Manta's Gift

"I'll think about it," he told Faraday, not looking back at the other.

"Take your time," Faraday said. There was the sound of footsteps, and the beep of a business card being swiped across Raimey's hospital room phone. "My number's in the phone," he added. "Call me any time."

"Don't hold your breath."

"Good-bye, Mr. Raimey," Faraday said.

More footsteps, out the door and fading down the corridor, and he was gone.

"Yeah," Raimey murmured to himself. "Good-bye."

That was the crux of the whole thing, wasn't it? Good-bye. Good-bye to everything he'd ever known.

But then, to be brutally honest, how much of it was actually left anyway?

It was three-thirty in the morning, with the silence of a nighttime hospital room pressing in around him, when he finally gave up.

TWO

The Contact Room, as it had been dubbed, seemed very quiet as Faraday passed through the security door and stepped inside. Quiet, but with the sense of a coiled spring about it.

Or maybe the coiled spring feeling was just him.

For a minute he stood at the doorway, ru

Which, if true, would be nice for a change. SkyLight had always had a bad tendency to change perfectly good plans for no better reason than what seemed to be the unscheduled whims of the people at boardroom level.

But then, this operation was hardly SkyLight's exclusive baby. Not with what was at stake. This was squarely in the hands of the Five Hundred, all the way.

And though it hadn't been stated in so many words, Faraday had no doubt that, sooner or later, someone from the Five Hundred would come to Jupiter to watch over his shoulder.

Or that someone was possibly already here, he amended his musings as he looked at the command chair and console to his left. A tall, incredibly blond young man was sitting there, peering intently at the row of displays rising up over the heads of the seated techs.

Delicately, Faraday cleared his throat. The man looked over, and instantly bounded up out of his seat. "Colonel Faraday," he all but gasped. "I'm sorry, sir—I wasn't expecting you so soon."

"That's all right," Faraday assured him. "And you are...?"

"Albrecht Hesse, Colonel," Hesse said, offering his hand. "Council representative on Project Changeling. Welcome back to Jupiter Prime."

"Thank you," Faraday said, squeezing the proffered hand once and then releasing it. Not merely from the General Chamber of the Five Hundred, which held the public debates and made the official media pronouncements, but from the Supreme Mediation Council itself, where the real horse-trading and power decisions were made. Earth was taking Changeling very seriously indeed. "It's good to be back."

"I understand this is your first trip here since retiring from active duty," Hesse went on. "I think you'll find quite a bit has changed."

"Most of this wing is new, certainly," Faraday commented, nodding around him. "We only had the one rotating section when I left."

"That's right," Hesse said. "I think you'll find that having the second wing in counter-rotation to the first has added tremendously to the station's stability. A word of warning, though: You'll need to watch yourself the first time you make the transition between them. If you don't pause long enough in the co

"I'll keep that in mind," Faraday said. It was marginally insulting advice, certainly considering how much of Faraday's life had been spent in space. Either Hesse was trying to establish the proper pecking order—with himself at the top—or else he was simply rambling as he desperately tried to find something to say to a living legend.

There might be an easy way to tell which it was. "You seem to have your people well on top of things," he commented, gesturing at the control board.

"Your people, sir," Hesse corrected hastily and firmly. "I'm strictly an observer here. And yes, they're ready."

"Good," Faraday said. So it was indeed number two: the Living Legend Syndrome. Slightly embarrassing, but after two decades he'd learned how to deal with that. Time and familiarity, he knew, should quietly put it to rest.

Time they would certainly have plenty of. And given the cramped quarters, familiarity wasn't likely to be a problem, either.

"Let me introduce you to the Alpha Shift team," Hesse went on, gesturing to the large, dark-haired man on the far left. "This is Everette Beach, communications specialist. He'll handle all the mechanics of our contacts with Mr. Raimey. He's also our expert on understanding Qanskan tonals."

"Colonel," Beach said, glancing away from his console long enough to give Faraday an abbreviated wave.

Hesse shifted his pointing finger to a short woman who looked as if she might come up to Beach's shoulder if he was willing to slouch a little. "Jen McCollum is our biology and xenobiology expert.

Anything you want to know about Qanskan physiology, she can tell you."

"Or at least I can tell you what we know about Qanskan physiology," McCollum added over her shoulder. "There are a lot of blank spots that still need to be filled in."

"But you can extrapolate?" Faraday asked.

"You mean make stuff up on the fly?" McCollum asked blandly. "Sure. No problem."

Faraday smiled to himself. Young tech and science types, their heads still mostly in academia's clouds and thus mostly immune to Living Legend Syndrome. That would be nice for a change.

"That one's Tom Milligan," Hesse continued with the next in line, a man slightly shorter and less bulky than Beach, with stringy hair and a rather half-hearted goatee. "He'll be handling the sensors and the various deep-atmosphere probes we'll be using to keep track of him. He's also our resident expert in physics, should we need something esoteric from that field."

He gestured to the fourth tech. "And finally, this is Hans Sprenkle, our psychologist."

Faraday frowned. No one had said anything to him about a psychologist. "Is the Council expecting us to go crazy out here?"

"Past tense, with this group," Sprenkle said cheerfully. He was built to the same scale as the other two men, though with a neatly trimmed moustache instead of Milligan's goatee. "My humble opinion, of course."

"I didn't know shrinks' opinions were ever humble," Beach commented from the other end of the control semicircle.

"You haven't read any of the retractions in the professional journals," Sprenkle countered dryly. "It's amazing how low some people can grovel while still keeping their noses in the air."

"Dr. Sprenkle's also in charge of keeping track of the weather on Jupiter," Hesse jumped back in, sounding slightly embarrassed. "There are a lot of atmospheric storms—"

"Mr. Hesse?" Milligan spoke up.

"Yes?" Hesse asked, frowning at the interruption.

"I'll bet the colonel probably remembers that," Milligan offered.

Hesse reddened. "Yes, of course," he murmured. "Thank you, Mr. Milligan."

"Any time," Milligan said, turning back to his board. Not only was this group not impressed by living legends, Faraday decided, but they weren't overly impressed by authority of any kind.

"Interesting combination of credentials, Dr. Sprenkle," he said. "Psychology and meteorology don't seem an obvious pairing."

"Actually, the meteorology started as a hobby," Sprenkle said. "But it sure came in handy when I was applying for this position."

"As you see, we don't have a lot of room in here," Hesse pointed out. "Even with the second wing, floor space on Prime is hard to come by. We thought it would be useful if our people could double up on their areas of expertise wherever possible."