Odyssey

Chapter 15. Oh Seven B

Despite all the good intentions, the partnership almost fell apart before it began. Derec had somehow visualized the arrangement with himself making all the decisions and Katherine gratefully following his lead. But he found out very quickly that it was Kate, not Katherine, with whom he’d made his pact.

Derec was eager to get started looking for the artifact. Since Dr. Galen had raised no protest about Derec’s excursion out of the hospital, he felt he had won the right to roam where he wanted. At the very least, it would be several days before Kate was accorded the same freedom.

But when Derec proposed that he go scouting alone and then report back to Katherine on his discoveries, she balked. “We go together or all promises are off,” she said firmly. “If we’re going to be a team, we have to work as a team.”

“Being a team doesn’t mean we have to be handcuffed together,” Derec argued. “Everybody should do what they do best, and right now what I can do best is be our eyes and ears.”

“What are you going to do?”

Derec shrugged. “Talk to the dock supervisor and the station manager. Start finding out what’s happened while we were here.”

“They’re robots,” she said. “Let them come here.”

It was a perfectly reasonable idea, and the fact that it had not occurred to Derec jarred him for a moment. He had been thinking of talking to the station staff ever since he had regained consciousness, but always in terms of going to see them. He realized that he had made an unspoken assumption:they’re busy-they don’t have time to come down here to talk to me.

He had never once thought of ordering them to leave their work. Katherine had thought of it immediately. Derec knew somehow that the difference said something important about the two of them-something about their background, the subculture which had shaped their attitudes about robots.

It was as though he respected the importance of the robots’ work and saw them more or less as equals, while she thought of them only as servants. But whether it meant he had more experience with robots than she or less, he could not say.

All the same, it was another tiny piece in his puzzle. He was not like Katherine. They came from different worlds-culturally if not geographically. It made him wonder how it was she knew him.

All these thoughts cascaded through Derec’s mind in a fraction of a second, allowing him to carry on the conversation with only the faintest hesitation. “Look, I’m willing to share the decision-making. Maybe we could get the robots to come here,” he said. “There’s still the ship. I should go have a look at it.”

“That’s something we should do together.”

“Why? What’s hidden there that you don’t want me to find?”

Katherine crossed her arms and sighed. “If you’re going to be suspicious of me all the time, this isn’t going to work.”

“I’m not suspicious of you!” Derec exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “I just don’t understand why you don’t seem to want to let me out of your sight.”

“And I don’t understand your hurry,” Katherine said stiffly. “You say that we’re a team, but you want to go run off and do everything yourself.”

“The hurry is because we want to get there first,” Derec said impatiently. “We don’t want anyone else taking it.”

She looked at him quizzically. “We’ve been here six weeks. Do you really think that they pulled us out and then locked the ship up somewhere until we could claim it? Think! That’s an alien starship. How long do you think it took them to realize they’d never seen one like it before-not just the design, but the whole technology? This is a frontier base. Do you think they just take it in stride when an unregistered ship shows up with two injured humans aboard?”

Belatedly, Derec understood. “So they’ve been all over it. Photographed it, X-rayed it, the whole works. They might have even torn it down, sent pieces of it out onFariis to the district offices. They’re probably wondering about us, too.”

“Of course they are. That’s why I sent Dr. Galen away.”

“Do you think he’s been spying on us?”

“All robots are spies for their masters,” she said bitterly.

“What?” Derec asked, surprised by her intensity.

“Nevermind,” she said. “I just think we ought to play innocents abroad for a while, do all the things they expect us to-until we understand what kind of game we’re in.”

“Be helpless and worried. Play dumb.”

“Just so,” Katherine said. “Sometimes it’s the smartest thing you can do.”

At their request, Dr. Galen had a multicom brought to the ICU and tied into the station net. Very quickly, they learned that the Rockliffe Station welcome mat was a bit threadbare.

