8

IMPOSSIBLE ROBOTS

Even with our own comlifers and the rapid development of cyber technologies, nothing yet has been developed to match Alan Saul’s “conjoining robots.” The reasons posited for this by those working in robotics have been of the same tone: he was lucky, the reports on their efficiency were exaggerated, or even that the robots never really existed. However, that Saul was able to turn Argus Station into an interstellar vessel in such a short time is undeniable, and the truth is perhaps difficult to accept. Alan Saul was a genius even before he was turned into what we now call a comlifer. Every time we have tried to take people with similar mental advantages and do the same with them, the result has always been disastrous—the recipient of the cerebral technology and AI mental template rapidly self-destructing or going insane, or turning into a moron. We must accept that Alan Saul was unique and we should not slide into a denial of what he managed. For our future, and for the sake of us all, we must believe in the impossible—and similarly achieve it.

EARTH

The image on the screen was as clear as anything broadcast locally, yet its source lay millions of kilometres away, focused on by the telescopes aboard the Vision and relayed back here. Serene felt an extreme frustration with the clarity of it all, for screen images as detailed as this had been, ever since she assumed total power over Earth, ones of scenes she could affect at once. However, she could not touch Argus Station, she could not touch this ship Alan Saul was building, or at least not yet.

“What are they doing?” she asked tightly.

“Exactly what the tactical assessment predicted, ma’am. They’re taking on more materials,” said Bartholomew. “Professor Calder should be able to give you more detail on that.”

Calder cleared his throat then, in dry tones, explained, “The Argus asteroid, as we see, is nearly all gone. It was mostly nickel iron, so Saul will need other materials. His EVA units, robots and work teams are currently using demolition charges and cutting equipment to take apart a rubble pile consisting of a wide variety of metallic ores, including some radioactives.”

Calder leaned forward, past Serene, and made some adjustments with a ball control, bringing the focus in closer so that now they could see the conglomerate of the rubble pile lying just hundreds of metres away from the ship’s outer skeleton. One-man EVA units—spherical machines sporting a pair of arms and claws to the fore—were ferrying chunks of the pile in through a gap in the skeleton, while robots of a kind Serene recognized were carrying other lumps across and down into a smelting-plant dock. However, there were things there she did not recognize, and the sight of them made her skin crawl. Things that looked like golden centipedes were crawling over the rubble pile and disassembling it.

“What the hell are they?” she demanded.

“Some new form of robot, ma’am,” said Calder. “Now we’ve managed to get a close look at them, I can confirm that they are the reason the outer skeleton of the ship was built so fast—but previous images weren’t clear enough for us to see them. I have my robotics staff analysing the data. An initial report suggests conjoining robots: single units that can join up into larger wholes.”

“We have nothing like that?” said Serene.

“No,” Calder agreed, “the degree of programming sophistication is not available to us as yet.”

Serene turned on him. “And why not?”

He gazed at her steadily, obviously reassessing the snap answer he had been about to give. “We have been working with already known methods to build our defences and ships as quickly as possible, rather than apply resources to that kind of research and development, ma’am. However, now we know that Saul can build robots like this, and now we are close to completing the two remaining ships, I have assigned a team to work on a similar project.”

She couldn’t really fault that answer and spent a moment analysing why she kept seeking ways to attack the professor. He had created his own little realm up here and, though she couldn’t detail a specific instance of it, she felt he resented stepping into second place while she was here. It seemed to her that he was always on the edge of rebelliousness, but his survival instincts kept restraining him. She turned back to the screen. “There was something about a space-plane launch.”

Calder leaned forward again to make further adjustments. The view changed abruptly to show two space planes heading under power away from Argus.

“They will reach their target within a day,” he explained. “They’re heading now for a single asteroid consisting of mostly water ice and salts. We suspect the main targets there are the water and rare earth elements.”

“They’ll tow it back?”

“It seems more likely that they’ll begin cutting it apart,” said Calder. “Then, when Saul has all he needs from the rubble pile, he’ll move Argus itself over.”

“Then what?” asked Serene.

“Once he has the materials,” interjected Bartholomew, “we reckon on him wanting power, ma’am. Tactical says he has three options: he comes back to the sun, he flees the solar system or he taps into some other solar system source, the mostly likely being the Io flux tube. That’s where—”

“I know what the Io flux tube is, Bartholomew,” Serene interrupted. “What I want to know now is how you plan to stop him and capture or kill him. I want to know how you’re going to retrieve the Gene Bank data and samples for me.”

