Across the Sea of Suns (12 page)
In time she got a reputation as a terrific trou bleshooter who suffered fools not at all, particularly if they were bosses. She had her own standards and they had made her unapproachable. Until
Lancer
departed Earth orbit and started trials, she had been bottled up inside herself. Nikka had liked her from the start, though, and along with Nigel had slowly developed connections, getting the three of them through the early, uneasy years, and onto a plateau of comfortable intimacy.
But any three-way dynamic was stressed, inevitably, if only by constant comparison with the conventional two-person model, which looked so bloody easy. How much loyalty did their snug harbor command? Nigel wondered as he watched Carlotta.
“I … I suppose I might … for a while. Only while we’re in Isis space, though.”
“Great! Knew you’d see the advantage of an old sod not having to explain every gimpy leg.”
He was being falsely jovial, and they all knew it, but it gave the women a chance to sit back and listen to him as he rattled on about the surface work. Nigel studied Carlotta’s pensive eyes as he talked. She smiled reflexively at his jokes, but she glanced at Nikka now and then tentatively, as if seeking approval. He saw that she had made this compromise more for Nikka than for him. Very well. He had gone begging and had gotten what he asked. Best not to fret over the reasons.
—
we’re competing for him
, she had said. Perhaps so. He had to admit that he rather enjoyed that, had always been open to this sort of arrangement, as far back as California, with Shirley and Alexandria—
He abruptly jerked his head, stopping the thought. The women flicked puzzled looks at him. He made his face become casual, distant.
He didn’t like to think of his previous three-way tie, and how it had ended. Letting the past filter into the present that way was a bad idea. He had to try to see Nikka and Carlotta as they were, above a calculus dictated by experience.
Still, he could not ignore the other side of the equation. In counterpoint to competing for him, they in the bargain competed
with
him … for each other.
It worked. He kept his own medical records and was able to disguise temporary injuries or stillness. That kept him on the roster but didn’t help him get jobs he wanted. It was weeks before a good servod surface mission came along, and Nigel didn’t make the squad.
The team went after an EM creature, intact. Alex had tracked thousands of them with the big radio antenna. In a valley system near the Eye, the EM signals had begun to ebb away. Then one winked out.
“Dead?” Nigel asked him.
“Prob’ly. Didn’t move for ten days. Then we lost its signal. Weak, for sure.”
“Does its body heat show up in the infrared?”
“Did. Doesn’t now.”
It took a week to reach a shipwide consensus, then another to plan the raid. The all-volunteer party dropped down, grabbed the alien, and boosted up—all in less than two hours.
They brought the big polyflex sack into the sterilized bay. The EM creature lay in it like a Tinkertoy monster that had fallen on its side, legs at impossible angles. In the blazing uniform bay light the thing had no shadow. It did not move. The team of sixteen wheeled the specially made cart slowly, carefully, into position among the crowded banks of sensors and diagnostics and gleaming racks of surgical instruments.
Nigel watched intently through the big viewport. He could make out Nikka in a stark white sealsuit. She pulled at the roller platform on the cart and the thing inside slumped into a better position. They were all drilled and sure. They moved quickly to position the instruments around the EM creature. Then they sliced the bag.
As the scalpel went in, the sack exhaled a thin mist. The team drew back for an instant and then, sheepish, watched the dust settle to the deck. The bay air was Isis normal, but without the fine sulfur-rich haze. Nikka sawed away part of the sack and stepped back, handing the polyflex to an assistant behind her.
I hope it doesn’t need that wind and dust to live
, she said over General Comm.
This thing’s dead already,
came from elsewhere in the bay. And the assembled specialists began. For years they had waited to see something like this, and now the waxy skin of the EM lay glistening under the piercing lights. A murmur came from them.
Nigel breathed deeply, not noticing the crowd around him. The air in this corridor was as flat and pure and dead as it was in the bay, BioSci had ordered a clean, positive-pressure balance all around the bay, just in case. He reached up and flicked the comm monitor perched on his ears, and tuned for all channels coming from the work zone.
