“How, without the knowledge of the Extro? The moment we haul Guess up to the surface that spying network will be activated, and you know goddamn well that a Moleman can’t be drugged unconscious.”
“You’re driving too hard, Guig. Let’s cool it.”
“I can’t. When I think of Fee-5 and Poulos, the Shortie killings, the — No, I’ll cool it. Back to business. Calmly. The Extro knows everything we do and maybe everything we think. What can I use to outflank it?”
“Hic-Haec-Hoc,” No-Name said.
My jaw dropped. This? From Mr. Nothing? Outclassed even by him.
“He can’t think. He can’t speak. He’s a blank.”
“But he obeys signs. Thank you, No-Name. Thank you all. If Sam Pepys can be located and can tell me where to locate Hic, I’ll bring him and we’ll try.”
But I tried the time-shot first, anyway, and H.G. Wells was right; I was a ghost, invisible and inaudible. Worse, I was like a two-dimensional phone projection. I oozed. I oozed through bods and buildings and I felt damned sorry for ghosts. Herb and I had pinpointed my spot very carefully and I was shot to JPL and oozed my way to the astrochem lab just as the crowd of afflicted stockholders was hacking and coughing its way out right through me. Uncanny.
When I oozed in, Edison was barking with laughter. “That damn fool girl brought you fuming nitric acid. Fuming. And the fumes have turned this room into one big nitric-acid bath. Everything’s being eaten away.”
“Did you see her do it? Did you see the label? Why didn’t you stop her?” The Chief sounded furious.
“No. No, and no. I’ve deduced it. Not an Emergent, just a Resultant.”
“Dear God! Dear God! I’ve ruined the whole pitch to the U-Con crowd.”
Suddenly me did the take and let out a yell. I didn’t like his looks but I suppose nobody likes their own looks.
“What’s the matter, Guig?” the Group called. “Are you hurt?”
“No, you damn fools, and that’s why I’m hollering. I’m Grand Guignol triumphant. Don’t you understand? Why didn’t he know it was fuming nitric acid? Why didn’t he choke on the fumes? Why isn’t he eaten away now? Why wasn’t he forced to run out with Fee and the rest? Think about it while I revel.”
After a long moment, the Syndicate said, “I never believed in your campaign, Guig. I apologize. It was a million to one against, so I hope you’ll pardon me.”
“You’re pardoned. You’re all pardoned. We’ve got another Molecular Man. We’ve got a brand new beautiful Moleman. Still there, Uncas?”
“I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“Take a deep breath of nitric. Belt down a stiff shot. Do anything you like to celebrate. Welcome to the Group.”
And as we all left the astrochem and joined the hacking stockholders outside, he disappeared, but this time the pseudo-me followed him as he slipped out through a side iris and loped down a ramp, the ghost following and hollering. What I said was shouted and screamed: “Chief, it’s me, Guig. Listen! Hear me! Danger ahead. Hear?”
He didn’t hear me, see me, or feel me; just went about his pokerface excape. It was one of the most frustrating and exasperating experiences of my life, and I was relieved when Herbie Wells’ mantis snatched me back. Herb saw my expression and shrugged helplessly.
“I told you it was a lemon,” he said.
So Natoma and I waited on standby for the outjet to Saturn VI, otherwise known as the moon, Titan. Standby because it was strictly a bribe transaction. We submitted to the search for flammable materials without complaint. Titan has a methane atmosphere, poisonous and explosive when spiked with fluorine. Methane is also known as marsh gas, produced by the decompositon of organic matter.
People who don’t travel think all satellites are alike; rocky, sandy, volcanic. Titan is a mass of frozen organic material, and cosmologists are still arguing about that. Was the sun hotter? Was Titan an inner planet (it’s bigger than Terra’s moon) snatched by Jupiter and delivered to Saturn without charge? Was it seeded by cosmonauts from deep space ages ago who abandoned our solar system in disgust?
Natoma came along, not because I needed her for Hic-Haec-Hoc but because you don’t shoot Saturn in a week, it’s more like a month and there’s a limit. The standby wasn’t too boring. We were entertained by the broadcast of Ice-O-Rama, a penguin sitcom. Zitzcom has just discovered that his daughter, Ritzcom, has accepted an invitation from Witzcom to spend the night with him on an iceberg. There are hilarious complications. The antarctic night lasts three months, and Zitzcom doesn’t know that it was Ritzcom’s twin sister, Titzcom, who accepted the invitation in a snit because her beau, Fitzcom, didn’t invite her to the penguin slide-in. Oh, bbls of laughs.
I’d warned Nat that Titan was a mining moon (they quarry the organic layer and ship it out in frozen blocks) but she didn’t really understand until we’d boarded the freighter and located our private cabin for two. That was the bribe. No passengers; no crew; just deck officers and no doubt a couple of them had been willing to doss anywhere for a substantial cut. The freighter stank. The compost it shipped in-jet left a permanent aroma of the grave.
I’d been smart enough to be prepared; a huge wicker hamper with enough deli for months, clean linen and blankets. A freighter to Saturn is no luxury jet, and although there’s a captain there’s no such thing as a captain’s table, a steward, formal meals. It’s all catch-as-catch-can, with the staff helping itself to the frozen food and drink stocks whenever so inclined. You merely endure and survive at the minimum, which is another reason why Titan will always remain a mining moon.
We stayed in our tiny cabin a lot, talking, talking, talking. So much to catch up on. Natoma grieved with me over Poulos and tried to cheer me up. She wanted to know all about CNA-Drone. I told her all I could about DNA-Cloning, which wasn’t much, but then the technique isn’t much, still in its infancy. Then she insisted on knowing why I had deep depressions, and what big L was. I had to tell her all about Lepcer.
“You must never, never, never run another physical risk,” she said severely.
“Not even for your sake?”
“Most of all never for my sake. There will be no big L this time. I know it because I have second sight, all the Guess women do, but if you ever run a risk again I’ll have you roasted over a slow fire. You’ll wish you had the big L then.”
“Yes’m,” I said meekly. “That linear explosion wasn’t my fault, you know.”
She pronounced a Cherokee word that would probably have shocked our brother.
Nat had been boning up, practicing reading XX. “Titan is the largest of Saturn’s satellites,” she reported. “It is seven hundred and fifty-nine thousand miles distant from Saturn. Its sidereal period is — I don’t know what that is.”
“How long it takes to go around.”
“Is fifteen dot nine four five days. The inclination of its orbit to the ring plane — I looked those words up — is twenty apostrophe. Its—”
“No, darling. That’s the astronomer’s symbol for minutes. They measure space in degrees, minutes, and seconds. A degree is a little zero. A minute is an apostrophe, and a second is a quotation mark.”
“Thank you. Its diameter is three thousand five hundred and fifty miles, and it was discovered by — by — I don’t know how to pronounce this name. It’s not in the dictionary.”
“Let me see. Oh. Not many people do. Huyghens. Hi-genz. He was a very great Dutch scientist a long time ago. Thank you, love. Now I know all about Titan.”
She wanted to ask questions but I promised to take her to what used to be Holland and show her all the sights that still remained, including Hi-genz’ birthplace, if it still existed. Saturn was quite a sight itself as it came looming up. Nat had already charmed her way onto the flight deck and would spend hours staring at the cold, belted, spotted disk and the widening rings inclined ten little zero.