There had been signs that parts of this base had been evacuated in a more orderly fashion than Phobos, which appeared to have been "evacuated" mostly in the sense of "suddenly exposed to vacuum." While the areas where the house-sized holes had been punched through had clearly lost their atmosphere instantly, other areas had apparently maintained pressure. But Ceres Base hadn't been cleaned out, like the Mars Base. It appeared that the conjectures were correct: whoever ran the Mars installation had won, and their opponents kicked out with barely the clothes on their backs or whatever they could drag out in a few minutes. Why the winners hadn't felt it worthwhile to rebuild or loot these bases, however, remained a mystery.
The tubes in front of Helen were another mystery. They were behind walls of glass, or a glassy substance, which had gone rather milkily translucent over the years; the tubes seemed to be made of the same stuff, so that all they could make out were tantalizing hints of shapes inside the tubes. Helen shivered as she suddenly remembered an old sci-fi movie with similar tubes.
A.J. apparently thought the same way. "If anything down there looks like an egg, I'm sending a Locust in to stomp it."
"Shut up, A.J.," Helen said, repeating one of the constant phrases of the universe. She turned slowly in place, surveying the whole huge room. "See all that? This is a major control center, or something. There must be a dozen of those computer stations with the ramps that we found in Phobos control. And a bunch of noteplaques."
"It's a lab," Larry said firmly. "Chem or bio, maybe. Bio, if those fuzzy shapes in the tubes were living. Can we get a better look at them?"
"One thing at a time." A.J. said. He was sitting comfortably in Nobel, watching through telemetry, as he had another task to help with. "Bruce and Jackie are coming up on the reactor placement. Helen, Jake, Larry, you guys keep looking around, but follow protocols, okay? I have to pay attention to this."
"Understood, A.J.," she said. The idea of Bruce and Jackie having an accident at this point wasn't a pleasant one. The nuclear reactor, a twenty-megawatt design, massed seventy tons and was derived from a combination of nuclear technologies, including the "town-sized" reactors manufactured by Toshiba in the early part of the century, and the thorium breeder design used in the Nike-style reactors. It would provide power for almost thirty years before needing a core replacement, and the core itself could be sent back for reprocessing to recover fuel and cleanse the reactor of waste products. Ares and the IRI had a total of five of these reactors on Mars, one on Phobos Station, and one in Phobos Base. They were as safe and reliable as any such design could be, but anything could be broken by accident . . . and this was to be their main power source for Ceres Base.
She continued to cautiously circle the oval room with its curved window—containment area, perhaps? Larry was carefully imaging the noteplaques as they lay before attempting to move them aside, very gently, so as to look at the ones underneath. Like those on Phobos, the plaques were locked in whatever their last display state was, and were probably very vulnerable to impact—as Joe had demonstrated once. The fact that A.J. had been able—just barely—to recover the apparently lost data from some of the incidental imaging scans had led to the current requirement to thoroughly image all finds before even attempting to move them. There'd been a general requirement like that in the original expedition notes, but there'd been some fuzziness as to what constituted proper imaging.
Now there was no such debate, especially after Jake Ivey got through lambasting the prior expeditions for their criminal sloppiness. Jake had grudgingly agreed to certain shortcuts when compared to normal Earth fieldwork, acknowledging that even with modern gear there were a lot of constraints on safely exploring an airless rockball with an average temperature of –106° C.
"Lowering . . . Support and locking plate is holding well. Keep her centered, Bruce. . . . Jackie, keep an eye on line 3. . . ." She heard A.J.'s instructions dimly in the background.
"Hey, Helen, take a look at this one." Larry flashed an image of one of the plaques before her. "Is that Bemmie?"
She studied the semi-streamlined, tri-armed creature. "No . . . no, definitely not. That looks like one of the creatures they'd left as a model in the Vault, the section clearly showing their homeworld's native species." She activated her data retrieval. "Hmm . . . Yes, here it is. We named it Bemmius symmetrius minor, the small symmetrical alien creature. See how it's rounder in cross section and more symmetrical than Bemmie? And it's about the size of a housecat."
