Summertide

CHAPTER 23

Rebka woke like a nervous animal, jerking upright and alert from a sound sleep. In that first moment his feelings were all panic.

He had made the fatal mistake of allowing his concentration to lapse. Who was flying the ship?

The only other person halfway competent was Max Perry, and he was too badly injured to take the controls. They could smash into Opal, fall back to the surface of Quake, or lose themselves forever in deep space.

Then, before his eyes opened, he knew things had to be all right.

No one was flying the ship. No one needed to. He was not on the Summer Dreamboat — he could not be. For he was not in freefall. And the forces on him were not the wild, turbulent ones of atmospheric reentry. Instead there was a steady downward pull, the fraction-of-a-gee acceleration that told of a capsule moving along the Umbilical.

He opened his eyes and remembered the final hours of their flight. They had meandered out to Midway Station like drunken sailors, the sorriest collection of humans and aliens that the Dobelle system had ever seen. He remembered biting his lips and fingertips until they bled, forcing himself to stay awake and his eyes to stay open. He had followed Perry’s half-incoherent navigational instructions as best he could, while they tacked for five long hours along the line of the Umbilical. With the help of the tiny attitude-control jets — the only power left on board the Dreamboat — he had brought them to a dazed docking at the station’s biggest port.

He recalled the approach — a disgrace for any pilot. It had taken five times as long as it should. And as the last docking confirmation was received at the ship, he had leaned back in the pilot’s chair and closed his eyes — for one moment’s rest.

And then?

And then his memory failed. He looked around.

He must have fallen asleep at the very second of final contact. Someone had carried him into Midway Station and moved him to the service level of an Umbilical capsule. They had secured him in a harness and left him there.

He was not alone. Max Perry, his forearms caked and daubed with protective yellow gel, drifted on a light tether a few feet away. He was unconscious. Darya Lang hovered beyond him, her flowing brown hair tied back from her face. The clothing had been stripped from her left leg below the knee, and plastic flesh covered her burned foot and ankle. Her breathing was light. Every few seconds she muttered under her breath as though about to surface from sleep. With her face so relaxed and thought-free, she looked about twelve years old. Next to Darya floated Geni Carmel. From the look of her she was also heavily sedated, although she had no visible injuries.

Rebka checked his wristwatch: twenty-three hours past Summertide. All the fireworks in the Quake and Opal system should be safely in the past. And for seventeen hours, he had been out of things completely.

He rubbed at his eyes, noticing that his face was no longer covered with ash and grime. Someone had not only carried him to the capsule, but had washed him and changed his clothes before leaving him to sleep. Who had done that? And who had provided the medical care to Perry and Lang?

That brought him back to his first question: with the four of them unconscious, who was minding the store?

He had trouble getting his feet to the floor and then found that he could not loose the harness that secured him. Even after seventeen hours of rest, he was weary enough for his fingers to be clumsy and fumbling. If Darya Lang looked like a teenager, he felt like a battered centenarian.

Finally he freed himself and was able to leave the improvised hospital. He considered trying to wake Perry and Lang — she still murmuring to herself in a protesting voice — and then decided against it. Almost certainly they had been anesthetized before their wounds were dressed and synthetic skin applied.

He slowly climbed the stairs that led to the observation-and-control deck of the capsule. The clear roof of the upper chamber showed Midway Station in the middle distance. Far above, confirming that the capsule was descending toward Opal, Rebka saw the distant prospect of Quake, dark-clouded and brooding.

The walls of the observation deck, ten meters high, were paneled with display units. Julius Graves, seated at the control console and flanked by J’merlia and Kallik, was watching in thoughtful silence. The succession of broadcast displays that Graves was receiving showed a planetary surface — but it was Opal, not Quake.

Rebka watched for a while before announcing his presence. With their attention on Quake, it had been easy to forget Opal had also experienced the biggest Summertide in human history. Aerial and orbital radar shots, piercing the cloud layers of the planet, showed broad stretches of naked seabed laid bare by millennial tides. Muddy ocean floor was spotted with vast green backs: dead Dowsers, the size of mountains, lay stranded and crushed under their own weight.

Other videos showed the Slings of Opal disintegrating as contrary waves, miles high and driven by the tidal forces, pulled at and twisted the ocean’s surface.

An emotionless voice-over from Opal listed the casualties: half the planet’s population known dead, most in the past twenty-four hours; another fifth still missing. But even before assessment was complete, reconstruction was beginning. Every human on Opal was on a continuous work schedule.

