In the seat next to him Artzybachova opened her eyes and gazed at him. “Are you all right?” When he nodded, she asked politely, “And how are you enjoying spaceflight? Is it what you expected?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. I thought we’d have to go through more training-“
She laughed. “Like high-G conditioning in those awful old centrifuges? Drills for emergency actions? Thank heaven, we don’t do that anymore. We don’t wear spacesuits, either.”
“I noticed that.” What Dannerman himself had on was the slacks and jacket he had put on that morning. Dr. Artzybachova and Jimmy Lin were wearing one-piece coveralls, General Delasquez the combat fatigues of the Florida Air Guard.
Dr. Artzybachova was still being grandmotherly. “Are you hungry? I brought some apples and I believe there are other things on board.”
“Hungry? No.”
“And you don’t have to pee or anything? You should’ve gone before we took off.”
“I don’t,” he said shortly, but she had put the idea in his mind. He quelled it, for there was an opportunity here to be taken. “Dr. Artzybachova? Can I ask you something? Is there something, well, peculiar about what we’re doing?”
She gave him an amused look, pale eyebrows raised. “Define ‘peculiar.’ “
He chose his words with care. “This is supposed to be a simple repair mission, right? But there are all these rumors-“
“What kind of rumors?”
He spread his hands. “Something about some kind of radiation from Starlab that wasn’t supposed to be there? I don’t understand that very well, Dr. Artzybachova; I was an English major. And something about those messages with the Seven Ugly Space Dwarfs?”
“You are very skilled at listening to rumors, Mr. Dannerman.” It wasn’t a compliment.
He pressed on. “I get the idea that that’s really what this mission is about. Something alien on Starlab? Something that might be worth a lot of money. Pat wouldn’t talk to me about it-“
“That is not surprising,” the old lady observed.
“I guess not. Will you?”
Dr. Artzybachova studied his face for a moment, considering, while the Clipper rolled itself into a new position. “I suppose it could do no harm now. In a little while you will see what we all see-whatever that turns out to be. Or it will turn out that there is nothing worth seeing, and then we will simply try to determine what repairs might make Starlab function as originally designed again. So,” she said, sighing, “yes, the rumors are true. Fifteen months ago your cousin’s observatory detected a burst of synchrotron radiation from Starlab. No one else appeared to observe it, but then no one else was actively trying to reestablish communications with the orbiter. So she called me at my dacha. I flew at once to New York. We examined all the logs of instrumentation changes and, no, there simply was nothing on Starlab that could have produced that emission. So we performed a data check.”
Dannerman pricked up his ears; this was new. “What kind of data check?”
“A fortunate coincidence: the Japanese were getting ready to replace one of their old weather satellites, so they did a census of everything in orbit-to select a safe slot for their satellite, you see. One of their instrument people was a former student of mine. From her I got all their obs of astronomical satellites- including Starlab. When we massaged the data it became clear that there was a steady flux of very low-level radiation coming from it, in several bands-none of it compatible with the presumed dead-board status of the satellite. In addition, optically, there was a blister on the side of the satellite that didn’t belong there. Finally, just recently we got another indication. There was a comet-like object-“
“Yes, I know about the comet-like object.”
She regarded him thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose you do.”
“And what all this adds up to?”
“Oh, Mr. Dannerman,” she said, sounding less patient, “I have no doubt that you know that, too. All the evidence taken together, there is strong reason to believe that something extraterrestrial has established itself on Starlab.”
“An alien?”
She looked pensive. “Probably not a living one, no. At least I hope not. More likely some sort of automated probe. But definitely some sort of technology that is not terrestrial in origin.”
A quick course correction spun their chairs around; the old lady grimaced and closed her eyes. Evidently she had finished her story.
But Dannerman hadn’t finished thinking about it. It sounded wholly preposterous, but this apparently sane woman seemed to give it credence. He cleared his throat. “Dr. Artzybachova?” And when she opened her eyes again, “I can see that new technology might be worth a lot of money. But what do you do with it when we find it?”
“If we find it. But that I cannot say until we see it, of course. That is what I am along for, me and my instruments.” She tapped one of the boxes with a toe.
“I was wondering about them,” he said.
She smiled. “Of course. Did you think I could examine what we find-whatever we find-by smell, perhaps? Although it may be that none of these instruments will be of any use, since we have no data on what might be there.”
“But you must have some idea-“
She raised her hand amiably. “But, Mr. Dannerman-Dan, may I? And please call me Rosaleen; it was a notion of my mother’s when I was born. She was much taken with the wife of your American president and gave me a name as close to hers as she dared.” She paused, then finished her thought. “But, Dan, I really don’t know what will be on Starlab, you see. I only have hopes. I hope that there will be some useful-looking devices which I can remove and bring back for analysis. Do you know the term ‘reverse engineering’? For that, so that perhaps they can be copied in some way. Will that happen? I don’t know. Will there be anything alien in Starlab at all? I don’t know even that much, either; it is all hopes. It is quite possible that, even if there is something there, it will be so unfamiliar that I will not dare to try to remove it. Or there may be nothing at all. In either case, we will have done all this for nothing.”
He looked at her. “Seems like a pretty long shot, the way you describe it.”
“Ah,” she said softly, “but think of the payoff. If we win our bet there will be unimaginable benefits, and not just in money. I would not have left my comfortable summer place in Ukraine just for the money, only for the chance to learn.” She looked pensive for a moment, then smiled. “Whatever it is, we’ll find out for sure when we get aboard. Now, Dan, if you’ll excuse me, we should be coming around toward North America again and I’d like to check the uplinks for news.”
Dannerman must have drifted off to sleep again, in spite of everything, because the next thing he remembered was Jimmy Lin’s cheery hail. The astronaut was swinging weightlessly toward them, hand over hand, pausing to float in space upside down by Dannerman. “So how do you like micrograv?” he asked amiably; then, glancing at Artzybachova and lowering his voice: “Tell you one thing, if my great-great had ever gone into orbit he would’ve had to write three or four new books. You don’t know what screwing is until you try it weightless.”
Rosaleen turned to him, her arms still waving in the graceful flow of tai chi. Ignoring the astronaut’s remarks, she asked, “Are we getting close to Starlab?”
“Not too far. That’s why I’m going to the head now; if we have to wear those damn suits I won’t want to need to pee. I recommend the same to you two, soon’s I’m through. But don’t stay out of your seats any longer than you have to, okay? And sing out when you’re both strapped in again. The general claims he ranks me, so he’s doing most of the piloting, and he has a heavy hand with the delta-vees.”
Dannerman’s bladder was signaling to him with increasing urgency, but he didn’t get his turn for a while. He deferred to Rosaleen Artzybachova out of politeness, and then to General Delasquez because he wasn’t given much choice when the pilot came back and pushed his way past; then to his cousin out of politeness again. By then his fidgeting was becoming conspicuous. Dr. Artzybachova, observing it, did her best to distract him. “Have you seen?” she inquired, reaching over to adjust his screen. It was displaying something tiny and oddly shaped, but when she turned up the magnification it became a satellite with antennae and solar collectors poking out in all directions.
“Starlab?” he ventured.
That amused her. “No, of course not. It is simply a dead old orbiter, I think a military one, and probably Russian; but it is interesting, is it not?”