“The initial plan remains unchanged, ma’am,” said Bartholomew. “We are mostly reliant on Saul not knowing about the warp missile aboard the Vision. Once we’ve stopped him, we can thereafter ensure he never leaves by completely disabling his Alcubierre drive. We can then take our time with Argus Station—effectively putting it under siege.”

The image on the screen had now returned to a previous setting and showed those same golden centipede robots seemingly eating an entire asteroid. The sight was disquieting because it made her wonder in what other ways they might have under-estimated Alan Saul. She also disliked how their whole plan relied on just one throw of the dice; if the Vision failed to stop Saul with its warp missile, the missiles aboard the other two ships would probably become redundant.

“When will Fist and Command be ready?” she asked.

“In twenty days now,” Calder replied, trying to keep his voice level. He glanced at Bartholomew. “Sometime soon the troops’ quarters will be ready, so they can go on board, then there’ll just be some diagnostics to run.”

Serene remembered how the troops were presently housed in the construction station, though why Calder had felt the need to mention them now she couldn’t divine. Perhaps he also resented their presence on his territory. Whatever, she dismissed the thought.

Sitting back in her chair, she gazed around the command centre, which overlooked the two remaining ships. She eyed the Inspectorate personnel here and recollected that she had intended making inquiries about the number of personnel in the construction station, but just didn’t currently feel inclined. She was tired of this place and had come to realize that her presence here tended to hinder people rather than impel them to greater efforts. Her order that the Vision should be launched as soon as possible had been obeyed, but she had since discovered the cost: eight people killed in accidents due to overwork and resulting tiredness, disruption in production here which, even though it had resulted in the Vision being launched sooner, had put back the launching of the other two ships. She decided she would stay until after that double launch, and until after the tug, which was currently being prepared, had brought in the Scourge. Then she would return to Earth and begin the genetic reprogramming of the human race.

SCOURGE

It was worse than when Scotonis had shot him with a stun round, but then this time, as well as something knocking him unconscious, he was recovering from inducement and his body was still full of slowly healing bones. He opened his gummy eyes to dim light and at once realized he was in one of the storerooms down near the troops” quarters. How he had ended up here, he had no idea, until Trove dropped into view, pushing a big plastic crate down towards the floor.

“How’s the head?” she asked, and by her tone it almost seemed as if she cared.

“It hurts,” he croaked.

“It was the only way I could stop you.” She then smiled oddly. “And it provided some repayment for what you did to me with my cabin inducer.”

Clay noted that her voice was slightly slurred, as if she was drunk, and her eyes were veined with red.

“But how did you stop yourself?” he asked.

She pointed over beside him, where a pile of used analgesic patches lay. It took him a moment to realize what this implied: she had used the patches to numb the pain from the inducers. That explained her apparent drunkenness, and also meant she must have known about the inducers beforehand.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“You realize Scotonis is insane?” she countered.

“Depending on your particular definition of sanity,” he replied. “How did you know about the inducers?”

“He had them put back online because, so he said, under such extreme circumstances the crew might mutiny and try to bargain with Galahad. I agreed, but I didn’t find out until just a few hours ago that he’d had further inducers installed in the corridors, and put the readerguns back online too.” She shook her head, picked up a coffee flask and swigged from it. “I didn’t start putting it together until the two of you visited me, then I started using my stash of patches. I stole them from Myers shortly after you used my cabin inducer on me.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Clay was astounded to discover that he actually meant it. “But what was your plan?”

“To kill Scotonis, but I couldn’t get to him—the inducers he has around the bridge were set at full strength.” She closed her eyes for a moment, obviously on the edge of tears, then her expression hardened as she opened them again. “They’re all dead,” she told him. “Scotonis murdered his entire crew.”

“Why did you save me?” Clay asked.

“Pure chance.” She stared at him woodenly. “Your cabin happens to lie between mine and the bridge, and all the other crew were further away. You were the only one I could reach after I stepped out. The rest were already running directly into his readerguns.”

“And how did we both get here without being killed?”

“You again.”

“What?”

“After you used my cabin inducer on me I opened up the back wall of my cabin to a service duct. Should it happen again I could thus escape without apparently leaving my cabin. I dragged you down the duct to end up here.”

Clay pulled himself upright. “We have to stop him. We have to get to the bridge.”