The broadcasts made clear to Rebka that the people of Opal had their hands more than full. If his group were to land there, they should not look for assistance.

He drifted forward and tapped Graves lightly on the shoulder. The councilor jerked at the touch, swiveled in his chair, and grinned up at him.

“Aha! Back from Dreamland! As you see, Captain—” He flourished a thin hand upward, and then to the display screens. “Our decision to spend Summertide on Quake rather than Opal was not so unwise after all.”

“If we’d stayed on the surface of Quake for Summertide, Councilor, we’d have been ashes. We were lucky.”

“We were luckier than you think. And long before Summertide.” Graves gestured to Kallik, who was manipulating displays with one forelimb and entering numbers into a pocket computer with another. “According to our Hymenopt friend, Opal suffered worse than Quake. Kallik has been doing energy-balance calculations in every spare moment since we left the surface. She agrees with Commander Perry — the surface should have been far more active than it was during the Grand Conjunction. The full energy was never released while we were there. Some focused storage-and-release mechanism was at work for the tidal energies. Without it, the planet would have been uninhabitable for humans long before we left it. But with it, most of the energy went to some other purpose.”

“Councilor, Quake was quite bad enough. Elena Carmel is dead. Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda may be dead, too.”

“They are.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I don’t know if you realize this, but they were in orbit around Quake at Summertide and they tried to blow us out of the sky. They deserved what they got. But why are you so sure they’re dead?”

“Darya Lang saw Nenda’s ship dragged off toward Gargantua with an acceleration too much for any human or Cecropian to survive. They had to be crushed flat inside it.”

“Nenda’s ship had a full star drive. No local field should have held it.”

“If you wish to argue that point, Captain, you’ll have to do it with Darya Lang. She saw what happened; I did not.”

“She’s asleep.”

“Still? She became unconscious again when J’merlia started work on her foot, but I am surprised she is not waking.” Graves turned in annoyance. “Now then, what do you want?”

J’merlia was hesitantly touching his sleeve, while by his side Kallik was hopping and whistling in excitement.

“With great respect, Councilor Graves.” J’merlia moved to kneel before him. “But Kallik and I could not help hearing what you said to Captain Rebka — that Master Nenda and Atvar H’sial escaped from Quake, then they were hurtled off to Gargantua and crushed by the acceleration.”

“Toward Gargantua, my Lo’tfian friend. Perhaps not to Gargantua itself. Professor Lang was quite insistent on the point.”

“With apologies, I should have said toward Gargantua. Honored Councilor, would it be possible for Kallik and my humble self to be excused from duties for a few minutes?”

“Oh, go on. And don’t grovel, you know I hate it.” Graves waved them away. As the aliens headed for the capsule’s lower level, he turned back to Rebka.

“Well, Captain, unless you want to collapse again into slumber, I propose that we go below ourselves and check on Commander Perry and Professor Lang. We have plenty of time. The Umbilical will not offer access to Opal for another few hours. And our official work in the Dobelle system is over.”

“Yours may be. Mine is not.”

“It will be, Captain, very soon.” The grinning skeleton was as infuriatingly casual and self-assured as ever.

“You don’t even know what my real work is.”

“Ah, but I do. You were sent to find out what was wrong with Commander Perry, see what it was that kept him in a dead-end job in the Dobelle system — and cure him.”

Rebka sank into a seat in front of the control console. “Now how the devil did you find that out?” His voice was puzzled rather than annoyed.

“From the obvious place — Commander Perry. He has his own friends and information sources, back in the headquarters of the Phemus Circle. He learned why you were sent here.”

“Then he should also know that I never did find out. I told you, my job is unfinished.”

“Not true. Your official job is almost over, and it will be done with very soon. You see, Captain, I know what happened to Max Perry seven years ago. I suspected it before we came to Quake, and I confirmed it when I queried the commander under sedation. All it took were the right questions. And I know what to do. Trust me, and listen.”

Julius Graves hauled his long body over to a monitor, pulled a data unit the size of a sugar cube from his pocket, and inserted it into the machine. “This is sound only, of course. But you will recognize the voice, even though it appears much younger. I sent his memory back seven years. I will play only a fragment. No purpose is served by making private suffering into a public event.”

…Amy was still acting goofy and playful, even in the heat. She was laughing as she ran on ahead of me, back toward the car that would take us to the Umbilical. It was only a few hundred meters away, but I was getting tired.

“Hey, slow down. I’m the one who has to carry the equipment.”

