“Into your suit,” an uncompromising voice said. “If you have an explanation, you can give it later.”
It was not a time to argue. One shot from any of those weapons would pierce the average hull. Aybee had a suit on and was ready to go in less than thirty seconds. He nodded as he closed the final seal. The outer lock opened, and air hissed out into vacuum. One of the guns lifted and gestured. “Outside.”
One step behind Gudrun, Aybee moved on through the lock. It had been three days since he last looked out of an observation port, and he stared around with keen interest. The strange rainbow aurora had vanished, presumably disappearing when the drive went off, and the familiar starfield was all around. The Sun was visible off to his right, noticeably more brilliant than it had been when the journey had begun. Aybee made a quick assessment of its apparent magnitude and decided that they were somewhere on the outer edge of the Kernel Ring.
The ship had docked on the perimeter of a structure that was no more than a minor way station, a long skeletal framework of struts with clamps to hold ships in position and massive tanks for fusion fuels. The group moved to a little pinnace propelled by a high-thrust mirror-matter engine. Their real destination was a few kilometers Sunward, a dull darkness whose size and shape could be assessed only from stray glints of sunlight splintering off external ports and antennas.
The body was roughly spherical, perhaps five kilometers across. Aybee stared at it with the greatest interest. If he were unworried, it was not because he was confident of his own fate. He was simply unable to drag his mind away from the new physical universe suggested by the ship he had arrived in. And if he had any emotion, it was anticipation; whatever he had seen in transit, there would be greater marvels here, where the transit ship had been built.
Aybee did a quick analysis. The sphere ahead might be a source of ships, but it was not itself a ship. It was also the size and shape of a cargo hulk, but it was not being used for cargo. There was no signs of a drive mechanism, and there could be none, since the delicate spikes and silvery filaments of exterior antennae were incompatible with accelerated motion. No stronger than tinsel, they would be crushed and deformed by the slightest of body forces.
It could be a colony, like the Outer System’s free drifters, or it might be a converted factory, originally dedicated to the production of a particular line of goods.
Aybee abandoned speculation. They were moving to a huge airlock built into the hull’s convex surface, and already several of the party had their hands ready to break suit seals. Aybee waited. If anyone attempted to breathe vacuum, he would not be the first. He was amused to note that Gudrun had positioned herself as far away from him as possible, at the opposite side of the lock. The escort had apparently formed their own conclusions about Aybee’s threat to them. No one held a gun at the ready, and half of them did not even bother to look at him.
The inner lock opened. The group moved quietly forward into a large, bare chamber with a flat floor and a local gravity field that varied irregularly from one point to the next. To Aybee, that suggested the resultant vector from many kernels scattered through the interior of the body, each adding its own field component.
The man in front halted and turned around. At his gesture, Aybee removed his own suit with the rest. For the first time he could assess their physical appearance. Most of them had the short, stocky build that he associated with the Inner System and the Kernel Ring, but two were long and lean, as much Cloudlanders as anyone Aybee had ever seen. They were probably not recent arrivals, either, since they were not dressed in Outer System style; their arms and legs stuck wildly out of clothes far too small for them.
Gudrun was staring at him in fear and horror. Aybee felt tempted to go across, wiggle his fingers in his ears, and see if she screamed. What was she expecting? Someone to appear in a puff of smoke and carry her off to hell?
Instead he nodded amiably to the others in the group. “Well.” They all stared at him. “You got me. What happens now?”
“That depends on you.” The speaker was a black-haired man with dark skin and a thickset build. Aybee recognized the voice as the one that had been ordering him around. “I was told to get you here, that’s all. If Gudrun is right”—the man spoke as someone who already knew her well—“then you’re in trouble. We don’t like spies here. If you’re innocent, you’ll have to prove it.”
“Guilty until proved innocent. Nice. Where’s here?”
Several of the men stirred uneasily at Aybee’s question. “Got a bit of nerve, haven’t you?” the stocky man commented. “What did you tell him, Gudrun?”
“Nothing.” She was defensive. “At least, not very much. I thought until we were on the ship that he was just a new trainee that we captured on the Sagdeyev space farm. How was I supposed to know he’s a Cloudland spy?”
That produced another reaction from the rest of them, and a couple of guns were again pointed at Aybee.
“I don’t think you want to believe this,” he said. “But I’m not a spy, and I’ve never been one.”
“He’s lying!” Gudrun’s face was flushed with anger. “He even gave me a false name. He says he’s Karl Lyman, but his real name is Smith—Apollo Belvedere Smith.”
That shocked Aybee more than he wanted to admit. He could see how he might have revealed by his actions that he was not from the space farm or that another farmer might have said he was not part of that group. But how could anyone know his real name? Unless he had taken to talking in his sleep, he had never mentioned his name since the accident back on the farm.
“Is that your name?” one of the tall, thin escorts asked. “Because if it is, then, man, you’re in deep trouble.” He turned to the rest of them without waiting to hear Aybee’s answer. “There’s an Apollo Belvedere Smith who works for Outer System headquarters. High up, staff position. So if this is him, he’s definitely a spy, and we have to—”
“I tell you, I’m not a spy.” Aybee cut him off before the other man could finish. “I’m a scientist—”
“He’s lying!” Gudrun shouted. “He’s no scientist. He lied to me.”
“He did,” said a quiet new voice from behind the group. “And yet, oddly enough, he is not lying now. He is telling the exact truth.”
Everyone spun around. A small, lightly built man had stepped into the chamber through its open inner door. He was dressed in a tight-fitting suit of rusty black, and on his head he wore a peaked cap of the same sable tone. His face was fine-boned and pale, with an odd little smile on the thin hps, but that expression was belied and dominated by the eyes. There was no smile there, only a dark and piercing look that demanded and held attention.
Aybee found his attention drawn to those eyes. It took an amazing effort to look away. He heard Gudrun gasp. She, at least, had not been expecting the new arrival. But she had to be less surprised than Aybee himself. For although the dress was quite different and the teeth no longer incongruously blackened, Aybee recognized the man standing in front of them. It was the Negentropic Man, just as he had danced and capered through Bey Wolf’s tormented memories.
The newcomer stepped forward, and the others moved aside to make a corridor. Right in front of Aybee, the man stopped and looked up. Aybee was a head and a half taller. The thin grin widened.
“As you said, Apollo Belvedere Smith, there was no lie. You are a scientist, and Cinnabar Baker thinks you are the best in the system.” He held out his hand. “Let me welcome you here, and let me introduce myself.”