No. Jelca had plans for this second generator. I just couldn't guess what those plans were.
Hampered by my obstructed vision, I examined the black coffin. It was wired into another piece of equipment: a waist-high glass box with wing panels attached to the top. "Photo-collectors," I murmured. "Curiouser and curiouser."
"What is a photo-collector?" Oar asked.
"These panels," I told her, "soak up light and other radiation that hits them… which must be a hefty dose of energy, considering the output of this building. The panels obviously transfer power to a battery inside this case, and the battery supplies the Sperm generator; but damned if I know why. What's the point of generating a Sperm field on a planet?"
"Jelca is very very stupid about sperm," Oar answered.
I gave her a look she couldn't see through my suit.
Cursed with Hope
Minutes later, we were back on the street. Oar had replaced the suit where she found it, and my skin was rediscovering the joy of breathing; wearing the suit had been like being wrapped in plastic, close and sweaty.
I had decided not to move the ancestors away from the walls just yet. Oar assured me they were all getting enough light and air, and would scarcely notice a few more hours of overlapping each other. Putting the people back would tip off Jelca that he'd been discovered… and I didn't want that until I was ready to confront him. At the very least, I had to talk with Ullis first. Maybe the other Explorers needed to know too; but maybe not.
Maybe Jelca had a sensible explanation for everything.
I know. I was being foolish. How much more evidence did I need that Jelca had degenerated into a self-centered bastard? Toying with Eel and Oar, then callously discarding them… hiding the generator from his fellow Explorers… giving me the cold shoulder as if I were a Vac-head…
And yet…
Since Oar had first told me he was here, I had dreamt about him. Thought about him. Imagined us together. Even earlier, during my years on the Jacaranda, he had crossed my mind now and then… especially when I lay beside some snoring substitute I had taken to bed because desperation got the better of me. Alone with my eggs, I invented fantasies about Jelca: a fellow Explorer I could make love with, not just a convenient Vacuum crew member to slick myself down.
I had such hopes. Stupid hopes — I knew that. But I had hoped that maybe, losing myself to Jelca would sear off my guilt, burn it away with white heat for just a few seconds. Whom else could I turn to? If I threw myself on another Explorer, or Ullis, or Oar, it would be so hollow, nothing more than drugging myself with sex. But with Jelca it could be different… couldn't it? He was not just someone within arm's reach, he was someone I'd thought about, dreamed about…
I'd even dated him. Twice.
This sounds so banal now. It embarrasses me. I'd say I was lying to myself, but the lies were so obvious I didn't believe them, even at the time. Yet I wanted to believe. I wanted to have something with someone somewhere. Who else did I have but Jelca?
I wondered if Oar was thinking the same thing as we walked down the street in silence: patently false hopes, because the alternative was despair.
Transport Tunnels
We found Ullis in her cabin on the whale. She had jacked in to the ship's system and was programming with fervid intensity.
"Jelca's got a second Sperm-field generator," I said. "Did you know?"
She blinked without speaking for several long seconds. Then she shook her head.
It took some time to give her the full story. When I was finished, she could offer no explanation of what he might be doing. "There's no reason to generate Sperm tails on Melaquin," she said. "Even if he wanted to set up a transport tunnel… no. What would be the point?"
"What is a transport tunnel?" Oar asked.
"A way of sending things very quickly from one place to another," I answered. "A Sperm tail is a long tube of hyperspace… which means it's really outside our normal universe. Physical laws are very different there. If you stuck your arm in one end of the tube, it would immediately emerge at the other end, even if the ends were thousands of kilometers apart. If you anchored one end here on Melaquin and another on the moon, say, you could reach through, pick up a handful of moon dust, and bring it back just like reaching through an open window."
"I wouldn't reach through that window if I were you," Ullis said. "If you're standing with normal Earth air pressure behind you, and the moon's vacuum in front, you'd go shooting straight through mighty fast."
"Which is how we usually transport things along Sperm tails," I told Oar. "When we go from one ship to another, we drop the pressure at the receiving end so things shoot through from the sender. When we go from the ship to a planet, we increase the pressure in the Transport Bay so that it blows us down…"
"This is very boring," Oar interrupted. "Also irrelevant."
Ullis said. "If Jelca wants to use a Sperm tail at all, he has to anchor down the far end. Otherwise the tail whips around at random."
"We all carry anchors," I reminded her. Landing parties needed anchors to attract the tail when they wanted to leave the planet. Anchors were small enough to fit in the palm of your hand; I had one in my belt pouch, and no doubt Ullis did too.
"So Jelca has an anchor," Ullis conceded. "What's he going to do with it?"
"He brought the Sperm generator to this city with a remote-controlled probe drone. If the probe still has fuel, he could load an anchor on board, and fly the probe anywhere on Melaquin."
"So what?" Ullis asked. "Yes, he can set up a transport tunnel anywhere on planet, but what's the point? Why would he want to go somewhere else when he'll be going home anytime now?"
"Unless he's not going home." The words were out of my mouth before I gave them a second thought.
"Don't be crazy, Festina. We all want off this rock. Jelca may be a turd but there's no reason he wouldn't—"
"Shit," I blurted out. The light had dawned at last. "Shit, shit, shit!"
"What?" Ullis asked.
"She is worshiping," Oar told Ullis in a low voice.
"Oar," I said, "stay here with Ullis. Ullis, I have to find Jelca for a chat. If I don't come back in a reasonable time, tell the others everything I've told you. And whatever you do, don't let Jelca onto the spaceship!"
"What's wrong?" Ullis asked bewildered.
I threw a tense glance at Oar, then grabbed a scrap of paper from Ullis's work area and scribbled a message.
Ullis gaped when she read it.
"What does it say?" Oar demanded.
I didn't answer; I was already running out the door.
Out of the City
No one working on the starship knew where Jelca was. Someone suggested he might have gone to help with the lark-plane.
I jogged down the boulevard toward the elevator, each footfall echoing off nearby buildings. As I passed Jelca's quarters — the place where Oar had been crying — I stopped to see if he was there. He wasn't… but his room contained more clothes of the silvery fabric used in his radiation suit: shirts, pants, even socks and gloves. I wondered if he'd tried piece-by-piece radiation clothing before he made the full suit; or perhaps he wore these as a second layer of protection under the main suit. If nothing else, having "street clothes" made of the same material would help reduce the radiation he soaked up while putting on the full suit inside the tower.
The temptation to search Jelca's quarters was strong — a thorough search, ripping the place apart if necessary — but I doubted I'd find anything. Besides, I felt an urgent need to confront him. And give him one last chance, said a voice in my head… as if there was still hope he could explain away all his actions. I hadn't figured out everything yet; the purpose of the second Sperm generator was still a mystery to me. However, I thought I had many of the answers I needed. I just hoped I was wrong.