Sunborn (26 page)

    When the bunk light went out at last, she cautiously climbed down. She felt an enormous and unaccountable sense of relief, being under way at last. Arlene pulled herself up from her lower bunk, but looked more wobbly and disoriented than Julie. “I’ve been in zero gee too long,” she confessed.

    “Better take it easy, then,” Julie advised. “Are you going to be okay? I need to go see someone, but I won’t leave if—”

    “No, no—I’m fine,” Arlene said in a tremulous voice. “But I think I’m going to lie here a few more minutes. Go ahead, I’ll be all right.”

    “Okay.” Julie closed the door behind her and strode down the passageway that a few minutes ago she had floated through. She searched until she found a small work area just aft of the bridge. “Lieutenant Cohn?”

    The officer looked up with a grin. “Call me Henry. I’ll be right with you, as soon as I check in with all the passengers and make sure everyone’s all right. Some people get off to a queasy start.”

    “I think my roommate’s one of them,” Julie said. There was an outside window nearby, so she went over and peered out at the curving twilight blue horizon of Neptune, which had not yet diminished at all.

    “Pretty sight, isn’t it?” Cohn said a minute later.

    “Hard to believe I’m leaving it behind. It feels like a natural part of the sky.”

    “I guess I haven’t been here long enough for that. What can I do for you, Ms. Stone?”

    “Julie. I’d like to check on the translator.”

    “Ah yes. Have you gotten permission from Dr. Lamarr?”

    “Oh, hell.” Could it be she didn’t
want
 to ask Dr. Lamarr?

    Cohn grinned. “Shall I call him for you?”

    “Yes, please,” she muttered. Pressing her lips together, she stared out the window again until Cohn returned from his console.

    “He’ll meet us at the cargo deck. Follow me?”

    She pushed back from the window at once.

    Lamarr beat them to the cargo deck. He was standing outside at the observation port, giving orders through the intercom. The translator’s corner of the cargo area had not been kept as isolated as promised, and a number of standard shipping containers, apparently secured at the last minute, blocked access to the much larger crate holding the translator. After a moment, Lamarr noticed Julie. “Miss Stone. Are you ready to look in on our charge?”

   
Nodding, Julie surveyed the scene. “It looks like we have to do some rearranging.”

    That provoked a jerk of the head from Lamarr toward the crewmen inside the compartment. “They were supposed to keep that area clear.”

    A crewman in the passageway explained, “Departure time was moved up, and we were informed we had exactly one hour to get everything secured. We
could
 have kept that area clear, if we’d been given a little more time.”

    Lamarr still looked irritated. “How long will it take to move that stuff out of the way?”

    The crewman shrugged. “We need an hour or two to find a place to secure everything else. Are you planning to open up the artifact container?”

    Lamarr turned to Julie. “What do you need, to make contact? Do we have to open it? It might be safer to leave it closed.”

    “I won’t know until I try,” Julie answered. “But if you want a more open communication—if you want it, for example, to recognize
you
and respond to
your
 questions—”

    “That is certainly a goal.”

    “Then I think we should remove at least the front of the crate, so it can see us.”
If it even has vision. I wonder how it actually sees.

    Lamarr turned to the crewman. “You heard her. We want to open the crate. The sooner the better.”

    The crewman’s eyebrows twitched. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us, Dr. Lamarr.”

    “Yes,” Lamarr answered. “And a great deal of work to do.”

    The crewman shrugged and turned away. Lamarr glanced at Julie and Lieutenant Cohn. “That’s settled, then. Officer Cohn, I’ll call you if we need you again. Miss Stone, if you will come with me, we must discuss what you will do when you reestablish contact. What you will say, and so forth.”

   
What I will say?
Julie thought, trying to imagine what instructions Lamarr might issue.
Or what I won’t say.

    Lamarr had never been present for her visits with the translator. She had heard, however, that he had been among those who had gone to see the artifact last night. Reportedly, it had ignored his attempts to communicate.

    This could be interesting.

*

   
“Dr. Lamarr, you’re asking me to promise things that are beyond my control.” Rocking forward on the crate she’d found to sit on, Julie spread her hands in exasperation.