She spun around, teasing me. “Oh, come on, Max. Learn to have some fun. You don’t need any of that stuff. Leave it here — nobody will ever notice it’s gone.”

She made me smile, in spite of the growing noise around us and the sweat that covered my body. Quake was hot.”

“I can’t do that Amy — it’s official property. It all has to be accounted for. Wait for me.”

But she just laughed. And danced on — on into that funny blurring of the surface, the fragile, shimmering ground of Summertide…

…before I could get near her, she was gone. Just like that, in a fraction of a second. Swallowed up by Quake. All that I could take back with me was the pain…

“There is more, but it adds nothing.” Graves stopped the recording. “Nothing that you cannot guess, or should not hear. Amy died in molten lava, not in boiling mud. Max Perry saw that shimmering of heated air again, in the Pentacline Depression — but too late to save Elena Carmel.”

Hans Rebka shrugged. “Even if you know what drove Max Perry into his shell, that’s not the hardest part of my job. I’m supposed to cure him, and I don’t know where to begin.”

Rebka knew that his present sense of failure and incompetence should be only temporary, no more than a side effect of exhaustion following days of tension. But that did not make it any less real.

He stared at one of the wall displays, which showed a Sling floating upside down and shattered by the impact of mighty seas. All that could be seen was a wilderness of black, slippery mud from which jutted random tangles of roots. He wondered if anyone could possibly have survived when the Sling capsized.

“How?” he went on. “How do you pull someone out of a seven-year depression? I don’t know that.”

“Of course you don’t. That’s my area of expertise, not yours.” Graves turned abruptly and headed for the stairway. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “Time to see what’s going on below decks. I think those pesky aliens are plotting a mutiny, but we’ll ignore that for the moment. Right now we have to talk to Max Perry.”

Was Graves going crazy again? Rebka sighed. Oh, for the good old days, when he was flying through Quake’s clouds and wondering if they would survive another second of turbulence. He followed close behind the other man, down to the second level of the capsule.

J’merlia and Kallik were nowhere to be seen.

“I told you,” Graves said. “They’re down in the cargo hold. Those two are up to something, sure as taxes. Give me a hand here.”

With Rebka’s puzzled assistance, the councilor carried Max Perry and then Geni Carmel back to the upper level of the capsule. Darya Lang, still muttering to herself on the brink of consciousness, was left in her securing harness.

Graves placed Max Perry and Geni Carmel in seats at ninety degrees to each other and fixed them in position.

“Put extra bindings on those harnesses,” he said to Rebka. “Make sure you don’t touch Perry’s injured arms — but remember I don’t want either of them to be able to get loose. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Graves made one final trip to the lower level. When he reappeared he was carrying two spray hypodermics in his right hand.

“Darya Lang is waking up,” he said, “but let’s get this taken care of first. It won’t take long.” He injected Perry in the shoulder with one syringe and Geni Carmel with the other. “Now, we can begin.” He began to count aloud.

The wake-up shot given to Max Perry was full strength. Before Graves had reached ten, Perry sighed, rolled his head from side to side, and slowly opened his eyes. He stared around the capsule’s cabin with a dull and disinterested look, until his gaze found the still-unconscious Geni Carmel. Then he groaned and closed his eyes again.

“You are awake,” Graves said in a reproving tone. “So don’t you go falling asleep again. I have a problem, and I need your help.”

Perry shook his head, and his eyes remained shut.

“We’ll be back on Opal in a few hours,” Graves went on. “And life will start to return to normal. But I have the responsibility for the rehabilitation of Geni Carmel. Now, there must be formal hearings, back on Shasta and on Miranda, but that cannot be allowed to interfere with the rehab program. It has to begin at once. And the death of Elena makes the program very difficult. I feel it would be disastrous to let Geni go back to Shasta, with all its memories of her twin sister, until she is already on the road to recovery. On the other hand I myself must return to Shasta, and then go on to Miranda for the formal genocide hearing.”

He paused. Perry still had not opened his eyes.

Graves leaned close and lowered his voice. “So that leaves me with two questions to answer. Where should the rehabilitation of Geni Carmel begin? And who should oversee the rehab process, if I will not be around?

“That is where I need your help, Commander. I have decided that Geni’s rehab program should begin on Opal. And I propose to make you her guardian while it is proceeding.”

At last Graves had broken through. Perry jerked bolt upright in the restraining harness. His bloodshot eyes opened wide. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I thought I was clear enough.” Graves was smiling. “But let me say it again. Geni will remain on Opal for at least four more months. You will be responsible for her welfare while she is there.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I’m afraid you’re wrong. Ask Captain Rebka if you doubt me. In matters like this, a Council member has full authority to proceed with prompt rehabilitation. And anyone can be pressed into service. That includes you.”

