In the Ocean of Night (31 page)

She stopped and studied the air bottles, rejecting the ones with obvious splits or burst seams in them. There were two at one end which seemed intact, but she could not read their meters because of the twisted metal wrapped over them. Stopping only an instant to judge, she detached a strut and wedged it under the sled section. By leaning against it she forced the front part of the sled against the invisible shield.

She couldn’t be sure this would work. The aluminum pipe had melted, but the sled had steel and alloys in it that might not. She leaned against the strut, keeping the pressure against the part of the sled nearest the bottles. In higher gravity she would not have been able to lift the sled, even with the strut as a lever arm, but in low-g she could. Her shoulders ached.

Quick darts of flame shot down her back. She could see no change in the sled bumper, but then it slipped slightly to the left. She adjusted her footing, moved the strut to support the sled’s weight and then saw that a dark fluid was dripping slowly downward from where the sled had been. It must be a liquid metal, running down the face of the shield. Nikka tilted the strut forward, increasing the pressure.

After some moments the front face of the sled began to blur and run together. The twisted metal sagged at one point, then another. Slowly, agonizingly, a thin stream of liquid metal began to stream down the face of the invisible shield. A thin gray vapor puffed from it. It collected in spattered pools on the dust below. The sled tilted again—each time Nikka adjusted her balance, canted the strut to better advantage and kept up the pressure.

Through the film of perspiration on her faceplate she judged the shifting weight of the sled section and tried to compensate for it. Her air was getting thick and close. She had to struggle to focus her attention. Occasionally she glanced up at the crumpled copper dome above. An hour or two before, she had never seen it, never suspected she would find something so strange and alien in the midst of a selenographic survey. If she ever got out of this she was going to find out what that dome was and why there was a shield around it. Maybe its defense systems were acting sporadically without knowing what they were doing.

The sled tilted to the left again and she quickly brought the strut around to correct its balance. The liquid metal now ran in a steady stream; a vapor cloud formed above the sled. The twisted metal slowly gave, rippled and flowed away; in one quick rush the last obstacle to the oxygen bottles melted and was gone.

Nikka dropped the strut and frantically climbed over the sled. She twisted at the oxygen bottles but they refused to give. She leaned over, feeling the blood rush suddenly into her head, and struggled to focus her eyes. A pipe had lodged against them, pinning them in their mounts. She pushed futilely at the pipe and tried to dislodge it. It was stuck.

She scrambled back to the side of the sled and found the strut again. If she forced it against a rock—there, that was it—and tilted the sled, so; yes, it rose up again, presenting the pipe to the invisible shield. She wedged the strut into place and then worked her way around, near the shield so she could use her body weight against the sled and tilt it further over. She strained against it; the sled gave a bit and then the pipe came up against the shield. Her hands were wedged firmly against the pipe and she could see that her right upper wrist was being forced slowly against the shield. The weight of the sled shifted further and pinned her hand.

She had to decide—drop it, start all over, or let the heating work against both the pipe and her hand. She decided to let things be. The pipe was already hot; she could see vapor rising from it as the metal boiled away. She shifted her hand as best she could to relieve pressure, but she could not get it away.

She waited, adjusted her feet again, and studied the pipe intently. Its firm edges began to blur and run together. She could feel nothing in her right hand. Nikka tried to move her fingers and felt some faint sensation as reward. She braced herself and pulled as strongly as she could against the pipe. It slowly gave, bending away from the invisible wall, and an oxygen bottle popped free of its mount under the pressure.

She was gasping. She grabbed the bottle as it rolled across the sled and forced open its safety warrant valve. There was no answering reading on the smashed dial. She held a finger against the nozzle and felt no pressure. The bottle was empty. Without thinking, not allowing herself to feel any despair, she reached for the next bottle.

