They spent about ten minutes total in Switzer’s office—just long enough for Bandicut to tell Switzer that he had come in from his survey run because the cast was driving him crazy. Switzer peered at him suspiciously, but instructed one of the techs to remove the cast. He probably figured that Bandicut was sandbagging on the job. Bandicut couldn’t have cared less; he just wanted to leave the cast behind.
As for Charlie’s “proposal”—Bandicut refused to discuss it further right now. There was, he said, much to consider; and he needed to sleep on it and let his subconscious work on it. He also badly wanted to see Julie. And to the quarx’s protest, he replied that if Charlie didn’t want to take this on his terms, then he, Charlie, was free to leave anytime he wished.
Charlie was quiet after that.
Returning to the dorm to shower, Bandicut found a message waiting for him on his bunk terminal. It was from Julie, on audio. He couldn’t tell if she was being apologetic or enticing. “Sorry that these discoveries keep wrecking our dates, but if you want to come by later, I may be able to show you something. And . . . if you’re not too fed up, maybe I can get you to have dinner with me again. I promise not to take any calls tonight. Well . . . unless . . . oh, you know what I mean. Bye.” She made a sound of blowing a kiss.
He stared at the comm, imagining the possibilities. He knew, but did not wish to admit to himself, that he had to devote serious conscious thought to Charlie’s proposal. He was frozen with conflicting urges, and he sensed Charlie quivering with tension, a coiled spring waiting for action. Charlie was asking him to take a terrifying leap of faith. But what if the quarx was right, which he almost certainly was? Probably, it was crazy even to be thinking about Julie tonight. But wasn’t he entitled to some life before he threw it all away?
/// Do you . . . ///
/What?/ he snapped.
/// . . . intend, well . . . ///
/None of your damned business. Okay?/
The quarx sighed, and didn’t ask further. Bandicut showered and changed in a blur, and got out of the dorm area just before the work shifts ended and everyone started coming back in. He went straight down to the exoarch office. He opened the door and met a short, stocky man who looked at him curiously. When he asked for Julie, the man hooked a thumb toward the back of the room.
Julie was poring over a computer display, which he recognized as radarsat scans of the Triton surface from low orbit. She looked up and beamed at him. “See this?” She tapped the screen where a dark series of contour lines converged in a small area. “This is it. It’s a total anomaly in the scan. It represents a reflection pattern completely different from anything we’ve ever seen—anywhere. All we know for sure is that it’s very compact and very high density.”
“Huh.” Bandicut felt his temples start to throb with guilt as he swallowed a dozen possible replies. “That’s . . . interesting.”
“Interesting?” Her eyes were alight like a child’s on Christmas morning. “You bet it’s interesting. It’s especially interesting that it has just appeared, at a time when our activity is increasing in a nearby area. You want interesting? I think we really might have us a genuine—” She hesitated, suddenly looking abashed.
“What?” he asked, huskily.
“Well—we don’t know yet, of course.” Her eyes glinted as she sat back in her chair, finger to her cheek. “But we’re going to find out, real soon.”
“You are?” he croaked.
“See this?” She pointed to the area immediately surrounding the anomaly. “This is an underground cavern which apparently contains the object, or mass. It’s not that deep, and we think there’s a chance we could cut through and climb down in to have a look.”
“Sounds—exciting,” Bandicut stammered. “Of course, you never know about that sort of thing until you actually go look.” He wondered why he was so dismayed. If someone had to find the translator, better it should be exoarch than the miners. At least they’d look at it before they tried to melt it down.
/// John—we dare not let
anyone get to that translator—
not until we’re on our way. ///
Bandicut hmph’d, though his heart was thumping anxiously. He hadn’t said anything to the quarx about having made a decision to go.
“Well, we’ll find out tomorrow. We have permission to go out and take surface readings.” Julie suddenly made a face, corralling her enthusiasm. “But don’t tell anyone,” she said hastily. “I’m not even supposed to tell you. But I had an idea.” She looked at him conspiratorially. “Do you suppose you could arrange to be the one to go out and do the survey? Georgia says you’re more familiar with that area than anyone else.”
He bit his lip, at a loss for words.
/// It’s an idea.
You might be able to sabotage the effort
for a day. ///
/I thought you said you wanted to get going./
/// Well . . . that’s true, too. ///
Bandicut cleared his throat, realizing that Julie was waiting for an answer. If he was still on Triton tomorrow, he would be going out on survey, anyway. “I could try,” he said finally.
“Good! I see you have your cast off. Are you okay now?”
“Ah—yes!” he croaked. “Yes—I’m doing great.”
She peered at him intently, with those penetrating blue eyes. “John? Are you sure you’re all right? You seem—I don’t know—upset. Or distracted.”
He shook his head, but could not wipe the insipid busy-talking-to-an-alien grin from his face. “I just know,” he managed, “that you invited me to dinner. And that it’s about time we stopped talking about . . . alien artifacts . . . and started talking about . . . well, whatever.” He blushed, but felt better when he saw an answering glimmer in her eye.
“Okay,” she said. “Just let me put in a good word for you for tomorrow. If you’d really like to.”
“Sure,” he whispered. “I’d like that. A lot.” He tried not to wince at the insincerity in his own voice.