“Are you all right? Your eyes?” Nikka asked.
“I think I’m integrating the change. Resting helped.”
“I’ve heard something about that medtech error. It’s a common one, easy to make.”
Nigel chuckled. “Gratifying to know.”
“I don’t think I can fix it.”
“Not without microsurgery tools, no.”
“I remember that the brain adjusts, though. Eventually you’ll see upright images.”
“How long?”
“A few days.”
“Um. I say, it seems that long since I went merrily off with smiling Ted. How long was I gone?”
“Half a day,” Nikka said. “They came and told me. I argued with Ted but he was busy. Carlos was there.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Sad. He went down to Pucks on the morning shuttle, just after you left. Reporting for his new job. A chance to put his training into action. I think he wants to—”
“Wash his hands of it all. Quite so. There’s still you, waiting here, after he’s done.”
“Nigel, that’s not fair.”
“Who said I was fair? Carlos is confused, but he’s not dumb.”
“Can’t we forget that? With all that’s happening—”
“No, we can’t. Might have to use it.” He slapped the portable medfilter resting between them. The elevator whine reverberated in the sheet-metal floor. It had taken over an hour for Nikka to strip Nigel’s jury-rigged device down to essentials, and then wedge it into a carrying case. Their apartment was no longer a candidate for House Beautiful.
He hoped the filter would still work. It was touch and go getting out of the apartment, too—Ted hadn’t put guards on their door, but Nigel was sure someone would lay hand on him if he showed his face in public.
“You’re going to have to keep the dockmen busy while I get this on,” he said.
She nodded. “Our chances aren’t good.”
“So what? Haven’t any choices left. Ted will nab us in hours if we stay.”
The elevator groaned to a stop in near-zero gravity. The door lurched open, revealing the aft ship’s lock. No one in view.
“I’ll nip across,” Nigel said. He slipped into the darkness of the shuttle’s hold. Nikka drew a deep breath and went in search of the crew.
Pocks was gunmetal gray. Long white filaments stretched across it, rays of debris from ancient meteors. Crusts of rock blotched the dirty purple ice fields.
Nigel could feel the chill through his servo’d suit. He moved carefully across the crumpled plain. Nikka pointed to the spherical submarine berthed at the edge of an orange-green lake. “That’s where the log says Carlos is on duty.”
Nigel picked up the pace. Between them they carried the portable medfilter.
They began to puff with the effort. Boots crunched on the purple ice. Nigel stepped up his opticals to see what the surface looked like unaugmented. It was barren, lit by an angry red dot. High up he caught the gliding gray smudge of the Watcher. The Lancer analysis net had stopped calling the moonlet by that name, but he refused to. Was there a shifting glimmer where the weak sun struck the ancient hull? He blinked. Perhaps a facet catching the light. Or more probably, he reminded himself, a trick of his eyes. He was catching, seeing better, but there were still illusions, distortions.
They were five hundred meters from the descent craft. As yet no one had tried to stop them. There had been questioning looks from the shuttle crew, but Nikka had made up some apparently plausible story. They had counted on the fact that aboard Lancer there were no security measures, any more than there were guards on an ordinary naval vessel. But once Landon and that lot worked out where they must have gone—
“Hey!” Nigel stopped dead still, startled by the shout. He turned. No one behind them. It came from a figure trotting toward them from the submersible. His helmet overlay winked a color-coded ID: Carlos.
“What’s this about you coming down? Nigel shouldn’t be out—”
“Explain inside,” Nikka said roughly, and pushed Carlos back toward the submersible. “Quick!”
Nigel panted hard beneath the black sky. It was difficult going and something about it satisfied him. He did not ask Carlos to help.
Bubbles bulged and popped on the lake and then it went glassy and smooth again beneath the ember glow of Ross 128. Near the lake a sulfurous yellow muck sucked at their boots. “Outflow,” Carlos said. “Like a tidal flat, only worse. The lake’s all liquid ammonia, but every few days it belches. Potassium salts, sulfur, have to wash it off at the lock—”
Nikka waved him to be silent. She glanced behind them; no one following. Nigel felt secure; she looked as though she could handle anyone.
It took over ten minutes to shuck their suits and get to the cranny where Carlos slept. He turned on them, blocking the doorway, and said, “Now let’s hear it. After I got your message I checked the shuttle manifest. You two weren’t on it.”
“Last-minute holiday,” Nigel said. “Simply caught the first thing out of town.”
Nikka smiled tolerantly. “You can tell when things are desperate,” she said. “He always makes a joke.”
“That’s what jokes are for,” Nigel said, stretching out on Carlos’ bunk. He rested while Nikka sketched in the jumble of events. He enjoyed hearing it all played back from another perspective. It was particularly pleasant to relax utterly and let someone else take charge, as Nikka had been doing ever since they nonchalantly walked aboard the shuttle. She had done marvelously well at persuading the pilot. However this might come out— and he had few delusions on that score—it was delicious to be moving and acting again. The worst part of age was the feeling of helplessness, of being disengaged from life. The middle-aged treated the old with the same serenely contemptuous condescension they used for children. That unthinking attitude was what lay behind Ted’s actions.
“You’re stupid,” Carlos said bluntly. “Stupid. Whatever you think Landon was doing, you’re building a great case for him by—”
