Derep was a debarkation report—how soon could they depart.
“We were counting on another three or four days, sir . . .”
“We don’t have three or four days. How soon can we cast off?”
“Sir, power systems and drives are on-line and ready to go. We’re waiting on another two deliveries of rawmats . . . and, of course, three quarters of the crew is scattered all over Earth and synchorbit.”
“Recall them.”
“Aye, aye, sir. But . . .”
“What?”
“There’s a major fault in the assemblers, Admiral. We’re getting black goo out of both the food and clothing nanoreplicators,and the ship Net can’t—or won’t—tell us what the problem is. We have both Compsys and Environmental looking at it, but there’sno telling when we’ll have it up and running again.”
Damn. It’s always something.
“Something in the software?”
“We think so, sir. But we haven’t been able to pin it down.”
“Okay. Stay on it and keep me in the loop.”
Damn—this was a problem that needed to be addressed before they could leave. Rather than stores of food sufficient to lasta crew of five thousand for months at a time during a typical deployment, America carried bunkers filled with rawmat—raw materials: carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and a couple dozen other elements thatthe ship’s assemblers could put together to create food, clothing, spare parts, machine tools, anything, in fact, that thecrew needed to continue functioning. From time to time the ship could take on additional rawmat from a convenient asteroid.
But it sounded as though the computers that ran the nanoreplicators might have a programming fault, and there was no way aroundthat.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“Aside from that, Admiral, everything’s in good shape.”
“Okay. Pass the word to bring our crew back on board. I want to cast off the moment we have the replicator problem solved.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many Marines on board?”
“About six hundred, sir. Third Battalion, 25th Marines. Lieutenant Colonel McDevitt.”
Gray nodded. He wanted a full complement of Marines on board. The sabotage worried him. “Who’s our chief AP?”
“Head of the astrophysics department is Dr. Conyer.”
“Have him come see me in my office, ASAP.”
“I’ll tell her, sir.”
He arched an eyebrow, but accepted the correction without comment. “Very well. Keep on the replicator problem and give mea yell as soon as it’s corrected. I’ll be aft.”
The admiral’s office suite was located aft of the flag bridge and included an outer office staffed by several secretariesand yeomen, a private office, and a briefing room. Within the solitude of his inner sanctum, he drifted into his chair andopened an in-head channel. “Can you get a handle on the replicator mess?” he asked in his mind.
“I am working on it, Admiral,” Konstantin’s voice replied. “I suspect viral sabotage.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that. Kind of convenient, isn’t it? We can’t leave port with no way to dispense food for thecrew.”
“I agree. It is possible that President Koenig’s home has been . . . compromised.”
“Marta?”
Konstantin’s voice hesitated. “That seems unlikely, but I will look into it. I think it more likely that President Walker’speople have managed to bug the house . . . or Koenig himself. Creating true privacy is something of a challenge.”
And wasn’t that the truth? Nanotechnology had made it possible to create spybots the size of gnats, and microphones and cameras that literally were microscopic. Gray knew that Koenig’s normal security systems were more than capable of defeating the more common means of spying on someone. The windows would be vibrating very softly, to blur out attempts to use a laser trained on the transparencies to pick up sound vibrations and record conversations inside. All communication devices would be constantly monitored so that they could not be switched on from a remote location and used for eavesdropping. Koenig’s in-head cerebral implants would be checked periodically, to make sure he’d not picked up a spy virus over the Net.
But as quickly as threats could be detected and neutralized, it seemed, new ones were being dreamed up. Foreign intelligenceagencies, industrial concerns, and even agencies within the USNA government would all want to keep tabs on the former President.
It was even possible that Gray himself had been compromised. Those armored guards had checked him electronically outside Koenig’shome, but they might have missed something. His mind flashed back to that poser in the park . . . what was her name? De Sailles.She had touched his chest, he remembered, albeit very, very briefly. Had she passed on a nanovirus designed to turn his implantsinto listening and transmission devices?
He made a mental note to have a nanomedical expert give him a thorough scan, just to be sure. A chime sounded. “Enter.”
An attractive woman of about Gray’s age floated in through the door. She wore a blue utility suit that marked her as belongingto the astrophysics department, and collar tabs that identified her as the civilian equivalent of a full commander. America carried a lot of civilian specialists on board; there were a number of skill sets that just didn’t come up with any regularityin the military.
“Admiral Gray?” she asked. “I’m Carol Conyer.”
“I’m pleased to meet you.” He gestured at a seat. “Strap in and be comfortable.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I need your opinion about something, Doctor.”
“Certainly, Admiral.”
“Is the Omega Centauri triggah going to be passable?”
“Ah.” Then her eyes widened as what Gray had said sank in. “We’re going to the Omega Cluster?”
“That’s the idea. And from there to the N’gai Cloud 800 million years in the past.” He didn’t add they would be doing so if they could get away from the synchorbital facility.
“Well . . . it’s been three years since the hypernova. Even though the Denebans appear to have blocked most of the hypernovablast, the core of Omega Centauri will still be a mess of high-energy radiation and extremely hot plasma. I’d need to check with the engineering department to find out if the ship can stand up to that kind of abuse.”
“Actually, I was wondering more about the TRGA itself. Would the blast have hurt it in any way?”
“Hypernovae release extremely powerful bursts of gamma rays,” Conyer told him. “When
