“Okay, okay. If you’d wait for the input like the rest of the crew—”
I was wondering if you’d considered the implications, Ted. No trace of cities. No urban areas. No big straight features, no fields or roads. And the EM transmissions are weak, except for that interstellar signal.”
“Yeah. Damn funny. But maybe they’re living underground, using all the land for agriculture, and they use cables for info transfer. Hell, we do that back on Earth. We wasted power on atmospheric transmissions only in the start-up days of radio and TV.”
“Even agriculture has a signature, this close. We could see croplands.”
“Maybe so, maybe so.”
“I’ve been cross-correlating Alex’s prelim fixes on the radio sources—the EM points, he calls ’em for electromagnetic—with the IR. Anyone in Command done that?”
“Uh, I don’t—”
“I’d like to check my work. There are signal-to-noise problems and I’ve been using the self-programming subsystems to unfold it—”
“No, look, Nigel, we’ve been too busy to try all that yet. I’d suggest—”
“Point is, some of the EM points and the IR points are the same.”
“Which ones?”
“There’s the rub. It’s the moving IR sources, looks like.”
“The ones we got variable fixes on? I don’t under—”
“What I’m saying, Ted, is that the radio transmitters give off heat as well. And most important, they’re moving.”
“Well, I don’t—”
Hey we’ve got this whole rig up, but you guys got to keep aligned with us or we’ll have shit to show for it when—
“Alex, this is Ted, give us an overlay of your mapping. I want to match it—”
With the IR?
“Uh, yes.”
Nigel was flimming me about that stuff. Wanted the early results. I just repped and verified the points he asked about. They’re variable. Slow, but moving.
“You’re sure?”
Yeah. The IR points are pretty weak, almost fuzzed out by the thermal landscape background Jenkins told me they were probably small volcanic vents—
“Not bloody likely.”
“Since when did you become a geologist? Look, the dust and crap down there, nobody can be sure of that IR.”
“Right. We have to go down and see.”
“That’s a little premature, Nigel. We’re standing off at a safe distance. Going to surface mode now would violate our guidelines, and you know it.”
“Dead right I know it. But that’s what we’ll have to do.”
FOUR
Ted arrived at Nigel and Nikka’s apartment a little late. He carried his usual prop, a clipboard jammed with notes. Nigel steered him first to the bar, then into the deep-cradled cushions of their new couch. Ted eased into it as if uncertain of its reliability; with its slanting legs and oblique joints, it looked rickety. Nigel had designed it for their apartment’s low gravity, using the wood he had in his personal mass allotment. He was the only person in Lancer with high-quality oak, and he had carefully carved this, polishing it with the oil of his hands.
“Wish you’d come down to Command to talk,” Ted began.
“It’s a jam down there.”
“Yeah, pretty busy. No wonder you stay home, low gravity, plenty of rest—”
Alex knocked; Nigel waved him in. Alex was a heavy, balding man, face dark with fatigue. He sat down on the couch like a man dumping a weight off his back. Muscles rippled in his shoulders as he flexed them, seeking an alert posture in the deep couch. Nigel had designed it to thwart such aims; finally Alex relaxed into it.
“Whoosh!” Alex puffed. “I been worshipin’ those consoles like an acolyte.”
“Drink?”
“Just make me go to sleep.”
“You’ve brought them, though?” Ted prompted.
“Sure. I piped ’em down to your input here. They’re waitin on your screen.”
Nigel said a soft “Thanks,” and thumbed on their flat. The screen filled with a grid. Small white dots peppered the green field. “These are your time-stepped maps, Alex?” Nigel prompted.
“Yeah, weeks’ worth. I followed ’em one by one. Talk about your low bit rate—”
