Threshold

  By the time the door opened a few minutes later, Helen was alone in the center of the room, with the three men against the wall as far away as they could manage. A.J. didn't even look at them; he ran to her and hugged her tightly. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Helen, I thought I was going to lose you . . . ," he whispered.

  It was such a total change from the lethal man she'd seen on the screen just minutes ago that she just stood there, blinking stupidly, before hugging him back. "I was pretty scared myself," she said quietly. "And you scared the hell out of me just now, too."

  "I scared the hell out of myself," he confessed. "I never knew what losing you would do to me until now." Without looking over at the others, he said, "Turn on the dataports on your suits, the three of you." Over his shoulder, Helen saw Modofori's suit suddenly go rigid as steel. "There, that'll hold you for a while. Someone will come down and pick you up in a little bit." He stood slowly. "C'mon, Helen."

  "Wait," Modofori spoke. "The Faerie Dust in us?"

  "Mostly nonreactive materials. I had to do major tricks to get it to the right places in you so it could do a few one-time zaps to the right nerves. I think your body's defenses will clean it all out just fine in a few days. I'll tell the docs to keep an eye on you until they're sure it's all right." He suddenly met Modofori's eyes. "I didn't want to hurt anyone, you know."

  Modofori nodded, about the only movement the locked Tayler suit allowed. "I believe you. Thank you."

  "Don't thank me. I'm still hoping someone else wants to hurt you later."

  As they left, Helen caught at his arm. "What's going on with the base?"

  "The base will be okay," he said. "If Bruce doesn't crash."

  Chapter 24

  Blackness slowly lightened to dim gray shot through with red pain. For a few moments he didn't even attempt to open his eyes, didn't even know who it was that would be doing the opening.

  Joe. I'm Joe Buckley.

  Joe tried to take a breath, felt knives in his chest and barely restrained a cough. The air was heavy, and cold. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn't open at first. Working his face, squinting and frowning and moving all the muscles, he felt something rough and sticky slowly giving. Finally, reluctantly, the eyelids came open, first the left and then the right.

  Stars. Stars and dark roughness. Another squint, and he realized the roughness was rock. A lot of rock. What the hell happened? He could remember working on the power line for their lab; that was it. Then boom—nothing.

  There were actual scratches across his visor, now that his vision was clearing. Something had hit him hard. Not that his body wasn't already informing him of that. He managed to move enough to get the self-diagnostics running. The suit was a mess, low on power, low on air, and some systems just plain not running. He wasn't in great shape, either. Broken ribs, possible minor internal injuries, concussion . . .

  The comm unit was still active, at least partly. The antenna had been torn away. Where the hell am I? "Hello? Anyone there?"

  Something suddenly moved in the circle of sky above him, a huge boxy shape of girders, cubes, and angles blazing with sunlight on one side, gliding with slow majesty across and, it seemed, downward. That was ridiculous, though. Nobel would have no business down that low, not even on a search-and-rescue for him. He closed his eyes, shaking his head to clear it even though that hurt. When he peeked again, there was no sign of the ship. No one answered his call. He tried to get the suit to boost the power and tried again.

  "Hello, anyone there, this is . . ." He almost coughed again. "Joe. Joe Buckley."

  Faint but sharp in his ears was the abrupt reply. "Joe? Joe! Thank God!"

  "Dunno about thanking him, I think he did this to me."

  "Bloke's right, act of God and all that." Bruce sounded distracted, though happy. "Glad to hear your voice, mate. Getting on a little eleventh-hour for you, if you know what I mean."

  "What happened, anyway?"

  "One hell of a lot," Maddie answered, unable to quite keep a teary-sounding edge from her voice. "For you, what happened was that a meteor smashed the reactor-control area and blew you . . . somewhere. We think we know the general location now, thanks to Jackie. Can you tell us anything to help narrow it down? Where are you?"

  "Meteor? Now I'm getting hit by meteors? What, crashing in spaceships isn't good enough? Jesus!" Another breath did cause coughing, which definitely wasn't good. Once he could finally breathe again, he answered the question. "I'm in a hole. Pretty deep. I'm down at least fifty meters, I'd guess."

