Part 35 (2/2)

Tupelov asked, ”How does Michel like all this traveling?”

”Oh, I think he enjoys it. Not that he ever tells me a lot about how he feels. Do you and Vera have any children, Mr. Tupelov?”

”No.” He tried to make it sound just a bit regretful.

”You're very kind to take the time to show me all these things.”

”Oh, not at all.” It was time he would have had to use on things of secondary importance anyway, while Michel and the latest refinement of the equipment were being melded for the first tests at the proving grounds. ”I'll tell you a secret,” Tupelov continued, sounding confidential though there were twenty other people in the big room. ”Being nice to certain people is part of my job, just as being nasty to others is part of it also. But for you I'd be nice anyway.”

The athletic lady from far away didn't know quite what to make of that. Well, it seemed he didn't yet know his own mind regarding her, which was doubtless why he talked that way.

Turning away from the ports at last, he led her closer to the center of the room. ”Here's the Moonbase ticker.”

”Ticker? Why do you call it that?”

”I guess some of the ancient models actually used to tick. The name, as applied to remote printers, goes way back.” Coming through as usual across the ticker's screens and on its writer were streams of information all more or less relevant to Defense. Some of the data were answers to questions transmitted from here down to Moonbase hours ago, and some were questions that the people down there had thought up for the Secretary or his aides during the few hours since he had left them. ”See, when it takes more than two hours to beam a message one way, you don't wait for an answer, you just keep chattering.” Tupelov briskly tapped the human operator's shoulder, and in a different tone demanded, ”Any word from Lombok yet?”

”Negative, sir.”

”Earth isthatfar.” Carmen was musing aloud, looking back toward the ports. ”And that's two hours'

communication time. And Alpine ismonthsaway, even moving at multiples of the speed of light. We can't really grasp it, can we? I can't, anyway.”

He was wondering whether he ought to try to commiserate with Carmen over her separation from her husband, when a double door opened on the far side of the big room. ”Here we go,” he said instead.

”Here comes Michel.”

The kid was garbed in Lancelot over a tight-fitting orange undersuit. As usual, he looked calm, intent, and ready to go. Carmen immediately hurried over to her son to make a little fuss about him, her hands stroking the invisible forcefields that guarded his face and tender neck as if there might be a collar there to be turned up. Then, with a technique she had discovered on Moonbase, she reached inside and actually touched his cheek. It could be done, as long as the reaching hand moved slowly enough, and the wearer was willing to be touched. Tupelov found himself wis.h.i.+ng, not for the first time, that the d.a.m.ned thing lookedmore formidable; small wonder that half the bra.s.s were unable to generate any faith in it. It was much too late now, of course, to make any design changes for appearance's sake. But it would have been easier to sell to everyone if it had looked more like a suit of armor. Somehow this version didn't appear to be able to keep its wearer dry in the rain, let alone . . . Actually, it made the kid look like some kind of fairy in the school play.

Carmen, abruptly realizing that everyone else was waiting for her to get out of the way, dropped her hands and with a few nervous words took herself aside.

Tupelov stepped forward. ”Michel, I hope this time you've been adequately briefed on what's expected.

I hear we've been a little lax about that in the past.”

Michel answered clearly. ”They said that this time you just want me to fly all the way around Miranda.”

”That's right. After you've done that we'll talk about what comes next. Some of us are going to be following along close beside you, in a scouts.h.i.+p. Ready?”

Elly Temesvar, recovering from her faint, had no idea how much time had elapsed since her introduction to the Co-ordinator, except that her body in its prolonged bondage was beginning to be uncomfortable in several ways. The restraints were as tight as ever. The door to the corridor was closed again, and the berth opposite hers had been swung back up into the bulkhead. She was alone.

Except, of course, that.i.tmight have ordered itself put back under the berth she lay upon.

It was time for a little deliberate deep breathing. She was not going to allow herself to sail off into another faint, no matter what. But fear and confinement were making her arms and legs feel so weak that she was not sure she would be able to stand up even if she were set free. . . .

The reopening of the cabin door actually came as a relief. A youngish, heavy-bodied woman looked in.