The pipe still forced it against its mount, but she wormed it away and the bottle popped free. This was it, she thought. There were no other bottles not already ruptured. Nikka tripped it open and the meter registered positive. She swung it around to her back mount without hesitation, screwing the cluster joints into place automatically.

The gush of air washed over her in a cool steady stream. She collapsed across the sled section, unmindful of the invisible shield, the tangled metal that gouged her even through her suit, the glare of the sun above. The bottle was good for at least three hours. If she rested and kept still Alphonsus might get through.

Something tingled at her wrist and she lifted her right hand to look at it. Against the mottled colors of the plastiform there was a spreading red patch.

The tingling sharpened into a dull, throbbing pain. As she watched, the blood ran down her wrist to her elbow. She lay absolutely still. She was bleeding into free space. Her suit fitted firmly against her skin, so the rest of her body felt no immediate pressure drop.

As she watched, a small group of bubbles formed in the blood and burst slowly. A thin veil of vapor rose from her hand as the blood evaporated.

She stared at it, numb. Exposure to vacuum meant death, surely. How long did it take? A sudden pressure drop should force nitrogen narcosis. How long? A minute, two? She took a deep breath and the air was good. It cleared her mind and she looked up again at the dome. It seemed to loom over her.

Blood against metal. Life against machine. She lifted her feet and rolled off the sled. Her ears popped; her body pressure was dropping. It was a hundred meters to the sled. In her repair kit there was tape, organic seals— something to close off the wound.

She took a step. The horizon shifted crazily and she almost lost her balance. A hundred meters, one step at a time. Concentrate on one, only one. A step at a time.

Her ears popped again but by now she was moving. Scarlet drops spattered into the dust. The pain had turned into a fierce burning lance.

She slipped and quickly regained her balance, and in the movement glanced back for an instant. The silent and impersonal dome squatted above her. In less than an hour it had done all this to her, brought her to the edge; perhaps it could do more. But she was in charge of her life at last. She wasn’t going to simply let things happen to her. And she was damned if she was going to die now.

FOUR

Mr. Ichino put his lunch bag aside and lay down on the tufted grass that grew in patches here. He cocked his hands behind his head and peered up into the canopy made by the massive pepper tree that rustled softly in a light midday wind. Yellow dabs of sunlight speckled him and shifted and danced. Mr. Ichino felt an inner calm that came from having made a decision and put it behind him for good. He suspected Nigel’s telephone call from Houston was designed to stop him from reaching that final point and tendering his resignation. But if that were so, Nigel was too late. Mr. Ichino’s letter was now worming its way through channels, and in a month he would be free of the stretching tensions he felt in his work; and he could then walk a bit more lightly through the years that remained to him. Precisely how many years that might be was a minor issue, though the incidence of pollutive diseases these days did not seem reassuring. He had never smoked and had watched carefully what he ate, so that—

“Sorry I’m late,” Nigel’s voice came from above him. Mr. Ichino blinked lazily and drifted up from his reflections. He nodded. Nigel sat beside him.

“Had a devil of a time getting in from the airport.”

“I see.”

“Snagged a bite on the way,” Nigel said, indicating Mr. Ichino’s paper bag. “Go ahead and eat.”

He sat up and carefully unfolded the wrapping papers for his sandwich and vegetables. “Then you did not truly intend to have lunch here.”

“No.” Nigel glanced at him sheepishly. “When I called I had to have some reason to get you away from JPL. I didn’t want to be overheard or have anyone wondering what we were talking about.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, first off, your prediction was dead on.”

“How?”

“NASA’s going to keep the Marginis operation as in-house as possible. They’ll use retreads like me—they have to. There aren’t that many younger types who’re trained for a variety of jobs.”

“The cylinder cities are too specialized?”

“So NASA says.”

“That seems a weak argument.”

“These things aren’t
relentlessly
logical. It’s politics.” “The old guard.”

“Of which I am, blessedly, one.”

“You were successful?”

“Right.” Nigel beamed. “I’ve got a lot of swotting up to do on computing interfaces and that rot.”

