‘We may have to,’ he said under his breath, hoping that the ship would not pick it up and relay it to Morwenna.
By then the ship had just about completed its rotation, flipping nose-to-tail. A prominent star slid into view and centred itself in the oval. At this distance it was really more a sun than a star: without the command deck’s selective glare shields it would have been uncomfortably bright to look at.
‘I’ve got something,’ Quaiche said. His fingers skated across the console. ‘Let’s see. Spectral type’s a cool G. Main sequence, about three-fifths solar luminosity. A few spots, but no worrying coronal activity. About twenty AU out.’
‘Still pretty far away,’ Morwenna said.
‘Not if you want to be certain of including all the major planets in the same volume.’
‘What about the worlds?’
‘Just a sec.’ His nimble fingers worked the console again and the forward view changed, coloured lines of orbits springing on to the read-out, squashed into ellipses, each flattened hoop tagged by a box of numbers showing the major characteristics of the world belonging to that orbit. Quaiche studied the parameters: mass, orbital period, day length, inclination, diameter, surface gravity, mean density, magnetospheric strength, the presence of moons or ring systems. From the confidence limits assigned to the numbers he deduced that they had been calculated by the Dominatrix, using its own sensors and interpretation algorithms. If they had been dredged out of some pre-existing database of system parameters they would have been significantly more precise.
The numbers would improve as the Dominatrix got closer to the system, but until then it was worth keeping in mind that this region of space was essentially unexplored. Someone else might have passed through, but they had probably not stayed long enough to file an official report. That meant that the system stood a chance of containing something that someone, somewhere, might possibly regard as valuable, if only on novelty grounds.
‘In your own time,’ the ship said, anxious to begin its work.
‘All right, all right,’ Quaiche said. ‘In the absence of any anomalous data, we’ll work our way towards the sun one world at a time, and then we’ll take those on the far side as we head back into interstellar space. Given those constraints, find the five most fuel-efficient search patterns and present them to me. If there’s a significantly more efficient strategy that requires skipping a world and returning to it later, I’d like to know about it as well.’
‘Just a moment, Quaiche.’ The pause was barely enough time for him to pick his nose. ‘Here we are. Given your specified parameters, there is no strongly favoured solution, nor is there a significantly more favourable pattern with an out-of-order search.’
‘Good. Now display the five options in descending order of the time I’d need to spend in slowdown.’
The options reshuffled themselves. Quaiche stroked his chin, trying to decide between them. He could ask the ship to make the final decision itself, applying some arcane selection criteria of its own, but he always preferred to make this final selection himself. It wasn’t simply a question of picking one at random, for there was always a solution that for one reason or another just happened to look more right than the others. Quaiche was perfectly willing to admit that this amounted to decision by hunch, rather than any conscious process of elimination. But he did not think it was any less valid for that. The whole point of having Quaiche conduct these in-system surveys was precisely to use those slippery skills that could not be easily cajoled into the kind of algorithmic instruction sets that machines ran. Intervening to select the pattern that best pleased him was just what he was along to do.
This time it was far from obvious. None of the solutions were elegant, but he was used to that: the arrangement of the planets at a given epoch could not be helped. Sometimes he got lucky and arrived when three or four interesting worlds were lined up in their orbits, permitting a very efficient straight-line mapping path. Here, they were all strung out at various angles from each other. There was no search pattern that did not look like a drunkard’s walk.
There were consolations. If he had to change direction regularly, then it would not cost him much more fuel to slow down completely and make close-up inspections of whichever worlds caught his eye. Rather than just dropping instrument packages as he made highspeed flybys, he could take the Scavenger’s Daughter out and have a really good look.
For a moment, as the thought of flying the Daughter took hold, he forgot about Morwenna. But it was only for an instant. Then he realised that if he were to leave the Dominatrix, he would be leaving her as well.
He wondered how she would take that.
‘Have you made a decision, Quaiche?’ the ship asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ll take search pattern two, I think.’
‘Is that your final answer?’
‘Let’s see: minimal time in slowdown; one week for most of the larger planets, two for that gas-giant system with a lot of moons… a few days for the tiddlers… and we should still have fuel to spare in case we find anything seriously heavy.’
‘I concur.’
‘And you’ll tell me if you notice anything unusual, won’t you, ship? I mean, you haven’t been given any special instructions in that area, have you?’
‘None whatsoever, Quaiche.’
‘Good.’ He wondered if the ship detected his note of distrust. ‘Well, tell me if anything crops up. I want to be informed.’
‘Count on me, Quaiche.’
‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’
‘Horris?’ It was Morwenna now. ‘What’s happening?’
The ship must have locked her out of the audio channel while they discussed the search pattern.
‘Just weighing the options. I’ve picked us a sampling strategy. We’ll be able to take a close look-see at anything we like down there.’
‘Is there anything of interest?’
‘Nothing startling,’ he said. ‘It’s just the usual single star and a family of worlds. I’m not seeing any obvious signs of a surface biosphere, or any indications that anyone’s been here before us. But if there are small artefacts dotted around the place, we’d probably miss them at this range unless they were making an active effort to be seen, which, clearly, they aren’t. But I’m not despondent yet. We’ll go in closer and take a very good look around.’
‘We’d better be careful, Horris. There could be any number of unmapped hazards.’
‘There could,’ he said, ‘but at the moment I’m inclined to consider them the least of our worries, aren’t you?’
‘Quaiche?’ the ship asked before Morwenna had a chance to answer. ‘Are you ready to initiate the search?’
‘Do I have time to get to the slowdown tank?’
‘Initial acceleration will be one gee only, until I have completed a thorough propulsion diagnostic. When you are safely in slowdown, acceleration will increase to the safe limit of the slowdown tank.’
‘What about Morwenna?’
‘No special instructions were received.’
‘Did we make the deceleration burn at the usual five gees, or were you told to keep it slower?’
‘Acceleration was held within the usual specified limits.’
Good. Morwenna had endured that, so there was every indication that whatever modifications Grelier had made to the scrimshaw suit offered at least the same protection as the slowdown tank. ‘Ship,’ he said, ‘will you handle Morwenna’s transitions to slowdown buffering? ’
‘The transitions will be managed automatically.’
‘Excellent. Morwenna — did you hear that?’