The Depths of Time (41 page)

A quarter rotation around the cylinder, a new, bright, gleaming repair yard had all lights on and a full staff in pressure suits, swarming over a gleaming-new atmospheric shuttle.

That was the pattern, writ small. The old was not preserved, or restored, but left to fall into decline and decay, scavenged and stripped for parts. The newly built sections and systems were not integrated into the old, but simply slapped into place over them. It was not a rational way to do work, or an efficient way. And things would not be the way they were unless someone, probably a large group of
 
someones, generations of someones, benefited in some way from doing things in that irrational way and had t
he power to make things happen to benefit them.

In other places, in other circumstances—on the surface of the planet, for example—abandoning one old loading crane where it stood, while building a newer, bigger, more powerful one a hundred meters away would not have held so much significance, or served as a warning sign of larger problems. But things were different in the tighter quarters of even a large orbital station.
“
They
’
ve doubled the size of the place,
”
he said to Norla.
“
But half the place looks close to abandoned. What does that say to you?
”

“
I don
’
t know, exactly, sir,
”
she replied.
“
Maybe they
’
re bad planners, or maybe it
’
s just plain old corruption. Or maybe the old guard just refused to rebuild or improve, and the up-and-comers left them where they were and went around them.
”

Not for the first time, Koffield mentally gave Norla high marks. She was not a trained observer, but she was sharp, and she knew how to interpret what she saw.

As they were drawn in toward the older central disks, the pattern became more obvious and more extreme. Wrecked service bays, no busier than ghost towns, were side by side with bustling supply depots. Brightly lit VIP observation windows stared into the ports of darkened, smashed-out fueling stations. That too seemed to be part of the pattern. Not just the vibrant new next to the impoverished old, but the prosperous luxury establishment next to the bankrupt essential.

Not good. None of it was good.

The PT Arm towed them smoothly past it all, past the center point of the station and toward the far end of the cylinder. They came to the forward docking complex, and were greeted by the sight of a quite different sort of pattern—or perhaps, Koffield reflected, merely a variation on the same theme.

Every docking bay was full, and that made no sense. If there was one thing not in short supply, out in space, it was space itself. At every other station Koffield had ever seen there was a very simple way to deal with overcrowding. If a bay was needed, one simply waited until the ship in it was finished unloading, then undocked it and left it in a matched parking orbit close to the station. Assuming one. took basic anticollision precautions, and assuming the ships had sufficient propulsion power and life support, there was no practical limit to the number of ships one could stack up, and no purpose served by leaving ships at their bays. Koffield peered down the forward end of the access tunnel, toward open space. Even just with the naked eye, he could see a good ten or twenty ships—interorbit jobs, mostly—of one sort or another, all plainly in just that sort of standard stationkeeping orbit. They used the normal techniques.

Then why were SCO Station
’
s docking bays filled to bursting?

Koffield found his answer by noting what sorts of ships were in the bays themselves. Atmospheric transports, nearly every one of them. All of them of vaguely futuristic design, as seen from the perspective of a century and a quarter in the past, and nearly all of them showing signs of long and hard use. Few showed anything more than minimal interior lights through their portholes. Few had propel-lant lines or personnel access tunnels running to them—but all of them had what looked to be life-support umbilicals hooked up. Only a few had their locator lights blinking, and no pilot liked to power down those unless absolutely necessary. Yet a few ships had their beacons going, so there couldn
’
t be a local prohibition against running lights. Then why shut them down, unless—

Second Officer Norla Chandray was a step ahead of
him.
“
I think there must be worse trouble on the planet
’
s surface than we thought,
”
she said.
“
Those are all ground-to-orbit ships, not orbit-only craft. That
’
s why they
’
ve got LSUs running to them, but not propellant lines or personnel access tunnels.
”

Koffield nodded. He had read it the same way. The ships down there didn
’
t have enough power reserves or propellant to get themselves back, so they had to stay docked. The station was feeding them power and air because the ships didn
’
t have enough of their own. And the Personnel Access Tunnels weren
’
t extended because a PAT gave, well, personnel access. And for whatever reason, SCO Station didn
’
t want anyone from those ships getting into the station. The passengers and crew of the distressed ships were trapped there.

So why didn
’
t the station refuel them? None of the three possible answers Koffield could come up with made him feel any better. Either the station didn
’
t have the fuel to give the ships, or the ships couldn
’
t afford to pay for it, or the ships were refusing to take the fuel, for fear of being sent back.

But who would fly from the planet
’
s surface to SCO Station under such circumstances unless—

Unless things on the surface of Solace were getting very bad indeed.

“
How
’
s
our
propellant holding out?
”
Koffield asked. He could have checked for himself, but he couldn
’
t tear his eyes away from the grounded hobo fleet spread out before his eyes.

“
Tanks at just under eighty percent full,
”
Norla said.
“
We can get anywhere in the system, or get back to the
Dom Pedro
with no problem, if we have to.
”

“
The
Dom Pedro
sounds good right now,
”
Koffield said.
“
But I can
’
t think of anyplace else in this system I
’
d much like to go.
”

“
I
’
m right with you there, sir,
”
Chandray replied.
“
What I
’
d like to know is, where are they going to put us?
”

“
You saw it on the heads-up,
”
Koffield said.
“
Docking Bay Gamma Two.
”

“
Yes, sir. But it looks as if someone is there already.
”
She pointed over his shoulder. He looked in the direction she was pointing. He hadn
’
t been watching for the marking placards, but clearly Chandray had been. And there, very plainly, was the sign indicating G2. And just as plainly, there was a ship already there, a cone-shaped ballistic atmospheric lander that was plainly too large to share G2 with a minitug, let alone an intersystem transport the size of the
Cruzeiro do Sul.
The name of the ship, the
Pilot’s Ease,
was painted in bold letters on the side of the ship.

