The Salvagers (19 page)

             
We passed into the Jupiter system without significant problems. Time seemed to pass faster thanks to the security of those two powerful ships traveling in my convoy. I felt safe, at least from claim-jumpers and pirates. I spent most of the travel time poring over Nelson's logs from the
Cape Hatteras
mission. I wasn't disappointed. They were as fascinating as Janet had made out. They seemed to make perfect sense for a while, but then his manner changed. He began saying bizarre things, coinciding with the moment he got hold of those crystals. I contacted Westmoreland.

             
"I've been reading the logs as you suggested. It has got to be those crystals, Doctor."

             
"We agreed with that inference until I got a chance to study their structure. Don't concern yourself with the crystals any longer."

             
"Are you certain? What did you find out?" I asked.

             
"Well, they have an unusual matrix and are extremely pure. They're not physically impossible and structurally they're just normal crystals. There's no magical or unknown element missing from the periodic table, no unusual properties. They're just a new kind of silicon-based crystal that we haven't seen before."

             
"That's not unusual? Something completely new like that?"

             
"Not at all. We find all kinds of new minerals in space. Conditions vary in the solar system, and all manner of unusual molecules can form that we might never see on Earth. These are no different. Look, if they were related to the foothold, it should have formed by now and made me disappear. They certainly shouldn't have driven Captain Nelson crazy. They're just rocks. We must have missed something. Make certain that your people on that derelict let me know of anything unusual they run across."

             
I realized why Westmoreland had let the academicians back on the ship: he wanted them to comb for anything that I might have missed. There was always an ulterior motive with that guy.

             
"I'll do that, but from what I can tell that ship is just an archeological site now. Completely normal, with nothing unusual happening whatsoever."

             
"We'll know more when I have access to my equipment at Titan. We're still weeks out, but I have to reiterate that you should keep this business about the crystals quiet along with everything else. The less your people know, the better."

             
That sounded ominous. First he downplayed the crystals, and then he wanted them kept secret. It had to be more misinformation. Also, I hadn't heard him speak quite that way before. He was forceful and authoritative rather than benignly good-natured.

             
I had no idea what he wanted me to say to the specialists. I'd have to tell them that everything was normal and fine but that, if something weird happened, I should know immediately. I didn't see how that would be believable, but that's what I did say. They seemed to shrug it off and go along with things for once.

             
Just before leaving the Jupiter system, another transmission came through for me.

             
"Cam, there's a message for you," Stacey said. It was Mary Joanna.

             
"Cammy, come give me kisses before I leave!" she said, seeming more like her alter ego of Sister Mary Joanna. I think she was slipping back into character.

             
"Leave? Aren't you going to Titan with us in your big powerful ship?"

             
"I'm taking the
Neptune's Revenge
back to Europa. They're not going to like it, but someone's got to tell them that Stunt was the pirate."

             
"Kisses and hugs!" I said, though I would have preferred to keep that ship and its immense weaponry with us.

             
"Watch your back, Cammy. You're in with a tough crowd right now. That's all I can say."

             
"Thanks, Agent Mary Joanna, and best of luck on Europa. Any plans?"

             
"I'm thinking of running for mayor," she replied with a giggle and a squeal.

Chapter 23
    
Day 314

              "December 23, 2259. 0900 hours. Supplemental Log. I have spent as much fuel as I can afford. I have been waiting for my crew to return but can wait no longer. I have no choice but to break free and set a course. I can feel others with me, voices that speak to me as I sleep. They whisper to ask me whether I am John Nelson, Salus, or one of them."

              We entered Titan orbit three months after the anomaly's last appearance. We immediately began refueling the
Cape Hatteras
at the orbital maintenance station. So few people had a reason to visit Titan that its station was unmanned. It was just a self-service facility designed as a waypoint to the Uranus system rather than a destination in itself.

             
It was strange to see the ship cradled in a space dock, active and alive with my engineers working feverishly to mate outdated connectors to new ones. At Westmoreland's request I reluctantly transferred back to the
Portsmouth
to work more closely with him. I ran into him on my way to the bridge.

             
"Odd place for a secret UNAG installation,” I said, “on a planet controlled by the Eurorussian Union.”

             
"Why would you say that? What better place could there be to hide it?"

             
"Since you put it that way. . . ."

             
"No one in the UNAG believes we'd have a facility here, and the public in Eurorussia have no idea that it's a UNAG installation. It's perfect!" he replied.