Trove shook her head. “He knows that we escaped.” She pointed to the ceiling at a cam socket and intercom plate that Trove must have recently bashed in. “He was talking to me just a little while ago—basically telling me that any attempt to stop him would be futile.”

“That can’t be true.”

“No?” Trove’s answering sneer was familiar. “He’s pumping the air out of every part of the ship but the bridge. If we stay here, we die. If we go after him, we die. Even if there was a way, via service ducts, to the bridge we’d then have to contend with his other protection.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense.”

“He’s managed to activate one of the spare spiderguns, and it’s in there with him.”

So that was it: every avenue to Scotonis was closed, and apparently they would soon suffocate down here. Clay gazed at Trove steadily, knowing that she wouldn’t have given up. She reached down, undid the catches on the crate and flipped over the lid. Inside were cellophane packs of neatly folded white garments and, when she skimmed one over to him, he saw the integral hood with its clear plastic visor—and small oxygen bottle. “Survival suits,” Trove confirmed. “The air supply lasts for twenty minutes, so should be enough to get us somewhere we can find some more air.”

Clay gestured to the crate. “What about the bottles on the other suits?”

“Designed by committee,” she stated, extracting a packet for herself. “The air bottles aren’t interchangeable.”

It reminded him of the time they first met and her sly comments about bureaucratic inefficiency. Then he had been offended; now he just accepted it. “So where’s safe?”

“Nowhere, if he sends that spidergun after us,” she replied as she opened her packet and shook out a survival suit. “But if he decides we’re no longer a danger to him, we should be able to get aboard one of the troop shuttles and use the air supply there.”

“Then we might be able to—”

“Get your suit on!” she snapped.

Only then did he realize that he was not getting enough air and hastily opened his packet, shook out the suit and donned it. The air supply kicked in immediately and the suit drew taut around him, straining against its quilt lines. A small speaker crackled beside his ear.

“You hear me?” she asked, her voice tinny.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go.”

She pushed open the door and they stepped into one of the hexagonal corridors of the hive-like troop section. Clay felt his stomach turn over when he recognized the unit numbers on the walls, and therefore where they were heading. The door at the far end of the corridor opened into what had since become a mortuary. Corpses floated in a haze of vapour, their suits bloated and burned. Brown flakes of what might have been boiled and dried-out blood swirled in the remaining air, clogging around vents in the walls. As she led the way through this horrible scene, Trove snagged an assault rifle and some ammo clips. Clay did the same, even though such weapons would be no use against a spidergun.

Beyond this area they moved into the hold, past munitions crates, a rack of ten-millimetre machine guns and the folded-up but terrifying shape of another spidergun. Clay was glad to reach the airlock at the end, which opened into the shuttle bay. Trove punched a code into the panel beside it and stepped back, but nothing happened.

“No way through there, I’m afraid,” came Scotonis’s distorted and tinny voice over his suit radio. “Sorry, but one of the Earth orbit tugs is now on its way out, so I can’t have you giving the game away.”

“We won’t leave,” said Trove. “We just want to keep breathing.”

“Sorry, but I don’t believe you, and I can’t take that chance.”

Trove stepped back from the door, scanned around, pointed to a nearby stack of crates and headed over. When she pulled off a lid, Clay immediately recognized the butter-like blocks it contained, with their inset timers: demolition charges just like the one she, Scotonis and Cookson had sent him out of the Scourge to use on an anchor that had failed to detach from Argus Station. She reached inside and lifted one of them out.

“The blast will kill you,” Scotonis observed.

“If there was air in here to transmit it, probably yes,” Trove replied, “but you yourself have conveniently been removing it.”

She attached the charge to the door, then waved Clay away. They retreated all the way back through the hold and into the mortuary, before moving against the wall on either side of the door. Clay felt the wall thump against his back, then a few shards shot through the door, followed by a cloud of dust. When they returned to the airlock, the first door was gone, while the second was just clinging by one hinge and hung into the shuttle bay. They entered and headed straight over to one of the brick-like shuttles—a vehicle that bore more resemblance to a large armoured car than anything space-going.

“If you try to leave, you die,” Scotonis informed them.

“I told you I had no intention of leaving,” said Trove. “At least, not yet.”

The airlock into the shuttle opened with ease and soon they pulled themselves up into a small storage area, behind rows of acceleration chairs ranged on what Clay perceived as both the floor and the ceiling. The vehicle was cramped and claustrophobic, but he was glad to feel the tautness of his suit relaxing.