Perry glared at Rebka, then back at Graves. “I won’t do it. I have my own work — a full-time job. And she needs a specialist.

I have no idea how to deal with her sort of problem.”

“You can certainly learn.” Graves nodded at the other chair, where Geni was slowly waking in response to her weaker injection. “She’s starting to listen now. As a first move, you can tell her about Opal. Remember, Commander, she has never been there. It’s going to be her home for a while, and you know as much about it as anyone.”

“Wait a minute!” Perry was struggling at his harness and calling to Graves, who was already ushering Rebka out of the chamber. “We’re tied in. You can’t leave us like this! Look at her.”

Geni Carmel was making no effort to escape from her harness, but tears were trickling down her pale cheeks, and she was staring in horror or fascination at Perry’s mutilated hands and forearms.

“Sorry,” Graves said over his shoulder as he and Rebka started down toward the lower level of the capsule. “We’ll discuss this more later, but I can’t do it now. Captain Rebka and I have something very urgent to take care of on the lower deck. We’ll be back.”

Rebka waited until they were out of earshot before he spoke again to Graves. “Are you serious about any of that?”

“I am serious about all of it.”

“It won’t work. Geni Carmel is just a child. With Elena dead, she doesn’t even want to live. You know how close they were, so close they would die rather than be separated from each other. And Perry is a basket case himself — he’s in no shape to look after her.”

Julius Graves halted at the bottom of the stairway. He turned to look up at Hans Rebka, and for once his face was neither grinning nor grimacing. “Captain, when I need a man who can fly an overloaded, power-drained ship like the Summer Dreamboat off a planet that is falling apart underneath us, and take me into space, I’ll come to you anytime. You are very good at your job — your real job. Can’t you do me the favor of admitting that the same could be true of me? Isn’t it conceivable that I might do my job well?”

“But that isn’t your job.”

“Which only shows, Captain, how little you know of the duties of a Council member. Believe me, what I am doing will work. Or would you prefer a wager? I say that Max Perry and Geni Carmel have more chance of curing each other than you or I have of doing anything useful for either of them. As you said, she is just a child who needs help — but Perry is a man who desperately needs to give help. He’s been doing penance for seven years for his sin in allowing Amy to go with him to Quake during Summertide. Don’t you realize that burning his arms like that will help his mental condition? Now he has a chance to obtain total absolution. And your job on Opal is finished. You could leave today, and Perry would be fine.” Graves snapped his fingers and held out his hand to Rebka. “Would you like to bet on that? Name the amount.”

Rebka was saved from a reply by an angry voice ahead of them.

“I don’t know who to thank for this, and I’m not about to ask. But will someone get me the hell out of here! I have work to do.”

It was Darya Lang, fully conscious and struggling to free herself from the harness. She sounded nothing like the shy theoretical scientist who had first arrived on Opal, but her practical skills were still lacking. In her efforts to free herself she had managed to tangle the bindings, so that she was hanging upside down and could hardly move her arms.

“She’s all yours, Captain,” Graves said unexpectedly. “I’m going to find J’merlia and Kallik.” He popped down the hatchway at the side of the chamber and vanished from sight.

Rebka went across to Lang and studied the way the harness had been knotted. Less and less, he understood what was going on. With their escape from Quake, everyone except him should have been able to relax; instead, they all seemed to have new agendas of their own. Darya Lang sounded urgent and furious.

He reached out, tugged gently at one point of the harness and hard at another one. The result was gratifying. The bindings released completely to deposit Darya Lang lightly onto the chamber floor. He helped her to her feet and was rewarded with a surprising and embarrassed smile.

“Now why couldn’t I have done that?” She put pressure tentatively on her injured foot, shrugged, and pressed harder. “Last thing I remember, we’d just reached the Umbilical, and Graves and Kallik were fixing me up from the med kits. How long have I been asleep — and when do we reach Opal?”

“I don’t know how long you’ve been asleep, but it’s twenty-three hours since Summertide.” Rebka consulted his watch. “Make that closer to twenty-four. And we ought to touch down on Opal in a couple of hours. If we can touch down. They took a real beating there. There’s no rush, though. We have plenty of food and water on board. We can live in this capsule for weeks — even go back up the Umbilical to Midway Station if we have to, and stay there indefinitely.”