             
"Even so you had to have cut a deal with them."

             
"That's reading between the lines. Maybe you should have been a spy," Westmoreland said.

             
"Maybe I am one."

             
"I'd know about it if you were. To answer your question, yes, we did cut a deal, along with the Asian-African Union, which has a presence here as well. Cam, this is a problem that Earth itself dealt with sans union squabbling. It was deemed too critical."

             
"Critical enough that everyone united, eh?" I was skeptical that the unions would ever set their differences aside and consider anything in the universe pressing enough to suspend their little games. Westmoreland’s tone became more somber as we delved deeper into the topic.

             
"That's exactly what happened two centuries ago. And we're still united on this issue."

             
"The anomaly is a bigger threat than I know, isn't it?" I asked.

             
"There's nothing to indicate that it couldn't destroy Earth."

             
"And that's why we came here. It's the real reason," I said. "Being in your lab won't let you do anything more than you could have done at the Trojan asteroid. You wanted to get this thing as far away from home as you could."

             
"Yes, that's true, or partly so. I'm just one scientist, Cam. There are more on Titan, and I have no doubt that Earth will fast-track their best out here to join us. This is still the most effective way we can study the phenomenon, and the safest."

             
"Who else knows on Earth?"

             
"Just the admiralties of the unions, all three of them."

             
I dropped the conversation at that. I couldn't argue with him. I didn't want Earth—my home as much as anyone else's—destroyed, and I had moved far beyond any need for public secrecy. The UNAG would take care of that for me.

             
Titan loomed close in the
Portsmouth
's
windows. It was a dim orange ball whose surface features were hidden by a thick smog that never dissipates. Moments later Saturn rose from behind the moon's limb as we orbited close and fast. The glory of its rings and subdued tan color made this place seem very alien. Of all the planets Saturn is the most captivating. It  mesmerizes you when you're near it, always reminding you that you are very far from home. It's these kinds of places that lie in the universe beyond, if we can ever find a way to reach them.

             
I boarded a military transport bound for the surface with Dr. Westmoreland. He was silent throughout the entire voyage, reminding me of a penitent monk returning to his monastery from an excursion into the secular world. Westmoreland’s old life, his normalcy, was resuming with all its layers of secrecy and isolation, shrouding the man I'd first met on the
Portsmouth
. His almost childlike delight in annoying the Captain by giving out just a little too much information was gone. Here he had to safeguard his secrets.

             
I had never been to the surface of Titan before, since there was little reason for any ordinary person to go there. It was the place of the geniuses and their engines, and if you didn't have an IQ the size of Jupiter, you didn't belong there.

We landed softly on a pad outside what appeared to be a research station. I paused at a window to marvel at the orange landscape stretching into the smog beyond. It was raining large, clear drops of liquefied hydrocarbons that undulated and fell slowly to the surface, collecting and flowing to a lake just barely discernible as a black smear at the limits of visibility.

              To get to the laboratories, we had to use a different kind of suit. More like a diving suit than a space suit. I couldn't get accustomed to it. It was comprised of a paper-thin layer of highly efficient insulation along with a tight-fitting plastic mask that left no part of your skin exposed. It was very cold on Titan, but that system was all that was needed. It made me feel naked standing on an alien world without the bulk of a moon suit surrounding my body.

             
Through the Titan suit’s thinness I could feel the rain drops slowly undulate down my arms before dripping to the ground below. They seemed almost alive, behaving like giant versions of amoebas living in the different rules of low-G. What felt like soft rocks crumbled beneath my feet, yielding to a permanent substrate as hard as concrete. They were made of a wet methane slush that thinly covered water ice that was permanently frozen. Water was a rock on Titan, a mineral that never became a liquid except deep below its surface. Miles underneath the surface was a liquid ocean, but there was no life in that sterile mix of water and ammonia.

             
Titan’s life existed on its surface in the form of extremophile microbes adapted to live on a methanological cycle instead of a water one. Metabolizing hydrogen instead of oxygen and pulling life-giving energy from acetylene in the bitter cold of −290° F, they were no more related to our warm organic chemistry than an elephant was to a desk. We were nothing to them, and they were nothing to us. That is expected to change in six billion years when the sun expands and Earth's role in the solar system's grand production ends, making a warmer Titan into evolution's new forge. No one knows what life on that world might become.

