The Spheres of Heaven

16: LINKING TO THE GEYSER SWIRL

The Hero’s Return was no longer a military ship, yet Chan Dalton assumed its affairs would run with at least a semblance of military precision.

He had been watching the clock. The time for leaving Ceres orbit was set for midnight. As soon as that departure took place, Deb Bisson would be unable to leave the ship. She would be forced to travel to the Link entry point, and from there to the Geyser Swirl.

He had checked that Deb was aboard and in prime living quarters, but to avoid meeting her he had moved hundreds of meters away, hiding far forward in an empty region once occupied by a major weapons system. As soon as the ship was heading out he planned to go aft and find her.

But midnight had come and gone, and the Hero’s Return floated in space as silent as a ghost ship. After ten frustrating minutes Chan started aft. Something had gone wrong, and he needed to find out what.

The first person he met was Elke Siry. She was heading forward, though he knew of nothing that lay in that direction. She would have moved past him had he not stood in her way.

He spread his arms wide to block the narrow passageway. “Do you know why departure has been delayed?”

She frowned at him, pale brows shadowing her icy blue eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“We were supposed to leave at midnight. It’s almost twelve-fifteen, and we haven’t moved. Why?”

Instead of answering his question, she ducked under his arm and eased past him in the corridor. “Come with me.”

Chan, baffled, followed. In seventy meters they were at the extreme forward end of the ship. Elke led him on, through a narrow round hatch into a bubble of transparent plastic.

“This is where I was going anyway,” she said. “It’s the bow observation port. There’s no better place to look at the stars, and see what’s ahead of the ship.”

She spoke as though her words provided some kind of explanation. Chan was about to voice his frustration when he followed her pointing finger.

“Ceres,” she said. The biggest of all the asteroids loomed large to the right of the Hero’s Return . It was sliding rapidly backward, as though its orbital motion took it in that direction. But its sunlit hemisphere was also to the rear. That implied Ceres was dropping directly toward the Sun.

Chan turned to Elke, and found her watching him with a superior expression. “No, Ceres isn’t moving sunward,” she said. “We’re moving away from the Sun. We’re heading for the Asteroid Belt’s closest Link entry point, three and a half million kilometers farther out. The drive was turned on precisely at midnight.”

“But I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Because the Hero’s Return was designed as a military ship. The engines can produce acceleration bursts of up to twenty-five gees. That would kill the crew if you didn’t do anything about it, so anywhere that the crew might be was equipped with inertia shedders. We’ll never reach those levels of acceleration, of course, but even two gees would be uncomfortable. General Korin thought we might as well get the benefit of the shedders.”

“I can’t hear the drive. Surely we ought to, even this far forward.”

“Do you know what engine noise signifies?” When Chan merely shrugged, she went on. “Engine noise — noise of any kind — is a warning flag for inefficiency . Noise doesn’t help the drive to work. It doesn’t provide useful information on engine status. It’s not something a designer aims to produce. Quite the opposite. In a mechanical system, noise and excess heat tell you that you are wasting energy. In a military ship it is worse than that. Noise and heat can also announce the ship’s presence to an enemy. Hence, the engines of this ship were made as efficient — and noise-free — as possible. If you do hear anything, it’s a sure sign that something is going wrong.”

Her manner was so loaded with condescension and cool contempt that the temptation to argue was almost irresistible. Was she looking for a fight? Or was this her normal way of dealing with mere mortals?

Just now, Chan did not have the time to find out. He had asked Danny Casement to say nothing until he, Chan, had the chance to talk to Deb Bisson. But silence became harder for Danny as time went on and other team members wondered why they had not yet seen the Bun on board.

“Thank you, Dr. Siry. I promise I’ll come back later and take a better look.” Chan managed a smile and hurried out of the observation chamber. At the hatch he turned to ask, “Do you know when we are scheduled for transition?”

“Of course.” Raised eyebrows, at so elementary a question. “Link entry will take place seven and a half hours from now.”