“I have a railgun aimed just beyond the bay doors,” Scotonis added.

“So what’s your plan, Scotonis?” Clay asked. “Why did you feel it necessary to try and kill us all?”

“Ah, our political officer speaks.”

Trove moved forwards, and Clay towed himself after her. “Yes, I speak,” Clay replied evenly. “So, apparently you can’t use the nukes?”

“Nonsense, of course I can.”

“So why kill the assessment team?”

“They found a problem,” Scotonis replied. “The entire launching system is wrecked.”

“So you can’t use them,” Clay declared, as he followed Trove into the cramped cockpit.

“I can detonate them,” Scotonis replied. “I just can’t detonate them outside the ship.”

Clay checked a display on the wrist of his survival suit. The air in here was good, so he reached up to open the visor seam, then pushed the hood off his head. Trove glanced at him, reached out and hit some controls on the console before them, then did the same.

“So I guess you plan to drop the Scourge on Galahad’s head,” she said, her voice humanized again.

“Not quite,” Scotonis replied. “Once I’ve located her, which I’m trying to do now using radio searches, I’ll drop the Scourge on her head and detonate all the warheads too.”

“Surely you can let us go just before you do that?” suggested Clay.

Scotonis did not reply.

ARGUS

Loaded down with tools, cable and long screw-in ice pitons, Alex descended slowly towards the asteroid. Flaky ice crunched under his feet but it offered little grip to the gecko boots of his heavy work suit, so he bounced off again. Floating up from the mass of ice, he surveyed his surroundings as he used his wrist impeller to bring him back down. Over to his right, the mooring cable stretched out towards the two space planes, which hung belly to belly, with a docking tunnel running between them. On the horizon of the asteroid beyond which the two ships lay, he could see some of Ghort’s robots busily drilling holes to plant demolition charges. Alex felt it was no coincidence that all the humans here had been detailed to another task—that of preventing the chunks of the asteroid from tumbling away from each other—and that none of them was directly handling explosives. He considered that a healthy paranoia on the part of the Owner.

Using his implant, which Hannah Neumann had told him would only activate partially until the repairs in his head had fully healed, Alex called up the overlay. Immediately, a network of glowing lines etched out the major faults in the arc of ice lying ahead of him, but the map was incomplete. He banished the overlay then called it up again, and this time it reappeared with numbers hovering above the attachment points. The nearest one lay just a few metres ahead. He used his impeller to propel himself to that spot, unreeled his line from his belt and, clinging with one hand to a rock embedded in the ice, wound in his screw piton. Next, drawing the line taut to hold himself firmly in place, he undid the clip holding a heavy reel of cable at his waist and pushed it down towards the ice. Through a loop in the end of the same cable, he inserted another screw piton, but this one was half a metre long. He now unhitched his powered socket drive and, bracing himself against the ice, used a vibrating torque setting to screw the piton deep into the ice itself.

Now having finished dealing with this anchor, Alex surveyed his physical surroundings, called up various different overlays from the survey data of the asteroid, then paused to run a couple of searches, which were unfortunately limited to the computing available aboard the space planes. Yes, this was good; this expanded his horizons, put knowledge within his immediate reach and there would be more to come. But the greatest advantage was the one Neumann had not made generally known—and which you learned just before your implant went in. Alex now knew that he had a very good chance of living forever.

“Number twelve is in,” he stated, wondering how much wiser he might become in a thousand years.

“So you managed not to turn yourself into a helicopter,” replied Ghort jovially over his suit radio.

“I managed it,” said Alex, gazing along to the next anchor point, and noting again that Ghort seemed very reluctant to open implant-to-implant communication with him. He had learned that such communication tended to carry greater nuances, that some of what lay behind the words uttered tended to transfer over. This, Alex surmised, was the reason for Ghort’s reticence in that respect: in using such communication it was more difficult to lie.

Alex picked up the reel of cable, detached his line and, clutching the reel’s spindle, used his impeller to send himself towards the next anchor point. This was no easy task since he needed a lot more impetus to get himself moving, and to keep moving, and the heavy cable now unwinding tended to put him off course. Arriving at the illusory number hanging over the surface, he anchored the cable with another piton before stretching the next length of cable to the next point. Soon he would have to return to the base of the mooring line leading out to the space planes just for more cable. Finally, when he and others, including Akenon and Gladys, were done, the main chunks that the ice asteroid would be separated into, once the demolition charges detonated, would not fly off into space. That was the theory, anyway.

