Silent, he and Aleka passed along the trail through the woods and out into the clearing. Shadow brimmed it. Light burned yet on treetops around and on the prow of the spaceship. Poised within the clear cylindrical shelter, she thrust her torpedo shape aloft to outshine the Moon.
A stone wall guarded the shrine. In front of its entryway, a two-meter block held a bronze tablet bearing an account of what Kyra Davis had done. Here Fireball folk always paused, as at an altar. Kenmuir and Aleka gave salute.
Sometimes those who came went on into the ship, for special rites or just to service her. Several had done it of late. They too had worn cloaks, in their case to hide the equipment and rations they took aboard. The hope was that this would touch off no alarm in the surveillance machines—another ceremony, another assertion of an identity long since obsolete. Leading the way onward, Kenmuir took care to pace slowly.
A mechanism permanently activated detected his approach and extruded a ramp from beneath the aft personnel lock, which opened. Man and woman ascended. For a bare instant, they glanced about at the living forest and took a breath. Then they went inside. The valve shut, the ramp retracted.
Beyond the chamber, Kenmuir doffed his cloak. To stow it in a locker was sheer reflex; he noticed and grinned at himself. Aleka did likewise. They were both clad in skinsuits, to slip directly into space outfits. Even now, the sight of her caught at him. “Come along,” he said hastily.
When the ship rested on her landing jacks, passageways through the length of her became vertical shafts. You used fixed ladders. The climb between pearl-gray bulkheads went past sections where remembrances of the original pilot darted forth, stowed high-acceleration couches, door to the wash cubicle, folded galley manifold, closet for personal possessions, multiceiver with vivifer, hobby kit, a family picture faded to a blur … Air hung heavy. It would not freshen until the recycler and ventilators resumed work.
To him the command cabin was archaic, a bit of history, to her new and foreign, but in the simulator both had grown familiar with it. They took their seats before the control console and secured their harnesses. Viewscreens and displays were blank, meters dead. Kenmuir sought after words. Aleka’s smile flashed taut. “Go,” she said to him. “Go for broke.”His fingers moved across the board. Lights glowed, needles quivered, numbers and graphics appeared, the forward viewscreen filled with sky. A rustle of air reached him, as if somewhere lungs were stirring. His voice sounded unnaturally loud. “Full readiness. Immediate liftoff.”
The voice from the speaker was female, husky, Kyra Davis’s own. So had she wanted it. “Salud … It’s been a long time … You are strangers.” His glance flipped involuntarily to the scanners whereby Kestrel observed him. The voice firmed. “We have no clearance.”
Part of the study had been of the language as it was spoken in that era. Kenmuir tried to form a pronunciation close enough for the robot to understand. “Emergency.”
Sensors were sweeping around. “No spacefield here. Liftoff in surroundings like these is unlawful. And I am enclosed.”
Hard to grasp that this was no sophotect, merely a robot, without conscious mind or independent will. He knew not how many such he had dealt with in his life, but here was something different. Here was a machine that had flown with Kyra Davis, served her, conversed and played games with her, maybe listened to her secret confessions and heard her weep. More than database entries remained. Against all reason, to Kenmuir, a spirit haunted the ship.
He had not expected it would hurt to key the Override code.
He did.
The orders jerked out of him: “We’re bound for the Moon. The shell is hyalon, tough, but you can break through if you boost at ten g. Then reduce to two g and proceed. However, don’t make directly for Luna. Set a course that will skim us past it, as if to get a gravity boost for a destination—” He gave coordinates, arbitrarily chosen, that would point them to deep space, well off the ecliptic. “In about an hour I’ll tell you the maneuver we actually want, and you can figure your deceleration vectors accordingly.” He didn’t care to do it earlier because he didn’t know what would happen. By then the whole plan might have crashed.