“Thank you.” After the first show of gratitude, the next one came easier. Chan resisted the urge to say more and began the long trip aft. The trouble with Elke Siry’s superiority complex was that it appeared to be justified. Chan had wondered after their last meeting if she might be some sort of ringer, planted on the team as a supposed scientist because of her relationship to General Korin. He had done a data download, and decided that if Elke were a plant the job had been done thoroughly. The records showed a full life story, from child prodigy in mathematics and music, to original discoveries in theoretical physics by the time she was seventeen. Now, at twenty-five, her list of important contributions spilled over into three digits.

What was so valuable a scientist doing on this high-risk expedition? Maybe Korin had talked her into it, but Chan doubted that. There were hints in the record not only of a formidable brain, but just as formidable a will. What Elke wanted, Elke got. She was here because she was interested in the Geyser Swirl, and the mystery of the new Link entry point.

Chan was coasting along the corridor that ran as a central axis for the full length of the Hero’s Return . It was the main artery for personnel movement back and forth along the ship, and in the vessel’s military past there must have been people bustling through the thoroughfare all the time. Today he heard nothing and saw no one. About the halfway point he came to the old fire control room that sat at the protected heart of the ship. It too was empty, and he passed it by. This was where the ship’s navigation system would take care of all actions on the way to Link entry, swapping flight data with stations on Ceres and the Jovian moons; only the final choice would require a human decision: enter the Link, or decline to do so? It occurred to Chan that perhaps this was the choice that humans were least qualified to make. He recognized in himself the tendency to say, we’ve come so far, we can’t possibly change our minds now. People following that philosophy died climbing mountains, they signed disastrous contracts, they flew into hurricanes, and they embarked on lifelong commitments to the wrong mates. Perhaps they headed to the stars for the same reason.

The width of the ship narrowed as he moved aft. It was down from a maximum of seventy meters in its central part to maybe forty. He was beyond the old captain’s quarters, beyond Dag Korin’s chosen suite, into the region which had in the old days been reserved for visiting VIPs. Korin himself had placed Chrissie Winger and Tarbush in suites there, and the other team members had asked to be close by. Team members. Let’s hope you could still call them that after his meeting with Deb Bisson.

He slowed down and examined the glowing numbers that identified each corridor. It was well past midnight, and unless Tully O’Toole was suffering bad withdrawal symptoms Deb should be alone. She would probably be asleep, and if he had to he would wake her. He had to get this over with as soon as possible, or he himself would never sleep.

This side branch. This door. Not locked — it was even slightly open.

He hesitated. On Europa he had entered Deb’s apartment without permission and she had almost broken his neck. If she had known who he was, she probably would have.

He was encouraged by a flicker of light from within. She was awake, and she was watching some sort of display. He gave a token knock, slid the door wide, and entered.

Deb was awake all right, dressed in a black skintight suit and black slippers and sitting quietly on her bed. Unfortunately she was not alone. It was not just Tully, suffering from night shivers. Chan did a quick head count. Danny — Tully — the Tarbush — and, on the other side of the bed, Chrissie. They were all absorbed in a display on the far wall, and no one had seen him enter. Chan glanced at the imaging volume, and stood staring.

It was the Geyser Swirl, in three dimensions and in more detail than he had ever seen it. Gas clouds, twisting like a rosy triple braid inside and outside a necklace of stars, orange and green and blue, showed how the Swirl had gotten its name. The image was striking enough, but it was the prerecorded voice accompanying the picture that really grabbed the attention.

“In the words of one of humankind, the Geyser Swirl is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma .” It was the flat, computer-generated tones of an Angel. “We are certain, beyond doubt, that a Link network point exists within the Geyser Swirl. We are equally confident that no member of the Stellar Group placed it there. At that point, knowledge becomes speculation. A test probe reported that it was entering the Link, but there was no standard return signal to report a successful transit, nor did the probe itself return.

