FSF, March-April 2010 (11 page)

He watched her self-assured handling of the rover. Wolverton hardly knew Nozaki, but he was talking to her easily. He'd never been able to make friends on Earth or Mars; out here on the frontier, he'd hoped it would be different. Nozaki had been especially nice to him ever since the hopper brought him to LGC-1, and now she'd saved his life. Crises brought people together, just as he'd always heard.

He liked Nozaki. He liked her a lot. In fact, he was falling in love with her.

"What if the digger gouges out base camp?” Wolverton asked.

"It wasn't moving in that direction,” Nozaki said, sounding a bit uncertain for once. “Besides, the compound is probably too big to miss, even for something that size."

"Probably?"

"Come on, Wolverton. I told you they're advanced, very civilized. They wouldn't want to harm us."

"But since there may be an infinite number of realities intersecting here, you can't be sure who built the digger."

"No,” she admitted. “I guess I can't. What do you think its functions are, besides digging up everything in its path?"

"I suspect that it's identifying ores just as we're doing, only on a much grander scale. It must analyze all the rocks by volume, separating them inside itself after scooping them up."

"They're in a hurry to acquire metals."

"Exactly where is this bubble, anyway?” Wolverton asked.

"Hard to say. It's centered in near space, but its parameters move around. Sometimes it comes down to the surface."

"And that's how we passed through it? Accidentally?"

"Yes. The digger may run into the bubble again and disappear, or..."

"Or it will chew up base camp, analyze the chunks, and spit out whatever it doesn't want."

"That's a pretty grim prognostication."

"But it could be accurate,” Wolverton said. “In fact, given the small size of this asteroid, I'd say it's quite likely."

"You've got a point. We'd better get back."

She turned the rover away from the trench and started toward base camp. Wolverton regretted leaving, realizing that he might never get another chance to be alone with Nozaki.

They soon saw the glare of floodlights over the steeply rounded horizon. Base camp abruptly came into sight. Labutunu's construction crew worked on the compound's new addition, affixing lead-sheet shielding to an erect wall.

Wolverton said he'd put away the rover, giving Nozaki a chance to get inside and provide a detailed account. She opened all channels and called everyone to the briefing room, while he detached the battery pack and fumbled with the rover's panels, until he finally managed to fold it up and lean it against the others.

The construction workers were already inside by the time he finished. Ducking his head to get out of the shack, he leaped halfway to the airlock hatch in a single step. He still wasn't used to this gravity, and his long legs often took him farther than he expected.

Wolverton went through the airlock, got his helmet and suit off as quickly as he could, and hung them next to his bunk. Turning, he glimpsed his lanky form, freckled face, and ginger hair in the mirror through the open bathroom door. He rushed past it to the briefing room, a relatively spacious chamber at the intersection of the compound's two main bunkers.

Everyone had already gathered there.

The babble of many voices confused him, but he soon saw something downright disconcerting.

Two Nozakis.

One of them spoke, and she wore a pressure suit without a helmet. The other was seated, listening along with everyone else, and she wore a blue thermal jersey and leggings.

"We don't know where it is right now,” the suited Nozaki—presumably the one he'd just been with—was saying, “but a very large mining machine has come through the bubble, and it may be out of control. It's tearing up the surface with abandon."

Some cross-talk followed.

"Here's a thought,” Wolverton said from the back of the room, as soon as there was a lull. He felt self-conscious when everyone turned toward him. “What if its purpose is to strip-mine the entire surface?"

That brought on quite an uproar.

"It could happen,” Nozaki said in a loud, firm voice. “We have to be prepared to evacuate base camp if it comes this way."

Another hubbub followed.

"What will we do if it destroys base camp?” the astrophysicist Jyoti asked, once things quieted down enough for her to be heard. “We can't live outside for long."

"We can call for hoppers to get us out of here,” said Zaremba. The overhead lights reflected on his shaved pate. “But that'll take some time."

"The best thing to do,” Labutunu said, “is to move building materials and everything we need for survival to another site. We'll assemble a makeshift compound and pump air into it. We can manage until we evacuate the asteroid."

