Then Robert and Money were standing guard at the airlock’s lip, held down against it by magnets in their boots, while the others carefully rappelled along the hull, in the direction of Viridity’s remains, ignoring the handholds Conrad and the others had used. He supposed those were only for the most desperate of emergencies, of which there were no doubt very few. Still, it took the Refugees longer to reach the cabin than it had taken the Camp Friendlies to reach the airlock from it. When they got there, they began attaching still more cables to it, and clearing away more of the sail, and attaching more tripods to the hull, until the whole area began to look like the inside of a grand piano.
And yet, despite these fascinations, the process was deliberate and methodical enough to be boring at the same time. Conrad found himself glancing at the scene rather than staring—his mind dividing it up into a series of still images, a few every minute. Meanwhile, his attention wandered, taking in the walls and the floor and the ceiling, the bridge controls, the wellstone edges of the holie screen itself. This cramped little bridge was an interesting exercise in its own right, with hardly a millimeter wasted anywhere.
“Hey, look,” he said at one point, eyeing the control panel in front of him. “There is a button to dump the neutronium.”
Bascal rubbed his nose. “You noticed that, eh? You knew there had to be one. Robert can talk all he wants about the barge being less valuable than the cargo, being essentially a protective cocoon for it, but this is a semi-crewed vessel, and certain safety concessions have got to be made. There’s also a self-destruct and a cargo-destruct, although they look complicated to operate.”
“Why would they need a self-destruct?”
“I dunno. Loss of helm control, on a direct course for a population center? Fully loaded, these barges are bringing in a hundred gigatons; that’s a tenth of a good-sized planette. Imagine dropping that in the middle of the Irish Sea.”
“Hmm. I suppose.”
On the screen, the Refugees were assembling some kind of sled, with pulleys of its own that hooked onto the cables linking cabin and airlock.
“Of course, if that were going to happen the navy would just vaporize the barge with a nasen beam, releasing all that mass-energy as far from humanity as possible. But having to would not amuse them.”
“I don’t think they amuse easily,” Conrad said.
Bascal seemed to find that funny.
And then, on the holie screen, the space-suited figures were packing it in: stowing equipment on their belts and backs, and slowly rappelling back in the direction of the airlock again.
“They didn’t get it,” the prince said, sounding surprised.
Conrad checked a chronometer. “Their forty minutes are up.”
“They should let us work the LIDAR for them. If we get a clean scan, they can stay out longer.”
“I’ll bet there’s some reason they won’t do things that way. Otherwise they’d’ve stationed one of their own people in here to do exactly that, right?”
Bascal didn’t reply, just watched the screen as the spacewalkers climbed back into the airlock again, and reentered the barge.
“You didn’t get it,” he said to Robert, when the mob of them arrived in the corridor outside the bridge.
Robert’s helmet was under his arm. He looked content enough, and smiled at the prince. “We weren’t trying to. We can’t fit all that into one space walk, not safely. That was just our setup run.”
“I see. So what happens now?”
“Now we take a LIDAR scan, pick up some more equipment, and go back out again.”
“Because you don’t have enough equipment out there already.”
“Right,” Robert said, unfazed by the irony. “Oh, before I forget.” He dug a gauntleted hand into a pouch on his belt, and pulled out a carefully folded square of wellstone film, several dozen layers thick. “A little souvenir from your journey.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Bascal said, sounding pleasantly surprised as he accepted the gift. “This is from the sail?”
“Yah. I thought you might want some. We’re trying to minimize the damage, in case you still need it for something, but these pieces had to come out.”
“You’re very thoughtful,” the prince commended.
“Funny, that’s not what the prudes back in TSA used to say.”
The second space walk was, if anything, even slower and more methodical than the first, although there was slightly more talking as the work progressed into areas outside the routine. The Refugees found it necessary to slice away large pieces of D’rector Jed’s shattered cabin, and to carry them around to the fore end of the barge for disposal in the great, all-consuming maw of the mass crusher. Luckily, there wasn’t a snowball storm while they did this, although—of course—there was no luck involved. These people knew the location and course of every snowflake within five million kilometers!
It occurred to Conrad that Martin’s lifeless body, along with the missing Palace Guard, must be among those cataloged objects. In the hours since the crash, they probably hadn’t drifted far. For all he knew, the guard might still be alive, an angry monster adrift in the nothingness, struggling in vain to return to its prince. Or maybe it had swept in front of the barge and been eaten.
“If we have to dispose of any evidence,” Bascal noted, obviously thinking along similar lines, “that crusher would be the place. Neutronium tells no tales, and preserves no information about the atoms and molecules which formed it.”
“Great,” Conrad said, just loving the sound of that. The Poet Prince was drinking in every sight and sound, every datum, every stray thought anyone had given voice to. He was scheming, and the gist of it was already unsavory.
And then, once again, the spacewalkers were stowing their gear and climbing back inside.
“They still didn’t get it,” Bascal grumbled. Then later, to Robert: “You people are awfully patient.”
Money Izolo smiled at that. “We got time, Your Majesty. The machine is secure, and as far as we can tell your boy is safe in there. So we got nothing but time.”
Fortunately, the third space walk hit pay dirt almost immediately, as Viridity’s fax machine was winched aboard the little sled, webbed and strapped in place, and transported without further fuss to the airlock. After that it was just the anticlimactic—ha!—disassembly of all the cables and pulleys and trusses and tripods, which for some reason went much faster than their setup had.
And then Robert’s jolly crew were carting their prize through the hallways on a complicated sort of hand truck, and soon enough they were back at the inventory again, grinning and thumping each other, and tossing heaps of equipment back into the fax machine.
“Well done,” Bascal told them sincerely. “Very, painfully well done. You’re an example to us all.”
And then, while the Refugees got naked again and chatted about their various adventures outside, Bascal took Conrad by the elbow and led him back into the corridor, stopping halfway between the inventory and the bridge.
Conrad groaned inwardly. Conspiracy time. “What is it?” he asked.
“I have a plan.”
Wearily: “I know you do, Bascal. But for crying out loud, why don’t you just ask these people for help? They might give it. If you trick them or force their hand, and something goes wrong ...”
“Yes?” Bascal was annoyed again, impatient.
“Why do I talk to you, Bas? Never mind. Let’s hear it.”
“Thank you so much, me boyo. Just out of curiosity, if I really do get us back to Denver, against all odds, against all hope ... If I do that, will you bow down to me as your monarch?”