“Direct me,” she said.
Yesterday they had drafted a general plan. Afterward he had spent much time alone, pondering when his mind did not drift freely in hopes of inspiration. Nonetheless, they must grope their way forward, improvising, his knowledge of space and astronautics guiding her skill with the system.
“The history of interplanetary exploration,” he told her unnecessarily. “For openers, a summary.” That should make their undertaking seem an innocuous bit of research, perhaps by someone with nothing better to do.
Hypertext appeared in three-dimensional configuration. Aleka entered the commands that led topic by topic outward from the asteroid belt to the Kuiper and beyond. Casualties … Sigurd Kaino Beynac did not come home. The purpose and destination of his voyage were never put in any public database. Whatever tale was kept sequestered was probably lost in the disastrous ending of Niolente’s rebellion. So the computer said.
“We knew this stuff,” Aleka complained.
“Yes, but I want it in an entire context, or as nearly entire as exists,” Kenmuir replied. “Next we’ll focus on scientific missions to asteroids.”
The established associations quickly brought up Edmond Beynac and his death. Kenmuir nodded. He had expected that. “Beynac was after confirmation of his ideas about the early Solar System. Let’s check on exactly what they were. It’s vague in my memory. I’m beginning to realize that that’s largely because I’ve scarcely ever seen it mentioned. Because he was in fact mistaken, or because there was something there that somebody would like to suppress? He was too important in his science for all record of this to be erasable.”
When he had studied the precis, which took time, Kenmuir whistled low. “M-m-hm. I get a suspicion of what kind of body Kaino went out to. But that was years after his father died, and he wouldn’t have taken off blind. First, an astronomical search. But nobody’s ever heard—“ He sketched instructions for Aleka to track down the account.
And: “Ah, yes, I’d forgotten, or maybe never knew, a brother of Kainp’s directed the major Lunar observatory of that period. We’ll run through a list of what reports and papers came out of it between those two death’s.”
And: “Some curious gaps, wouldn’t you say? Distant comets discovered and catalogued, nothing anomalous, but … I should think the surveys would have found more of them. We know they’re out there. Were certain findings left unreported?”
And: “If I were seriously interested in spotting,m-m, Edmond Beynac’s hypothetical mother asteroid, I’d get better parallaxes than you can from the Moon. Robotic probes—those launches will be recorded, even if the results are not.”
Aleka giggled. It sounded like a guitar string breaking. “How lucky for us the cybercosm is a data packrat. It hoards everything.”
“Aye, but a part of the hoard stays permanently underground.” Kenmuir was silent a while. “Duck back to Kaino. The departure date of his last voyage, exact type and capabilities of his ship, initial boost parameters as far as they were routinely tracked, date of the return without him. That will all have been public.”
And: “Yes, it’s consistent with an expedition to the Kuiper Belt, though that still leaves an unco huge region.” Kenmuir frowned. “The last decade or two of the Setenarchy. Missions dispatched by the aristocrats of Zamok Vysoki: Rinndalir till he left for Alpha Centauri, Niolente afterward. Very little information would ever have been released about them, but we’ll see what’s available, including whatever the Peace Authority found in her files.”
“You’ve told me they claimed a lot of that was accidentally destroyed,” Aleka said.
“They claimed. Let’s look. Again, ship types and launch parameters. Those could not have been hidden, at least not if they left from the Moon. And maybe you can locate a few cargo manifests or the like, scraps of fact, pointing to what they may have carried … Uh, I’d better explain how such matters work.”
Having assembled the figures, Kenmuir turned to an auxiliary board and calculated trajectories, fuel consumption, the range of what could have happened. When he was through, he sat back and said in his driest voice, “Plain to see now, Lilisaire’s suspicions and mine are right. Some sort of project in deep space, involving construction. Clandestine, which means trips to the site had to be few and far between and minimally manned. But even in those days, you could do quite a lot with well-chosen, well-programmed robots, if the raw materials were handy.”