She frowned, concentrating. “So either it was completely fragmented or it did leave the system.”
“Unless somehow it got trapped in another equilibrium point.”
“But the only way that could have happened in so short a time would be if it was hit twice, or collided with some other rock …” They looked at each other and she felt their fantasy building, layer on layer.
“The most likely place would be in the other Lagrange points.”
“Right, and probably a stable one—”
“The aft-trojans,” he finished it for her. “It could be there right now, as good as new.” He looked up again at the ceiling as though he actually expected to see it.
“As good as new?” Her face twisted.
He shrugged. “Let's face it—if the factory itself took a hit, the reactor would probably be spilling radiation. You couldn't miss it. But nobody ever reported anything like that from the aft-trojans. If the plant was blown up, there wouldn't be much point going after it; but if it wasn't … we could buy the whole goddamn Demarchy with that find!” He rubbed his hands together.
“How would we ever find it, in the whole of the aft-trojans?”
“They were mostly uninhabited, anything with any manmade stuff would stand out in the readings. That signal separater Fitch gave us could be just the edge we need for this.”
“But even the core-trojans are spread over a hundred and forty thousand kilometers—” She pictured them in her mind, their tenuous teardrop spread veil-thin through endless vacuum.
“I didn't say it would be easy. It's probably not even there; this whole thing is insane. But you wanted a long shot, and that's the only one I've got. It's either shoot our wad on this or go on the way we have, bleeding to death.” He shrugged. “Your choice is mine. What do you say?”
She took a deep breath. “What the hell. Let's gamble, let's throw it all away on the trojans! What the hell have we got to lose?” She raised her arms and swept them down, rising defiantly through the air.
He nodded, his eyes shining. “Only our chains.”
“Nothing.” Chaim looked up from the read-outs. They had been in the aft-trojans, sixty degrees behind Discus, for more than two megaseconds. And so far they had found nothing that should not have been there; no trace of radiation or any material that had not been formed in the original fusion of stone out of primordial dust.
Mythili sighed, saying nothing because she could not think of anything to say. She finished a handful of nuts, feeling the presence of every hard, broken fragment prick the tight walls of her stomach; they had begun rationing their supplies to stretch their search time. Wasted time. She tried not to think it, and failed. She looked away at the chameleon, which clung to the wall beside her with its tonglike toes. It seemed to crave their company more and more; or perhaps there was simply nothing else left for it to do. There did not seem to be a single cricket remaining on the ship, and there was nothing in their own dwindling supplies the lizard would eat. She wondered how long it could survive without food. Lucky … she thought, and sighed.
“You want to check out the twin?” Chaim twisted to look directly at her. “There was something in the long-range scan; I'm not losing my mind—” he murmured, as if he wasn't absolutely certain of it himself.
She shrugged. “We're here; we might as well.” The kilometers-long piece of stone below orbited a common center of gravity with a larger mate she could see shining, a spurious star, above the bleak, dead mass they had just close-scanned.
She altered their course again, feeling the delicate mastery of her skills that she had regained and enhanced these past megaseconds. This was something that used her abilities fully, challenged them, honed them.… But soon it would all be gone. She didn't regret the decision they had made in gambling on the long shot; but she did regret that it would do them no good—that the satisfaction of this moment would only leave her more hungry, when their last chance and this ship were gone.
They closed with the second planetoid. Chaim put the results of the reconnaissance scan on the screen almost perfunctorily, below the actual view of naked stone framed in the ship's viewing port. A binary … it was hopeless, the original factory had not been part of a binary system. Their long-range instruments must be going bad on top of everything else. She watched morosely over his shoulder as the readings began to appear, lining up as she had learned to expect them, high in iron and nickel ores. Anticipating zero on hydrocarbons and metal alloys, she looked out at the barren scape below them before she saw the actual figures.… She blinked, and looked again. “Chaim.” She reached out, her hand brushed his arm unthinkingly.
He glanced up. “Oh, God,” he breathed. “Oh, God.…” His arm knotted and trembled. A pragmatic, colorless dawn was breaking across its surface; the growing light glanced from the bristling discontinuity of towers and domes. She tore her eyes away from the sight of them: The readings continued to come, and looking down she saw that they were not zero anymore.
“Ninety-five,” Chaim murmured. “Look at that! Look! We've found it! Geez Allah, we're rich!” He caught her hand, pulling her toward him, sending them out in a spin until they rebounded from the control room's ceiling. “He was right, the old man was right, God damn him … he finally did something for me!”
She heard her own laughter echoing through his shouts, echoing through the ship—her own laughter, as alien as a voice out of deep space. Chaim's arms closed around her, she felt suddenly as solid as steel, as ephemeral as bubbles. She pulled his face toward her own and kissed him.
He stared, speechless, as she broke away again. He kissed her back, eyes closed, arms tightening, pressing himself against her with sudden urgency.
She broke away and struggled back toward the panel. “I—I'll take us down.” She felt her blood sweep to the ends of her body and recoil through every artery, capillary, vein; dazed by a feeling as strong as terror, that was not. Her hands stumbled over the instruments.
Chaim nodded, clearing his throat. “Sure … Let's see what we've got.” He settled down to the instrument panel beside her, his voice husky. “Look at that; there's no radiation leaking at all. It must be in perfect shape!” He grinned, abruptly reoriented.
She felt her own excitement change form again as she looked down at the readings beside him. The figures twitched unexpectedly on the screen, still plagued by the random fluctuation that had been with them from the start. It struck her as ironic that after a gigasec this factory was in better shape than their own equipment. Her eyes tracked on across the readings, caught again. “Chaim, look. It looks like there's something in orbit here besides us.”
“Another ship?”
She nodded, pointing at the screen.
“Showing any power?” He peered past her.
“No …”
“Hm.” He let himself drift again abruptly. “Must be a derelict; doesn't look like much. We can check it out later, see what's left of it. But first I want to see that factory!”
She didn't argue.
She brought the ship in as close to the source of their readings as she could, handling the difficult rendezvous perfectly with only half her concentration. They went through the ritual of suiting up, emerging through the lock onto the airless surface of another unfamiliar world, seeming to move through it all for the first time. The planetoid rolled sunward into another fleeting day, and the light of distant Heaven silvered the razed stone surface of the docking field, limned the eerie insect-silhouette of the Mother behind them—etched the shining reality of the factory up ahead against the black surface of the sky. It seemed to grow out of the stone itself, an iceberg jutting above a frozen sea, the greater part of its plant buried beneath the surface. Beautiful, incongruous, immense—flawed. Unfamiliar with its form, still she recognized the gaping, unnatural breach along one side: “Chaim, it looks like it did take a hit.”