Ilium

“I’m kidding, for Christ’s sake,” said Orphu. “My visual nodes are gone, but I still have memory and parts of my brain left. Let’s play chess.”

Three sols was 73.8 hours and Mahnmut did not want to stay in the seabed that long. The reactor was losing power faster than he’d estimated—the pumps were draining more energy than he’d pla

During their first sleep period, Mahnmut went on internal power, took pry bars and cutting equipment, and descended the narrow crawlways and corridors to the hold. The interior spaces were flooded, the vertical gangway without power and pitch black. Mahnmut activated his shoulder lamps and swam lower. The water here was much warmer than Europa’s sea. Beams and girders had crumpled, blocking the last ten meters of the approach. Mahnmut cut them away with the torch. He had to check on Orphu’s condition.

Two meters from the airlock to the hold, Mahnmut was stopped cold. The impact had buckled the aft bulkhead, pressing it almost flat against the forward bulkhead. The already narrow corridor had been squashed into a space less than ten centimeters across. Mahnmut could see the hatchway to the hold—closed, dogged, and twisted—but he couldn’t reach it. He would have to cut his way through one or both of the thick pressure bulkheads and then probably use the torch to cut through the hatch itself. It would be a six- or seven-hour job and there was a basic problem—the torch ran on oxygen, just as he and Orphu did. Whatever he gave the torch came out of their air supply.

For several minutes, Mahnmut floated head-down in the darkness, silt floating in front of his lenses in the twin beams from his shoulder lamps. He had to decide now. Once Orphu awoke and realized what he was doing, the Ionian would try to talk him out of it. And logic dictated that he be talked out of it. Even if he got through the bulkheads in six or seven hours, Orphu had been correct—Mahnmut wouldn’t be able to move the huge moravec while they were still embedded in the seabed. Even first aid would be limited to the kits and system inputs that Mahnmut kept onboard for himself—they might not even work with the huge hardvac moravec. If Mahnmut could really get The Dark Lady free of the silt and to the surface, that would be the best time for Mahnmut to get to Orphu—even if he had to cut through the hull bay doors or outer hull. O2 would be plentiful then. And he could remove Orphu if he had to, find a way to lash him to the upper hull, in the sunlight and air.

Mahnmut kicked his way around and swam upward in the tilted and torn corridor, letting himself through the airlock into his personal space again. He stowed the cutting equipment. Later.

He was no sooner in his acceleration couch again when Orphu’s voice came over the comm. “You awake, Mahnmut?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“At the controls. Where else would I be?”

“Yes,” said Orphu, his deep voice sounding weary and old on the hardline. “But I was dreaming. I thought I felt a vibration. I thought you might be . . . I don’t know.”

“Go back to sleep,” said Mahnmut. Moravecs slept, if only to dream. “I’ll wake you for the buoy check in two hours.”

Mahnmut would deploy the periscope buoy for a few seconds every twelve hours, quickly scan the skies and gentle seas, and reel it back in. Flying machines were still crisscrossing the skies day and night at the end of the first forty-nine hours, but further north, nearer the pole.

Mahnmut was fairly comfortable. His control room and co

And free myself, thought Mahnmut, although being separated from The Dark Lady did not seem like freedom to him. All deep-sea Europan cryobots had carried the kernel of agoraphobia in them—true terror of open spaces—and their evolved moravec descendents had inherited it. On the second day, after their eighth chess game, Orphu said, “The Dark Lady has some sort of escape device, doesn’t it?”

Mahnmut had hoped that Orphu wouldn’t know this fact. “Yes,” he said at last.

“What kind?”

“A little life bubble,” said Mahnmut, in a foul mood for having to talk about this. “Not much bigger than me. Mostly meant to survive deep pressures and get me to the surface.”

“But it has a beacon, its own life support system, some sort of propulsion and navigation systems? Some water and food?”

“Yes,” said Mahnmut, “what of it?” You wouldn’t fit in it and I can’t tow you behind it.

“Nothing,” said Orphu.

“I hate the idea of leaving The Dark Lady,” Mahnmut said truthfully. “And I don’t have to think about it now. Not for days and days.”

“All right,” said Orphu.

“I’m serious.”

“All right, Mahnmut. I was just curious.”

If Orphu had rumbled amusement at him at that moment, Mahnmut might well have crawled into the survival bubble and cast off. He was furious at the Ionian for raising this topic. “Want to play another game of chess?” Mahnmut asked.

“Not in this lifetime,” said Orphu.

At sixty-one hours after splashdown, there was only one chariot visible to radar, but it was circling just eight klicks above them and ten to the north. Mahnmut reeled in the periscope buoy as quickly as he could.

He sat listening to music over the intercom—Brahms—and, down in his flooded hold, Orphu presumably was doing the same.

Suddenly the Ionian asked, “Ever wonder why we’re both humanists, Mahnmut?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, humanists. All moravecs evolved into either us humanists with our odd interest in the old human race, or the more interactive types like Koros III. They’re the ones who forge moravec societies, Five Moon Consortiums, political parties . . . whatever.”

“I never noticed,” said Mahnmut.

“You’re kidding me.”

Mahnmut stayed silent. He was begi

Mahnmut barely resisted laughing on the hardline. What could be more useless?

As if reading his mind again, Orphu said, “What would the Bard say about this predicament?”

Mahnmut was sca

“Mahnmut?”

“I’m sorry. Dozing. What about the Bard?”

“He must have something to say about shipwrecks,” said Orphu. “I seem to remember lots of shipwrecks in Shakespeare.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mahnmut. “Lots of shipwrecks. Twelfth Night, The Tempest, the list goes on and on. But I doubt if there’s anything in the plays to help us in this situation.”