"I don't understand how this thing got down to the surface,” said the bespectacled Dr. Linebarger, M.D.

"The bubble sometimes brushes the surface,” Nozaki explained.

"The alien artists make a broad brush stroke,” said Duvic, the head mineralogist, stroking his gray beard.

A few people laughed at his comment, taking some edge off the group's fear.

"There may yet prove to be bubbles,” said Jyoti, her dark eyes widening with enthusiasm, “enveloping entire asteroids, even entire planets. This is very exciting."

"A little too exciting, if you ask me,” said the Nozaki who was unencumbered by a pressure suit. Wolverton admired her trim, athletic figure as she stood up.

Since he'd come to LGC-1, he'd sometimes wondered why he'd seen Nozaki so often. Now he knew why, and he understood what she'd meant by “incontrovertible evidence."

"Let's get busy,” the suited Nozaki said.

Everybody pitched in. Some people were assigned to gather essentials, while others assisted Labutunu outside with the heavy equipment. Sentries were assigned, and pictures from the flyby were examined.

"There it is,” the unsuited Nozaki said, pointing at a hologram taken from space.

The flyby's imager had picked up the digger as it tore its way into the asteroid's crimson dawn. It kept going right through the searing heat of the hydrogen shell.

"Hard radiation doesn't even slow it down,” Jyoti said.

"Maybe it uses GaCrux's hydrogen shell as a smelter,” Wolverton ventured.

"It looks like it's going to circumnavigate the asteroid, its path diverging each time it comes around,” the unsuited Nozaki said. “It will almost certainly reach this point sooner or later."

"In which case,” Duvic said, looking at Wolverton, “your hypothesis is going to become a propecy fulfilled."

"You may be responsible for saving the lives of fifty-two people, Wolverton,” the suited Nozaki said.

Her praise made him feel good, but this was no time to bask in the warmth. They had to get busy.

Everything they needed was hauled outside—tools, food, dietary supplements, water, inflatable tents, oxygen tanks. They had to hurry before dawn came.

At one point Wolverton found himself working with the duplicate Nozaki.

"You shouldn't stare at people,” she said.

"I'm sorry,” Wolverton replied. “It's just that I...."

"You've never seen the same person in two places at the same time,” she said. “I know. I've heard it since the day I came back and found my double here in the compound. Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of talking about it."

It was strange, but this version of Nozaki didn't seem as kindly disposed toward him as the other one. Everything else about them was the same, right down to the identical birthmarks on their throats. The difference must have been due to the experience he'd shared with the other version of her.

"We need those units stacked by the airlock,” Zaremba said, interrupting Wolverton's reverie.

"
Vite! Vite!
” Duvic cried from behind him. “It's coming this way!"

"And it's moving fast,” Nozaki said. “There's no time to gather everything up. Just load the rovers and pray that the hoppers get here before it's too late."

"The wieldos...,” Labutunu said, dismayed. “We can't build without them!"

"I know, but we've got to get going."

All the rovers were unfolded, battery packs attached, and the ore boots filled with whatever supplies could be carried. Wolverton jumped into a rover next to Nozaki. Now that both versions of her were suited up, he wasn't sure which Nozaki it was.

Twenty-six rovers drove in a column away from the encroaching sunrise, a scarlet corona behind them on the black rim of the horizon.

"My God,” someone said over the radio.

The fear in that voice caused Wolverton to turn and look behind him. There was the digger, churning up the surface, seeming even more gigantic than the first time he'd seen it, and growing larger by the second.

Just as the images from the flyby had suggested, it was headed straight toward the compound. Its angular legs churned, propelling it forward at a furious pace.

Much of base camp was below ground, only its lead-lined roofs visible from this distance. Wolverton saw the monster take its first bite. He got a brief look at part of its underside where the ground dipped in front of the airlock. Huge spiraling blades sliced into the bunker and the debris fell into its enormous scoop.

Everything was sucked up inside it. There was no sound, only a vibration.

