Farthest Reef (6 page)

Chapter 3

1
“Smells like a Ganny ship in here,” said Alex, sniffing in the direction of his co-pilot. “Tsu, I thought you hosed off in the ladies room.”

Diver
was quickly approaching the white needle in the sky Mary had seen only in pictures. She crouched in the front near Connie, looking out the window.

Tsu never looked away from the controls. “The cleaner wasn’t working very well. It only took Ganny slugs, no Feds or creds.” She shot a steely glance at Alex. “You want a list? What is it wi’ these people? Never heard of money?”

Alex smiled and regarded Connie for a moment. “Not big on Corpie bucks, I guess. But, hey, I didn’t say it was a bad smell. I kinda like it. Hell, it’s as close to a Ganny bar as I’m gettin’ for a while.”

“We’re landing, Alex.” Tsu pointed at the gargantuan ship ahead of them. “Aren’t you flying this ship?” Alex didn’t need to defend himself. In the next second the green flashing markers lights lit up on his dash. As usual, his manual approach had been computer perfect.

Tsu was embarrassed when she saw the marker. “Oooops. Spoke too soon, supposes. Takin’ it back, Alex. Sorry.”

Mary turned from the window and smiled. “That was a big mistake, Connie,” she warned. “Now you’ve apologized, Alex’ll never let you forget it.”

“Listen to Mary,” Alex said with a wink. “She knows all my finer qualities.”

Auto-guidance systems aboard
Goddard
guided
Diver
swiftly into the shuttle bay. Alex noted that all the berths but theirs were now filled. When the bay was sealed and pressurized, a welcome party of three officers met them at the hatch. None of the crewmen were wearing foam suits, but he remembered that they were only worn during the gee-pulse. He was pleased to see that ordinary coveralls were the apparel of choice.

Following behind Alex and Connie as they took the main tubeway to the central cylinder, Mary had the expression of a child in Wonderland. In less than five minutes they were climbing the final steps to the park-like environment of the main level. Alex was eager to see Mary’s expression when she saw the incredible view.

“Oh,” Tsu suddenly said. “I have sunglasses for you.” She withdrew three sets of sunglasses from a leg pocket on her blue coveralls and handed a pair each to Mary and Alex. “Put these on.”

Alex and Mary did as Tsu asked, then exited the tubeway. Mary paused, shielding her eyes from the overhead light as she surveyed the expanse of the biocylinder. If the view impressed her, Alex couldn’t tell. At the moment, he presumed Mary was in what she often called ‘tourist mode’, meaning it hadn’t become real to her yet.

Their escorts led them to the Master Control building where Professor Baltadonis and Tony Sciarra opened the glass doors and stepped outside to meet them. They, too, were wearing sunglasses.

Tony smiled when he saw Mary carrying Inky. “You haven’t changed, I see.”

“In some ways I have,” said Mary. Tucking Inky under her arm, she offered a handshake.

Sciarra took her hand gently. “I guess we’re all going back to the reef. We’re still the only experts on it, I’m told.”

Professor Baltadonis thanked Mary for coming and informed them that they would be spending a day or so in briefings. He looked Mary over doubtfully. “Are you healed? Everything in working order?”

Mary nodded. “Ninety seven percent, give or take,” she said. “Enough so plain old aspirin gets me through. Pain patches when it’s bad.”

“You’ve tested your systems while convalescing, as requested, I presume?”

Mary nodded. “As ordered. I was able to send and receive.”

“Are you including the clicker men? We suspected you might even be able to tune them in.”

“Blends with the Jupiter’s static. But it’s there.”

“Good.” Johnny smiled and thought for a moment. “We’ve prepared tapes for you, Mary, based on
Diver’s
recordings of the reef. Our exolinguists have deduced a click language that might help you during the next meeting.” He reached into his jacket and produced a small data cube. He handed it to her, then pointed to a group of buildings in the distance. “Your quarters are down the lane, at the end of that row of buildings. As to getting around, there’s the tubeways, of course, and there are ground vehicles. Stubbs claims to have brought a bicycle, but I haven’t seen him use it. Anyway, there’s lots of ways to get around.” Johnny squinted at the blazing light. “The solar lights are set on high at the moment, to stimulate plant growth. It won’t be that bright during the mission. This is just to give the ecology a kick start.” He scratched his head. “Let’s see, anything else? I’m sure there is. As you can see, it’s a big place – over twenty square kilometers. Right now, though, a walk to your domicile will let you get a feel for the place.”

