'It's bad. I think it's always bad. I'm not sure. My meteorology is weak.'
The screens were active. They reflected power drain figures, short- and long-range scans, attitude, orbital configuration. Fuel levels. Life support on both the ship and the shuttle.
Janet was pleased with the way things had turned out. Drafts, despite his hostility to the project, was a congenial companion, armed with a droll sense of humor. The ship was comfortable, and life was easy up here. She couldn't see that the ground assignment was anything but cramped drudgery.
She was about to make some small talk, when he stiffened. Almost immediately, an alert beeped. 'Long range,' he said.
Two displays brightened. They presented optical and sensor views of a hazy object. Range at twelve A.U.s.
Drafts frowned. 'Odd.'
Projected diameter: 23,000 km.
'Irregular shape,' said Janet.
'We seem to have an extra world.' He called up survey records. 'Not supposed to be there.' He studied the sensor return. 'We're not getting much penetration,' he said. 'It looks like a cloud. Hydrogen and dust. Trace iron, carbon, formaldehyde, and silicate particles.'
'So it's a cloud.' Janet didn't understand why he looked so puzzled.
'Angela would know more about this than I do, but I don't think clouds come this small. They tend to be a lot bigger.'
'What's inside?' asked Janet.
'Don't know. We can't get into it.'
He went to mag five and enhanced. It was still a blur.
Delta. Sunday, May 15; 1045 hours.
The winds quit as if a switch had been thrown. The top of the mesa became very still, and they looked out across a crumpled orange wasteland. Angela moved the shuttle out of the snow that had piled up around it, and they got out and began assembling their base.
Within two hours, they erected an RK/107 top-of-the-line pressurized shelter, which consisted of a triad of interfaced (but fully compartmented) silver and black domes. The snow was wet and heavy and resisted movement, and they were thoroughly tired by the time they collapsed into the unit's compress chairs. Meantime, another storm blew up, and they watched fiery clouds roll overhead. This time, though, it rained. It rained thick, syrupy drops that plopped and blatted against the windows and rolled down like amoebas. Lightning flickered.
Angela sat by a window. 'So much for the rare electrical storm.'
'By the way,' said Carson, 'if this is really a gasoline atmosphere, why don't the lightning bolts blow the place up?'
'No oxygen,' she said. 'If there were oxygen in the mix, we'd get a show.'
The shelter was state-of-the-art. They had private apartments, a washroom, a kitchen, an operations center, and a conference room. Polarized windows were set in all outside walls. They had comfortable furniture, music, extensive data banks, decent food. 'We could have done worse,' said Angela, who, like the others, was accustomed to accommodations produced by the lowest bidder.
She seemed thoughtful. And when Hutch asked what was on her mind, she hesitated. 'Not sure,' she said. 'I'm getting near retirement. In fact, they didn't want me to come out on this one. I think this is my swan song.' Her gray eyes brightened. 'This is the most interesting mission I've been on.' Her gaze turned inward. 'Yeah. I haven't seen anything like this before. I hope we find something so I can go out in style.'
'Even a dragon?'
'Sure,' she said. 'Especially a dragon.'
'It won't pass very close.'
Janet had been idling through Ashley's mission report. The ship had been surveying older stars, mostly middle-aged, stable G-types, prime candidates in the twin searches for habitable worlds and other civilizations. So far, they had nothing to show for their efforts.
The auxiliary screen on her right displayed the cloud. Nothing much had changed. It was somewhat more distinct, a result of enhancement and, to a lesser degree, its decreased range.
'Hey.' Drafts stared at his instruments. 'I think we've got another one.'
'Another what?'
'Another cloud.'
Janet slid into the seat beside him. 'Where?'
'Extreme long range.' He jabbed a finger at the readout. She picked it up on a window. 'This one is on the other side of the sun, moving away from us. It's out on the edge of the system.'
'Can't we get a better picture?'
'It's too far.' He was running a search through the data banks. 'But it's also not on the charts.' He turned toward her. 'Neither of these objects was here when the original survey was made.'
'Or they got missed.'
'I would have thought that was unlikely. Maybe we better let Angela know.'
They had just left the dome, just cycled through the airlock and stepped out into the snow, when Drafts's voice broke into their chatter. 'We have a couple of anomalies,' he said.
They kept walking, plowing through the snow with difficulty. Carson had begun to wonder whether they should try to make snowshoes. 'What kind of anomalies?' he asked.
'Clouds, I think. Two of them.'
'Here?' asked Angela, looking into a crystal-clear sky, apparently thinking what Carson thought: that they were talking about something in the atmosphere.
'One at twelve A.U.s, approaching; the other on the far side of the sun. Going the other way. Listen, I'm not sure yet, but I don't think they're in orbit.'
'Clouds, you say?'
'Yeah. Clouds.'
'Not possible,' she said.
'We'll send you pictures.'
'Okay. Yes, do that.' She started back inside. 'Frank, do you mind?'
'No. Go back and look. We'll see you in the shuttle.'
The ATL1600 general-purpose particle beam projector was of the type that had been used to cut shafts in the polar ice packs on Quraqua. It was simple to operate, durable, and effective. The narrow, tightly-focused beam that it generated was capable, even while tied to the shuttle's limited power plant, of slicing the mesas like so much cheese.
On Quraqua, the projectors had been driven by a fusion link with the orbiter. Here, the drain on the shuttle would be considerable, and they could not approach full power. Operations would be limited to seven hours daily. The work would be slow, but they had plenty of time.
The real problem was that the unit was difficult to manage. It had been designed for installation on board a specially fitted CAT. Carson would have to try to aim it from the cargo hold, while the shuttle was in flight. Hutch's mount was really little more than a restraining web to prevent the instrument, or its operator, from falling out. They had one advantage: the half-ton unit weighed only about four hundred pounds in this gravity.
When Angela rejoined them, she was excited. 'I don't know whether it has anything to do with what we're looking for, but we've got a couple of very strange beasties out there.' She described what the ship had seen. 'Terry thinks they're clouds.'
'And you don't?'
'No. Clouds would get ripped apart in the gravity fields. They look like clouds, but it couldn't be. They have to be solid bodies. The lopsided appearance will turn out to be an illusion.'
'They can't be hydrogen clouds?' asked Hutch.
'No.'
'I thought there were a lot of hydrogen clouds.'
'There are. But they don't come in this size. These are too small. I can't even imagine how such objects would form.' She smiled, and looked pleased. 'We'll keep an eye on them.' Angela helped them lock down the
