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consciousness-what kind of ethics-operates with a circulatory system running on liquid nitrogen?"
Chow-Lin twisted his lips skeptically. "Or did we get into something we don't have a remote chance of
understanding?"
Jordin said, "We sure won't unless we try."
Shanna let the talk run. She had given the orders, and the others weren't too happy with playing spear-
carriers. Fair enough. But democracy was a luxury out here. "There wasn't time for a long discussion,"
she said. "Somebody had to act, if we were going to keep talking to the zand."
Mary Kay said, "Looks from the IR like the Darksiders did pull back after you lifted off. No more
feelers out to encircle that zand community."
"Um." Chow-Lin looked melancholy, staring off into the distance. "Make a wasteland and call it a
peace."
Shanna wanted to bark back, "Enough of this nonsense! It's done, so we live with it"-but she held her
tongue.
Mary Kay said soberly, "We looked at what happened at the, uh, attack site, after you left. Toward local
noon, zand came into where you blasted the Darksiders. They ... ate the remains."
Shanna gaped, openmouthed. "They feed on..."
"Looks like," Mary Kay said. "Tore the body parts down, ingested them somehow."
Chow-Lin said, "Remember those parts you and Jordin saw on the beach?"
Jordin snapped his fingers. "Darksider parts!"
Shanna was awed. Here was a predator-prey relationship, of a weird kind. Maybe, maybe ... Darksiders
had the edge in the night, but zand could digest the Darksiders during the day. Overall, the Old One said,
the Darksiders were winning. "Speaking as a biologist," she said, "this is making some sense ... but..."
She and Jordin gazed at each other, eyes wide. "Current-driven..." he said.
"Biosphere," she finished.
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Jordin blurted, "Enhance the chem reactions with current. Speed up all the enzymes and protein
folding..."
"To make a chemical biosphere run as though it was a lot warmer," she finished.
Mary Kay frowned. "Why? Because whatever built the Pluto biosphere knew lots more about electricity
than it did about warm chemistry?"
The whole crew stared at each other. "Sounds good," Chow-Lin said.
Shanna sat back. Wow. Can that be it? They needed to know more, sure, but she was captain, after all.
She should let the research angle rest, get down to business, check out status reports-and then her eyes
widened. "Hey, did anybody go down the checklist for the lander?"
Mary Kay said ruefully, "We were kinda in a hurry."
"Worried about us, sure," Jordin the peacemaker murmured, coming out of his distracted gaze.
Something still irking him.
A suspicion clicked in Shanna's mind. She said nothing, just jumped up and was first to reach the
departure bay. They searched the lander, which was going to need a lot of blowtorch-level work. The
alien patch-up had been hasty but remarkably firm and tight. "This wasn't done any way I can figure,"
Jordin said, running a gamma-ray probe over the seam, which looked like brown, melted ice cream.
"Must be low-temperature metal bonding or something."
"Spread out all over it and check every crevice," Shanna said tersely. For what? She had no idea.
Shanna worked methodically, letting Brahms follow her in her ear patch. Internal systems running okay.
Then the external check, looking in every cranny, the underside, wiring boxes, thrusters, and-
There it was. A neat oval hole, cut all through the crumpled number four landing leg. Rimmed by an
equally neat patch of a dull reddish material.
"Red?" Mary Kay said. "Never seen that on the surface."
"Only two centimeters across." Jordin took a sample. "Big enough for a clawhold. Maybe somebody
hitchhiked aboard?"
They stared at each other. "So it's ... onboard?" Shanna mentally kicked herself for not doing this right
away. She had been lolling about in a goddamn medicinal bath. Captains don't pamper themselves!
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The breach was near the lander leg's chunky top swivel joint, which was sitting a mere meter from a
bulkhead that cradled Proserpina's life-support tanks. (My God, do they know our ship blueprints, too?)
Between the bulkhead and cryo tank compartment the ceramo-carbon deck was scratched and scored, as
if something had dragged a heavy machine through. Or a machine dragged itself. A faint tang of-
ammonia? What chemistry worked in them?-hung in the air.
"Spread out through the whole ship," she said. "We've got to find this whatever-it-is." Darksider.
Houseguest.
They scattered. She raced hand over hand up one level, to the main ship computer console. An all-
systems check gave her nothing. A light winked at her imperiously from one of the monitors. Input for
you from DIS, Shanna. Read me! The music ended. Shanna looked at the chronometer: 1700 GMT;
nearing the end of the mission's nominal day, but who was counting anymore? Two microwave
schedules missed; Earthside must be frantic. She could not yet face playing back whatever worried,
subtly reproachful messages they meanwhile might have sent to her.
"Mary Kay! Call Earthside, tell them what's up." Ah, the pleasures of delegating. Time to do some hard
looking.
"It's in the cargo bay," Jordin said tightly over comm.
She had been fruitlessly searching for over ten minutes now and saw immediately that he had done the
right thing: look where people weren't, usually. The Darksider was smart. And ... why?
"Let's circle it," she sent to all crew, and started down to the cargo level.
It was there, all right, somehow running at a temperature it could never have evolved for. But then,
machines don't evolve...
A boxy metal thing, with odd burned-metal spikes, like an angry kitchen appliance. It lifted a shiny,
lopsided black claw toward them as they converged. Threatening? No-a scramble of microwave noise
came from it, hissed into her ear processor. Talking.
DIS sent, It says there is someone who wishes to communicate.
"And who might that be?" she said aloud. Heads turned, eyes questioned. The whole crew was here,
surrounding the thing.
If it exploded, good-bye to the expedition. She gestured for most of them to leave. The Darksider did not
move when they did, but she could see glinting quartzlike sensors on each side of it.
I am unsure. It speaks very similarly to the zand. I believe they are linked in some fundamental way.
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"Ummm. Even though they're blood enemies? Why's it here?"
To make us listen. To help with the ... converse.
"With...?"
Those who made this world, it says.
"And who's that?"
Something ... big.
The feed cut out.
11
EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN
"They are utterly strange." Shanna's voice resonated in the crowded, hushed hall. Axelrod sat at a desk
in a capsule above the auditorium where the gaggle of reporters sat, buzzing. He puffed on a cigar, and
his very own filter system sucked in the smoke so as not to offend the entire rest of the moon. He
relished the pleasure and privilege.
His daughter was sending without any visual feed. Probably because she was looking ragged, judging
from the high, tight notes in her voice.
The reporters caught her anxiety as well. Their eyes narrowed.
"Even good ol' DIS is having a hard time making sense out of them, but we've figured one thing out at [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]