There was an annular tug departing one of the refineries, an open three-hundred-metre-diameter ring of girders with a drive unit at the centre, starting its three-month inward spiral to low Earth orbit. Ten foamedsteel lifting bodies were attached to the outside of the ring, blunt-nose triangles, massing three thousand tonnes, but with a density lighter than water. Spaceborn birds which would be dropped into the atmosphere and glide to a splashdown by one of the two permanent recovery fleets on station in the Pacific, or the one in the Atlantic.
Anastasia was heading in for New London’s southern hub. This end of the asteroid was covered in long thermal-dump panels, radiating out from a central crater like aluminium impact rays. Two spherical Dragonflight transfer liners were docked halfway down the spindle. A steady flow of small tugs and personnel commuters was berthing and disengaging, carrying crews and cargoes between New London and the clusters of microgee modules holding. station south of its main solar panel.
Greg tried to draw the image of New London inside his mind, to capture its essence, sketching out the crumpled dusty surface, small high-walled craters. Hyde Cavern: gaping emptiness surrounded by thick shadow folds of solid rock, the second chamber, mushroom shaped, unfinished. Shafts and rail tunnels knitted the two chambers together, black gossamer lines cutting through the two-kilometre rock barrier, looping underneath the valley floors in complex twists; there were buried fresh-water reservoirs and surge chambers, caverns housing reserves of oxygen and nitrogen.
The ghost image turned slowly behind his closed eyes, pulsing with the slow rhythm of life. Hyde Cavern a warm heart, a kernel of expectation and promise. He could sense the strength and determination it housed, a hazy aural glow spun out by the combined psyche of its inhabitants. The asteroid nestled at the centre of a spectral whirlpool of human dreams.
He felt it then, a solitary discrepant thread impinging on the communion, not a contaminant, but aloof from the consensus, different. Alien.
Anastasia’s cabin trickled back into existence around Greg as his mind let the phantasm slither away. “It’s here,” he said. The asteroid’s southern end was sliding by outside the windscreen, ribbed thermal-dump panels pinned to the brown-grey rock by enormous pylons, a maze of yellow and blue thermal shunt conduits laid out underneath.
Suzi cocked her head, her cap making her appear strangely skeletal. “What is?”
“The alien, it’s inside New London.”
“Shit. Where?”
He tried to shrug, but the muscle movement simply pushed his shoulders away from the seat back. “You want specifics, use a crystal ball. My espersense is good for about half a kilometre if I really push it, and solid rock blocks it completely.”
“So how the flick do you know it’s there?”
“Intuition.”
She opened her mouth to shout. Reconsidered. “How about Royan? He there too?”
“Dunno.”
“Great. So what do we do?”
“Stick with our original scenario. Find Charlotte’s priest.”
“Hmm.” Suzi waved her cybofax wafer. “Been updating on these Celestial Apostles. Beats me why Victor doesn’t just flush them out the airlock. Fucking weirdos.”
“I think I detect Julia’s hand in that. She always allows a little looseness in human systems. The Celestials are harmless, and they support her long-range aims, if not her methods. As long as they don’t get out of control, why bother?”
“You think they’re the ones in contact with the alien?”
“It’s as good a guess as any. The psychology certainly fits. They’d treat it as a messiah. The only group of people who’d keep quiet about it, if it asked. Which prompts the question “How did it find them?”
New London’s southern hub crater was a kilometre wide and three hundred metres deep, the walls perfectly flat. It had been cut out by the mining machines; the electron-compression devices had all been detonated at the northern end.
Anastasia glided over the rim and its picket ring of radars. The floor below was a near solid disk of metal, massive circular bearings in the centre supported the two-hundred-metre-diameter spindle, outside that were tanks, lift rails, observation galleries, airlocks, three concentric rings of lights illuminating the rim walls, bulky incomprehensible machinery.
Anastasia’s reaction-control thrusters fired. Greg’s visual orientation began to alter as the spaceplane turned. The crater floor tilted up slowly to become a wall, the rim wall shifted to a valley floor curving up to the vertical and beyond. There was another sequence of drumbeat bursts from the reaction-control thrusters as the pilot changed Anastasia’s attitude again.
Greg heard the unmistakable metallic rumbling of the undercarriage lowering. The crater wall curved up out of sight in front of Anastasia’s nose; it was moving, he could see a strip of small white lights running round the circumference, New London’s rotation carried them down the windscreen and under the spaceplane. To Greg it looked as if Anastasia was flying low above a smooth rock plain.
There was a final burst from the reaction-control thrusters, and Anastasia began to descend. It was like touching down on a runway, the difference being Anastasia was stationary and the crater rim was moving. They landed with a gentle bump. Electric motors accelerated Anastasia’s undercarriage bogies, chasing New London’s rotation.
Suzi’s jaws were clamped shut, her cheeks very pale, staring rigidly ahead. Greg could feel the spaceplane racing forward, yet their speed relative to the rim was visibly slowing. The starfield and spindle began to turn.
“Down and matched,” the pilot announced.
Greg started to register the low gravity field. Blood was draining from his face, that annoying fluid puffiness abating.
Anastasia taxied towards the circular wall of metal and a waiting airlock.
They came out of the airlock tube into a rock-walled reception room. Greg walked carefully in the low gravity field, very conscious of inertia, each step carried him a metre and a half.
New London’s Governor was waiting for him, flanked by two assistants. A tall, spare man who smiled expectantly, holding out his hand. Greg stared, frantically trying to place a name to the distantly familiar face.
“Greg Mandel, good to see you again. It’s been over fifteen years, yes?”
Now the memory came back. Sean Francis, one of Event Horizon’s younger generation of executives, a disturbingly ambitious one, if memory served. He was also superbly efficient, and keen, giving his total attention to every problem and request, no detail was too small to be reviewed. It was an attitude Greg had enjoyed the first time he’d met him, Sean Francis in person inspired confidence. Then after five minutes’ exposure, the unrelenting effusiveness began to grate.
Greg shook his hand. “Seventeen years, would you believe? Seems like you’ve done all right for yourself. I’m surprised Event Horizon let you go.”
Sean Francis grinned brightly. “I haven’t left. I’m just on sabbatical. You see, the English Government had to have a trained executive who was also completely conversant with the space industry in the hot seat, so Julia Evans loaned me out. Simple, yes?”
“Yeah.” Even after all this time Julia’s political expediency still never failed to gain his admiration. New London might be a Crown Colony on paper, but in realpolitik it was hers, and no messing.
Sean Francis introduced his assistants. The man was Lloyd McDonald, an Afro-Caribbean, one of Victor’s people, whose job description was New London’s corporate security chief. Greg suspected his responsibility extended further than that, given the administrative hierarchy. The woman was Michele Waddington, the Governor’s secretary. Another on secondment from Event Horizon.