Roger Allen - The Ring of Charon

The first signs of polar ice had not been noticed until human settlement on the Moon was well advanced. Some thought it was all there as a result of human activity, water vapor leaking out of life-support systems on the Moon and the nearby habitats. The theory rather vaguely suggested the water was transported to the Lunar poles and deposited there. Other theories held that the ice was natural and cyclic, appearing and vanishing in a very long-term pattern that had nothing to do with humans.

No one quite knew who had started calling the still-hypothetical entrance to the Lunar Wheel the Rabbit Hole, but the name fit. The data from the gravity-telescope images wasn’t good enough to give a precise location, or show just how deeply buried the top of the hole was. It might not even be a hole. Larry himself had dreamed up at least four possible purposes for the spikes growing out of the pole points of the buried Lunar Wheel. That didn’t matter. Getting at anything related to the Wheel would tell them volumes about the Charonians.

Larry sighed. The time pressure had eased, at least a bit: the engineers refurbing the Nenya had discovered a dangerous flaw in the main fuel-pump assembly. It would take them three more days to get her repaired. On the bright side, they had installed external fuel tanks, eliminating the need to use the ship’s interior space for tankage. There would be a lot more room on the ride back to Pluto.

The silence that hung over the Moon’s North Pole reminded him of Pluto’s emptiness. He wished desperately for more faces, more people. Even the few days he had spent in the hustle and bustle of the Moon’s cities had been enough to remind him of how much he missed human beings.

Of course, there was at least one person he would not miss. Larry was devoutly grateful that Lucian Dreyfuss had made the run south to Central City for more equipment.

One of the small robot rollers crawled over the horizon as he watched. Crammed full of every kind of sensor, the roborollers could spot virtually any kind of subsurface anomaly. Magnetic and gravitic properties, thermal energy, dielectric constant, seismic, color. Anything the searchers could think of to use. Surely the buried top of the Rabbit Hole would reveal itself to one of them. He looked over at the search chart that showed how much of the area had been surveyed. Slowly the shaded area was growing.

But it would help if they knew what they were looking for.

The signal-probe design had barely firmed up in the computer when Tyrone Vespasian christened the craft.

Lucian Dreyfuss, however, was not up on his saints. He, Vespasian, and Raphael stood by the viewport, watching the rollout. “I don’t get it,” Lucian said as the probe was rolled out. “The Saint Anthony ? Shouldn’t that be the Saint Jude ? Wasn’t she the patron saint of losing things?”

Simon Raphael watched through the viewport as the massive cylinder was towed from the thermal lock and into position on the linear accelerator’s launch cradle. “If I recall my hagiography,” he said, “Jude was a man, not a woman, and he was the patron saint of lost causes . But one prays to Saint Anthony if one loses an object . Which would you rather call Earth? A lost cause, or simply lost, misplaced?”

Lucian didn’t have an answer for that. Or if he did, he kept it to himself.

Raphael went on. “By naming the probe after Anthony, Mr. Vespasian obviously meant to remind us of Jude—and to remind us that Jude is not appropriate here, that there is hope. I’d call Saint Anthony a subtle and apt name for our little emissary.”

It pleased Tyrone to be so honored by such a scholar as Dr. Raphael. He nudged the younger man and chuckled. “Fallen away, Lucian?” he asked.

“Never was a Catholic to start with,” Lucian said with a slight edge of irritation. “But I’ll be taking a leap of faith soon enough, Tyrone. Maybe Saint Jude can go with me, so long as he’s not going to be busy.”

The two older men shifted uncomfortably. Lucian had been showing more than a few rough edges as the search for the Rabbit Hole progressed.

Descending forty-odd kilometers below the surface to confront the thing that waited down there. Tyrone Vespasian shuddered. Even for a Conner used to living underground, that idea induced claustrophobia. No wonder Lucian was nervous, Tyrone thought. Going down into the pit of Hell.

If Vespasian was reading his old friend right, Lucian was treating Daltry’s ruling as a draw in the odd rivalry between Larry and Lucian. No one pretended to understand that silent battle completely—not even, Vespasian guessed, Lucian or Larry. But such things were not enough to explain Lucian’s odd behavior. There was, in Vespasian’s eyes, something else in Lucian’s character that explained it.

Everyone knew that someone or something had stolen the Earth. All of them were afraid, and a few even had the nerve to step forward and fight against the unseen enemy, willing to pit a tiny human’s strength against such mighty powers. Lucian was of that number—but with him it was different.

With him, it was personal. With sudden inspiration, Vespasian understood Lucian’s anger toward Larry. He blamed Larry, directly, personally, for what had happened. Larry had pushed the button. Because that button was pushed, Lucian’s city was half-wrecked. Lucian’s father had all but single-handedly saved that city, years before. In the Dreyfuss family, you inherited responsibilities. Lucian felt himself responsible for Central City’s safety.

Which was, of course, absurd. And completely understandable. Damn it. Vespasian shrugged. Or maybe he had gotten it all completely wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Tell me again why we can’t just put a radio transmitter up alongside the wormhole and broadcast through it,” Lucian said. “I thought that was the original idea.”

“It was, and we put some embroidery on it,” Vespasian said, glad for the change of subject. “Mostly the problem was that the wormhole only opens once every hundred twenty-eight seconds, and remains open only three seconds. Not much transmission time. Also, we don’t know where in the sky Earth will be on the other side. No way to aim an antenna. And suppose the Charonians just close the hole to silence us? If the Saint Anthony can get through, it should be able to lock in on Earth and then broadcast and receive constantly. It’s got a massive datapack aboard, with everything we know about the Charonians on this end. With luck, it ought to be able to broadcast the whole dataset before it gets silenced. It can run some, if they attack it, maybe long enough to transmit the data Earth needs.

“And it will know where the wormhole is, with us on the other side, through its own inertial tracking system. It should be able to send lasergram messages back to us every hundred twenty-eight seconds.”

Vespasian glanced at his watch. “Launch in five minutes. And then two days until the Saint Anthony is in position.”

“Two days and a hundred twenty-eight seconds until we know for sure if Earth is still there,” Raphael said.

“Of course, there’ll be a fair amount of excitement before then,” Vespasian said.

Lucian looked over at the older man. “What do you mean?”

“Hell, you boys at the North Pole really are out of it,” Vespasian said. “Tomorrow, the first of the gee-point asteroids from the Belt drops onto Mars. McGillicutty, MacDougal and Berghoff should be on station already, waiting for it.”

Lucian grinned eagerly. “So things are finally starting to happen.”

Vespasian cocked an eyebrow skyward. It seemed to him that quite a bit had been happening up to now. Choosing not to reply, he turned toward the viewport and switched on the monitor screens that surrounded it. The Saint Anthony carried its own on-board cameras, and they ought to provide a hell of a view during the boost phase.