Ten hours later Alex was back aboard one of the space planes, which had acceleration chairs only in a forward section, behind the cockpit, for Ghort and his team; while the section behind had been turned into a temporary living accommodation, and the one behind that into an enlarged hold for their equipment, including Ghort’s robots. Alex, Akenon and Gladys already sat strapped in to watch the show on the big screen on the forward bulkhead.

“There goes the line,” said Gladys cheerfully, as the plane jerked and they saw the mooring line on the screen slacken into an arc. A moment later a motor thrummed somewhere and the line began to snake in.

“We’re keeping the docking tube?” asked Akenon.

Akenon seemed to have some kind of resentment for the team in the other space plane; he seemed to get offended when they came aboard this plane. This apparently was something to do with a failed affair and the loan of some station credit—Alex was unclear about the details. It all seemed very human and petty, and was certainly far below the concerns of Ghort and the similarly implanted team leader on the other plane, for they remained in constant communication. They tried to hide it, but while conducting implant-to-implant conversations they gave away the fact that they were talking by their facial expression and inadvertent gestures. Thinking of Ghort, Alex now glanced behind. If their team leader did not come soon he would miss the show. He returned his attention to the screen.

The ice asteroid hung in void, now static in relation to their space plane. When they first approached it, Alex had thought it looked vaguely like an anvil, albeit one that had partially melted. Their present perspective showed nothing of that shape—just an irregular lump of dirty ice. Alex used his implant to key into general com and the limited computer network around them, and thus picked up on a countdown.

“Ten seconds,” he stated.

“Sure thing, O omniscient one,” said Gladys.

Alex instantly relayed an audio recording of the word into a search to get the meaning. He guessed Gladys’s vocabulary was the kind you picked up if you constantly played VR fantasy games in your time off.

The count dropped to zero and the asteroid expanded, blowing out clouds of ice dust, then came a flash, sending rainbow colours skittering over its surface.

“What the fuck?” Akenon exclaimed.

“Complex ices,” Gladys explained, before Alex could do any research. “They fluoresce as they turn into normal water ices, and the demolition charges will have caused a bit of that.”

“Thank you, O omniscient number two,” said Akenon.

Alex stood up, the image on the screen now replaying in some part of his mind. The asteroid was heaving like some big beast taking a breath, becoming deformed, clear fragments visibly moving but the cables preventing it from flying apart. As he opened the door into their living quarters, he saw the mooring line snake out again and its explosive harpoon imbed itself into one of the larger chunks. Later they would have to return to detach the cables in preparation for those same chunks to be hauled inside the Owner’s new ship.

No sign of Ghort.

Alex moved on into the recently enlarged hold and at last spotted his team leader. Ghort was standing beside an open crate and, from his distracted expression, was obviously communicating with the other team leader. Alex walked over and waited politely, just as when someone was using a fone. His gaze strayed to the crate, which was the same one the demolition charges had arrived in. There were four charges left inside. Alex would have thought little about that had not Ghort, upon suddenly realizing he was not alone, turned round and casually closed the lid.

“You missed the show,” said Alex.

Ghort tapped his own head. “I was watching.”

Alex acknowledged that statement with a nod, then paused as something massive dropped into his mental compass. It lay thousands of kilometres beyond the ice asteroid, and weighed heavy in his mind through its wealth of connections, data, possibilities: what had once been Argus Station, but was now turning into an interstellar vessel, had come as close as it could by relying on the Rhine drive and was now firing up its Mars Traveller engine. Only able to access a small amount of all that lay available, Alex felt he understood Alan Saul so much more now, and understood why he had chosen that title “the Owner.”

Turning away from Ghort, Alex wondered if any of the demolition charges inside that box would soon go missing, or if some had gone missing already. He decided he must try and find out where they would end up, and whether Ghort required expert help to deploy them. He now had an intimation of what his team leader’s plans might be, and decided that he wanted to be included. All Ghort needed to do was trust him fully.

Alan was ever so careful not to infringe her territory, and Var was sure that sometimes, when she made any mistakes, he overlooked them just so long as they did not impinge upon his overall plans or threaten to result in danger. However, despite his diplomacy, she knew for certain that what she was doing he himself could probably now do with only some designated portion of his mind. That rendered her expertise impotent and, indeed, impotent was the best way to describe how every other “expert” aboard this ship was feeling.