  "That'd explain the diminished signal. And I'll bet there are side passages giving us multipath." That was A.J.'s voice.

  "Still, now we know to look only in holes. Can you see the sky from where you are?"

  "Yeah, I'm lying on my back looking just about straight up. Can't figure the constellations, though." He hesitated. "Um, the air's getting awfully thick."

  There was silence for a moment. "How much air do you have left, Joe?"

  "The recycler was kinda damaged, according to the readouts. I guess I have ten, twelve minutes before the stuff gets really unbreathable." When there was no response, he sighed. "Guess you don't have that good an idea where I am, huh?"

  "No," Madeline said quietly. "No, Joe, I'm afraid we don't. But we might get lucky."

  "I'll be prayin'," Bruce's voice said, seriously. "But I'll have to cut off, gents, because this last part is going to be very, very tricky."

  "We understand, Bruce," A.J. said flatly.

  Joe bit his lip. Ten minutes, and—"Wait a minute. Last part of what?"

  "Of landing Nobel," Madeline answered. "We can't get the reactor back online right away, and we need power very soon."

  "Maddie, look, I saw Nobel pass right over me. About . . . call it three to five seconds before you answered me."

  "Bruce! Jackie! Did you hear that?"

  "I'm on it," Jackie said. "Hold on . . . Got it! Depending on exact angles and times, that gives us . . . this area."

  "I see it." A.J.'s voice was energetic once more. "Concentrating all Locusts in the vicinity. Ignore any radio outside of that area. Maddie?"

  "Combining with the maps . . . there. It's one of those three."

  The faceplate was slightly fogged now, and the air was sharp. He had to fight to prevent himself from gasping. Talking wouldn't be a good idea.

  "Joe, hold on. We're—"

  The radio went dead at that moment, and all that remained was the very dim lighting of the controls inside the helmet, and the stars, smearing into a mist of fog. And the pain, and breathing thickness . . . and despite all efforts, the world going even darker . . .

  He was falling into pain, redness, cold, more pain . . . sharper pain, as though he was struck, but his chest still ached. But the ache was fading, fading like everything . . . almost gone, into warmer gray nothing. . . .

  Suddenly light blazed through closed eyelids and there was a hissing sound. . . . Pain screamed back into existence with consciousness, but he forced his eyes open, looking through a clearing faceplate into the airlock of Feynman and the tear-streaked face of the most beautiful woman in the solar system. "Joe?" she said, voice almost breaking.

  He managed a grin. "Hey, it's like I always say. Seeing you is like a breath of fresh air."

  Richard Fitzgerald entered Hohenheim's office. "You sent for me, Gener—"

  With barely a shift of expression, Hohenheim grabbed Fitzgerald and slammed him against the wall, forcing a grunt of surprised pain from the Irish mercenary. "You complete fool. Do you realize what you have just done?"

  Fitzgerald was too startled to reply immediately. He had not expected this violent a reaction, at least not once the operation was over. The general's vehemence had caught him unawares. So did his strength. Hohenheim was tall and broad, but much of that could have been the uniform. Richard realized now that he'd misgauged the man.

  His immediate impulse was to disengage and counterattack, but that would be very foolish. Careful, Richard, old
boy. Just the overenthusiastic employee. "General, please, calm down. We're getting underway now, and they haven't accused us of anything we didn't expect. It's all working out, so what's to be so angry about?"

  The general slowly let him down, his fury seeming to ebb away a bit. "They have accused us of nothing yet, Mr. Fitzgerald. But you could have easily committed murder. Are you so callous and reckless you don't understand that? Furthermore, if they realize—"

  "If they suspected us, they'd have said something right away, sir. Fathom isn't the sort to hold back. I tell you, the only chance they had to realize what was really happening was when it happened, unless someone spills the beans to them about our other capabilities, and that's not possible. Even Modofori wasn't in on that little part of the operation."

  "He can cast suspicion on you, can he not?"

