J.D. forced her attention back to the group she was with, to their questions and curiosity.
All she could do now was wait.
M
CHAPTER 6
STEPHEN THOMAS LEANED HIS HEAD against the isolation box and drew his hands from the manipulators. For the moment, he had done all he could do, inoculating growth medium with Samples of alien cells and sacrificing a few of the precious organisms for microscope slides. Within a day, if the alien bacteria continued to grow at their current rate, he would have enough cultures to give samples to his colleagues.
He stretched his body against the hot stiffness of his bruises. He wished he were home in bed. He stepped back from the box, and his feet flashed quick pain up his legs.
'Christ on a crutch,' he muttered, 'that's enough, all right?'
He shut down the isolation box. The lab was quiet and empty. After the conference, he had sent everyone home. He wanted his students to be fresh when he had something for them to work on.
He grabbed one of the scanning microscope preparations and an inoculated isolation tube of culture medium, and carried them down the hall to Professor Thanthavong's office.
He met J.D. and Zev in the hallway. Zev led J.D., watching her worriedly.
A small holographic display, the LTM transmission from Nerno's chamber, tagged along behind them.
'Hi, Stephen Thomas.' J.D.'s voice was pitched half an octave higher than normal. Her eyes were bright and very dark, the pupils dilated to the edge of the blue-gray irises.
'Hi,' he said. 'Are you drunk?'
'I told you, I don't drink.'
'Oh, right.' She had even turned down a sip of celebratory French champagne, the day Starfarer's sail first deployed. God, but that felt like a long time ago.
'It's the link preparation,' Zev said, sounding worried. 'She just breathed it, and it's making her weird.'
'Maybe you better get her home to bed.'
'I'm trying, ' Zev said. 'Come on, J.D., okay?'
'Okay.' She followed Zev obediently down the hallway. When she passed Stephen Thomas, she said, 'Your hair's down.' Now her voice was lower than usual.
Frowning, Stephen Thomas watched them go. He tucked the straying strands of his hair behind his ears.
Zev drew J.D.'s arm across his shoulders and led her out of the biochem building, talking to her softly.
Stephen Thomas shrugged. They were doing fine without his help. He limped into Professor Thanthavong's office. He could use some help himself. 'Professor Thanthavong?'
She opened the recycler and tossed in the prep bottle and the inhaler by which she had administered the link enhancer to J.D.
'Hello, Stephen Thomas.' Nearby, a couple of holographic images hovered, frozen. When her attention returned to one, it would continue its report. Stephen Thomas put the slide and the chamber on her desk. 'I should have enough samples for everybody soon. But here's one, to start.'
'Thank you,' she said. She gestured to a chair. 'Sit down. You look footsore.'
Footsore was hardly the word for it, but he held back from complaining to Thanthavong. She probably would not say, 'I told you so,' but she was not likely to offer much sympathy, either. She had not wanted him to turn into a diver in the first place.
He sat down, wondering if he would be able to get up again. Professor Thanthavong was small, and all her furniture was too low for him. Sitting down eased the pain in his feet, but renewed the ache in his body. He did not mention that to Thanthavong, either. She had rescued him from the slug. She had probably saved his life. Then she had read him the riot act about his behavior.
She gestured to one of the displays, the report Stephen Thomas had made on the alien microbes.
'This is good work,' she said.
'More questions than answers,' Stephen Thomas said.
'That's why it's good work. You got a lot accomplished while you were gone.' She paused. 'You weren't able to collect more samples,' she said, a question rather than a comment.
'I was tempted,' Stephen Thomas said. 'But I didn't want to screw J.D. up with Nemo.'
'Ah.'
'But maybe
'Out with it, Stephen Thomas.'
'I tried taking a culture off my shirt. The stuff I wiped up from the pool. Nothing's growing. Yet. Maybe it will.'
'We can hope.'
'Yeah.
'These other experiments you're doing,' she said. 'With the soil bacteria from Europa's ship.'
'I haven't figured those out yet. Any ideas?'
'Their DNA fingerprints are very close to normal. About what you'd expect if they diverged four thousand years ago.'
'They look the same,' Stephen Thomas agreed. 'But the buggers act different.'
'Have you sequenced them?'
'Not yet. I was resequencing bacteria from J.D. From all of us in alien contact.'
'You suspect contamination?' she said sharply.
'No. I was double-checking. It's strange, though. You'd expect some exchange between us and the alien humans. Nothing pathological. The normal skin microbes and so forth.'
'But you found none.'
'No. Europa told the truth about something, anyway. '
'Or we're blessed with unusually robust microbial flora,' Thanthavong said dryly. 'Your students could have done the sequencing.'
'I didn't have the heart to make the kids stop watching the reports.' 'Graduate students expect to work,' Thanthavong said. 'You're perhaps a bit too indulgent of yours. The sequencing should be done soon.'
'Do we have a machine to use?'
'Biochem's is at your disposal.'
'Good. Thanks.' He had not been looking forward to the commute up the hill to use the sequencer in the Chi. 'I'll go-'
'Go get some sleep, Stephen Thomas! I said 'soon,' not 'instantly.' Leave instructions for your students to do it. You look worn out.'
'Yeah. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow. Today. Later.' His time sense was completely skewed.
Stephen Thomas went outside. He paused in the
dawn air, enjoying the coolness. The daytime temperatures on Starfarer had been warm for spring. He touched Arachne and left a message for his students, obeying Professor Thanthavong as far as that went.
But he did not go home to bed. He had something to do. If he did it now, while everyone was still caught up in the reports from the Nemo expedition, no one would stop him. If he waited, he might not be able to carry out the task at all.
Infinity Mendez dozed on his futon, drifting in and out of sleep, telling himself he should get up and go to work. Beside him, Esther Klein slept soundly, her snore a soft buzz.
By this time of the morning, Infinity had usually been up for a couple of hours. He liked to be outside in the gray foggy dawn while the light tubes slowly brightened. But he and Esther had sat up late talking to J.D. Sauvage.
Every so often, Infinity stopped and said to himself, We've met an alien being. No matter what happens now, we did what we said we were going to. Like just about everyone else on board, Infinity would have liked to tag along with J.D. He wished he could lie here all day, cuddle with his lover, replay the transmissions from the Chi, and wait to see what happened next.
But anticipating what happened next meant anticipating the death of Nemo. Come on, he said to himself, suddenly restless. Get up, you have things to do.
Esther curled on her side, facing him, her knees drawn up beneath his legs, her small square hand draped
