"Now what, in heaven's name, is this?"
Toya Pulaski looked at the object in her hand and shook her head. Under a brittle crust of fossilized fluorocarbon contaminants, she could see that it was similar tobut much larger thansomething she'd once examined from Mister Thoggosh's personal collection of Predecessor artifacts, gathered from over a hundred alternative versions of the Solar System. The Predecessors had certainly gotten around, she thought, and they were real litterbugs.
Roger Owen peered over her shoulder. "It's a hydrospanner. You know how the Predecessors used triangular bolt heads. Well, you apply lateral pressure to the grip extensions and the energy is transferred through internal counterrotating channelsif there's any fluid left insideto the jaws, which rotate. See, it still works after a billion years. `Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.' " He gave her behind a gentle pat, an intimate gesture of affection she was still trying to get used to. "Very handy in tight spaces and free fall."
She set the prehistoric tool down, turned, and regarded him suspiciously. "Roger, I never saw anything like that before I came to this asteroid. How do you always know these things?"
"What's to know?" He shrugged, spreading his broad, blunt hands. "I'm a machinist. I just wish it was half as easy to identify some of the rest of this junk."
Thrown together from the nautiloid equivalent of plywood and sawhorses, the rough table before them was heavy with paraphernalia they'd retrieved over the past few days from inside the ancient space vessel that was 5023 Eris. From time to time they'd checked with Model 17, to make sure that nothing they brought up here for scientific examination was vital to her own important work. As it had turned out, there were more than enough tools and other equipment down there for a million Model 17s or her organic progenitors, and her objectionsalways made politelyhad been few and far between.
Until this morning, they'd also had the enthusiastic and competent assistance of S*bb*ts*rrh, the Small Artifactologist. Learning that the sea-scorpionoid was deadhad been horribly murdered, in factthey'd decided to carry on with what they were doing out of respect for the little fellow. Besides, they'd received news of the shuttle fires at the same time, and neither of them, presumably, wanted to think very much about what that might mean to their futures.
A sudden flash of movement caught Toya's eye. She looked up to see that it was only the warm breeze playing gently with a loose flap of the makeshift plastic awning they'd rigged over their worktable to protect the artifacts they were studyingand themselves, of coursefrom the weather, which on 5023 Eris consisted primarily of diffuse sunlight and rain showers engineered by the Elders' environmental specialists to occur every evening as regularly as clockwork.
Briefly, she considered a third, more cheerful datum they'd had this afternoon by radio from the human encampment on the opposite side of the asteroid. Mister Thoggosh's wild entrepreneurial venture had paid off, at least technologically: Model 17's first prolonged run of the Virtual Drive had been even more successfulif as undetectable by the nervous system of any organic sapientthan the ten-million-kilometer start-up test. No one, Toya thought, would guess from glancing at the butter-colored sky overhead that 5023 Eris, with its tiny artificial sun, was just about to cross the orbit of Jupiter.
Before she looked down again, one of the bagel-shaped nautiloid aerostats settled to the floor of the lush green valley where they'd found the entrance to the interior of the billion-year-old vessel, and where she and Owen had established their own personaland privateheadquarters for the past few weeks.
It was Eichra Oren, of all people, who stepped out of the little machine and strode toward them, nylon rucksack in one hand and sword in the other. As usual, he wore a splashy Hawaiian shirt, faded Levis, and battered neoprene and Kevlar running shoes. It was still strange to see the Antarctican all alone, and stranger yet to realize that his sapient dog Sam was deadand not dead at the same time.
As if he couldn't wait, when he was still several dozen meters away, the debt assessor lifted his scabbarded weapon of office and waved it at the couple. But it was hardly the friendly greeting they were expecting that followed the gesture. "Rosalind Nguyen is missing," he told them with a grim expression. "We think it's possible she was kidnaped, and we're going down below to look for her."
"How can we help?" Toya and Owen spoke the words simultaneously. To the extent that they were capable, they understood the situation with Sam and the bizarre manner in which he'd managed to survive what had happened to him; neither of them bothered to ask what Eichra Oren had meant by "we". Nor did they ask why he and Sam believed Rosalind had been kidnaped, or what made them think that she was down inside the asteroid. Eichra Oren was the famous detective, after allor as close as nautiloid civilization had come to producing one.
The man blinked. "I don't know. How can you help?" He tapped the side of his head. "We have a three-dimensional map of all of the areas we've explored so far down there. I have a couple of other technological tricks to try. And we're in constant touch by cerebro-cortical implant with Model 17, who's supposed to know where everything is whether we've gotten around to exploring it yet or not."
"You can always use an extra pair of eyes." Owen moved to one end of the worktable, rinsed his grimy hands under the tap of a plastic water reservoir, and carefully dried them on a roll of paper towels. He drew his regulation EAA Witness, a high-capacity service automatic originally carried by the ASSR Marines, a special-purpose variant with an oversized trigger guard for arctic use, which had proven useful with spacesuit gloves, as well. Seeing that the magazine was full and the chamber loaded, he reholstered his pistol, patted the pleated pockets of his Aerospace Force coverall where he carried extra magazines, and nodded. "Count me in."
