He walked forward to the nearest waiting figure, reached out, and touched his gloved hand to her faceplate. The shape in front of him rippled and started to change. At the same time, the long line of image figures moved in rapidly to coalesce with the first one. The surface he had touched brightened. In less than a minute Ben stood before a shining spherical body. As the last ripples died away on the silver surface, a slender neck with a pentagonal head emerged from the topmost part.
Ben drew in his first deep breath since leaving the surface of Marglot. If every journey began with a single step, he had just completed a second one. Now to try for a third. Was the object in front of him Guardian of Travel, or would he have to start everything over from the beginning?
"Can you hear and understand what I am saying?"
The initial reaction was not encouraging. The silver globe sank into the surface of the cylinder, until only a small upper part was visible.
"I have returned from the world to which you sent us. You said that we might return."
The long-necked sphere remained silent, but it slowly began to reemerge from the floor. That had to count as progress of sorts.
"I would like to learn more about the planet to which you sent us."
"A special world."
At last, words.
"Did you say that a super-vortex lies at the center of that world?" This would be one hell of a time for Ben to learn that in his shocked and injured condition he had dreamed up the whole previous conversation.
"A super-vortex exists at the center. That is correct."
"Is it a transport vortex?"
"No. There is no way that it can be used as such. It was placed there long, long ago by our creator, to serve a quite different purpose."
"Will it work now, as it did then?"
"We do not know."
Not so good. "If it can still work, is it controlled at the planet I just came from?"
"It is controlled from here, and only from here."
Fifty-fifty on the answers he hoped for. As good as it was likely to get. But the difficult part lay ahead. Guardian of Travel seemed friendly enough to humans, but all its allegiance must lie with the Builders. Also, its sentience was inorganic and presumably completely logical. You had to imagine that you were trying to persuade E.C. Tally—and hope you remembered at least some of the facts correctly from the last time you were here.
"As servant to the Builders you once provided access to many worlds, including the surface of this one. Little by little, the service that you provide was diminished; not because the Builders wished it so, but because another group has been at work, destroying what the Builders made. Now you have access to only one world."
"One world; but a special world to the Builders."
"Special, but not special enough to save it. Unless you take action, that last world will suffer the same fate as all the others." This was the trickiest piece of what Ben had to say. From most points of view Marglot was already a dead world. "That world is not yet in the hands of the Builder adversaries. It can perhaps be saved from possession by them, if you take the right action here."
"If it can be saved by such action on our part, do you wish to return to it?"
That was a question to which Ben had given not one moment's thought. Go back? It was his turn to say, "I do not know. Why do you ask?"
"Because connection to the super-vortex at the heart of the world can be made at any time, while use of a transport vortex to the surface is possible only at precise times, when the configuration of other events permits it."
Die here of eventual starvation and dehydration? Or return to die on Marglot, in whatever strange condition that planet might be at the time of his transfer?
"May I postpone a decision on that?" Ben felt a paradoxical sense of exhilaration. Sure, he was going to die. But he had taken another step toward his goal, and he would keep stepping as long as he had breath. "Let me tell you what must be done to save the world from possession by the adversaries of the Builders."
"We will listen." The pentagonal disk bobbed up and down on its long silver neck. "Be aware, however, that we too may postpone a decision."
"It has happened before, if you are willing to believe some of the ancient stories." Teri Dahl's arms felt ready to fall off and she was taking a brief break. "An old man pushed a rock up a hill all day. Whenever he reached the top it rolled back down and he had to start over."
Torran Veck had been digging furiously, clearing away new snow and old ice from the runway in front of the
Have-It-All
. He paused for a moment. "I don't know what they meant by an old man, but I doubt if he was much older than I'm feeling. We've done this three times so far. How many more?"
"As often as we need, until we can get out of here. I heard Louis Nenda talking with Hans Rebka. No one, not even E.C. Tally, can calculate the weather patterns. At least the temperature seems to be holding steady. Nenda says we just have to keep the thrustors free from snow and ice as often as they become clogged, and hold the runway open."
