giveJimmy access to the out-of-doors.
“Actually, I don’t think there will be serious problems.” Qiwi Lisolet rose from her seat. She coasted over to Pham Trinli’s maps, preempting whatever more Trinli had to say. “I did a number of exercises like this while we were in transit. My mother wants me to be an engineer and she thought stationkeeping might be an important part of this mission.” Qiwi sounded more adultly serious than usual. This was also the first time he’d seen her dressed in Lisolet-greens. She floated in front of the windows for a moment, reading the details. Her ladylike dignity faltered. “Lord, they are asking a lot! That rockpile is so loose. Even if we get the math right, there’s no way we can know all the stresses inside the pile. And if the volatiles get into sunlight, there’ll be a whole new problem.” She whistled, and her smile was one of childlike relish. “We may have to move the jets during the Relight. I—”
Pham Trinli glowered at the girl. No doubt she had just trashed a thousand seconds of his presentation. “Yes, it will be quite a job. We have only a hundred electric jets for the whole thing. We’ll need crews down on the jumble the whole time.”
“No, no, that’s not true. About the jets, I mean. We have lots more ejets over on theBrisgo Gap. This job isn’t more than a hundred times bigger than ones I practiced—” Qiwi was wholely caught up in her enthusiasm, and for once it wasn’t Ezr Vinh who was on the other side of her arguing.
Not everyone accepted the situation quietly. The junior officers, including Diem, demanded that the rockpile be dispersed during the Relight, the volatiles piled on the shadowside of the biggest diamond. Nau be damned, this was just too risky. Trinli bristled, shouted back that he had already made these points to the Emergents.
Ezr slapped the table, then again, louder. “Order please. This is the job we’ve been assigned. The best way we can help our people is by behaving responsibly with what we’ve got. I think we can get added help from the Emergents on this, but we have to approach them properly.”
The argument rolled on around him.How many of them are in on theconspiracy, he wondered. Surely not Qiwi? After some seconds of further argument, they were left where they began: with no choice but to truckle. Jimmy Diem shifted back, and sighed. “All right, we do as we’re told. But at least we know they need us. Let’s put the squeeze on Nau, get him to release some senior specialists.”
There was mumbled agreement. Vinh’s gaze locked with Jimmy’s, and then he looked away. Maybe they could get some hostages released for this; more likely not. But suddenly Ezr knew when the conspiracy would strike.
ELEVEN
The OnOff star might better have been called “old faithful.” Its catastrophic variability had first been noticed by the Dawn Age astronomers of Old Earth. In less than eight hundred seconds, a star catalogued as “singleton brown dwarf [peculiar]” had gone from magnitude 26 to magnitude 4. Over a span of thirty-five years the object had faded back to virtual invisibility—and generated dozens of graduate research degrees in the process. Since then the star had been watched carefully, and the mystery had become grander. The initial spike varied by as much as thirty percent, but as a whole the light curve was incredibly regular. On, off, on, off… a cycle some 250 years long, with onset predictable to within one second.
In the millennia since the Dawn, human civilizations had spread steadily outward from Earth’s solar system. The observations of OnOff became ever more accurate, and from smaller and smaller distances.
And finally, humans stood within the OnOff system, and watched the seconds tick down toward a new Relighting.
Tomas Nau gave a little speech, ending with: “It will be an interesting show.” They were using the temp’s largest meeting room to watch the Relight. Just now it was crowded, sagging in the microgravity at the rockpile’s surface. Over in Hammerfest, Emergent specialists were overseeing the operation. There were also skeleton crews aboard the starships. But Ezr knew that most of the Qeng Ho and all of the off-duty Emergents were here. The two sides were almost sociable, almost friendly. It was forty days since the ambush. Rumors were that Emergent security would ease up significantly after the Relight.
