“Those two seem to spend a lot of time together,” Dan grumbled.
“Come to think of it, that’s true.”
Dan said nothing. He didn’t like the idea of Amanda and Fuchs playing around together, but he had no evidence that they were. Fuchs seemed like a pretty stiff straight arrow. But you never know, Dan said to himself. Amanda certainly seems to enjoy being with him.
Pancho jabbed a finger toward one of the touchscreen displays. “Well, at least the magnetic shield’s holdin’ up okay. We’re safe from radiation storms… for th’ time being.”
For the time being, Dan echoed silently.
“And the MHD channel?”
She tapped at a screen. “Normal as pie.”
“The bugs haven’t infected it, then.”
“Maybe not.”
“I think I’ll go back to the sensor bay,” Dan muttered. “See how those two are getting along.”
“Gonna be their chaperon?” Pancho teased.
“Am I that obvious?”
“You sure are, boss. A real worrywart.”
“Do you think they need a chaperon?”
“Prob’ly not. Mandy can take care of herself. Lars isn’t like Humphries.”
Nodding his agreement with Pancho’s assessment of the situation, Dan said, “So I’ll see how he’s doing with the electron microscope.”
“Good excuse,” Pancho said, laughing.
Wishing he could forget his fears of the nanobugs, Dan left the bridge, poured himself a mug of coffee in the wardroom, and then headed along the passageway to the sensor bay. He could see them through the open hatch to the cramped little compartment, standing amid the humming instruments and flickering display screens, deep in earnest conversation.
My god, they look like Beauty and the Beast, Dan thought. Even in rumpled tan coveralls, with her shining blonde hair pinned up in a sensible, no-nonsense fashion, Amanda looked gorgeous. Her big blue eyes were totally focused on Fuchs. In his usual dead-black pullover and slacks, his barrel-chested thickset body made him look like a feral animal out of some wildlife vid: a boar or a black bear. But he wasn’t growling or snarling at Amanda. Far from it.
“How’s it going?” Dan asked as he stepped through the open hatch.
They looked startled, as if they hadn’t seen him approaching.
Pointing to the gray tube of the miniaturized electron microscope, Dan forced a grin and asked, “Find any nanobugs?”
Fuchs turned away from Dan, toward the microscope. “No, it’s hopeless. This machine will never resolve nanometer objects.”
Dan wasn’t surprised. “It wasn’t designed to.”
“I had thought perhaps I could boost its power,” Fuchs went on, “but that was an idle hope.”
“We’ve been reviewing the long-range sensor data,” Amanda said, her cheeks slightly red. “Looking for a suitable asteroid, you know.”
“And?”
Fuchs broke into a happy grin. It was so unusual that Dan was taken aback.
“We have an embarrassment of riches,” he said, tapping at one of the touchscreens. “There are more than a dozen metal-rich bodies within a day’s flight of us, or less.”
Amanda said, “We’ve been trying to decide which one we should aim for.”
Dan smiled at her. “That’s easy. Go for the biggest one.”
George held his breath as he edged closer to the corner of the big bedroom where Humphries and Dr. Cardenas sat. They both looked tense, although he seemed strung high with anticipation, while fear and anger glowered clearly on Cardenas’s face.
George knew that they couldn’t see him, yet he felt anxious, almost frightened to be this close to them, invisible or not. Don’t sneeze, he warned himself. Don’t fookin’ breathe.
“All right,” Cardenas said tightly. “I’m listening.”
Leaning slightly toward the soft on which Cardenas sat, Humphries clasped his hands together and began, “Suppose I set you up in your own laboratory in some remote location on Earth. My father has holdings in Libya, for example. We could bring your grandchildren there, to be with you.”
“And what would I be expected to do at this remote laboratory?” Cardenas asked. Her voice was without inflection, like an automaton’s, her face a frozen mask.
“Nanomachines could be made to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, can’t they? Break the molecules down into carbon and oxygen atoms. The carbon could be buried, the oxygen released back into the air or sold as an industrial gas, whatever. That could stop the greenhouse warming in a year or two!”