Balance of Terror (21 page)

“Kad Minslok didn’t give you any further clues as to who your contact was going to be?” Saff asked.

Moon shook her head. “He just told us to get to 3 Enkil IV and that he’d organise some way to contact us when we got here.” She looked at the screen. “Somehow, I’m not sure he had this in mind.”

“Maybe he did,” Srin added. They were some of the first words he’d uttered since entering the cockpit. Sometimes, due to his periods of exhaustion and unconsciousness, Moon forgot that he was around, but he was there, always listening, always analysing, picking up the important fragments she often missed.

“Think about it,” he added. “What better camouflage than a mass of buzzing ships, each operating according to its own agenda? As Quinten says, even a squad of Space Fleet ships would need several months to get this mob under control. And, in the meantime, people can appear and disappear at will.”

“But this is such a new venture,” Moon objected. “How could Kad plan something like this?”

“Not plan. Leverage.” Srin gazed at the screen. “I think I’m looking forward to meeting this old research partner of yours.”

Moon’s voice was dry. “We have to figure out how to find him first.”

Moon tentatively approached the door. She registered the label next to it – “Hydroponics” – before the panel slid open with an audible hiss. Taking a breath, she stepped inside.

Green and white surrounded her. Rows of large rounded tubes, open at the top, were suspended from floor to ceiling. In between, foliage dominated, mostly a healthy-looking forest tone, but interspersed with some reds, yellows and browns. The air smelt damp yet fresh and filled with an additional scent that Moon supposed must be fertiliser.

She walked carefully, peering down each aisle until she saw a tall distinctive figure three-quarters of the way down.

Saff looked up as she approached, but her fingers kept picking the tips off a row of tall seedlings in front of her.

“This is a lovely place,” Moon said, and she meant it. She was surrounded by life and quiet in a chamber that was in stark contrast to the metal panelling outside.

“When I joined the
Perdition
, working in Hydroponics was my first duty.”

“Do you like it?” Moon asked, genuinely curious.

Saff’s nimble fingers paused. “It’s nice to give life,” was all she said.

Moon licked her lips. “I, er, I have a favour to ask you.”

Saff stepped away from one of the plant tubes and let her arms fall to her sides.

“I spoke to Toy Cenredi – well, actually, Srin spoke to him and then he told me what the young man said – and consensus seems to be that you have an almost supernatural ability to find things.”

“I recognise patterns,” was all Saff had to say in reply to that.

“Well, I was wondering if you could help me find my contact. Since the conversation in the cockpit yesterday with, ah, Quinten, Srin and I have tried thinking of any way we could somehow send the correct communication to a place on 3 Enkil IV, but we don’t know where to start. You were there, remember? You saw the chaos of the mining operation.”

“Are you certain you don’t know who your contact is?”

Moon nodded. “Unfortunately, yes.” She hesitated, then added: “And there’s a further complication. We were supposed to take a particular ship in order to reach this system. It had been all arranged. But we didn’t. We came with you instead.”

“You do not know your contact, and your contact doesn’t know that this ship was your transport. In fact, he, she or it,” there was the barest stress to the third pronoun, “might be waiting for a signal from the transport you never caught and, thus, never entered this system.”

“Something like that,” Moon agreed with a grimace. Put in such bald terms, the quest sounded hopeless.

“Very well,” Saff said, without changing expression. “I appreciate a challenge.”

She turned away then stopped and swung around to face Moon again. “What happens if I fail to find your contact?”

Moon didn’t want to think about that but couldn’t deny that it was a reasonable question. She shrugged her shoulders and gave a nervous laugh. “Then I suppose we might be reduced to asking your captain if he has room on this ship for two more crewmembers?”

“And what would you do on this ship?”

Moon blinked. “I…I don’t know. Help maintain the engines? Learn enough first-aid to be the Medical Officer?” She’d already had a crash course in pharmacology, Moon thought to herself.

“You would be an acceptable addition,” Saff said, after a pause. “Very well, I will consult with you later on.”

Moon wondered at the little spring in her step as she walked out of Hydroponics. Had Saff really said that she would like to welcome the two runaways as fellow workers on the ship? It was such a small statement, yet it made her feel unaccountably happy and a little proud. It had been such a long time since anyone, besides Srin, had expressed any confidence in her.

With a smile curving her lips, she sought out her partner.

“Later on” turned out to be early evening, ship time. Moon and Srin were in the small observation deck near the front of the
Perdition
.

“It reminds me a little of my lab on the
Differential
,” Moon remarked. “Except this view is a lot more panoramic.”

They were seated at one of two cramped low tables. The décor was muted and lushly velvet-like in texture. Beyond the curved panel, the unstoppable industry of 3 Enkil IV was on display. Moon had stopped counting, but it looked as if there were hundreds of shuttles, ships and transports arcing past the gas giant, heading for a satellite that was slowly disappearing behind the bulk of its planet.

Not only did she
not
know how Saff was going to find their next contact in the sub-light buzz of confusion, but no inspiration had sparked in her own brain over the past few hours either. She was starting to feel depressed.

So intent were she and Srin on watching the near-collisions of dozens of vehicles that they didn’t notice Saff’s approach until she was at their table.

