Investments (5 page)

“Boarding tube . . . ” Waiting for the light to go on. “ . . . withdrawn, my lord.”

“Electrical connections withdrawn,” said Bhagwati. “Outside connectors sealed. Ships is on one hundred percent internal power.”

“Data connectors withdrawn,” said Lord Barry. “Outside data ports sealed.”

“Main engines gimbaled,” said Bhagwati. “Gimbal test successful.”

“Hold at ten seconds,” said the captain. “Status, everyone.”

All stations reported clean boards.

“Launch in ten,” Lord Go said. “Pilot, the ship is yours.”

“The ship is mine, my lord.” Severin released and clenched his hands on the joysticks.

The digit counter in the corner of his display counted down to zero. Lights flashed. “Clamps withdrawn,” Severin said. “Magnetic grapples released.”

Severin suddenly floated free in his webbing as
Surveyor
was cast free of Laredo’s accelerator ring.
Surveyor
had been moored nose-in, and the release of centripetal force from the upper ring, which was spinning at seven times the rate of the planet below, gave the ship a good rate of speed that carried it clear of any potential obstacles.

Severin checked the navigation display anyway, and saw no threats. He thumbed buttons on his joysticks and engaged the maneuvering thrusters. An increase in gravity snugged him against his chest harness. He fired the thrusters several more times to increase the rate at which
Surveyor
was withdrawing from the ring.

It was very illegal to fire
Surveyor’s
main antimatter engines, with their radioactive plumes, anywhere near the inhabited ring. Severin needed to push the ship past the safety zone before
Surveyor
could really begin its journey.

Again Severin checked the navigation displays. He could see the Chee Company yacht
Kayenta
outbound for Wormhole Station Two, carrying Martinez and Lady Terza to the newly opened planet.
Surveyor
would follow in their wake, fourteen days behind. A chain of cargo vessels were inbound from Station One, many of them carrying equipment or settlers for Chee, all of them standing on huge pillars of fire as they decelerated to their rendezvous with the ring. The closest was still seven hours away.

The only obstacle of note was the giant bulk of the
Titan,
which orbited Laredo at a considerable distance for reasons of safety.
Titan
was full of antimatter destined for Chee and Parkhurst, and even though the antimatter was remarkably stable— flakes of antihydrogen suspended by static electricity inside incredibly small etched silicon shells, all so tiny they flowed like a thick fluid— nevertheless, if things went wrong the explosion would vaporize a chunk of Laredo’s ring and bring the rest down on the planet below.

It would be a good thing for
Surveyor
to stay well clear of
Titan
.

Severin looked at the point of light on the display that represented
Titan
and wondered about the conversation he’d had with Martinez and his brother, the one where Allodorm’s name had first been raised.
Titan
was a Meridian Company ship leased long-term by the Exploration Service. The growing settlements on Chee required antimatter to generate power, and as yet had no accelerator ring. Cree Station, with its skyhook that ran cargo to the surface, required power as well.

The wormhole stations at both Chee and Parkhurst, with their colossal mass drivers that kept the wormholes stable, required an enormous output of power.

Since Chee could not as yet generate its own antimatter, it had been decided to ramp up antihydrogen production on Laredo’s ring, fill
Titan
with the results, and move the whole ship to a distant parking orbit around the newly-settled planet, on the far side of Chee’s largest moon so that even if the unthinkable happened and
Titan
blew, none of the energetic neutrons and furious gamma rays would reach Chee’s population. When one of Chee’s installations needed antihydrogen, they’d send a shuttle to
Titan
and collect some. By the time
Titan
had been depleted, an accelerator ring— a small one, not the vast technological wonder that circled all of Laredo— would have been built in Chee orbit.

Severin wondered if it truly made economic sense to use
Titan
that way, or whether it was a complex scheme to fill Allodorm’s coffers.

Surveyor
finally reached the limit of Laredo’s safety zone, and Severin rotated the ship onto a new heading, his couch sliding lightly within the rings of his acceleration cage.

“We are on our new heading, my lord,” Severin said. “Two-two-zero by zero-zero-one absolute. Mission plan is in the guidance computer.”

“I am in command,” Lord Go called.

“The lord captain is in command,” Severin agreed. He took his hands off the joysticks.

“Engines, fire engines,” the captain said. “Accelerate at two point three gravities.”

Severin felt a kick to his spine and his acceleration couch swung within its cage as the gravities began piling on his chest..

“Accelerating at two point three gravities,” Bhagwati said. “Course two-two-zero by zero-zero-one absolute.”

They would accelerate hard until they’d achieved escape velocity from Laredo, then slacken for most of the journey to a single gravity, going to harder accelerations for an hour out of each watch.

Severin looked at the displays and saw
Kayenta
again, outbound and approaching the wormhole that would take it to Chee. It was a pity that
Surveyor
wouldn’t travel to Chee, but merely pass through the system on its way to Parkhurst and the possible new wormholes. A pity not only because Severin wouldn’t see Martinez and Terza again, but because he’d probably never find out how the Allodorm thing worked out.

He’d just have to find something else to amuse him for the next few months, and he thought he knew what it was.

He’d been unable to entirely forget the dream he’d had at Rio Hondo, and he’d loaded his personal data foil with articles on puppets, puppeteers, marionettes, automata, shadow puppets, and recordings of performances.

People on long voyages found many ways to occupy their hours. Some gambled, some drank, some drew into themselves. Some concentrated obsessively on their work. Some watched recorded entertainments, some had affairs with other crew members, some played musical instruments. Some worked as hard as they could at making everyone else on the ship miserable.

