Unless, of course, everyone up here managed to get themselves killed by whatever the Charonians were trying now. Which thought brought Vespasian’s thoughts to Larry Chao.
Larry Chao. He claimed to understand what it was all about. Tyrone had had just about enough of that fellow’s ravings. Maybe everything he said was true, but somehow Vespasian could not quite believe any of it. Except. Except, here they were, with the Lunar Wheel bucking and heaving and word back from the Ring of Charon that it had something to do with wormholes and gravity waves. And gravity waves were what Chao did.
Tyrone turned his back on the Vertical Transit Center and went to find Chao.
Larry Chao was in his quarters in the temp worker section, working his main computer and a half-dozen interlinked notepacks all at once. Tyrone didn’t want to interrupt him, but then Larry looked up and saw him standing in the doorway. Larry’s eyes were bright, over-alert, and he seemed agitated, twitchy.
“So,” Tyrone asked, not quite sure where to start. “What’s going on? What’s with the quakes?”
“They’re not quakes,” Larry said. “They’re the Lunar Wheel reacting to large masses passing through a wormhole almost on its tuning frequency. If the Adversary can sense a pulse moving through the wormhole net, then why not the Lunar Wheel? But that’s not the important part.”
“So what is?” Tyrone asked.
“What it means,” Larry said. “I think I know what it means.”
“And that would be?”
Larry held his hands out, palms toward Tyrone, a small, cautionary gesture. “There’s a lot we don’t know,” he said. “A lot. But we’ve got all the data on the Adversary—plus a lot of what Lucian fed to me directly that I haven’t worked out all the way yet. But if the Adversary were going to move on the Multisystem, the Earth-Sphere system, it would head for the wormhole that it sensed in the first place. And if it sensed the arrival of Earth in the Multisystem, then it would be the wormhole Earth came through that it would have detected. And if the Charonians knew their cover was blown anyway, and if they knew which hole the Adversary was going to come through, maybe they’d decide to set up some kind of forward defense on the other side of the hole.”
“That’s a lot of ifs and maybes.”
“I know. I know. But I think it hangs together. And if it’s right, then the Charonians are getting ready to defend against an attack. And if the first line of defense fails—”
“Then the Charonians throw Earth at the Adversary,” Vespasian said. “I still can’t quite believe that. How could someone throw a planet?”
Larry smiled thinly. “How could someone steal a planet?”
Vespasian nodded. There wasn’t much of an answer to that.
“I don’t know if I’m right,” Larry said. “But I might be. I might be. And if I am, then we have to get word to Earth.”
“How?”
“Somehow,” Larry snapped. “Somehow fast. Before Earth isn’t there anymore. And I have an idea how.”
Sianna Colette moaned, shifted in her sleep, and then woke up, her eyelids fluttering open most unwillingly. She tried to prop herself up on her elbows, but even that effort was too much. She slumped back onto the bed, and suddenly realized that she was in a bed, and not a coffin-shaped tin can.
She rubbed her eyes, realizing in the process just how stiff and sore her arms were. On the second try, she managed to prop her herself on her elbows, and from there to sit full up in bed.
She seemed to be in some sort of hospital room or infirmary, clean enough if a bit chaotic in the decorating department. The walls were covered with graffiti, most of it cryptic—and occasionally rather cheerfully obscene—get-well messages for past occupants of her bed. The furnishings were all rather tatty and run-down looking, but warm and safe and bright for all of that.
Wally was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking a bit thinner and paler, and dressed in an odd-looking outfit that seemed to be a cross between overalls and a bathrobe. He was staring at the screen of a datapack, and hadn’t noticed her waking up.
“Wally?” she asked—or at least tried to ask. It came out sounding more like a grunt than a word, and Sianna found herself taken by a fit of coughing. Wally got up suddenly, got her a glass of water from the side table, and gave it to her, putting a hand on her back to support her. She took a big gulp of it, and grimaced just a trifle at the taste. Now she knew they were definitely on NaPurHab. Only a habitat would recycle water that many times.
“Wally,” she said again, and this time her voice worked. “We made it.”
Wally nodded and smiled, but there was something sad, something worried behind the smile. “Yes,” he said. “We made it. They got you out of your permod about sixteen hours ago.”
“My God! That long. I don’t remember anything at all about the second half of the permod flight. Have I been unconscious that whole time?”
Wally shrugged. “I suppose,” he said. “The doc says it looks like you were running a pretty high fever for a while there.”
Sianna lay back down onto the pillow, and Wally let her down easy before sliding his hand out. “So,” she asked, trying to keep her voice calm and casual. “Have I missed anything?”
Twenty-five
The Way Out
“One of our most cherished illusions is that we always have a choice, that there are always options. We seem to feel there is something unnatural about the inevitable. We like choices, even if they are meaningless. Most people are more willing to accept an unpleasant reality once they are convinced that there is an alternative—even if that alternative is nothing more or less than death.”
Ursula Gruberdid not like the ideas he was getting. They were dangerous, grandiose—and yet, they smacked of surrender, somehow.
The Lone World monitors were coming into their own, pulling down all sorts of data, and were listening in on nearly every command the Lone World sent to the Ghoul Modules controlling the Moonpoint Ring. By now the data teams were confident they had correctly interpreted all the basic commands.
And they were at least fairly certain they could duplicate at least a few of them.
Well, maybe that was the way they would have to go. She was not sure she saw any other way out.
If “out” was the right word to use, all things considered. Ursula checked the time and sighed. Time for her call to NaPurHab, a chore she did not look forward to. She did not like dealing with those people. In a better world, she would not have to do so.
Of course, in a better world, aliens would not have kidnapped the Earth, either.
Sianna Colette, still in her hospital overalls, slipped into the back of the MainBrainMeet Room. Wally was there, listening to the call from Earth with rapt attention. Sianna felt she ought to be in on the conference, even if she was too much in shock to pay much attention. After all the effort made to get her here, she felt something close to honor-bound to attend.