  Fitzgerald shrugged. "I suppose he could try to say I sent them to do it, but he hasn't got a shred of evidence, and the others got slightly different conversations. They'll never match up. Oh, Fathom knows I sent them, and I think she's probably already guessed why. But with Nobel stuck on Ceres, they've got no chance of stopping us—and there's nothing in the system to catch us once we have a day or so running time, am I right?"

  "True enough." The general turned away. "Mr. Fitzgerald . . ."

  "Sir?"

  "I thought I made it clear that I did not want them attacked. I consider this to have been an attack, however one may be able to argue otherwise. You did not—quite—disobey my direct orders, in letter, but in spirit I feel you have. In the future, I want you to understand that I will not look kindly on that kind of latitude. I will expect you to obey both the letter and the spirit of my orders, or I will have you relieved of duty, arrested, and sent back to Earth." Hohenheim's deep voice was as hard as iron. "And had Mr. Buckley died, Mr. Fitzgerald, I would have stopped this vessel, turned you over to them, and testified against you, no matter what that might have done to my career. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Fitzgerald?"

  "Crystal clear, sir."

  "Dismissed."

  Richard paused once he had gotten some distance from the general's office. The back of his head throbbed where it had hit the wall. He'd also underestimated the general's ethical hang-ups, he now realized. That could be a problem in the future.

  But there wasn't much point worrying about that now. Unless another emergency came along, there wouldn't be any reason to get into a pissing match with the general. Now, if all went as planned, it was going to be a matter of long routine and long-distance travel. Without Fathom or the others to bother them, he wouldn't need to worry.

  Chapter 25

  "A.J., you are such a geek. Going to your wife's rescue and you still couldn't keep from making cheap jokes?"

  A.J. looked embarrassed. "That's how I keep from losing it, Joe."

  Madeline nodded. "We all have our own methods. I'm . . . impressed, to say the least." Internally, she shivered. There were very few things that scared her, but the thought of the insidious way in which A.J. had dealt with the three renegade Odin crewmen gave her the creeps.

  She was seated next to Joe's bed, where monitors were tracking his health. Dr. Brea didn't think Joe was in any danger, but he was to be monitored for the next day or so. A.J. and Helen, her nose bandaged, were in seats at the foot of the bed.

  "Well," A.J. said, "I'm sure you knew the Faerie Dust could do stuff like that."

  "Sort of," she admitted. "It's not as though no one ever thought of it before, but no one's quite gone ahead and weaponized it until now. And I had no idea you knew enough anatomy to do that so accurately. Especially using only the stuff from Helen's ring." That had been a point that was bothering her. There were an awful lot of the motes in the sparkling ring, but the power output and other aspects of the stunt A.J. had pulled didn't seem to jibe with what she knew of the Faerie Dust capabilities.

  "Oh, I didn't just use that. I was able to get her ring to shed the stuff and get it on my targets before they suited up—as soon as Modofori answered, in fact, and I knew there was real trouble. If Helen had been wearing her suit then, it would've taken longer—I'd have had to work the things out of the suit when she had the helmet off, and so on. Anyway, once the stuff was all over them I was able to track them using occasional pulses from the marker beacons in the tunnels—had to override their power-conservation schemes, but that wasn't hard.

  "Once I knew where they were going, at least in a general sense, I could spread a bunch more Dust in the area. When they took off their helmets, the first set from Helen's ring were able to guide the rest to the right points. It really doesn't take much if you're going to be triggering nerve and muscle impulses, but like I said, the stuff wouldn't last long. I had to move as soon as I was sure it was all set. The human body's a terrible environment for my little Faerie Dust motes."

  He gave an exaggeratedly sympathetic look. "As far as anatomy, well, I don't know all that much, but the library files do, and Dust-Storm has been producing prototype medical motes, so I had to know something about it. And to be honest, I thought about these kind of techniques years ago, so finding the necessary nerve and muscle junctions was something I didn't have to work on just off the cuff. Guiding the motes to the right place, getting them to stay there, and hoping they'd all keep working long enough, that was the real pain in the butt."

