Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Hunt would never have believed he'd see the day when humans showed sentimentality over a computer. After further successful tests involving the raft, the next major step was to scale things up to operational dimensions by repeating the experiment with the Shapieron itself-the size of the Gate configuration had been decided with this as the eventual aim. The Shapieron was the only ship of its kind in existence, and if anything went wrong, it would be irreplaceable. But everything leading up to this crucial test had gone well enough to satisfy even Eesyan, and eventually the time came when the moment of decision had to be faced.

The first trial of dematerializing the entire ship would be just that-involving the vessel only, with no Ganymean or human presence aboard. Such a precaution was the routine approach, but in this instance there was an unusual complication. An integral part of the Shapieron was its distributed control and computing entity, ZORAC-in some ways a diminutive precursor of VISAR-which had been doing invaluable work plugged into the planetary net while the Shapieron was based on Jevlen. In fact, VISAR's informal, whimsical style of interacting had been modeled to a large degree on the interface designs of the old starship systems, which had been popular among the crews. ZORAC had been the first alien intelligence that Hunt, Danchekker, and the other Terrans present at the time had actually talked to when the Shapieron first appeared at Ganymede after its strange exile. To them, and others who had gotten to know ZORAC in the subsequent period of Ganymean-Terran dealings out at Jupiter, or later during the Shapieron's six-month stay on Earth, it had a distinct personality that warranted classing it as a sentient being in its own right, in every sense of the word. And this was even more true of Garuth and his Ganymean crew, for whom ZORAC had been not only a totally dependable manager of the ship and everything in it upon which their lives had depended for twenty years, but also a companion, advisor, and mentor in a way that made it as much a fellow member of the mission as any Ganymean. In short, by universal accord, it would be a shame to lose the ship, but if that was what it came to they could live with it; but they weren't prepared to jeopardize ZORAC.

ZORAC itself was unperturbed about the prospect, having concluded from the record of experiments up to that point that the probability of anything going seriously amiss was not something to be wearing out any circuits over. The electronic and optronic devices that had been transferred through M-space and recovered had continued functioning normally, and likewise the animals. It was just another case of soggy biological carbon-based minds getting emotional again, and so best left to them to come up with something that would make them happier. What the biological minds came up with was that as an insurance, before the trial was conducted a full backup of ZORAC would be stored by VISAR. At least, this information would enable ZORAC to be recreated in some other form later if worse came to worst-exactly what such a form might be was something they agreed to worry about when and if it should become necessary.

In the event, the worries turned out to have been misplaced. The first trial in which the Shapieron was dematerialized from the Gate was a very cautious affair that involved merely shifting it a few hundred miles to a beacon positioned not far away in the Gistar system of a reality that was very "close." ZORAC almost caused coronaries by faking a system crash for several seconds before announcing that it was fine and the experience had actually been less unsettling than a regular transfer through h-space. As confidence grew, the scope of the tests was gradually increased until pitching a beacon out across the Multiverse (exactly "where" to was still not something that could be predetermined with any exactness), sending the Shapieron to home on it, and then bringing the Shapieron back had been demonstrated as a task that could be repeated at will. And that brought them finally to the second hurdle that there was no way around: the first trial involving living people.

It was their project, the Thuriens pointed out; the privilege of sending the first being should be theirs. The Terrans reminded them that it was they who had been contacted by the relay bringing the message that had put them all on the right track, so they should have the first shot. Nobody was quite certain of the logic by which this conclusion followed, but it was the best argument that anyone on the Terran team could come up with, so they all pretended not to be aware of the non sequitur. Wrangling continued until the matter got back to Caldwell, whose reply was simply, "Why not send one of each?" Why not? Like so many obvious things, it was obvious once somebody had said it.

Then, of course, the question became, Who, from each? Since Hunt was officially the leader of the Terran group, there was no question in his mind that it meant him-there was an old principle about officers not expecting the men to do anything they weren't prepared to do themselves, and in any case it suited his temperament. Duncan Watt disputed this on the grounds that Hunt's experience made him less expendable, which Hunt read as a cheap ploy by Duncan to get himself some glory. The Thuriens were at a bit of a loss to follow these intricacies, since the concept of personal glory meant little to them anyway. Danchekker contacted Caldwell privately to confide the view Duncan was right in maintaining that Vic shouldn't be put at risk, small though the risk might be, and suggested it might be appropriate for Caldwell to pull rank and take the decision out of Hunt's hands. Caldwell, however, knew that seeing the leader overruled wouldn't be good for the group and elected not to interfere, leaving it to Hunt to assert his position by pulling rank instead-as Caldwell knew he would. That much having been settled, the Thuriens took a dissent-free view that if the Terrans were putting forward the head of their group, the Thuriens would do likewise. So Hunt and Eesyan, it turned out to be.

They had to travel out to MP2 for the test, and wear space suits. The original transfer chamber at Quelsang wasn't big enough to take a single human, let alone an eight-foot Thurien as well. The reason MP2 had been built remotely in space and projected its test objects into distant regions was to avoid the hazards associated with things rematerializing inside solid matter. The same considerations applied when it came to projecting people-if anything, more so. Hence the suits.