“Meanwhile, contrary to the evidence of the probe, a recent remote survey indicates no evidence of a Link point’s existence within the Swirl. The survey did define the stellar types present in the Swirl, as follows: F-type stars predominate, and there are seven of them. There is one blue giant star, one A-type, one K-type cool giant, and one G-type dwarf of mass similar to Sol. Detailed spectra are available. Five of the stellar systems possess planetary retinues. However, of the twenty-three planets in these systems, none is able to support life of any form resembling a member of the Stellar Group. Nine are massive gas giants, five possess hydrogenous or methane atmospheres, while the remaining five lack volatiles and an atmosphere of any kind. Note that this distribution violates the widely accepted principle of homeostatic convergence, whereby worlds able to support life tend to a common limit of atmospheric pressure and composition, temperature, and humidity. In the Geyser Swirl, all surface temperatures lie in the lethal range… .”

Since entering, Chan had not moved or made a sound; but Deb Bisson possessed the heightened senses of a weapons master. Without warning she rolled off the bed and came to her feet poised ready to spring. Chan held his hands wide, to show that he was unarmed.

“Only me. I didn’t say anything, because you were all watching.” He nodded at the display. “Doesn’t look good for the teams that went there already, does it? No habitable planets. At least we’re forewarned.”

He tried to sound relaxed and casual. It didn’t work. The others glanced at him, then at once turned their eyes to the woman standing by the bed. Chrissie held out a restraining hand. Danny Casement said, “Easy, Deb, easy.” And then to Chan, “I’m sorry, but I told her. A few minutes ago. I had to, because we were on the way.”

Chan nodded, but he did not take his eyes away from Deb. “I understand. Don’t blame Danny for this, Deb. I asked him not to say anything until we left parking orbit.”

“I don’t blame Danny for anything.” She was still in the fighting posture that made the hair stand up on the back of Chan’s neck. “You think you’re smart, Chan Dalton, tricking me into being part of the team. But you don’t know a thing. I was going anyway, with or without the other team members.”

“I’m glad. This team wouldn’t be the same without you. And I’m very glad that when I came in you weren’t carrying weapons.”

“Oh, cut the crap. You just want to use me, the way you used me before. The way you use everybody. As for having no weapons, try this.”

She hardly moved, just the flick of her left index finger. Chan saw nothing, and for about five seconds he felt nothing. Then there was a curious sensation of something crawling up his chest.

He looked down and saw that a round white patch about five centimeters across had appeared in the middle of his long-sleeved shirt. While he watched, it spread rapidly. He realized that the white patch was part of his undershirt, and the outer garment was simply vanishing. The torso went, then the neck and finally the sleeves, creeping down his arms to his wrists until he was standing in a sleeveless white top. An odd smell of acetone filled his nostrils.

“I used a fabric version.” Deb’s face was stony. “I’ll give you thirty seconds to get out of my room. If you’re not gone by then, we’ll see how the skin version works.”

“Deb.” But he saw her eyes. “All right, I’m on my way. I’ll say it again, I’m glad you’re with us.”

He left, carefully closing the door after him. There was a long silence, broken surprisingly by Tully O’Toole. He had been staring, mouth open, first at Deb and then at Chan.

“Well, there’s a surprise.” He rubbed at his arm, with its line of purple dots. “Now we know why he always wore long sleeves. And where he got the words for me. He knows it can be done, you see.”

Deb glared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Chan told me that you can break the Paradox habit. He knew, because he did it. Didn’t you see his bare arms when your potion dissolved his shirt away?”

“Of course I did. We all did.”

“But I was nearer than you. I saw the marks. He’s a Paradox addict himself — or I should say, he used to be. The stigmata have faded to little white dots; but still they show, from long ago.”

“Long ago,” Danny Casement added. “Tully has it right. Not any more, though. Not for a long time. Chan’s over it.”

“ When?” Deb’s voice would cut glass.

“You mean, when was he on it? Oh, I’m not sure.”

