Starfire (26 page)

At the center of the sphere floated a physical model of the shield, built at a scale of a hundred thousand to one.

"It's a little more than a kilometer lengthwise," John explained as he guided Maddy toward the wide end of the cone. "Everything is in exact proportion to the real shield. The important thing, though, is that you get an overview of where the project stands at any time, which you can never get by looking at the shield itself—for one thing, most of the shield components are too small to see, and for another, the whole thing is too big to look at all at once. The model is updated in real time to reflect progress—or problems—with the real shield. See, it's happening now. A section is going out of commission. Either it's part of a routine check, or a horde of rolfes will be heading that way on the real shield."

Maddy followed his pointing arm. A small section of the shield, no more than a meter square, was changing from green to red. Except that a one-meter square was not small at all. With a scale of a hundred thousand to one, one meter on the model represented a hundred kilometers on the shield itself.

"Let's go take a look at it," John said casually. "Hold tight, I'm switching us to VR mode."

He saw Maddy turn and stare at him inside her suit helmet. A VR session was not on their schedule. In less than an hour, John was supposed to meet with Will Davis and Lauren Stansfield for a final wrap-up before he went to his new assignment in asteroid capture.

"I know," he said. "But I've worked with the shield for a lot of years. Call it one last look."

"Hey, you're the boss. You don't have to give me explanations for what we do."

Her helmet was only a foot away from his, and she was smiling. That smile made John profoundly uncomfortable yet pleased at the same time. Will Davis had met Maddy only once, three days ago, but as soon as he and John were alone he said, "Better not get ideas, boyo—and if you have ideas already, drop 'em. That there's one heavy-duty alpha female. She eats men like me and you as appetizers before the main meal."

Heavy-duty alpha female.
That struck John as an understatement. But he still wanted an answer to his question: Why did someone like Maddy Wheatstone trail along with him when she could be doing so many more important and interesting things?

Don't ask, or you'll hear what you don't want to hear.
John took a quick breath and threw them into virtual reality mode.

The shield sat in front of them, exactly as before. Its apparent size had not changed, but the far-off wall of the chamber had vanished and Maddy Wheatstone no longer smiled at him inside her suit.

He heard her gasp. "What happened?"

"We're in VR. What you're seeing on your visor isn't the model of the shield anymore, it's the real thing. We're picking up radio feeds from sensors located around the shield, in the same relative position as we are to the model. Smart sensors on the shield surface send out messages describing their condition, and those are converted to light signals of the right color by the message sensors."

"Neat. But suppose I want to look at a different part of the shield?"

"You move along using your suit controls, just as if you wanted to visit a different piece of the model."

"Like this? Hey, I'm moving."

"Keep going. You can use VR all the way to Cusp Station." John did the same thing, gliding steadily toward the point of the cone that formed the terminus of the shield.

He was used to the effect, but Maddy wasn't. After a moment she said, "I don't get it. I'm moving all right, but if I travel along in my suit at ten meters a second I must be going like hell in real space."

"It's a hundred thousand to one scale. Ten meters a second converts to a thousand kilometers. You're moving along the shield at a thousand kilometers a second."

"But that's impossible. Nothing can accelerate me so fast to move at that speed."

"Quite true. Nothing at all is accelerating in real space. Observational sensors watch every part of the shield, and the VR system simply switches to provide us with signals from whichever set of sensors is appropriate. What you're seeing is a succession of frames, like in an old-time movie camera. If your eyes could handle a hundred frames a second, you'd be able to watch the individual scene change each time you were switched to a new set of observational sensors."

He wondered if he was talking down to her. Maybe Maddy already knew this; it was well-known stuff. He rapidly switched himself out of VR, leaving Maddy in it. The suits' proximity sensors and collision-avoidance systems had cut in as soon as they went to VR mode, so he and Maddy now floated ten feet apart. John overrode them and approached close enough to peer in at her face. She couldn't see him, and he was relieved to find that she appeared anything but bored or irritated. Her lips were slightly apart, her eyes were wide, and her nostrils flared. "Alpha female" didn't even begin to describe it.

"That tiny thing is Cusp Station?" Maddy's words brought John back from his private version of virtual reality. "How big is it, John? It looks small enough to reach out and hold in my hand."

"It's almost a kilometer across—as big as Sky City." John went back to VR and felt a gentle push as the proximity sensor cut in again and moved his suit away from Maddy's. Cusp Station was a cherry-sized glowing ball at the very end of the shield. As Maddy said, it seemed close enough to grab. "Of course, Cusp Station has nowhere near as many people as Sky City, and hardly any computer power."

"How many people?"

"The last time I was there we had a human staff of a hundred and forty, plus about three thousand rolfes either in Cusp Station or out on the shield. But a lot of the rolfes are early models. They can't do nearly as much as the newer ones."

"That was the day we first met, wasn't it? We dragged you back for a meeting in Bruno Colombo's office. You were so tired you looked like a walking corpse. That's the last time you were out on the shield."

"Yes."
The last time.
That could mean the time before this one, or it might mean the final time.

Could you feel nostalgia for something as vast, remote, and austere as the space shield?

John had a sudden urge to see it—not the model, not the VR presentation, but the real thing in its elusive gossamer glory. He dropped out of VR and checked the time. They had forty minutes before the meeting with Will and Lauren. He and Maddy could do it, provided they kept their suits on and used the old exit lock from the simulation chamber.

He brought Maddy out of simulation mode and watched her shocked expression when he appeared from nowhere in front of her.

He said, "Relax, you're out of VR now. The change is a bit of a surprise when you're not used to it. Come on. I'll take you outside so you can see the shield. The real thing this time."

He took over her suit controls and steered them toward the far side of the simulation chamber. Maddy protested, "But this isn't the way we came in."

