me for a time, but he didn’t say anything until I had the replacement cone in place. “You did that neat-like, Bond.”
“Tried to, chief. Thank you.”
“You hear about what happened to Vaio?”
“Vaio?” I couldn’t place the name.
“He’s a repair mech for the shuttles. He was. He’s in the brig. He has been for two weeks. The Marines have kept it real quiet. He did something to one of the shuttles, tried to get it to crash on Danann. The pilot managed to bring it back, and they tracked it back to him.”
“Why would he do something like that?” It didn’t make sense. If you wanted to sabotage the expedition, you’d need to do something that would damage or destroy the Magellan. That would amount to suicide, and no one sane would try that. Destroying a shuttle wouldn’t stop the Comity from obtaining any alien technology. It might slow them down, but anyone intent on getting Satan’s handiwork would find a way. Thinking about that, I still wanted to know why Major Ibaio had been so insistent that the alien technology was the Morning Star. He couldn’t have known what might lie on Danann. If he had, wouldn’t he have known the location?
Besides, so far, according to the techs in the mess, even the scientists hadn’t really discovered anything. There was only the one city or whatever it was, a big silver-blue oval in the screens. To me, it looked more like a huge anthill or a sandwasp colony.
“Could be he’s spy,” the chief went on. “From the Covenanters, or even the League. They slow us down and demand we share the knowledge. They show up with a fleet, and the Comity might agree.”
“Do you think so?”
“Is it worth another war, Bond?” Stuval snorted. “They’ve been pawing through that deep freeze for almost three weeks, and they still don’t know any more than when we got here. The Danannians were aliens. We might never find out what it means.”
I wasn’t sure about that. Who knew what kind of secrets were buried down there? No one was going to let the techs know.
After the chief left the aft bay, I eased the torp onto the slider cradle, then stopped. There had been a Sunni attack. Now a shuttle had been sabotaged. I’d been inserted to send a locator signal. Yet no one even knew if there was anything of real worth on Danann. Or did they?
In the end, all I could do was my duty, and pray that it would be enough—and that whatever was down there wasn’t the Morning Star… or anything close. Anything that had lasted billions of years and had once nearly sundered Heaven wasn’t something meant for the hands of men.
36
Barna
We’d been orbiting Danann for almost two weeks before I was fitted for space armor. After that, more than a week passed before I got word that I’d actually get a chance to use it and see the ruins of the city on Danann—the only one, from what the orbital surveys had confirmed. My “tour” planetside was set for three ship-days. In the meantime, I’d done what I could. I’d studied all the images sent up from the team on the surface, but they were only images. Images lacked the solidity of either reality or of art, although the ancient photographers would have argued that. They would have been wrong. An image is not what it portrays. That is the strength of art, because it allows a good artist to capture the essence of reality. A bad artist, unhappily, is worse than a photographer or an imagist.
I hadn’t tried to create anything based on the images. That would have locked me into preconceptions when I hadn’t seen the underlying reality. I’d never painted a portrait—or anything else—to my satisfaction when I’d relied exclusively on captured images. Rather than try to work from images when I hadn’t seen what was behind them, I was still working on a group portrait of the three pilots.
Even before sixday finally came, I couldn’t work on the portrait any longer. I paced around in my spaces, but it was still more than an hour before I had to report to the shuttle in bay two up on the boat deck. When I heard El-ysen murmuring from the adjoining work space, I left the portrait I hadn’t really touched for the last day. It was one that would take more work. Some just do, no matter what you can visualize in your mind. I knocked gently on her half-open door.
“You can come in, Chendor.”
Elysen sat before a console. Her short fingers flicked across the board, and on the screen above her star images appeared, then changed, and changed again.
“What are you doing?”
She did not look up. “I’ve programmed a regression analysis here. I’m not certain what it will show, but there’s something not quite the way I would have expected it. Rather it is the way I had calculated, but not dared to expect.”
That was a different way of saying it. I would have said it was not quite right, but “right” implied that a particular expectation was correct. Yet, as I observed Elysen, who hadn’t even looked at me, I could see a regal and detached expression, as if she were the empress of the ancient skies her programming had re-created.