The station manager was fully scheduled until the following morning and thought that they really wanted to talk to the dock supervisor anyway. The dock supervisor was conducting an overhaul of the dock pressurization system, a priority task which had to be completed in the shortest possible time, and had they tried the dispatcher?

The dispatcher couldn’t answer their questions without clearance from the security chief, who deferred to the associate manager for station operations. The AMSOP was one step down the ladder from the station manager and probably the robot to which they should have been recommended in the first place.

The AMSOP was busy at the moment but would be free in an hour if they wanted to make an appointment. It seemed to be the best they could do, so they took it.

“So what do we do while we’re waiting?” Derec said as he turned off the viewer.

“We could spend the time getting to know each other better-”

“Should I entertain you with stories about my family?”

She laughed-a nice laugh. “Maybe not.”

“Youcould tell me stories about my family.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Katherine-the only person who knows anything about me is you,” Derec said pleadingly. “Why don’t you tell me some of it now?”

“Not yet.”

“Still following Dr. Galen’s advice?”

“This really is the best way,” she said, touching his hand.

“It doesn’t feel like it to me,” he said gruffly. “All right. Tell me about you, then.”

“It’s boring,” she warned.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Being hijacked by an alien spacecraft was boring?”

“My life is boring. That’s the first exciting thing that ever happened.” She added, “Except it wasn’t exactly a hijacking.”

“Tell me about it. What was the name of your courier ship?”

“Golden Eagle, out of Viking. We were carrying a diplomatic pouch to Frier’s Planet-”

At least in a first reading, the story had the ring of truth.

According to Katherine, she and her robots had been outbound from Viking on the courier shipGolden Eagle, along with a pilot and two diplomats. Just before they were about to make their Jump at the fringe of the Viking system, the pilot spotted Aranimas’s ship, apparently adrift.

Taking it for an uncharted wreck-in part because of its appearance and in part because they could not raise it on any channel-they abandoned their exit trajectory and went to investigate. Suddenly they were fired upon, and their ship disabled. Katherine and the robots were taken off the courier by the Narwe, and then the courier was set adrift. A short time later the courier exploded, probably, Katherine said, because of a bomb that had been placed aboard.

There were no screaming contradictions in the story, but there were several little points that nagged at Derec. Katherine was vague about just why she was on the courier. At first she seemed to want him to think that she was part of the diplomatic mission. But even though she wanted him to think that she was old enough for such duty, she clearly was not.

When he questioned her on it, she hastily explained that she had been a passenger, using the courier instead of a commercial carrier because she wanted privacy. He wondered aloud at a courier taking on passengers. She responded by hinting that she was important enough to justify any exception that might have been required.

But the biggest sticking point, and the one on which he kept his own counsel, was the behavior of the courier pilot. Couriers carried important people, emergency supplies, engineering prototypes, irreplaceable documents. It didn’t make sense that a courier pilot would endanger his cargo by poking around a wreck. It seemed far more likely that the pilot would report the sighting to the Patrol post on Viking, then make his Jump on schedule.

Derec recalled that the first time her capture had come up, Katherine had quickly changed the subject. He wondered now if that was because she didn’t have her story ready. Perhaps he was being fed half-truths as some sort of test-Dr. Galen’s prescription for crippled minds. If so, he resented it.

But the arrival at last of the Assistant Manager for Station Operations pushed those thoughts to the back of Derec’s mind.

“I am called Hajime,” the AMSOP said, “Dr.Galen tells me that both of you are recovering from your injuries. That is good news.”

“Especially to us,” Derec said under his breath.

“I understand that you have questions about your presence here. I hope that I will be able to answer them.”

Derec opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak Katherine jumped in. “Begin with when the station first detected our ship and tell us what you observed,” she ordered.

“Yes, madam. The station’s sensors detected an unidentified ship immediately after it emerged from its Jump-as you may know, the termination of a Jump is accompanied by a minor spacetime disturbance comparable to the atmospheric disturbance caused by a discharge of lightning-”

“We know all that,” Derec said. “Get on with it.”

