Across the Sea of Suns Read online

  He finished the skipjack, waiting. Presently the silvery sky overhead broke into jewels and the woman splashed through the bubbles, stroking downward powerfully. She circled, studying. Even this deep he felt the slow roll of waves that made the structure creak.

  He rose. She caught sight of him and waved. Suddenly excited he threw his hands into the air, waving madly. Shouting. Though he knew she could not hear him yet.

  PART TEN

  POCKS

  ONE

  Downward, into an ocean of night. The submersible was a bright, gaudy Christmas ball with spangles of running lights. It cast a wan glow on the massive shelves of carbon dioxide ice that walled the vent. Motors whirred. In the tight cabin the air chilled and pressure climbed.

  Lancer’s recon analysis had located dozens of warm spots on the surface. They were cracks in the ice layers, where warming currents below had worked their way up the fracture faults of the ice continents. The mountain ranges of ice and rock moved and shifted in gravid tectonics, breaking and folding and splintering.

  This moon was bigger than Ganymede. Below its icy skin, a huge volume of slush and liquid circulated. At the center, a core of rock and metal became hotter as the radioactive elements decayed. Earth itself gained most of its internal heart from decay of radium and uranium. Here the heat from below sought an exit, working at the thin spherical cap of ice, seeping upward, finding an opening here, a weakness there, and at last breaking onto the surface in short-lived victory.

  When the flow came strongly, escaping liquids built volcanoes. From their crown and flanks steam rose incessantly. They created lake-speckled plains when the currents ebbed. The ground crews had chosen a quiet upwelling, so they did not have to fight strong turbulence when the submersible descended, searching.

  The vent widened as they plunged. Chunks of ice drifted by in the amber spotlights. They dropped several kilometers through solutions of ammonia, carbon dioxide slush, methane crystals, and twinkling specks of debris. The moon’s spin stirred the grains of rock, keeping a fine suspension hanging like a shimmering curtain before the working lights.

  They reached a zone of reasonably pure water. Carlos deployed a huge sac and ran nose into the current. It billowed and filled—strong, though only one molecule thick. Carlos showed Nikka how to attach floaters to the tail of the sac while he ran the board. He found a strong updraft. When he called out, she released the floaters and the sac self-sealed. Guided by the floaters, it rose up the vent. It would bob to the surface of the lake, be snagged ashore, and a mass spectrometer would separate out the rare deuterium. Lancer’s fusion motors could burn the deuterium, as backup to the reactions that ran in the ramscoop drive.

  “Rather a lot registering on the impurity detectors,” Nigel observed.

  “Whole zoo of stuff out there,” Carlos muttered. He had been quiet since their descent. His face knotted with conflicting thoughts and he kept his attention fixed on the complex half-moon control pit.

  “What’s it look like?” Nikka had come forward after freeing the floaters manually.

  “Chicken soup, actually. Or the Ross 128 equivalent,” Nigel said from the wall bunk where he lay.

  Carlos said, “Science Section’s coming down in a few days, take deep samples.”

  “Interesting. Heavy molecular stuff. Free radicals, too.”

  “This water’s too cold to make free radicals spontaneously,” Nikka remarked. “No energy source.”

  “Indeed.” Nigel frowned. “You’d imagine—”

  Carlos. Want to talk to those passengers of yours.

  “That’s the fifth time he’s called,” Carlos said.

  Nigel yawned. “Poor fellow. Ask if there’s news.”

  “Ted, this situation is really out of hand and I just want to do what’s—”

  I know that. Hitting you all of a sudden like that, really mixing up your loyalties—I know, Carlos.

  Nigel whispered, “Sounds quite judicious and forgiving. Man for all ages, is Ted.”

  Nikka smiled and shushed him.

  “Marvelous actor. I never appreciated that till now.”

