“Anything else I need to know?”
“You won’t even feel a lurch. Smoothest ride in the universe,” Charles said.
Mercury’s human pilot from the first mission had been replaced by a Martian-manufactured dedicated thinker. It gave us a one-minute warning. With a loud series of pops like gunshots, the vehicle lifted on a pillar of flame and steam, pushing us firmly into our couches. Through the ports and on vid displays, we watched Mars recede. The little ship swung around to target the small gray-black moon, and we enjoyed a few minutes of quiet inaction while it carried us into a high dawn.
Cameron lifted her head from her couch as far as the restraints allowed and smiled at me. “I wanted to tell you how honored we are — I am — to be included. This is incredible… Absolutely fantastic. I’m terrified.”
I smiled as much reassurance as I could muster. What we were about to do was beyond my imagination — though not beyond the calculating power of my enhancement.
Because there would be no acceleration, no force expended, a very different notion of force and work came into play — based entirely on descriptor adjustments observed in experiment. Translating into familiar terms, moving Phobos across ten thousand light-years would require stealing from the galactic treasure-chest enough energy to power a star like the sun for several years.
The approach to the moon seemed glacially slow. Phobos, across an hour, grew from a bright speck to a dark smudge as we fell again into Martian shadow.
Deceleration was more abrupt than take-off, one loud staccato burn that left bruises on my elbow where it pressed against a thinly padded metal bar. We skimmed a few hundred meters above the regolith of Phobos, ancient gray and black mottled craters, grooves, pits, and scars from early mining and research.
We would be occupying a thirty-year-old mining base near the center of Stickney crater, still viable but inhabited only by arbeiters.
If Mercury were attacked, we would have a better chance of surviving buried beneath the small moon’s bleak gray surface.
“There it is,” Leander said. Charles sat up. On one sloping side of the irregular bowl of Stickney crater, a small landing beacon flashed every few seconds, as it had for decades. Mercury shifted course with a lurch. We approached the beacon with alarming speed.
“Searching for anchor points,” the thinker announced.
Another jarring deceleration, then a gentle bump as Mercury locked down. We checked all systems in the station, found everything in adequate condition, and extended the ship’s transfer tube.
Charles unbelted from the couch and I followed, floating free. “Three days’ supplies,” Charles said with a crooked grin as he passed me in the cargo bay.
“Will that be enough?” Galena Cameron asked, face creased in concern.
“We hope to be gone less than five hours,” Leander called from the deck above.
Hergesheimer grimaced. “We could spend ten years studying the system and not know enough.”
“The tunnels are going to be cold and uncomfortable for several hours,” Leander said. “Not used to visitors.”
Crawling through the transfer tube behind Charles, I nearly bumped into an old arbeiter felted with dust. It floated in a corner, the size and approximate color of a much-loved teddy bear, ancient sensor torque spinning with a faint squeak as it examined us.
“This device is in need of repair,” it said in a muffled voice.
Charles rotated in the lock to look at me, and for the first time in weeks I smiled, remembering Trés Haut Médoc. He returned the smile, wincing as stretched skin tugged on his nano patches. “We really should take better care of our orphans,” he said.
Hergesheimer cursed the lack of adequate sensor ports, and Leander instructed a small sample-drilling arbeiter to make new ones. We had brought repair kits with us, and most of the station arbeiters were undergoing upgrades and refits. Galena Cameron coordinated the sensors and telescopes, sitting in a cold cubic chamber by herself, putting everything through practice runs with simulated targets and data.
For the time being, I had little to do. I helped Leander by sitting in the star-shaped central control chamber and keeping close watch on pressure integrity; we could not trust the station’s own emergency systems until the upgrades were finished. I occupied one point of the star. Charles nursed the QL thinker in another. He leaned around the corner, optic leads attached to the back of his head, and said, “It’s fuddled.”
“What is?”
“The thinker. I should have given it a focusing task before we left. It’s off somewhere doing something we’ll never need to know about.”
“Can you get it back?” I asked.
“Of course. It just takes a while to corral all of its horses. How’s your enhancement?”
“Quiet, actually,” I said. “I think I’ve finally got it under control.”
“Good.” He looked at the wall behind me as if someone might be there. I felt the urge to turn, but I knew we were alone in the control center. “Casseia, I don’t know what this is going to do to me. Every time I guide the QL, I get a different reaction. It’s definitely not…” He couldn’t seem to find the word. He waggled his fingers in the air.
“Pleasant?” I offered.
“Maybe too pleasant.” he said. “Like slipping into a bad habit. Like joining a raucous party of crazy geniuses. There’s always something enchanting, the solution to everything — ”
“You’d like that,” I said quietly.
“Exactly. My weakness. I go looking for it, and the true parts vanish like ghosts, leaving only a sensation of completeness. The QL chases different kinds of truths, things not useful to human brains. Mathematical tangents we’ll never pursue, logics that actually hurt us. I have to watch myself, or I’ll come back and not be useful. To you or anybody.”
“You’ll always be useful,” I reassured him.
“Not necessarily. I just wanted to ask… May I keep a focus on you? I don’t really have anything but this job and you. Focusing on the job is recursive. Not productive.”
“How do you mean, focus?”
“A goal,” he said. “Something to value that’s real.”
The request bothered me deeply. I decided that a question needed to be asked now, no matter how awkward it might be. “Are you making a pass, Charles?”
“No,” he said. A frown crossed his face and he looked away again. “I need a strong friend. I hope that’s clear, and appropriate.” He took a deep breath. “Casseia, to hit on you now would be so horrible… You’re still grieving.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I need someone here who cares for me in more than a professional sense. To bring me back. Me. Not some product of merging with the QL, not some intellectual mutant.”
“I care for you,” I said. “You’re important in and of yourself. I value you.”
His expression softened. Once again, I felt my power to please and was dismayed by it. “That’s what I need,” he said. “But don’t be frightened. Even if I lose myself, whatever’s left will bring us back. Tamara or Stephen can take my place later. For the big trip.”
“Is it that dangerous?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Charles said. “But each time gets more difficult. The truths are so compelling.”
“Dangerous truths.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Falling in love with another reality… Getting all set to marry it. And being jilted.”
Leander entered the control center from below, hand over hand in the moon’s weak gravity. “ Galena and Jackson say they’re ready. I’ve connected our tweaker by direct link to Preamble’s big tweaker. We’re getting good signals. I can’t guarantee keeping a connection when we move, but I can probably get it back when we return.”