possible, they stationed themselves on the ground. But for the most part it was necessary to take to the air, and work from above the mesa. Angela pointed out that they were in violation of a wide variety of safety procedures. But she swallowed her reservations, took them up, and, on signal, rolled the shuttle onto its side. In back, restrained by his tether and Hutch's makeshift harness, Carson rode the 1600, looking straight down. 'You're perfectly safe,' Hutch assured him.
After about an hour, they changed places. Hutch enjoyed aiming the big cannon, and they learned how to employ the sensors to see through the steam, and so became more proficient. By the time they broke for lunch, a substantial portion of the rear wall lay in rubble. But they had a rectangle!
The limiting factor in getting to the rendezvous point and laying in alongside the cloud was not the capability of the ship, but that of its crew to withstand prolonged acceleration. They would arrive with aching joints and sore backs, and they would have only a few seconds before the target sailed past and left them hopelessly behind. To ameliorate these effects,
Drafts programmed in frequent breaks in the acceleration, during which they could get up and move around. It would not be a comfortable ride, but it would be livable.
Hutch distrusted hastily planned maneuvers as a matter of instinct. She wondered at the necessity for this trip. Angela's logic made sense: there was probably another one coming. Why not go after it at their leisure? She was annoyed that Janet had not supported her. Instead, she'd allowed herself to get caught up in the general enthusiasm. They were making snap decisions again, without considering all the consequences. She wondered whether they had learned anything at Beta Pac.
She derived some satisfaction from knowing that Janet was now pinned in her webchair by the acceleration. Served her right.
They inspected their work on the south mesa. Seen from the air, it was a child's block, an orange rectangle. 'I wish we could change its color,' said Carson. 'The Oz-structures were highly reflective, and they stood out from their surroundings.'
'You think that matters?' asked Hutch.
'I don't know. It might.'
It occurred to Hutch that the pumpkin-colored block below might be as hard for some future mission to explain as Oz had been.
The eastern mesa was next. It was three times as big as the one they had just worked on, less regular, heavily scored. Moreover, when they started on it, they discovered it was brittle. Its walls shriveled at the touch of the energy beam, and whole sections crumbled away. They experimented with intensity and angle, and discovered that overhead shots with low power worked best. 'Like everything else,' Carson said as they sliced and polished, 'the only thing that succeeds is finesse. The light touch.'
Communication with Ashley was becoming difficult. After twenty-four hours, the ship had traveled approximately fifteen million kilometers. At that distance, laserburst signals required almost two minutes to make a round trip. Conversations became slow and frustrating, and the two groups began to feel their isolation from each other.
The ground team slept through the night-phase. But all three were up early, anxious to get started. They treated themselves to a substantial breakfast, and went back to the eastern plateau.
They hoped to finish the wall they'd started the previous day, and fashion the corner. Hutch liked doing comers. They were a break from the routine.
Because much of the work was done from the air, Angela was usually alone in the cockpit. There, she watched the visuals coming in from Ashley, pictures of the oncoming object. Of the cloud, tiny and purple and utterly impossible.
Sometimes she had to draw back, remind herself where she was, remember to keep her mind on the mission, on the people who were hanging out the cargo door. But My God, this was a magnificent time.
The only downside was that she was not on board Ashley.
On the other end, Drafts was by turns ecstatic and depressed. The sensors still gave them only superficial readings. 'What I'd like to do,' he told Angela, 'is put our money where our mouth is and lay Ashley right in front of it. Let it run over us, and see what happens.' That got her attention, even though she didn't believe he meant it. But she stabbed the Transmit key anyhow and told him to forget anything like that, that she would have his career if he even so much as raised the suggestion again. But he added, long before her threats could have reached him, 'Of course I won't. I don't think the probes will do much good, but we'll try to insert one.'
Later, when they were back on the ground, Carson came forward for lunch. Hutch remained in back because the cockpit was too crowded for all three. He was munching on a sandwich, and Angela was planning the next day's flight, when, between mouthfuls, he said, 'What's that?'
He was looking at the overhead display.
The object had developed fingers.
And despite all her training, the intellectual habits of a lifetime, the unshakable conviction that the universe is ultimately rational and knowable, Angela suffered an uneasy twinge. 'Don't know,' she said, almost angry, as if it were somehow Carson's doing.
Extensions. Not really fingers, but protrusions. Prominences.
'Seven,' said Angela. 'I count seven.'
'One of them's dividing,' said Carson.
They grew long and narrow. Hutch thought they looked like the fingers of the wizard in The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
'Have we got measurements?' asked Carson.
Angela checked the status board. 'The longest is twenty thousand kilometers, plus or minus six percent. We don't have a reading yet on the expansion rate.'
'They're contrails,' said Hutch.
Yes. They were. Angela felt relieved, and then foolish, as if she had not known all along it would be something prosaic. 'Yes,' she said.
The contrails began to lose their definition. They drifted apart, overlapped, bled together. The illusion dissipated. It might have been a wispy comet with a multitude of tails. Or an airship that had exploded.
Got to be enormous disruptions to throw all that off. 'I think it's coming apart,' Angela said.
The chime sounded, and Drafts's image blinked on. 'Take a look at the target,' he said.
Carson held up a hand. 'We see it.' Drafts did not react, of course. His image was delayed by several minutes.
Angela was caught up in a swirl of emotions. 'Lovely,' she said. Nothing in her life, which had been reasonably full, had prepared her for what she was feeling now. Unable to restrain herself, she let go a cheer, and jabbed a fist skyward. 'Good stuff,' she said. 'But what is that thing?'
It looked as if it were unraveling.
Long smoky comets rolled glacially away from the object.
'What the hell's going on?' Drafts's voice again.
The process continued, almost too slowly for the eye to follow. Bursts of conversation passed between the pod and the ship. Drafts thought the object was disintegrating, dissolving as it should have done earlier amid the fierce tides of the gravitational fields.
'But why wow?' demanded Angela. 'Why not yesterday? Why not last week? It's not as if local gravity has changed in any significant way.'
'The other one got through,' said Hutch. 'Why would this one explode?'
'I don't think it's really exploding,' Angela said without taking her eyes from the screen. 'It's hard to see clearly, but I think all that's happening is that some of the outer cloud cover is peeling off.'
'What would cause that?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'This thing doesn't seem to obey physical law.'
She took to replaying the entire sequence at fast forward. The object opened slowly and gracefully, a blood- red flower with blooming petals offering itself to the sun.
The ground team continued with their efforts at block carving. They wielded the 1600 and shaped and molded the ice, and took pleasure in their growing skills. And they watched the numbers coming in on the dragon.