"That's easy for him to say. He's not down here digging."
"In some ways this is harder on Nenda than anyone else. It's his ship that's being torn to pieces and thrown away. Look at that."
A flash of green showed at one of the upper hatches, and four storage lockers came sailing out to land on the snow.
Torran stared up. "That's Claudius at the hatch. If they have him working, things must really be bad."
"Nenda let him sit inside the shields on the forward reactor for a few hours, and it made all the difference. See how light a green he is? He's drunk. In his condition he's likely to throw himself out along with everything else."
"Who's keeping overall track of things?"
"E.C. Tally. That kind of job was made for him. He knows to the gram the mass of everything being thrown away, and he provides a running total anytime you ask for it—or even if you don't."
"How close are we to a decision, Teri? I've been too busy even to ask."
"Asking won't help. Tally says he doesn't know. Nenda and Rebka do, and maybe Julian Graves. They know all the facts. But not one of them is telling. My guess is that we still have a long way to go, because internal fixtures are bring thrown away faster than ever."
A fat disk, three meters across and half a meter thick, went spinning away through the air from an upper level of the ship. It flew thirty or forty meters before it plowed sideways into deep snow.
Teri said, "I think that's Louis Nenda's special luxury bed. The only one aboard who could throw it like that is Archimedes. I wonder where Nenda will sleep now?"
"Somehow I don't think that's his top priority. Nobody should plan much sleep anywhere for the next day or two." Torran glanced up at the sun. "Uh-oh. I had no idea it was so late. It will be sunset in another hour. We have to get back to work."
"I can't believe it's so close to sundown." Teri looked to the readout in her suit's faceplate. "And my suit agrees with the way I feel. It says we have four hours and more before dark."
"That's strange." Torran paused again in his work. "My suit is saying the same thing as yours. But our eyes aren't lying, either."
They stared at the sun, barely above the horizon, then turned to look at each other.
At last Teri said, "I have no idea what is going on."
"Nor do I. But this is strange enough, whatever it is, we have to report it this minute."
Teri Dahl was right. They did indeed have a long way to go. But she was wrong in thinking that Louis Nenda and Hans Rebka knew how far.
"We're not down to the wire yet, nowhere near it. There's loads more stuff can go." Nenda was in the conference room with Hans Rebka, along with E.C. Tally, Julian Graves, Darya Lang, and Atvar H'sial. Nenda's beloved conference table had long since vanished, torn apart by Archimedes and thrown outside. The chairs had suffered the same fate. The members of the group sat around on the floor.
Nenda went on, "One thing's for sure, if we have a chance at all, it's a slim one. I pulled us together because we need to make a couple of decisions. Tally, what we got up to now?"
"In our present situation, we have no chance whatsoever of achieving orbit."
"That's just lovely. What I had in mind was a bit more detail. Like, maybe, a few numbers, a few facts, some probabilities."
"Those I will gladly provide."
"But not too many of 'em."
"Can there be too many facts? However, let us begin with fundamentals. In order to reach a Bose entry node in this system, the
Have-It-All
must achieve escape velocity from Marglot. We must somehow attain with our drive a final velocity of better than 9.43 kilometers a second. Based on the
Have-It-All
's present mass, and assuming a drive efficiency of thirty-eight percent, which appears to be the best that we can hope for, our top final velocity would be 7.61 kilometers a second."
"So we're not even close. Not even close to close. You're tellin' us we somehow have to get rid of twenty percent of the ship's original mass."
"Nineteen point three percent, to be more precise. However, considerable mass reduction is still possible. We have scarcely begun to remove the second class of inessentials." Tally glanced around the conference room. "For example, wall paneling such as that. It is not needed for flight. It must go."
"That paneling is special hardwoods from Kleindienst. I'll never be able to replace it. Go on."
