Iris

FIVE

From the interior of the transparent CM dome, John Cornwell stood and stared at nothing. He had participated in the debriefing of the Polaris crew and, after the exhilaration of their safe escape from the Artifact had waned, an apprehension was growing that everything he wanted was going to be drowned out by the alien presence. It wasn't that the Aello find wasn't of huge significance, or that he wasn't moved by the adventure that had overtaken them. But, somehow, it all seemed damned irrelevant when compared to the interior world he and Beth had found. The fact that there were intelligences other than man, and that they were on the trail of information that would revolutionize how the human race would see itself, was not meaningful to him, to his life. It was just a manifestation of a cold, rather pointless external reality. . . . Or was it simply that he felt left out of the adventure; jealous of Sealock, who was now moving into a position of leadership? He could not say. He turned and launched himself to the roof of the CM, and slipped through a small clear bubble cracked three-quarters open. Perhaps Beth would have an insight about his motivation, something that was beyond him.

They were back in their habitual positions in the central room of the CM. Sealock and Krzakwa were both eating messy-looking pastries and, as explorers will, were holding forth garrulously on the nature of their discovery. "I'm accessing Jana's statistics for the surfaces of the three satellites," said Brendan. "The thing on Aello makes any divergence from Solar System asterology suspect, even though what happened when proto-Iris was coalescing was certain to be a little different." Stroking her ponytail where it curled down over her collarbone, Jana remarked stiffly, "We still know very little about the primordial conditions of planetary formation. There is no statistical sample of—"

"Jana, even you cannot have failed to notice that Ocypete's 'eye' is not easy to explain. If I didn't know you better I'd say that you are deliberately obscuring things. The old crater above the Artifact was damned peculiar. Why didn't you say something to us about it?"

"It's always easy to see things in hindsight, you jackass." Evidently a raw nerve had been touched in Hu . "My report wasn't finished, either. I was waiting— waiting—to examine Aello close up and do some crater excavation. Even if I wanted to prove that Aello's morphology was influenced by the impact of a large, virtually indestructible object, I couldn't now!"

Cornwell was a little taken aback by this contorted reasoning. "Jana," he said, "we all realize that science has certain rigorous protocols. But are you saying you actually suspected something?"

"I mentioned the unusual features of this system in my preliminary report. I had no intention of allowing the important abstracts Iris offers to be done by someone else." Theasterologist seemed especially vulnerable to John's manifest growing incredulity. "That's certainly my right."

"OK," said Krzakwa. "OK. What is your real opinion about the melting incident that formed Mare Nostrum?"

"Considering that this system contained technological objects, I would say that an artificially processed quantity of radiogenic material impacted Ocypete in the same epoch that Aello was hit by the Artifact."

"Jesus," said Ariane. "That's two. What else is here?"

"That's for the scanner to find out," said Brendan.

The process of constructing a working quantum conversion scanner was principally one of reprogramming the various function boxes which had been used to route some of Shipnet's major elements. A power line was brought out of the main fusion system, since reaching the needed flux-gate thresholds expended vast quantities of energy. They built a superconducting torus mounted on another insulating trivet to act as an accumulator, energy shuttle, and antenna ground. Brendan and Tem stayed in the CM, supervising and structuring the programming, so the on-site work was left up to the others. The communications setup for the colony was still incomplete. There was a period during which both the colony and the Clarke satellite were occulted by the bulk of Ocypete. The result was that they went without contact with the rest of humanity for two days out of every twenty-two. Since lag time was so great anyway, this feature didn't bother anyone much. The only real drawback was that repeat broadcasts of entertainment 'net programs had to be requested, and that was expensive. This relink was different. Enough time had passed for anyone who was interested to have seen the damage to Aello. Tem and Brendan had even taken a break from their labors to join the rest for the moment contact was reestablished.

Bad news. The first message in was the end of a communication from IAAU, its beginning lost in horizon distortion:

—radical changes in the appearance of Iris I, leading us to believe that you have without authorization damaged the asterologic record of this world. Our charter enjoins and empowers us to demand explanation within one standard day, penalty to be defined by the courts.