  Carlos had said little the last hour. The release of talking to a third party opened him up. He could not hide his own confusion and uncertainty, but this came through as reluctance to own up to his actions; or so Landon would interpret, Nigel guessed. Landon listened and conferred with the director of Pocks Operations. The surface crews were angry at the violation of regs and the possible danger—principally to the equipment; it was good to remember what was replaceable—in case Carlos got into a jam. But if he stayed away from the vent walls it made sense to let him go ahead, locating streams of pure water and filling the teardrop sacs. Landon conferred some more and then provisionally approved Carlos staying down. If anything changed, or Nigel’s condition deteriorated, however—

  “I’ve got a filter with me,” Nigel put in.

  Was wondering when I’d hear from the kingpin. I must say this is right in line with your whole career. Under pressure you crack.

  There was a gentlemanly iciness in Landon’s voice. They were, of course, both speaking for the recorded benefit of any future review board.

  “Undergo a phase transition, is more the way I’d put it. Or tempering. Marvelous process, that. Lessens brittleness. Reduces internal stresses.”

  Well, we’ll wait out the time for your mandatory vote. Don’t think the consensus isn’t going to factor in this escapade.

  “I came with him, Ted,” Nikka said. “Do you want to shut me up, too?”

  “Don’t commit yourself,” Carlos broke in. “Ted, I hope you can see that she’s in a very excited state and not really—”

  I follow. Well, I could have done without this slice of shit you put on my plate, Nigel. Things are jittery back here as it is, with the Earthside news. We’re waiting for an update now and I may have to replan everything if—

  “What’s the news?” Nikka asked.

  Getting a spotty carrier wave. More thermonuclear strikes, looks like. Satellite warfare seems to have gone just the way everyone predicted—complete cancellation. Reports of alien craft in orbit, too. Some are landing in the oceans.

  “My God,” Nikka said softly.

  Yeah. And Nigel picks this moment to pull one of his—

  “Bit cavalier about causality, aren’t you?” Nigel said sharply. “You already had warning signals about the Earthside situation—it’s been brewing for a week. So you thought you’d slot me away while everyone’s distracted. No accident it’s all happening at once. Only it’s not going as you’d planned, is it?”

  Paranoid, Nigel, real paranoid.

  “We’ll see. If I’ve any friends up there who’ll vote for me—”

  After this? Don’t bet on it.

  Nigel grimaced in irritation. “No point in this talk. Carlos, what’s that on the sonar? Big structure in the left quadrant.”

  “Signing off,” Carlos barked. The job took precedence over all else. He banked to port in a downstream.

  “That was to get him off the air,” Nigel said gently. “Needn’t shy away from everything.”

  “If we hit one a those bergs—”

  “Doesn’t mean we must stand off by kilometers. Might as well get in a bit of exploring while we’re waiting for the hangman.”

  “Nikka, want to deploy a bag? Getting good percentages here.”

  She moved back to the manuals. The floater frames and sacs were neatly arranged in the big bay that comprised most of the ship’s volume. She worked the big controls at the mouth of the bay. “Free!” An answering thump and whoosh.

  Carlos nodded. Nigel moved forward to the copilot’s couch and lay in it, studying the board. A prickly sensation running through him. Carlos bent over the crescent array of controls, involved. The man had shown typical male responses during the talk with Landon. It was often that way when the conversation involved mostly men; each was bursting with something to say, waiting for the other to finish, for his own p
recious chance to impose his own pattern. Nigel had done that often enough to recognize the mode. But what was new to him was in fact that recognition. He had spent his life pressing forward, maneuvering the talk the way he wanted it to go. Focusing, always focusing. There were other ways to work, less wearing paths. He had learned those slowly, gradually. The fact that Carlos was showing recognizable signs meant that the man was working out for himself some sense of identity. Good. But it promised problems in the hours to come.

  “Ready to tie it off?” Carlos called.

  “Sealant deployed. One, two, mark.” Nikka came forward, brushing her hands on her crimson jumper.

  “Mind dropping a bit to the northwest?” Nigel said mildly.

  “What for? Current’s vectoring to the high quadrant.”

  “Some optical spectrum from over there.”

  “Huh. Okay.”