They stood gripping a handrail on a raised grating in the metal-walled chamber. A clutter of monitoring heads and instrument mountings filled the space around them, packed between the apertures of the projector barrels angling in from all directions. In several places, eyes looked in on them through observation ports. Below the grating was the five-foot diameter sphere containing the convergence suppressor. No doubt the strange things that happened with time would become a subject for further research one day, but for present purposes they would remain confined in there. As a test object, Hunt and Eesyan were well below the size where carrying a local bubble generator became necessary.

Although Hunt had maintained a light-hearted attitude all the way through to now, this all had a sinister and oppressive feeling. He felt like the victim in some macabre, over-elaborate execution ritual. His usual inclination toward banter had deserted him. The suit readings were all good, projector systems counting down; there was nothing much to be said. Although Caldwell was patched in from Earth again, he was being reticent this time. It was as if he could read Hunt's mood. Typical Gregg, Hunt thought to himself.

"Everything okay?" the Thurien supervising scientist's voice inquired inside Hunt's helmet.

"All okay."

"As ready as we'll be," Eesyan said.

The black mouths of the projectors flickered yellow for an instant, then stabilized to a uniform, depthless indigo. "Sequencing out… Transferring."

And Hunt was floating in space. This was not some virtual illusion manufactured by VISAR, that he was experiencing in a neural coupler somewhere. He was really out here-several thousand miles from MP2, if all had gone as scheduled. It seemed to have-Hunt could see one of the beacons at a distance he judged to be a mile or less away. With live beings involved in the test, Eesyan had stipulated sending a backup beacon ahead in addition to the regular homing beacon. As Hunt gyrated slowly, Eesyan came into view, sliding by with the starfield. His long Ganymean face was turning this way and that inside the headpiece of the Thurien space suit as he took in the surroundings. Hunt could feel his gloominess of only a few moments ago giving way to a strangely exhilarating sense of awe.

He had to remind himself of what had just happened. Every one of the particles that composed his body had been converted to a component of a wave pattern projected and stabilized a short way across the Multiverse. There, drawing on energy beamed through by the projectors, the wave components had condensed into the nodes that define material particles, reconstituting the configuration that equated to Victor Hunt.

This was him now, a structure frozen out of vibrating local energy condensations, just as the one back at MP2 had been. A containment bubble sustained through the M-space umbilical from the projectors was keeping the pattern together while it found a local energy balance and stabilized.

"How are we reading?" the supervisor's voice checked.

"Everything appears to be admirable," Eesyan replied.

"Vic?"

"Oh… fine. Just fine."

"It's looking good from here. Are we clear to go to the next phase?" There would have been nothing to be gained by not completing the process once they had gotten this far. Eesyan looked across. Hunt gave a double thumbs-up with his gauntlets and nodded.

"Proceed," Eesyan said.

"Dissolving bubble now."

They allowed several seconds to elapse. The indicators on Hunt's sleeve panel that monitored the status of the link channel changed to null readings suddenly. "This is Eesyan, calling Control. Testing." There was no response. Hunt tried and got the same result.

"I guess we're on our own," Hunt said over the local channel.

"Sobering to contemplate, indeed."

For the MP2 that Hunt could make out as a point of light gleaming in the direction opposite to Gistar was not the MP2 they had come from. He was staring out through his helmet visor at a different universe. And he and Eesyan were now part of it. There could be another Hunt inside this MP2 there, right now; and if not, there would almost certainly be one somewhere on the Thurien behind his right shoulder, looking the size of a dime. The beacon that had appeared over ten minutes ago now was probably causing consternation already. Hunt grinned to himself as he pictured the reactions if the Thurien senors had resolved in addition two space-suited figures floating miles from anywhere in space.

The sleeve panel indicators registered activity again. VISAR having remained locked on to the beacon throughout, had reformed the bubble. "Control checking. Your readings look good."

"All fine," Eesyan reported.

"Fine," Hunt echoed.

"I suppose you realize you've just made history?" Caldwell's voice came in, judging with perfection that Hunt was in a sociable mood again.

"It seems to be becoming a daily thing here these days, Gregg," Hunt told him.

"Seen enough?" the supervisor at MP2 inquired.

"One could never see enough of this," Eesyan replied.

"Well, it will have to do," the other Thurien quipped. "It's all we have scheduled, and there's this very meticulous boss I have to deal with. Sorry, people, but it's time to bring you home."

After that, there were trials that involved sending the Shapieron with occupants to a succession of targets progressively "farther" away in the Multiverse. There were no new surprises. At last the time came to put final touches to the planning for the mission that it had all been leading up to, which had been proceeding at its own pace in parallel with the engineering. Eesyan and Hunt had a final meeting with Calazar, Showm, and a deputation from the Assembly that was reporting on the project. There seemed no reason why everything shouldn't be ready for a departure in two weeks.