“They’ll never learn if they don’t face problems.” Killeen could remember his father saying exactly the same, refusing to shield Killeen from tough jobs when he was a boy.
He studied the small bronze speck for a long moment, then asked Shibo to give the natural light view. In true human spectrum the thing glittered with jewellike warmth, but under maximum magnification he could make out no structure.
Quite possibly this was a human outpost. Perhaps—Killeen felt a racing excitement—it was indeed an ancient Chandelier, those legendary edifices of crystalline perfection.
He had once seen one through a ’scope on Snowglade, so far away that he could make out no detail. He had caught only the strange glimmering presence of it, the suspicion of beauty lying just beyond perception. The possibility of finding something manmade, hanging in this roiling vault of troubled sky, was enough to summon up his profound respect and awe for the ancient masters who had made Argo and the even older Chandeliers. That he might see one closely—the thought made him lean toward the screen, as if to force answers from it.
Besen arrived, a young woman of hard eyes and soft, sensuous mouth. She had a strict crewlike bearing and came to attention immediately after entering the control vault. “Sir, I—”
Killeen’s son, Toby, dashed in through the hatchway before she could finish. He was gangly, a full head taller than Besen, and panted heavily. “I—I heard there’s some hullwork needs done.”
Killeen blinked. His son was flushed with excitement, eyes dancing. But no Cap’n could allow such intrusions.
“Midshipman! You were not ordered here. I—”
“I heard Besen’s call. Just lemme—”
“You will stand at attention and shut up!”
“Dad, I just want—”
“Stand fast and belay your tongue-wagging. You are crew here, not my son—got that?”
“Uh…yeah…I…”
“Stand on your toes,” Killeen said firmly. He clasped his hands behind him and jutted his chin out at the undisciplined young man his own boy had become.
“Wh-what?”
“Deaf, are you? You will stand on your toes until I am finished giving orders for Midshipwoman Besen. Then we will discuss the proper punishment for you.”
Toby blinked, opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He swallowed and rose on his toes, hands at his side.
“Now,” Killeen said slowly to Besen, who had all this
time remained standing at attention, eyes ahead—though at the word tongue-wagging a quick grin had flashed across her face. “I believe Officer Shibo has instructions for your task. Perform it with all good
speed.”
SIX
Besen proved equal to the demands of finding and extruding from the ancient ship’s hull the needed opticals. They followed her progress on the main monitor. Killeen gave Toby a dressing-down in front of Cermo and Shibo, knowing that through Cermo the story would get through the ship faster than if he had played it over full comm. All the while Toby had to remain on his toes, even after the ache began to twist his face with grimaces and sweat beaded on his brow. In this contest between father and son there could be only one winner—Family legacy and the demands of the ship itself required that—but Toby held out as long as he could. Finally, in the middle of a deliberately protracted lecture by Killeen on the necessity of following orders exactly, Toby toppled over, crashing to the deck.
“Very good. Lesson finished,” Killeen said, and turned back to the main display screen.
Besen had adroitly arranged the fibery, translucent opticals, which were too delicate to be permanently exposed. She tilted their platform so they could find the tiny glimmering planet that lay swaddled in the dusty arms of the star’s ecliptic plane.
Shibo brought up an image from it quickly. Killeen watched the watery light resolve, while Toby got up and Lieutenant Cermo ordered him back to station. It had been a hard thing to do but Killeen was sure he was right, and his Ling Aspect agreed. The inherent contradictions involved in running a crew that was also a Family demanded that difficult moments not be avoided.
“What…what’s that?” Cermo asked, forgetting that it was a good rule never to question a Cap’n. Killeen let it pass, because he could well have asked the same question.
Against a mottled background hung a curious pearly thing, a disk penetrated at its center by a thick rod. Strange extrusions pointed from the rod at odd angles. Instinctively Killeen knew it was no Chandelier. It had none of the legendary majesty and lustrous webbed beauty.
“Mechwork, could be,” he said.
Shibo nodded. “It circles above the same spot on the planet.”
“Is there some way we can approach the planet, keeping this thing always on the other side?” Killeen asked.
He still had only a dim comprehension of orbital mechanics. His Arthur Aspect had shown him many moving displays of ships and stars, but little of it had stuck. Such matters were far divorced from the experience of a man who had lived by running and maneuvering on scarred plains.
Once, when Killeen had asked if a ship could orbit permanently over a planet’s pole, Ling had laughed at him—an odd sensation, for the tinny voice seemed to bring forth echoes of other Aspects Killeen had not summoned up. It had taken him a while to see that such an orbit was impossible. Gravity would tug down the unmoving ship.
“I can try for that in the close approach. But even now this thing could have seen us.”
“We will avoid it then, Officer Shibo. Give me a canted orbit, so this satellite can’t see us well.”
Shibo nodded, but by her quick, glinting eyes he knew she understood his true thoughts. Soon he had to decide whether they would pause in this system at all. The Mantis, that frosty machine intelligence of Snowglade, had set them on this course. But if the planet ahead proved to be mechrun, Killeen would take them out of the system as swiftly as he could. But where was the crucial choice to be made? No experience or Family lore told him how to decide, or even when.
He left the control vault and walked through the Argo’s tight-wound spiral corridors. Inspections awaited, and he took his time with them. He kept his pace measured, not letting his interior fever of speculation and doubt reveal itself, so that passing crew would see their Cap’n moving with an unconcerned air.
There was a gathering, humming expectancy in the air as they plunged toward their target star. Soon they would learn whether they came to a paradise or to another mech-run world. The planet’s strange, discolored face had given him no answers, and he would have to deflect questions from Family members who so desperately wanted assurances.
Walking through a side corridor, he heard a faint scrabbling noise from an air duct. Instantly he sprang up, un-slipped the grille, and peered inside. Nothing.
The sound, like small feet scrambling away, faded. A micromech, certainly.
Try as they might, the crew had never destroyed all the small mechs left in the Argo by the Mantis. The remaining machines were almost certainly unimportant, delegated to do small repairs and cleaning. Still, their presence bothered Killeen. He knew how much intelligence could be carried in a fingernail’s width; after all, the chips lodged along his spine held whole personalities. What were even such small mechs capable of doing?
He had no way of knowing. There had been disturbing incidents during the voyage, when problems mysteriously cleared up. Killeen had never known whether the ship had repaired itself with deep, hidden subsystems, or whether the micromechs were at work, following their own purposes.
No Cap’n liked to have his ship at the control of anyone but himself, and Killeen could never rest comfortably until all the micromechs were gone. But short of some drastic remedy, he saw no way to rid himself of these nuisances.