Careful, careful there, Andreov, peel that back as though it were your daughter’s hymen.
thick-skinned isn’t the word look at that like shoe leather
X rays look good. Complicated bone structure I’d say.
Some kind of tripod spine running down into the underbelly see but what’s that big long thing up there, must be in the head
yeah that’s parabolic, Jeffreys said that on the boost-up, a longitudinal parabolic antenna fitted into the rectangular frame in the head, so it can pick up microwaves all along the long axis
must be what ’at bone’s for, housin’ the nerve endings for its radio sight, picks it all up an’ ’er’s a processor some’ere in ’ere to shape up the input for ’at funny-shaped brain
okay the spectral stuff is coming in on these tissues; nothing big so far pretty stringy stuff really
chem says the flash on that first sample is just plain ole oxy-binding iron hemoglobin wrapped up in a corpuscle blanket, same biochem patent the vertebrate line holds on Earth
this stuff’s chromatophores just like I said and McWilliams said was bullshit, remember but lookit it respond see
man look it jumps up like that from smooth to prickly must be papillae in the skin
maybe helps flick off the dust
it’s a reflex probably not conscious, just like shivering is for us
you keep ridin’ my ass ’bout that I’ll oh you think so huh look at that sked we don’t get to those incisions for half hour at least, so you can wait for your microspecs until Kovaldy makes his cut
I know we got to move fast can’t tell if this thing is clinically dead after all what’s it mean we’ve been through all that before only now looking at the goddamn thing jeezus it’s impressive so big the 3D doesn’t really make you feel it but still I think we ought to hold back until the superficial team is through we don’t know what sort of neural patterns we’re going to hit
hey that’s some kinda sac you’ve
sir there’s fluid over there on team A’s incision lots of it they say
caught it fine only can’t figure what
look at that pH
like nothing I ever saw it’s a metallic salt a whole big bag of it carried up under that
watchat
got the needle okay
standard tissues here high water-storage ability just as we expected
no, nobody touches the head or anything spinal yet didn’t you agree on that when we laid out the
hand me the other one I can’t cut see this stuffs like leather
flaps are all over the slit there, you can see on the low-E X ray, see sir I think that’s a mouth only the flaps are down over it, there are teeth back in there
awful damn sharp but what’s it eat
Avery, get those legs braced better no we don’t go in yet I don’t want it to move is all, tell Kajima we’re ’bout ready
clean at up ’fore you
get your lens on this I’m making a cut like so up and across
hold the bowl just in case
Nikka you got a hand I
something tough here I think I
Hey
Jesus
’at’s not living tissue at all Sam
little threads of it I thought we’d hit some nerves by this time but this stuff jeez get chemsamp over here
tough innit
grab that
you know what this is it’s
silicon
, right, strings of silicon with
boron
in it of all things
I don’t get it there are look it’s all laced through this living tissue here maybe some intrusion
like cancer maybe?
hey Singh we’re getting some weak electroneural noise from the head I think we oughta step down till we
it’s gangliated, that silicon, part of the bones maybe?
somethin’ like a belly here, let me see that scope shot yeah it’s empty see, just maintaining pressure and notice how it’s linked to that tangle of stuff, for sure that’s an intestine, all stacked funny how regular they are innit perfect design for getting max digestive surface for the space you want, concentric
yeah, spherical shells instead of the swarm of ropes we’ve got in our gut
a lot better engineering you ask me
no we must have separate samples of each, I know they’re coming fast now freeze-dry or vac-dry them every other one of them if you have to but don’t fall behind I told Ladunda we should have had more backup on that but would he of course not well do what you
low metabolic rate they got though listen with that low a blood O
2
you’d be a corpse
this one is already
well sure but not because of that there must’ve been something else
it stopped moving jess like the rest in the valley
shit now look just four centimeters away from that boron-silicon string there’s that look at the lines that’s phosphorus for sure, lots of it, all mixed in with the silicon
I think we oughtta stop right here until we get this straightened out
it must be rotting now already, you want to crack your suit and give it a whiff just go right ahead
come on
we’ll have to vac you afterward of course but for science y’know you should be proud
stop gawking Kafafahin and fix that
put a potential drop across it you get funny characteristics see
what are you doing, Jeffreys?
