"Geronimo, John Galt, this is Laika. Check your throttles again. My line feels slack, regardless of what the tension readouts tell me. Over."
Horatio Gutierrez, former Aerospace Force Brigadier General, officer in charge of the American Soviet Socialist Republic's expedition to the asteroid 5023 Eris, still captain of the twice-refitted and renamed space shuttle once known as the Honorable Robert Dole, peered out the left seat window at two other spacecraft, identical to his own, where they strained under their respective loads against a star-flecked background of blackest velvet. He'd never have believed it possible two weeks ago, but it felt good to be in space again, even if it meant resuming command of the small fleet of "Polish bombers" which in so many ways were the exact opposite of the sleek American Soviet interceptors he'd spent most of his life flying.
"Geronimo, here, Laika. We copy." The voice of Major Jesus Ortiz, captain of the former Honorable Orrin Hatch, issued from a speaker overhead. "This goofball of ours claims we're three hundredths of one percent over-throttled. I repeat, zero point zero three. I'm attempting to correct now. Over."
"John Galt to Laika," added Lieutenant Colonel Juan Sebastiano, captain of the former Honorable John McCain. "Our goofball's telling the same story. I'm not sure our control's that fine, but we'll give it a try. Over."
The "feel" Gutierrez had referred to was more a matter of how the modified engines sounded to him than of any tension reading or velocity indication. He was too preoccupied even to spare a glance at the computer, one of three onboard which struck him now as primitive.
Projecting from it, the alien interface Mister Thoggosh had supplied (the same casual way his chemists had cooked up the needed fuel) looked like a head-sized gray-green fungus. It had been created to help Laika and her sisters complete a mission which, like the expedition itself, they'd never been designed for. Hooked into the nautiloid cybernet, the "goofball," as his crew was calling it, performed calculations necessary to insert a miniature moon into orbit around the miniature planet. His own goofball told him, through a telltale on the already-crowded control board, that his adjustments were perfect.
Gutierrez didn't trust it.
Trailing on impossibly slender cables ten kilometers behind the craft (although in another sense they were trailing it as it preceded them in orbit) was a mountain of silica which would have been a kilometer in diameter had it been remotely spherical. To Gutierrez it resembled nothing in particular, "potato-shaped" in much the same way that every kind of unfamiliar meat is said to "taste like chicken." It was about twice as long as it was thick, and peppered with tiny impact craters. One curving surface was almost smooth except for a large elongated astrobleme (he'd thought craters weren't supposed to form like that) which was the most remarkable feature of the unremarkable rock. What was important was that it was the correct mass and composition. They'd found it, as Aelbraugh Pritsch had suggested they would, within a thousand kilometers, the average distance between asteroids in this region of the Belt.
Had it only been a week since Mister Thoggosh had confessed, during that remarkable conversation in Dlee Raftan Saon's tent, how weary he was of equipment failures and other technical problems associated with a ground-search for the Predecessor artifacts he was looking for? Looking back, it seemed much longer. What he wanted to do, he'd told the general, was place a smaller asteroid in a polar orbit around 5023 Eris. He'd reassured Gutierrez that, given the technology available to the Elders, such an undertaking was by no means impossible. There was no lack of small rocks circling the sun in this orbit and many were within easy reach of the nautiloid establishment.
"In aid of what, I suspect you are about ask," the appendage had responded to the general's upraised eyebrows. "Quite simply, I plan to establish an unbeinged base on our semiartificial moonlet. At that range, it can be directed quite as efficiently as one of our aerostats."
Gutierrez had grimaced, then laughed. He'd ridden here aboard one of the machines Mister Thoggosh was talking about. So had the tentacle, for that matter. Both bagel-shapes were parked just outside the door. Gutierrez had long since gathered that, had some calamity happened to the appendage, the mollusc could grow another, however long it took or painful it might be. He'd have a much tougher time growing himself a new Horatio, he thought with a morbid grin.