Perhaps, Severin thought, he would be the first to plan a puppet theater.

Certainly it was a field that seemed to have a lot of room to expand.

*

“Are you all on virtual?” asked the astronomer Shon-dan. “I’m transmitting the outside cameras on Channel Seventeen.”

“Comm: Channel Seventeen.” Terza’s soft voice came to Martinez’ ears from the nearest acceleration couch.

Martinez was already on the correct channel, his head filled with the stars as viewed from the
Kayenta
as it passed the final moments of its twenty-day acceleration out of the Laredo system. The virtual cap he wore to project the image onto his visual centers was lighter than the Fleet issue, which required earphones and microphone pickups, and he sensed other differences as well: the depth of field was subtly different, a bit flatter, perhaps because the civilian rig required less precision.

The stars were thrown like a great wash of diamonds across the midnight backdrop, silent and steady and grand. They were the home stars under which Martinez had spent the first half of his life, and his mind naturally sought the familiar, comforting constellations in their well-known places. Laredo’s own star, this far out, was hardly brighter than other bright stars. The software had been instructed to blot out
Kayenta
’s brilliant tail so as to avoid losing the stars by contrast, and the result was a flickering, disturbing negative blot occupying one part of the display, a void of absolute darkness that seemed to pursue the ship.

Martinez and Terza were in
Kayenta’s
main lounge, the softly-scented center of the yacht’s social life. Shon-dan, an astronomer from the Imperial University of Zarafan who had come aboard as Marcella’s guest, was about to show the reason why an astronomical observatory had been placed on Chee Station, and why she had spent months journeying here.

“Ten seconds,” Shon-dan said. “Eight. Five.”

Kayenta
was traveling too fast for Martinez to see the wormhole station as the ship flashed past, or the wormhole itself, the inverted bowl-of-stars that was their destination. The transition itself was instantaneous, and the star field changed at the same instant.

A vast, lush globe of stars suddenly blazed across Martinez’ perceptions, occupying at least a third of the sky, the stars so packed together they seemed nearly as dense as glittering grains of sand stretched along an ocean shore. Martinez felt himself take an involuntary breath, and he heard Terza’s gasp. The closer Martinez looked, the more stars he saw. There seemed to be vague clouds and structures within the globe, each made up of more and more brilliants, but Martinez couldn’t tell whether the clouds actually existed or were the results of his own mind trying to create order in this vast, burning randomness, seeking the familiar just as it had sought out constellations in Laredo’s sky.

Gazing into the vast star-globe was like drifting deeper and deeper into a endless sea, past complex, ill-defined shoals that on closer inspection were made up of millions of coral structures, while the structures themselves, looked at with greater care, were found to be composed of tiny limestone shells, and the shells themselves, on examination, each held tiny specks of life, a kind of infinite regression that baffled the senses.

“Now you see why we’ve built the observatory.” Shon-dan’s voice, floating into Martinez’ perceptions, was quietly triumphant. “Of all the wormholes in the empire, this one leads to a system that’s closest to the center of a galaxy. This is our best chance to observe how a galactic core is structured. From here we can directly observe the effects on nearby stars of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center.”

With an effort of will Martinez shifted his attention away from the glowing globe to the rest of the starry envelope that surrounded
Kayenta.
By comparison with Laredo the entire sky was packed with stars, with an opalescent strip that marked the galaxy’s disk spiraling out into endless space. The Chee system was actually within the galactic core, though on its periphery, and stars on all sides were near and burning bright. Chee’s own star, Cheemah, shone with a warm yellow light, but other nearby stars equaled its fire.

“The stars here are very dense,” Shon-dan said, “though not as dense as they are further in. The Chee system has seven stars— or maybe eight, we’re not sure— and the orbits are very complex.”

“Do we actually know which galaxy we’re in?” Terza asked.

“No. We’re scanning for Cepheids and other yardsticks that might give us an indication, but so far we haven’t found enough to make certain of anything. We could be anywhere in the universe, of course, and anywhere within a billion years of where we started.”

Martinez heard footfalls enter the room, then the voice of Lord Pa. “Looking at the stars?” he said. “You’ll get tired of them soon enough. Between the galactic core and the other six stars in Chee’s system, there’s no true night on the planet, and we’ve had to install polarizing windows on all our workers’ dormitories just so our people can get some rest. I’ve just stopped looking at the sky— galactic centers are nasty violent places, and the less we have to do with them, the better.”

“Stars are packed pretty closely here, true enough, my lord.” Shon-dan’s deference to a wealthy Peer did not quite disguise her disagreement. Clearly she was not about to tire of gazing at this sky anytime soon.

“I’m going to sit and play a game of cinhal,” Lord Pa said. “Don’t let me disturb you.”

Martinez returned his attention to the great, glowing galactic core while he heard Lord Pa shuffle to a table, then give it the muted commands to set up a game.

“So far you’re only seeing the light in its visible spectrum,” Shon-dan said. “I’m going to add some other spectra in a moment. There will be some false colors. I’ll try to fix those later.” Martinez heard the Lai-own give a few muted commands, and then the galactic core shifted from a pearly color to a muted amber, and the great sphere was suddenly pierced through by an enormous lance of light, shimmering and alive, a giant pillar that seemed to stretched from the foundations of the universe to its uttermost heaven.

Martinez gave an involuntary cry, and he heard Terza’s echo.