The other stepped forward from the monitor area. "Yes, sir?"
"I want you to contact Commodore Freitag for me. Find out how soon we can have one of his destroyers ready for a short trip."
The lieutenant nodded and turned back to one of the consoles. Eisenstadt looked over at Zagorin, currently the focus of attention of a half dozen medical people. "How do you feel, Ms. Zagorin?" he asked.
"Fine," she said, sounding a little out of breath. "Much better than the last time."
Eisenstadt nodded, caught one of the physicians' eyes. "I want you to do an extrapolation of her physical condition," he told the other. "I'm interested particularly on how long she could have stayed under without harm."
The other nodded and returned to his examination. "You're planning to take her along with you?" I asked quietly.
Eisenstadt nodded. "It might be useful to find out just how far away from Spall we can get before we can't raise them anymore."
"But if the thunderheads are guiding us through the Cloud—"
"We have no evidence of that," Eisenstadt reminded me. "Not even an unsupported statement by the thunderheads. All of that is pure speculation on our part, and pure speculation always makes me nervous."
I looked at him, read the sense of uneasiness there... "Because if it's not the thunderheads guiding us through the Cloud, it's someone else?"
He threw me a patient look. "Come on, Benedar—surely it's obvious there are at least two intelligences working at cross-purposes here. Or do you want to try and tell me that the thunderheads built the Cloud as a defense or something and then couldn't remember how to turn it off?"
I thought about that. "It doesn't have to be that monochrome, though, does it?" I suggested hesitantly. "Couldn't it just as well be that they don't mind us mining the rings but want to limit how many of us live next door to them on Solitaire?"
"Or even be the reverse," Calandra added. "That they don't mind us living on Solitaire but want to limit our plundering of the ring minerals."
"For all the good the rings do them," Eisenstadt growled. "They're hardly in a position to do any mining themselves. Unfortunately, neither of those theories will hold air. If that's all they wanted, all they needed to do was to make a treaty with us covering population size and mining rights and then shut off the Cloud."
"What if we reneged?" I asked.
"They turn the Cloud back on, of course—trapping, incidentally, everyone who was in the system at the time. With that kind of threat hanging over us, they'd hardly have to worry about treaty violations."
"Before the Halo of God came along, maybe there wasn't any way for them to talk to us," I reminded him.
"The way's there now," he countered. "And they haven't mentioned anything along those lines. No, either the thunderheads are the ones guiding our ships and aren't responsible for the Cloud, or else they're running the Cloud and someone else is bringing our ships in. It doesn't make sense any other way."
I bit at the back of my lip. He was right—the logic of it was indeed hard to argue against. And yet...
"You don't seem convinced, Benedar."
I focused on him. His expression was gruff, tolerant, as befit a scientist who didn't officially give much credit to my Watcher skills... but beneath that official veneer I could sense a genuine interest. "There's something else about the thunderheads," I said, trying without success to pin down the elusive feeling nagging at my back-brain. "Something that bothers me."
"You think they're lying to us about something?"
I looked at Calandra, saw her equally helpless shrug. She didn't have it, either; but like me, she recognized there was something here we weren't getting. "No, I don't think they're lying. Not... exactly."
It was a sloppy enough statement, and I fully expected to get a scornful glare for it. But Eisenstadt merely rubbed his cheek, his sense thoughtful. "Could it be that this invitation out to the Cloud is some kind of a trap?" he suggested.
"I can't see what they could hope to gain," I shook my head. "They must know that information about them has long since left the system. It's far too late to try and keep their existence secret, even if that was what they wanted."
Calandra stirred. "I don't think it's a trap," she said slowly. "But Gilead's right—they are hiding something. I get a sense of manipulation, as if they're deliberately feeding us just enough information to keep us moving in the direction they want."
"You think they're going to take us to the Cloud generator and then ask us to shut it off?" Eisenstadt asked bluntly.
She looked at him steadily. "I'd be very careful about doing anything like that," she told him. "If you're right about them not being responsible for the Cloud, then it could only have been put there by someone else for the purpose of isolating them."
Eisenstadt nodded grimly. "That thought has already occurred to me," he acknowledged. "Which is why I want to take a Pravilo warship instead of just requisitioning some freighter. The generator may be defended."
Across the way, the Pravilo lieutenant straightened from his board. "Dr. Eisenstadt?" he called. "All set. Commodore Freitag has ordered the Kharg to return from ring patrol duty; ETA approximately six days." He hesitated. "However... the commodore asks me to remind you that none of the Pravilo ships in Solitaire system is equipped with a Deadman Switch."
For a second Eisenstadt just stared at him. Then he swore under his breath. "Chern-fire!—I forgot all about that."
I glanced at Calandra, read my own puzzlement there. "I don't understand," I said to Eisenstadt. "It can't be that hard to install a Deadman Switch."
"The hardware's not the problem," he growled. "It's the fact that the Pravilo doesn't have a general license for Solitaire transport. Trips in and out of the system are authorized on an individual basis by the Patri. And for that authorization you have to go all the way to Portslava."
"It's not quite that bad, sir," the lieutenant spoke up. "The judiciaries on Miland or Whitecliff can also grant authorization."
"All that means is that you apply to them and they send the request on to Portslava," Eisenstadt shook his head. "Could take weeks—not to mention the paperwork involved in getting the actual zombi."
I looked at Calandra, feeling my stomach muscles tightening. Except that there was a zombi already on hand, if Eisenstadt ever happened to remember that... "Surely there are emergency procedures available," I said.
"I doubt this could be made to qualify," Eisenstadt snorted.
"Well..." I hesitated. "The last I knew, Governor Rybakov owed Mr. Kelsey-Ramos a rather large personal favor. You might talk to him, see if he can wheedle a zombi for you from among Solitaire's own death-sentence criminals."
He looked at me; and from the way his eyes carefully avoided Calandra I could tell that he, too, had suddenly remembered her status. I held my breath... but practically before the idea was fully formed it was smothered by a strong sense of rejection. Like Randon, it seemed, he had quickly learned what an asset Watchers were, and he had no intention of throwing that asset away. "I was under the impression Solitaire law forbade that," he said. "Worth a try, though. Anyway—" He glanced at Zagorin. "I'd like you two to accompany Ms. Zagorin back to her quarters when they're through with her."