Charles Sheffield - Proteus in the Underworld

His ship had beamed ahead to signal his arrival, but that call had been fielded by the automatic equipment on the colony. His personal ID identified Aybee as a Cloudlander, familiar with a wide variety of free-space living conditions. On the strength of that he had received approval for unaccompanied docking. He had been offered—and declined—assistance upon arrival by Fugate staff.

His first look at the interior of the Fugate Colony made him wonder if he had made a bad decision. Everything he saw was impossibly big, even the communications system. It had been designed for use by twenty-meter, thirty ton people, and even Aybee with his elongated arms could not manage the stretch.

But that could not be the whole story. The Fugates, like most of the colonies, conducted regular commerce with the rest of the Kuiper Belt and made use of imported systems and services. Other people, many of them as small or smaller than Aybee, must be regular visitors. They had to be able to work inside the colony without continuous Fugate assistance. That implied the presence somewhere of standard-sized data terminals and information systems. Trouble was, this chamber was so cluttered and so foggy inside that you couldn’t get a good look at most of it. Aybee went on the prowl, floating along past gigantic desks, doors, and transfer chutes. He finally found the data unit he needed over in the far right corner, hidden behind and dwarfed by a rack of space suits big enough to house Leviathan.

It was an old-fashioned design and it didn’t seem to have been used for a while, but it responded promptly enough when Aybee turned it on. And sorts and searches, thank Knuth, were pure logic, not dependent on anything so material as physical size or equipment age. The Fugate general query system was also a little primitive, but five minutes of experiment located the record of Sondra Dearborn’s arrival at the colony. Her exact time of entry was shown: three days ago. After that it became a bit trickier. There was no sign that Sondra had left, so presumably she was still somewhere within the planetoid. But the file provided no indication of her present location. Chances were that she was working with form-change equipment, but which form-change equipment? The data bank showed thousands of tanks, set in many different parts of the colony.

Aybee sighed. Work went a lot faster when you did it alone, but that no longer seemed an option. The record of Sondra’s arrival provided the names of two individuals who had been assigned to help her. He gave in, and asked the terminal to put him in touch with either Mario or Maria Amari.

Patience was not Aybee’s strong point. He fidgeted and muttered for what seemed an interminable wait, while the colony communications system placed its calls.

The result, when it finally came, did not seem promising. Sondra in her first meeting with the Fugates had been overwhelmed by flesh, by sheer physical size so great that she could not comprehend expressions on the giant faces. Aybee, seeing Mario Amari on a data screen no bigger than his hand, had an opposite first impression of a tiny, puzzled and slightly annoyed baby. The bulging cranium was far too big for the eyes and pursed mouth.

There seemed no expression at all on that diminished countenance as Mario Amari listened to Aybee’s explanation of the reason for his call. At the end of it the puzzled look returned.

“Let me be sure that I understand you correctly.” Amari’s rumbling voice was converted by the data line to the high-pitched, slightly squeaky delivery of a three-year-old. “You know that Sondra Dearborn is here on the colony, working on form-change equipment. You know that Maria and I met her, and showed her where everything is, and how it works. And you are worried about her?”

“Well not exactly worried,” Aybee didn’t like the way the conversation was going. It was obvious that Mario Amari considered he was dealing with a half-wit. “I’d like to know where she is, and check what she’s doing.”

“Are you a specialist on form-change methods?”

“No.” Make that a quarter-wit. Amari was slowly nodding as Aybee continued, “Look, I don’t want to be a nuisance for you or anyone else on the colony, but I would like to see Sondra. So if you could just tell me where she is working, and how to get there … ”

“Do you know your way around this world?”

“Not really.”

“Have you been to the colony before?”

“No. Never.”

“Then it is probably quicker and easier if I show you where she is. Stay exactly where you are, and do not leave that chamber. I will be with you shortly.”

In other words, you shouldn’t be allowed to wander the colony without a keeper. Aybee cursed Bey Wolf while he waited. Bey had dragged him halfway across the Kuiper Belt for nothing. Sondra was certainly all right-there had been annoyance but not a trace of concern in Mario Amari s voice. How could she not be all right, safe inside the colony? Amari was casual and unworried when he finally came floating in.

“We did not stay with her, because she did not want it.” Mario Amari, without asking Aybee’s permission, grabbed him in one great hand and headed at once for the colony interior. “In fact, Sondra Dearborn specifically requested that we permit her to work alone in her first analysis of our form-change equipment.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Since early yesterday. But she has access to ample food, and to a sanitation and rest area suitable for her needs. Small-form visitors to the colony regularly use the same facilities. If we had heard nothing from her in another day or so, Maria and I would probably have checked back here.”

They had floated through a succession of huge rooms, each scaled to match the size of the Fugates, and were approaching yet another one. The doors between the other rooms had all been wide open. Aybee noted that this one was sealed.

“Again, this was at Sondra Dearborn’s request.” Mario Amari sounded patient and even a little amused as he replied to Aybee’s question. If Aybee was unfortunate enough to be a terminal worrier, his voice said, then maybe he was more to be pitied than blamed. “She wanted to work without a suit, in that setting of lower temperature and pressure where she would feel most comfortable. Naturally, that required that this room be sealed off temporarily from the rest of the colony.”

Aybee found himself nodding agreement, even as they approached the room’s great sliding door and he glanced at the monitors showing the chamber’s interior conditions. That first look brought him instantly to full attention. What he saw bristled the sparse hair on the back of his head.

Air pressure: 40 millibars. Temperature: -68 Celsius. No human without a suit could survive more than a couple of minutes inside such a room.

“This has been changed!” Mario Amari was staring at the gauges as though he could not believe what they said. “This is nothing like the control values that we employed—and the door has been sealed from outside. We left it set for internal control. Sondra Dearborn must have come out, and re-set the interior parameters. She cannot be inside.”

But his actions suggested that he did not believe his own words. He had released Aybee. Now he grasped the door in one huge hand and began jerking at it wildly.

“No, man! Don’t even try that.” Aybee decided he was not the only half-wit in the Fugate colony. “You got a two-atmosphere difference between the sides of that door. You have to equalize before you open it, or we get a big implosion.”

Fortunately the room’s own safeguards agreed with him. It took another half-minute to flood the interior with air-compression effects would be the least of Sondra’s problems if she were inside-and equalize pressure enough for the door to slide open.