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All complete rubbish. I knew that even as I fantasized, and McAndrew pointed out why when we discussed it later.
“We got the way we are, Jeanie, because life on Earth is one long fight for limited resources. Our bloody-mindedness all started out as food battles, three billion years ago. The Halo isn’t like that — everything will be part of the food supply. How much evolving would we have done if it rained soup every day and the mountains of Earth had been made of cheese? We’d still be single-celled organisms, happy as clams.”
It sounded plausible. McAndrew was so bright that you tended not to question him after a while. But an hour or two later I was worrying again. It occurred to me that Mac was a physicist — when it came to biology he was way outside his field. And something had happened to Lanhoff and his ship. What could it have been?
I didn’t mention it again, but I worried and fretted, while McAndrew and A
Poor Will. Looking for security he had joined the safest, most stable organization in Earth’s government: the Food Department. That was the place for a solid, Earthbound, risk-free job. He had no desire for adventure, no wish to travel more than a mile from his little apartment. He had been in space only once before, as part of a meeting between the Council and the United Space Federation. Now he was embarked on a mission so far from home that he might survive even if the Sun went nova.
How had it happened? He didn’t know. It didn’t occur to him to blame A
“QUERY DISTANCE FOR STAR HARVESTER APPROACH? DEFAULT VALUE: ZERO.”
Our computer began talking to us while we were still sca
“Fifty thousand kilometers.” I didn’t want an immediate rendezvous. “Manual control.”
“FIFTY THOUSAND KILOMETERS. CONTROL TRANSFERRED.”
“We’ll see nothing from that distance.” A
We could now see the rough-cut oblong of Ma
“Didn’t you hear me?” A
I turned to face her. “I think we should be cautious until we know what’s going on. We can do a lot of overall checking from this distance. It’s safer.”
“And it wastes time.” Her voice was impatient. “I’m the senior officer on this ship. Now, do as I say, and let’s get in closer.”
“Sorry.” I couldn’t delay this moment any longer. “You’re the senior officer while we’re in free flight, I agree. But when we’re in a rendezvous mode with another ship, the pilot automatically has senior decision authority. Check the manuals. I have final say on our movements until we’re on the way back to Earth.”
There was a long pause while we sat eyeball to eyeball. A
“You’ve had this in mind all along, haven’t you?” A
She went through to the other communications department, and I heard the rapid tapping of keys. I didn’t know if she was making an entry into the log, or merely calling out the section of the Manual that defines the transfer of authority to the pilot during approach and rendezvous. I didn’t care. Super-caution has always paid off for me in the past. Why change a wi
Half an hour later A
“That’s why I didn’t want to rush. I don’t think we’ve been wasting time at all. Mac, look at those radioactivity readings. What do you think of them?”
The computer had done its preliminary analysis, taking the ratio of radioactivity measurements from Ma
“Uh-uh. They’re high. About six hundred times as big as I would expect.”
I took a deep breath. “So I think we know what happened to Lanhoff. One of the fusion units must have run wild when they were installing it. See now why I’m cautious, folks?”
A
“Looks like it.” I had proved my point, but not in a way that gave me any satisfaction. I felt sick inside. When a fusion plant blows, there’s no hope for the crew.
“No, Jeanie.” McAndrew was frowning and rubbing at his sandy hairline. “You’re jumping to conclusions. I said the radioactivity was six hundred times as big as it should be, and it is. But it’s still low — you could live in it for years, and it wouldn’t do you much harm. If a fusion plant had gone, the reading from Ma
“But what else could give us abnormally high values?”
“I’ve no idea.” He looked at me apologetically. “And we’ll never know from this distance. Seems to me that A
Perhaps the idea that Lanhoff and his crew were almost certainly dead was hitting A
“That’s as far as I’m willing to take us,” I said. “We’re a long way from home, and I won’t risk our only way of getting back. Any closer look will have to be done with the transfer pod. Mac, I’ve not had time to watch the inputs. Is there anything about the ship or about Ma
He had been muttering to himself over by a display screen. Now he frowned and pressed a sequence of control keys.
“Maybe. While you were busy I did a complete data transfer from Star Harvester’s computer to ours. Lanhoff and his crew stopped feeding in new inputs a hundred and fifteen days ago — that’s when the signals to Oberon Station cut off — but the automatic sensors kept right on recording. See, here’s the very first radioactivity reading from Ma