Iris

opened, and the look inside the lids was not pleasant to see. She did not speak.

'I don't believe it,' said John. 'Why didn't you radio the information to us?'

'You may not care,' said Sealock, 'but that thing's ours until we decide otherwise. We decided to avoid the risk of having a signal intercepted, by anyone. I brought the RAW bubble out of Polaris. You can verify everything for yourself.'

'But . . .'

'Just tap the fucking thing! We'll talk later. Tem and I have work to do.'

They labored and, finally, the rebuilding program was complete. Though they still referred to it as Polaris, it was no longer the same. Where there had been a tall, sleek spaceship form, something that bore a distinct kinship to both the centuries-gone fantasies of a prolonged childhood and the early designs of Sergei Korolyev , there now stood a modernistic girder array, almost the Deepstar reborn. A closer inspection showed the detail of what had been done: the new ship was made of three slim obelisks standing side by side on the ice, encased within a confining structure of beams. In a sense, what they'd built still fitted in with the technological gestalt of their original design. The core of the structure, its middle tower, was the heavy-ion drive unit that had provided Deepstar's principal thrust, encased within its crosshatched metallic housing. The two outriggers, though somewhat differentiated in form, were similar in function. To one side of the engine/drill was one of the Hyloxso matrices that the earlier craft had used, recharged with H2/O2fuel. Beneath it, a high-impulse liquid- fuel rocket motor was secured. On the other side stood Polaris itself, a little longer than it had been, but still largely devoted to being a rocket vehicle, with a module for men to ride in. The added length was necessary, and the story was power. The ion drill/engine was a voracious device, no matter what its intended purpose. Though it used fuel efficiently, it did soat a high cost in electromagnetic energy. It was a pretty little problem for engineers to face, but it had a tractable solution. The ion fuel itself, through its automatic breakdown process, was a form of stored energy, ultimately power-stabilized by the fusion reactor. The complex's Magnaflux generator, intended for attitude control and as an important part of the life-support system, was an em-field manipulation device. Though batteries were no longer a major part of the technological surround, their purpose was still understood, and the generator, by its very nature, could contain stored energy for a certain period of time. It would work, over the short term, recharged from Ocypete via microwave beams, and that was all that they needed to ask of their system. It would work, after a fashion, and accomplish their purposes on Aello. In their haste to return to the Artifact, and what it represented, they had done little to modify the CM

for its enlarged crew. There were four of them now, possessing what passed for physical-science expertise in their little universe on the edge of the void. Sealock, Krzakwa, Hu, and Methol filled the little ship to near overflowing and made the CM into a crowded place indeed. There were two extra couches bolted into the space athwart the top of the lower equipment bay, and Jana and Ariane would ride there, facing into the backs of the upper berths. They would be little more than cargo during the flight, sitting there, watching the bracing struts flex. Because of their presence there would be no room for extra food lockers here, but the already extant ones could be stuffed fuller, and the ship's vaster superstructure invited much external storage. They would use the same airlock, for instance, but the first two to exit could pass in two more worksuits. Aggravations would probably abound in a ship that was even more claustrophobic than it had been previously. With the firing sequences ended, there was little practical to do but wait.

Disconnecting the induction leads from his head, Krzakwa rolled over in his seat to a position that left him uncomfortably back-bent, despite the zero-g float, and grinned at the two women. 'This must be how it was for the first astronauts. I feel like an elephant in a birdcage.' Sealock, still hooked up to the control element, glanced over and said, 'That's a consistent visual image, . . . You're going to have to go on a diet if you want to get to the food, you fat bastard.' Tem smiled. It was true—he'd never be able to squeeze his bulk between the two women to reach the provision cabinet. 'No, but I can have a lot of fun trying. I feel like I'd be a lot thinner if I could just take a good crap. This shitless food is accumulating somewhere inside me. . . . Anyway, these here cabin boys can cook our meals and serve them to us in bed.'

Sealock began unplugging leads from his skull. 'They're not boys, my friend, if you haven't noticed. And they should have at least one shit apiece coming, if you would like a little empathic elimination.' Krzakwa laughed.

Grimacing, Ariane said, 'This is the grossest conversation I've ever heard! Are you two that bored already?'

'Just call it ennui,' said Brendan.

Tem said, 'Remember, we've been sitting in these very same positions for a good part of the last two weeks. I guess we've been developing ways to entertain ourselves. . . .' Methol laughed. 'Well . . . if it's entertainment you want . . . the rest of you can watch me making up for lost time.' She peeled off the inertial harness and slithered out between the forward seats, climbing atop Brendan, her legs locking about his waist.

Krzakwa settled back into his couch with an expression of interest. It was not immediately obvious whether Hu was even paying attention. Her eyes were open but she was looking at nothing in particular. Watching them have sex from a close perspective turned out to be no novelty for Tem. After an initial bout of writhing, held in place by Brendan's harness, they coupled and quickly settled into the slide and grind rhythms of woman-on-top sex. There was no real sound beyond the coarse whisper of cloth on cloth and the even quieter one of meshing organs. Tem stole occasional glances at their faces, but in their fixed expressions there was nothing new to learn. The only noveltywas the way Sealock pulled apart Ariane's buttocks and inserted his finger between them as far as he could reach, apparently so he could get independent verification of the sensation of his penis being alternately engulfed and decoupled. After a while Krzakwa fell into a sort of reverie. Contained within himself, he was back on the Moon again, thirteen now and starting his apprenticeship. The surging arcana of sex, though fascinating for their strangeness, were distinctly alien —not unlike the behavior of the exotic small particles that, he was learning, represented the even stranger forces that made up that which was. Perhaps he was thinking about Sadie, and what had become of her when she graduated . . . and then again, perhaps not. It was like a waking dream, and a reverie was like DR, but unaided and alone. It was private, and seemed pleasant: he walked alone down the endless dim hallways that led to the underground rooms in which he received his Met-stat training. He was late because of an incident involving an accusation of 'overindulgence,' so in all probability that's what he was thinking about. He did not walk as quickly as he could have, and perhaps there was more trouble waiting for him at the class hall. Occasionally he had to stop before closed seals and wait for them to slowly iris open. He would be at least twenty- five minutes late, but he didn't really care. He would blame it all on the residence counselor.