It was like an earthquake, and the rover careened wildly before Nozaki got it back under control.

Refuse shot out through the digger's backside. Jagged pieces of base camp drifted for a moment against the black and red sky and then fell slowly to the surface.

The silence inside Wolverton's helmet made it all the more terrifying. He could hear his own breathing and pulse—but nothing else—as he watched the compound being destroyed.

The caravan veered away from the digger's path, and soon the black colossus was out of sight. Wolverton thought about the few mementos he'd brought from Mars; they were all gone, along with everything else that fifty-two people had called home.

Panic overwhelmed him. Where would they go? It would take at least three hoppers to get everybody off the asteroid, and there weren't three of them close enough to get here any time soon.

"Oh, God,” he said.

"Take it easy, Wolverton,” Nozaki said. “We're not dead yet."

"We might as well be."

"Don't start with that defeatist stuff. That's why you didn't make it back through the bubble."

"The bubble...."

"It's our only chance."

"Do you think we can find it in time?"

"If we're lucky,” Nozaki said.

Wolverton could see her mouth through her visor. She hadn't spoken. It must have been the second Nozaki on the open channel. Or was this the second Nozaki he was riding with? He had no way of knowing if he didn't ask. He quickly switched to a private channel.

"Uh, which one are you?"

"I'm the one who
didn't
leave you behind."

"Oh.” He'd gotten into the rover with the wrong Nozaki. He reminded himself that they were the same woman.

He returned to the open channel as the caravan drove on ahead of the deadly dawn.

Soon his stomach rumbled with hunger, a sound louder than the destruction of base camp. He hadn't eaten since before going out to cut the ore samples. Would they starve out here on LGC-1's surface? It was likely, if their pressure suits’ liquid processors didn't break down first, in which case they would die of thirst. And if the rovers’ battery packs failed, Gamma Crucis's hydrogen shell would ultimately cook them alive.

Jyoti's voice came through. “We shouldn't all be driving in a caravan. The probability that we'll find the bubble is increased if we spread out."

"That's sensible,” Nozaki said. “If you see any sign of it, send up flares."

She pulled the joystick to the left and drove at a sharp angle away from the caravan. The other rovers peeled off from both sides of the column. Soon they were spreading out in all directions, excepting toward base camp. Nobody had any intention of going back, even though the digger must have been long gone from the site by now.

They drove for another twenty minutes before they saw something over the horizon. It was virtually invisible, except that it obscured the stars. At first, Wolverton thought it was the digger, but he soon realized that this was even bigger.

"That's it!” Nozaki shouted.

Flares were going up even as she turned the rover's wheels toward the huge anomaly. The flares burst gloriously in the negligible gravity, several kilometers overhead.

Wolverton was excited, although he had no idea what they were going to do once they reached the bubble.

"It's moving away from the surface!” Jyoti's voice cried in dismay. “We've got to hurry or it will be too late!"

Wolverton exhaled, realizing he'd been involuntarily holding his breath.

But as the rovers rolled over the barren landscape, he saw exactly what Jyoti meant. The bubble's amorphous, black border was meters above the barren asteroid's surface—and receding steadily.

"How can we get through it?” Wolverton said.

Someone ahead of them fired another flare. Its glowing trail vanished inside the bubble.

"The gravity's low,” Nozaki said. “We may be able to make it through if we jump, but we've got to do it before the bubble gets any farther away."

The rovers were gathering under the anomaly as if for a tailgate party. As soon as they stopped, Wolverton pulled himself out of his seat, floating a meter off the ground with the effort. He was looking up into the bubble as his feet touched the ground. From directly below, he could see stars inside it, but they weren't the stars that should have been there.

"We're going through that?” he said.

"If we don't,” Nozaki said, “we're dead."

"The edge is too far off the ground."

"If someone jumps onto the ore boot, it can be done."

"Who's going to be the first to make the jump?” Zaremba asked.

"I will,” said Wolverton, before Nozaki could speak. He wanted to be sure he went ahead so that he'd be there waiting for her, no matter where they ended up.