Proteus in the Underworld (24 page)

Georgia Kruskal tapped at the terminal in front of her with thick fingers, and a wall screen came alive with a brightly-colored form-change schematic. "First I talk, Behrooz Wolf. You look, listen and learn. Then—if you have anything to say—you talk. And then, who knows? Perhaps I learn, too."

CHAPTER 15

Aybee hummed tunelessly and cheerfully to himself as the little high-gee craft prepared itself for docking. All this way to the ass-end of nowhere, when you had real work to do, and probably all for nothing; but once you said "yes" that was what you let yourself in for. So relax and enjoy it.

Bey was just an old worry-wart. Smart enough, sure; but too much pointless worry, and why bother living? Might as well turn up your toes and get it over with.

Aybee saw it the other way. The Apollo Belvedere Smith philosophy of life, if he had ever bothered to define it, was simple:
If anything can possibly go right, it will.

After Bey's call, Aybee had sent a hyperbeam query to Sondra on the Fugate Colony. She did not respond. Fair enough. Didn't mean a thing, except she was head-down working. She would ignore any messages, just as Aybee did when was really trying to get something done.

But he had promised Bey. Aybee sighed, commissioned the little ovoidal Rini ship assigned for Kuiper Belt use, and zoomed off for the Fugate Colony.

And now that he was arriving, what was he supposed to do? Tell Sondra that she had to go home with him because Bey Wolf said so? Aybee's exposure to Sondra had been limited, but he could imagine her reaction to that suggestion. She would tell him just where to put his advice.

It was a lose-lose deal. If Sondra was fine, as Aybee felt sure she would be, then his journey was for nothing and he would look like a real idiot. He would have no choice but to turn around and head back to Rini Base. And if she
wasn't
all right? Then presumably he was supposed to dash in and save her. Aybee had no doubts about his own pre-eminent abilities. They did not include rescuing damsels in distress.

He had checked the Fugate Colony's standard parameters on the way. The stated internal temperature and pressure were human tolerable—just. That wasn't enough for Aybee. He wanted something that was human
comfortable.
The Fugates could have their atmosphere soup, and good luck to them. He remained in his suit as the docking was completed, then floated on through the airlock.

His ship had beamed ahead to signal his arrival, but that call had been fielded by the automatic equipment on the colony. His personal ID identified Aybee as a Cloudlander, familiar with a wide variety of free-space living conditions. On the strength of that he had received approval for unaccompanied docking. He had been offered—and declined—assistance upon arrival by Fugate staff.

His first look at the interior of the Fugate Colony made him wonder if he had made a bad decision. Everything he saw was impossibly big, even the communications system. It had been designed for use by twenty-meter, thirty ton people, and even Aybee with his elongated arms could not manage the stretch.

But that could not be the whole story. The Fugates, like most of the colonies, conducted regular commerce with the rest of the Kuiper Belt and made use of imported systems and services. Other people, many of them as small or smaller than Aybee, must be regular visitors. They had to be able to work inside the colony without continuous Fugate assistance. That implied the presence somewhere of standard-sized data terminals and information systems.

Trouble was, this chamber was so cluttered and so foggy inside that you couldn't get a good look at most of it. Aybee went on the prowl, floating along past gigantic desks, doors, and transfer chutes. He finally found the data unit he needed over in the far right corner, hidden behind and dwarfed by a rack of space suits big enough to house Leviathan.

It was an old-fashioned design and it didn't seem to have been used for a while, but it responded promptly enough when Aybee turned it on. And sorts and searches, thank Knuth, were pure logic, not dependent on anything so material as physical size or equipment age. The Fugate general query system was also a little primitive, but five minutes of experiment located the record of Sondra Dearborn's arrival at the colony. Her exact time of entry was shown: three days ago. After that it became a bit trickier. There was no sign that Sondra had left, so presumably she was still somewhere within the planetoid. But the file provided no indication of her present location. Chances were that she was working with form-change equipment, but
which
form-change equipment? The data bank showed thousands of tanks, set in many different parts of the colony.

