Saturn Run

46.

The transfer of the memory modules and the readers was routine. The eight modules looked like 2.5-centimeter carbon-fiber dowel rods, each twenty centimeters long, with a needle-thin, gold-colored metallic strip on one side. The strip was gold-colored because it turned out to be gold. The rods looked like carbon fiber, because analysis showed that each module had a carbon fiber shell.

The readers looked vaguely like office paper-printers, black cubes that measured fifty centimeters in each of the three dimensions, with rubber-like legs at each corner of the bottom. The top had a slot that would take a memory module.

The readers ran on direct current electricity but had an alien I/O port. Converter ports would have to be fabricated. Wurly interrupted the regular I/O flow to the Nixon to insert an operating manual for the readers, along with instructions for converting the I/O port.

Each reader and each QSU module came in its own container, again, of carbon fiber. They were ferried back to the Nixon in a heated case built by Martinez and Sandy in the fab shop, one set at a time: Fang-Castro wouldn’t risk losing all of them at once, or even two of them at once, in a freak accident.

Sandy called Crow from the primary: “We got the last five and a half trade points. They gave us one point for the oboe and the bassoon, apparently there’re no double-reeds in their trading stock. Forking over most of the commander’s tea and Clover’s liquor got us three more points. Oh, yeah, and we got half a point for the music collection, although the trade computer discarded ninety-nine percent of it. John says we could learn more about our alien friends from what they kept and what they rejected.”

“We kept a record of what they took and what they let go?”

“Absolutely.”

“They keep Beethoven and Mozart?”

“No. They kept Bach, Vivaldi, some guys I never heard of from the late nineteenth century—Erik Satie?—then a twentieth-century group called Motörhead and some American Indian drumming songs, and most recently, a Russian group called Rape the Whirlwind. They didn’t take Kid Little, which tells you something about their taste.”

“Yes, it does, but I don’t care. What’d we get the other points for? Don’t tell me they went for those fake disks and the disk player.”

“Absolutely. The computer suggested that we could bring more of them, and get more points, but we have to wait sixty-four years.”

“Unbelievable.” When Martinez had learned that the trade computer was interested in archaic music machines, he’d fabricated a mid-twentieth-century disk player that played thirty-centimeter plastic disks through a crystalline pickup that vibrated according to an arrangement of grooves on the disk. He got the specs from a vintage recording club, and he and Sandy printed out everything but the pickup in a marathon five-hour fab session. The pickup was fashioned from a diamond-stud earring they extorted from the surveillance tech—“But they were given to me by my former fiancé”—and cut with a laser.

“Unbelievable, yup. I got the feeling we just got patted on the head for handing over some nice woven baskets. Do you care?” Sandy asked.

“No.”

Crow rubbed his eyes: he’d had nothing but catnaps for two days, relying on stim tabs to get him through. They were starting to take their toll.

The powers-that-be back home were making life difficult, demanded constant updates on the status of the Chinese mission. By virtue of its proximity, the Nixon had a better idea what was going on with the Celestial Odyssey than Earth did, but that didn’t mean they had a very good idea.

That problem was complicated by the light-speed time lag. The round-trip time for communication was over two hours, and that was unavoidable. Santeros didn’t much care. Whatever was going on back home wasn’t waiting on the speed of light. As soon as one of her queries came in, he had to jump on it and formulate a response, regardless of the time, day or night, or what else he might be doing.

Further, the Chinese were still uncommunicative. There clearly had been considerable damage to their ship. Their external tanks were either destroyed or badly damaged. They could see Chinese work crews cutting away what remained of the tankage. The main superstructure ship appeared to be intact.

His implants beeped at him, and he nodded, sighed, and headed down to Fang-Castro’s office.

She looked as tired as he felt. “Talking to the President again?”

“Yes. Same old thing. Anything change? No. How about now? Anything change? No.” A thin smile flitted across his face. “It’s like dealing with a kid: ‘When are we gonna get there?’”

“All right,” Fang-Castro said. “They’re telling us that we need to ensure that the Chinese don’t get access to the AI in the depot, at least until we’re gone. I’ll be ordering the deployment of armed personnel at the depot landing pad and the access port, round the clock. Do you agree?”

Crow pursed his lips. “This is theater, correct? Drawing a line in the sand that they know they can’t cross without risking war?”

“Entirely. We can’t fire on their personnel for the same reason. We look tough, but if the Chinese push the issue, we give way. I’m betting the Chinese won’t risk it. If it did come down to a fight, we’d lose. We are most likely seriously outmanned and outgunned.”