  Into the murk. They fell in blackness, the obliging whine of the motors making a high keening background wail they scarcely noticed. The dark clasped them and removed all sense of direction save the press of Pocks’s muted gravity. They sought a glimmer, but in the shifting currents the craft could not hold to the course.

  It was one of the fine ironies of history, Nigel thought, that this craft was in the end the result of classic, constricted warfare. Submarines had become the carriers of thermonuclear death nearly a century before. The major powers built involuted vessels which could withstand vast pressures, seek any enemy, survive, and track in utter blackness. When the Jovian moons were explored, it was natural to use such technology to penetrate the ice crust, sniff the seas below. The marriage of war and science continued, despite occasional domestic spats. So Lancer had carried a team of submersibles, in case open oceans were rare on planets, and they had to penetrate a moon.

  He squinted at the blank blackness before them. He knew with a dead finality that this was as far as he was going to get. He had stalled for time but now he was tiring. A few hours, a meaningless gesture of defiance—and then a sad, sour return.

  Sod that, he thought suddenly. I’m not going.

  There were some things a man wouldn’t do.

  TWO

  They searched for hours. They ate, argued, took samples, deployed sacs, and sent them rising to the vent, tugged by racks of floaters.

  They spoke fitfully, without making any clear progress. Nigel had been in a deeply conflicted three-way before, and recognized some old patterns. It occurred to him that he sought these complex emotional geometries because they removed some of the pressure of demand from him, allowed him to dream and laze about, focused on his own inner states. Not a wholly welcome revelation. But coming at the tether of a life, it at least implied that he could accept this truth, too, for it was clearly too late now. Then he laughed at himself—provoking a quizzical glance from Nikka, who probably suspected why—for this also was a conveniently intellectual way of escaping the pressure of change. Self-knowledge that arrives too late loses its momentum. He laughed again.

  “I’m getting a lot more of that molecular stuff,” Carlos said gruffly.

  “Deeper, then,” Nigel said. “Sniff it out.”

  “Dammit, I don’t take orders!”

  “I was suggesting—”

  “You’re always just ‘suggesting’ and ‘advising,’ aren’t you?”

  “You’re quite right. I’ll say nothing.”

  Carlos hesitated, still fuming. With Nigel having given way so easily, he was left with nothing more to say. He busied himself with the control board and after a while began following the direction indicated by the chem sensors. It was, after all, the obvious thing to do.

  Slowly, so that at first they were unsure whether they saw it or imagined it, a faint blur of green formed in the dark. The instruments had picked it up, but only the eye gave form and substance to the mottled glow.

  Abruptly, green shifted to burnt orange. Something came at them out of the blankness. It was long and spindly. Disjointed parts flexed and turned as it swept silently by. Trailing strands wove in the turbulent passing. Then it was gone.

  “What the—”

  “Exactly the question.”

  Nikka said softly, “Self-luminous.”

  “Yes. Feeding off the free radicals, I’ll wager.”

  “No eyes.”

  “No reason to evolve them here.”

  “What do you figure—”

  “Over that way.”

  A dim glow. The craft gave off a high-pitched ping and crack as they descended.

  “What’s that?”

  “Can’t make it out.”

  “Must be far away. No resolution.”

  “If it’s that bright—”

  “Right. Bloody luminous.”

  “Not one of the things we just saw.”

  “No. Bigger. A lot bigger.”

  It grew. Yellow bars of light moved in the suspended wash of particles. The craft bucked and turned against sudden currents.

  “It’s moving.”

  “A pattern. Look, see, it repeats.”

  “Revolving.”

  “Yeah. Spins around in ’bout two minutes.”

  The thing swelled. It was huge and pitted with fire. Brownish gold and orange swept across its face. From each bright flare point burst a cascade of bubbles, each working with its own inner fire.

  “Damn thing’s more’n a click across.”

  “Yes. See those big bags attached?”

  “Balloons.”

  “To keep it afloat?”

  “Must. Spectrometer says that’s rock there. Hot.”

