Bringing a sample into the Mood Indigo was much easier than taking a person out of it. The liquid, whatever it was, would have filled the little cylinders of the fusion drive normally exposed to open space. He could isolate one of those and retract it without leaving the ship.
“Keep well back, Liddy. This may splash. I expect that it’s water, but I’m not sure.”
It was another test of a sort. When he opened one end of the cylinder’s chamber to allow it to come into the ship, it would be forced in by whatever pressure existed at the other end. Bony placed his left palm in the way, preparing himself for the idea that the cylinder could possibly shoot out hard enough to break the bones of his hand.
Bony opened the valve. The cylinder, its flat end about two inches across, shot backward and smacked into his open palm. It didn’t hurt. The pressure outside couldn’t be much more than a standard atmosphere. That corresponded to a thirty-foot column of water, back on Earth; which meant that the liquid outside, assuming it was water under a sixth of a gravity, couldn’t be more than a hundred and eighty feet deep. Once in suits and outside the ship, they could easily float up to the surface.
In spite of his warning, Liddy had stood too close. As the cylinder came backward, liquid splashed out of it onto her hand.
“Don’t touch it!” Bony cried, but he was too late. Liddy had already bent her head and touched her tongue to the wet spot. Now she was standing absolutely still. Bony added, “Don’t drink any,” but she smiled at him.
“It’s all right. I might as well be useful for something, even if Captain Indigo doesn’t believe I can be.” She licked her lips and frowned in concentration. “It’s water. Not pure water, though. It tastes a little bit strange and salty. And it’s fizzy on my tongue.”
If she could risk it, so could he. Bony raised the cylinder and licked a few drops from the end. As Liddy had said, it was salty, but less salty than water from Earth’s oceans. You could drink this if you had to. And it was carbonated, though the touch on his tongue was not quite the same as the carbon dioxide normally used in making fizzy water.
He poured more of the liquid from the cylinder into a triangular beaker and held it up to the light. It was quite clear; although of course, that didn’t mean for a moment that the sample was free of microorganisms. Possibly he and Liddy had already allowed lethal alien bacteria into their bodies. The chances, though, were very much against it. Experience all through the Stellar Group showed that alien organisms were just too alien to find a human body an acceptable host.
Bony went across to the miscellaneous equipment cabinet and rummaged around inside. After a couple of minutes he found what he was looking for and pulled out a graduated measuring cylinder and a spring balance.
“What are those for?” Liddy said at last.
Bony smiled. He had been waiting for her to ask. “Tasting and guessing isn’t the best way to do scientific testing. We think it’s water — in fact, I’m almost sure it’s water — but we have to do a real test. This tube holds fifty milliliters.” He held up the measuring cylinder. “So first I weigh it on the spring balance. Then if I filled it with water and weighed it again, back on Earth that would weigh fifty grams more on the spring balance.”
“But we’re not on Earth.”
“I know. So we don’t know how much fifty milliliters of water weighs here. But we don’t need to know that, to test that it’s water. First, we weigh the empty measurer.” He hung it on the spring balance and held it up to Liddy. “You note where the pointer is. Now we take some regular water, water that we brought with us.” Bony went across to a small faucet set into the side wall and filled the measuring cylinder to the fifty-milliliter mark. He hung it on the spring balance and pointed to the new level of the pointer. “See, now we know how much ordinary water weighs here.”
He looked for a place to pour the measure of water that he was holding, and after a moment tilted it up and drank it.
“All that’s left to do,” he went on, “is pour some of the water we collected from outside, and fill the measurer to the same level.” Bony did that carefully, his eye on the marks on the side of the measuring cylinder. “And now, you see, because the balance is weighed down to the same place as it was with the water we brought with us, we know that …” His voice faded away.
“But it isn’t at the same place on the balance,” Liddy said. She gazed at him with dark, wide-open eyes. “It’s pulled down quite a bit farther. That means it weighs more, doesn’t it?”
“It weighs more.” Bony was staring in disbelief at the balance. “Nearly fifteen percent more. It’s a lot denser than water. And that means …” Bony went across to an access cover for the main drive and flopped down onto it. So much for his big show-off demonstration, the one that was supposed to impress Liddy Morse.
“Means what?” asked Liddy.
“It means it’s not water. I don’t know what the hell that stuff is out there.” Bony waved his hand toward the expanse of silent green beyond the port. “But I know what it isn’t. And it isn’t water.”
4: GENERAL KORIN
The office suite of Dougal MacDougal was appropriate in size and splendor for someone with the exalted title of Solar High Ambassador to the Stellar Group. Lying within a huge and perfect dodecahedron, two hundred meters on a side, the suite sat deep beneath the surface of Ceres. In an architect’s conceit, the other four Platonic regular solids were nested within it at a considerable loss in useful living space. A crystal tetrahedron formed the very center. By an ornate desk in that tetrahedron sat Chan Dalton. Awaiting MacDougal’s return, he had been drinking steadily and popping fizz slugs. Now he felt wasted and was asking himself why he had done it.
The prospect of danger in the Geyser Swirl was not the problem. Danger was nothing new. Anyone who reached a position of power in the Gallimaufries faced danger every day. Chan had received — and given — his share of sudden and violent attacks. His facial scars spoke more of blood and guts than thrown floral bouquets.
Treachery was not the problem, either. You expected to be stabbed in the back, figuratively and literally, by everyone who wanted to get close to the Duke of Bosny. That was fair enough. Hadn’t you done the same thing yourself?
Lies were not the problem. Of course you were lied to; you expected it and you discounted what you were told, no matter the source. Even when people were not trying to lie, their output was usually wrong because some rat-head had given it to them wrong. Over the years you had met a few men and women you could rely on, but no more than you could count on the fingers of one hand. Trying to reach them over the past few days, you learned — not surprisingly — that they were scattered all over. Quality was like a thin veneer on the unfinished rough-cut of the extended solar system.
Even uncertainty was not the problem. You didn’t know where you would land when you passed through the Link Network to the Geyser Swirl, or what you would find there. But what else was new? The only certainties in life were unpleasant ones. Tomorrow was uncertain unless you were sentenced to die tonight. And even that was uncertain. You might be reprieved. You might escape. There might be a war or an earthquake.