Ezr had latched on to a spot near the ceiling. Without huds, the only view was through the room’s wallpaper. Hanging from here, he could see the three most interesting windows—at least when other people weren’t coasting across his line of sight. One was a full-disk view of the OnOff star. Another window looked out from one of the microsats in low orbit around the OnOff star. Even from five hundred kilometers, the star’s surface did not look threatening. The view might have been from an aircraft flying over a glowing cloud deck. If it weren’t for the surface gravity, humans could almost have landed on it. The “clouds” slid slowly past the microsat’s view, glimmers of glowing red showing up between them. It was the sullen red of a brown dwarf, a black-body redness. There was no sign of the cataclysm that was due to arrive in another… six hundred seconds.
Nau and his senior flight technician came up to join Ezr. Brughel was nowhere to be seen. You could always tell when Nau wanted mellow feelings—just check for the absence of Ritser Brughel. The Podmaster grabbed a spot next to Vinh. He was smiling like some Customer politician. “Well, Fleet Manager, are you still nervous about this operation?”
Vinh nodded. “You know my committee’s recommendation. For this Relight, we should have moved the volatiles behind a single rock and taken it further out. We should be in the outer system for this.” The ships of both fleets and all the habitats were moored to one side of the largest diamond rock. They would be shielded from the Relight, but if things started shifting…
Nau’s technician shook his head. “We’ve got too much on the ground here. Besides, we’re running on empty; we’d have to use a lot of our volatiles to go flying around the system.” The tech, Jau Xin, looked almost as young as Ezr. Xin was pleasant enough, but did not have quite the edge of competence that Ezr was used to in senior Qeng Ho. “I’ve been very impressed by your engineers.” Xin nodded at the other windows. “They’re much better than we would be at handling the rockpile. It’s hard to see how they could be this sharp without zip…” His voice trailed off. There were still secrets; that might change sooner than the Emergents expected.
Nau smoothly filled the pause in Xin’s speech. “Your people are good, Ezr. Really, I think that’s why they complained about this plan so much; they aim for perfection.” He looked out the window on the OnOff star. “Think of all the history that comes together here.”
Around and below them, the crowd was clustered into groups of Emergents and Qeng Ho, but discussion was going on in all directions. The window on the far wall looked out onto the exposed surface of the rockpile. Jimmy Diem’s work crew was spreading a silvery canopy over the tops of icy boulders. Nau frowned.
“That’s to cover the water ice and airsnow, sir,” said Vinh. “The tops are in line of sight of OnOff. The curtains should cut down on boil-off.”
“Ah.” Nau nodded.
There were more than a dozen figures out there on the surface. Some were tethered, others maneuvered free. Surface gravity was virtually non-existent. They sailed the ties over the tops of the icy mountains with the ease of a lifetime of outside operations—and millennia of Qeng Ho experience beyond that. He watched the figures, trying to guess who was who. But they wore thermal jackets over their coveralls, and all Vinh could see were identical forms dancing above the dark landscape. Ezr didn’t know the details of what the conspiracy planned, but Jimmy had set him certain errands and Ezr had his guesses. They might never have an opportunity this good again: They had access to the ejets aboard theBrisgo Gap. They had almost unlimited access to the outside, in places free of Emergent observers. In the seconds following the Relighting, some chaos was to be expected—and with Qeng Ho in charge of the stationkeeping operation, they could fine-tune that chaos to support the conspiracy.But all I can dois stand here with Tomas Nau… and be a good actor.
Ezr smiled at the Podmaster.
Qiwi Lisolet flounced out of the airlock in a rage. “Damn! Damn and fuck damn and—” She swore up and down as she ripped off her thermal jacket and pants. Somewhere in the back of her mind she made a note to spend more time with Gonle Fong. Surely there must be more offensive things she could say when things got this messed up. She threw the thermals into a locker and dived down the axis tunnel without taking off her coveralls and hood.
Lord of Trade, how could they do this to her? She’d been kicked indoors to stand around with her finger up