  “The free radicals.”

  “Dead right.”

  “They come from that?”

  “Big fat energy source.”

  “Samplers out?”

  “Yeah, got it. Lots of energetic molecular stuff.”

  “Food.”

  “For …”

  The three humans shifted uneasily in their couches. Their spotlights ebbed away in the silted darkness. They watched the thing that spun slowly in the black and pulsed irregularly, throwing out gouts of orange and burnished green and gold and red, showers of hot bubbles. They strained forward, trying to see farther.

  “Lot of radioactivity.”

  “Figures.”

  “I’m … getting kind of nervous.”

  “Yeah. You feel it, Nigel?”

  “What?”

  “Like … something’s out there.”

  “Moving.”

  “Beyond our lights? … Yes.”

  “We’re in the updraft from it now. Getting a lot more Geiger.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “No. The gammas can’t get through our skin.”

  “Blowoff from that thing.”

  “Suppose so. That big rock …”

  “Right. A crude nuclear reactor.”

  “Duct chemicals through it, they get bombarded—”

  “—you get excited molecular forms.”

  “What’s the source of organic molecules?”

  “Below here? Something’s got to supply them.”

  “Right. Tending the fire.”

  “Why put it near a vent?”

  “Why move to Florida? Warmer.”

  “No, wait, that’s the wrong way round. The vent, the vent is here—”

  “Because of this.”

  “The whole thing’s artificial.”

  “The volcanoes, the lakes, they’re made by things like this?”

  “Walmsley’s Rule.”

  “In spades. Warm currents, food—”

  “And an opening to the surface.”

  Carlos said, “To do what? I mean …”

  “I don’t know,” Nigel said.

  “Why are we whispering?” Nikka asked.

  Nigel shouted, “Maybe they can hear!”

  “Jesus!” Carlos said.

  “Then again, maybe not.” Nigel settled back in his couch. “They’ve overheard our motors long before this, if they do. And they must, co
me to think of it. Acoustics are the fish’s eye.”

  Nikka said, “That thing that went by us was luminous.”

  “So?” Carlos said.

  “There must be a reason for that. To find prey.”

  Nigel murmured, “Or lure it.”

  Carlos said, “I wonder if I should douse our running lights.”

  “It might well be a good idea,” Nikka said.

  He snapped off several switches. The control crescent cast angular shadows in the cabin.

  Nigel said softly, “Should call Lancer, let them know.”

  Carlos did. Before he could explain, Ted Landon came on the line. “We’ve got a solid majority vote on your petition, Nigel. Sorry ’bout that.”

  Nigel shook himself from his dreamy state. “What … oh, yes. So?”

  “You’ve lost. C’mon out.”

  Nigel sighed. Ted was in quite a jovial mood. “Tell him, Carlos.”

  Talk continued, but he knew what would come next. He felt a fatigue seeping into him but with it came an old certainty. Ted was a stickler for the rules, especially those rubber-stamped by the consensus mandate of the beloved bloody people.

  Carlos spoke with assurance, putting down the facts in steady fashion, orderly and authoritative. He would be more difficult to deal with, the more he clarified his own idea of himself.

  Nigel got up and moved casually to the rear of the ship.

  “Nature calls,” he said to Nikka. He could not risk a parting wink.

  THREE

  Their suits were racked in smooth-swiveling braces. He swung one out in an arc until it clipped onto the self suiting platform. He backed into its enfolding grip. He jackknifed forward to get his arms into the sleeves and then worked his head through the neck ring. It enveloped him, an action that to Nigel always carried the quality of shaking hands with a corpse. He straightened and the rack zipped him up the chest. Helmet locks snapped and clicked home. The suit had full thermal insulation and heavy heaters, weighing on him like a blanket.

  He shambled into the equipment bay, an ankle protesting the added bulk. A hexagonal frame was resting in the launch pod. It held the six floaters for the next sac. Nigel detached the leaders to the sac so that the frame stood alone. He took the two central floaters out and climbed into the vacant space.