Mutineers were pulling the extra ponchos over their clothing. They stopped to strap themselves in. The jungle giants moved against the aft wall and grabbed fixtures. "Two. One."
But only the attitude jets lit. The carm's nose swung toward the
Smoke Ring and stayed there while the aft motors fired. It lasted several tens of breaths. They would pass closer to Gold…which had become huge, a spiral storm seen edge-on, whose rim was already below them.
If Mark weren't tied, Lawri thought, and as the main motor fired, nobody would be able to move except Mark It was something to keep in mind. Jeffer didn't seem to realize that the thrust could be controlled, by touching the top or bottom of those rectangles to raise or lower the fuel flow.
Meanwhile…how could the leaks be blocked? If there was a way, Lawri was damned well going to find it before Jeffer did.
Chapter Twenty-one
Go For Gold
"KENDY FOR THE STATE. KENDY FOR THE STATE. KENDY FOR the State."
The response came almost instantly, sharp and crisp through nearvacuum and dwindling distance. The CARM was out of the Smoke Ring. Kendy had clear sending for the first time since the mutiny. He sent: "Status?"
The motors were functional, all of them. Fueclass="underline" a few teacupaful.
Water: a good deal. Solar power converters: functional. Batteries: charged, but running down as they changed water into liquefied hydrogen and oxygen. Sunlight flux from T3 would be steady in vacuum. There would be fuel.
The CARM was on manual. CO2 flux indicated a full load of passengers. The carbon dioxide was accumulating slowly; the life support system could almost handle it…and the cabin was leaking air. Oh shit, they were dying!
"Course record since initiating burn."
It came. The CARM was rising. It would have passed near the L2 point-Kendy's own location, the point of stability behind Goldblatt's World-were it not for Goldblatt's World itself. And were it not for
Goldblatt's World, the CARM would presently fall back to safety… but the core of an erstwhile gas giant planet was pulling the CARM's orbit into a tilted near-circle entirely outside the Smoke Ring.
"Switch to my command."
Massive malfunction.
"Give me video link with crew."
"Denied."
And the cabin pressure was dropping. Something had to be done.
Kendy sent, "Copy," and waited.
The CARM computer thought it over, slowly, bit by bit; geared up; and began beaming its entire program. It took twenty-six minutes.
Kendy looked it over-a simplified Kendy, patched with subsequent commands and garbled by time and entropy-while he sent, "Stand by for update programming."
"Standing by."
Kendy didn't believe it. The long-dead programmer would have embedded protect commands. He simply hadn't reached them yet…unless they had deteriorated too? Kendy didn't have an update program, he'd been so sure. He'd have to assemble it from scratch.
The speed with which a computer can think was Kendy's triumph and tragedy. Always he was freshly surprised by the boredom of his evenfless life. It stayed fresh, because Kendy was constantly editing his memories. The storage capacity of his computer-brain was fixed. He was always near his limit. He had edited his memory of the mutiny, deleting the names of key figures, for fear that he might later seek vengeance against their descendants. He regularly deleted the memory of his boredom.
Once he had examined the solution to the Four-Color Problem in topology. The proof submitted in 1976 by Appal and Haken could not be checked except by a computer. Kendy was a computer, he had experienced the proof directly and found it valid. He remembered only that.
The details he had deleted.
He had used a simplified program for the CARM computers, then deleted it. But now he had the CARM's program as a template. He ran through it, sharpening everywhere, correcting where suitable, updating his own simplified personality…leaving intact the CARM's own memories of the time of mutiny, because he was determined to ignore them. He looked for a way to plug the leak in the cabin. It was hopeless: the life support sensors had failed, not the program. He almost deleted the command that barred use of the main motor. The main motor was more efficient. He didn't understand that command…but it was input, and recent. He left it alone.
Now: a course program to bring them here, to study them
He barely had time to hope. Kendy apprehended orbital mechanics directly. He saw instantly that the fuel wasn't there, nor the sunlight to electrolyze enough water in time. His own pair of CARMS, which fed him power via their solar collectors, didn't have fuel to meet and tow the savages' CARM even if he were willing to risk them both.
Forget it and try again…He could get them back into the Smoke Ring via a close approach past Goldblatt's World. In fact, the CARM's computer had already worked out a course change. It didn't matter.
They'd be dead by then.
He left that part of the program intact. He deleted the barriers that barred him from communication. He beamed the revised program to the CARM at the snail's pace the CARM could accept.
The CARM filed it.
It had worked! At least he could look them over, get to know them a little, before they were gone. After five hundred and twelve years!
The cold had gotten to the jungle giants. Anthon and Debby and Ilsa were curled into a friendly, cuddling, shivering ball, with the spare ponchos pulled around them.
The other passengers were taking it better. There were ponchos for everyone but Mark, and two to spare. One they tore into scarves. Jinny wound a scarf around Mark's neck and tucked the ends into the collar of the silver suit. "Comfortable?"
The silver man seemed cheerful enough, despite the lines that held him immobile in his chair. "Fine, thanks."
"Is that suit thick enough?"
"Damn it, woman, you're the one who's shivering. This suit keeps its own temperature, just like the carm. If anyone needs my scarf. you want it?"
Jinny smiled and shook her head.
"Of course, I'd be even better off with my helmet closed," Mark said, and they laughed as if he'd said something funny. It didn't need saying: if they couldn't plug the leak, or if Lawri chose to kill them somehow, Mark would die with the rest.
The Grad had made a torch from one of the scarves plus fat scraped from the skin of the salmon bird. He was about to light it when he noticed mist before his face. He blew…white smoke. Everyone save Horse was breathing white smoke, as if they were all using tobacco.
"If you think something's leaking, breathe on it!" he announced.
"Watch your breath. No, Jayan, forget the doors. Voice has sensors there."
Lawri did something to the controls "I'm turning up the humidity-the wetness in the air. More fog that way."
Citizens took their turns at the control panel to find the blank spots in the yellow diagram. The Grad began the uncomfortable job that others might miss: he crawled between the seats, edging around the cold corpse of Gavving's friend, blowing mist where the floor joined the starboard wall.
Merril called, "I've got it. It's the bow window."
A crowd of citizens crawled around the rim of the bow window, blowing, watching the pale smoke form streamlines where the window joined the hull. The window was loose around the ventral-port corner.
"Keep looking," Lawri ordered. "There may be more."
She herself made her way aft. The Grad joined her at the back wall. "What have you got in mind? Is there a way to plug the leaks?"
Voice began a countdown. Lawri waited while small jets fired. The cluster of jungle giants sagged against the aft wall without falling apart. Ilsa giggled. She must be still floating from the spitgun drug.
The burn ended. Lawri said, "Maybe. Have we got something to hold water?"