“You know the material well.”

“Not well enough, the specialists say.”

“The specialists wish to go themselves,” Mr. Ichino murmured lightly.

“Check. Quite a round of throat-slitting going on back there, I gather. Had to be careful not to slip on the blood.”

“Yet you survived.”

“I collected on a lot of old debts.”

“The legacy of Mr. Evers.”

Nigel grinned slyly.

“I have never truly approved of that, you know,” Mr. Ichino said carefully.

“I’m not bursting with pride over it,” Nigel’s voice took on a hesitant, guarded note.

“We have all conspired, implicitly, to conceal the truth.”

“I know.” Nigel nodded with a touch of weariness. “But it was necessary.”

“To protect NASA.”

“That was the
first
-order effect. It’s the
second
-order effect I was after—keeping NASA from getting itself gored by outsiders, so they’d have a free hand and a bigger budget. Money to explore the moon.”

“And you have been proved correct.”

“Well—” Nigel shrugged. “A lot of other people felt the same way. Finding that wreck was pure accident.”

“The girl would not have been flying there had the lunar budget not been expanded.”

“Yes. Nifty syllogism, eh? Logical to the last redeeming comma.” Nigel chuckled with hollow mirth.

“You are not convinced.”

“No.”

“It has worked out well.”

“I don’t like lying. That’s what it was, that’s what it is. And you can’t ever be sure, there’s the rub. We
think
the politicians and the public and the New Sons and God knows who else, we
think
they’d be horrified to learn that Evers fired a bomb at the Snark, drove it away. And blew our chance. Hell, he could’ve been risking a war, for all he knew. And the backlash might’ve gutted NASA so that we’d never have got to search for the Marginis wreck. But we don’t
know
that would have happened.”

“One never does.”

“Right. Right.” Nigel fidgeted with his hands, flexed his legs into a new sitting position, stared moodily out at the knots of people lunching in the park. Mr. Ichino felt the unbalanced tensions in this man and knew Nigel had something more to say. He pointed toward the western horizon. “Look.”

A noontime entertainment. A darting flitter craft was beginning a cloud sculpture. The pilot chopped, pruned, extruded and sliced the taffy-white cumulus. A being emerged: serpentine tail, exaggerated fins, knotted balls of cotton for feet. The event was admirably timed—as the flitter shepherded the remaining puffs into place, to shape the snouted face, the eyes turned ominously dark. The eyeballs expanded and purpled and suddenly lightning forked between them, giving the alabaster dragon a surge of life. In a moment a wall of thunderheads split the beast in two, sullen clouds churning. Claps of thunder rolled over the park. Above Los Angeles a hazy rain began.

When Mr. Ichino looked again at Nigel he could perceive from his new posture that some of the tension had drained away. In its place was Nigel’s familiar pensive enthusiasm.

“You learned more?” Mr. Ichino said.

“A lot,” Nigel said absently. “Or rather, a lot of negative results.”

“About Wasco?”

“Right. The Wasco event, as it’s called. Can’t label it a bomb because nobody dropped it. It was buried about a kilometer in bedrock. Must’ve come near on thirty megatons. A pure fusion burn.”

“I heard there was little radiation.”

“Surprisingly little, yes. Cleaner than any bomb we know of.”

“Not ours.”

“No, certainly not ours. The cover story is that a lot of experts think it was a human accident, but I never met anybody who buys that. No, it was alien. Triggered by the Marginis wreck at the same time that survey craft one oh five was getting snuffed.”

“But why? If the wreck thought it was being attacked…”

“Don’t look for order in any of this. It’s a malfunctioning ship, period. It nearly got that girl, then plugged one oh five and some standing order inside it made it touch off the Wasco explosion. The fusion device was there, probably stored in an arsenal or a base—look, it’s all a balls-up, a pack of guesses. We don’t know much for dead certain.”