“No way.” Darya was shaking her head. “I can’t afford to wait. I’ve only been conscious for a few minutes, but I spent all of them cursing the man who filled me with drugs. We have to get down to the surface of Opal, and you have to get me a ship.”

“To go home? What’s the rush? Does anyone on Sentinel Gate know when you’ll be going back?”

“No one does.” She took Hans Rebka by the arm, leaning on him as they walked over to the capsule’s miniature galley. She sat down, taking her time as she poured herself a hot drink. Finally she turned to him. “But you have it wrong, Hans. I’m not going to Sentinel Gate. I’m going to Gargantua. And I’ll need help to get there.”

“I hope you’re not expecting it from me.” Rebka looked away, very conscious of her fingers on his biceps. “Look, I know that Nenda’s ship was dragged off there, and they were killed. But you don’t want to be killed, too. Gargantua is a gas-giant, a frozen world — we can’t live there; neither can the Cecropians.”

“I didn’t say that the ship and the sphere went right to Gargantua. I don’t think that. I believe the place I need to go is probably one of Gargantua’s moons. But I won’t know that until I get there.”

“Get there and do what? Recover a couple of corpses. Who cares what happens to their bodies? Atvar H’sial left you to die, and she and Nenda abandoned J’merlia and Kallik. Even if they were alive — and you say they’re not — they don’t deserve help.”

“I agree. And that’s not why I have to follow them.” Darya handed Rebka a cup. “Calm down, Hans. Drink that, and listen to me for a minute. I know that people from the Phemus Circle think everyone from the Alliance is a dreamy incompetent, just the way we think you’re all barbarian peasants who don’t bother to wash—”

“Huh!”

“But you and I have been around each other for a while now — long enough to know that those ideas are nonsense. You acknowledge that I’m at least a decent observer. I don’t make things up. So let me tell you what I saw, not what I think. Everyone else here may miss the point of this, but I trust you to draw the right conclusions.

“Remember now — listen first, then think, then react — not the other way round.” She moved closer to Rebka, positioning herself so that it was difficult for him to do anything other than listen to her.

“When we came up out of the clouds on Quake, you were too busy piloting the ship to look behind, and everyone else in the rear compartment was blinded by Mandel and Amaranth. So no one else saw what I saw: Quake opening, deep into the interior. And two objects coming out. One of them flew away, out of the plane of the galaxy. I lost sight of it in less than a second. You saw the other one. It took off toward Gargantua, and Louis Nenda’s ship was carried with it. That was significant, but it isn’t the important point! Everyone said that Quake was far too quiet for so close to Summertide. Sure, I know we thought it was violent, when we were down there. But it wasn’t. Max Perry kept saying it: Where’s all the energy going?

“Well, we know the answer to that now. It was being transformed and stored, so that when the right time came the whole interior of Quake could open up and eject those two bodies — spaceships, if you think they were that.

“I saw it happen, and I caught the sniff of an answer to something that had kept me baffled for months, long before I left Sentinel Gate:

“Why Dobelle?

“Why such a nothing place, I mean, for such an important event?

“The idea of visiting Dobelle occurred to me when I calculated the convergence time and place for influences spreading out from all the artifacts. There was a unique solution: Quake at Summertide. But when I proposed that, the Builder specialists in the Alliance laughed at me. They said, look, Darya, we accept that there is an artifact in the Dobelle system — the Umbilical. But it’s a minor piece of Builder technology. Something we understand; something that isn’t mysterious or big or complex. It makes no sense for the focus of all the Builder activities to be at such a second-class structure, in such a worthless and unimportant part of the Galaxy — I’m sorry, Hans, but I’m quoting, and that’s the way people in the Alliance regard the worlds of the Phemus Circle.”

Rebka shrugged. “Don’t apologize,” he said gruffly. “That’s the way a lot of us think about the Circle worlds, and we live here. Try a weekend on Teufel, sometime — if you can stand it.”

“Well, whatever they said about the Phemus Circle and the Umbilical, they couldn’t argue with the statistical analysis. In fact, they repeated it for themselves and found that everything did point to Dobelle, and to Quake at Summertide. They had to agree with me. The trouble was, I was forced to agree with them. Dobelle made no sense as a place for important action. I mean, I was the one who had written the Catalog description of the Umbilical — ‘one of the simplest and most comprehensible of all Builder artifacts’! People were parroting back my own words.

“So I was baffled when I arrived here. I was still baffled when you flew us up through the clouds, trying to get off Quake in one piece. I couldn’t make sense of Dobelle as the convergence point.