“I know.” Tarboosh Hanson stirred from his cross-legged position on the floor. The head of Scruffy the ferret peered out from a gap between the fastenings of his shirt. “I was there when it happened. It was right after the beginning of the quarantine when Chan came by Lunar Farside. He had found out that we wouldn’t be allowed to go to the stars and he was in despair. He said he had let everybody down, and he couldn’t stand that. He swore he was going to do something about it. You must know all this, Deb. He was with you on Vesta right before he came to Lunar Farside.”

“He was. But the two of us had just had a big fight. He never said anything like that to me when he left.”

“The Tarbush is right, though.” Danny Casement stood up. “Chan was feeling so low — I didn’t know about your argument, so I assumed it was about the quarantine — that I wondered if he’d ever come back to normal. And I know what happened next, though I didn’t hear it until a long time afterwards. Chan left Lunar Farside and went down to Earth. He was in contact with people there who said they had worked with aliens, and he thought he might be able to make a special deal. Isn’t that right, Tarb?”

“It is. He had some tricky plan worked out, something involving Pipe-Rillas operating in the basement warrens that could made an end run around the quarantine. But somebody was trickier than he was. A pusher slipped him a dose of Paradox during dinner, and that was it. You know what they say, one shot and you’re gone.”

Deb Bisson sat down suddenly on the bed. “I thought it had to be injected.”

“For maximum effect, it does. Regulars always take it that way. But most people get hooked orally, the way Chan did.”

“The way I did,” said Tully. He had closed his eyes. “Oh, yes. That’s the way it’s done. One shot in your cup, and you never come up. That would still be true for me if you and Chan hadn’t taken me from Europa.”

“What happened after that?”

At Deb’s question the others looked at each other.

“To Chan?” Danny Casement said at last. “He never came back. You can buy Paradox most places now, but right after the quarantine all the suppliers were down on Earth. So he didn’t leave.”

“He couldn’t leave.” Tully sat rocking to and fro, his eyes still closed and his arms folded across his chest. “You have no idea how good you feel when it hits, or how frightened you get when you don’t know where the next shot is coming from. You want to follow your supplier twenty-four hours a day, just to make sure. Get a shot, you’re red hot; miss a hit, you’re in the pit.”

“Stay here as long as you like and help yourselves to anything you want.” Deb was suddenly on her feet again. “I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going?” Chrissie took her by the arm.

“To talk to Chan.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should I come with you?”

“ No!” Deb shook herself free and was out of the door before anyone could move.

“Better go after her,” Danny said. “When she finds him she’ll kill him.”

“No.” Chrissie spoke firmly. “You stay here. Don’t you people understand anything ? If she does kill him, it’ll only be because he deserves it.”

She settled back down on the bed and stared at the display. The Geyser Swirl was still pictured, and the voice of the Angel droned on: “Mean estimated survival time for a suited individual on the surface of the planet Swirl Kappa Three, sixteen minutes. On Swirl Kappa Four, four minutes. On Swirl Kappa Five, nineteen minutes …”

“Oh, shut up,” Danny said. “Tarb? Tully? Should we follow Deb?”

“I’ll go with Chrissie’s judgment. We’ll be at the Link in a few more hours. And then, if it works, we’ll be there .” Tarbush Hanson nodded gloomily at the display of the Swirl. “Relax, Danny, and have a drink. Get me one, too, while you’re at it. It may be our last ever.”

Deb had not been totally honest. She did know where Chan was — or at least, she knew where his rooms were, thirty meters along the corridor from hers.

Only he was not there. Glancing around — if he could enter private rooms without knocking, so could she — Deb found no sign that he had ever been inside. The bed had not been touched and a travel case sat unopened in the middle of the floor.

Where was he? The only thing she knew for certain was that he must be somewhere on board. She stood still long enough to slow her pulse to an even fifty beats a minute, then set out on a careful and deliberate search.

