Polaris

TWENTY-SIX

“Chase, where are you?”

“She can’t hear you down here, Alex.”

It must have been a nervous moment for him, but I had her in my sights and could have taken her out at any time. She was standing in the doorway, half-in, halfout, paying no attention anywhere except to Alex. Completely fooled by a scripted conversation. The plan, of course, was to let her talk as long as she wanted. But obviously not to let her shoot anybody.

I suspected she would not give up meekly, and she had the pistol. If I told her to put it down, she could keep it trained on him, and we’d have a standoff. So I decided to go the safe route. Shoot first, talk to her later.

I aimed and fired. Scramblers, of course, are not lethal. There are some people who say that’s their drawback. Maddy gasped, and her lights went out. The pistol drifted away from her, and she just hung there, locked to the deck by her grip shoes.

Alex took a deep breath. “Chase,” he said, “where’ve you been?”

“Been right here,” I said. “The whole time.” I pushed past the woman into the room. She swayed.

“I was afraid maybe you got lost.”

I took her pistol and put it in my belt. Then I slipped the scrambler into a pocket.

“I was behind you the whole way, Big Guy.”

“I’m glad.”

I put my lamp up close to her helmet. “Is it really Maddy? How can it be?” I was looking at Teri Barber.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Incredible. I hope I look that good at a hundred.”

“She’s not quite that old.”

We stood quietly, trying to absorb the reality of the moment. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t, for certain. But I couldn’t think of any scenario that would account for three women, Barber, Shanley, and Maddy, who looked so much alike. And the fact that Kiernan looked like Taliaferro, and Eddie Crisp resembled a young Dunninger.

Even parents and their kids don’t look that much alike.”

“They could have been clones.”

“Not this bunch. Maddy, maybe. The others? There was no record of any clones.

And anyhow, they were population-control types. Opposed on principle to cloning except in special cases.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t imagine any reason for them to do that.”

“So you decided Dunninger had already achieved his breakthrough-”

“-And that it did more than extend life. It restored damage caused by the ageing process. Yes.”

“So they’re all alive? Except Dunninger?”

“And Taliaferro. Yes, I think so.”

“And they’re at Morton College,” I said.

“Very good, Chase. I don’t know whether they actually spend time there or not.

But I don’t think there’s any question that’s their base.”

“Margolis? Is he one of them? He didn’t look like anybody.”

“I don’t think so. I think he’s just hired help.”

I was shining my light around the room. Taking my first good look at the place we’d been searching for. “Taliaferro,” I said. “What happened to him? I mean, why’d he disappear?”

“He benefited from Dunninger’s discovery, like the rest of them. Except a couple of years passed before they administered it to him. I assume Mendoza was handling that.”

“Why would they wait?”

“Probably because they wanted to keep Taliaferro in charge at Survey. Once he became like them, his ageing process would go into reverse. He’d start getting younger every day.”

It was hard to swallow. “Alex,” I said, “I always understood age reversal was impossible.”

“That’s what the experts say. Obviously, Dunninger, and maybe Mendoza, figured out a way.”

I tied the generator into one of the circuits and adjusted the voltage. Alex hit the switch, and the lights came on. He took the key out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“Do the honors,” he said.

We went into the corridor, picked a closed door at random, aimed the remote, and pressed the button. Nothing happened, and we moved to the next door. “It’s here somewhere,” said Alex.

It was at the far end of the hall. I will never forget watching a guide light activate while the door tried to swing inward, but it wouldn’t because it was wedged tight so Alex gave it a kick. That broke it open and a table lamp came on. Maddy’s apartment.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Yes.” He was wearing a large smile. “We do seem to have done it, don’t we?”

“And the rest of them stayed in these other units,” I said.

Alex nodded. “I wonder what the mood was like.”

I could hear Maddy breathing over her open channel. “So what’s next?” I asked.

“We take Maddy back and figure out what we’re going to do with her. And then we’ll have a conversation with Everson.”

“You think he’ll agree to that?”

“Oh, yes,” Alex said. “In fact, I’ll be surprised if he’s not in touch as soon as he hears we’re back.”

“Do we need to do anything else here?”

“No. I think we should be heading out.”

I looked down the corridor. Some of the lights were on, lending an appearance that was less romantic than it had been, and more dilapidated. I wondered what it had been like in its glory days, when the place was alive and the Kang were on the premises. What would a functioning AI from that era be worth? Which called to mind Alex’s idea about tracking ancient radio signals.

Ah, well. Let’s stay with the business at hand.

I could no longer hear Maddy breathing. She’d turned off the link. I slipped away from Alex and retreated down the corridor to the room in which we’d left her.

She was gone.

I let Alex know and checked the lobby. There was no sign of her.

“You’ve got her pistol?” asked Alex.

“Yes.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.”

