The Spheres of Heaven

19: THE HERO’S RETURN ARRIVES ON LIMBO

Chan Dalton knew within half a second that something had gone wrong. Subjective time inside a Link transition — the only time that had meaning there — was the single dizzying moment when your head turned inside out. After that you were back in the real world. In this case the real world was supposed to be the gauzy starlit splendor of the Geyser Swirl; that’s not what he was seeing. The forward observation chamber of the Hero’s Return revealed a murky green gloom, and hovering within its depths sat a gigantic alien spaceship.

The alien ship moved, jerking forward. Chan’s eyes refocused. Suddenly he was looking not at a distant behemoth but at a small fish-like creature, inches away from the transparent wall of the observation chamber. As Chan watched, the little animal darted away and disappeared.

Half a second in human terms was an eternity to the ship’s computer. While Chan was still peering after the vanished fish, the audio outlet in the observation chamber sounded an alert and continued with a message: WARNING. ANOMALOUS ENVIRONMENT. CURRENTLY CHANGING SENSOR OBSERVATION SUITE, RECALIBRATING INSTRUMENTS, TAKING READINGS. THIS SHIP IS ON EMERGENCY STATUS.

In the pause that followed, Deb Bisson gripped Chan’s hand harder than ever. “What’s happening? Where are we?”

All her previous Link experience had been within the solar system. She didn’t know just how unusual this one was. Chan tried to speak with a confidence that he didn’t feel. “We completed the transition. I assume that we’re somewhere in the Geyser Swirl. But we’re in a gravity field when we expected to be in free fall, and we’re under water when we thought we would emerge into open space. We won’t know more than that until the computer has taken and interpreted sensor readings.”

He was still staring outside. There was no light inside the observation chamber itself, but light shining out from other ports of the Hero’s Return illuminated the cloudy water for a few meters. The outside view was a uniform green, broken now and then by faint glints of silver.

Apparently the ship’s sensors had the same problem as Chan at visible wavelengths. A calm voice said, SWITCHING TO ULTRASONICS AND ULTRA-LONG FREQUENCY ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION AS PRIMARY SENSING MODES. PERFORMING PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF SHIP STATUS AND OF IMMEDIATE ENVIRONMENT.

And then, after a pause too brief for any human analysis, THE FOLLOWING STATUS REPORT IS RANKED ACCORDING TO PERCEIVED HUMAN SURVIVAL PRIORITIES.

ITEM ONE: THE SHIP’S HULL REMAINS INTACT, ALL INTERIOR SYSTEMS ARE OPERATING NORMALLY, AND THERE IS NO IMMEDIATE DANGER TO PERSONNEL OR EQUIPMENT.

ITEM TWO: THE SHIP’S EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT FROM PRE-TRANSITION ESTIMATES. THIS MAY LEAD TO LONG-TERM PROBLEMS.

ITEM THREE: THE SHIP FLOATS IN A CLEAR LIQUID OF DENSITY 1.156. THE LIQUID’S REFRACTIVE INDEX, DENSITY, CONDUCTIVITY, AND GROSS CHEMICAL PROPERTIES ARE CONSISTENT WITH THOSE OF DEUTERIUM OXIDE CONTAINING A SMALL FRACTION OF MINERAL SOLVENTS.

ITEM FOUR: THE SHIP SITS IN A GRAVITATIONAL FIELD OF 0.154 GEES. THIS IS TOO SMALL TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VALUE OF SURFACE GRAVITY ON ANY KNOWN HABITABLE PLANET POSSESSING A LIQUID WATER SEA. ALSO, THE PLANETARY RADIUS AS INFERRED FROM LOCAL HORIZON SENSING IS TOO LARGE TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE OBSERVED SURFACE GRAVITY. NO EXPLANATIONS ARE AVAILABLE FOR THESE ANOMALIES.

ITEM FIVE: THE SHIP’S ESTIMATED DEPTH BELOW THE WATER SURFACE IS 161 METERS. THE ESTIMATED WATER DEPTH BELOW THE SHIP IS 1.52 KILOMETERS. THE CURRENT RATE OF DESCENT IS 1.1 METERS A SECOND. WARNING . IF THE PRESENT RATE OF DESCENT WERE TO BE MAINTAINED, HULL STRESSES WOULD EXCEED TOLERABLE LEVELS IN 13.8 MINUTES. AUTOMATIC REMEDIAL ACTION WILL BE TAKEN IN 9.4 MINUTES UNLESS HUMAN OVERRIDE COMMANDS ARE PROVIDED.