             
Westmoreland led me into an entrance located at the eastern side of the research institute. I knew that I was not at the famous engine technology center. There were no domes, though they could have easily built them. The buildings were more like the airtight steel sheds at a science station in Antarctica. The door sealed behind us. It was a kind of airlock, but instead of air rushing into a vacuum, the air pushed out the denser Titanian atmosphere. I removed my helmet and smelled the strong residual lighter-fluid stench of this world.

             
"This lock is the most dangerous place on Titan, Captain Hunter. One spark in the presence of oxygen and this stuff becomes highly flammable, like hydrocarbons on Earth. We went to great lengths to prevent accidental ignitions. We coated everything in rubber and installed fire suppression systems, but we still have the occasional accident every few years. My predecessor died precisely where you're standing."

             
"I had no idea," I said, moving quickly out of the antechamber as a glass door slid open.

             
"Accidents generate public interest. When something happens that might attract eyes, even from just the Propulsion Institute, we have to cover it up. As far as anyone outside this station knows, Dr. Halsey died in a vehicle accident on a trip to check a weather station."

             
"What caused the fire?" I asked.

             
"Just a simple spark from a malfunctioning battery in an instrument he was carrying. We tried to get him out, but it happened so fast that there was nothing we could have done. The hydrocarbons are in the atmosphere itself, and the moment the oxygen started flooding the room, the air simply ignited. We now have an intermediate stage. Inert neon is pumped in before the breathable air. We think it's safer. At least we haven't had any further accidents . . . yet."

             
The door closed behind us. In a place like that, it was only natural to wonder whether Dr. Halsey's death was
really
an accident.

             
"Are we safe now?"

             
"Perfectly. It's the necessary smallness of the lock that makes it dangerous. In a larger room like this one, the gases diffuse. Even so we have to filter the air constantly to prevent explosive concentrations from accumulating. No smoking please. I understand that you were on Europa recently."

             
Westmoreland might have thought it safe, but I still smelled lighter fluid.

             
"Where is the Propulsion Institute?" I asked. "I didn't see it when we were landing."

             
"In another complex about 400 miles from here. They don't know much about us. They think we're a science outpost with a crew of two. In reality, we've got 18."

             
We bounced down the hall. It was perfectly white from floor to ceiling with closed black doors along its length, all with labels and warnings on them.

             
"Vaporization Threat. Do Not Use the Floor," I whispered aloud to myself as I read some of them. Another read: "Warning: Time Distortion."

             
"Bizarre things happen here, Captain. I wish I could tell you more, but believe me when I say you don't want to know."

             
I was compelled to accept that at face value, especially when I saw a warning on a door covered with locks. It said: "Existence Alert! Abnormal Space. DL-828 Access Only."

             
The doctor led me into a large central hall. It was circular with long corridors radiating from it in all directions. In one corridor I could see scientists in lab coats moving between doors and two more standing around talking to each other. Most of the other corridors were empty. I assumed them to be living quarters, other labs, storage areas, and the like. He led me down one of the deserted ones, turned to a door about halfway down, and unlocked it.

             
The lights sensed our presence and switched on. The room was a disused laboratory filled with covered equipment. At the opposite end of the room was another door. Westmoreland opened it, revealing a relatively straightforward office. He sat down behind the desk and motioned for me to have a seat.

             
"We can talk freely here," he said. "This lab hasn't been used in some months. I doubt anyone's bugged it."

             
"Easy for you to say. The anomaly could have bugged it," I said, intending to be facetious, but I think I sounded serious.

             
"I wouldn't discount that. We can't discount anything. Captain Hunter. Let me level with you. We face an alien species . . . no, I can't use that term. A species occupying the same physical space as we do, but living in a higher vibration of matter."

             
"Higher vibration?"

             
"Yes, that's the only way to say it. Their matter, what we call dark matter, exists in a completely non-interactive state with ours, at least on this side of the gateway. It doesn't parallel ours except in one way: gravity. Otherwise they could be all around us, and we wouldn't see them."

             
"Yes, I understand that much."

             
"We think that these aliens detected us much as we detected dark matter initially. They can see that there's more gravity in their universe than their own kind of matter can produce. We're the same to them as they are to us."

             
"Makes sense so far. So they can't see us. They just see the gravity that our matter creates in their universe."

             
"Right. And that should be the end of it. But it isn't. Somehow they're able to open a gateway, a method for bringing our matter into their vibration of the universe. The problem is that our matter can't exist there; it would have to change state and become dark matter. We don't know whether whatever is drawn into the foothold does that or is destroyed. They may even be able to choose what happens."