So Aybee had been right. Bey allowed himself the luxury of a moment’s irritation, then he inspected the ship that Mary had arrived in.
His reaction to it was not so strong as Aybee’s. He had done little space travel, and although he knew that the ship was radically different in appearance from the ones he was used to, he did not realize how much new science had to be in it. He also had many other things on his mind. With Mary at her sunniest, most affectionate, and most demanding, he had little time to worry about spacecraft. She was in a holiday mood. If she thought for a moment that she was taking Bey toward danger, it did not show in her manner.
She complained only at the end, when the ship neared its destination in the central annulus of the Kernel Ring. “We’re crawling. Why do we always have to go so slow when we’re nearly there?”
“Safety requirement,” replied the hollow voice of the ship’s main computer. “Proceed with caution. Danger zone.”
The computer was treating the region with great respect. They were picking their way through the maze of debris, unshielded kernels, and high-density fragments that littered the central part of the Kernel Ring. Those shards were the relics of a catastrophe four billion years earlier, when a toroidal region of space-time had suffered gravitational collapse and spewed high-mass elements toward the Sun. Life on Earth owed its existence to the event, but that was of no interest to the computer. Like Mary, it too lived in the present. Currently this location housed the freaks of the Solar System: collapsed objects invisible to deep radar and massive enough to destroy a ship, side by side with corotating kernel pairs whose signals played havoc with navigation systems.
Bey had never been here before, but he knew the place’s reputation. The Kernel Ring had been left undeveloped for a good reason. A thousand ships had been lost in the early days, before transit vessels to the Outer System learned to fly high above the ecliptic.
Danger, the small voice in his ear said. Danger. Ninety-nine of any hundred conceivable surprises are unpleasant ones. But the shiver in Bey’s spine was not fear. It was excitement. Ransome’s Hole was visible; or, rather, it was invisible, a dark occulting disk against the continuous starfield. And it was big, big enough to contain anything: armies, weapons, factories, cities, monsters and treasures and mysteries unguessed at. Bey stared at nothing and was stirred by emotions he had not felt for years. He was in the past again, pursuing illegal serpent forms into the black depths of Old City. He was eager to begin, wondering if and how he would survive. The same ineffable force was quickening his pulse, drawing him on and tugging him down into danger.
While he was watching, brief flashes of blue-white fire sparked on the black disk. He recognized them. Short-range drive units. Five small vessels were heading out toward them.
Bey glanced at Mary. She frowned and shook her head. “Not my doing.” But she did not seem too surprised.
Within a couple of minutes the five had been joined by others. Surrounded by an escort of a dozen pinnaces, the ship drifted to a docking and attached to a lock. The hatch swung wide, and Bey followed Mary out.
A dozen armed soldiers were waiting, their weapons raised and ready. Two paces to their rear stood a short, black-clad man with folded arms. His face was thin, with prominent bones, a sharp nose, and a trace of a self-confident smile. Bey stared at those piercing eyes, and after a few seconds the unmoving features before him seemed to shift and flow, reassembling themselves like an optical illusion to a different and familiar pattern.
The Dancing Man—the Negentropic Man, without the clownlike scarlet suit and black filed teeth but unmistakably the same in face, body, and movement. Bey shivered. The face and burning eyes brought frightening memories from the edge of death and madness.
“Full house,” the Negentropic Man said. He stepped forward, still flanked by his guards, and nodded approvingly at Wolf. “I am Ransome. I have been curious to meet you for a long time, Mr. Wolf. When a man or woman refuses to commit suicide or to become insane, no matter what the external pressure, that person is of interest to me. And here you are, in my home.” He turned, and his wave took in the whole habitat. “You see how obliging the universe can be. If I had originally set out to lure you here, I might well have failed. But by allowing you to sail freely with the winds of space, you arrive even before I am ready for you.”
Ransome placed his arm possessively around Mary’s waist. She did not resist, but she gave Bey a strange, uncertain look.
“So you have me. What happens now?” said Bey. He had seen eyes like that three times before in a human head, but none of their owners was living.
“For the moment, nothing.” Ransome was disconcertingly at ease. “I have unfinished business with two of your friends, and then a couple of other things to take care of. You will have to bear with your own company for a little while. Later you and I must talk. I feel sure that we are going to be working together.” Ransome gave Bey a dismissive, self-confident little nod and turned to go. Mary followed without a word.
“Mary!” Bey called after her as the guards moved to separate him from them. He received a brief glance in return from lowered brows, then he was being hustled away. The guards escorted him deep into the habitat’s interior and finally stopped at an oval door. They ushered him through without comment and left at once, but as they went a bulky machine took up guard position at the entrance.
How long was the “little while” that he would be on his own? Ransome’s joking tone had suggested that it might be quite some time. Bey turned in the doorway and stepped close to the Roguard. It stood solidly blocking his path.
“Allow me to pass. That is an order.”
“The order cannot be obeyed.” The voice was soft-toned and polite. “Egress is prohibited. You lack authorization.”
“Who has authorization?”
“You do not have authorization to receive information on authorizations.”
Bey retreated. He had not expected a useful answer, so he was not much disappointed. He went to sit at the table in the little dining area and pondered his situation.
Against the initial odds—and suspiciously easily—he had found his way to Ransome’s Hole. He was in the middle of the enemy stronghold, unarmed and surrounded by guards, held prisoner by a probable megalomaniac with the power to destroy the Solar System; he had to decide what to do next.
What could he do?
After a few minutes he stood up and made a leisurely and thorough survey of the living quarters. They were perfectly adequate for a stay of weeks, months, or even years. The walls, floor, and ceiling were white, seamless, and solid. There was a comfortable-looking bed, a large and well-equipped washroom, a full food-production faculty, a small computer with its own recreational and educational data bases, and even a small exercise unit that included simple form-conditioning. Notably absent was any type of communications equipment, audio or video.
Bey went to the little form-conditioning unit, turned it on, and reviewed its capabilities. It was the simplest and cheapest of the commercially packaged form-change systems. The options it offered were minimal. They included monitoring and feedback for standard muscle tone improvements, routines for minor physical repair such as sprains and bruises, and a couple of low-g/high-g conversions modules; that seemed to be all.
Bey opened the cover and checked the telemetry inputs and internal storage. It was a BEC unit, completely self-contained, and the hardware was standard and quite powerful. That meant the weaknesses were in the software. The programs that came with the unit lacked all the more substantial form-change functions—it did not even permit eye adjustments, which Bey had needed for nearsightedness since he was a teenager.