“Remedial action?” Deb glanced at Chan.

“I don’t know. But the computer knows what it’s doing. It will keep us safe unless we tell it not to.” He stood up. “We’re getting just the summary over the address system. If we really want to know what’s going on we have to be in the control room. Come on, let’s go.”

Progress through the interior of the Hero’s Return was slow. Walkways and handholds had been designed for free fall or for uniform fore-to-aft acceleration. In its slow watery descent the ship was canted far away from the vertical. That tilt seemed to affect Deb Bisson very little. She floated from chamber to chamber without effort and with no wall contact other than an occasional foot or hand. Chan, lacking the balance and sense of body position that made Deb unbeatable in single combat, floundered along behind.

The ship’s computer continued to offer its summary from every audio outlet. ITEM SIX: THE SHIP’S OVERALL LOCATION WITH RESPECT TO KNOWN MARKER STARS IS UNKNOWN. THE ANALYSIS OF AMBIENT SUNLIGHT SUGGESTS A NATURAL STELLAR ORIGIN, BUT THE RECONSTRUCTED STELLAR SPECTRUM MATCHES NO KNOWN STAR AND NO POSSIBLE STAR TYPE. THIS DISCREPANCY HAS NO EXPLANATION.

Nopossible star type, Chan thought, struggling vainly to catch up with Deb. Not just lost, way lost. We’re near a star of a type that can’t exist.

She had turned in midair and was resting with her back against a bulkhead. “What does it mean?” She was not even out of breath. “I thought this ship’s computer knew everything. How can we be near a star with no stellar type?”

“I don’t know.” Chan was eager to reach the control room, but he could use the breather. “The Geyser Swirl is one big mess of stars and dust and gas. Maybe we’re close to a star whose light is being filtered through the rest of it.”

“But shouldn’t the computer know that, too?”

It should. Chan shrugged. They started out again as the steady voice came once more over the audio system: ITEM SEVEN: ULF RETURNS INDICATE THE PRESENCE OF THREE OTHER SHIPS WITHIN TEN KILOMETERS OF OUR PRESENT LOCATION. EACH ONE HAS PROVIDED AN ID RESPONSE TO OUR CODED SIGNAL. THE SHIPS ARE:

ONE, THE FINDER , WITH A REPORTED CREW OF ONE PIPE-RILLA AND AN UNSTATED NUMBER OF TINKER COMPONENTS. CAMERON’S DREAM WAS ITS LAST PORT OF CALL, IT ENTERED THE FOMALHAUT FOUR LINK BOUND FOR THE GEYSER SWIRL LINK ON 79/03/07 STANDARD DATE, AND IT HAS NOT BEEN HEARD FROM SINCE. ITS SLANT RANGE DISTANCE FROM OUR CURRENT POSITION IS THREE KILOMETERS, AZIMUTH IS 81 DEGREES, AND IT SITS STATIONARY ON THE SEABED AT A DEPTH OF 110 METERS.

TWO, THE MINISTER OF GRACE , WITH A REPORTED CREW OF ONE OR MORE ANGELS OF SELLORA. AMBROSIA WAS ITS LAST PORT OF CALL, IT ENTERED THE SKYRILLAN LINK BOUND FOR THE GEYSER SWIRL LINK ON 79/05/11 STANDARD DATE AND HAS NOT BEEN HEARD FROM SINCE. ITS SLANT RANGE DISTANCE FROM OUR CURRENT POSITION IS EIGHT KILOMETERS, AZIMUTH IS 151 DEGREES, AND IT SITS STATIONARY ON THE SEABED AT A DEPTH OF 52 METERS.

THREE, THE MOOD INDIGO , WITH A REPORTED CREW OF THREE HUMANS. THIS SHIP WAS LAST OBSERVED IN THE VICINITY OF THE VULCAN NEXUS ON OR ABOUT 79/08/02. THIS SHIP IS IN MOTION, AND ITS SLANT RANGE DISTANCE FROM OUR CURRENT POSITION IS SEVEN KILOMETERS, AZIMUTH 37 DEGREES. THIS SHIP’S CURRENT DEPTH IS 29 METERS.

“Nothing about the Mood Indigo being sent here.” Chan and Deb had reached the control room, but he paused on the threshold. “I wonder what idiot decided that the first expedition was so secret that the next ship going in couldn’t be told. The Hero’s Return computer is no different from the rest of us — it only knows what’s fed to it. What else didn’t they bother to mention?”

