There had been one exception. And that, oddly enough, made his decision easier when he decided to leave Sentinel Gate.
In the days before he first met Darya Lang, Hans Rebka had contracted to lead a Fourth Alliance team to the artifact known as Paradox. At the very moment he was ready to begin, he had been reassigned to Quake and Opal — and had been furious at the switch. For weeks and weeks beforehand he had been learning everything there was to know about the spherical anomaly called Paradox. All that knowledge, so painfully acquired, then just wasted.
But maybe he could use it now, to confirm or deny the ideas of Darya Lang and Quintus Bloom. Even if he found no change to Paradox, there was still a good reason for the journey. The cold-start procedure, when Hans had been forced to open E. Crimson Tally’s skull, had reminded him of another attribute of the embodied computer. This one might be the key that would unlock the mystery of Paradox.
Rebka watched the gleaming soap bubble ahead, its surface rippling in hypnotic rainbow colors. Paradox was one of the smallest of the artifacts, only fifty kilometers across. Unlike Sentinel, or many of the others, Paradox provided no impermeable barrier to an approaching ship. Exploring vessels could simply coast right through to the interior, and emerge physically unscathed. Unfortunately, as early would-be explorers of Paradox had learned (or rather, the people who found the explorers had learned) the same was not true of a ship’s crew. Paradox wiped clean all stored memories, organic or inorganic. Surviving crews emerged like new-born babies, with only the most basic instincts and reflexes left to them. Data banks and computer memory on the ships were equally affected. Their contents disappeared. Any ship function that relied on the performance of a computer — and many did — failed inside Paradox. Ships had emerged with their hatches open, their temperature down to ambient space, or their drives dead.
The effect had been named: a Lotus field. That did not, unfortunately, mean that anyone in the spiral arm had the faintest idea how or why it worked, or how to neutralize it. After the first few expeditions (the first recorded expeditions — no one knew how many times Paradox had been discovered, and how many times all memory of it had been erased), the artifact was placed off-limits to all but specially trained investigators.
Investigators like Hans Rebka, with many years of experience in the fine art of avoiding disaster.
But not like E.C. Tally. The embodied computer was staring at Paradox like a child offered a new toy. “Do you think the whole inside is a Lotus field, or is it just in a surface layer?”
“Probably in the surface. We know it starts there, and we have evidence of a lot of other interior structure in Paradox from the light that passes through it.” Rebka was distracted. He was happy with the overall plan of what he wanted to do, but now he was down to practical questions. What was the best way to unwind, and then to wind back, a reel holding thirty kilometers of thin neural cable? Where would the fiber best enter the spacesuit, if the suit was to be airtight? At what point must Rebka put on his own suit?
It was a nuisance to be forced to do everything in suits, but Rebka could see no alternative. Even if the interior of Paradox, by some improbable miracle, turned out to be filled with air breathable by humans, what would happen just before entry? And what was the interior temperature of Paradox? Instrument readings gave inconsistent results.
“Sit still.” He was standing behind Tally, who was suited except for the helmet. “I’m going to rehearse the whole thing just one more time.”
He had already passed the neural cable through a hole in the top of the helmet, made an airtight seal at the point where it entered, and attached a neural connector plug to the end of the cable inside the helmet. He let that float free and reached forward to feel the rear of Tally’s head. When he pressed on three marked points and at the same time lifted, a gleam of white bone was revealed on the back of the skull. The rear pins released, so that the upper cranium could pivot forward about the hinged line in the forehead. Tally’s brain was revealed as a bulging gray ovoid sitting snugly in the skull case.
Rebka carefully lifted it out. “You all right?”
“Just fine. Of course, I cannot see. The top of my head is covering my eyes.”
“I’ll make this as quick as I can.” Rebka felt beneath the wrinkled ball of the brain, to locate a short coiled spiral that connected the embodied computer’s brain to the upper end of the body’s hindbrain. “Doing it — now.”
He unplugged the spiral, lifted the gray ball of the brain free, and pressed the neural connector from the suit’s helmet into the plug in the hindbrain. A moment later he connected the other end of the thirty-kilometer filament to E.C. Tally’s disembodied brain.
“How’s that?”
“Perfectly fine.” E.C. Tally’s hands came up, to click the top of his skull back in position. The thin fiber ran from the back of his head to the suit’s helmet, and on into the disembodied brain. “I sense a slight transmission delay.”
“About two hundred microseconds. It’s the two-way signal travel time through thirty kilometers of cable. Can you handle it?”
“I will become accustomed to it.” Tally reached up again, and closed the suit helmet. “There. I am airtight. Does that complete our rehearsal?”
“Almost. I’m happy with all the moves that involve you, but I want to check my own suit and then take us to vacuum and back. I’ll do it once you’re unwired. Hold still while I switch you, then in a few minutes we’ll try the whole thing for real.”
Rebka opened Tally’s helmet and performed the operation in reverse. He hinged the skull forward and pulled the neural connector out of the body’s hindbrain. He freed Tally’s brain from the other end of the fiber optic cable and plugged it once more into its hindbrain socket. Finally he clicked the cranium back to its original position.
“Here we are again.” E.C. Tally lifted one suited hand, then the other. “No anomalies. What next?”
“Close your helmet. I’m going to take us to vacuum.”
Rebka waited until his own suit was on and they both had their helmets locked in position. He cycled the air pressure down to zero, then slid open the hatch. They could see Paradox through the opening. It sat only a few tens of meters away, a shimmering bubble seemingly close enough to touch.
“Do you mind if I examine the artifact from outside the ship?” E.C. Tally was floating toward the hatch.
“Go ahead. Check the E/M field intensities while you’re there, but make sure you don’t get into trouble with the Lotus field. And remember the cable’s attached to your helmet, if not to your head, so don’t get tangled up.”
Tally nodded. He picked up a portable field recorder and drifted out, cable unreeling behind him. Hans did not move. They were ready to start, but there was no hurry. He had survived in the past by being ultra-cautious. He wanted to review everything mentally one last time.
The steps seemed clear and simple:
Remove Tally’s brain, which would stay here with him.
Connect brain and body through the neural cable.
Allow Tally’s body to enter and explore Paradox, remotely controlled through the cable.
They knew from a previous experience that this would work in a Lotus field, although it had been tried only over short distances. This time E.C. could in principle go all the way to the center of Paradox. Rebka wasn’t sure he was that ambitious. If Tally could bring something — anything — back from the Paradox interior, they would be breaking new ground.