Scientific naming conventions for the species of another world was a subject that was going to be hotly debated eventually, she suspected. Right now they were using Bemmius as an overarching tag meaning alien creature from Bemmie's home ecology, but if they managed to learn enough about the taxonomy of the creatures, they'd probably have to develop a much more detailed and discriminatory nomenclature. For now, though, the only agreed-upon change made to any of the names was to the original: no longer merely Bemmius secordii, he was now Bemmius secordii sapiens.
"Yeah, now that you mention it, I can see that. Did Bemmie actually have that third eye?"
"In a somewhat degenerate form. It's there, but much less developed than the other two."
"In the hole now. . . . Going smoothly . . . Okay, Bruce, detach. We have impact . . . well within tolerances . . . Triggered the locking clasps, all on cue. . . . Lockdown. Jackie, if you want to go and start her up, I think we're good to go. Start laying your cable, and pretty soon we'll be in business." She heard A.J. give a sigh of relief. "Okay, I'm back. What do you need?"
"The tubes?"
"Right. Let me see. . . . Oh, screw them! It's some of that damn composite stuff that eats a lot of the wavelengths I scan on. I'll have to make do with enhancing the visible. Hey, can you find a way into that glassed-off area?"
"I'll take a look." There were two other doors leading out of the room, one of which seemed to be closer to the side of the sealed location. She pointed the Locusts in that direction; a few minutes later, the door ground slowly open. "Yes, I think this goes around the side."
She bounced with dreamlike slowness down the corridor, her suit's lights reflecting a rippled gold and gray pattern from the walls. The corridor ended in a rounded door with a familiar long bar arrangement in the center. "Pressure or seal door. I think this is a containment facility."
Having already made his little joke earlier, A.J. managed to resist making a similar remark now. Clearly he was getting older and more responsible. Possibly, she mused, he'd reached high-school–level maturity by now.
"Well, after sixty-plus million years of vacuum, plus your being in a suit capable of withstanding small-arms fire, I don't think we need to worry about whatever they were containing. Nothing showing on the sensors I've got around you, Helen."
"Okay. Try the door?"
"You can try, but I think you'll be waiting for the Locusts. Readings show it's vacuum-cemented at points around the door seal."
"How long, A.J.?"
"Hard to say. I'll give it a quick try, but I think I may have to make several attempts to commit a Lara Croft on this one." She heard a growl of protest from Jake.
"That bad?"
She could see A.J. grimace in the miniature screen. "Yeah. Remember how well these buggers built, and with what. I don't think I'm going to quite have to call up Maddie for advice on demolitions—this isn't as bad as the first Vault door, but it's close."
"Then I won't just hang around."
"If you want to help out," Jackie's voice broke in, "you and Larry can come join me and start laying down cable. The reactor's powering up beautifully. The more of us who get cracking on this, the sooner we'll be able to set up our real Ceres headquarters!"
"On our way, Jackie," Larry said as Helen emerged from the tunnel. "Jake, you're staying?"
"Well, first of all she didn't invite me, and second, there's plenty for me to sort through here without the amateur bulls in the china shop around." Jake's tone wasn't as hostile as the words cou
ld have sounded. "I'll keep my lines open and keep an eye on the Locusts when they arrive. I might as well supervise the vandalism if I can't prevent it."
"Sounds like a good idea to me," A.J. said cheerfully. "I'll start loading Feynman with the first set of base supplies, including the fuel maker. That'll be a serious load off of Bruce's mind."
"You got that right, mate. Once we're makin' our own fuel, I'll be a lot happier."
"And we'll have a lot wider options. I'm on it. With any luck, I'll be seeing you guys down there soon!"
She cut in a private circuit. "Looking forward to it," she said, and winked.