"Me, too," Pulaski declared. She seized up an olive-drab canvas bag and began scooping up certain items she believed they might need, for the most part freeze-dried rations. Until this minute, she'd been embarrassed to have Eichra Oren see their untidy campsitethey'd been too busy to do housekeepingespecially the single sleeping bag airing out on a line stretched between two saplings. Now all that was forgotten in the light of Rosalind's disappearance and with the prospect of adventure ahead. "I don't have a gun, but I can see and hear as well as either of you two."
"So you can, my little chickadee," Owen replied, doing a terrible W. C. Fields imitation, "and I would be honored beyond my poor ability to express it if you should desire to carry my very own personal shotgun for the defense of your delicate"
"I'd be more honored, Mr. Dukenfield," she grinned and shook her head, "if I weren't aware that that blasted Remington of yours weighs about nine pounds, fully loaded."
The corporal flicked ashes from his imaginary cigar and waggled his eyebrows. "But my little petunia, what does nine pounds come to in a mere one-tenth gravity field?"
"The same nine pounds of ungainly mass it comes to at one full gee." Toya watched Eichra Oren's face, knowing that he'd be surprised to hear her bantering this way with Owen. She couldn't help being proud of herself. She'd been a fairly humorlessand timidold maid, she knew, when they'd first met. "All right, give me the damned gun, Roger. I'm no pistol fighter like you desperados, but at least I know which end of a shotgun to point with."
Owen nodded, handing her the weapon, a semiautomatic twelve-gauge with extended magazine and short, riot-length barrel. "Before we descend into the abyss," he suggested to Eichra Oren, "there's something special I want you to see."
Toya trailing along, he led the man out from under the awning to a point behind a clump of bushes which almost formed a hedge. Propped over a small, smokeless fire stood a kettlelike vessel of raw copper with a long coil of the same material leading from the top. Its free end slowly dripped a thin, transparent liquid into an ASF canteen.
"Arthur Empleado would shit blood if he saw this," the machinist declared proudly, "if he weren't too busy sticking his long brown nose into Mister Thoggosh's business."
The Antarctican looked puzzled. "What is it?"
Both Americans gave him an unbelieving stare. "You've heard of Dutch courage, haven't you?" Owen asked.
"It was included in my vocabulary injections." Eichra Oren nodded. Toya wondered whether he was serious or had merely adjusted to the level of discourse. "A euphemism for liquor."
"And Southern comfort?"
"Yes, that, too."
"Well," the machinist proclaimed, producing three small plastic cups and pouring liquid into them from the canteen, "I call this `Southern Courage.' Dlee Raftan Saon supplied the yeast. I hate to think what Dutch comfort might besounds like something you'd find advertised in the personals of small San Francisco newspapers."
He handed them each a plastic cup. Having had experience with the stuff already, Toya sipped at it cautiously. Eichra Oren took a much larger draft. He didn't quite burst out in a fit of coughing, as she'd expected, but his eyes began to water.
"Smooooth," he managed to croak.
Owen held his cup aloft, critically squinting at a bright spot on the canopy through the liquid. "Hold on, friends, we need to toast the enterprise we're about to undertake. Toya?"
"Me?"
"Sure, why not you?"
"Okay, a toast: let's go."
"Yeah, Boss," Sam agreed electronically, "What she said. Enough of this debauchery."
Without acknowledging a message the others couldn't hear anyway, Eichra Oren nodded, shouldering his rucksack and strapping his sword belt about his waist. He also made sure his little plasma pistol was handyalthough after that one drink, he wasn't sure he wanted to touch it for a while. It served several purposes in addition to self-defense. One of them was as a flashlight.
Gathering a few more thingscanteens, their own flashlights and spare batteries, and the transparent filmsuits Mister Thoggosh had recently given themthe two Americans walked with the Antarctican a short distance to the asteroid entrance, easily tilted up the huge bronze-colored metal slab which, lying flat, formed the outer door of the cleverly uncomplicated Predecessor air lock, stepped over the edgea mere one tenth of a gravity was good for something, after alland together dropped gently to the floor several meters below.
The machinist picked up a long fiberglass pole he'd left there for the purpose and tilted the slab back into place, plunging them into darkness. "Another labor-saving device from Owen Industries, where profit is the most important product. If the Predecessors put a light in here," he added, "we sure as hell haven't found it."
Working in the dark from memory, he and Eichra Oren pushed and swung another enormous metal slab, horizontally this time, on its concealed pivot-pins, opening the inner door. Even after a billion years, the process was smooth and soundless. Passing through into the asteroid's main entrance chamber, they shut the door behind them so that others from the surface wouldn't be locked out.
