Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

“Don’t patronize us with flattery,” Ajit said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to do that. It’s true you’re both scientists, and it’s true you’ve both been certified rational enough for space travel.”

They couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t mention how often certification boards had misjudged, or been bribed, or just been too dazzled by well-earned reputations to look below the work to the worker. If Kane or Ajit knew all that, they kept it to themselves.

“I blame myself for any difficulties we’ve had here,” I said, in the best Nurturer fashion. Although it was also true. “It’s my job to keep a ship running in productive harmony, and this one, I think we can all agree, is not.”

No dissension. I saw that both of them dreaded some long, drawn-out discussion on group dynamics, never a topic that goes down well with astrophysicists. Kane said abruptly, “I still want to move the ship.”

I had prepared myself for this. “No, Kane. We’re not jumping closer in.”

He caught at my loophole. “Then can we jump to another location at the same distance from the core? Maybe measurements from another base point would help.”

“We’re not jumping anywhere until I’m sure the third minicap isn’t coming.”

“How long will that be?” I could see the formidable intelligence under the childish tantrums already racing ahead, planning measurements, weighing options.

“We’ll give it another three days.”

“All right.” Suddenly he smiled, his first in days. “Thanks, Tirzah.”

I turned to Ajit. “Ajit, what can we do for your work? What do you need?”

“I ask for nothing,” he said, with such a strange, intense, unreadable expression that for a moment I felt irrational fear. Then he stood and went into his bunk. I heard the door lock.

I had failed again.

No alarm went off in the middle of the night. There was nothing overt to wake me. But I woke anyway, and I heard someone moving quietly around the wardroom. The muscles of my right arm tensed to open my bunk, and I forced them to still.

Something wasn’t right. Intuition, that mysterious shadow of rational thought, told me to lie motionless. To not open my bunk, to not even reach out and access the ship’s data on my bunk screen. To not move at all.

Why?

I didn’t know.

The smell of coffee wafted from the wardroom. So one of the men couldn’t sleep, made some coffee, turned on his terminal. So what?

Don’t move , said that pre-reasoning part of my mind, from the shadows.

The coffee smell grew stronger. A chair scraped. Ordinary, mundane sounds.

Don’t move .

I didn’t have to move. This afternoon I had omitted to mention to Kane and Ajit those times that certification boards had misjudged, or been bribed, or just been too dazzled by well-earned reputations to look below the work to the worker. Those times in which the cramped conditions of space, coupled with swollen egos and frenzied work, had led to disaster for a mission Nurturer. But we had learned. My bunk had equipment the scientists did not know about.

Carefully I slid my gaze to a spot directly above me on the bunk ceiling. Only my eyes moved. I pattern-blinked: two quick, three beats closed, two quick, a long steady stare. The screen brightened.

This was duplicate ship data. Not a backup; it was entirely separate, made simultaneously from the same sensors as the main log but routed into separate, freestanding storage that could not be reached from the main computer. Scientists are all sophisticated users. There is no way to keep data from any who wish to alter it except by discreet, unknown, untraceable storage. I pattern-blinked, not moving so much as a finger or a toe in the bed, to activate various screens of ship data.

It was easy to find.

Yesterday, at 1850 hours, the minicap bay had opened and received a minicap. Signal had failed to transmit to the main computer. Today at 300 hours, which was fifteen minutes ago, the minicap bay had been opened manually and the payload removed. Again signal had failed to the main computer.

The infrared signature in the wardroom, seated at his terminal, was Ajit.

It was possible the signal failures were coincidental, and Ajit was even now transferring data from the third minicap into the computer, enjoying a cup of hot coffee while he did so, gloating in getting a perfectly legitimate jump on Kane. But I didn’t think so.

What did I think?

I didn’t have to think; I just knew. I could see it unfolding, clear as a holovid. All of it. Ajit had stolen the second minicap, too. That had been the morning after Kane and I had slept so soundly, the morning after Ajit had given us wine to celebrate Kane’s shadow-matter theory. What had been in that wine? We’d slept soundly, and Ajit told us that the minicap had come before we were awake. Ajit said he’d already put it into the computer. It carried Kane’s upload’s apology that the prelim data, the data from which Kane had constructed his shadow-matter thesis, was wrong, contaminated by a radiation strike.

Ajit had fabricated that apology and that replacement data. The actual second minicap would justify Kane’s work, not undo it. Ajit was saving all three minicaps to use for himself, to claim the shadow matter discovery for his own. He’d used the second minicap to discredit the first; he would claim the third had never arrived, had never been sent from the dying probe.

The real Kane, my Kane, hadn’t found the particle from the first ship’s breach because it had, indeed, been made of shadow matter. That, and not slow speed, had been why the particle showed no radiation. The particle had exerted gravity on our world, but nothing else. The second breach, too, had been shadow matter. I knew that as surely as if Kane had shown me the pages of equations to prove it.

I knew something else, too. If I went into the shower and searched my body very carefully, every inch of it, I would find in some inconspicuous place the small, regular hole into which a subdermal tracker had gone the night of the drugged wine. So would Kane. Trackers would apprise Ajit of every move we made, not only large-muscle moves like a step or a hug, but small ones like accessing my bunk display of ship’s data. That was what my intuition had been warning me of. Ajit did not want to be discovered during his minicap thefts.

I had the same trackers in my own repertoire. Only I had not thought this mission deteriorated enough to need them. I had not wanted to think that. I’d been wrong.

But how would Ajit make use of Kane’s stolen work with Kane there to claim it for himself?

I already knew the answer, of course. I had known it from the moment I pattern-blinked at the ceiling, which was the moment I finally admitted to myself how monstrous this mission had turned.

I pushed open the bunk door and called cheerfully, “Hello? Do I smell coffee? Who’s out there?”

“I am,” Ajit said genially. “I cannot sleep. Come have some coffee.”

“Coming, Ajit.”

I put on my robe, tied it at my waist, and slipped the gun from its secret mattress compartment into my palm.

The probe jumped successfully. We survived.

This close to the core, the view wasn’t as spectacular as it was farther out. Sag A*, which captured us in orbit immediately, now appeared as a fuzzy region dominating starboard. The fuzziness, Ajit said, was a combination of Hawking radiation and superheated gases being swallowed by the black hole. To port, the intense blue cluster of IRS16 was muffled by the clouds of ionized plasma around the probe. We experienced some tidal forces, but the probe was so small that the gravitational tides didn’t yet cause much damage.