Her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s seemed to be bound, to flatten them, by some constricting fabric underneath a steel-colored s.h.i.+rt. Elly could not tell if she was one more of the pseudo-tourists from the Temple or not.

”Where-” Elly began, and discovered that her mouth was now so dry that the simplest speech was difficult.

”Where what?” The woman's voice was harsh, like a reedy imitation of Stal's. She came to stand right beside the bunk, evidently with no fear in her legs of anything that might be beneath it. ”Never mind.

There's nothing that you need to know just yet.”

”Get me a drink,” Elly managed, in a whisper.

”All right. But don't make any fuss that's going to bother them out in the control room.” What was probably the same spray device that had been used in the Temple appeared in the woman's hand. ”Or off you go to sleep again.”

Just as at Moonbase, a rink-sized portion of the Mirandan surface had been smoothed and prepared, and starting marks laid out. The natural gravity here was ridiculously weak, so that Michel/Lancelot drifted without even trying, and his suited human escorts were variously anch.o.r.ed and attached to one another with lines. For a small distance beyond the edges of the smoothed arena the floodlights made the natural land look like broken gla.s.s and cinders. The surface notched up frequently in man-sized sawteeth, local features nicking a dark horizon that circled the floodlit area and the adjacent operations building at a distance of no more than a few hundred meters. Ura.n.u.s' polar cap of sunlight, half below the horizon now, still washed the landscape, the dark building and its docked scouts.h.i.+ps, with fading underwater light.

In the opposite direction, the large moon that they had told Michel was called Oberon was s.h.i.+fting his own tiny crescent, as swifter Miranda in her smaller orbit began to overtake him. When Michel had first heard the names, he had wondered briefly about coincidence; but right now there were other things that seemed to need wondering about more.

From here, Lancelot's eyes could scan interplanetary s.p.a.ce with fair efficiency, in particular the regular approach lanes leading to the solar system's inner harbors. Without much effort Michel could pick out at least a dozen s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps of various sizes, moving in their several directions at various speeds. Though all of the s.h.i.+ps that he could see looked spherical, and all were enormously distant, Michel thought he could at least begin to distinguish types. Those of the military somehow moved a little differently, radiating a different blend of energies, even here in the gravitational deeps of the solar system where nothing like full interstellar speed could safely be attained.

A few meters from where Michel drifted amid his small bodyguard of technicians, suited, watchful and mostly silent, the scouts.h.i.+p that was to pace him on his first circuit of Miranda rested, still docked against the hemispherical bulk of the operations building. Between observations of s.h.i.+ps and moons, Michel could switch his attention to what some of the people in the building and the nearby s.h.i.+p were saying.

There were a good many words he could not catch, but with every minute of practice there were a few more that he could.

At the moment the most easily recognizable voices were those of Mr. Tupelov and Dr. Iyenari.

Relatively near, the two men were supposed to ride the scout during the test but were at the moment exercising what Michel had come to understand was one of the most noticeable privileges of rank, that of keeping other people waiting.

Tupelov's voice said, ” . . . still no other successful wearers in the . . . or so . . . possibility of trying to clone him.”

Moons and s.h.i.+ps dropped out of Michel's thoughts for the moment. He stared at the building's side as if Lancelot might be able to see through that.

Iyenari: ”-never worked too well, historically . . . Marcus is an example . . .”

Tupelov: ” . . . the good colonel out to stud, perhaps . . . follow one order at least without any argument.

Then the . . . Michel when he's a little older. Do me a little report . . . speed up his maturation.”

Iyenari (with some feeling, only surprise perhaps): ” . . . you had started that . . . risky to mess around with . . . hormonal . . . only one we've got. But I'll check it out.”

Tupelov: ”Do that.”

The two men were easier to hear, now, walking toward the scouts.h.i.+p and about to enter it. Michel s.h.i.+fted his gaze back to the sky. Another moon in view now, this one also being overtaken. Would this be Umbriel? Two sets of clumsy feet were entering the scouts.h.i.+p from the building now, men's voices innocently greeting his mother, who had got on ahead of them.

Umbriel, if that was truly its name, occulted a bright nameless star. What would it be like to live on Umbriel? Alone, of course. Except for Lancelot.

Hormonal treatments. He was a little vague about that, but in general he thought he understood.

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