Chapter 11
"Please have a seat, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Goswin Osterhoudt. The chief operations officer of the European Space Development Company motioned toward a chair positioned near one corner of his huge desk.
Osterhoudt did not do Fitzgerald the courtesy of rising to greet him. But Richard managed to contain his dismay. Actually, he had to struggle a bit to keep from smiling. People like Osterhoudt were so predictable.
Two other people were already seated in the office, in chairs positioned near the opposite corner of the COO's desk. One of them was a paunchy middle-aged man with hair that was almost pure white; the other was a somewhat younger woman with dark hair, dark eyes, and a narrow face. Both of them were wearing business suits, as was Osterhoudt. The man's suit was expensive; the woman's more expensive still.
Neither of the suits was as expensive as Osterhoudt's. And where Osterhoudt had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie, neither of his subordinates had done the same. It was all delightfully predictable.
"Florian Lejeune, Chiara Maffucci," said Osterhoudt by way of introduction.
Maffucci nodded, her face expressionless. Lejeune half rose to his feet and extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you," he said.
Richard shook his hand and took his own seat. Both Osterhoudt and Lejeune had spoken in French, so Fitzgerald presumed that would be the language for the occasion. That was a bit of a relief. His French was excellent. His German was almost as good, but when he and Osterhoudt met privately the COO insisted on speaking in Dutch, a language with which Richard was only passably familiar.
Osterhoudt's accent was pronounced whenever he spoke in a foreign language, but his French and German were quite understandable. In English, he was almost incomprehensible.
Lejeune's French had been smooth and fluent, as with a native speaker, but with a trace of an accent. Between the accent and the given name, Richard assumed he was Belgian.
"Very well, Mr. Fitzgerald," Osterhoudt said. He nodded toward his two associates. "I've given them a summary of what I propose to make your assignment, and they have a few questions they'd like to ask."
There'd been a slight emphasis on the word "few." Richard suspected that neither of Osterhoudt's underlings was happy with the situation—but Osterhoudt was making clear that he'd made up his mind already.
Richard gazed at Maffucci and Lejeune, his expression as bland as he could make it. Which was surprisingly bland, in fact—he'd practiced in front of a mirror—given that Fitzgerald's face was composed of harsh planes and angles and decorated with three scars, one of them quite visible.
Lejeune cleared his throat. "Mr. Fitzgerald, I'm puzzled as to the reason you're requesting so many people for this assignment. Nine people besides yourself, given that the entire company of the Odin isn't much more than a hundred people, seems an exceedingly large security force."
Richard was tempted to point out that in his negotiations with Osterhoudt, he hadn't "requested" a team of ten people. He'd insisted on it. In fact, he'd made approval of that number a critical item in the dickering.
But there was no reason to rub a flunkey's face in his own status. So, politely, he replied: "Yes, I realize that the number must seem unnecessary—and, if this assignment were anywhere on this planet, I wouldn't have asked for more than five or six. But we're to be engaged on an interplanetary mission, Mr. Lejeune. Furthermore, we have no clear idea how long the assignment might last. It could go on for years before we return."
"Oh, nonsense!" snapped Maffucci. "Months, certainly. One or two years, perhaps."
Richard transferred the bland gaze to her. "Or three years, Ms. Maffucci. Or four years. The truth is that we have no idea how long we'll be gone. If we turn up evidence of another Bemmie base somewhere in the asteroids or the outer solar system, we could be gone for a very long time indeed."
"The projections—"
"Projections," Osterhoudt interrupted, "are even more apt to go astray once you leave the Earth's atmosphere than they are on the planet itself. And they're quite apt to go astray here. Leave this be, Chiara. Fitzgerald is just being realistic."
"And given that the length of the mission might become very protracted," Richard continued smoothly, "I need a large enough security force to handle attrition. I won't be surprised at all if one or two—possibly even three or four—of my people become incapacitated at one point or another. Possibly permanently. I have to make allowance for that."