the electrical characteristics of these silicon threads they’re damn funny in fact you asked me I’d say it’s a transistor, a lot of ’em
yeah that’s what makes the thread flexible, see it’s made up of little platelets all strung together, just a couple millimeters long max and they have some give in ’em
don’t get it
it’s a transistorized neural net, that’s why you can’t find any nerves in those tissues, that’s not bone or anything it’s a bunch of goddamn chips carrying info back an’ forth
the blood vessels are so small they sure don’t get much oxy to the tissues this way
we’re only a few centimeters in don’t jump to
platelets I mean platelets of silicon migod ’at’s crazy how you going to lay down silicon in a body when
down in the DNA, isn’t that obvious there are lots of ways to transfer nucleic acid information into protein structure and build up inorganic structures in parallel if the code is there
sections of each I’ve got to have sections on each slice get Hendricks he can help, with all this pushing and shoving how’m I supposed to what’s that babble over there anyway we’re supposed to work not talk when
the opportunity I mean
these are electroplaques for sure, boron for p-type transistors, phosphorus for n-type, stimulated by the adjustments in potential in the tissues themselves, same as our nerves only with more control I’d say, like the difference between a semiconductor transistor and a plain wire, you can do a lot more that way than you can with simple nerves like ours, same as difference between those old vacuum tubes and a microchip at least
hold that steady
shit I’d swear that arm moved
they’re pokin’ into it, I don’t wonder
so it’s got both p-type and n-type transistors for different
don’t you think we oughta back offa this till we understan’ whatinhell is
Hendricks give me that bi-clamp I think there’s something else, looks like
here, I’ll help you get it
a myelin sheath sort of but thicker, got silicon plating it too here wait hold it there watch your
yeah okay tissues awful dry here
got to cut through hand me that
okay wonder what
something hard here som—
The fierce, dry snap of it jerked heads up all around the huge carcass, as the man shuddered and shook violently, the voltage shooting through him and wrenching open his mouth, a rattle of breath escaping, and his assistant also shared the current for a moment as it surged, rooting him to the floor, and then the assistant’s hand, arm went into a spasm and slipped from the clamp he held so the current passed from him and he collapsed to the deck, unnoticed, for the first man now jerked and shook so violently everyone watched, frozen, and inside him the central pumping chambers of the heart, which had been starting to relax in their cycle, went into ventricular fibrillation, shaking and banging together and stopping the flow of blood, the man’s eyes rolling up, the current shooting through his arm to his feet and into the mass of the ship, the crowd around him still unmoving, staring, until at last a woman seized a plastform instrument and hit him, hard, freeing the hand, and the man fell loose upon the deck. Nikka dropped the instrument and knelt beside him. The room burst into babble.
He sees there is nothing he can do of course yes as the man falls, puppet with cut strings, eyes rolled back, Nikka following through with the blow, always stroke through the ball his father had said, and Nigel sees what will happen next, the gasps and quaking thin astonishment around the huge body, the sudden clump of humans forming to get the man out and into a vacced-down and retrosterilized environment, so they can split the skinsuits and treat the charred flesh, probably saving the one man yes but not the other, it will take too long and it must have been high current, the most dangerous kind of discharge, it would have been easier if there had been only high voltage, but no that is—
he blinks, sensing his own slow respiration and the rank scent of the shuffling, muttering, frightened people around him, their sudden bitter sweat fouling the air before they sense it themselves
—that is unlikely, it had to be an electrical discharge appropriate to a biological system, low voltage, high current, stored somewhere perhaps in the electrochemical batteries they carried, the metallic salt fluids in insulated sacs, a very compact way to store energy on an oxy-poor, grim, red dust-smothered world, so the thing on the carry cart—