“Forgive me, sir,” the robot said with a slight bow. “I only wanted to be certain that you understood how we were able to detect your ship at such a great distance.”

“Why? How far out were we?”

“Eighty-three astronomical units. At such a distance, the station’s sensors were only able to determine the position and velocity of the vessel. Since there was no direct identification through a transponder or indirect identification through sensor data, this vessel was designated UPH-07.”

“UPH?” Katherine asked.

“Forgive me. Unidentified, Potentially Hostile,” Hajime supplied.

“Go on, Hajime.”

“Thank you, sir. We tracked Oh Seven inbound for two days. We were just beginning to acquire some preliminary data on its mass and profile when an anomalous event took place. UPH-07 divided into two independentbodies, UPH-07A and UPH-07B. The larger vessel, Oh Seven A, made a course correction which carried it out of the station’s zone of control-”

“They cut us loose and then turned around and went away,” Katherine said.

“Looks like it,” Derec said. “Did the big ship Jump?”

“Not while it was within range of our sensors, sir,” Hajime answered. “It is not possible to say what happened once contact was lost.”

Derec and Katherine exchanged glances that said, So they could still be out there somewhere, waiting.

“And the other vessel, Oh Seven B, it continued inbound?” Katherine asked. “That’s where you found us?”

“Yes, madam. A scout with a rescue and retrieval team aboard was dispatched immediately.”

“Can you show us a navigational plot of all this?” Derec asked.

“Certainly, sir.” The robot went to the hyperviewer and entered a code on the keyboard, and a moment later the far wall dissolved into the black of space.

It was all there as the robot had described it. A blue trace from the top of the plot traced the raider’s approach to the station, represented by a golden hexagon at the bottom. One-third of the way there, the blue trace split. A thick green trace angled off the plot to the upper right, while a thin red one continued curling inbound on the original trajectory. Two-thirds of the way down the plot, the red trace intersected a golden trace climbing up out of the station: the rescue ship.

“Can we have a copy of that?” Derec said.

“I will file it in a directory under your name,” Hajime said, his touch on the controls turning the far wall into a wall once more.

“Was the boarding recorded?” Katherine asked.

“Yes, madam.”

“I’d like to see the recording,” Katherine said, beckoning Derec to come sit on the edge of the bed beside her. When he did, she took his hand and gripped it tightly, as though seeking reassurance. The skin contact surprised and unsettled Derec.

“The recording was made by means of a witness robot,” Hajime said. “The multicom will not be able to display the full bandwidth-”

“What’s a witness robot?” Katherine whispered to Derec.

“I’ll explain later,” Derec whispered back. Witness robots were odd-looking, with their bullet heads and 360-degree scanning slit instead of eye sensors, but invaluable for such operations. Their sole responsibility was to position themselves so that their scanners and recorders captured unfolding events clearly. Many a bungled operation had been reconstructed from the data supplied by witness robots before they were destroyed.

“-so if you wish to move the window left or right at any point please tell me so.”

From the outside, Aranimas’s ship looked like a fat arrowhead trailing bits of the twine which had held it to the shaft. The arrowhead was in fact an atmosphere-piercing lifting body, and the twine the tattered remnants of several transfer corridors which had been attached to the hexagonal junction between the engine exhaust bells at the stern.

Together Derec and Katherine watched as the rescue robots fit a self-cutting emergency hatch to the upper hull. When the hatch’s contact ring had burned through the hull and fused itself in place, the robots entered-one at a time, the witness first.

“This is where Aranimas had me living,” she whispered as the hypervision panned the atticlike upper deck.

“How long were you there?”

“Two months. Believe me, it seemed longer.”

When the witness robot led the way down to the main deck, the first thing they saw was a robot standing in the central corridor.

“Alpha,” Derec cried.

“Capek,” Katherine said at the same instant. “Where’s my robot?”

Hajime suspended the recording. “This robot was removed and taken away for diagnostic examination and repair.”

“I want him back, just the way he was,” Derec said. “You’ve got no right to tinker with him without a work order.”