“Catch you guys later,” said Tony with a salute, as he and Johnny went back into the building.

Mary dug a long leash out of her bag, clipped it to Inky’s collar, and put him down in the grass beside the rubbery black sidewalk, letting him prowl the turf as they walked. The path joined a broader avenue leading to a causeway that traced the circumference of the cylinder. As they walked slowly along, Alex sensed that Mary was deliberately avoiding looking up at the view. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“More disorienting than I expected, that’s all.” Mary pointed in the direction they were strolling. “That way, the world curves up. The other way, it’s flat. I’m not sure I can get used to it.”

Alex scratched his head and surveyed the view. To his eye, the engineers had done an admirable job of landscaping the place so the trees and architectural features hid the curvature, and the dizzying view of the opposite wall was generally obscured by the dazzling light overhead. Here and there, he had to admit, the distortion was very apparent and a bit disorienting, and he guessed Mary’s heightened senses found it even more so. “You’ll get used to it,” he assured her, “in time.”

They found their house at the end of a row of a dozen or more flat-roofed buildings. The door, with the name Rose on it in attractive white letters, opened for them as they came up the walk. Inky seemed to be enjoying the walk, not the least concerned about his bizarre surroundings. He bounded alongside them in short spurts as if chasing after insects. When they turned into their yard he bounded toward the house, straining at the leash, as if he knew he was home. “Inky likes it, at least,” grunted Mary, tugging at the leash.

Though the houses were row homes, connected together, a low white picket fence separated the front yards. The grassy yards, while small, were planted with flowers and small fruit bushes of different kinds. The houses themselves appeared to be faced with false stone and were all styled somewhat differently, almost quaintly. “This isn’t so bad, Mary,” Alex said almost defensively, but Mary wasn’t listening. She’d already opened the front door and ducked inside. He shrugged and sighed. “I really thought you’d like it,” he muttered as he followed her inside.

The downstairs was a portrait in white: a small front living room, with a kitchen and dining area in the rear. Up a short flight of stairs lay a bedroom, a com room with mini-theater and com center, and a spacious bathroom featuring a large tub of faux stone with a small waterfall. A small label on the tub was marked Local Hydro-Waste Cycling System. Alex noticed a label on the toilet said the same thing and read it aloud to Mary, who was trying to figure out how the tub’s waterfall worked.

“Waste? Great. We’ll be drinking our own pee for the duration, I suppose.” She shuddered.

“Yummy.”

Negative as Mary was sounding, Alex noticed that she had relaxed almost as soon as they got inside. “Whew,” she said, removing her glasses and peering out the bedroom window. “The view is better from here.”

“Is there a problem, my love?” He put an arm on Mary’s shoulder. “Are you saying you can’t deal …?”

“No. I’ll just discreetly throw up during our pleasant strolls outside.” She unhooked Inky’s leash and smiled as he ran off to explore the house. “But … if Inky can deal with it, so can I.”

“Yeah, he’s right at home.” He hugged her tighter, feeling a bit relieved.

It took a few hours to determine where everything was located, and there seemed to be few problems. Food processors had yet to be installed, but the cooler was well stocked and the cabinets were supplied with dry food, and Alex assured Mary, and himself, that everything would be in working order when they returned from their trip into the reef.

They ended up in the com room where Mary placed the data cube Johnny had given her into the com unit. While the program loaded she went to the bathroom. Meanwhile Alex reviewed the programs that scrolled on the large flat screen over the com. One was called
Diver
, and another was identified as “Strategic Reef Simulation”.

Alex was about to activate the latter when the front door-chime rang. Their bags had arrived, minus those slated to be stowed aboard
Diver
. He thanked the delivery driver and watched as the man got into his spindly vehicle. Despite an oversized load of bags and suitcases the tiny car rolled away easily down the lane.