Penetrating the incredibly dense surface of 5023 Eris, which accounted for most of the asteroid's mass, they left the last hint of gravity behind. The entrance chamber was a huge metal bowl filled, since Model 17 had turned the power on, with sourceless pale light. They'd entered, in effect, from the middle of the lid. The bottom was perforated like a sieve with dozens of tunnel-mouths leading in all directions. Those which the humans or the Elders' people had explored were marked, either with daubs of paint or fluorescent stickers.
"Well, Bwana, where to?" Owen asked, standing against the curved wall balanced on one finger.
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Do we have a plan here, Peerless Leader, or are we just going to search through thirteen million cubic kilometers of asteroid until we all drop dead of old age?"
"You're already dead, remember?" Eichra Oren's reply got an odd look from Toya, and an even odder one from Owen. The Antarctican repeated Sam's question for their benefit. "In the first place," the debt assessor insisted, grinning at both of them, "Sam has always been a professional pessimist, and whether it was accidentally or on purpose, getting crushed to death hasn't changed that."
"Geez." Owen shook his head. "I don't expect that it would.
The debt assessor laughed. "Nevertheless, I don't think the situation's quite as bad as he paints it. As far as we knowas far as Model 17 has told us, anywaythere's only one way into and out of the asteroid, and Mister Thoggosh's excavation specialists had to dig down half a dozen meters to find it. I believe we should limit the scope of our initial search to passages and compartments which one person, dragging another one along involuntarilyor unconsciouslycould get to before being seen by some third party."
"I don't understand." Toya blinked. "Why do you and Sam assume that it was only one person?"
"We don't, really. But I don't believe that changes anything, either. Two or three or four or five kidnapers would have to smuggle Rosalind down here without any of our explorers and researchers spotting them, and that's getting harder every day."
"Besides," added Sam, "the more miscreants, the harder it becomes to remain inconspicuous."
"I'd think it'd be impossible," observed the machinist, "with most of the population wired into each other cybernetically." Since they'd discussed it several times, Eichra Oren knew both Toya and Owen had been thinking about acquiring implants. Specific detailsincluding costhadn't been worked out yet. It was relatively rare in the culture Eichra Oren came from for an adult to undergo a surgical procedure usually performed on children shortly after birth.
He shrugged. "There are plenty of built-in privacy safeguards in the system. And some people, members of the more bashful species and reclusive individuals, sometimes go for weeks without any contact with the network. I've done it myself when I was working hard and trying to concentrate without interruption."
Owen nodded, understanding.
"Rosalind isn't within view or earshot of anybody with an active implant," Sam informed the Antarctican. "Not now, and not when she disappeared."
Toya shook her head. "The question remains, how do four of us search such a huge volume?"
"To begin with, we use these." He reached into the bag he carried and extracted a thin, flexible disk about the size of his palm, which appeared to be made of coppery paper or plastic. "Courtesy of Clym Pucras, machine-tool designer and instrument maker. You may recall that I conducted an assessment for him not long ago."
"Wasn't he the little guy," asked Owen, "who sued himself for trespassing on his neighbor's property?"
Toya remembered that both Clym Pucras and his irascible neighbor, Babnap Portycel, had strongly resembled deep-sea creatures from her own world called brittle stars.
The Antarctican nodded. "He's the one, all right." He indicated the object from the bag. "These are like the audio transducers you've seen some of the marine species wearing attached to their filmsuits, only they're wired for both sound and pictures. I had them colored to match the interior materials of the asteroid, so they don't stand out and won't be avoided or removed. As we descend, we'll place them where we've been, so that nobody can sneak past us, up to the surface. Sam will monitor them for any trace of Rosalind."
"I wish they were wired for odors, too, Boss. I sure like the way Rosalind smells!"
Owen grinned. "So do I."
Eichra Oren sent the machinist a sharp lookhow could Owen have heard Sam?but his eye was distracted by sudden movement and a flash of white deep within one of the many tunnels leading to the entrance chamber. He had just caught another glimpse of his mother, Eneri Relda, waving at him.
"Boss, I see her, too!" Sam was excited. "If you're hallucinating, so am I!"
Eichra Oren seized Owen's shoulder, pointing him in the right direction. "What do you see down there?"
The American squinted. "A young woman I don't recognize, waving at us. Looks about seventeen or eighteen, maybe a little older. Long hair, blonde as near as I can tell. Very good looking. She's wearing a long, white, floaty kind of dress."
Toya pushed between the two, straining for a peek, but by then the apparition had vanished into the darkness and she was disappointed. "Damn! Who was she, Eichra Oren?"
Severely shaken, the Antarctican took a breath. "I don't know for sure, but if my guess is right, she's a lot older than seventeen or eighteenunless you're counting in thousands of years! I can tell you one thing, though."
"What's that?"
"Our choice has been made for us. This is the tunnel we're going to follow!"