Engines Of God

"Even a dragon?"

"Sure," she said. "Especially a dragon."

"It won't pass very close."

Janet had been idling through Ashley's mission report. The ship had been surveying older stars, mostly middle-aged, stable G-types, prime candidates in the twin searches for habitable worlds and other civilizations. So far, they had nothing to show for their efforts.

The auxiliary screen on her right displayed the cloud. Nothing much had changed. It was somewhat more distinct, a result of enhancement and, to a lesser degree, its decreased range.

"Hey." Drafts stared at his instruments. "I think we've got another one."

"Another what?"

"Another cloud."

Janet slid into the seat beside him. "Where?"

"Extreme long range." He jabbed a finger at the readout. She picked it up on a window. "This one is on the other side of the sun, moving away from us. It's out on the edge of the system."

"Can't we get a better picture?"

"It's too far." He was ru

"Or they got missed."

"I would have thought that was unlikely. Maybe we better let Angela know."

They had just left the dome, just cycled through the airlock and stepped out into the snow, when Drafts's voice broke into their chatter. "We have a couple of anomalies," he said.

They kept walking, plowing through the snow with difficulty. Carson had begun to wonder whether they should try to make snowshoes. "What kind of anomalies?" he asked.

"Clouds, I think. Two of them."

"Here?" asked Angela, looking into a crystal-clear sky, apparently thinking what Carson thought: that they were talking about something in the atmosphere.

"One at twelve A.U.s, approaching; the other on the far side of the sun. Going the other way. Listen, I'm not sure yet, but I don't think they're in orbit."

"Clouds, you say?"

"Yeah. Clouds."

"Not possible," she said.

"We'll send you pictures."

"Okay. Yes, do that." She started back inside. "Frank, do you mind?"

"No. Go back and look. We'll see you in the shuttle."

The ATL1600 general-purpose particle beam projector was of the type that had been used to cut shafts in the polar ice packs on Quraqua. It was simple to operate, durable, and effective. The narrow, tightly-focused beam that it generated was capable, even while tied to the shuttle's limited power plant, of slicing the mesas like so much cheese.

On Quraqua, the projectors had been driven by a fusion link with the orbiter. Here, the drain on the shuttle would be considerable, and they could not approach full power. Operations would be limited to seven hours daily. The work would be slow, but they had plenty of time.

The real problem was that the unit was difficult to manage. It had been designed for installation on board a specially fitted CAT. Carson would have to try to aim it from the cargo hold, while the shuttle was in flight. Hutch's mount was really little more than a restraining web to prevent the instrument, or its operator, from falling out. They had one advantage: the half-ton unit weighed only about four hundred pounds in this gravity.

When Angela rejoined them, she was excited. "I don't know whether it has anything to do with what we're looking for, but we've got a couple of very strange beasties out there." She described what the ship had seen. "Terry thinks they're clouds."

"And you don't?"

"No. Clouds would get ripped apart in the gravity fields. They look like clouds, but it couldn't be. They have to be solid bodies. The lopsided appearance will turn out to be an illusion."

"They can't be hydrogen clouds?" asked Hutch.

"No."

"I thought there were a lot of hydrogen clouds."

"There are. But they don't come in this size. These are too small. I can't even imagine how such objects would form." She smiled, and looked pleased. "We'll keep an eye on them." Angela helped them lock down the 1600, and then went up front and took the pilot's seat. "Are we ready?"

They were.

"Okay. I'm going to seal off up here. The thing that I'm worried about is that you two and the sixteen hundred are all going to be concentrated on the starboard side. Don't make any sudden changes of position. And if I ask you to shut down, I want you to do it immediately, and move to the other side. Clear on that?

"If the thing does break loose and fall out, don't try to stop it. It doesn't weigh nearly as much as it looks, but neither do you. I don't want any dead people."

She wished them luck, and closed off the cockpit. Hutch sat down and made herself comfortable.

They would ride with the outer door open, because the unit's housing stuck out of the vehicle. They fastened tethers to their belts.

Angela engaged her engines, and they lifted off. The shuttle circled the three domes, turned east, and glided out over the plateau. The weather had cleared, and a light wind blew out of the north.

"The plateaus were probably carved by methane glaciers," Angela said. "It would be interesting to know whether this moon has periodic ice ages."

She continued in that vein, while Carson and Hutch endured an uncomfortable ride in back. They looked out at the endless snowscape, watched the edge of the plateau fall away, maybe two hundred meters, and they were cruising over the plain. Carsoa's idea was to do the easy ones first. Get the hang of the equipment.

Hutch wondered if Angela had ever flown before with an open cargo door. It was unlikely, but the woman knew her shuttle. It developed a drag, and a tendency to turn to starboard, but they seemed to be compensating.

The least challenging of the four mesas was on the south. It was already a passable rectangle, except that one side had partially collapsed and left a big hole in the symmetry. They'd have to square that off. For the rest, they wouldn't have to do much more than straighten the corners.

The projector's phase controls were set in a bright yellow teardrop case; its black mirror housing looked like a rifle barrel. There was provision for both automatic and manual operation. Rewriting the programming to factor in the shuttle was simply too time-consuming, so they had opted to go manual. "When in doubt," said Carson, "fly by the seat of your pants."

There was a pair of handgrips, a sight, and a trigger. But the instrument was unwieldy. So they ignored the trigger, and rigged a remote. The plan was that Carson would aim and, on command, Hutch would push the button.

"Coming up on target," said Angela. "Let's do a couple of flybys and see precisely how we want to do this."

Janet was surprised to discover that Harley Costa, whom she knew, had flown the original mission to 4418. At the time they'd met he was en route to Canopus. He was a busy little man who talked too fast, and who could not tolerate anyone who didn't share his passion for astronomy. Janet had taken the time to find out about his specialty, asked the right questions, and they'd become fast friends.

Harley didn't have much use for simple sentences. His energy overflowed ordinary syntax. His ideas sallied out to battle. He trampled (rather than refuted) opposing views, lit off objections with glee, and imposed decisions with crushing finality. Harley never expressed an opinion. He delivered truth. She wondered what sort of person his partner had been, cooped up with him for a year or so.

Reading through the report of his visit to 4418, she could hear his voice. Harley had found things to engage his interest here, as he did everywhere. He found volcanic and seismic activity in unlikely places, and an anomalous magnetic pattern around one of the gas giants. He took a series of measurements of the sun, and entertained himself by calculating the date of its eventual collapse.