The vocal material had, as a result, gone to what nine-tenths of the Nixon’s crew dismissed as “anthropological.” Clover persisted, right to the end.
“Wurly, you said you can provide us with operational logs for the station, correct?”
“Yes, for most of them. No, for a few. I cannot provide detailed security logs, only summary reports.”
“Why is that? Can I talk to the security system?”
“Security data can include the detailed activities of visitors to the depot. In the case of sanctions, where that information needs to be promulgated to the rest of the depot network, it must include species-specific information that exceeds the normal privacy protocols. Consequently, access to the detailed logs is not allowed. That information is not accessible to external systems.”
“Then the security system contains explicit details about the species visiting the depot?”
“No, even the internal-to-security database contains the bare minimum of identifying information, only enough to recognize a species if it shows up again and to allow other depots to impose mandated sanctions against that species. Still, it is against depot rules to access that data, and attempts to do so will be met with penalties.”
“What is in the summary reports, and are we allowed to see them?”
“The summary reports contain security-related status information about the station. For example, the approach of your ship. The details are completely scrubbed from the summary. No one could identify your species or its origin from the summary information. You are allowed access to any information I have. None of my data is restricted.”
Sandy had stuck a camera to a wall to record Clover’s interrogation attempt, and had then stretched out on the floor in an attempt to nap: he couldn’t do that in an upright position, nor had he trained himself to do it simply by floating in a zero-gee state. Clover spoke to him: “Well, the jukebox spins an airtight yarn. There’s no point in trying to get around its own security, because it doesn’t know anything it won’t tell us voluntarily. Plus, I’ll bet you anything that trying to circumvent its protocols breaks the rules.”
Sandy asked, “Wurly, does trying to circumvent your protocols break the rules?”
The answer-bot spoke up. “That is correct. As long as no harm is done to my systems, though, the sanctions are small because the effort cannot gain anything. There is just enough of penalty to discourage species from trying.”
Clover asked, “Have there been any sanctions applied during this depot’s operation?”
“Yes, thirteen times, all for minor breaches of protocol. Would you like the summary reports?”
“Yes. Also, are there summary reports that list arrivals and departures that don’t result in sanctions? If so, I would like those also, and time-stamped.”
Sandy keyed a private channel to Clover. “What are you up to? Are you going to get us in trouble?”
Clover shook his head. “Nope, I’ve got an idea, and I was just making sure it’s completely legal.” He turned his attention back to the answer-bot. “Wurly, I’d like to get the environmental logs for this room and any other habitable portions of the depot. Not the minute-by-minute logs, just anytime there’s a significant adjustment to the environmental conditions—lighting, temperature, atmosphere—and I’d like that time-stamped. Is there a problem with that?”
“That is a legitimate request.” The console’s colors mirrored a warm sunset. “I’ve extracted the data you requested and directed it to the uplink your technician set up. It will increase the time of the I/O flow by .013 seconds.”
Clover keyed his comm back to Sandy: “You see that?” He chortled. “We may not know exactly who visited or where they came from, but we know when, and if they behaved, and the environmental data will tell us a hell of a lot about their biology. I just scored major demographic data on the populations of alien species in our neck of the galaxy.”
“Good job,” Sandy said. He yawned. The I/O link went down and Wurly said, “Data transfer through the I/O link is now complete.”
“Thank you,” Clover said. “Wurly, I have—”
Fang-Castro crashed the party. “For all members of the contact crew, the I/O record is now complete, or so we have been told. Return to the Nixon immediately, or make arrangements to hitchhike back home with the Chinese.”
“That’s us,” Sandy said on the private link. On the public link, he said, “Yes, ma’am. It’ll take a minute to pack up my cameras.”
Clover asked, “Wurly, do you have any final message for the people of Earth?’
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Hello, people of Earth.”
Sandy: “I think that’s a glitch. It’s the first glitch we’ve had from him.” He patted the jukebox on its carapace. “Thanks, pal.”
A tech came out of the room where the I/O harness was attached.
He said, “Let’s haul butt.”
Thirty-seven hours after Fang-Castro first spoke to Zhang, she called back: “We are starting our main engines. We thank you for your courtesy in waiting for our departure.”
Zhang nodded. “May you have the best of luck in your return. We hope to see you there someday.”
“Someday,” Fang-Castro said.
Zhang winked out.
The Nixon left Saturn on Sunday, April 8, 2068, but it wasn’t a day of rest. As soon as Fang-Castro issued the burn order, the VASIMR engines set about pushing the Nixon out of the Saturnian system.
The exit trajectory was similar to the one that had taken them away from Earth more than eight months before—a long, slow spiral outward while the VASIMRs piled on enough thrust to finally break the ship free of Saturn’s grip. Unlike that launch, this was no tentative departure, no slow and careful ramping up of the reactors and the engines. In less than two hours, Engineering had the engines sucking down every bit of power Reactor 1 was capable of generating.
The engine ignition that signaled their departure from Earth had been a novel experience and symbolically profound for everyone on board, unimpressive as it was to the senses. Eight months later, it was another story. Firings were now routine; in truth, most of the crew had had their fill of engine starts and stops. Of space travel, really. They just wanted to get home.
As the Nixon gradually put distance between itself and the alien depot in the Maxwell Gap, it pushed out of the ring plane as it expanded and inclined its orbit. An hour of thrust had it a thousand kilometers from the depot and the Chinese. Halfway through its first orbit, as the Nixon threaded its way back through a gap in the ring plane, they were far enough from the alien constellation that it was invisible to the naked eye.
By the following morning, the Nixon had completed three outward spirals on its winding path to free flight. It was a comforting fifteen thousand kilometers farther out, in an orbit that was inclined four degrees to the ring plane. Another day’s worth of thrust doubled that. Saturn was still an overwhelmingly impressive presence in their sky, but it was dwindling. It remained paramount for the engineering and navigation teams that had to calculate and recalculate the trajectories that would let them safely thread the gaps in Saturn’s rings on each half orbit’s ring plane crossing, but even their vital job was becoming routine. By the end of Day Three, they’d be safely beyond the outer limits of the A Ring, where the ring plane was mostly empty space.
Just as when it had left Earth, the Nixon’s velocity dwindled as their orbit expanded. That peculiar logic of orbital mechanics by now felt normal to the Nixon’s crew. That trade-off would continue as they spiraled away from the ringed giant, but nine days of this would see them entirely free of Saturn’s pull.