Eric Flint - Threshold

A.J. added. "Yes. I am glad that Ares and the IRI were able to reach an accord." Helen smiled. Despite the inherent friendliness between some of the principals, A.J., Glenn, Hank, and Joe had spent a lot of tense days trying to hammer out all aspects of that agreement, and she'd had to absent herself from those discussions since she herself was, naturally, an employee of the IRI. With the tiny pool of skilled people on and around Mars, it was actually more the rule than the exception for the formal, or informal, families that existed to include rather divided loyalties. This did make it awkward when there were potential conflicts of interest, and both the Institute and Ares knew they had a lot of legal landmines to negotiate around when they were trying to arrange a deal that would keep Ares mobile and independent, maintain the IRI's reasonably neutral position, and yet make it possible for both groups to get most of what they wanted. In this case, though, the small number of people worked to their advantage. Everyone knew everyone, and respected their needs and goals. Off the record, Nicholas knew perfectly well what Ares intended to do. Off the record, Glenn and the rest of Ares knew that they had to be willing to hand over considerable control to the IRI of certain assets when conditions warranted. So when it came time to negotiate, it was mostly a matter of getting on record with hard-nosed noises of negotiation for the investors and watchdogs back home and then coming to a good gentleman's agreement and finding the most ironclad legal terms to nail it down, and thus see to it that it wouldn't be broken if one side or the other eventually ended up with less cooperative and cordial people in charge. "How does it feel to be on Mars, Nicholas?"

"Absolutely wonderful, Helen. I cannot even begin to describe it. How very strange it is, though, that I'm here, running some kind of interplanetary research organization that has hardly anything to do with paleontology. Not a career course I could have expected." "I'll drink to that. I'm not even surewhat I am right now. Paleontologist, partly, but now it's more biology… with some guesses at behavior of alien species. A sociologist of the alien?

Xenopaleoarchaeological-sociological-reconstruction-and-analysis specialist?" "And interplanetary supermodel, too," A.J. inserted.

Helen poked him. "Which I suppose is the more important point to you?"

"I can't complain," A.J. answered equably. "And for our bank account it is arguably the most important point." Nicholas nodded. "While there's obviously a certain element of crude sexism about it, Helen, I think it's still a rather positive thing. And there is not a man within, um, a hundred million miles that does not envy A.J. and Joe whenever one of yours or Madeline's advertisements appears." "They do make us look good, I admit. And I can't say that I don't feel some pride in managing to break into a business usually reserved for those half my age." She raised her glass. "To changes!" The two men joined her. "Changes!" they echoed, and drank. There was a muffled thumping at the door, and then the intercom came on. "A.J.! A.J.! Hey, let me in, man!" A.J.'s brow wrinkled in confusion. "Larry? What's the big fuss? I've got company right now. Can't it wait?" Regardless of the answer, Helen could see from the door telltales that he'd opened the outer lock and the cycle had started. "No, really… Well, maybe, but I think you'd kill me if I just waited on this." The lock finished cycling, and the tall, massive frame of Larry Conley entered. He took off his helmet. "I-holy sheep, something smells great!" "First Martian frontier pot roast," Helen said, folding out another chair. "Want to try some?" Larry looked torn. "Hey, I wouldn't want to deprive you of the leftovers…" His eyes wandered longingly to the steaming pot.

"But, jeez, that looks a lot better than the package I was going to have later." "Sit. Eat. But talk," A.J. said. "If it's that important, you can even talk with your mouth a little full." "Mmm. Thanks, guys.

Hey, Dr. Glendale, sorry to go busting in like this. But I think you'll be interested too. It's Ares business, though. I don't-"

Nicholas stood. "I perfectly understand. Even if we are going to be working together, there may be some things you don't want me to know right away." He turned to Helen with the same courtly grace he brought to almost any occasion. "Helen, my dear, why don't you show me around the other parts of the house? With the connecting doors insulated as they are, I'm sure it should be private enough." A.J. looked at him gratefully. "Thanks, Nick. We really do appreciate the IRI's cooperation with us." "And we the help of Ares. As I'm sure Jackie and Bruce have told you more than once."

Helen was obviously bursting with curiosity about what Larry found so important, but if the director wasn't going to eavesdrop, neither would she. Instead, she took Glendale into the second hab can, where the bedroom and home offices were, and took care to shut the door behind her. "Okay, we're secure. Give." To A.J.'s resigned frustration, now that everyone else was gone, Larry seemed to have lost his initial excitement over whatever it was that he'd discovered, and was much more excited by the pot roast and gravy. "Now, this is a meal. Y'know, I really ought to… mmm… learn to cook."

"Larry," A.J. said threateningly. "You don't think I should?" "Keep it up, Doctor Conley. Just remember who's in charge of your data feeds."

"Okay, okay. It's worth a little wait. You'll remember that I've been working with the IRI and our own departments in trying to match up Bemmie astronomical information with ours? Correspondences of various objects, trying to figure out orbits, all that kind of thing?" "Yeah.

Cosmological importance for you guys, I guess." "Oh, there's all kinds of great data we're getting, and if we can get enough out of that oversized DVD and the other stuff we've found, we could learn a hell of a lot. But I was going over a bunch of data on the asteroids-finally got it separated out and decoded with our in-house programs a little while ago-and I found this." Larry tied his personal VRD to A.J.'s with a standard signal. A.J. saw an image come up of a generally spherical object, sketchily drawn as the Bemmies often represented things. At first he didn't see what had excited Larry, but then he saw a small ripple-shaped line of Bemmius-style writing.

Studying it he had a feeling he'd seen some of the symbols before.

"What is it?" "Don't recognize it? From the lecture a few months back with Jane and Rich? No?" "Missed that one. Glanced over the notes.

Anyway, get to it." "Well, when Jane and Rich were analyzing the data on the images they could match between the Phobos records and those on the Rosetta Disc, they noticed repeated symbols on the labels for the Phobos base and for the one here. Long story short, they think-and so do I-that those symbols stand forcolony orbase." "A third…" A.J. stared at the image, almost in awe. "Damn, they were busy. Um, there's an awful lot of asteroids, though. How are we going to figure out which one?" Larry grinned. "They do show a few surface features on here. And I know it's pretty spherical, which not very many are. And I know our friends were very much into water. A quick comparison, andvoila! Ceres, no doubt about it." An image of a dusty-gray scarred marble appeared next to the sketchy image. "Water andCeres?" "Jesus Christ, A.J., you have so many blind spots it's amazing you can find your way to the can without some of your damn sensors to guide you.

Yes, water and Ceres. We were pretty sure even thirty years ago that a really large proportion of Ceres was water ice-maybe more than all fresh water on Earth combined." "Can you tell where on Ceres this base is supposed to be?" A.J. said, ignoring the (to him) irrelevant shot at his lack of knowledge outside of his specialty. "Compared to a planet, Ceres is puny. But after working on Phobos for months, I've gained a lot of respect for how much even puny space rocks can hide.