    “I’m not asking you to promise. I’m asking you to do what it takes to establish communication. Is it unreasonable to ask that you push a little bit?”

    Was it? The translator would decide for itself how to respond to Lamarr. Her own feelings, she supposed, were irrelevant. She shrugged and changed the subject. “Were you ever going to tell me that you’d bugged my spacesuit with all kinds of biosensors, back on Triton? I just learned about it, from my roommate.”

    Lamarr’s gaze met hers for a moment, then moved away dismissively. “There were experimental considerations during that phase. It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”

    She suppressed a snort.

    His gaze darkened very slightly. “I understand your discomfort. But let me caution you, Ms. Stone, not to fall into the trap of thinking of this artifact as yours. It may have chosen you as its medium of communication for now, but that does not make you its only keeper.”

    Julie bit back the first reply that came to mind and said carefully, “I am aware of that. But it’s part of my responsibility to
protect
the translator to the extent I can, while I work at establishing communication.”

    “Of course,” Lamarr said, “though the translator seems capable of protecting itself.” Julie felt herself redden as he continued, “Ms. Stone, you do not hold me, or MINEXFO, in particularly high esteem—I know that. You think we’re in this just for the money, or the power. You think we want to exploit the translator for our own gain.”

    With an effort of will, Julie kept a neutral expression.

    “Well, I don’t deny that we hope to gain from our position regarding the artifact. As I’ve said, we would not have come three billion miles to Triton if we hadn’t hoped to find a profit.” Lamarr paused, tapping his pen on a notepad. “We haven’t yet made a profit, you know, in spite of the interesting metals we’ve mined. And now we have the
potential
 for a return on all of those trillions of dollars that were spent by investors and taxpayers, building an outpost at the edge of the solar system.”

    Julie answered as evenly as she could. “I understand the need for profit. I’m not opposed to profit.”

    “I’m glad to hear you say that.”

    “But—” she paused “—profit isn’t the only thing that matters, either.”

    “No, it’s not. This...
artifact
...could be of significant benefit to all of mankind.”

    “Exactly.”

    “Or, to view it from the other extreme, it could pose a significant threat.”

    Julie flushed.
It already saved the Earth once. What more can it do to prove itself?

    “Now, I don’t really believe that,” Lamarr continued. “If we thought it posed a threat, we wouldn’t be taking it anywhere near Earth.”

    She relaxed slightly.

    “But I say this to point out that since we don’t
know
 what the end result of its presence is going to be, someone needs to be in charge of it. And that someone—”

    She tensed again.

    “—is not you. Or even me, personally.” Lamarr paused, to let his words sink in. “It is the organization that made the discovery of the translator possible—the Mining Expeditionary Force—at least until some greater body decides differently. However, since MINEXFO is a multinational and multiworld consortium, there aren’t too many greater bodies out here.”

    “I understand that, but—”

    “And I am, currently, the chief representative of MINEXFO in the vicinity. That means I’m in charge until someone more senior arrives on the scene. And since we’re now on a three-month journey from Neptune to Earth, it would seem I’m going to have this job for a while.”

    Julie stared back at him.
Especially since you timed our departure to make it impossible for a competing team to join us. Yes.

    Lamarr nodded, then rose and peered through the window into the cargo hold. The crew were just moving the last of the cargo away from the translator’s crate. An olive-complexioned man, who seemed to be in charge, saw Lamarr and thumbed the intercom. “Do you want us to begin opening the artifact crate?”

    “Not yet,” said Lamarr. “We need to get our instruments and recording equipment in place.” He turned. “Ms. Stone, will you please oversee the setup of equipment?”

    “Of course. Do we know where the equipment is?”

    Lamarr asked the crewman, who pointed to three shipping pods stacked beside the translator’s container. “We were told to keep those boxes with the artifact. I don’t know what’s in them.”

    “May I come in?” Julie asked.