"No. The usual way outside takes you back along the axis, but there's a faster route to space using an old exit lock and tunnel at this end."

"Are you sure it will be all right?" Maddy was used to the old office buildings of Earth, where many escalators and elevators knocked out by the supernova had never worked properly since.

"Sure. The maintenance machines keep everything clean and in perfect working order. The worst thing that can happen is there might be maintenance work going on, and we'd not be allowed to enter."

They passed into an exit lock hardly big enough for two people. The doors groaned and creaked as they opened and closed. "Just old," John said, though the poor lubrication surprised him. He made a mental note to check that a suitable vacuum-rated lubricant was being used, then realized that was no longer his job. Sky City maintenance was Lauren Stansfield's responsibility now.

They emerged at the entrance of the curving corridor beyond. Maddy paused to stare at John. She did not speak, and she did not need to. He could see for himself. Everything in this section might be in working order, but clean it certainly was not. He ran his glove along one dimly lit wall and wiped off a layer of gray dust. Now that he looked closely, he could see that a couple of nearby fluorescents on the tunnel wall were not lit. But all the corridor lights were supposed to come on automatically when the lock was cycled.

Maddy was standing perfectly still, taking her cues from him. "We'll be safe," he said. "Even if all the wall lights failed, our suit lights would be enough. All we have to do is go along to the end of the corridor, then another lock takes us outside to open space. One more thing before we go."

He opened a circuit to maintenance and left Maddy in the loop so that she could hear his message. He kept it short. The corridor they were in seemed to have been overlooked by the cleaning machines. From the look of the place it had been this way for months.

She watched him send the message and made no comment. After his boast about everything being in perfect working order, why should she? He already looked like a half-wit. "Along here," he muttered, and ushered her into the main body of the corridor.

A small residual field showed that they were not exactly on the central axis of Sky City, so the path they followed had an apparent floor and ceiling. The upward curve was gentle, and as they moved John could examine the walls and follow the line of the corridor. He kept track of failed lighting and looked for any signs of recent visits by cleaning machines. Possibly it was just one particular machine that needed repair.

A grunt from Maddy brought his attention back to her.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." She gestured ahead of them. "But what on earth's that?"

It was a shapeless dark object on the floor about thirty meters ahead.

"Probably a cleaning bag." John moved faster, but it wasn't until he was within a few yards of the sack that he felt any sense of uneasiness. The bag was bulky, about four feet long and two feet across, and the lumpy shape was suggestive.

The sack's neck was loosely secured by a drawstring. He lifted it easily and pulled the string fully open. The bag fell away. The contents appeared as though emerging of their own volition. Two feet from John's suit helmet a human face and naked torso floated into view. The skin of the head was desiccated and freeze-dried, withered lips pulled back in a dreadful grin. The eyes showed only whites, deep in their sockets. A deep indentation in the skull on the left-hand side gave evidence of a savage blow. The delicate throat had been hacked and slashed, and dried blood blackened the ends of long, fair hair. A deep cut began just below the sternum and ran downward to the navel.

And beyond.

John swallowed hard, lifted the black plastic of the bag back into place, and pulled the drawstring tight.

He looked at Maddy. She sagged against the wall, eyes unblinking behind the visor of her suit. He wanted to speak to her, but could not.

He opened another circuit, this one direct to Bruno Colombo's office and without Maddy in the loop. "This is John Hyslop," he said. He sounded strained and unnatural, even to himself. "I am in the old extension tunnel leading from the simulation chamber to space. I will transmit exact coordinates after this message. I need security here as soon as possible. I have found . . ."

He paused. He had been about to say "a new victim of the Sky City killer," but the body showed signs of long duration in space. Such a degree of drying could not have happened in a few hours.

He shielded the bag from Maddy with his own suited body, and forced himself to open the drawstring. This time he examined the body closely, for as long as he could stand. "I believe," he said at last, "that we have found one of the missing victims of the Sky City killer. There has been mutilation. Judging from the wounds and the apparent age of the victim, I think that this must be Lucille DeNorville."

* * *

Under other circumstances the prospect of a private dinner with Maddy would have made John delighted but nervous. He had been aware of her oddly amorous look after the attack of labyrinthitis, but he had done nothing to follow up on it because he felt sure it was all the effect of her medication. Now, the discovery of Lucille DeNorville's mutilated corpse overshadowed all personal issues.

He and Maddy had been grilled for an hour by four Sky City security staff. John knew each of them personally and hoped that they saw him and Maddy as no more than the accidental discoverers of the body. But a full and careful questioning was inevitable. At what time had they entered the simulation chamber? At what time did they operate the air lock?
Why
had they chosen that particular lock, out of date and normally out of use? Had they seen anything or anyone in the tunnel before Maddy caught sight of the black plastic bag? Had either of them heard anything?

To that last question John was tempted to give a sarcastic answer. What can you possibly hear when you are floating in a vacuum?

He remained polite and cooperative. The security officers had no choice but to ask their questions, it was standard procedure. Unfortunately, neither he nor Maddy could offer a scrap of useful information. They had not touched the corpse, or moved it from where they found it, or seen anything out of the ordinary.

John knew, as Maddy did not, that the location of Lucille DeNorville's body had other implications. The killer, either before or immediately after the murder, must have tampered with the central data bank that governed the maintenance of Sky City. Otherwise, routine service by cleaning machines would have found Lucille within a few days. Without such service the discovery might have gone unnoticed for years. John could not recall the last time that he, or anyone else, had gone directly from the simulation facility to open space.

The security staff confirmed John's suspicion. The air lock maintained an electronic log of the date and time of its use, and there had been just two previous openings in the past three years. The first was four days before Lucille DeNorville vanished. The second was on the actual day of her disappearance.