“I think he’s right, Captain,” said Zeke. “That T-Tauri is flaring several times a day, now. It might be a thousand years until it ignites, or it might be a day. I’d just as soon not stick around to find out. Let’s roll the ship, clear off the ice, and get out of here.”
“I don’t think we should be so quick about that,” said someone behind them. Cogs. He stood in the doorway, arms folded, a mop of hair down over his eyes, thick lenses giving him a bug-eyed look. He rubbed his chin reflectively. “At the same time, I find it curious that our visitor left the one reaction port open, when it could have filled it up again. We’re not just dealing with a dirty snowball, gentlemen.”
“Yeah. You think it’s alive,” said Leon sarcastically.
Cogs got a tube of coffee from the dispenser and sat down with them. “I didn’t exactly say that. What I said was that it shows directed and purposeful behavior. Call it intelligence. Or simple, programmed logic if you like, but the thing is directed, and it’s communicating. That piece you brought in for me is sitting in the lab right now, chirping away in a broad band with a peak around one micron. There’s your radio noise, Zeke. It’s coming from the ice on this ship. And my bet is the ninety meter peak is coming from the snowball itself. A part of it is stuck to Orion, and the snowball wants it back. When you started flaming, it returned to remove what it perceived as a threat. It’s probably been lurking out there in the cloud ever since we collided with it.”
Leon thought of the glowing eye in the center of the snowball rushing towards him, the tendrils reaching out like claws towards the flamers. And cold. “So why did it hit us in the first place? I nearly died out there, Cogs.”
Cogs nodded. “I know, but that could have been an accident. It was outbound and just ran into us. A direct collision would have splattered Orion, and my guess is it made a course correction the instant it saw us.”
Waisley looked thoughtful, raising an eyebrow. “It was moving out—away from that T-Tauri star?”
Cogs smiled briefly, then said, “Looking for a cooler place, Captain. It’s probably had tens of millions of years to evolve while that star was moving down the Kayashi track to ignition, but now something’s about to happen, and whatever we’re dealing with is trying to get the hell out of here. For all I know, the star has already ignited, and the energy just hasn’t reached the photosphere yet. We can’t detect neutrinos, but maybe the snowball can.”
“Jesus,” said Zeke. “It could get hot here in a hurry. We’re less than an A.U. out from that thing.”
“But not as vulnerable as exposed ice,” said Cogs. “You’ve seen how sensitive it is to temperature. There’s an organic matrix in that stuff, a matrix it’ll take me months to figure out, even with the Cyber II back at base. Too cold and it’s immobile, but communicative. Too hot and the matrix breaks up, ceases to function. In other words, it dies.”
“We were killing it with the flamers,” said Leon, his anger suddenly tempered. “But if that star blows, and it’s us or them who survives it, then my vote is for us. That ice has to come off the hull.”
There was mumbled agreement among the men, including Cogs. “I have an idea for doing that,” he said, “but we’ll have to move slowly with the snowball watching us. And its participation will be vital. It has to figure out what we’re doing, and have time to react to it.”
“OK,” said Waisley, “let’s hear it.”
Cogs proceeded to outline a simple yet crazy and delicate plan none of them believed could happen. Midway through the conversation, Zeke left to see if the snowball had changed position. When he returned, Cogs had finished, and everyone was ready for a meal and some sack time.
“We have a new development that doesn’t do your plan any good, Boris,” said Zeke.
“What the hell has happened now?”
Zeke shook his head. “Your snowball has disappeared.”
“Shit,” said Cogs softly.
“So let’s break out the flamers and get at it,” Arnie growled, the only thing he’d said during the entire meeting.
“No!” shouted Cogs. “Captain, we’ve got to wait, even if it’s just a few hours. There must be a reason that thing has gone away.”
The men groaned.
Waisley thought for only seconds. “You’re all tired and hungry. Take care of that first; then we’ll decide. Get to it.”
Everyone headed to mess, Cogs still pleading his case with Waisley as they left the room.
Thirty minutes later, drinking coffee over the remains of still another unidentified meal, they heard the screech of a horrible plasma wind raking the sunward hull of the ship.
Leon was finishing breakfast with Arnie and the others when an intercom call from Zeke ordered them immediately to suit-up bay. “Looks like you’ll get your wish,” said Leon to Arnie, but the man scowled and just said, “About time.”
So much for morning conversation with Arnie Solvido.
When they got to the bay, Zeke was watching the big monitor screen. He pointed to it, and what they saw sank their expectations into oblivion. “Snowball’s back,” said Zeke, “and it brought a couple of friends along with it.”
Three glistening orbs showed on the screen, two much smaller than the third. “The big one is a klick off,” said Zeke. “The two little guys are only three hundred meters out, sitting right in our shadow. They moved in a couple of hours ago from that dusty cloud patch at eleven o’clock, streaming trails of vapor that Cogs says is normal water. And the radio noise is terrific, now. Waisley is going ahead with Cog’s plan, crazy as it sounds, but he wants you suited up to clear out that last reaction port if things don’t go right.”
They got suited and racked up six flamers this time, one per man. One port, six flamers. Could they work fast enough, before those things moved in to stop them? Leon suddenly felt like he was readying for battle, and he was sweating immediately after his suit was on.
The ship shuddered for one instant, and the orbs moved downwards on the screen, Zeke bringing them back to center with his camera controls. Another shudder, and motion ceased on the screen.
“A small rotation, and the top of that ice ridge should be warming now. It was right at the sun-line,”
Zeke said.
The small orbs on the screen grew larger, the big one remaining as it was. “They’re coming in, just like Cogs said. The guy is amazing,” said Zeke, then, “Switching to forward cam’.”
What they saw astonished them, the sight of a two-meter high ridge of ice rippling, undulating, rising to a crescent-shape peak to wave like cloth in a gentle breeze. Zeke switched back, and the entire screen was filled with a cloud of glistening crystals.
“They’re coming for it, Captain!” shouted Zeke. “They’re right on us!”
“We’re watching,” came the reply.
Zeke switched back as Orion shuddered again, then again. Another short rotation. The ridge ice was flowing from base to crest, now, stretching several meters above the hull, waving like a field of grain, and then the blackness beyond was covered with sparkling white, visible tendrils reaching towards the dancing crest, fanlike, moving along it to form a bridge along which ice flowed as if sucked on by some giant mouth. As they watched, astonished, the entire ridge, thousands of kilos, flowed upwards and across the bridge, leaving behind the dull yet unmistakable clean surface of the hull.
“They sucked it up!” said Leon. “They actually did the job for us. How could Cogs figure that would happen?”