“But then I saw that pulsing light beam shine down from Gargantua and watched the whole of Quake opening up in front of me. And just before I passed out I realized that we had all been missing something obvious.

“All the references on the structure of the galaxy make the same comment, the Dobelle system is ‘one of the natural wonders of the local spiral arm.’ Isn’t it wonderful, the books say, how the interplay of the gravitational fields of Amaranth and Mandel and Gargantua has thrown Dobelle into such a finely balanced orbit — an orbit so placed that once every three hundred and fifty thousand years, all the players line up exactly for Summertide and the Grand Conjunction. Isn’t that just amazing?

“Well, it is amazing — if you believe it. But there’s another way to look at things. The Dobelle system doesn’t just contain an artifact, the Umbilical. The Dobelle system is an artifact! The whole thing.” She grabbed at Rebka’s arm again, caught up in her own vision. “Its whole orbit and geometry were created by the Builders, designed so that once every three hundred and fifty thousand years Mandel and Amaranth and Gargantua are so close to Quake that a special interaction can take place between them. Something inside Quake captures and uses those tidal energies.

“Before I came to Quake, I thought that the Builders themselves might be here — maybe even appear at this particular Summertide. But that’s wrong. The Grand Conjunction serves as a trigger for the departure of those spheres — ships, or whatever they are — from Dobelle. I don’t know where the first one went — out of the galaxy, from the look of it. But we have enough information to track the other one, the one that went toward Gargantua. And if we want to know more about the Builders, that’s where we have to go.

“And soon! Before whatever it is that happens out near Gargantua is over and done with, and we have to wait another three hundred and fifty thousand years for a second chance.”

Finally able to get a word in edgewise, Hans Rebka asked a question of his own. “Are you suggesting that Quake splits open, and something comes out of it at every Grand Conjunction?”

“I certainly am. That’s the purpose of the Grand Conjunction — it provides the timing trigger and the tidal energy needed to open up the interior of Quake. So when Quake opened—”

But it was Rebka’s turn to talk. “Darya, I’m no theorist. But you’re wrong. If you want proof of that, go and talk to Max Perry.”

“He wasn’t watching what happened when we left Quake.”

“Nor was I, particularly. Max and I had other things on our minds. But when I first arrived on Opal, I asked about the history of the doublet. The history of Opal was hard to determine, because it has no permanent land surface. But Perry showed me an analysis of the fossil record of Quake. People had studied it in the early years of colonizing Dobelle, because they needed to know if the surface of Quake was stable enough to live on through Summertide.

“It isn’t, for humans — we proved that pretty well for ourselves. But there has been native life on Quake for hundreds of millions of years, since long before the planet went into its present orbit. And any recent opening of the deep interior of Quake — like the one that you saw — would show clearly as an anomaly in the fossil record.”

He reached out for the display control and set it to show an image of the space above the capsule. Mandel and Amaranth were visible, still huge in the sky, but they were less bright. The knowledge that they were on the wane for another year was comforting. As the stellar partners dimmed, Gargantua shone brighter in the sky over to their right. But the giant planet was well past its own periastron, and the orange-brown disk was already smaller. No blinding beam of light shone forth from Gargantua, or from one of its satellites. Quake hung above the capsule, its surface dark and peaceful.

“You see, Darya, there’s no evidence in the whole fossil record of a deep disturbance of Quake, comparable with what you saw. Not three years ago, or three hundred, or three hundred and fifty thousand. The deep interior of Quake has been hidden from view, as far back as people can trace the history of its surface. And that’s at least five million years.”

He expected Darya to be crushed by his comments. She came back stronger than ever. “So this Grand Conjunction was special. That makes it more important to find out why. Hans, let me give you the bottom line. You can go back to your work on the Phemus Circle tomorrow. But I can’t go back to Sentinel Gate. Not yet. I have to go on and take a look at Gargantua. I didn’t spend my whole adult life studying the Builders and then come all this way just to stop when the trail gets hot. Maybe the Builders aren’t out near Gargantua—”

“I’m sure they’re not. People would have found them when they first explored the Mandel system.”

“But something is out there. The sphere that took Nenda’s ship wasn’t just leaving Quake. It was going somewhere. I have to find a ship of my own and hustle out there fast. Otherwise I may lose the trail completely.”

She was still gripping his arm, hard enough to hurt.

