beacons are the type used all over the Loop and the Precincts. I’d have to agree, it’s suspicious.”
“Iadara’s weather is peculiar,” Sandrig murmured. “Electrical storms alone—”
“Do not affect the beacon, damn it,” FitzGilbert retorted, and made no apology for her immodest language. “The beacon should’ve gone off.”
“What did you do when the latac failed to come in?” Heikki asked. She had used the Iadaran dialect word out of old habit, and Mikelis gave her a rather startled glance.
FitzGilbert scowled again. “Not one hell of a lot, at least not at first. There was a storm brewing—we assumed that brought the latac down, and that delayed us. Like Pol says, the weather’s something fierce. We do lose a lot of transmissions, and we did think that it was just normal interference cutting out the locator. When the latac didn’t dome in, and we didn’t get a beacon signal, we sent out a search flight, working from both the projected flight path and the wind data we’d gotten from station blue—that’s the nearest recording point, weather station blue northwest. And we didn’t find a damn thing. That’s when I started getting worried, and I pushed the panic button.” She nodded to Mikelis. “That’s why it’s on Mik’s plate now.”
“So you’d be hiring us not just to find the wreck,” Heikki said, “but to tell you why it went down.”
“Yes,” Mikelis said, and added, before Heikki could speak, “I accept that it’s going to cost us more for that.”
“I’m afraid it will,” Heikki murmured, but in spite of herself felt the stirrings of a salvage operator’s curiosity. Hijacking or sabotage, one or the other, and from FitzGilbert’s story the two possibilities were evenly balanced— She curbed her enthusiasm sharply. There was still the matter of Foursquare’s attempt at the contract to settle, and the question of the cargo; better to deal with the lesser of the two first. “I take it that the cargo—you said a crystal matrix—was something fairly small and portable?”
“Yes.” Sandrig leaned forward in his chair, his hands sketching a cube perhaps half a meter square. “About so big—I don’t know if you’re familiar with crysticulture, Dam’ Heikki?”
“Only with what everybody knows. And I’ve seen the fields.”
“Ah, this is something different. It was the matrix— the seed for first-stage growth—for what we hoped would be the universal center crystal.” Sandrig managed a sudden, deprecatory smile. “We hoped! But the indications were promising.”
Heikki nodded. Anyone who spent time on the Loop knew that the great stumbling block to intersystems trade and to the expansion of the Loop lay in the way in which the Papaefthmyiou-Devise Engines were constructed. The Engines “folded space”—which was not what really happened, of course, but was the closest undisputed analogy—around an FTLship or Exchange Point, warping hyperspace until the points of origin and destination lay side by side. At the heart of the Engines were the crystals, the common crystals focusing the energies from the generators onto the crucial center crystal, whose interior geometry was crudely analagous to the “geometry” of the hyperspace it manipulated. Each of these center crystals had to be grown specifically and exclusively for the Engine in which it would eventually be mounted; the PDEs that drove the startrains had two such crystals, mirrored twins, to hold open a permanent fold in space.
Mikelis nodded as if he’d read her thoughts. “The failure rate for growing center crystals runs between sixty and seventy-five percent—for the common crystals we lose maybe one in a hundred as too flawed for use. A universal matrix….” He let his voice trail off.
“A universal matrix—a matrix that would fully and truly reflect the geometry of hyperspace—could be used in any PDE,” Sandrig said. “It could be grown in mass lots—and you heard what Mik said, common crystals have a one percent failure rate, and they’re grown from a universal seed. More than that, it would make it possible to build FTLships quickly and cheaply. Shipbuilders wouldn’t be held up while they waited for an unflawed crystal, they wouldn’t have to make expensive last minute changes to accommodate the center’s peculiar resonances.” His voice took on an almost evangelistic fervor. “It might even eliminate the problems with the startrains’ PDE, allow us to put more than three terminals into an Exchange Point. After all, the problem seems primarily to be one of interference…. But can you imagine, an infinite number of Exchanges within each point?”
