The Salamanders themselves are a different matter. As monitors and custodians of the great array they ride their refrigerated spacecraft hair-raisingly close to the solar furnace, skimming low above vast hydrogen flares and across the Earth-sized whirlpools of sunspots. Occasionally a cooling unit fails. Vehicle recovery is performed — always — but never the bodies of the crew members. Those are burned, what remains of them, out in space by their Salamander brethren. On Salamander Row, by convention, the names of the dead are recorded but they are not talked about. The Salamanders refuse to admit the power of King Sun. Other residents of the Row often seem determined to deny his existence.
That is their privilege. It is, however, a privilege denied to the occasional visitor. Before an arriving ship can reach the Nexus and the Row, it must first drive inward until the eye of the Sun fills half the sky. Although the temperature inside the ship never rises past a comfort level, the psychological heat mounts by the minute.
Danny Casement had shed his jacket before they crossed the orbit of Mercury. Now he mopped at his wrinkled forehead, stared at the port where the photo-glass turned the solar disk to an opaque circle of dark gray, and wondered how many more minutes to Nexus rendezvous.
And he, believe it or not, had chosen this. Chan Dalton, worried about schedule, had offered him a choice: did he want Europa, or the Vulcan Nexus?
“You out of your mind?” Danny, packing the things he would need on the Hero’s Return and sending everything else to sealed storage, stared at Chan. “If you think I’m going to invite Deb Bisson on a trip with you as leader, you can think again. Anyone says your name to her, he’d better be ready to go home with teeth marks in his ass. You dumped her. You go to Europa.”
It made sense at the time. Chan would go to Europa, find Tully O’Toole, and face Deb; but there was a trade-off: Danny had to go to Salamander Row and look for the Bun.
The ship was smart enough to fly itself and the only other person on board was a woman. Expensively dressed, clearly a lady, striking in appearance although no longer young, Alice Tannenbaum was big-bosomed and strongly built. Casement prime choice, under normal circumstances. She had also shown interest in Danny. Almost as soon as they had introduced themselves, Alice was saying, “If you have never been to the Vulcan Nexus before, I would love to serve as your personal tour guide.” A little smile and a sideways glance. “The Nexus offers pastimes that most visitors never see.”
“Ah — er — well.” Danny did his own sideways glance, to where the occluded disk of the Sun loomed ever larger. Soon it would fill the whole port. “I — er — I — um.” After a few replies of that caliber, she apparently decided that she was dealing with a half-wit and retreated to the rear of the passenger cabin.
Well, maybe she was. If the known dangers of the Vulcan Nexus gave you fits, how would you manage the unknown ones of the Geyser Swirl? You wouldn’t, unless you took a better hold of yourself. And if she knew the Nexus, she might be able to save him some time.
Danny made a mighty effort, stood up from his seat, and wandered toward the back of the cabin. He smiled at his fellow passenger.
“I’m sorry I was rude a few minutes ago. This is quite an overwhelming experience, flying so close to the Sun.”
“That’s understandable. You’ll get used to it after a while.” She moved along the seat, making room for him. “Where are you from, Jack?”
He had assumed a false name and identity for this journey as a matter of course, without ever expecting it to come in useful. Danny, who for the moment was Jack Eckart and had better not forget it, made a more detailed inspection of Alice Tannenbaum. She had to be close to his age, but she was far better preserved. The skin of her face and hands was smooth and unlined. And she must be rich. Those epidermal rebuilders cost real money.
“I’d say that I’m from pretty much all over.” He sat down next to her. “Born out among the Saturnian moons, spent a while on Mars, a while on Earth, a while on Ganymede. If it hadn’t been for the quarantine, I might be somewhere out among the stars by now.”
“That’s so exciting.” She turned as though to glance out of the port, but actually to display her profile, which she must know showed her to advantage. “You make me feel like I’ve been nowhere and done nothing. Never to Mars or Ceres, never to the Jovian moons. I wanted to, but my family wouldn’t allow it.”
“But you’ve been to the Vulcan Nexus before.”
“A hundred times. That’s different. Coming here is a family tradition. We were one of the Nexus first families, involved from day one.”
The Vulcan Nexus was a major supplier of power for the whole system, drinking in solar energy through the giant arrays and sending it out to destinations as far away as Persephone in tightly collimated microwave beams. Abundant energy — at a price. Anyone with a piece of the Vulcan Nexus revenue stream had money to throw away.
Danny was here to see if he could find the Bun, not to pursue personal business interests. But the urge to play the game a little was irresistible, particularly when the target was as tempting as Alice Tannenbaum. He justified his next words with the thought that he would need help if he was to explore the Nexus in a day or less. He said casually, “I suppose I’ve been a user of your service and never realized it. The past few years I’ve been on one of the Saturnian moons, and we have a big receiver for energy from the Vulcan Nexus.”
“Really.” She turned to stare at him with wide hazel eyes. “What were you doing out there, Jack?”
“My family’s business.” Danny glanced carefully around the cabin, though the nearest human other than Alice Tannenbaum was a million kilometers away. “I was on Hyperion, busy with diamond mining operations.”
He watched closely. Her reaction would decide what came next. Everyone in the system knew about Raxon Yang and his five-centuries-old discovery on Hyperion. Early explorers of the solar system had more or less ignored the lumpy, uneven hunk of rock that formed the seventh major satellite of Saturn. Old Yang, with nothing better to do, had landed on Hyperion and followed a surface fissure down and down and down. Seven kilometers below the surface he came to the upper face of the Yang diamond.
Even after the claim was filed, it took a while to learn exactly what he had. The Yang diamond had the shape of a forty-legged octopus. Its head, seven kilometers below the surface, was almost spherical and fourteen kilometers across. The legs ran out and down, each one half a kilometer wide and thirty to forty kilometers long.
Mining the Yang diamond had created the Vault of Hyperion, home to a polyglot melange of industries. Now no diamond was exported — because there was none left to export.
The first question was, did Alice Tannenbaum know that?
She did. She was frowning at Danny. “But Jack, I thought that the diamond was all—”
Danny was ahead of her. “Not the original one, of course. That’s long gone. But a few years ago we had seismic hints that there might be another one. We organized a private offering, formed a new stable of investors, and began prospecting. The exploration was very difficult. We were about ready to give up when a month ago we struck lucky. Actually, that’s why I’ve come to the Vulcan Nexus. We have been unable to reach one of our larger investors, and I’ve been sent to find him. If you are a regular visitor to the Nexus, maybe you’ve run across him. His name is Bonifant Rombelle. Some people know him as Senor Bonifant, others as Bunnyfat Ramble; but his close friends call him Bun or the Bun.”
“I never heard of him.” Alice’s face showed her utter lack of interest in hearing more about the lost investor. “You say you `struck lucky.’ Do you mean you found another Yang Diamond?”
“Oh, nothing nearly so big. The new one is smaller, and much deeper. On the other hand, this diamond seems wonderfully pure and without flaws. So yes, it’s a very significant find. It will make many people very rich.”