    The crewman gestured toward the pressure hatch. There was a loud click, and the door slid open. She stepped into the cargo bay. Lamarr called after her, “I’ll send some people to help you. Call me when you’re set up. But don’t open the artifact until I’m back. Understood?”

    Julie nodded and turned her attention to the cargo. The olive-skinned crewman followed Lamarr with his gaze, then said to Julie, “Would you like a hand with that stuff? I’m Ashmar, and this is Jose.”

    She shook hands with both. “Can we clear some more space around the translator to set up equipment?”

    “Well,” said Ashmar, “I guess we could stack some of this stuff on the other side of the bay. But do you mind if I ask you something first?”

    “What’s that?”

    Ashmar hooked a thumb toward the translator. “What’s in that thing? We’ve heard a lot of rumors, but no one seems to know. Do you?”

    Julie pondered how best to answer. “Let’s just say—it’s extraterrestrial, it’s intelligent, and sometimes it communicates. As to
what
 it is, no, we don’t have a clue.” As she spoke, she saw Ashmar’s eyes shift downward to the stone glinting in her right wrist. It was no secret back at the station how she had gotten the stones. How could it seem anything but weird to him? Did he wonder if she was being controlled by the device?

   
Sometimes I wonder myself.

   
Clearing her throat, she said, “Maybe we’ll get some answers. Shall we get started?”

*

   
By the time they’d cleared the area, the extra help had arrived in the person of her roommate. “Feeling better?”

    “Yah.” Arlene flashed an unsteady grin. “I just needed a little time to get my feet under me again. What do you want me to do?”

    Julie pointed to a set of three black, heavy-duty shipping cases. “Let’s get the lights set up, for starters.” She turned in place, surveying the area. “We need to space them as evenly as possible. The translator throws light in unusual ways. You’ve seen that in the holos, right?”

    “I saw
something
in the holos,” Arlene said, lifting a bar lamp out of the first case. “I couldn’t really tell
what
I was seeing. So...what do you think it’ll do when you open the container?”

    “I have no idea. I just know we want it on holo.”

    Jose set another case in front of them. He seemed nervous working around the crate. “Relax,” Julie said. “Can you set this light stand up over there?”

    Jose nodded, but shifted his eyes toward the crate. “What if this thing doesn’t like Mr. Lamarr bossing it around?”

    Julie saw Arlene’s eyebrows twitch at the question and stifled a laugh. “I guess that’s a risk we’ll have to take.” She heard the clearing of a throat behind her, and turned to see Henry Cohn. “Hi. Here to help?”

    “Actually,” Henry said, “I’m here to ask what your plans are for opening the container. The captain wants to know. You know, in case it—” He coughed discreetly.

    “What? Blows up? Or decides to take over the ship?”

    “Well...yes.”

    “My plan,” Julie said, tightening a holocam onto its tripod, “is to open the container very carefully. If the translator wanted to blow up or take over the ship, I suspect it could do that anytime it wanted.”

    “Then why take it out of the crate at all?”

    Julie glanced quizzically at him. “Doesn’t it seem more courteous? I suppose it
could
 talk to us from in there, but it is, after all, a fellow sentient. Plus, we want to study it.”

    Henry rubbed his jaw thoughtfully as he walked away.

*

   
They broke for dinner, sending word to Lamarr that they were nearly ready. Julie sat at a long table in the dining room with Arlene, Henry, Ashmar, Jose, her chicken teriyaki and rice, and her own thoughts. She barely noticed the conversation, until Arlene said,
“Julie?”
 She looked up and blinked. “I was afraid we’d lost you,” Arlene said with a chuckle.

    Julie forced a smile. “No, I’m just...preoccupied.” Which was putting it mildly. Her stomach was in knots as she contemplated opening the translator—not for another meeting with
her,
 but to introduce it to Lamarr. Was he right? Was she afraid of losing what leverage she had over the translator’s fate? Things were going to change, that seemed certain.

    Lamarr appeared in the doorway. “Everyone ready to go?”

    Julie had just taken a large mouthful, so Henry answered. “It’s all set up, Dr. Lamarr. As soon as we finish eating, I think we can start. Is that right, Ms. Stone?”