Aybee sighed. Work went a lot faster when you did it alone, but that no longer seemed an option. The record of Sondra's arrival provided the names of two individuals who had been assigned to help her. He gave in, and asked the terminal to put him in touch with either Mario or Maria Amari.

Patience was not Aybee's strong point. He fidgeted and muttered for what seemed an interminable wait, while the colony communications system placed its calls. The result, when it finally came, did not seem promising. Sondra in her first meeting with the Fugates had been overwhelmed by flesh, by sheer physical size so great that she could not comprehend expressions on the giant faces. Aybee, seeing Mario Amari on a data screen no bigger than his hand, had an opposite first impression of a tiny, puzzled and slightly annoyed baby. The bulging cranium was far too big for the eyes and pursed mouth.

There seemed no expression at all on that diminished countenance as Mario Amari listened to Aybee's explanation of the reason for his call. At the end of it the puzzled look returned.

"Let me be sure that I understand you correctly." Amari's rumbling voice was converted by the data line to the high-pitched, slightly squeaky delivery of a three-year-old. "You know that Sondra Dearborn is here on the colony, working on form-change equipment. You know that Maria and I met her, and showed her where everything is, and how it works. And you are worried about her?"

"Well not exactly
worried
." Aybee didn't like the way the conversation was going. It was obvious that Mario Amari considered he was dealing with a half-wit. "I'd like to know where she is, and check what she's doing."

"Are you a specialist on form-change methods?"

"No." Make that a quarter-wit. Amari was slowly nodding as Aybee continued, "Look, I don't want to be a nuisance for you or anyone else on the colony, but I would like to see Sondra. So if you could just tell me where she is working, and how to get there . . ."

"Do you know your way around this world?"

"Not really."

"Have you been to the colony before?"

"No. Never."

"Then it is probably quicker and easier if I show you where she is. Stay exactly where you are, and do not leave that chamber. I will be with you shortly."

In other words, you shouldn't be allowed to wander the colony without a keeper. Aybee cursed Bey Wolf while he waited. Bey had dragged him halfway across the Kuiper Belt for nothing. Sondra was certainly all right—there had been annoyance but not a trace of concern in Mario Amari's voice. How could she
not
be all right, safe inside the colony? Amari was casual and unworried when he finally came floating in.

"We did not stay with her, because she did not want it." Mario Amari, without asking Aybee's permission, grabbed him in one great hand and headed at once for the colony interior. "In fact, Sondra Dearborn specifically requested that we permit her to work alone in her first analysis of our form-change equipment."

"How long ago was that?"

"Since early yesterday. But she has access to ample food, and to a sanitation and rest area suitable for her needs. Small-form visitors to the colony regularly use the same facilities. If we had heard nothing from her in another day or so, Maria and I would probably have checked back here."

They had floated through a succession of huge rooms, each scaled to match the size of the Fugates, and were approaching yet another one. The doors between the other rooms had all been wide open. Aybee noted that this one was sealed.

"Again, this was at Sondra Dearborn's request." Mario Amari sounded patient and even a little amused as he replied to Aybee's question. If Aybee was unfortunate enough to be a terminal worrier, his voice said, then maybe he was more to be pitied than blamed. "She wanted to work without a suit, in that setting of lower temperature and pressure where she would feel most comfortable. Naturally, that required that this room be sealed off temporarily from the rest of the colony."

Aybee found himself nodding agreement, even as they approached the room's great sliding door and he glanced at the monitors showing the chamber's interior conditions. That first look brought him instantly to full attention. What he saw bristled the sparse hair on the back of his head.

Air pressure: 40 millibars. Temperature: -68 Celsius.

No human without a suit could survive more than a couple of minutes inside such a room.

"This has been changed!" Mario Amari was staring at the gauges as though he could not believe what they said. "This is nothing like the control values that we employed—and the door has been sealed from outside. We left it set for internal control. Sondra Dearborn must have come out, and re-set the interior parameters. She cannot be inside."