“Darya, you can’t dash off to Gargantua like that. Not on your own, or you’ll kill yourself for sure. The outer part of the Mandel system is cold and hostile. It isn’t an easy place, even for experienced explorers. As for you, coming from a nice, civilized world like Sentinel Gate…”

Hans Rebka paused. First she booby-trapped him and knocked him unconscious by accident. Then she took him to the waterfall cave, fussing over him and caring about him, in a way that no one had ever cared. And now she was booby-trapping him again. He had to be careful and not commit himself to anything.

“I don’t know how to find a ship,” he said. “It’s too much to ask the people on Opal — they have no resources to spare after Summertide. But I’ll scratch around and see what I can do.”

Darya Lang released his arm, but only because she had other things in mind. Her bear hug was interrupted by a cough from the stairway. Julius Graves had reappeared in the chamber. Close behind him came J’merlia and Kallik.

Graves gestured J’merlia forward. “Go on. Say it for yourself — it’s your speech.” He turned to Hans Rebka. “I told you they had trouble in mind. And I told them that this sort of thing was not my decision, though I do have an opinion.”

J’merlia hesitated, until he was given a hard nudge from one of Kallik’s spiky elbows, accompanied by a hiss that sounded like “S-s-s-spee-k.”

“Indeed I will. Honored Captain.” J’merlia was moving to debase himself before Rebka, until a warning growl from Graves stopped him. “Distinguished humans, the Hymenopt Kallik and I face a grave problem. We beg your help, even though we have done nothing to deserve it. We would not do so, if we could see any way to proceed without asking your assistance. Already we have been a burden to you. In fact, by our stupid actions on the planet Quake, we endangered the lives of every—”

This time both the growl and the nudge came from Julius Graves. “Get on with it!”

“Yes, indeed, honored Councilor.” J’merlia shrugged at Rebka with a near-human gesture of apology. “The point, distinguished Captain, is that the Hymenopt Kallik and my humble self believed when we left Quake that Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial had surely been killed, or had decided — as is their perfect right — that they did not choose to make use of our services anymore. Both possibilities were deeply disturbing to us, but we saw no alternative to accepting them. We would then be obliged to return to our homeworlds, and to seek new masters for our services. However, a few minutes ago, we heard that Masters Nenda and Atvar H’sial escaped from the surface of Quake.”

“True enough.” Rebka looked at Darya. “But Professor Lang saw what happened, and Nenda and Atvar H’sial were killed.”

“I know you think that. But Kallik points out that this may not be the case. She notes that if the ship were gravitationally accelerated in its departure, the beings inside would feel no forces on them — it would be exactly as though they remained in free-fall. Then they would have been carried away alive toward Gargantua, against their wishes, and may now be in need of assistance. And if this is the case, it is the clear duty of the Hymenopt Kallik and my humble self to pursue them. They are our owners. At the very least, we cannot leave the Mandel system until we are assured that they either do not want, or cannot make use of, our services. We therefore ask you, bearing all these facts in mind, and with due consideration of the possibility that — oof!”

J’merlia had received another nudge from Kallik, and the yellow tip of the Hymenopt’s poison sting appeared and touched one of J’merlia’s hind limbs. He flinched and hopped forward a step.

“Did you know, J’merlia,” Julius Graves said in a pleasant conversational tone, “that Professor Lang was for a time convinced that you were incapable of independent speech? Now she is probably regretting that she was wrong.”

“I am sorry, Councilor. I am accustomed to the translation of thoughts, not their creation. But in summary, the Hymenopt Kallik and I request that we be allowed to borrow a ship; and we request that we be allowed to follow Masters Nenda and Atvar H’sial to Gargantua, or to wherever their trail may lead.”

“No.” Rebka answered at once. “Definitely not. I reject your request. Opal is too busy digging out from Summertide to waste time looking around for starships.”

Kallik clucked and chirped urgently.

“But that will not be necessary,” J’merlia said. “As the Hymenopt Kallik points out, we do not need to descend to Opal. A starship is available — the Summer Dreamboat. It is at Midway Station, and it will be easy to return there and restore it to full power. We will find ample provisions on the station, and Kallik and I are sure we can fly the ship.”

“With one extra passenger,” Darya Lang said. “I’m going along, too.”

Rebka glared at her. “You’re injured. You’re too sick to travel.”

“I’m well enough. I’ll convalesce on the way to Gargantua. Are you telling me a burned foot would stop you from doing your job, if you were in my position?”

“But the Summer Dreamboat isn’t the property of the Dobelle system.” Hans Rebka avoided answering her question and tried another approach. “It’s not in my authority, or Max Perry’s, to grant you the use of that ship.”

“We agree.” J’merlia was nodding politely. “Permission would of course have to come from Geni Carmel, who is the owner.”

