“Why line up along the poles?” Killeen persisted.
I would venture to suppose that this quick revolution evokes a pressure all around the polar axis. The faster the string revolves, the more smoothly distributed is this pressure. It slices free the rock close to the axis. This liberates the inner core cylinder it has carved away, frees it from the planetary mass farther out. The results of this I cannot see, however.
“Humph!” Killeen snorted in exasperation. “Let me know when you have an idea.”
THIRTEEN
He returned to the labyrinth of corridors within the station’s disk. Over comm he summoned two more squads to explore the Flitters. They met him at the bay and he gave instructions for trying to revive the craft. The Family might need to flee soon. How they could get past the revolving hoop to reach New Bishop, though, he had no idea. Maybe the cosmic string would go away. Maybe it would stop. All he could do was be sure the Family had the capability to move swiftly and then pray that some opportunity came from that.
Around him midshipmen and other crew hurried, searching for the right cables, calling raucously on the comm lines for input from the Argo’s ancient computer memory. Commandeering mechtech was always chancy, dangerous business.
Killeen saw that the first squad had breached the incoming Flitter’s hold. They were prying forth crates. No time to see what these held; he ordered the space cleared in case they should need it. He was uncomfortably aware that they had taken the station at a particularly lucky moment. Some vast experiment was going on around New Bishop, and they had sneaked in while attention was focused on that. Whatever called the tune in this star system was distracted. But for how long?
Killeen fell to helping one work gang unload cargo. He enjoyed the heft of real labor, using his hands, and it cleared his mind for some unsettling questions.
Had the course settings of Argo somehow taken this cosmic string into account? He remembered that the Mantis, years ago, had conferred with the recently revived intelligences buried in Argo—human-programmed machine minds of undoubted loyalty to humankind. Had the Mantis set this course for Argo, knowing that they would arrive when the golden hoop was at work?
It seemed fantastic, so specific a prediction at such a range, like describing the clouds over a particular mountaintop five years hence—but not, he supposed, truly impossible. Such ability, if real, simply underlined again the unreachable heights of machine intelligence. Killeen accepted this without a second thought; he had never known a time when the predominance of mech minds was not obvious.
Killeen thrust speculations aside. Events rewarded the prepared, and he intended to act.
“Come on,” he called to one of the newly arrived squads. “These ships—try figurin’ them out.” He led them toward the Flitter which had just arrived. The squad unloading it had been forced to rejack the ship into the power cables from the station in order to get the cargo-hold doors to open.
“Cap’n, put me in charge,” Jocelyn said at his elbow. “I’ll get this one up’n runnin’.”
About her eyes there was a concentrated look of unbending discipline. She was one officer he could rely on to do a job on time and without error. Lean and fit, the Argo years had not softened her. She was trouble only when she got to talking with the others.
“Good,” he said. “I want as many Flitters running as we can manage.”
“Enough so can carry all the Family?” she asked.
“Yeasay.” She had already guessed his intention. They were too exposed here. The station was some sort of shipping nexus in an economic scheme he could not imagine, but he knew that whatever truly ran the station would not long tolerate them. Their victory over the mech attendants had been exhilarating but too easy. The true governing intelligence was elsewhere.
As if to confirm this, Shibo broke in on comm.—I’m picking up another ship coming at us. Moving fast. It’s a lot bigger, too.—
“Time to pay the piper,” Killeen said, repeating a mysterious phrase his long-dead mother had used. The last musician had vanished from the Family a century ago.
Jocelyn had heard the comm on overlap circuit. “Think it’s a boarding party, Cap’n?” she asked sharply.
“Um-hmm,” Killeen said. He did not like being prompted by crew, especially when they were right.
“We can take them right here, when they come into the bay,” she said.
He shook his head. “They won’t be that dumb, whoever they are. Even ordinary defensive mechs, barely better than navvys, would see that.”
“We can catch ’em as they come in over the disk,” she persisted.
“If they come that way. Suppose they dock up at the end towers?”
“There?” She frowned. “We haven’t got out there yet. Hadn’t thought…But what’d be the point, puttin’ a dock that far away?”
“Boardin’ when there’s trouble down here, that’s why,” Killeen said irritably. He disliked discussing tactics with crew, even officers, because they kept him from clearing his mind of all extraneous ideas. He needed to concentrate, decide on the best odds in the battle he knew was coming. There could be no other meaning to another, larger ship coming along the same trajectory that the Flitter had followed.
“Got that first craft up and running?” he asked.
“Uh—” Jocelyn touched her left temple and conferred with her squads over comm. “Yeasay, Cap’n. The other Flitters will take a while. Y’know—rev up, check out, things like that.”
“But the first one?”
“It’s ready.”
“Good. Let’ s move it out from the station.”
Jocelyn blinked, surprised. “Uh, why?”
Killeen gave her a mirthless smile. “Just do it.”
“I don’t—”
“Do it, Lieutenant.”
“Yessir!”
Killeen made his way up through the open cargo hold of the Flitter just as the doors began to close behind him. He wanted to get a full view of the station, and this was a quick way. It would be a while—he checked with Shibo and got an exact figure, 1.68 hours—before the large craft could arrive.
He wanted to see what he could use for maneuver, what the station could do as a defensive fortification. The immense crackling energies that worked over the disk surface would presumably not hinder the humans as they moved and fired at the incoming antagonist, since they had not reacted to the Argo as it approached. But he could be sure of nothing.
He wormed his way through narrow dark passages and soon he was in the cramped control room, a geometrically precise cylinder densely rimmed with electronic gear.