The scrambler should have put her down for thirty minutes or so. We’d been gone less than ten. “Maybe her body is more resistant than normal,” he said.

Oh, damn. I should have realized. “It’s the pressure suit. It would have shielded her.”

Alex made an irritated noise deep in his throat. “Well, we got what we came for.

Let’s head out.”

“And quickly,” I said.

He picked up on my sense of urgency, asked no questions, and we hustled out of the lobby and back down the passageway. It was about three kilometers out to the airlock. That was not good news. I assumed that since we hadn’t seen Maddy’s ship, she’d been able to get the docking area working, and that was where she was moored.

Docking areas are always close to the living spaces. She would get to her ship long before we could reach ours. It didn’t help that Alex wasn’t the quickest creature on two feet.

“I’m going ahead,” I told him. “We need to secure Belle. ” I charged through the tunnel, wishing I’d kept in better shape.

Noncombat vessels aren’t armed, in the normal sense of the word. But they do carry the HCS, with its particle beam deflectors. The system is activated automatically when a rock approaches on a threatening vector, as had happened to us at Terranova. But it had parameters, preventing it from firing at an approaching vessel. There was, however, nothing to stop Maddy from rewriting the parameters.

She’d have to do that physically, have to poke the change in. That was a safety feature, to avoid inadvertent firing at the wrong target. But she’d only need a couple of minutes. Once she’d done that, she could blast Belle and leave us stranded.

It’s hard to run in a pressure suit. In zero gee. In a tunnel. Every time the tunnel turned, I hoped maybe I’d see her ahead, but I knew that wasn’t likely. And sure enough the passageway stayed dark and empty. Finally, gasping for breath, I was tumbling through the airlock, and there was the lander, about fifty meters overhead, above a field of elevated power collectors. I opened a channel to Belle.

“Hello, Chase,” she said.

“Belle, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you doing?”

“Never mind that. Do you see any other ship?”

“Yes. There’s one approaching from the port quarter.”

I looked and saw a cluster of lights above the horizon. Growing brighter. I’d been wrong. She hadn’t docked, but had succeeded in keeping her ship hidden among the orbiting debris. Now it was coming to pick her up.

The AI in the lander had been named Gabe, after Alex’s uncle. “Gabe,” I said, “I need the lander. Bring it in close.”

The station hatch was in a narrow gully, but the primary hazard to the spacecraft was the field of antennas surrounding it. Gabe eased the lander down among them.

“Could you hustle it up a bit, please?”

“The terrain in which you are located-”

“-I know that, Gabe. But we don’t have time at the moment for safety first.”

He made a noise that sounded like disapproval but brought the lander in quickly.

I got in, and we made for the oncoming ship.

The gas giant floated on the opposite side of the sky. It was sludge brown, with no features whatever except a disturbance of some sort in the northern hemisphere.

Probably a storm. I could see several inner moons, all crescents.

The planet and its satellites cast an eerie glow across the chopped surface of the asteroid. I saw Maddy, standing atop a ridge, watching her ship approach. I could make out Bollinger thrusters, and a boxy bridge. It was a Chesapeake, probably a 190.

A yacht, really, a dual hull, reduced-mass luxury runabout designed exclusively to travel among ports. It wasn’t intended for use elsewhere. Which was why Maddy had to bring it in close to board: It had no lander. Her back was turned to me, and she was utterly exposed. Whatever she might have been sixty years ago, she was homicidal now. I’d left the lander’s hatch open, and I thought seriously about using her own pistol to take her out. To finish it. The scrambler wouldn’t be adequate at this range, and if I tried to move in close enough to use it, she’d spot me. And the truth was I didn’t know whether she had a second weapon available. I didn’t want to take any more risks. Or maybe I just wanted to kill her and be done with it. I don’t know.

In any case I got as far as leaning out the hatch and drawing a bead on her. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I remembered lecturing Alex years before during the Sim business when he had a helpless Mute ship in his sights and was about to pull the trigger on them.

So I let her be. Instead, I arced around and came in over the Chesapeake. The area where Maddy was waiting was well off to one side of a collector array. It was relatively flat, and there was room for the Chesapeake to descend.

Its thrusters were firing, moving it in closer to Maddy, lining it up, and slowing it almost to a stop. The ship’s hatch began to open.

At that moment she spotted me. But I wasn’t interested in her just then. I was looking for the HCS, specifically the controller, the black box, without which the particle beams were useless. I spotted it as the ship snuggled in beside her. It was red and white, located on the hull just forward of the bridge.

Alex’s voice broke over the link: “Chase, where are you?”

“Back in a minute,” I said. “Keep in mind she’s listening.”

He spoke again, but this time not to me: “Maddy, give it up. Come back with us.

You need help.”

The Chesapeake drew abreast of Maddy, and she scrambled inside. But that was okay. I was within can’t-miss range. I leaned out the hatch, aimed at the black box, and pulled the trigger. “Bang,” I said.