“And what makes you think she would grant it?”

Julius Graves coughed softly. “Well, as a matter of fact, Captain Rebka, I have already discussed that matter with poor Geni. She says she never wants to see or hear about that ship again. It is yours, for as long as you like to use it.”

Rebka stared at the other man. Why did everyone seem to assume that he would be going along?

“It’s still no, Councilor. So we can get a ship. That makes no difference.”

J’merlia bowed his head and groveled lower, while Kallik whistled in disappointment. It was Julius Graves who nodded and said quietly, “That is certainly your decision to make, Captain. But would you be willing to share with me the logic of your thinking?”

“Sure I will. Let me start with a question. You know Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial. Would you go to Gargantua to look for their bodies?”

Rebka’s own position was quite clear in his mind. The idea that you should try to find people who had tried to destroy you was all wrong — unless you were proposing to kill them yourself.

“Me, go to Gargantua?” Graves raised his eyebrows. “Certainly not. In the first place, it is imperative that I return to Miranda. My task here is complete. In addition, I regard Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda as dangerous criminals. If I went to Gargantua — which I do not propose to do, since I believe that they are dead — it would be only to arrest them.”

“Very good. I feel the same way. Now, Councilor.” Rebka pointed at Kallik. “Do you know how Louis Nenda controlled her? I’ll tell you. He used a whip and a leash. He said Kallik was his pet, but nobody should treat a pet like that. She wasn’t an equal to him, and she wasn’t a pet. She was a downtrodden and disposable slave. He was quite willing to leave her behind to die on Quake. Before Kallik came to Opal she understood very little of human speech, but only because he had deprived her of the opportunity to learn. And yet it was Kallik who performed all the calculations showing that something unique would occur at Summertide. She did that, you know, not Nenda. She’s a whole lot smarter than he is. Isn’t that true?”

“It is quite true.” Julius Graves had a little smile on his face. “Please continue.”

“And J’merlia was no better off. The way that he was treated when they arrived on Dobelle was an absolute disgrace. You’re the specialist in ethics, and I’m surprised that you didn’t notice it before anyone else. Atvar H’sial made J’merlia into a nonentity. Now he speaks freely—”

“That is one way to put it.”

“But when the Cecropian was around, J’merlia was afraid to say one word. He was totally passive. All he did was interpret her thoughts to us. He has a mind, but he was never allowed to use it. Let me ask you, Councilor, do you think that Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial did anything to deserve loyalty?”

“They did not.”

“And isn’t it totally wrong for rational, reasonable beings like J’merlia and Kallik to be treated in that way, with all their actions controlled by others?”

“It is more than wrong, Captain, it is intolerable. And I am delighted to see that you and I hold identical views.” Julius Graves turned to the waiting aliens. “Captain Rebka agrees. You are mature, rational beings, and the captain says that it would be totally wrong for you to be controlled by other people. So we cannot dictate your actions. If you wish to take a ship, and seek Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial, then that is your perfect right.”

“Now wait a minute.” Rebka saw the grin on the face of Julius Graves and heard a whistle of triumph from Kallik. “I didn’t say that!”

“You did, Hans.” Darya Lang was laughing at him, too. “I heard you, and so did Councilor Graves. He’s right. If it was wrong for Nenda and Atvar H’sial to control Kallik and J’merlia, it would be just as wrong for us to do it. In fact, it would be worse, because we would be doing it more consciously.”

Rebka looked around the group, from the mad and misty blue eyes of Julius Graves, to J’merlia and Kallik’s inscrutable faces, and finally to the knowing smile of Darya Lang.

He had argued and lost, on all fronts. And curiously, he did not mind. He was beginning to tingle with the curiosity he had felt when they were planning a descent into Paradox. There were sure to be problems ahead; but they would call for action, not the psychological manipulations that Graves found so easy and natural.

And what might they find at Gargantua? That was an open question. Atvar H’sial and Louis Nenda, dead or alive? The Builders themselves? Or mysteries beyond anything on Opal and Quake?

Hans Rebka sighed as the first whistle of atmosphere began along the smooth sides of the capsule. Touchdown was only a few minutes away. “All right, Councilor. We’ll drop you, Max, and Geni off on Opal. The rest of us will head back up the Umbilical to Midway Station and the Dreamboat. But what’s out there at Gargantua…”

“Is anybody’s guess,” Darya said. “Cheer up, Hans. It’s like Summertide, and a bit like life. If you knew just what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be worth taking the trip.”