“The robot resisted our efforts to rescue you. It was judged to be operating in a substandard and hazardous manner and was deactivated. Standard procedure in such cases is to perform a full examination so that the anomaly may be reported to the manufacturer.”

Katherine was nodding in reluctant agreement, and Derec took his cue from her. “All right,” he said. “Go on.”

When the recording continued, they saw themselves for the first time. They were lying head to foot along one wall in the central walkway of the main deck. Katherine winced and turned away at the sight of her own burn-blistered face and bloody clothing. Derec gritted his teeth and tried not to feel the pain all over again that was reflected in his burned skin.

“I thought so,” Derec whispered under his breath. “I thought so.”

“What?” Katherine demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“Alpha. He kept us alive.”

“You heard Hajime-the robot was abnormal. He wouldn’t let them rescue us.”

“That was just the PD cube being careful. Look,” Derec said, gesturing. “Those aren’t positions that you fall into naturally after an accident like that, or even crawl into. We were moved. And more: we were at least five days out when I tripped the booby trap. It took the rescue ship two and a half days to reach us. There’s no quarreling with the fact that we were badly injured-”

“No,” she said with a little shiver.

“I was wondering how we survived until the paramedics got to us. We should have died right there on the ship. All they should have found were corpses. Alpha is the reason they didn’t.” Derec looked toward the robot. “Hajime, could you pause the recording and give us privacy, please?”

“Of course, Derec.” The image and the robot both froze.

“What? What’s going on?”

“I just want to point out that someone else might have been on the ship, too.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“I had wondered why Wolruf and the robot were taking so long to get back from their errand. What if Aranimas regained consciousness? They might still have been trying to lock him up when the bomb went off. Alpha would have come running back. He wouldn’t worry about Aranimas. He probably wouldn’t even worry about what Aranimas might do to Wolruf. Aranimas and Alpha could both have gotten back into Hull A before it was cut loose.”

“And Alpha would have protected us from him, just as it tried to protect us from the rescue crew.”

“That might even explainwhy Alpha gave the robots trouble.”

“He could have hidden,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “It was his ship. He would have known where he’d be safe. Until the ship was brought in-”

“Just what I was thinking. If he doesn’t have the key, he’s looking for it-or us. If he’s got it, he still may be looking for us. Either way, the key’s not safe, and neither are we. And we can’t just sit around and tell ourselves there’s no rush. We have to start doing something right now.”

Katherine cast her gaze downward into her lap. “All right,” she said at last.

“Hajime,” Derec said. “You can rejoin us.”

The robot stirred again. “Thank you, sir. Shall I continue with the recording?”

“No. Terminate the replay. We’ve seen enough,” Katherine said.

“Very well, madam,” the robot said, complying. “Do you have other questions?”

“Yes. Where is Oh Seven B now?”

“I do not know, madam.”

The answer brought Derec up off the bed, his face reddening. “What do you mean, you don’t know?” he demanded. “You’re the second highest ranking staffer on the station.”

“That is correct, sir.”

“And you don’t know where our ship is?”

“I only know that Oh Seven B is no longer in the berth at which it was moored when first towed into the station.”

“Was it stolen?” Derec pressed. “Are you trying to tell me it’s gone?”

“It was not stolen. It was moved under the authorization of the station manager.”

“Why didn’t you say so from the start?” Katherine snapped.

“Derec asked if I knew where Oh Seven B was berthed. I do not, and so informed him.”

“Then find out where our ship is. I want you to take us to it.”

“I am sorry,” Hajime said. “I am not permitted to do that.”

“Then find us a robot who is permitted,” Derec snapped.

“I have been instructed to refer all inquiries of this sort to the station manager.”

Derec sighed. “All right. You can go.”

“Thank you, sir.” The robot paused. “May I make an inquiry, sir?”

“What about?”

“Do you continue to refer to Oh Seven B as ‘our ship’ out of habit or as a matter of affection?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have been informed that the vessel known as Oh Seven B is no longer your property.”