With hands that were not quite steady, she unlocked the microcylinder, removed the tiny gel-encapsulated unit, and placed it in the culture dish that Kitti had readied. An agony as severe as a knife stab almost doubled Bay up, but she fought the grief and the knowledge that Kit Ping Yung had died to produce that altered egg cell. The label was even prepared: Trial 2684/16/M: nucleus #22A, mentasynth Generation B2, boron/silicon system 4, size 2H; 16.204.8.
Walking as fast as her shaky legs would permit and gradually recovering her composure, Bay took the final legacy of the brilliant technician to the gestation chamber and put it carefully beside the forty-one similar units that held the hopes of Pern.
“That was the second probe to malfunction,” Ezra told Paul and Emily, his quiet voice ragged with disappointment. “When the first one blew up, or whatever, I thought it a mischance. Even vacuum isn’t perfect insulation against decay. Probe motors could misfire, their recording device clog somehow or other. So I refined the program for the second one. It got exactly as far as the first one, and then every light went red. Either that atmosphere is so corrosive even our probe enamels melt, or the garage on the Yokohama has somehow been damaged, and the probes, too. I dunno, guys.”
Ezra was not much given to agitated gestures but he paced up and down Paul’s office, strutting and waving his arms about him like a scarecrow in a high wind. The last few days had wearied and aged him. Paul and Emily exchanged concerned glances. Kitti Ping’s death had been such a shock, following so closely on the sled collision disaster. The geneticist had seemed so indestructible, despite the fact that everyone knew of her physical frailty. She had exuded a quality of immortality, however false that had proved.
“Whose theory was it that we were being bombarded from outer space to reduce us to submission?” Ezra asked, stopping suddenly in his tracks and staring at the two leaders.
“Ah, c’mon now, Ezra!” Paul was bluntly derisive. “Think a minute, man. We’re all under a strain, but not one that makes us lose our wits. We all know that there are atmospheres that can and have melted probes. Furthermore—” He halted, not certain what would suffice to reassure Ezra, and himself.
“Furthermore, the organism attacking us,” Emily went on with superb composure, “is hydrocarbon based, and if it comes from that planet, its atmosphere is not corrosive. I favor malfunction.”
“My opinion, too,” Paul said, nodding his head vigorously. “Fardles, Ezra, let’s not talk ourselves into more problems than we’ve got.”
“We’ve got”—Ezra brought both fists down on the desk—“to probe that planet, or we won’t know enough to combat the stuff. Half the settlers want to know the source and destroy it so we can get back to our lives. Rake up the debris and forget all this.”
“What aren’t you telling us, Ezra?” Emily asked, cocking her head slightly and regarding the captain with an unflinching gaze.
Ezra stared back at her for a very long moment, then straightened from his half crouch over the desk and began to smile wryly.
“You’ve been sitting in the interface booth long hours, Ezra, and you weren’t playing tiddlywinks while the programs were running,” Emily went on.
“My calculations are frightening,” he said in a low voice, glancing over each shoulder. “If the program is in any way accurate, and I’ve run it five times now from start to finish, we have to put up with Thread for long after that red planet crosses out of the inner system.”
“How long will that be?” Paul felt his fingers gripping the arm rests and made a conscious effort to relax them while he tried to recall some reassuring facet of planetary orbits.
“I get between forty and fifty years!”
Emily grimaced, her mouth forming an O of surprise be-fore she slowly exhaled. “Forty or fifty years, you say.”
“If,” Ezra added grimly, “the menace originated from that planet.”
Paul caught his eyes and saw the ineffably weary and discouraged look in them. “If? There is another alternative?”
“I have discerned a haze about the planet, irrespective of its atmospheric envelope. A haze that spreads backward in this system and swirls along the eccentric’s path. I cannot refine that telescope enough to tell more. It could be space debris, a nebulosity, the remnants of a cometary tail, a whole bunch of things that are harmless.”
“But if it should be harmful?” Emily asked.
“That tail would take nearly fifty years to diffuse out of Pern’s orbit, some into Rukbat—the rest, who knows?”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Any suggestions?” Paul asked finally.
“Yes,” Ezra said, straightening his shoulders with a wrench. He held up two fingers. “Take a trip to the Yokohama, find out what’s bugging the probes, and send two of ’em down to the planet to gather as much information as we can. Send the other two along the line of that cometary dust and use the Yoko’s more powerful space scope with no planetary interference to see if we can identify its source and components.” Ezra then locked his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, a habit that always made Emily shudder. “Sorry, Em.”
“At least you can recommend some positive action,” Paul went on.
“The big question is, Paul, is there enough fuel to get someone to the Yoko and back? Kenjo’s already made more trips than I thought possible.”
“Good pilot,” Paul said discreetly. “There’s enough for what we need now. Kenjo will pilot, and did you wish to go with him?”
Ezra shook his head slowly. “Avril Bitra has the training for the job.”
“Avril?” Paul gave a harsh bark and then shook his head, grinning sourly. “Avril’s the last person I’d put on the Mariposa for any reason. Even if we knew where she is.”
“Really?” Ezra looked at Emily for an explanation, but she shrugged. “Well, then, Kenjo can double. No,” he corrected himself. “If something’s wrong with the probes, we’d need a good technician. Stev Kimmer. He’s back, isn’t he?”
“Who else?” Paul jotted down names rather than worry Ezra with more suspicions.
“Kenjo is a very capable technician,” Emily insisted.
“There should be two on the mission, for safety’s sake,” Ezra said, furrowing his brow. “This mission has got to give us the results we need.”
“Zi Ongola,” Paul suggested.
“Yes, the very one,” Ezra agreed. “If he runs into any trouble, I can have Stev at the interface for expert advice.”
“Forty years, huh?” Emily said, watching Paul underline the two final choices on the pad. “Rather longer than we’d bargained for, my friend. Let’s start training replacements.”
Inevitably their thoughts went to Wind Blossom, so obviously a frail vessel to continue the work her grandmother had begun.
Avril’s suspicious nature was aroused not by anything she heard, although what she did not hear was as significant, but by what she saw in the weary hours she manned the sled’s scope. It was usually trained on the Mariposa, sitting at the far end of the landing grid. The night before every one of Kenjo’s jaunts he had done exterior and internal checks of the craft. Fussy Fusi! Her use of the nickname was not quite derisive, because she simply could not figure out how he had managed to stretch the small reserve of fuel on the Mariposa as far as he already had. She had seen some activity about it last night but no sign of Kenjo. In fact, with neither moon out, she had just barely seen the shifting of shadow that indicated activity about the craft. She had been quite agitated. The only thing that reassured her was that several figures were involved. But no one entered the gig. That perplexed her.