After half an hour she had found no trace of Chan, but she had gained an idea of just how much space there was inside an eighty-thousand-ton warship. The interior volume was close to a million cubic meters, divided into thousands of rooms and chambers interconnected through a maze of tunnels and corridors. At the rate she was going, long before she located Chan the Hero’s Return would have reached the Link entry point and made its transition.

She needed help. That was not going to be easy to find, in a ship where the service robots were too dumb to answer even the simplest question.

Deb headed for the main control room. Surely there, if anywhere, she would find other people.

Make that person rather than people , and she would be right. The control room of the Hero’s Return had originally also been the fire control zone. Row after row of weapons terminals, all unoccupied, formed a three-dimensional matrix. At the far end of the great cylindrical chamber, lolling at ease on a couch, Deb saw a solitary blonde.

The woman, lanky and starvation-thin, turned at Deb’s approach and said, “If you’re looking for Dag Korin, he’s taking a nap. He said he’d be here when the time came to make the Link transition.” She glanced at one of the displays. “That’s less than five hours from now. I hope he wakes up in time.”

“I don’t want General Korin. I’m seeking Chan Dalton.”

Deb expected a casual “sorry” or “never heard of him.” But the woman nodded.

“I don’t know where Dalton is now. But I know where he was , half an hour ago.”

“Where?”

“Forward. I told him, the best place to see what’s ahead of the ship is the bow observation port. When he left there he said he’d be back later.”

“Thank you.” Deb was already on the way.

“All the way forward,” the skinny woman called after her. “Follow the central corridor as far as you can go.”

Which, as Deb soon found, was very far indeed. She seemed to race for miles before the corridor ahead ended in a small ring hatch. It was open, and she dived through headfirst and emerged into a bubble-like observation chamber.

Chan was there, sitting in a swivel seat and staring out at the stars. She had made no plans as to what to do when she found him. She grabbed the back of his chair to slow herself and blurted, “You were a Paradox addict.”

He turned slowly and said in a sleepwalker’s voice, “Yes. I was a Paradox addict.”

“Down on Earth.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.” He roused himself. “No, I guess that won’t do as an answer. From my first hit to my last, it was three years, five months and fourteen days. I didn’t know any of that at the time, of course. All the days blended into one.”

“How were you able to stop?”

“The hardest way. I needed money. An addict will do anything to pay for the next shot. One day I robbed the wrong person. He was chief enforcer for the Duke of Bosny. Next thing I knew I was in a labor camp in the Gallimaufries where the drug of preference was Velocil. The guards ran the trade in it, but Paradox and Velocil clash. Take both and you die.”

“What did you do?”

“I died. Or felt like I did. The guards knew I was hooked on Paradox, so they wouldn’t give me Velocil. I guess I ought to have been grateful to them, but I wasn’t. I screamed and howled and begged and prayed. No good. Four years later I was alive, out of the camp, and free of the habit. But you know what? In my dreams, I’m a Paradox addict still.”

It wasn’t the passion in his voice that made Deb shiver. It was the total lack of it.

“Out of the labor camp,” he went on, “and out of a job, too. Who would want anything to do with a man with a Paradox record?”

“Why didn’t you come to—” She checked herself. “What did you do?”

“I went to the man who caught me and put me in the camp. I told him, look, if it wasn’t for you I’d be dead now. It’s your fault that I’m alive, so you owe me a job. He said I had a hell of a nerve. But he seemed amused. He put me on his own staff and I became an enforcer for the Duke of Bosny. I was a good one, too. I knew every trick in the book, and a lot that weren’t there. I’d used them all to support my own habit.”

Deb had sunk to her knees at the side of the chair. “After you got out. Why didn’t you contact me?”

“It had been nearly eight years. Eight years going on forever. Too long.” Chan turned away to stare at the cold stars. Far ahead the rainbow beacon of the Link entry point was visible as a bright point, warning space vehicles to stay away. At last he said, “I did check with a couple of the old team. They told me you were living with someone else. That finished it. I had nothing to offer, and it wouldn’t be fair to contact you. Anyway, it would have made no difference.”

“ Wrong!It would have made a difference to me .”

