He couldn’t tell how much of her cheerfulness was genuine, but it lightened his mood. He’d never before had occasion to use a conveyance like this. In his methodical fashion, he took stock. The cabin was about three meters square. Two facing benches, well cushioned, could fold down into beds, and a table could be lowered between them. An eidophone and an entertainment cabinet stood at the front end. In the rear were a sanitor cubicle and an air unit that was a miniature version of a spaceship’s.
Spacelike, too, was the silence in which the car flew on forcefields through vacuum. The tubeway was barely visible outside; a little dust had inevitably blurred its clarity. Drive rings flicked by every few hundred meters, or now and then a pump. Forward and aft he saw the power cable as a thin gleam crossing the piers that, at their own intervals, supported the tubeway six meters above ground. On the left at a distance, the eastward shaft ran equally straight. As he watched, a carrier in it bulleted past.
Now and then he spied a remnant town—more accurately, village—or an isolated home. Otherwise the prairie stretched like a sea, grass rippling in golden-green billows before a wind on which hawks and wild geese rode. It must be hot; light cataracted from a sky empty of clouds. He dimmed the windows and looked forward to the leafy shadows of Dakota New Forest.
Aleka racked the luggage Packer had gotten for them, filled with clothes and toiletries. From its holder she took the lunch and the thermoses of coffee and lemonade she had prepared at his cuisinier. After their breakfast there, they wouldn’t be hungry for hours, but the sight of the things resting tidily on a shelf made this compartment their nest.
“I ought to have helped,” Kenmuir apologized awkwardly.
“You will, amigo, you will.” Aleka turned the water tap beside the sanitor upward, fountained a mouthful, and came back to bounce down onto a seat. “I’m going to make you talk yourself hoarse.”
He settled opposite. Even under reduced sunlight, her skin and hair glowed. Ring shadows flowed across the curves of her. “What do you mean? You’ve seen everything I did.”
“Have I? I doubt it, ‘cause I don’t know how to see. If you got a hasty peek at the layout and training manual for our community yacht in Niihau—a bar-kentine, she is—how much would you retain? Never mind the names of sails and lines, could you draw me a picture of them? Bueno, I’m no spacer. Tell me what you learned in Prajnaloka and what it means.”
He scowled. “Much less than we hoped, I’m afraid. My fault. I should have realized that the basic data are at the end of the text, and skipped ahead to them. I’m sorry.”
“Pele’s teeth! Will you stop hogging the blame for everything? We had what—three minutes max?— before the word came to scoot. I’m not sure I savvy what kind of beast we grabbed the tail of. That’s your job, Kenmuir. Start talking.”Her eagerness heartened him. Nonetheless he rummaged through his mind a while before he spoke, and made academic phrasing a defense.
“You undoubtedly did see that a clandestine Lunarian expedition went to a unique body far out beyond Neptune, which a similarly secret astronomical program had located, back in Dagny Beynac’s time.” She nodded. “A giant asteroid, mostly iron, therefore with a surface gravity comparable to Luna’s. Other metals are abundant too, and it’s accumulated a vast hoard of cometary materials, ices, hydrates, organics, preserved virtually intact.”
“Yes, I got that far, and wondered what the fuss was about. Treasure trove? We’ve ample materials a lot closer to home, don’t we? In fact, what with recycling and shrinking demand, aren’t extractive industries supposed to peter out in the course of the next century?” The full lips curved ruefully. “I puzzled, and the rest of what we managed to screen didn’t register too well. Something about, uh, Rinndalir and Niolente mounting later expeditions.”
“Correct. I wondered, myself, what they did, and skimmed the text till it reached that part. There I slowed down, which I shouldn’t have, and was immersed when we got the alarm.”