CHAPTER 29
Optical amplifiers turned the stars into a sphere of dazzlement, bright ones become beacons, thousands upon thousands more leaping into visibility, the Milky Way a river of frozen fire, the Andromeda galaxy a glowing maelstrom. Only the pinpoint neutron star was dulled, lest it sear eyes that strayed in its direction. Ten kilometers distant, the boat Herald gleamed like a splinter off a sword.
Dayan and Brent gave the splendor no heed. Their attention was on the bulky nexus of a metal spiderweb, five kilometers wide, slowly spinning, its concavity always facing the pulsar. Spacesuited, they floated before the mass, touching a gripsole to the extended lattice whenever they needed to correct a recoil-drift, plying tools and meters with hands that power joints and tactile contractors made as deft as if bare. Nonetheless it was a demanding task. Each heard the breath of the other loud through radio earplugs, and recycling did not fan away all smell of sweat.
Finally Brent nodded. “Yep, what I suspected. Imbalance in the main data reducer. That program’s gone abobble. Not much, but enough. No wonder the input you were getting stopped making sense.”
“At first I thought we might have stumbled on some wild new phenomenon —” Dayan laughed. “No, this is better. We’ve more mysteries pouring in on us already than we can handle.” Her mirth thinned out into the light-years around. “How soon can we have this unit working right? The gravity waves from the starquakes — what they have to tell about the interior —”
“We can replace the whole module right now. The robots keep spares of everything, don’t they? The question is, will we get the same problem again soon? What mutated the program?”
“I’ve been thinking about that since you first suggested the possibility.” Dayan started plucking her implements from the lattice where they clung and securing them to her harness. It was a near-automatic task; her gaze went afar, her voice meditative. “We did record a partial reflection of the southern pulsar beam off something — seemed to be a drifting molecular cloud, maybe a remnant of the eruption — and it may well have happened to strike the reducer here. That’d probably be plenty to scramble a few electronic configurations. A weird accident, sheer bad luck, but we have to expect weirdness. . . .”
His look dwelt on her. The spacesuit muffled the curves of the small body, but clear within the helmet stood large eyes, curved nose, full lips, fair skin; the amplification gave just a hint of colors, but he knew the bound hair was flame red and could fall loosely down over her shoulders.
“So the stupid robots couldn’t figure out what the trouble was, and hollered for us,” he said.
“They’re only as good as their programs, Al, and the programs are only as good as our knowledge and foresight.”
“Yeah. Well, let’s get this fixed and head home for Envoy.”
Every array that the expedition deployed had its machine attendants, to monitor and maintain. Brent snapped an order.
Waiting, there alongside the great web, among the stars, Dayan regarded him for a silent while. “I’m sorry if this has inconvenienced you, Al,” she said.
“Huh?” She had not before seen him taken quite so off balance. “Inconvenience? Why, no, no. I thought you were impatient to get back. Me, I’m, uh, happy to do anything useful. That’s what I came along for.”
“And to shorten the time for yourself till we go home, not so? Nothing wrong with that. We all miss Earth.”
“Well, but —” He cleared his throat. “Hanny, working like this, together with you, it’s special. I’m almost sorry we’ll soon be done. Anytime you want —”
A blackness crossed the Milky Way. “Here comes the repair robot.” Dayan sounded more relieved than the event called for.
The shape — octopuslike, starfishlike, machine — approached on thin, invisible jets. The humans saw a flash of its optics. It passed within meters, seemed to wobble for a second or two, and moved on, shrinking into the heavens.
“What the fuck?” Brent shouted. “Come back, you bastard!”
“Something’s wrong,” Dayan said fast. “Its program’s deranged, too. Same cause?” She grabbed a radar gun, aimed, squinted at the reading, put it aside and took an ionoscope. “It cut jets off as it came near. Safety doctrine. But then it didn’t maneuver to dock. It just stayed on trajectory. It’s falling free, bound for infinity.”