"I can understand the need for some redundancy," said Lejeune. "But this still seems excessive. Let's assume that you lose as many as four of your people. That leaves you with a security force of six people, including yourself. For a ship with a crew of not more than a hundred people, Mr. Fitzgerald? All of whom are either experienced and thoroughly vetted astronauts or prominent and almost-as-thoroughly vetted scientists. I'd think yourself and one other person would suffice." He smiled, almost sweetly. "I realize you do need to sleep on occasion."
Richard wondered why Lejeune and Maffucci were pressing this issue. He would've expected their questioning to focus on some of the details of the mission itself, given that many of those details were stated in exceedingly fuzzy language in the contract.
They were probably just covering their asses, he decided. If they pressed him on the operational specifics of his assignment, they'd risk getting too close to knowledge that might someday—if things went badly—wind up being embarrassing. Embarrassing, at best. At worst, such knowledge could potentially even lead to prison sentences. That was very unlikely, of course. Still, it wasn't impossible.
By making a fuss over the crude issue of the size of his security force, on the other hand, they avoided that problem—while still, if it ever proved necessary, being able to claim they had raised objections and reservations from the beginning.
It was all so predictable. The only somewhat puzzling thing was the reason Osterhoudt was letting them go on as long as they were. Richard suspected that was because neither Lejeune nor Maffucci was entirely under the COO's authority. Though officially his subordinates, they probably had other patrons in the hierarchy of the huge corporation—or its board of directors, more likely—and were acting on their behalf here. As much as Osterhoudt might like to squelch them, he simply couldn't.
On the other hand—as he made clear that very moment—the COO didn't have to tolerate them for very long, either.
"I think that's enough, Florian. Mr. Fitzgerald has explained his reasons for wanting a ten-person security force, and they seem quite sensible to me. So let's move on. Do you have any other issues to raise?"
Lejeune hesitated, and then shook his head. Osterhoudt turned to Maffucci. "Chiara?"
The woman was made of sterner stuff. She proceeded to waste Richard's time with pettifogging quibbling over some of the equipment he proposed to take aboard the Odin. It was all quite pointless, since nothing on Richard's list came close to violating the prohibitions in the Mars Treaty concerning weaponry in space.
True, combined with some of the equipment already on board or soon to be loaded on to Odin, and certain . . . enhancements that had been carefully introduced into the ship's design, the stuff being brought by Richard and his team would allow them to construct several quite effective types of weapons. But that sort of arcane military use of seemingly innocuous equipment was very specialized knowledge. Richard was confident he could
smuggle the stuff on to the ship without alerting even the U.N.'s professional inspectors. There was no chance that either Maffucci or Lejeune would be able to spot the potential violations of the Treaty. In fact, Richard was pretty sure he could assemble a complete weapon system right in front of them and they wouldn't realize what it was unless it was put into operation.
Which was quite unlikely also, of course. Richard did not expect to have to actually use any of those military options. He simply wanted them available, just in case. Careful planning for all contingencies, he had found, was the key to success in his line of work.
Finally, they were done. Maffucci and Lejeune rose and left the room. The Belgian nodded politely on the way out. The woman didn't.
"My apologies for putting you through that silliness, Richard," Osterhoudt said. He waved his hand. "Corporate politics, you understand."
The chief operations officer leaned forward on his desk. "I stress that nothing has changed in the basic parameters of your mission. Whatever nervousness may exist on the part of some of the company's directors, everyone who really matters is entirely behind this project. We must get our hands on at least one major alien installation. Exclusively in our hands, that is. That is absolutely imperative. The benefits of this new Bemmie technology are literally incalculable. There's been enough of this 'sharing' that we've had to tolerate because of the unique position enjoyed thus far by Ares and the IRI. Now it comes to an end."
Richard smiled and said nothing. The smile was mostly to cover what would otherwise have been a derisive jeer. It was typical of people like Osterhoudt to toss around expressions like "Now it comes to an end."