The Integral Trees

"Why did you turn off the display?"

"Voice can't hear us till I tap it again. It can do almost anything if you say the wrong thing, just talking."

"Would it talk to me?"

"You're a…" Her scorn became something else. "It wants you to identify yourself, and it remembers. Hmm. Try it." She tapped the talk button.

"Prikazyvat Voice," said the Grad.

"Identify yourself."

"I'm the Scientist of Qui

For a moment the Grad forgot how to breathe. Then, "We have a water supply. Won't it be separated into fuel?"

Voice paused. Then, "If the flux of sunlight maintains its intensity, I will have fuel soon enough to affect a return. I note a mass near our course. I can use it as a gravity sling."

"Would that be Gold?"

"Rephrase."

"The mass, is it Goldblatt's World?"

The Grad tapped the switch before he began laughing. "Go for Gold! If we live that long."

The whispering aft had become obtrusive. With the air turning icy and Voice speaking from the walls, luncheon was sliding over to panic. Jeffer said, "Gavving, you'd better tell them about the pressure. We don't have time to brief Clave."

Lawri asked, "Shall I do it?" She knew more aj,out what was going on.

Jeffer seemed appalled. "Lawri, they'd think you started the leak!"

"Savages—"

"Anyone would."

She couldn't decide if he meant it.

Gavving was telling the rest of the mutineers about the leak. He told it long, including what they pla

"I find no point of leakage. Air is disappearing."

"Will we live long enough to get back into the Smoke Ring?"

"No. The course I've programmed would take twenty-eight hours. Air pressure will have dropped to lethal levels in ten hours. Times are approximate."

Lawri couldn't remember how long an hour might be. Still…ten hours? It had been seven before the cabin got so cold. She wondered why Voice hadn't taken it into account. Sometimes Voice could be such a fool.

She said, "Display the areas where you have looked for a leak."

The yellow line diagrams of the cabin sprouted green borders along two-thirds of the interior. Red dots blinked elsewhere. "Those are sensors that have died," Lawri told Jeffer. "Voice, implement your course correction."

Jeffer added, "Pnikazyvat Voice. Do not use the main motor at any time!"

"I will fire as I have fuel," Voice said. "First burn in ten seconds. Nine. Eight."

"Everybody grab something," Jeffer called.

Mutineers were pulling the extra ponchos over their clothing. They stopped to strap themselves in. The jungle giants moved against the aft wall and grabbed fixtures. "Two. One."

But only the attitude jets lit. The carm's nose swung toward the

Smoke Ring and stayed there while the aft motors fired. It lasted several tens of breaths. They would pass closer to Gold…which had become huge, a spiral storm seen edge-on, whose rim was already below them.

If Mark weren't tied, Lawri thought, and as the main motor fired, nobody would be able to move except Mark It was something to keep in mind. Jeffer didn't seem to realize that the thrust could be controlled, by touching the top or bottom of those rectangles to raise or lower the fuel flow.

Meanwhile…how could the leaks be blocked? If there was a way, Lawri was damned well going to find it before Jeffer did.

Chapter Twenty-one

Go For Gold

"KENDY FOR THE STATE. KENDY FOR THE STATE. KENDY FOR the State."

The response came almost instantly, sharp and crisp through nearvacuum and dwindling distance. The CARM was out of the Smoke Ring. Kendy had clear sending for the first time since the mutiny. He sent: "Status?"

The motors were functional, all of them. Fuel: a few teacupaful.

Water: a good deal. Solar power converters: functional. Batteries: charged, but ru

The CARM was on manual. CO2 flux indicated a full load of passengers. The carbon dioxide was accumulating slowly; the life support system could almost handle it…and the cabin was leaking air. Oh shit, they were dying!

"Course record since initiating burn."

It came. The CARM was rising. It would have passed near the L2 point-Kendy's own location, the point of stability behind Goldblatt's World-were it not for Goldblatt's World itself. And were it not for

Goldblatt's World, the CARM would presently fall back to safety… but the core of an erstwhile gas giant planet was pulling the CARM's orbit into a tilted near-circle entirely outside the Smoke Ring.

"Switch to my command."

Massive malfunction.

"Give me video link with crew."

"Denied."

And the cabin pressure was dropping. Something had to be done.

Kendy sent, "Copy," and waited.

The CARM computer thought it over, slowly, bit by bit; geared up; and began beaming its entire program. It took twenty-six minutes.

Kendy looked it over-a simplified Kendy, patched with subsequent commands and garbled by time and entropy-while he sent, "Stand by for update programming."

"Standing by."

Kendy didn't believe it. The long-dead programmer would have embedded protect commands. He simply hadn't reached them yet…unless they had deteriorated too? Kendy didn't have an update program, he'd been so sure. He'd have to assemble it from scratch.

The speed with which a computer can think was Kendy's triumph and tragedy. Always he was freshly surprised by the boredom of his evenfless life. It stayed fresh, because Kendy was constantly editing his memories. The storage capacity of his computer-brain was fixed. He was always near his limit. He had edited his memory of the mutiny, deleting the names of key figures, for fear that he might later seek vengeance against their descendants. He regularly deleted the memory of his boredom.

Once he had examined the solution to the Four-Color Problem in topology. The proof submitted in 1976 by Appal and Haken could not be checked except by a computer. Kendy was a computer, he had experienced the proof directly and found it valid. He remembered only that.

The details he had deleted.

He had used a simplified program for the CARM computers, then deleted it. But now he had the CARM's program as a template. He ran through it, sharpening everywhere, correcting where suitable, updating his own simplified personality…leaving intact the CARM's own memories of the time of mutiny, because he was determined to ignore them. He looked for a way to plug the leak in the cabin. It was hopeless: the life support sensors had failed, not the program. He almost deleted the command that barred use of the main motor. The main motor was more efficient. He didn't understand that command…but it was input, and recent. He left it alone.

Now: a course program to bring them here, to study them

He barely had time to hope. Kendy apprehended orbital mechanics directly. He saw instantly that the fuel wasn't there, nor the sunlight to electrolyze enough water in time. His own pair of CARMS, which fed him power via their solar collectors, didn't have fuel to meet and tow the savages' CARM even if he were willing to risk them both.

Forget it and try again…He could get them back into the Smoke Ring via a close approach past Goldblatt's World. In fact, the CARM's computer had already worked out a course change. It didn't matter.

They'd be dead by then.

He left that part of the program intact. He deleted the barriers that barred him from communication. He beamed the revised program to the CARM at the snail's pace the CARM could accept.