The control room of the Hero’s Return was in keeping with the ship’s size. In its heyday three dozen officers had occupied the banks of communications and fire control consoles. Now the weapons had been removed, but the array of desks remained. Just three of them were occupied. Tully O’Toole sat over in one corner, staring at the lanky figure of Elke Siry. Next to him the physicist was curled up in a too-small seat like a praying mantis, ignoring everything except a quartet of data displays in front of her. A lock of blond hair hung over her forehead and she was gnawing at her lower lip.

Dag Korin sat in front of the main control console, his head slumped forward on his chest. He had one gnarled forefinger poised over the button that opened the circuit for oral commands to the ship’s computer.

“Hey, Dalton!” He had seen Deb and Chan at the threshold. “Got a question for you. Your team is supposed to come up with bright ideas once we’re in the Geyser Swirl, but I’m damned if I know whether we’re there or some place else. Anyhow, I figure you should have a say in this. Did you hear what the computer said about remedial action to stop us sinking?”

“I heard it.” Chan came across to Korin, Deb Bisson following. “But I don’t know what the computer is proposing to do.”

“That display shows the plan.” The General nodded to one of the screens. “Reduce the ship’s mass so the average density of the ship becomes lower than the water density, and we start ascending. I like that — I just don’t like the way the computer’s proposing to lower the density. See the listing? A lot of our mass is in the external defensive shields. Every one of them would have to be dumped into the sea. Even with that it’s touch and go, but without the shields I’ll feel as naked as a soft-shell crab. Anyone who feels like taking a potshot at us can blow the Hero’s Return to pieces.”

“All the ships that the computer has located are Stellar Group members.”

“I know. And isn’t that bad news? You know the Angels, it will be more of their `Violence is never the only alternative’ line of bullshit.”

“But we know they won’t shoot at us.”

“So what? I learned a long time ago that it’s a bad habit to waste effort counting your friends. It’s your enemies you need to look out for. We don’t know who might be just over the horizon. Anyway, what do you think? Let the computer do what it wants and dump the shields, or override it?”

“What are our other options?”

“None that I can see.” Korin nodded his head toward Elke Siry. “Unless our resident genius over there can suggest a different answer. She looks like she’s got her teeth into something.”

Chan could see it, too. Elke Siry’s face glowed with excitement. She was spitting out oral commands to the terminal in front of her, while at the same time hammering out with her hands a series of requests and instructions to the ship’s computer.

“Elke!” Dag Korin called across to her. “You have all the status reports. Do you see any alternative to allowing the ship’s external shields to be released?”

Elke Siry raised her head. The show of teeth was not a smile but a vicious snarl. “You expect me to worry about shields, when I have this to analyze?” She waved a thin hand to take in the displays. “Don’t you realize what we have here? Do what you like with the damned shields, it’s of no interest to me — and stop interrupting my work.”

The General glared. He said loudly to Chan, “You’d never know I was her legal guardian for five years, would you? But it’s pointless trying to talk to her when she has that look on her face.” He placed a finger on the button in front of him.

“You were the one who insisted on bringing her,” Chan said.

“Because she is a genius. Every army and every navy needs one — and no more than one. Most generals and admirals think it’s them, but usually it isn’t. We’ll find out what Elke’s so excited about when she’s finished her analysis.” Korin finally pressed the button. “Computer, d’you hear me? This is Dag Korin speaking.”

AUTHORITY RECOGNIZED.

“Good. And don’t play the idiot with me this time. Go ahead, dump the shields and take us up to the surface.”

OBJECTION TO THE LATTER COMMAND. THE SONAR REPORTS A ROUGH SEA STATE WITH SURFACE WAVES OF TWENTY METERS AND MORE.

“You mean after all that hassle we can’t go up?”

WE SHOULD NOT GO ALL THE WAY TO THE SURFACE. WHILE THE ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES REMAIN AT SUCH A HIGH LEVEL, THE SAFEST PLACE FOR THE SHIP IS THIRTY OR MORE METERS BELOW THE SURFACE. THE OFFSHORE SHELF SHOULD BE SAFE. THAT IS WHERE TWO OF THE OTHER STELLAR GROUP SHIPS ARE ALREADY WAITING OUT THE STORM. IT IS ASSUMED THAT YOU WILL WISH TO ESTABLISH CONTACT WITH THEM.

“Two ships? You said three. What about the other one?”