"All non-structural interior bulkheads are expendable. All food refrigeration systems, together with all food that would spoil. All but an absolute minimum of other foods. All water recycling equipment may be dispensed with, since present water supplies will suffice for a trip back to the Orion Arm. All drinks but water. All storage lockers, all furniture except for control chairs, all sleeping accommodations, all soft furnishings, all carpets and drapes. All clothing beyond what people are wearing at the time we leave. All spare suits. Most lighting fixtures. All exercise and recreational equipment. All toilet and bathroom fixtures, unless you feel it necessary to keep one working toilet."
Nenda said, "That would be nice." Hans Rebka added, "Keep going, E.C. This is beginning to sound familiar—just like it was where I grew up."
"All air quality monitoring and air purification equipment. This introduces a slight risk, which the councilor believes to be tolerable."
Julian Graves nodded. "Compared to the risk if we stay on Marglot, it's negligible."
"Most communication and navigation equipment, beyond a bare minimum. All cosmetics. All personal computing equipment. I volunteer to upload their contents into my own internal storage, and will download them again into new equipment if and when the opportunity arises. All interior temperature control and air circulation systems. Individuals must seek their own comfort zones. There are also many smaller potential savings. For example, Kallik assures me that a Hymenopt can go months without food or water, and she is quite willing to do so. My own body can be left behind, and only my brain retained. Should we survive, a new embodiment will present no problem. Though I cringe at the prospect of Sue Harbeson Ando's indignation if I return to her yet again for a replacement."
"I cringe at the prospect of somethin' a lot worse than that. Suppose we do the list, every one?"
"We will achieve a further mass reduction of 7.44 percent. Making the same assumptions as before as to engine efficiency, that provides us a final velocity of 8.27 kilometers a second."
"And we need 9.43 or better. It won't do. We're still more than twelve percent short."
"I don't understand something." Darya Lang had been sitting silent. "Seems to me we're missing out on something huge. What about all the equipment associated with atmospheric flight? There are the air-breathing engines, the extensible wings, the stabilizers, and the landing gear."
E.C. Tally was nodding. "Most of the landing gear is also needed for an air-breathing power takeoff. However, if we were to dispense with the rest, we would achieve a further mass reduction of two percent of our original. This would bring us to a final velocity of 8.44 kilometers a second. However, the consensus seems to be that we should not readily abandon a capability for atmospheric travel. Captain Rebka is worried that we may need to fly atmospheric for other reasons."
"I am. Keep going, E.C. You still haven't mentioned the beetlebacks."
"They are on my list of relevant facts. They move slowly, perhaps because the snow is hindering their progress. But they do move, and groups of them are still converging on our location. Given their possible role in the destruction of Marglot, it is difficult to believe that they come to do us anything but harm."
"So we may have to take a short hop. After that, maybe we burn our bridges and get rid of the
Have-It-All
's engines for air travel. There's one more thing we need to sort out, an' maybe it's the main reason I wanted us to meet." Nenda looked around at the others. "This isn't a deal where we all get to pick, an' everyone has their personal preference. We're in one ship. Somebody has to make the call: if we fly, when we fly, how we fly. Some of you have been in trouble as often as I have—maybe more. You know you don't run emergencies by committee."
Darya said at once, "Take me out of the decision-making loop. I like to sit and think for a year before I make up my mind."
"You made your mind up about
that
quick enough. But all right."
Hans Rebka said, "I'm not like Darya, I can make up my mind fast. But I don't know this ship the way you do, Nenda. I don't know what it will and won't do, when you can change your mind, how you can cut corners. This one has to be yours. The rest of us can listen, and maybe make suggestions. But calling the shots must be your job."
"I was afraid you would say that. I don't like it much, but I know I'd like anythin' else a whole lot less." Nenda stood up. "All right. I'll say when. Meanwhile, we hold on to the equipment to fly atmospheric. Everythin' else goes."