David Brin - Earth

She showed him where NASA scavengers had stripped the ship, back when the decision had been made to abandon Atlantis where she lay. “They took anything that could be cannibalized for the two remaining shuttles. Still, there’s an amazing amount of junk they left behind. The flight computers, for instance. Totally obsolete, even at the time. Half the homes in America had faster, smarter ones by then. Your wristwatch could cheat all five at poker and then talk them all into voting Republican.”

Alex marveled. “Amazing.”

Teresa led him up the ladder to the main deck, where South Pacific sunshine streamed in through front windows smudged and stained by perching seagulls. The cockpit was missing half its instruments, ripped out indelicately long ago, leaving wires strewn across dim, dust-filmed displays. She rested her arms on the command seat and sighed. “So much love and attention went into these machines. And so much bureaucratic ineptitude. Sometimes I wonder how we ever got as far as we did.”

“Say, Teresa. Is there a way to get into the cargo bay?”

She turned around and saw Alex peering through the narrow windows at the back of the control cabin. It was pitch black in the bay, of course, since it had no ports to the outside. She herself had been back there only once, to discover in dismay that midges and tiny spiders had found homes there, lacing the vast cavity with gauzy webs. Probably they used cracks Atlantis had suffered when she fell onto her 747 carry-plane, ruining both ships forever. The Boeing had been scrapped. But Atlantis remained where she lay, her cargo hold now home only to insects.

“Sure. Through the airlock on middeck. But—”

He turned. “Rip… There’s a favor I have to ask.”

She blinked. “Just name it.”

“Come outside then. I brought something in the truck.”

The crate had to be winched up the pediment steps. From there it was a tight squeeze through the crew-egress hatch.

“We can’t leave it here,” Teresa said, panting and wiping her brow. “It blocks my work space.”

“That’s why I asked about the bay. Do you think we can get it through?”

Just left of the toilet cubicle stood the shuttle’s airlock, now the only way into the cargo bay. Teresa looked, and shook her head dubiously. “Maybe if we uncrate your whatever-it-is.”

“All right. But let’s be careful.”

She saw why he was so nervous when they peeled away the inner packing. There, resting inside a gimbaled housing, lay the most perfect sphere Teresa had ever seen. It glistened almost liquidly, causing the eye to skip along its flanks. Somehow, vision flowed on past, missing the thing itself.

“We’ll have to carry it by the housing,” Alex told her. Teresa bent to get a good grip on the rim as he took the other side. It was very heavy. Like a gyroscope, the silvery ball seemed to stay oriented in exactly the same direction, no matter how they shifted and jostled it. But then, that might have been an illusion. For all Teresa knew, it was spinning madly right in front of her. No ripple in the convex reflection gave any clue.

“What… is this thing?” she asked as they paused for breath inside the airlock. There was barely room for the globe and its cradle, forcing them to squeeze side by side to reach the opposite hatch. The close press of Alex’s shoulder, as they sidled together, felt at once familiar and warm, recalling times not so long ago of shared danger and adventure.

“It’s a gravity resonator,” he told her, caressing the sphere with his gaze. “A completely new design.”

“But it’s so small. I thought they had to be big cylinders.”

“They do, to generate a broad spectrum of search waves. But this one’s a specialist. This one’s tuned. For Beta.”

“Ah,” Teresa commented, impressed.

They resumed wrestling the shimmery globe into the bay, now lit by three small bulbs. “So why… do you want to store a tuned gravity resonator… inside a broken space shuttle?”

“I… thought you’d ask. Actually, I’m not… so much setting it up here as hiding it.”

As they rested for a moment, Teresa mopped her forehead. “Hiding? Do you mean from Spivey?”

Alex nodded. “Or his ilk. You know those Maori guards Auntie Kapur insisted on sending us? Well they’ve already caught spies trying to sneak into the compound. One Nihonese, another pair from the Han. And I’m sure Spivey’s got people on the island as well. Auntie’s sending reinforcements, but even so I’d rather keep my ace in the hole well concealed.”

He rubbed his palms on his trousers to dry them and grabbed the housing again. Together they resumed lifting.

“Hidden up…” She grunted as they hauled the resonator over a rib longeron into a stable position near one of the payload attachment points. “Hidden up my sleeve.” Teresa straightened. “No, that’s okay, Alex. I approve. It’s not just Spivey. I don’t trust any of them, not farther than I could spit.

“So,” she continued as Alex fastened the machine down. “Was that a bottle I saw in your hand earlier, I hope?”

Still short of breath, Alex grinned back at her, eyes glittering in the spotlights and their reflection off the perfect superconducting sphere. “Yeah. I know you Yanks like your beer cold. But once you’ve tasted this I’m sure you’ll give up that beastly habit.”

“Hmph. We’ll see about that.” Teresa brushed a wisp of cobweb from her eyes. As Alex turned to go, she paused to watched the tiny shred of spider silk flutter, descend to touch the round globe, and instantly disappear.

It was, indeed, a potent, bitter brew, and Teresa rather liked it. Still, for appearances she said the stuff explained a lot about Englishmen. It obviously stunted your emotional growth. He only laughed and leaned over to refresh her glass.

Teresa sat in the shuttle’s command chair while Alex perched cross-legged in the copilot’s seat. Neither of them felt any particular need to fill the long silences. So it often was, in Teresa’s experience, between people who had faced death together.

“You’re worried,” she surmised at last, after one extended pause. “You don’t think the deal can hold.”

“It was hopeless from the start.” Alex shook his head. “In retrospect, I can’t understand why it took so long for Spivey to find us. But at least we were a small conspiracy, operating on a shoestring. Now? Our beams are producing detectable phenomena all over the globe. The alliances can’t keep a thing like this under wraps, not with everyone on Earth prying to find out what’s going on.”

“Then why did Spivey and Hutton agree to try?”

He shrugged. “Oh, it seemed a good idea at the time. Take care of Beta, get the situation stabilized, then present the world with a fait accompli. And of course it’s giving us a chance to characterize the singularity, to prove its origin. Our technical report should let the science tribunals extend inspection to the Earth’s core, preventing any new arms race over gazers and such. Then, in an open debate, it could be decided whether to keep Beta around, as a possible planetary-defense weapon, or try to expel it forever.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Teresa nodded, grudgingly.

“The only problem is, that time’s already come! Beta’s relatively stable, I have data for a full report, and I’m certain the other great powers have already started clandestine graviscan programs of their own. There was a pulse from Nihon, yesterday—” He shook his head. “I wish I knew what Spivey was waiting for.”

“Did you hear about the meeting at the U.N.?” Teresa asked. “Everyone, all the delegates, were talking in parables and double-entendres. Moralizing and posturing, and saying nothing any of the reporters could sink their teeth into.”