The feeling that swept through Deb was like nothing she had known in her whole life, a bloodred rage that twisted and tore at her insides. She raised her hand. One blow would break his neck.

He did not see the movement, because he was still staring at nothing. He could not possibly have seen her raised hand. But he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “You know, when I was asked to lead an expedition to the Geyser Swirl, I knew instantly that I would accept. But I didn’t know why. I told myself that it was the chance to do what we had all talked of doing, long ago. Since then I’ve had other thoughts. This mission is so dangerous it sounds like guaranteed suicide. Sane people don’t commit suicide. And only monsters talk their oldest friends into going along to die with them. Have I been building a team? Or have I been luring you and Danny and Chrissie and the others to share my fate?”

He sounded like a zombie, and his tone of utter hopelessness broke Deb. The blood seemed to drain out of her, leaving her weak and faint. She brought her raised hand down on the back of Chan’s head, not violently but gently, touching his hair. “How long before we reach Link entry?”

“About four and a half hours.”

“Then that’s when you’ll find out if you’re a monster. Are you going back to the control room?”

“I don’t think so. The Link transition is the job of the ship’s computer. It’s supposed to be close to omniscient, and close to infallible.”

“So why are we here? What can humans do that it can’t?”

“We can risk human lives. That’s Dag Korin’s job now; mine when we get through the link.”

“Mine too, then. I’ll wait here — if that’s all right with you?” She waited, but there was no word, no nod of acceptance. Finally she went on, “I can tell you one thing right now. No matter what happens when we go through the Link, you haven’t lured anybody here. Not Chrissie, not Tarb, not Danny, not anybody. Every member of the old team, they would rather be here than anywhere else in the universe.”

Still he said nothing.

She added, “And so would I.”

Link network transitions: every one the same, every one different.

Similarities:

* Before a transition can be initiated, coordinates must be provided. One hundred and sixty-eight decimal digits are needed, enough to specify origin and destination to within one meter anywhere in the universe. No exceptions are permitted.

* The matter density within the destination volume must be no greater than that of a thin gas; otherwise, Link transition will not be initiated. Link points on Earth’s surface come very close to that limit.

* Adequate (which is to say, enormous) power must be available at the originating Link point. Travel to the stars will never be cheap. The power for a single interstellar trip eats up the savings of a lifetime. When a large mass is involved, such as that of the Hero’s Return , no private groups can afford the expense. Such Link transitions are the prerogative of wealthy species governments.

Differences:

* Link entry positions are absolute, but Link entry velocities depend on mass. A small ship, such as the Mood Indigo , can enter a link with some latitude in velocity and emerge unscathed. A ship the size of the Hero’s Return must hit the right entry velocity to within millimeters a second.

* Velocity error converts kinetic energy to heat energy upon Link emergence. Miss the entry speed by a few kilometers a second, and your ship will emerge red hot.

* There is no uniformity in Link destinations, and no warning given of their properties. A traveller must learn of any dangers — high temperature, intense gravity field — ahead of time.

* Small fluctuations, believed to be amplified quantum effects, add a random element to the direction of travel on emergence. In the worst possible case, the one-in-a-million shot that no one likes to talk about, emergence never takes place at all. In any event, a ship had better be prepared to make sudden course changes.

That encourages one other permitted variation: the prayers of the crew about to undergo transition can be anything you like. The contribution of prayer to Link transitions is not established — but almost everyone does it.

Zero hour was approaching for the Hero’s Return . The entry point gaped open, a hole in the fabric of spacetime. In the final seconds before transition, every person on board fell silent. Men and women, young or old, believers or atheists, alone or together, outwardly nervous or outwardly confident, vanished into their private worlds.

The final second ticked away. Deb Bisson gripped Chan Dalton’s hand, hard enough to bruise. He felt the pain, and welcomed it.

Time ran out. The great bulk of the Hero’s Return , slowly, sluggishly, as if reluctantly, slid forward to enter the dark eye of the Link.