“The situation is unpredictable,” Mark said bluntly. “But it’s possible that the Planners would destroy their people — and themselves — rather than let us win.”
The little party exchanged shocked glances.
Trapper said, “But that’s insane. It even contradicts their conscious goals — to protect their people.”
Mark’s smile was thin. “Nobody said it had to make sense. Unfortunately, there are plenty of precedents, right through human history.”
Constancy-of-Purpose said, “With flaws like that hardwired into our heads, it’s a wonder we ever got into space in the first place.” She let herself drift a little way from the Deck, her legs dangling beneath her, and studied the Temple, eyes squinting. “Well, if we can’t break the siege, we’re going to have trouble. For a start, there are more of them than us. And, second, their cross-bows have a much greater range than these blowpipes wielded by Trapper and her friends — ”
“Maybe,” Trapper-of-Frogs said slowly, “but I’ve been thinking about that. I mean, the Planners could have killed us earlier, when we were strung out along the Deck. Couldn’t they?”
Mark frowned. “They fired over us. Maybe they were trying to warn us.”
“Maybe.” Trapper-of-Frogs nodded grudgingly. “Or maybe they were trying to hit us — but couldn’t. Watch this.”
She pulled a dart from the pouch at her waist and raised her blowpipe to her lips. She spat the dart harmlessly into the air, on a flat trajectory parallel to the Deck.
Morrow, bemused, tracked the little projectile. It rapidly lost most of its initial speed to the resistance of the air, but its path continued flat and even, still parallel to the Deck. Eventually, Morrow supposed, it would slow up so much that it would fall to the Deck, and…
No, it wouldn’t, he realized slowly. The GUTdrive was shut off: there was no gravity. Even if air resistance stopped the dart completely, it still wouldn’t fall.
“When the gravity first disappeared,” Tracker said, “I couldn’t hit a damn thing. I seemed to aim too high, every time. I quickly worked out why: even over quite short distances, gravity will pull a dart — or a cross-bow bolt — down a little way. I’ve grown up compensating for that, allowing for it unconsciously when I aim at something.
“In the absence of gravity the dart just sails on, in a straight line, until it hits something.” She hefted the blowpipe. “It took me hours of practice before I felt confident with this thing in zero-gee; it was like learning from scratch all over again.”
Mark was nodding slowly. “So you think the Planners’ bowmen meant to hit us.”
“I’m sure of it. But they shot too high. They haven’t learned to adjust to zero gee; they certainly didn’t allow for it when they shot at us.”
Constancy-of-Purpose cupped her chin. “Maybe you’re right. But I don’t see how that helps us. Even if their aim is a little off, there are enough of them to blanket us with bolts if we try to get too close.”
“Yes,” Mark said, some excitement entering his artificial voice, “but maybe we can use Trapper’s insight in another way. She’s right; the Planners — everyone in that building — are failing to learn how to cope with the absence of gravity. In fact, they seem to be denying that the absence even exists.” He glanced around, staring at the tracery of ropes they’d laid from the access ramps as if seeing them for the first time. “And so have we. Look at the way we’ve traveled — abseiling across the floor, sticking to the familiar two dimensions to which gravity restricts us.”
Morrow frowned. “What are you suggesting?”
Mark raised his face to the iron sky. “That we try a little lateral thinking…”
At the origin of the weak, ancient signal Louise and Spinner found a worldlet. It was a dirty snowball three hundred miles across, slowly turning in the outer darkness.
When Louise bathed the worldlet with spotlights from her life-lounge, broken ice shone, stained with splashes of color: rust-brown, gray.
This lost little fragment followed a highly elliptical path, each of its distorted journeys lasting a million years or more. Its closest approach to the Sun came somewhere between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, while at its furthest it got halfway to the nearest star — two light-years from the inner worlds.
“Bizarre,” Louise mused. “It’s got the orbital characteristics of a long-period comet — but none of the physical characteristics. In morphology it’s more like a Kuiper object, like Port Sol. But then it should be in a reasonably circular orbit…”
Spinner-of-Rope peered out of her cage at the dark little world, wondering what might still be living down there.
Here and there, in pits in the ice, metal gleamed.
“Artifacts,” Louise said. “Can you see that, Spinner? Artifacts, all over the surface.”
“Human?”
“I’d guess so. But I don’t recognize anything. And I doubt if there’s much still working…
“I’m taking radar scans. There are hundreds of chambers in there, in the interior. And our beacon’s somewhere inside: still broadcasting on all wavelengths, with a peak in the microwave range… Life knows what’s powering it.”
“Is this ice-ball inhabited? Is there anyone here?”
“I don’t know.” Spinner heard Louise hesitate. “I guess I’m going to have to go down to find out.”
The pod’s small jets flared across the worldlet’s uneven surface as Louise descended. Spinner watched; the pod was the only moving thing in all of her Universe.
“I’m close to the surface now,” Louise reported. “I’ll level off. They certainly made a mess of this surface. I think these artifacts are sections of ships, Spinner. Not that I can label much of it — so much of this technology must be tens of millennia beyond us… Lethe, I wish we had the time to spend here, to study all this stuff.
“But at least it’s human.” Her voice sounded strained. “The first traces of humanity we’ve found in the whole damn System, Spinner.
“I think people landed here, and broke up their ships for raw materials to occupy the interior.
“I’m going to land now. I see what looks like a port.”
Louise couldn’t find any way to open the wide, hatch-like port to the interior. Instead, she had to erect a plastic bubble to serve as an airlock over the port, and cut her way through, working slowly in the microgravity.
“All right, I’m in.” Her breath was scratchy, shallow — almost as if she were whispering, Spinner thought. “It’s dark here, Spinner. I have lamps; I’m going to leave a trail of them, as I go through.”
Spinner, listening in her cage, prayed that nothing bad happened to Louise down there. If it did, what could she — Spinner — do? Would she have the courage even to try a landing on the ice worldlet?
Doubt flooded her, a feeling of inadequacy, of being unable to cope…
You’ll manage, Spinner-of-Rope.
That same dry, sourceless voice.
Strangely, her fears seemed to subside. She glanced around; of course, she was alone in the cage, with the nightfighter suspended passively over the ice worldlet. But still — again — she had had the impression that someone was here with her. She couldn’t see him, or her — but somehow she knew there was nothing to fear; she sensed a massive, comforting presence similar to her own, lost father.