  "Now, alas, I have to start figuring out a defense against that kind of thing," Maddie said. "That really is quite frightening, even to me."

  A.J. nodded. "To me, too. And the only defense I know of for sure is to already have stuff like that around, on, and maybe even in you that will intercept and kill off anything that doesn't belong there. That's how the human body works, you know. It's biological nanotech, and diseases are the attacking nanotech."

  Maddie winced. "I think you and I are going to have to sit down and do some design brainstorming sometime soon. But not right now."

  "Odin?" Joe asked.

  "Odin," she confirmed. "They're definitely heading for the outer system." Her communicator buzzed. "Fathom."

  "Larry here, Maddie." The voice of the astrophysicist was grim, angry, and—through the tiny speaker—slightly tinny. "I went through the backups like you said, and I found it. Wasn't hard with the clues you and A.J. had turned up. They're headed for Enceladus. Judging by the course they're taking, probably going to use Jupiter for a course-correct and slingshot to push them to maximum controllable speed—and incidentally let them visit the big guy for publicity points."

  "You're sure it's Enceladus and not somewhere in the Jupiter system?"

  "Dead sure. That's the stuff that was hidden from the main systems, and the label on the Enceladus diagram is clearly for a major base—even if what we know about Enceladus didn't already tell me that." He summarized the peculiarities of the little Saturnian moon. "So yeah, I'm sure."

  "How long before Nobel can't catch them?" she asked, trying to sound casual.

  A.J. shook his head. "Too late already, even if we could spare Nobel. If we'd caught on right away, maybe, but they've gotten out into their mass-beam now. They'll be making eight kilometers a second already and accelerating every second. Judging on what our network's seeing on their course . . . Larry, can you give me a likely course-speed breakdown? I don't think they can crank it up much past one hundred sixty kilometers per second, based on what I've been able to figure out about their mass-drivers, plus they have to be able to make the corner and stop when they get to Saturn. It's going to be tricky."

  "I can get you a rough guess . . . here."

  A.J. stared into apparently empty space as he surveyed the data and imported it. "Yeah . . . they're full loaded. Rough guess, they'll be into Jupiter system in eighty days or a little less, then heading on to Saturn. Not sure what we'd do, anyway. They've got the right to make the claim, and there's no one else in the solar system who could get there."

  Maddie almost said something, then stopped. There probably wasn't much point in it, at least not n
ow.

  Then Joe said, "But there is."

  A.J. looked at him. "What are you . . . Of course!"

  "You haven't even tested that thing yet!" Helen snapped, picking up on their meaning a split second after Maddie did. "And you'd have to stock it up for the trip, and figure out how you were going to get back, and . . ."

  Joe opened his mouth to argue, and then—to everyone's astonishment—A.J. said: "She's right, Joe. It's crazy. We've got more stuff to work on with three bases—one of them, the one we have right here—than we'll manage to get done in a lifetime. Why the hell should we take off and try to beat them to another one? I'm just glad we're all still kicking."

  Joe's mouth slowly closed. Then opened again. "I'll be totally damned. A.J. Baker, Voice of Reason. What happened to the real A.J., you alien impostor?"

  The blond sensor expert reached out and took Helen's hand. His gaze met Joe's, and Maddie saw Joe's eyes widen slightly. "Oh. Yeah, I guess that might do it. You just gotta stop this growing up, A.J. It's freaking us out."

  "I'll do what I can." He glanced at Maddie. "Anyway, we've hung out here enough. I think me and Helen need to get some rest."

  "Yes, let's leave you two alone for a while," Helen agreed. The two left, their drifting walk as close together as was practical.

  Joe took her hand. "Thought they'd never leave."

  She gave a slight laugh. His glance told her that he'd noticed something. Why she couldn't hide things from Joe now was a mystery.

  "What's wrong, Maddie?"

  She was silent for a minute. "Joe . . . When am I justified in not saying something, do you think?"

  "Huh?" Joe stared at her. "I guess it depends on the things you aren't saying. Something about A.J. and those killer tricks? That scares the hell out of me, too. And A.J., if I don't miss my guess."