The Ouroboros Wave (29 page)

Such things did happen, of course. Before AADD was created, the challenges faced by the first Martian settlers had seemed insurmountable and Earth had had no scruples when it came to exporting its social problems to the red planet. In that sense Chaa’s resentment was natural. It didn’t take a leap of imagination to conclude that Earth might be secretly planning to dismember AADD and take over the accretion disk, and it would be hard to view the Terran action aboard
Shantak II
with anything but similar
apprehension.

But for Shocho, these were additional reasons for preventing emotions from taking over. Passion would just make it harder to see what was in front of them. From a crisis management standpoint,
that would be extremely dangerous.

“I think the Terrans would be happy to see us arguing like this,” said Shocho. Chaa was generally not one to let his emotions get the better of him, and he knew that nothing was achieved by letting the rest of the team see him arguing with Shocho over fundamental
matters like this.

All right, I’ll trust in your command and see how things develop. But if you continue to make concessions to the Terrans and I determine it’s putting the rest of us in danger, I’ll proceed on my own authority. Do you agree?

“Of course. That is our way.”

Shocho’s agent signaled that the rest of the team was now behind Chaa.

3

THE BARRICADE
blocking the entrance to the south and west modules was immediately removed, just as Whitley had promised. For the time being, observation of Eingana progressed. Data continued to accumulate. But as the days passed there were still no transmissions from within the solar system, with the exception of data coming from
Discovery,
one light-day away.

“
Discovery
continues to ignore our requests for information, Commander.” Shocho heard this on a daily basis. The only thing coming from
Discovery
was numerical data. As a Terran ship, they must have had some information from Earth on the general situation, but if they did they weren’t disclosing it.
Discovery
might as well have been an unmanned satellite as far as
Shantak II
was concerned.

“I wonder what’s going on with their crew,” ventured Chaa.

“Well, whatever they’re doing, there aren’t any AADD crew aboard to witness it. At least they don’t have to worry about the kind of friction we’re having. Still, it’s a bit worrying.”

“What is?”

“Why haven’t they asked
us
what’s going on? At least they should’ve sent some information to Dr. Whitley, don’t you think?”

In fact, Shocho knew that Whitley
had
received confidential transmissions from
Discovery
but apparently hadn’t learned much from them. Of course, Whitley had kept the content of the messages to himself. But he had sent repeated queries to
Discovery
and received little by way of reply.

Shantak II
continued to wait, starved for information. Perhaps AADD and Earth were at war this very moment. No one could say.

OTHER THAN
during their observation work, the Terrans and the AADD crew had no contact. Almost mysteriously, there was no friction, but the situation couldn’t be called peaceful. It was as though a tremendous load of energy were accumulating ahead of
a huge explosion. The slightest disturbance might release it.

Shocho, who was responsible for crisis management, soon grew isolated from the other Guardians. She had begun to lose the support
of her team.

Who could replace her? It was a decision that conferred responsibility on the people making it. Supporting Chaa would entail the same responsibility as supporting Shocho; Shocho herself had no intention of making a fuss about losing her team’s support. Her
stoicism was part of their culture.

It would be unusual for a team leader in one of the cities of Mars or Uranus to lose the support of her team over a disagreement, since diversity of opinion was the norm. But there were only five other
Guardians on
Shantak II.
Shocho was truly isolated.

In point of fact, Chaa was under even more pressure. If the other Guardians adopted his outlook, it would mean using force. This would expose the squad to physical danger. Chaa knew this, and it made him slightly more cautious than before. Shocho reciprocated by steering clear of Chaa, partly from a desire to allow him to grow through figuring things out on his own, partly because she wanted
to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Still, further problems would have to present themselves for a process of education or punishment—whichever it ultimately was—to be effective. Sure enough, soon after the barricade came
down, the next problem came up.

“
Hastur
? In this quadrant? You’ve got to be joking.”

Chaa had taken Shocho into an empty meeting room to give
her the news out of earshot of the rest of the crew.

“I’m just guessing it’s
Hastur.
I assumed that war would mean a
lot of ship traffic, so I carried out some observations.”

Both Guardians knew the significance of Chaa’s taking such a step without consulting Shocho, but both pretended not to notice it. This was not the time to test the limits of Shocho’s weakened
position.

“How did you find her?”

“With the spare optical telescope. No one’s on it these days. I
wrote a program to scan for signs of traffic.”

“And what makes you think this is
Hastur
?”