The section of lattice wall she stood upon, adjoining Arcoplex One, had been turned into some weird alien rockscape consisting of numerous chunks of asteroid crawling with those giant golden centipedes busy securing them in place. As she looked up to watch a chunk of dirty ice being driven into the ship’s skeleton by impellers and human workers wearing EVA units, she reflected how those workers were now better off than the experts. They, at least, were finding ways to advance and adapt within the increasingly alien and frightening environment of this ship. All the experts, however, were thoroughly aware that they could never again be the top in their field, and that the ultimate expert here was always looking over their shoulders. That was with one exception, perhaps.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of security you use in computer tech,” observed Hannah from beside her, “since there’s always someone who will find a way to circumvent it.”

Var glanced at her. “So you know what it is?”

Hannah glanced up from the vacuum-format e-pad that she had stuck on the surface of a chunk of asteroid consisting of metallic bullet-shaped chunks, like belemnite fossils. “It’s an encoder rather like those used in subnet hardware. A group of the chipped have set up a—until now—secret method of implant-to-implant communication.”

“Should I be worried?”

“I don’t know.” Hannah shook her head, which made a visible gesture in the VC suit she wore, but was something Var could not achieve in her heavy work suit. “I think it highly unlikely that Alan is unaware of this.”

“Are you aware of this, Alan?” Var asked.

“Yes, I am aware of this,” he replied.

The immediacy of his reply did not lead Var to think he had been paying close attention to her and Hannah. That was just some piece of software—rather like one used in the more user-friendly fones—responding to a question directed at him. Doubtless some further piece of software, presently recording every public and probably every private conversation aboard the ship, had immediately dragged up the previous content of the exchange between Hannah and Var for his instant inspection. Of course, he did not respond to every question directed at him, just to those he considered important and relevant. That assessment was probably carried out by yet another piece of software, or a subsidiary thought process, since within him the difference wasn’t easily defined. She wondered if he knew that the replies he gave were just enough to promote the idea of his being godlike, ever present and ever watching. Of course he knew.

“What are they using?” Hannah asked.

“It’s quite simple,” he replied. “The encoder attaches to their relays, and provides a list of icons they can select to contact anyone else with a similar encoder.”

“And you’ve cracked those codes,” Var suggested.

“In a way …”

“So what are they saying?”

“They are saying they must build the groundwork of their rebellion cautiously, and that, since an escape to Earth would only result in them being captured and killed by Galahad, their domain has to remain here, aboard this ship,” Saul explained. “And for them to be truly free aboard this ship, the autocrat currently in charge has to die.”

“And you allow this to continue?” Hannah asked in exasperation.

“What would you have me do, Hannah? Have them thrown in an adjustment cell, or killed, or perhaps sent over to you to have their minds wiped?”

Studying Hannah’s expression, Var saw it transform from exasperation to weary horror.

“No,” Hannah replied, “there always has to be a better option.”

“It’s just talk,” he continued, “and talk cannot hurt me.”

“They’ve managed to put together this hardware,” Var protested, “and mere talk can easily turn into something else.” She felt he was again being irritatingly dismissive and arrogant.

“And should it do so, I have something in place ready to counter it,” Saul replied. “I wait in the hope that they will see what others receiving implants and backups saw at once and so clearly. I wait in the hope that they will cease to behave as children.”

“Who are they?” Var asked. She certainly didn’t want such people working on anything important, and she was damned if she wanted to leave everything to her brother. She didn’t believe the myth he was creating about himself and, as she finally admitted to herself, she didn’t really trust him.

“That I will not tell you,” he replied. “Don’t you have other things to occupy your time right now?”

Suppressing a snappy reply, Var glanced up. More EVA units were now on the move above, travelling up along the length of the newly erected arcoplex spindle. And, when she turned on her visor display and inspected a work-order flow diagram, she saw that the new transformers were now being moved into position. Of course, if she had taken the time to get her own implant installed, she would have been aware of all this much sooner.

“Work to do,” she said to Hannah, before she launched herself upwards.