"It's the next step, General, no more impossible than the rest, I assure you, which takes one's intellectual breath away. We have in our possession certain instruments, new even to our science, which collect and interpret the galaxy's natural background neutrino-flux. They were imposed upon me at the outset of our expedition by certain individuals with a greater and more detachedly scientific interest in this affair than my own. They believe that each alternative universe has its own unique neutrino pattern. Now I'm rather grateful they were so adamant."
Gutierrez had listened as Mister Thoggosh explained to Dlee Raftan Saon (whose specialization lay in areas other than physics), that neutrinos were subatomic particles so small and swift they could pass through anything, including an entire planet, almost as if it weren't there. During the course of this explanation it had developed that the word "almost" (statistically a few neutrinos would be stopped or slowed by denser objects they attempted to pass through) was critical to the scheme.
"As these elusive particles pass, or fail to pass, through the world we occupy, which possesses roughly the same surface area as the region of your world known as `Texas,' these captured neutrinos will create, in effect, a spiraling X-ray or CAT-scan of the entire globe. This three-dimensional pattern of relative transmission and absorption will be detected on our little moon and relayed to our imaging and translating computers." The latter were devices which had "accidentally" broken Earth's most sophisticated military codes, having mistaken them for naturally occurring interference. "Since neutrinos are very small themselves," Mister Thoggosh had concluded, "resolution should be excellent."
"Giving us a peek," Dlee Raftan Saon suggested, "at what's inside."
"Precisely." Bent at the tip, the tentacle had given the impression it was turning to look at each of them. "I cannot bring myself to believe that the Predecessors, having taken care to leave so many tantalizing clues behind, would have made the task of recovering their technological legacy as difficult as it's seemed. Such a scan should reveal any great masses beneath the surface, including the object of our search, and possibly a method of getting to it. I can stop wasting my time, my investors' money, and the colony's dwindling supply of equipment on all this confounded blind drilling."
At this point the surrogate had turned to Gutierrez. "I believe this plan to be effective, General, but it's hindered by a lack of spacecraft to move the requisite small asteroid. I confess it was not a necessity I anticipated when I planned this expedition a century ago."
Gutierrez had nodded. "I assume you can't just send for a spaceship."
"Well, sir," Mister Thoggosh replied, "I've always been reluctant to employ, without the direst necessity, the expensive and somewhat unreliable facilities for interdimensional transport we have at our disposal. In this instance, both the difficulty and the expense increase as a function of the fifth power of the longest dimension of whatever's being sent."
"So it's especially dangerous to bring something as large as a ship?"
"And expensive." Even through a voice transducer, irony was audible in the nautiloid's chuckle. "What made the task appear absolutely insurmountable, however, was the utter impossibility I anticipated of accomplishing what I believe necessary under your watchful eye, sir. Thinking of you Americans, however, gave me an idea. You have the spacecraft, even ifI, er, that is . . ."
"Even if they're primitive by standards you're used to?"
Again the chuckle. "You've said it, sir, so I shan't have to. Might it be possible, I thought, given appropriate consideration, to borrow one or two of your craft and the crewbeings necessary to operate them?"
The general had laughed. "It wouldn't be unprecedented. It would be like people from our civilization borrowing a canoe from Pacific natives to recover the nose cone of a downed satellite. But you couldn't do it, could you, without giving the purpose of the search away?"
The transducer had transmitted the sound of a deep sigh which Gutierrez knew to be an affectation. The marine mollusc, a relative to the squid and octopus, breathed silently through gills. "I confess, Horatio, had I been human I'd have shaken my head with the futility of it all. The canoe analogy occurred to me. It appeared to have ominous implications. If I recall correctly, primitives who use them are likely to be headhunters or cannibals."
It was the first time Mister Thoggosh had called him by his given name and it felt friendly even if it was a sales pitch. Gutierrez had been about to reply that he'd never cared for calamari, but wasn't sure how it would be taken.
"From the long, terrible experience of my own people," Mister Thoggosh had continued, "I knew that there's more than one kind of cannibalism. Sapients are as easily consumed by taxation or conscription as in a black iron stew pot. I shudderedindeed I still shudderto think of the immoral and insapient uses your governments might make of the Predecessors' impressive technology."