It was an easy shot. The weapon bucked, there was a satisfying flare, and the black box disappeared in a belch of smoke.

The Chesapeake lifted into the night.

I was wondering about the extent of the damage as I put about and started back to pick up Alex. “I saw what happened,” he said. Then he was talking to the Chesapeake: “Maddy, are you okay? Do you need help?”

Thoughtful, considering that she’d tried to bushwhack us.

She didn’t answer. “She might just want to get clear,” I told him.

Then I got two voices at once: Gabe and Alex both yelled at me to look out.

The Chesapeake was diving on me, trying to ram. I guessed that settled any questions about Maddy’s state of mind. I swerved to starboard.

Even though the lander is far slower, it’s much more maneuverable than a ship, even a small one like the Chesapeake. She made a second pass before I got back to the airlock where Alex waited, but she never had a good shot at me. I took it down among the antennas, and she backed off.

Alex looked dismayed as he climbed in. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

“She’s not going to let us ride the lander out to Belle, ” I said.

“So okay. We bring the ship here. In tight.”

I opened a channel to Belle and got a surge of static. Switched off and tried again. “She’s jamming us,” I said.

“Can she do that?”

“She’s doing it.”

We could see her, a group of five lights now, just off the rim of the gas giant.

Waiting.

“If she tries to ram us, isn’t she risking serious damage herself?”

“Not if she does it right. It wouldn’t take a whole lot to punch a hole in the lander.” I glanced around the cabin. It looked suddenly fragile.

I turned the engine off.

Alex had removed his helmet. Now he reached for it and seemed to be considering putting it back on. “I have an idea,” he said. “The windows are polarized, so she won’t be able to see into the cabin. She won’t know what’s in here. We’ve got a whole station at our disposal. How about we make a bomb, put it on board the lander, and let her ram that? ”

“That’s a good idea. Great idea.”

“Do you know how to make a bomb, Chase?”

“No. I haven’t a clue. You?”

“Not really.”

He went back on the circuit, hoping to talk with her. I guess he thought he might be able to cut a deal of some sort. But all channels were blocked. “We’ll just have to make a run for it,” he said. “She wasn’t able to get you a few minutes ago so maybe we’ll be all right.”

“I was close to the ground. Not an easy target. Trying to get up to Belle is a different game altogether. It’s strictly desperation.” The temptation to say the hell with it and make a sudden move was strong. But it would get us killed. Belle, like the Chesapeake, was only a set of lights. In her case, there were six. She was directly overhead.

“Does Belle actually have instructions to take off if Maddy were to try to board?”

“Oh, yes. I wasn’t leaving that to chance.”

“Good.” For a long minute he was quiet. His eyes drifted to the air tanks.

Between the air supply in the lander and the spare tanks, we were good for a few more hours. “Damn it,” he said. “Let’s try it. Maybe we’ll catch her in the washroom.”

“No. We won’t make it that way.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I do. I like your bomb idea.”

“But we don’t know how to make one. For that matter, there might not even be materials on the platform.”

“There’s another possibility.”

“What?”

“First thing we have to do is get the spare air tanks out. We’re going to need them.”

“And then-?”

“We arrange things so that Maddy runs into a brick.”

We put our helmets back on, got out of the lander, and climbed down into the station airlock.

We shut off our radios so we couldn’t be overheard. Alex touched his helmet against mine so he could speak to me. “She can see us,” he said.

“Doesn’t make any difference. She’ll know we have to try for the ship. Sooner or later.”

The laser that Alex had brought was a household unit, a little hand-held device for a guy working at home, rather than the industrial strength I would have liked to have. But it was functional, and if it was a trifle short on power, it should nevertheless be adequate.

The airlock hatches and bulkheads looked like steel. Probably made from iron mined on the asteroid itself. They would have been ideal for our purpose, but the metal was resistant to the laser. We could have cut through the hinges and freed the two hatches, but they were too big to get into the lander.

We’d have to load up with ordinary rock.

Alex signaled: You cut, and I’ll haul.

I shook my head no. We needed to keep an eye on Maddy, so she didn’t slip down and seize the lander while we were preoccupied. I indicated I’d do the first round of work, and he should go back and keep watch.

The work was easy. Just cut a large slab of rock, then haul it out to the airlock.

Even that part of things, in zero gee, was simple enough. After a half hour or so, we switched.

I moved the lander directly over the airlock to block Maddy’s view of what we were doing. I measured the dimensions of the lander’s hatch. It was smaller than I’d remembered, about three-quarters my height. Width was shoulder to wrist.

I ripped off one of the seat covers and moved the backs of the seats down. That would make it easier to load the cabin. The windows protected against outside glare, so Maddy wouldn’t be able to see who, or what, was in the cabin.