The answer to Chandray
’
s question came almost before she was finished asking it. The PT Arm towing the
Cruzeiro
slowed to a smooth, steady halt, and the
Cruzeiro’s
superstructure creaked and moaned as the stresses readjusted. Another PT Arm rolled up on its carrier car and came to a halt just ahead of the
Cruzeiro do Sul.
The second PT Arm swung down over Docking Bay Gamma Two and connected its docking probe to the docking probe in the nose of the
Pilot’s Ease.
The arm pulled the
Ease
straight up out of the bay and brought it to the centerline of the station. The arm rotated its docking collar about until the base of the ballistic ship was pointed straight at the forward end of the station, the end opposite to the one through which the
Cruzeiro
had entered the station.

The arm moved forward, pushing the
Pilot’s Ease
ahead of itself. Arm and ship moved forward, toward the end of the tunnel. Twenty meters or so shy of the tunnel
’
s end, the - arm let go, and set the
Pilot’s Ease
adrift. The big ballistic ship sailed slowly out into open space. So far as Koffield could see, she made no effort to adjust her course or slow her forward motion relative to the station. The PT Arm hadn
’
t pushed her hard, but it had put a few meters per second of speed into the ship, enough to shift her orbit somewhat. If she did not slow her forward motion, the
Ease
would stay in her slightly variant orbit, gradually drifting away from the station. Koffield could not see any nav locator lights or interior lights on the
Ease.

Chandray and Koffield looked at each other. Was the captain
 
of the
 
Pilot’s Ease
just being extremely—even insanely—economical of his onboard power, or had they just seen a ship being deliberately set adrift, made a derelict? Had there even been a crew aboard that ship? And if there had been crew aboard, were any of them still alive?

Had SCO Docking Control just performed a routine bit of ship-handling—or had they just seen a corpse thrown overboard to make room for the new arrival?

There was no time for such questions. Their own PT Arm had started moving again, swinging the
Cruzeiro do Sul
through ninety degrees so that her base and her landing jacks pointed straight at Docking Bay Gamma Two. The arm started lowering the ship down toward the deck of the docking bay, setting the
Cruzeiro
into her docking bay, a pawn being set down on a giant chessboard. But what of the
Pilot’s Ease)
Had they just seen some other pawn sacrificed so they could take its square? Would they sacrifice the
Cruzeiro
just as casually, should that suit their purposes?

It seemed to Koffield that he had been moved about by others, often by forces he could neither see nor understand, moving without any real choice of his own, for far too long. Ever since Circum Central, or so it sometimes seemed. Games within games. Who had maneuvered him to this place and time, and why? And what, exactly, did the position of the pieces on the gameboard that was SCO Station tell him? What game were they playing here, and what, exactly, was the state of play?

With a sudden, sharp
thud,
the
Cruzeiro do Sul
landed on the docking bay deck. They had arrived.

It was, Anton Koffield realized,
his
move now. And he hadn
’
t the slightest idea what the rules of this game were.

It should have been the climax of their trip. A few quick housekeeping chores to secure the piloting station and power down the ship
’
s propulsion and nav systems, and then should have come the big moment when they stepped from the
Cruzeiro
into a Personnel Access Tunnel, and from the PAT into Solace Central Orbital Station, into the up-close-and-personal, in-your-face, future full of people and events.Now that they were here, with no turning back, now that they had crossed their Rubicon, and, at long last, had gotten to where they were going, Norla was eager to get off the ship and see what there was to see of this place.

Even the great Anton Koffield himself exhibited a bit of eagerness and impatience, and he even did something that was just microscopically irrational. While Norla was still completing her postflight checks, Koffield went into his cabin and brought out his precious secured container. He set it down by the side of the airlock. Norla watched him do it, and he caught her watching him. He smiled, and shrugged, and went back into his cabin without saying a word. It was quite absurd, really. How much time was he really going to save by having it that much nearer the airlock, once the lock opened? And for that matter, what point had there been in keeping the secured container in his cabin all this time? Had he expected her to try and steal it, or pilfer the contents?

At least it was proof, or at least strong evidence, that Koffield was indeed human. And proof that he, as much as Norla, was ready, willing, and eager to get on with it.

But SCO Station wasn
’
t ready for them. Station Medical saw to that. Station Med did not volunteer explanations and refused to give explanations when asked. Station Med simply made it clear that Koffield and Chandray would not be allowed to enter the station until they cleared a much more rigorous medical survey than usual. A service robot wheeled over to the
Cruzeiro’s
exterior airlock door and delivered two sampling kits.

Once they retrieved the kits from the airlock, both of them had to go through the unpleasant, undignified process of providing the required samples of hair, nail clippings, saliva, stool, urine, ear wax, a balloonful of exhaled breath, and even scrapings off the inside of their mouths.