"Yet datum by datum," Eichra Oren had interrupted, "you realized you were inevitably losing the hopeless struggle to maintain secrecy."
Sam had added, "You weren't surprised at all by our uncovering your secrets, were you, you old fake?"
"Only by how quickly it was done. No need to be so harsh, Otusam, put yourself in my place. I was aware that, with your help, against my explicit wishes, Eichra Oren was continuing his investigation." The appendage had swiveled back to the general. "The stubborn fellow defined learning my secrets as a necessary part of the task I'd assigned him. I was forced to concede, to myself, that he'd a measure of logic and justice on his side."
"Logic and justice," Eichra Oren observed, "are the same thing."
"Well," Mister Thoggosh had gone on, "there wasn't much I could do short of firing him. Not only would that involve me in the difficulty and expense of shipping him home, but his mother, an old and esteemed friend, would likely never speak to me again." Mister Thoggosh had sighed once more. "On the other appendage, whatever Eichra Oren discovered, an observant and rather frightened Sergeant Pulaski would soon learn, as well."
Sitting up suddenly, Toya had opened her mouth in reflexive denial. Mister Thoggosh had ignored her.
"She, I knew, reports directly to you, Horatio. This saves a shy and nervous little female the emotional strain of dealing with less sympathetic superiors. You, sir, report to the American KGB's own Mr. Empleado. He, in turn, reports to the mysterious secret Russian agent, `Iron Butterfly.' "
This time Gutierrez had laughed and slapped a knee, shaking his head in surprised amusement. "I only regret that Art isn't around to hear that!"
"But he is," Mister Thoggosh had corrected, "just outside, at the back of the tent. What he doesn't know is that Iron Butterfly is watching him through binoculars from the rim of the gulch. No matter: the time lag represented by this layered method of communication was less than a couple of your hours. Left to itself, a quiet but rather desperate race would soon develop between our two groups, human and nautiloid. Despite any superficial cordiality we somehow managed to maintain between ourselves, it would be an all-out struggle. Who would find, understand, and employ the Predecessors' Virtual Drive first? And it was this string of expectations which made my mind up."
Ignoring an almost irresistible urge to run out and drag both damnable secret operatives from the busheshe wondered who they'd hitched a ride withGutierrez had fished in a coverall pocket for his cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it. "A while back you said `given appropriate consideration.' Did you have anything specific in mind?"
It was Mister Thoggosh's turn for a thoughtful pause, although he lacked the excuse afforded by a cigarette. "Well, sir, as you know, we're reluctant to deal with your governmentslet's make that `unwilling'whatever the cost. Nevertheless, each of our groups has motivations of its own, rather I should say that each of us as individuals does, and sometimes they're shared by others in the groupconsistent with our own peculiar necessities."
Gutierrez had looked at the messenger shrewdly. "And?"
"And those referred to as `the Elders,' including myself, feel a degree of humiliation by what we now see as our lack of imagination and progress."
The general had leaned forward. "I'm not sure I follow you."
"You will, Horatio. I'm being as open with you as I know how to be. True, we independently inferred the existence of alternative realities. Using this esoteric knowledge, we invented (or with reference to our Predecessors, I should say unknowingly reinvented) interdimensional travel."
"Okay so far." Gutierrez had grinned, struck with the necessity of reassuring an ancient and accomplished being who suddenly seemed hesitant and doubtful. "Watch it on the corners, though."
"I shall. We even have a healthy interplanetary commerce in our version of the System, mostly carried out, I'm chagrined to confess, by Appropriated Persons. For millions of years we've had astronomers and are well aware of the size, shape, and composition of the galaxy around us. Yet it never occurred to us to physically explore interstellar space."
Gutierrez had asked Toya, "The cultural viewpoint thing, right?"
The girl had nodded back, shyly.
"We fervently hope," Mister Thoggosh had told them, "to redeem ourselves by following in the Predecessors' wake. I feel I can trust you to help us, because I believe I know what you want."
"And what," Gutierrez had asked him, "is that?"
"With what you learn here, you exiled Americans simply hope to buy yourselves a ticket home."