Studying the details of the biocylinder visible above the trees, Alex could see trucks moving along roadways in the distance, the giant lakebed to their left, buildings, groves of trees. All these details were enclosed in a grid of mammoth proportions. The more he looked at it, the more symmetry he saw in the details. Most of the surface buildings seemed to be grouped in clusters, like towns, and most of these were located at his end of the Biosphere. The rest of the landscape was broken up into farmland.

Back inside, Alex shouted to Mary, “Looks like we’re situated at the business end of the tube.”

Mary came out of the bathroom naked, smiling, and wearing a neck patch. “The cabinet has all my medication,” she said. “How nice. After a year with the Gannys I’d forgotten what efficiency is.”

“It’s a tradeoff, my love,” said Alex. “Efficiency versus humanity.”

Mary ran to Alex and jumped on him, wrapping her slender legs around his waist. Together they tumbled onto the couch. “Lust versus headache,” she said, biting his lip gently. Her nimble fingers tugged at the zipper of his togs and had them open in no time. “It’s been weeks, Alex,” she breathed as her beautiful face disappeared into his lap.

Their lovemaking ended in the tub under the waterfall. Only then did it occur to Alex that there might be cameras everywhere. “I hope there aren’t cameras in here.”

Mary quickly wrapped herself in a towel and peered at every corner of the room. She tilted her head and listened for a moment. “Nope,” she said, slipping back under the waterfall to rinse her soapy white hair. “No cameras … no bugs. And best of all, my headache’s gone.”

2
While the entire house was wired for sound so they could address the computer at any time, there proved to be no cameras anywhere, except in the communications room.

Soon after Alex and Mary had dressed, Johnny called and invited himself, Tony, and Connie Tsu over to their house for a meeting. They gathered in the upstairs communications room where Baltadonis immediately told them that Stubbs was acting as if they were, as he put it, “going to blast off to Lalande tomorrow.”

“He’s a driven man,” admitted Johnny. “But Stubbs isn’t the only one calling the shots.” He looked at Alex gravely. “We were walking on eggs around you, Alex, because this mission simply can’t fail. You have no idea how much of humanity is focusing on this mission … and on you.”

“I found the reef,” said Alex. “But I’m not responsible for everything that comes of it.”

Johnny looked down at his coffee. “Do you want to do this, Alex?”

Mary was sitting next to Alex on the sofa. She held up her hand before he could answer. “What exactly is the question that is burning to get answered by this mission, Professor Baltadonis?”

“Where did we come from?” offered Sciarra. “We know life’s on Earth. And on Jupiter. But where did it come from?” He looked at Johnny.

Professor Baltadonis nodded. “There are many questions we hope to answer. A lot of the life you saw on Jupiter, Mary, looked similar to terrestrial forms. We know that the Earth has been blasted by asteroids all through its history. Some of its early life might have migrated on their debris to other planets. They’re still arguing where the microbes native to Mars originally came from. And the debate has simply increased since you discovered Jupiter’s reef.”

“You think all life might have originated on Earth?” asked Tony. “I would have thought it was the other way. Stuff falls in, not out of the sun’s gravity well.”

“Generally true, but impacts can send debris everywhere,” Johnny explained. “Earth life could have migrated to all the planets, even other stars. We won’t know until we check another star system. Now we have the ship to do it.”

“So. Do you want to do this or not?” asked Tsu, glaring at Alex. “Not to be rude, but I’m ready to do this mission even if you’re not. And, by the way, there’s a thousand or so other folks on this ship who’d like to get on with it.”

“You’re acting like I’m holding this up,” said Alex. “Okay, let’s do it.”

The Professor smiled. “Which brings us to our plan.” He took a chair by the window and faced it to the screen on the wall over the communication console. “Computer,” he said in a loud voice, “Please display Reef Program 1A.” The computer responded, displaying on the wall screen what looked to Alex like an oval contour map. He guessed that it was Jupiter’s reef.

Johnny continued his discourse. “Since you last visited the reef, there has been unprecedented analysis of
Diver’s
recordings. I don’t think any data in history has been more thoroughly scrutinized.” He looked at the image on the screen. “You’ll be pleased to know that we won’t be relying on luck to find the clicks. We’ve been able to construct not only a three dimensional map of the reef structure, but also where pockets of reef populations are located. It should be a relatively simple operation once you get a fix on the structure. We hope we’ll be able match your radar imaging to the maps.”