“It’s been tried before,” FitzGilbert said. Her voice was not unkind, but it broke the spell. “They’d only just started testing, Pol.”
Sandrig looked away, blushing fiercely.
“I do have one more question,” Heikki said, into the sudden silence.
“Of course,” Mikelis answered, and seemed grateful for the change of subject.
“What happened to FourSquare?”
The question was verging on the immodest, but Heikki was not prepared for the vehemence of FitzGilbert’s response. “You tell us, you’re one of them. We signed a contract, made a first payment, then they backed out, said they couldn’t handle the back country, that we hadn’t given them all the information.” Her smile was a baring of teeth. “This when they’d been in contact with local talent from the beginning, even if we hadn’t been honest enough to give them all the details—”
“Electra.” Mikelis’s voice held a warning. “It’s a reasonable question.” He looked back at Heikki. “What Electra’s said is perfectly true, though. We hired them in good faith, and they broke contract without offering us any rational excuse. When they refused to turn over their survey tapes—which will be made available to the winning bidder, of course—we sued, and eventually obtained the material. Does that answer your question?”
I suppose it will have to, Heikki thought. “I think so, thank you,” she said aloud, and glanced down at the viewboard. Lab and analysis fees—we’ll have to add a clause to the final contract allowing us to send back to the Loop for molecular work, if we need it, she thought, at Lo-Moth’s expense—and money to cover the hire of extra ground equipment…. She touched keys on the calculator inset beside the screen, and nodded at the new total.
“Bearing in mind that you are hiring us to find out why the latac crashed, as well as to locate the crash site, I’ve added recovery expenses and the costs of a Loop analysis to our estimate. The new total will be K49, pounds-of-account.”
“Do you think that’s necessary?” Sandrig asked. “Loop analysis, I mean. After all, we have excellent facilities on Iadara.”
FitzGilbert sighed audibly. Heikki said, with caution, “If it is a matter of sabotage, I think you would be better off getting a completely independent analysis.”
“Oh, of course.” Once again, Sandrig flushed to the roots of his thinning hair.
“If you feel it will be necessary,” Mikelis said, “I see your point.”
“Then you have our bid,” Heikki said, and the director nodded.
“We will be in touch with you, Dam’ Heikki. Thank you very much for coming.” It was an unmistakable dismissal, and Heikki rose to her feet just as Mikelis added, “Pol, would you see Dam’ Heikki to the entrance?”
There was a jitney waiting at the level entrance: Lo-Moth was expensively efficient in the small matters, it seemed. Sandrig walked her to the craft and handed her in with punctilious courtesy, wishing her good luck on her bid. Heikki thanked him, but wondered, as she folded herself into the cramped passenger space, if he was really eager to see her win the contract. He seemed remarkably unwilling to face up to the possibility of sabotage, or an enemy within the corporate ranks…. Hold it right there, she told herself. You have absolutely no evidence that there is an inside agent, or even that there was sabotage. It could have been a hijacking, even an accident; leave the speculations for when—and if—you get the contract.
“Pod 19, suite 2205,” she said aloud, and leaned back as the jitney creaked into motion.
When she finally reached her home suite, she was not surprised to find Djuro waiting for her, feet propped up on the table that held the status cube. “I ran into Jock Nkosi while I was making your inquiries,” he said without preamble. “He asked if we had anything going, and I told him about the Lo-Moth bid—in confidence, of course. Was that all right?”
Heikki nodded, shrugging herself out of her tight jacket. “Yeah, that’s good. If we get the job, I want him.”
“I told him that, too,” Djuro said. “You want a drink? I’ve made a pitcher.”
“Thanks,” Heikki said, and subsided into the chair that stood waiting for her. It tilted back, programmed to the proper angle; she kicked off her own slippers and rested her bare feet on the low table. “Did you find out anything more?”
Djuro appeared in the kitchen doorway, a tall glass in each hand. He gave one to Heikki, saying, “Not really. Nobody reliable seems to know anything more, so I tried to get back to Fang, but she’s left already—off on a