But his actions suggested that he did not believe his own words. He had released Aybee. Now he grasped the door in one huge hand and began jerking at it wildly.

"No, man! Don't even try that." Aybee decided he was not the only half-wit in the Fugate colony. "You got a two-atmosphere difference between the sides of that door. You have to equalize before you open it, or we get a big implosion."

Fortunately the room's own safeguards agreed with him. It took another half-minute to flood the interior with air—compression effects would be the least of Sondra's problems if she were inside—and equalize pressure enough for the door to slide open.

Aybee floated inside, ahead of Mario Amari. His suit protected him from temperature shock, but he heard Amari gasp. The air pumped into the room was warm enough, but the walls and floor were still cold enough to burn anything that touched them.

But maybe it was only a gasp of relief—because the room was empty. There was no sign of Sondra, dead or alive.

"She's not here. Thank Heaven, she got out." Amari, like Aybee, was scanning the interior, with its array of form-change tanks. "She must have."

"Must have. But didn't." Aybee's instincts had taken over as soon as he saw the tanks. "She's still here, and she's all right. Come on, man. I may need a little bit of local assistance for this."

* * *

Every trainee in the Office of Form Control was required to take practical tests. One of them called for form-change program modification with re-calibration of a form-change tank. But no trainee, ever, had been asked to do that in six hours or less, nervous, wearing a suit, and filled with the awful knowledge that you would soon be evaluating the quality of your work using your own body as test subject.

Sondra had to make some working assumptions. The chamber's ambient temperature might drop close to absolute zero, and the air pressure to vacuum. A human, suitably changed, might survive in that situation for a couple of days. It called for total hibernation and a severe alteration to body chemistry. Re-vivication probability was down around ten percent.

But that was the worst case. The tank itself would provide some thermal protection, maybe hold a little air. The chance of survival increased rapidly with every trace of oxygen and every degree of higher temperature.

Sondra did all the calculations that she had time for. She knew they were not enough, but she would have to act based on what she had. She recalled Bey's words:
Intuition is what remains after all the facts have been forgotten.
Fine. But pray that intuition was also something that guided you when there was no more time for calculation.

She reviewed the program changes one more time; entered them into the tank's controller; climbed slowly into the tank; adjusted the sensors, electrodes, and catheters as best she could, to interact with an adult form a fraction of the size of a Fugate newborn; and then faced the final, most difficult judgment call.

She could not make the form-change tank attachments to her own body while she remained inside her suit. When that suit was removed, she would have no more than a few minutes before anoxia robbed her of consciousness. And the longer she waited, and the lower the chamber air pressure became, the quicker anoxia would set in.

Sondra lowered her internal suit pressure and switched to pure oxygen. She hyperventilated for a couple of minutes, until she felt her head swimming.

Now.
Before she had a chance to change her mind or think more about the implications of what she was doing. Suit off.

Forty seconds.

Into the tank harness.

One minute twenty seconds.

Connections—fourteen of them. Can't afford to rush. Can't afford to make a mistake.
Two minutes twenty seconds.

Sondra's lungs were empty. She felt them collapsing within her rib cage. Five more connections, just five. Not much to ask. Her head was swimming again.

Three minutes and thirty seconds.

Two more attachments. Tank turning dark, have to work by feel.

Four minutes something.

Last one. Was that right? Can't tell. No more feeling in fingertips. Spears of ice, down throat and into chest.
Five . . .

Total darkness.
Personal
darkness. Strange way to go. But when it came to the final moment, maybe every way seemed like a strange way to go. And go
where
?

No one had ever managed to answer that question. Maybe she would do it, be the first.

Sondra turned to solid ice, wondering if her personal darkness would ever end.

* * *

When you plunged into a form-change that was both unplanned and desperately hurried, you gave little thought as to what you were likely to find waiting for you when you emerged. You were far more likely to be wondering if you would emerge.