Groton manipulated his controls, that seemed to be almost as intricate as those of the macroscope maintenance, and on the screen the monster dummy-ship was lifted into place. This was a breech-loading cannon with a clip of four; further expenditures on dummies had been deemed a waste of time.
Groton fired. The gravity-diffusion field came on, taking a moment to develop full intensity. It was generated by a different unit than theirs of the residential area, since it was essential that they continue to be shielded from the full gravity and pressure of the planet. Then gas hurtled through the pipes and smashed into the base of the projectile, itself abruptly weightless. The control chamber shuddered.
Above, atmosphere imploded into the column of null, meeting the baffles there and forming into an instant hurricane with an eye that was a geyser of methane snow. All the pressure of Neptune’s atmosphere drove that bullet forward: one million pounds per square inch, initial.
Out from ammonia and water, both vaporized by the friction; through hydrogen and beyond the mighty atmosphere: a thousand miles beyond the apparent surface of the planet the motor cut in. The rocket accelerated at a rate that would have terminated any fleshly occupants and shattered unprotected equipment. It was a temporary motor, designed for power and not duration, and it consumed itself as it functioned; and it got the ship up to a velocity that would bring it to the destroyer in days instead of months.
“Certainly looks like a ship from here,” Afra said with admiration. “Are you sure you didn’t put Joseph in that lock by mistake?”
“Drone ship, on my honor. It only weighs a tenth as much as Joseph, and that galactic formula would asphyxiate our type of life as soon as it ignited, not to mention the fact that it burns its own guts. You can do a lot with chemical drive if you don’t have to sit on top of it.”
The watch began. Each person tracked the drone for four hours, ready to sound the alarm when anything happened. A light-day was a very small distance compared to those they had become accustomed to, but even galactically sponsored chemical drive was very weak. The rocket achieved its top velocity and coasted, an empty shell. Their vigil lasted a fortnight.
The drone passed the nearest satellite and angled toward the destroyer itself. Nothing happened. It came within a light-minute of the main sphere and curved around it as though bent by a tremendous gravitational force, but did not stop. It passed another satellite on the way out.
“Either they’re dead or playing possum,” Groton said. “Do we try another?”
Another two weeks of eventless waiting, Ivo thought, but certainly the wisest course.
“I’m satisfied,” Afra said. “Obviously there are no functioning automatic defenses. I’m sorry we wasted this much time. Let’s move in ourselves.”
Ivo thought of objecting, then decided not to. She had spoken and it was so, impetuous or not. This project was hers, now.
They were space-borne again, and it was a strange sensation. Not since they put down on Schön, erstwhile moon of a moon, had they taken Joseph out of planetary control for any extended period. In the passing months the old reflexes had faded, if they had ever been really implanted, making free-fall unfamiliar, making them have to stop and think out their actions.
“I like it,” Afra said. “Neptune is home, of course, but this is vacation.”
Why was she so buoyant? Ivo wondered. They were near the termination of their grisly mission, in whatever guise that mission existed now, and he would have expected it to remind her forcefully of the fate of her supposed fiancé. Instead she acted as though she had found new love. She hardly seemed to care about the destroyer itself, though it was the instigator of all of this.
Groton clapped his hand on Afra’s shoulder, sending her skidding in the weightlessness. “Girl, if you don’t get on those computations before I reorganize our gear, I’ll have the cap’n hurl you into the brig!”
They had tied down their equipment and pushed out from Neptune slowly, without the benefit of full gravity nullification. This had been expensive in working fluid, but far safer for man and machine. Now the ship was scooping in more hydrogen and compressing it, at the fringe of the Neptune atmosphere, so that they would have full tanks for the main haul. They were ready to retool for straight space flight.
They had to melt, despite Groton’s earlier objection; there was no other way to cover such a distance. The cycle was routine, however, once their course had been set. They revived in good condition light-seconds from one of the satellites. It had seemed wiser to investigate the minion before the master.
Ivo had been lulled by the somewhat cavalier attitude affected by the others, but the sight of the alien sphere looming so close — telescopically — reminded him with a shock that this was to be their first physical contact with an artifact of extraterrestrial civilization. A malignant one.
It was monstrous as they approached, not so much in its hundred-foot diameter (Afra had done expert photographic work and analyzing, to pinpoint that size at a distance of a light-day, even allowing for the superior equipment sponsored by galactic technology) as in its suggestion of implacable power. The surface was pocked, as though it had been subject to spatial debris for many millions of years. Portions of it projected, reminiscent of cannon.
Afra took over the telescope to make detail photographs. Now, while her attention was wholly taken up, he could watch her. She was radiant; her hair was bound in a single braid that drifted over one shoulder and down her front, red against the white of her blouse. She had recovered the weight she had lost and was now in vibrant health. Her lips were parted, half-smiling in her concentration. Light from the equipment played over her high cheekbone and across her perfect chin, caressing her face with shadow.
Was it the single rose he smelled again?
“Moonstruck,” Brad had termed him, setting that emotional snare, and Afra was that moon. Ivo knew he would have loved her anyway, whatever her color, whatever her intelligence. It was perhaps her appearance more than her personality; he had disillusioned himself long ago about his romantic values and hers. Still, the love he felt encompassed all of her, the violent along with the beautiful. All, no matter what.
She jerked her head up, eyes widening in shock, showing that blue again. Ivo jumped guiltily, thinking she had caught him staring, but her exclamation banished such inconsequential alarm immediately.
“It’s tracking us!”
Groton and Beatryx seemed to materialize beside her.
“It’s live!” Afra said with the same shock. “It has a range-finder on us.”
“Since we’re a sitting duck, all we can do is quack,” Groton said, but he did not look as complacent as he sounded.
Beatryx ventured one of her rare technical comments: “Wouldn’t it have done something, if it meant to?”
Afra smiled, as she did so readily and prettily now. “You’re right,” Tryx. I’m getting hysterical after the fact. We’d be smithereened by now if we were going to be. We’re within fifty thousand miles, and you can bet that’s well within its sphere of control. So eradication just isn’t in our horoscope for today.”
The strange antenna continued to track as they came close. It was a bowl-shaped spiral of wire about two feet in diameter, with beads strung on the outermost spire. There was no other sign of life. Ivo felt the cold sweat on his palms and wiped it off, embarrassed by it and what it signified. Was he the only one to feel old-fashioned fear?