I picked up one of the pieces of rock that I’d stowed just the other side of the airlock, put the seat cover over it as an extra precaution, floated it out to the lander, and loaded it into the cabin. Alex was bringing up more chunks, but I could see the doubtful expression on his face. He was wondering whether it would really work, because all the rock didn’t weigh anything. That was true. The weight was gone, but it retained its mass. It would resist getting shoved in a new direction.

I started getting warning beeps from my suit’s life-support system. Time to switch to fresh air tanks. We had another two sets for each of us, four more hours apiece. And it occurred to me that we would have to be done and back inside Belle by then, since we were not going to have the lander at the end of the operation. At least not if everything went according to plan.

We loaded the rock. The warning lamp on the laser began to blink, but we kept working until it gave out. The last piece was too big to fit into a cabin already filled, so we put it in the cargo hold. Acceleration was going to be pretty slow, but Maddy wouldn’t have a lot of time to think about it.

When we were ready to launch, Alex made a show of opening the hatch and getting in. But we kept the lander airlock turned away from Maddy’s telescopes, so she had no way of knowing what was actually happening. To her it must have seemed we were just going to roll the dice.

Alex slipped back out of the spacecraft, kept down as best he could, and went back into the tunnel. Then it was my turn. I stood at the lander’s hatch, my head sticking up so Maddy could see me. I ducked as I normally do and climbed aboard.

Then it got complicated. I closed the hatch, pressurized the cabin, and, when I could take off my helmet to speak, I instructed Gabe to start the engine after I got out and rendezvoused with Belle.

“Best approach comes if I leave in six minutes,” he said.

“Okay. Do it.” It occurred to me that I should take out some insurance, so I gave Gabe a final instruction. Then I put my helmet back on and started depressurization. I also turned off the lander’s lights in what was supposed to look like part of an effort to sneak past Maddy’s watchful eye.

My conscience, which I usually try to keep under control, reminded me I was abandoning Gabe. I know AIs are not sentient, but sometimes it’s hard to believe that.

I whispered a goodbye that he couldn’t hear.

When I was able to open up, I slipped out, closed the door, and joined Alex in the tunnel.

A minute or two later, the lander lifted away.

Alex touched his helmet to mine. “Good luck,” he said, keeping his voice low as if even there, inside the rock, with the radio links turned off, Maddy might hear us.

The jamming stopped. She’d spotted the lander and figured she had us now. I half expected her to say something, some final expression of regret, or maybe a taunt.

But there was nothing.

Our pressure suits were white, so they didn’t provide much camouflage.

Nevertheless, we had to know what was happening, so I edged out close to the airlock hatch and took a look. The lander was ascending slowly, trying to accelerate with its load of slabs. I hoped that Maddy was too emotionally played out to notice that it was struggling. But it was moving away from the surface, ascending to an uncertain rendezvous with the Belle-Marie.

For a long minute I couldn’t find the Chesapeake. But then it passed across one of the moons. I was able to follow it, nothing more than a cluster of lights, moving through the night, curving in, descending, gliding across the barren moonscape.

It was coming.

Alex tugged at my leg. What was happening? We still couldn’t talk, especially at that moment. I tried to signal with my hands that she was on her way. Taking the bait.

The Chesapeake came close enough that I could see her clearly, burnt orange in the ghastly light. The twin hulls looked like missiles riding slowly beneath the stars.

Her attitude thrusters fired once, twice, lining her up, then she made a final adjustment and began to accelerate.

Here we go, I thought.

But no. She was slowing down again.

Alex’s helmet touched mine. He was up beside me now. “She’s thinking it over,” he said.

If she took too long, if the lander actually reached Belle, we were dead.

He was baring his teeth. “Look at her!” The Chesapeake was still tracking the lander, still closing, but still slowing down. “Maybe she’s figured it out.”

“She’s wondering whether she can do it without sustaining major damage herself.” I opened my channel to the lander and spoke one word, trying to disguise my voice as something else. Anything else. “Blip,” I said. Then I shut it down again.

Gabe, using my voice, said, “We’re right here, you dumb bitch. If you have the guts.”

For several seconds the tableau remained virtually unchanged. The lander struggled to gain altitude. And then the Chesapeake fired its main engine and lurched ahead.

Maddy knew that if she hit the lander too hard, there was a possibility of an explosion. Nevertheless she continued to accelerate, raced across a range of about six hundred meters, and blasted into the smaller vehicle, knocking it sideways. But the Chesapeake literally bounced off. The lander’s engines erupted in a fireball.

The Chesapeake went spinning toward the east.

We scrambled out onto the surface. Alex had hold of one of my arms, a death grip. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Don’t know.”

The starship gradually faded into the night.

We waited.

A star appeared where it had been. It expanded, burned brightly for a minute or so, faded, and vanished.