“That’s not necessary.” Aybee took the outstretched hand and decided it was time to do more than just deny everything. He had to establish independence. “I know where I am. This is Ransome’s Hole. And you are Black Ransome.”
If Aybee had expected a shocked response, he was disappointed. The other man frowned just a little and gave Aybee’s hand a dry, firm shake. “I’m Ransome, true enough. Some call me Black Ransome, although that is not my name. And some call this Ransome’s Hole, too, though I would never do so.” The smile returned, warm and embracing. “I’m going to welcome you here, whether you want it or not. You’ve come a long way, and we must talk. You may be very valuable to us. Come on.”
Aybee had apparently been switched in status from prisoner and spy to welcome guest. Gudrun gasped, but there was no murmur of dissent from anyone. The force of Ransome’s personality was too strong to brook argument. Instead, the group of people moved to leave a clear path to the door. He turned and left, confident that Aybee would follow.
That annoyed Aybee. So Ransome was to lead, and he was supposed to trot along behind like some pet animal? No way.
He left the chamber just behind Ransome and tagged along until they were out of sight of the other group. But then he paused and looked around. Ransome went on, almost out of sight in the curving corridor, heading deeper into the sphere along a spiral path whose field in less than fifty meters fluctuated from almost zero g to a thirtieth of Earth gravity. The floor turned in the same space through 180 degrees. In any other structure, Aybee would have known just how to interpret that. The path must wind its way past two shielded kernels, one below the “floor,” the other, forty meters farther on, above the “ceiling”—which had become the floor.
That was the only logical explanation, but Aybee’s new experiences on the transit ship had taught him to mistrust preconceived ideas. He slowed his pace and hunted backward and forward, seeking a point of maximum field in the corridor floor. If he were now close to a kernel, he would feel an inertial dragging.
He went down on his hands and knees and put his head close to the floor, moving it slowly about. While he was in that position he saw a pair of black-clad legs standing a few feet in front of him.
“If you’re going to travel all the way like that,” Ransome’s calm voice said, “it will take you a long time and I won’t wait. I’ll send one of the machines back here to show you the way. It is a kernel down there, you know. What else did you think it might be?”
Aybee stood up. He was still young enough to hate looking like a fool more than anything in the world. For the rest of the journey through the interior of Ransome’s Hole he trudged grumpily along right behind Ransome.
In a few minutes they came to the end of the corridor and passed through into a great hemispherical chamber, furnished to a level of luxury that Aybee had never seen. Glittering silver sculptures of human and animal figures were everywhere. The domed ceiling housed a huge sprinkler system, able to deliver anything from a fine mist of rain to a total deluge. Fruit trees and flowering vines, trained in elaborate espaliers along walls and trellises, grew beneath in disciplined variety. At the center of the chamber stood its most spectacular feature. A forty-meter globe of greenish water was held in position by the gravitational field of the kernel at its center, and brilliantly colored fish were swimming within it. Fronds of weed and branched coral grew down on the kernel’s outer shield, and an external lighting system created ever-varying patterns of light and dark within the clouded interior.
Aybee goggled. No one had anything like that in the Outer System, not even the three general coordinators.
Ransome had caught his expression. The shorter man shrugged. “Not for me, Aybee Smith. That isn’t my taste at all.” He sounded amused and tolerant, far from the fanatical rebel promised by his reputation. The ogre of the Kernel Ring was easy company, lulling one to relax and listen to him.
“But sometimes you have to do these things, don’t you?” Ransome went on. “For the sake of the less scientific. Stick around here for a while, and you’ll see worse. Maybe you should think of this as my version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.”
The what of what? Aybee decided to look it up when he had a chance. Meanwhile, he could not help changing his mind about Black Ransome. The man was treating him like an equal rather than a prisoner, and given Ransome’s reputation and authority, that had to be flattering.
“Now, this is my own taste,” Ransome said. “A person can really work here.” He led the way through a gleaming door of white metal, on into a sparsely furnished room about eight meters by six. A long desk, half-covered with random piles of data cubes, stood against one wall. Half a dozen displays were mounted above it on plain beige walls that carried unobtrusive light fixtures, the biggest holograph projectors Aybee had ever seen, and no decorations of any kind. Elaborate computer consoles were built into the surface of the desk itself.
Ransome sat down on one of the three easy chairs and gestured to another one. Now that they had arrived, he seemed in no mood to speak. There was a long, uncomfortable pause, with Aybee standing waiting and Ransome staring blank-eyed at the wall.
At last Aybee tucked himself into a chair. They had been made for Ransome’s convenience, not for a tall Cloudlander, and his knees came up near his chin. “So I blew it,” he said. The personal failure had been troubling him since they had first reached Ransome’s Hole. “Mind telling me how?”
Ransome raised dark eyebrows questioningly, but still he did not speak.
“I mean, my name,” Aybee added. “Gudrun knew it, and you knew it. But I told her I was Karl Lyman when she found me on the space farm, and nobody did a chromosomal ID check on me. You shouldn’t have had any idea I was lying. So I must have done something dumb. I’d just like to know what it was.”
Ransome shook his head. “You demean yourself, Aybee Smith. It was not your failure. Watch.” He nodded to one of the displays and played briefly with the miniature console set into the arm of his chair.
The screen glowed. Aybee had half expected to see the result of some unsuspected test conducted on the space farm or perhaps on the dark cargo hulk. Instead, a color image appeared. It was Sylvia Fernald, seen full face. After the flicker of a fast audio search, her image steadied and began to speak.
“We thought Aybee would have been here long ago,” she was saying. “Now it looks as though he was captured along with the others. Do you have any idea where they were taken?”
“Not yet.” The voice was Cinnabar Baker’s, and as the field of view on the display scrolled across and down, Aybee realized that he had to be viewing the scene through her eyes.
“I hope he has the sense to lie low until we can trace him,” Sylvia said from outside the field of view.
“If we ever can,” Baker said. “We have no clues so far. If he’s still alive—we’re not sure of that—he could have been taken anywhere in the system.” The screen showed the main display in Baker’s own office. It held a listing of the names and physical descriptions of all personnel of the space farm, plus Aybee’s own personal data.
“You know Aybee,” Sylvia said. She appeared again in the picture. “If he is alive, he’ll be looking for a chance to get away—”
“As I’m sure you were,” Ransome said. He cut off the display, and Sylvia vanished. “But once we knew you had not left the Sagdeyev farm with the others, we could identify you from your description and take special precautions.”