“Are you a nanotech specialist, too?” Deirdre asked.
Muzorewa shook his head slightly. “No, no. I’m here strictly as an observer.” He turned back toward Archer. “To tell the truth, I welcomed this opportunity to see what Grant has accomplished with this old station.”
Archer looked pleased.
Leaning forward, his childlike face utterly serious, Franklin Torre said to Deirdre, “We’ve ’ginned up a nanomachine that disassembles the virus analogs we built in our lab back at Selene.”
His sister took up, “But we’ve only worked on analogs, based on the three-dimensional imagery that Dr. Archer sent to us.”
“So we need to get a sample of the real virus from you,” Franklin resumed, “and see if our nanobugs will chew it up.”
“And if they don’t?” Deirdre asked.
He looked surprised at the question. “We’ll modify the nanos so that they work right. No sweat.”
His sister nodded her agreement.
“You’ll be working down in the third wheel,” Archer said. “My people are setting up an isolation area for the nanotech lab.”
Janet Torre said, “Can you rig the passageways leading in and out of the area with high-frequency ultraviolet lamps? We engineer our nanomachines to be deactivated by hard UV.”
Archer said, “I meant to ask you about that. Wouldn’t it be dangerous for people?”
“Not really,” said Janet. “You just need a few meters to be exposed to the UV. People can get through it without harm, as long as they don’t linger in the area.”
“I wouldn’t want to go sunbathing out there,” Franklin quipped.
“It’s just insurance that no active nanomachines will get out of the lab,” Janet added.
“People worry about nanos,” Franklin Torre said lightly. “It’s pretty silly, really. A machine that’s specifically engineered to destroy one certain type of molecule isn’t going to develop a taste for other molecules.”
“Tell that to the crazies back on Earth,” Archer muttered. “Nanoluddites.”
Muzorewa held up a finger. “Be fair, Grant. With twenty billion people on Earth there are plenty of fanatics and madmen who would happily develop nanomachines into terror weapons.”
“I suppose,” Archer admitted.
“A disassembler developed to take apart one kind of molecule,” said Janet Torre, “could be modified to attack a wider range of molecules.”
“Only by somebody who knows what he’s doing,” said her brother. “And is nuts.”
“That’s what they call gobblers,” Muzorewa said, his red-rimmed eyes looking sad, wary.
Deirdre asked, “Can the nanomachines actually cure me of rabies? How fast will they work?”
“I’ll explain all that over dinner,” said Franklin Torre.
The room fell silent. Deirdre heard in her mind her father’s warning about smooth-talking blokes. But Franklin Torre didn’t look like a smooth-talking bloke to her. He seemed more like a smiling little leprechaun.
“Dinner?” she replied, pleased and a little alarmed at the same time. “With both of you?”
Franklin glanced at his sister and said, “Oh, Jan-Jan’s going to be too busy. It’ll be just you and me, Deirdre.”
MAIN GALLEY
Deirdre looked over the galley but could not see Franklin Torre. She had agreed to meet him at the galley’s entrance at 1900 hours. She had purposely arrived ten minutes late, to make certain he’d be there waiting for her. But he was nowhere in sight.
She had put on a modest pair of forest green slacks with an overblouse of lace-decorated pale lemon. As she stood at the galley’s entrance she saw several people, mostly men, turning to stare at her.
“Don’t tell me a beauty like you is all alone.”
Startled, she turned to see Rodney Devlin grinning at her. He was in his usual white chef’s jacket, spotless for a change. His brick red hair was shaved close, as usual, while his mustache was thickly luxuriant.
“I’m waiting for someone, Mr. Devlin.”
“Red. Call me Red. Everybody does.”
Deirdre nodded and made a smile for him.
“Well,” said Devlin, pointing, “you won’t have to wait long.”
Andy Corvus came ambling through the galley doors.
“Hi, Dee,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “Going in to dinner?”
“I … um, I’m waiting for somebody, Andy,” Deirdre said, feeling uneasy that Devlin was still close enough to hear everything they said.
“Not Max, I hope.”
“No, not Max. And not Dorn, either. Somebody you haven’t met yet.”
Corvus looked puzzled. Deirdre thought he was about to scratch his head as he stood there frowning slightly.
“Hello, there!”
Franklin Torre came striding up to them, a happy wide smile on his round, snub-nosed face. Deirdre realized for the first time that Torre barely reached her chin.
Feeling slightly awkward, she introduced the two men to each other. Torre shook hands with Corvus, who looked as suspicious as a policeman.
“Franklin’s one of the nanotech specialists,” Deirdre tried to explain. “From Selene.”
“Oh,” said Corvus.
Torre’s expression suddenly went solemn. Almost whispering, he said to Corvus, “You’re infected with nanomachines, aren’t you?”
“Me?” Andy yelped. “No!”
“Yes, you are,” Torre insisted. “Don’t try to hide it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not—”
Torre suddenly broke into a wide grin. “Viruses, man. Viruses. They’re natural nanomachines and you’re full of ’em!”
“Huh?”
Laughing, Torre tapped Corvus on the shoulder and said gleefully, “Gotcha! You should see the expression on your face!”
With that, he took Deirdre by the arm and led her grandly into the galley, leaving Andy standing at the entrance, looking befuddled. Deirdre looked back at him over her shoulder, trying to apologize with her eyes. Andy just stood there, obviously hurt.
Deirdre said to Torre, “That wasn’t nice, Franklin.”
Torre shrugged. “I couldn’t help it. Nobody realizes that our bodies are filled with natural nanomachines.”
“It still wasn’t nice to trick him like that,” she insisted.
With a sigh, Torre said, “He’ll get over it.”
Glancing back at Andy again, Deirdre saw that Devlin had disappeared. Back into the kitchen, she surmised. Andy was standing at the galley’s entrance alone now.
Torre showed her to a table for two. As they sat, Max Yeager and Dorn joined Corvus, who was still staring in her direction. The expression on Andy’s face worried Deirdre. He seemed … she groped for a word. Hurt. That’s how Andy looks: wounded, as if I’ve hurt him.
Torre paid no attention to Deirdre’s distress; he talked all through dinner about his nanotech work and how the disassemblers he and his sister had designed would destroy any rabies virus in her body.
“You ought to come out to Selene one of these days,” Torre said cheerfully, “and see our lab. Finest in the solar system. It was started by Professor Zimmerman himself, one of the real pioneers in the field.”
Deirdre listened with only half an ear. She couldn’t help watching Andy, across the room, picking listlessly at