“Process of elimination. Very few spacecraft—even for us—have the legs to do a round-trip all the way out here. Luckily she was decelerating when I saw her. The plasma spectrum was a match.”

Hastur
’s antiproton propulsion system could kick the ship up to five percent light speed for voyages to the Kuiper belt and the Oort Cloud—prospecting missions to the swarms of comets in those regions. Its mission had nothing to do with servicing
Shantak II.
Normally the ship wouldn’t even be in this part of the solar
system.

“Did you hail her?”

“Not yet. I wanted to clear it with you.”

“All right.” Shocho quickly drafted a short message outlining their situation and webbed it to Chaa. He signed off on it and they sent the message using the optical telescope’s laser sighting system to ensure that it wouldn’t be detected by others on the ship. The sighting laser wasn’t designed for communication, so the message
had to be sent using Morse code.

“When can we expect an answer?”

“With no change in course, about three hours.” Chaa was a hard-liner, but he was as anxious as Shocho for the news from
Hastur
to
be favorable—that war had not broken out.

They spent the next three hours huddled with the rest of the security team, weighing options. Should they try to determine how all communication from the rest of the solar system could possibly be blocked if a state of war did not exist? And if war had
been declared—what then?

“Receiving transmission!” The response came slightly later than expected. Maybe
Hastur
’s crew had guessed the situation on
Shantak
II;
in any case, the reply was also in Morse code.

A-A-D-D t-h-i-s i-s D-e-e-p S-p-a-c-e C-r-u-i-s-e-r H-a-s-t-u-r—

The message appeared character by character. The transmission speed seemed unaccountably slow, even allowing for the use of Morse. Perhaps whoever was sending the message wanted it read
off directly by the receiver.

“I was right,” said Chaa. “It’s
Hastur.
”

“Come on, tell us why you’re here,” Shocho muttered to herself.

The six Guardians assembled in the tiny room peered intently at their webs, but there was nothing further. Then, unbelievably,
Hastur
disappeared from the display. The coordinates were correct,
but the display was empty, the airwaves silent.

“Something hit them! It’s war after all!” shouted Chaa.

“Calm down,” snapped Shocho. “Why would anyone attack
Hastur
? Is she strategically important? Are we?”

“Well… of course not. Then what do you think it was?”

“Maybe something harder to deal with than news of war.”

“How could anything be harder than that?”

“Because the transmission was inconclusive.
Hastur
is gone. For some reason it’s disappeared. If we tell the rest of the crew—and the Terrans—all we’ll do is make everyone aboard even more paranoid. If we conceal what we’ve just seen, the Terrans are likely to find out anyway. Then there’ll be hell to pay because we didn’t tell them.”

“But what else can we do?”

“We can’t let the Terrans know we sent
Hastur
a message. I want everyone in this room to consider themselves under a gag order.
The existence of the gag order is under gag order too.”

Shocho’s agent transmitted a summary to each team member’s web for confirmation. Not even Atwood was to know what had just happened. It looked like things were going to get much worse before they got better.

IN FACT
, it wasn’t long before Atwood contacted Shocho, asking for a meeting. Since Atwood was the project leader, Shocho assumed that he wanted to discuss the comm blackout and the tension between the two crews. As it turned out, she wasn’t wrong, but Atwood clearly saw things in an optimistic light.

“I can’t imagine there’ll be a war. Even if there was, the Terrans don’t have a hope of winning. We’ve got the energy, the technology, and the economic power. If they’re not fools, they won’t use force. But say there’s a war—what’s the impact on this station? We’re ninety AUs out. The Terrans can’t just reach out and grab us. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

Shocho and Atwood were in one of the east module lounges. The AADD crew module was the largest on
Shantak II,
and in addition to the large mess area there were three smaller meeting lounges. When the ship was accelerating, there was enough space in the compartment to set up a small table.

In freefall the table was stored and handholds extended from the four walls, the floor, and the ceiling. The handholds were coded in six colors so the astronauts could orient themselves with respect to the rest of the ship.

Atwood lightly grasped a handhold to stabilize himself. Shocho floated facing him, in the posture that signaled a desire to talk.

Atwood’s generation—he was about ten years younger than Shocho—had no doubt that AADD’s society had surpassed that of Earth. They had never known AADD as anything other than a far-flung, relatively wealthy society. Occasionally, they might feel that the Terrans deserved pity, but they would never regard them as a threat.

“What did you want to speak to me about, Dr. Atwood?”

“Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the atmosphere aboard this ship isn’t exactly conducive to good research work. My own staff seems to be smoldering. It’s completely unnecessary, really.”