“I have a preliminary plan,” she said.

Moon started then stared up into a pale impassive face.

“Please, join us,” Srin said, almost immediately, pulling out a third seat in invitation.

“Thank you.”

Considering her height, and the compact design of the furniture, Moon expected Saff to awkwardly position herself, but she folded herself neatly, like an elegant piece of origami, into the soft upholstery.

“What’s your plan?” Moon prompted, her voice eager.

“Do you know the element deuterium?”

“Of course,” Moon replied with a shrug. “It’s a stable isotope of hydrogen, commonly called ‘heavy hydrogen’.”

“3 Enkil’s concentration of deuterium is decreasing due to a slow fusion process taking part within the planet. It is now much less than the amount of deuterium found in, for example, a comet.”

Now that she was on familiar ground, Moon felt her confidence growing. Depleted deuterium due to fusion? She knew what that meant. “You’re saying that 3 Enkil is actually a brown dwarf?”

“That is correct. And vehicles that stay within the orbit of 3 Enkil also begin to lose deuterium.”

Moon was quiet for a handful of seconds then her eyes widened. “You’re going to test the vehicles for their deuterium values.”

“We can initially discard ships with high deuterium values. They have obviously only recently moved into the system. But ships that have been here for any length of time should show low values.”

“Then we’ve found our contact!”

“No,” Saff corrected. “We have only found a likely pool of candidates. Once we have done that, we can formulate a refinement strategy. Perhaps
that
one will find your contact.”

“It seems so obvious now that you’ve said it,” Moon admitted. “Why didn’t I think of something like that before?”

“Perhaps,” Saff replied, rising to her feet, “you have had other things on your mind.”

She flicked a dark glance over to Srin then, with a courteous nod, left them.

“Do you think she’s trying to tell us our love-making’s too noisy?” Srin suggested with a laugh.

Moon punched him in the arm. “Your mind constantly travels along the same old track, doesn’t it?”

He sobered. “Now it does. Now that I can do something about it.”

Moon sobered as well, but there was still a hint of a smile hovering about her lips. “I don’t know where she came from, but Saff’s one smart woman. I could have done with an assistant like her at Phyllis.”

“But think of what could have happened. You might have finalised your work there…”

“…and the Republic would have taken it and held entire systems to ransom,” she finished with a sigh. She punched the seat of her chair. “I wish, I wish there was some way I could do what I love without the need to play politics. Especially not
this
kind of politics, with billions of lives in the balance.”

“Hopefully, you’ll get the chance,” Srin said. He hesitated. “What do we do, if we can’t find our next contact?”

It was the same question Saff had asked earlier in the Hydroponics bay and Moon felt better able to handle it the second time around.

“What would
you
like to do?” she countered smartly.

Srin glanced at the receding fourth moon, now almost completely obscured behind the bulk of 3 Enkil. “Right at this moment, at this nexus of space and time?”

Moon nodded.

“I think I’d like to stay on board, ask Tamlan to take us on as crew.” Srin scratched the back of his head absently. “The problem is, we can’t do that, can we? I’m still not well and we have a dwindling supply of medication.”

“We could ask him for some more help,” Moon suggested. “Even with paying him for this one trip, we have more than fifty kilo-credits left. That should be more than enough to buy whatever cure we need.”

“It isn’t money, Moon, it’s time.” Srin held one of her hands. “You keep bringing me back from the brink, but I can feel myself get a little bit weaker with each revival. And I’m not a young man any more.”

With her free hand, she reached for his face, skimming her fingers over his cheek and down to the rougher skin on his chin. “You know I will always love you,” she whispered.

“If I were a better man,” he said, “I’d tell you to hell with this Kad Minslok, let’s try to make a new life for us here, on this ship. The problem is,” he continued with a smile, “I’m such a selfish bastard that I want you, not just for a few months, but for decades more. The thought of dying scares me, Moon, and I don’t want to do it. If there’s some way your friend can help, can cure me of this manufactured affliction, I want to take it. And, in a way, I don’t care if it means that you hand over your work, if millions die – if
billions
die – as long as it means I can enjoy a long life with you.”

His voice lowered to a whisper. “Do you see what a selfish coward I am?”

She hugged him close and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Never,” she said, brokenly. “We’ll get through this. I know we will.”

Chapter Seventeen

“There appear to be forty-seven vessels that have been orbiting 3 Enkil for more than two weeks,” Saff told the assembled humans in the canteen. “Sixteen of them have not filed any information regarding their origins or purpose, eight have filed inaccurate information, and the remaining twenty-three have filed information that corresponds to both our deuterium findings and their tracked flight routes.”

“So people lie,” Cenredi remarked. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Forty-seven possibilities,” Quinten muttered. “That’s not bad but it’ll take time to go through them all, one by one, and there’s no guarantee any of the crews on those vessels will be co-operative.”

“There is another way,” Saff added. “While the
Perdition
depends on limited supplies, due to our extensive hydroponics system (and small ship population), other vessels are not so fortunate.”

Cenredi snorted. “You mean, they don’t have green stuff coming out their ears like we do?”