THE MOOD INDIGO IS PROCEEDING TOWARD A LAND MASS NINE KILOMETERS DISTANT FROM US. SUCH AN ACTION IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THIS SHIP FOR TWO REASONS. FIRST, THE HERO’S RETURN IS MUCH LARGER THAN THE MOOD INDIGO, AND OUR GREATER DRAFT MEANS THAT WE CANNOT GO WHERE A SMALLER SHIP IS ABLE TO PROCEED. SECOND, THE COURSE FOLLOWED BY THE MOOD INDIGO PRESENTS SUBSTANTIAL RISK. OUR BEST MODEL ESTIMATES THE PROBABILITY OF THAT SHIP’S DESTRUCTION BY NATURAL FORCES AT THE LAND-SEA INTERFACE AS NO LESS THAN 0.40. WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO COMMUNICATE THIS CONCLUSION TO THEM, SO FAR WITHOUT SUCCESS.

“All right, all right. I didn’t ask for a lecture.” Dag Korin raised bushy eyebrows at Chan. “Chatty devil, this one — always has been. So what do you think? Land on the off-shore shelf?”

“If we can. But how do we maneuver to get us there? We can’t use our drive under water.”

“We weren’t told that was a problem, so I assume know-it-all has it figured out.” Korin again pressed the button to transmit an oral command. “Computer? Go ahead, dump the goddamn shields.”

THAT ACTION HAS ALREADY BEEN INITIATED FOLLOWING YOUR EARLIER APPROVAL.

“Then take us to where the Stellar Group ships are sitting out the storm. Put us down near one of them — not the Angel ship, though. I can’t stand the sight of those bloody upstart artichokes.”

THE WATER IS TOO SHALLOW FOR THIS SHIP AT THE LOCATION OF THE PIPE-RILLA VESSEL. WE CANNOT APPROACH CLOSER THAN NINE HUNDRED METERS TO THE SHORE. HOWEVER, BEING IN WATER ALSO HAS ADVANTAGES SINCE THE SHIP IS PROTECTED FROM WAVE ACTION. WHEN THE STORM SUBSIDES YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH A TWO-PERSON AIR-BREATHING PINNACE FROM OUR UPPER LEVEL. WARNING: THE EXTENT OF POSSIBLE DAMAGE TO THE PINNACE IS UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME.

“Fine. Go ahead and set us down in the best place you can find. I want to launch a couple of unmanned orbiters, too, as soon as possible.” The General turned back to Chan. “That computer talks too much, but in this case it has the right idea. Always keep your head down until you know the situation. Even if we had weapons and our shields in place we’d still be vulnerable. We’re like a shark on land or a tiger under water — misplaced. Staying alive is about the best we can do. I need an airborne overview.”

Chan nodded. “If the pinnace hasn’t been too damaged we’ll have plenty of volunteers to fly it as soon as the storm lets up. Who do you think, Deb?”

They had hardly spoken during the hours while they waited for the Link transition, but in those hours their relationship had changed. It seemed natural now to ask her for advice and assistance.

She thought for a few moments. “Chrissie and Tarbush? They’ve been working together for years, and they’re the best observers we have.”

“That was my thought, too. We should find them aft. All right, General?”

“Hell, they’re your people, Dalton. Do what you need to do. I’ve got my hands full trying to make sense of this garbage. Computer, what sort of a halfassed picture do you call that ?” Korin gestured at the main screen, which showed a bizarre undersea terrain etched in black and silver.

WHAT YOU ARE SEEING IS AN IMAGE CONSTRUCTED USING THE ULTRASOUND RETURN SIGNAL. THERE IS NO WAY TO GENERATE TRUE COLOR FROM SINGLE-FREQUENCY SOUND DATA. WOULD YOU LIKE FALSE COLOR TO BE ASSIGNED ON THE BASIS OF IMAGE LOCAL TEXTURE MEASURES?

“How the devil do I know, until I’ve seen it? Give me another minute to look at this one.”

As Deb and Chan left the room, the view on the big screen began to change. The ship was beginning a slow rotation, heading east and then north toward the coastal shelf. Like a great crippled whale, the Hero’s Return sought a haven on the seabed.

Chan took a final look back. Dag Korin was scowling again, hunched over his console and arguing with the ship’s computer. Tully O’Toole stared open-mouthed at Elke Siry, in open admiration.

And Elke?

She alone of the people in the room — probably of all the people on the Hero’s Return — seemed happy , her attention fixed on the torrent of data flowing across the screens. Her expression remained one of blissful exaltation.

Chan had been exactly right in his assessment of the ship’s computer. It controlled almost every aspect of the Hero’s Return operations, and it could do almost anything — except knowingly risk the lives of humans.