As Saul watched Var head away, he briefly dipped again into the communications between the would-be rebels, but everything worthy of note was already being flagged in a continuous recording. He checked these latest flags and noted that Ghort and two others had been discussing Alex. Ghort was still unsure about this member of his work team, but the others were insistent that Alex must be recruited. In their eyes he possessed the training and skills they needed and, being the last surviving clone of Alessandro Messina, having him on their side would send out a powerful message during further recruitment. Ghort had to question whether that message would be a positive one, and so their discussion had continued. Saul calculated that they would shortly make their first approach to Alex who, though emotionally less complex than most other human beings, was very smart in many other respects, and would respond positively and join them, just as Saul had predicted.

He next watched the final chunks of ice being ferried in and roped down amidst the asteroid matter on the lattice walls of the station wheel. This even distribution would reduce distortion of the warp bubble, though there was a small chance they would lose another chunk of the docking pillars. Meanwhile, Var was now ensuring the locking down of the transformers being installed at the upper pole of the ship.

As he watched through nearby cams, he reflected how he had handled his sister’s most recent … error. The transformers were heavily insulated, as were the cables leading inside from them. The insulation Var had intended to use had been more than adequate to deal with a potential two megawatts running through the station, but were not sufficient to deal with any of the possibly huge fluctuations above that, so Saul had found it necessary to intervene. However, at the same time he had deliberately speculated with her on the insulation requirements of the space planes that would serve as the anode and cathode they intended to plug into the Io flux tube, so her annoyance was ameliorated by him accepting her suggestion that they use old Mars Traveller solid-fuel booster tanks retrieved from around Jupiter for that purpose. She had, in essence, responded as predictably as Alex. Saul hadn’t even been disappointed, which told him that all those parts of himself he still defined as human were now less so.

Saul briefly considered how, even before Hannah had put the biochip in his head and before he loaded Janus, he had rather stretched the concept of what the likes of Hannah would define as human. Now his human aspects were changing even further as he evolved mentally. He retained the survival instinct, but knew he was growing more and more distant from ordinary human concerns. He had moved beyond contempt, beyond boredom, beyond exasperation. As he was now, he knew that he would have much more closely analysed his previous almost instinctive decision to rescue his sister from Mars, and perhaps decided to leave her there. And now he was seriously considering the benefits and disadvantages of maintaining a human population at all aboard what had become his ship, and considering it very carefully.

The last chunk of ice set on course for its final position, the EVA workers were departing, leaving Saul’s robots to rise up from their plain of boulders and field it. His ship now possessed much more water than its occupants required, but Saul was thinking both towards the immediate future and far beyond. As power became available, the ice would be melted down and piped in between the blast walls and layers of composite armour that now filled the outer ring, around the vortex generator. Then, at some point in the more distant future, when the new arcoplexes were built, he had decided that one of them would become a mostly aquatic environment and therefore much of the water could go there. He visualized a cylindrical sea with land masses positioned at either end, perhaps dotted with islands between over a central barrier designed to contain the pumps that would shift water from one end of the cylinder to the other, to mimic the effect of tides. It would be a curious environment for the spectator—with the sea curving up on either side around the spindle lights—and one that would take some technical know how to balance out properly, especially when using anything other than the Rhine drive.

In that same cylinder he would utilize Gene Bank samples and data to construct a marine ecosystem. Perhaps it might be possible to resurrect extinct species like the dolphin, though anything larger would have to wait until he extended his ship into something the size of a moon, so it could contain larger cylinders. However, perhaps by then he would have had time to look into some interesting possibilities related to Rhine-drive technology and have developed that old staple of science fiction, artificial gravity, and therefore not need cylinder worlds at all.

The ice was down in place and secure, the EVA workers gradually docking and heading back to their accommodation. Var had checked the security of the new transformers, and dispatched the EVA workers there to their homes before attaching herself to a portion of the outer cage that gave her the best view. Hannah, meanwhile, had returned inside, since perhaps one viewing experience close to the engine flame was enough, and her own esoteric concerns were again occupying her thoughts. Le Roque was busy overseeing the now rote lockdown procedure required before a firing of the Traveller engine. All seemed to be operating like a smoothly oiled machine and Saul felt no need, or inclination, to deliver any warnings before he finally fired up the engine again.