She continued: “Our ship is also more fragile than theirs. If they were to bring the fight to the Nixon, they very likely have armaments that could entirely cripple us. Whereas we, in turn, have little if anything that could touch their ship. Unless you have an ace up your sleeve you haven’t told me about?”

Crow shook his head. “No. When the planning devolves down to ‘Who can wave the bigger gun?’ it’s moved beyond my scope of authority.”

“All right, then. I’m assigning four-person teams, two at the landing pad and two at the port. Three teams, eight-hour shifts. I will hold back Sandy Darlington. He will continue to document this encounter—I mean, both with the alien primary and with the Chinese.”

Crow nodded. “I wish I could provide you with better options, but I’m as blind as you are. I’ll keep hammering intelligence back on Earth to try to get more information about the Chinese’s intentions, but I’m not hopeful.”

His slate pinged. Sandy Darlington, urgent. Any urgent call from the alien primary was a priority.

He said to Fang-Castro: “It’s Darlington, urgent, from the primary. I better take it.”

“Yes.”

Crow tapped the link and Darlington’s face came up from his in-suit camera. He said, “Hey, big guy. How they hangin’?” and flashed his toothy smile.

“Sandy, I’m talking to the admiral.”

“Oops. Sorry, ma’am. Anyway, I was, uh… hanging out here… uh, just bullshittin’ with Wurly—”

Crow said, “Sandy…”

“Ah, sorry again, ma’am. For the language. Anyway, I thought of a couple of questions that nobody else has asked, and I asked them, and I thought I better get the answers back to you.”

Fang-Castro said, “Do you want to share the answers with us, Mr. Darlington, or do you plan to continue bullshittin’?”

“No, ma’am.” The toothy smile again. “I asked, ‘Wurly, when you said we get eight memory modules and eight readers, did you mean, we, from the ship here now? Or did you mean we, as a species?’ Wurly said, ‘You, as a species. We have eight memory modules to dispense and eight readers.’ I asked, ‘Can’t you make more?’ and he said, ‘We do not have the facilities here to fabricate more, although we have the information to do so. Therefore, the number of physical readers allotted to one species is limited.’ Then I asked, ‘When you said we get up to eight points, is that for our species, or for this visit?’ He said that it’s for our species. If we want more, we have to go to a different depot, or wait sixty-four years, when we’ll become eligible again.”

Fang-Castro and Crow looked at each other, then Fang-Castro asked, “You mean… if the Chinese show up and ask for the memory modules and readers, they won’t get any? Nor will they be able to trade?”

“That’s what Wurly’s saying, ma’am. Then I thought, ‘You know, old Crow’s gonna want to run off with both the memory modules and the readers, and all the trade stuff, leaving the Chinese holding an empty bag. More than that, he’s probably gonna want to slap a chunk of C-10 on Wurly and blow the shit out of him—sorry again, ma’am—so the Chinese couldn’t even find out what we’d done.’ So I asked Wurly if there were more Wurlys, and there are. It will take them ten hours to bring out a replacement, plus all the other computers can act as Wurlys if necessary. So we probably can’t go around blowing them all up, even if we knew they wouldn’t retaliate. Bottom line is, we’ve got all the hardware.

“They could get instructions for the reader, and maybe even the information that’s on the memory modules, through Wurly, but it would take them forever. I asked how long it would take to download all the QSU information through our I/O, and Wurly said it would take two hundred and twelve years. The Chinese can get the basic science over the I/O link. Hell, a lot more than basic science. But the complete manufacturing and engineering specs? Those’re on the QSUs.

“But here’s the key thing: Wurly answers all questions that he knows the answer to. If we run off with everything—the Chinese are going to find out. All they have to do is ask.”

Fang-Castro said, “Mr. Darlington, stay where you are. I’m going to run this by the brain trust, and see if there are more related questions for your old pal Wurly. Oh, and we’ll get Santeros and her people off their asses.”

Sandy said, “Ma’am, as you know, I served in a military intelligence unit…”

“Yes, I have been briefed on that.”

“Mr. Crow believes there is a spy on board. Or at least, believes it’s possible. I would suggest that you, mmm, hold this information very tightly. You need to know it, and Mr. Crow needs to know it, but if there’s a spy, and you talk to your brain trust, the spy is going to hear about it. I don’t think that would be good—though, of course, it’s your call, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Mr. Darlington.” She went silent for a moment, looked at Crow, who raised an eyebrow.

Then: “I think perhaps you’re right, Mr. Darlington. We will hold this to the three of us.”