Even as she asked that question, her mind was posing a more abstract one. How could orbiting lumps of rock be vectoring in at them, all at once and from all directions? Random processes did not work that way.
Kallik, with hands to spare, was doing better than Hans Rebka. Without saying a word she was at work on the control panel. The ship spun on its axis, and Darya felt a powerful, steady thrust added to the jerks and surges of the collision-avoidance system.
From her position in the bunk she could still see the main display screen. It showed a circle of light surrounded by bright glittering motes. As she watched it came swooping closer at alarming speed. When they seemed ready to plunge right into its center, the ship pivoted on its axis and decelerated at maximum power. Darya was again pressed flat to the bunk’s mattress. She heard a startled grunt from Hans Rebka and a thump as he fell to the floor.
Darya felt a few seconds of maximum force on her body; then all acceleration ceased. The drive turned off. Darya found herself lying in something close to normal gravity. She lifted her head.
Hans Rebka was picking himself up painfully from the floor. Kallik was still seated, clutching with both hands at the control panel. The Hymenopt stared at them with the semicircle of rear-facing eyes and bobbed her head.
“My apologies. It was wrong to take such action without seeking permission. However, I judged it necessary if this ship and its occupants were to ss-ss-survive.”
Rebka was rubbing his right shoulder and hip. “Damn it, Kallik, there was no need to panic. The collision avoidance system is designed to handle multiple approaches — though I must say, I’ve never known a bombardment like that.”
“Nor will you again, in normal ss-ss-circumstances.”
“But what made you think we’d be any safer here, on the surface of the planetoid?” Darya had looked out of the port and confirmed her first impression. The Summer Dreamboat was sitting on a solid surface, in a substantial gravity field.
Kallik gestured out of the same port. The upper part of another ship was visible around the tight curve of the planetoid. “For two reasons. First, it was clear from the fact that the Have-It-All could sit on the surface with a working beacon, and therefore with working antennas, that there could be no continuous rain of materials here at the surface of the planetoid. I already thought that meant safety, even before I saw what was triggering the collision-avoidance system.”
“Rocks and ice?”
“No.” The black cranium turned slowly back and forth. “When I caught sight of the objects raining in on us, I had a second reason for descending rapidly. The attackers were free-space forms. I knew they would avoid any substantial gravity field, and we would be safe here.” The Hymenopt turned to face Darya. “Those were not rocks or ice, Professor Lang. We were attacked by Phages.”
Hans Rebka looked startled. But Darya jerked upright in the bunk and clapped her hands together with excitement. “Phages! That’s terrific.”
“Terrific?” Rebka stared at her in disbelief. “I don’t know how much exposure you’ve had to Phages, Darya, but I can tell you this: they may be slow, but they’re nasty.”
“And these Phages are not so slow,” Kallik said calmly. “They are faster than any of which I have seen reports.”
“Which makes them worse.” Rebka stared at the excited Darya. “Do you want to be killed?”
“Of course I don’t. We made it through Summertide together, and yet you still ask me a question like that?” Darya had trouble keeping a smile off her face. “I want to live as much as you do. But put yourself in my position. I drag us all the way out here to the middle of nowhere, telling you we’ll discover clues to the Builders. And then all we find are dreary bits of rock and old mine-workings. Until a few minutes ago I thought that might be all that we would find. But you know as well as I do, Phages are found around Builder artifacts, and only there. They may even be Builder artifacts — a number of specialists have suggested that theory.” She stood up and went to stare out of the ship’s port, at the gleaming and suspiciously regular surface of the planetoid. “I was right, Hans. I felt it back on Quake, and I feel it more than ever now. We’re getting there! The Builders have been gone for a long time — but we’re close to finding out where they went.”
Kallik wanted to scramble into a suit and head off at once across the surface of the planetoid. Louis Nenda’s ship was in plain sight, a few hundred meters away, and she was itching to hurry over to it. The need to know if her master was alive or dead made her abandon any thought of caution.
It took a direct order from Hans Rebka to stop her. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I can think of ten ways you might get killed, and there must be twenty more I don’t know about. When you go, one of us goes with you. And you don’t go yet.” At his insistence Kallik settled down on her stubby abdomen and joined the other two in making a first survey of their surroundings.
Even from a distance, the body on which the Dreamboat rested had appeared anomalously massive and anomalously spherical. An hour of observation and measurement added other peculiarities. When Kallik and Hans Rebka finally put on their suits and made a first descent onto the planetoid’s surface, Darya stayed behind, monitored their progress, and entered the physical data into the Dreamboat’s log. A copy was going to J’merlia on Dreyfus-27, together with a note of their safe landing and their location. Darya prepared another copy for tight-beam transmission to Opal, with a request that it be forwarded via the Bose Network to Sentinel Gate.
She smiled to herself as she reviewed the message before sending it out. Just dull statistics, most people would say. She was giving little but the facts. But there would be high excitement over these particular dull statistics when they reached her colleagues on Sentinel Gate and were passed on in turn to Builder specialists in the spiral arm. Every last one of them would want to be here.
She kept an eye on Kallik and Hans, who were moving cautiously away from the Summer Dreamboat, and played back the message before sending it to Opal.
SURFACE TEMPERATURE: 281 K; THE SURFACE OF THE BODY IS WARM, ABOVE THE FREEZING POINT OF WATER. GIVEN ITS ENVIRONMENT, REMOTE FROM MANDEL, IT SHOULD BE HUNDREDS OF DEGREES COLDER.
FIGURE: THE BODY IS A PERFECT SPHERE TO WITHIN THE LIMITS OF OBSERVATION; RADIUS, 1.16 KILOMETERS.
SURFACE GRAVITY: 0.65 GEE; GIVEN ITS SIZE, IT SHOULD BE LESS THAN A THOUSANDTH OF THIS VALUE.
MASS: 128 TRILLION TONS.
DENSITY: ASSUMING HOMOGENEOUS COMPOSITION, 19,600 TONS PER CUBIC METER. NOTE THAT ALTHOUGH THIS IS LESS THAN SOME CECROPIAN COMMERCIAL MATERIALS, IT IS ABOUT 1,000 TIMES AS DENSE AS ANY NATURALLY OCCURRING SUBSTANCE.
ATMOSPHERE: 16 PERCENT OXYGEN, 1 PERCENT CARBON DIOXIDE, 83 PERCENT XENON. THIS IS UNLIKE THE ATMOSPHERE OF ANY PLANET IN THE SPIRAL ARM; THE XENON CONTENT IS AN UNHEARD-OF CONCENTRATION; AND A BODY OF THIS SIZE SHOULD POSSESS NO ATMOSPHERE AT ALL. NOTE THAT THIS ATMOSPHERE WILL SUSTAIN LIFE FOR ALL OXYGEN-BREATHING FORMS OF THE SPIRAL ARM.
MATERIAL COMPOSITION: THE OUTER SURFACE HAS THE APPEARANCE OF SMOOTH, FUSED SILICA. THE INTERNAL COMPOSITION IS UNKNOWN, BUT IT IS OPAQUE TO ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION OF ANY WAVELENGTH.