The fusion flame glared as bright as the sun, and charging levels rose as rectifying batteries were bathed in the sudden light and heat. The column supporting the engine shortened, but stress-sensor readings showed nothing out of expected parameters. Var whooped in delight, the sight of the Traveller engine’s power never getting old for her. Slowly, the ship began to move up towards the periphery of the Asteroid Belt. It would only take minutes to bring them to the point where solar system maps showed their clearest run on the two hops to their destination. As the minutes passed, Saul considered various plans for the other new cylinder world. Perhaps all the tropical ecologies could be transplanted there from the old arboretum, which would definitely solve some of the heating and insulation problems. Perhaps this new cylinder could be filled with moist tropical life …

The time arrived, and Saul engaged the Rhine drive without shutting down the Traveller engine. The effect was an astounding colour display on the interior of the warp bubble, and the production of some exotic particles that Rhine himself was already studying, having been forewarned. The ship moved, at a right angle to the thrust of the Traveller, but since that engine was now effectively firing within its own universe, it had no effect on their course in the outer universe. Heat levels within the bubble rose rapidly, while rectifying batteries distributed throughout the station sucked it up and converted it, dumping charge into super-capacitors, ultra-capacitors and other forms of storage. Saul’s robots literally bathed in it as they also topped up their depleted supplies. Some of the asteroid ice sublimated, creating a fog within the ship’s skeleton, but one that soon blew away as the warp shut down.

Next, Saul shut down the Traveller engine. At the cost of the tritium fuel that was now becoming depleted, he had now effectively recharged the entire ship. He looked around, seeing Jupiter as a slightly larger star far away from them round in its orbit, discerning Mars as hardly visible without magnification and the Asteroid Belt as a haze slewed about and below them.

Again the Rhine drive kicked in and dropped them into what was effectively their personal universe. Saul counted down the minutes as the drive took them up close to the speed of light, closer than they had ever been before. Hawking radiation flooded the ship’s skeleton, and Saul observed an effect as close to perpetual motion as was possible as the power the drive used was replenished by the charging of rectifier batteries. Beyond the speed of light, would they rectify out more energy than the drive actually used? This was an issue Rhine had been considering at some length, but neither his nor Saul’s maths was up to the job. Something new would have to be invented once they had collected enough data, which Rhine was gathering even now. And certainly there was no such thing as perpetual motion, so the cost would have to be paid somewhere, somehow.

Saul allowed his attention to range once more through his ship, taking in detail, assessing conversations, keeping his finger ever on the pulse. He saw Langstrom, Peach and one of the mentally reprogrammed, the repro Manuel, sitting playing a game of three-sided chess on their linked computer screens. This was a pastime all the police still aboard the station seemed to be enjoying, and this particular game was part of a tournament that Saul predicted Manuel would win. Hannah was already aware of this odd effect in some of those whose minds she had wiped: a tendency to borderline autism.

Tick-tock, time passed, though its effects were curious and monstrously difficult to calculate.

“Paul,” said Saul, “tell me you’re ready.”

“You know I am,” replied the proctor.

Something new to try, monitored by eight proctors scattered throughout the ship. Saul had left it just for them to handle, since he was reluctant to let such advanced minds continue solely with the many menial tasks with which they had been occupying themselves.

Paul was out on the station-wheel lattice wall, acting as a node in the network the proctors formed: closely connected to seven of his fellows but only loosely connected to Judd and to the proctor that had named itself Tull, both of whom now completely controlled Robotics. Again Saul resisted the temptation to insert himself into that network and spy on the minds he had effectively created.

“Two minutes,” Saul said, noting the Mach-drive coils already drawing power as a mackerel sky spread across the inner side of the warp bubble.

“Yes!” shouted Rhine, slamming his hand down too hard on his console, then sucking his stinging fingers afterwards. One fragment of a loosely connected theory proven true.

“I’m not sure that when you’re happy, I should also be,” said Le Roque, walking over to peer at the equations on Rhine’s screen, frowning, then moving away again.

“Get ready,” Le Roque announced next to the entire station, “though what for I don’t know. No one quite knows what happens next.”

They were close to their destination: laser measurements showing a slight distortion of the warp bubble caused by a huge mass in the universe adjacent to their small and temporary one. Saul made direct adjustments to the vortex generator that effectively turned the warp through a hundred and eighty degrees, then shut down the drive. They came out of warp still carrying the impetus given by the Traveller engine, but now taking them in the opposite direction relative to its previous thrust. The ship shuddered, stabilized, EM fields reaching out and feathering towards infinity, pushing on the surrounding universe. And the ship accelerated. Saul now sent images to every screen presently not in use for some other purpose. Old Jupiter gazed at them with a vexatious red eye while they slid past veined Europa, whose pallid gaze lingered upon its secret oceans within.