The Mind Pool

The lights dimmed further. In the apocalyptic gloom of the control room, Lotos at last completed her own data request. With no indication of an active Link access point in the system, she had set up her own program to start from the energy supply points, and track where it was being sent.

“This is crazy. The power is going nowhere.” She was staring at the general 3-D plan of the solar system. All the supply vectors converged to a single point — but not to any place showing the blue circle of a Mattin Link unit. There’s nothing there.”

It was Phoebe Willard’s turn to cry out. “There is, there is!” She pointed to the system map that she had been creating, comparing it with Lotos Sheldrake’s display. “That’s my people — the Sargasso Dump. What are they sending into the Dump?”

“Not a thing. Except energy.” Lotos Sheldrake was still at the console. “It’s something Linking out — and a long way out. Over fifty lightyears For a guess — maybe all the way to the Perimeter.”

’To Travancore?” croaked Flammarion.

“Not to Travancore. Just as far, but in a different direction. And the transfer is still going on!”

“But it can’t be.” Flammarion’s adrenalin level had been fading with the lights, and with it all the pain was flooding back in on him. He sat bowed-headed, in a darkness lit only by the computer displays with their own emergency power systems.

“It can t be, Lotos,” he mumbled. “There’s no stellar Link point in the Sargasso Dump. There isn’t now — and there never has been.”

Chapter 39

The ascent was anything but comforting. Even from far away, the size of the Q-ship was overwhelming. Chan stared up to the enormous ellipsoidal mass, and then around him at the puny landing capsule.

The contrast was alarming, but it was not surprising. A Q-ship was designed for quarantine. It must be able to bottle up the inhabitants of full-sized space colonies, or even whole planets — populations who had their own weapons, and as often as not did not want to cooperate. Each quarantine ship was shielded and armored, bristling with offensive and defensive weapons. Even ignoring the mass of their power kernels, they were million-ton behemoths.

They had to be. In extreme cases, a Q-ship might be called on to purge an entire world. That extreme had never yet been necessary, but there had been close calls. The discovery of a natural organism, a native brain-burrowing gnathostome affecting all the inhabitants of Pentecost and causing their planet-wide blood-lust, had been made only at the eleventh hour. A Q-ship had been in position, ready to carry out planetary sterilization.

And the landing capsule? Chan stared around him at the flimsy, thin-walled shell, vulnerable even to a mild stellar flare. A Q-ship could vaporize it with an accidental puff from secondary exhausts.

They crept closer, on their unpowered approach trajectory. The Q-ship was taking no chances. The designated entry port was protected by a gleaming array of projectile and radiation weapons. After docking, the members of Team Ruby had been instructed to enter the Q-ship one by one. Chan would go first, and the others would not leave the capsule until they had been given permission to do so. Even within the docking area, Esro Mondrian could order the instant destruction of the capsule and all its contents.

That would include Team Alpha. The pursuit team, already pooled to form Nimrod, was hidden away in the capsule’s primitive cargo compartment.

Chan was terribly conscious of their presence a few feet away from him. It had been his idea, with support from Leah, to bring the Alpha team onto the landing capsule. Neither Nimrod nor Almas could estimate the effect of that on the overall survival probabilities, and the other team members had all argued against it. Why endanger both teams, they said, when it was only necessary to place one in immediate peril?

Chan had insisted, without being able to justify it. As another consequence, the journey up to the Q-snip was a one-way trip. With Team Alpha aboard, all spare supplies and fuel had been left behind on Travancore to avoid a mass anomaly. The Q-ship would detect any excess of total mass when the capsule was caught for docking. Even a suspicion of Team Alpha’s presence on board would be enough to encourage violent action.

As they neared the Q-ship, Chan heard a whisper in his ear. Nimrod’s analysis was passing from the cargo hold through a single-link chain of Tinker components, and instantly being converted by Angel to a form that Chan could comprehend.

“We are twelve hundred meters from docking,” said Angel. “Nimrod regards that as a good sign. If the Q-ship intended to destroy us before we docked, the best time to do so has already passed. The current probability estimate for success of Q-ship rendezvous is 0.255, up from the last estimate of 0.23. Nimrod also believes that Tatiana Snipes is not on board the Q-ship. That reduces the probability of finding a sympathetic contact with whom we can work to 0.13, down from 0.19. The overall probability estimate of mission success is thus reduced to 0.12.”

Chan was hardly listening. Angel was perfectly happy puttering around with data and computing statistics, out what was the point of them? The group was committed, and probabilities meant nothing. Either they would succeed in a wild venture, or they would fail. It was a binary situation. They could not one-tenth succeed, or one-third succeed. In another half hour, they would be alive, or they would be dead. There was nothing in between.

“ Ready for docking,” he said to the blank screen. They had received no visual signals from inside the Q-ship, although the port was less than two hundred meters ahead.

“Proceed,” said the capsule communications set, in a metallic voice.

“They are still computer-controlled,” said Angel. The bulk of the Chassel-Rose was hanging upside-down over Chan’s head, in the free fall of a ballistic approach. “If they were to shoot at us now, there could be minor damage to parts of the Q-ship itself. That is a good sign. Onward and upward! Nimrod believes that we will certainly be permitted to complete the docking.”

“Then get down off the ceiling. They’ll grab us in the next second or two, and we’ll feel acceleration. Go and lie down next to Shikari. I don’t want you wrapped around my neck when we dock.”

As Chan spoke there was a jolt on the hull. Angel sailed backwards and bounced on the cabin wall behind him. “Oof!” said the computer strapped to Angel’s mid-section. A vibration was felt through the whole capsule, followed by a clang from outside.

“Docking is complete,” said the communicator.

Chan headed for the capsule door, while the other team members remained in the cabin.

Careful. This is a moment of maximum danger. Chan heard those words — or was he saying them internally? He paused at the door, and made himself wait. The capsule had been tucked neatly into a berth in the contoured fourth deck. Chan heard outer port seals clang into position, and a creak from the capsule’s hull as external air pressure increased from vacuum levels. He watched until the meters showed external and internal equalization, then opened the capsule lock.

A narrow pier alongside the hull led to an airlock on the interior wall. Chan pulled himself along to it, aware that even after this he would still not be in the ship’s true interior. According to Angel’s reconstruction of Q-ship geometry, there would be another lock to pass through, with its own checking system for interlopers. If anything failed a test, the whole entry port could be blown free into space, and the Q-ship would still operate at close to its full potential.

The lock slid open. As Chan stepped through, a decontaminant spray blew over him from head to Toot. A perso