The shedding of the massive defensive shields was slow and systematic, accompanied at every step by calculations of the ship’s new density distribution, center of mass, and barycenter. The curve toward shallower water was gentle, an arc many kilometers across, imposing minimal stresses on the ship’s structure and auxiliary thrustors. Storm conditions at the surface were evaluated constantly, together with more analyses of the blue sun that now appeared occasionally through breaks in the cloud cover.

The humans on board knew nothing about any of this, nor did they need to. Life support and life protection involves a million functions, most of them as essential, automatic and unnoticed as the flow of blood through a crew member’s arteries and veins.

The computer was also able to obtain readings from the air-breathing pinnace fixed to the outer hull. The little craft, as feared, had been fatally damaged in shedding the defensive shields, and would no longer fly. The computer began its countdown for the other requested action. Two unmanned orbiters were to be launched from the depths. Their mission: to monitor the surface and sky of the planet and return their findings to the ship. The General had placed no restriction on the timing of the action, except to say it should be done as soon as the storm eased sufficiently. He knew that the computer was better able than any human on board to decide appropriate values for “sufficiently.”

Three hours later, the Hero’s Return sprawled its cumbersome mass along the seabed, a little less than six hundred meters away from the Finder . The storm still raged, but on the seabed all was peaceful. Darkness was approaching, above and in the depths. The computer again checked the status of all onboard systems, then it switched to rest-period protocols.

The recreation center on the Hero’s Return had been designed on a large scale. Three hundred crew members could play there, with robot opponents if no humans were available, at everything from chess to table tennis to sumo wrestling.

The group around Chan Dalton had tucked itself away into one dimly lit corner. Business was over. The situation on the ship had been reviewed and reviewed again. Only one thing seemed clear: weather permitting, Chrissie Winger and Tarbush Hanson — to their delight and Danny Casement’s mild irritation — would take an air-breathing pinnace up and out at first light.

Danny’s half-hearted “I didn’t come all this way just to sit around” had been countered by Deb Bisson’s “All which way? We don’t know where we are yet — and we won’t, until someone can take a look at the star patterns.”

“It’s only a two-person craft, Danny,” Chrissie added. “Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of work for everyone once we get out of this steel can. We have a whole planet to explore. When we started out we didn’t know if humans could live anyplace in the Geyser Swirl.”

“The pinnace could hold three. They often do.”

Danny was standing up. Chrissie went across to him, looped one arm in his and the other in Tarbush Hanson’s, and led them toward the door. “Say it all again, Danny. Maybe you can talk the Tarb and me into your coming with us.”

When they were outside the recreation hall Danny Casement stopped and stared at Chrissie with suspicion. “Why do you want to talk out here? Chan and Deb need to hear anything we agree to. Do you really mean there’s a chance I can convince you?”

“Not in a million years. Sorry, Danny, but it will be just the Tarb and me in the pinnace.” Chrissie took his hand in hers. “You’re a big success with women, I know that. But sometimes I wonder how, because you can be as dense as Pipe-Rilla shielding.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t. Don’t feel too bad, though, because Tarb is no better.” Chrissie nodded her head toward the closed door of the recreation hall. “Back there, couldn’t you tell that Chan and Deb were just itching for us to leave? Couldn’t you see that things have changed between them?”

“She wasn’t trying to kill him, if that’s what you mean. But look, we had to discuss where we are and what comes next.”

“We finished with all that half an hour ago. Those two want to talk — but not about here and now. And not with us.”

Danny Casement and Tarbush Hanson stared at each other. Tarbush, who had said not a word for the past three hours, slowly nodded and spoke. “I think she’s right, man. They got serious catching up to do. Twenty years of it.”

Danny walked across the room to one of the observation ports that studded the side of the Hero’s Return . He stared out. The sea lacked the abyssal black of ocean depths, and an eye adjusted to the darkness could make out an occasional glint of phosphorescence.

“Twenty years,” he said at last. “I guess it really has been that long. It is going to take a while.”

Somewhere above them, far along the ship’s side, a glare of orange fire threw the sea and the seabed into sharp relief. The three at the port saw startled sea-creatures darting away and felt the plates of the Hero’s Return shudder beneath their feet. They heard a roar like a wounded sea-monster. In seconds the fiery light came from above, rapidly dimming. Within half a minute the darkness returned.

“Rocket launch,” Danny said into a new and uneasy silence. “One of the orbitals is on the way. It must be getting calmer up on the surface.” He turned away from the port. “You’re right, Tarb, catching up is going to take a while. Let’s hope they — and we — live long enough to see it happen.”