* * *
The wardroom was standing room only. Representatives from the military and science sides, by an unconscious choice, Nathan thought, had sorted themselves out onto separate sides of the table. Nathan sat with Ford on one side; Kristin Westphalen stood on the other, looking grim and businesslike. All her attention was for the tabletop screen in the middle of the table, showing the HR probe's thermographic view of the power station's central derrick. Mostly the colors showing there were cool blues and greens, except for a bloom of red-orange heat from the base of thfi derrick.
Westphalen looked extremely worried. "As you can see from the data Lieutenant Hitchcock got back from the probe," she said, "the power station is built over a deep ocean volcanic vent."
"Why?" Ford said.
"Energy," said Nathan. "It uses trapped heat from the controlled venting to power its turbines."
"A common enough arrangement," Westphalen finished for him. "But according to the data from that probe"—and she pointed at the telltale cloud of orange-red gathering at the base of the derrick—"the venting cap at the base of the station is in the process of tearing."
People on the science side stirred and murmured, exchanging concerned glances. Nathan's eyes got a bit wide.
"What happens if it breaks?" Hitchcock said.
Westphalen shook her head. "A nightmare. If it tears completely, the poisonous extract gases that are usually captured and disposed of will spill out across the ocean floor."
"How big a spread?" asked Ford.
Westphalen shook her head, looking concerned with the enormity of what the data had told her. "With the thermal currents in this territory—could be hundreds of miles."
The science team all began to talk at once, angry, upset and worried by turns. Westphalen raised her voice enough to be heard over the din. "Every living undersea biologic—plant and animal—would choke on this man-made crap and die!" She looked at the naval personnel across the table, a pleading expression on her face. "We'd have our first equivalent of a deep-ocean desert wasteland!"
The noise among the science crew got louder. To Nathan's annoyance, the naval crew were mostly sitting looking at one another with expressions going from blank unconcern to annoyance that such fuss was being made about so little. He spoke to Westphalen through the commotion, but she couldn't hear him, shook her head, cupped one hand behind her ear. Nathan raised his voice, imitating the shout he had heard his own officers copy so often in his younger day. "Can it be fixed?"
Stunned by Bridger's sheer unexpected volume, everyone shut up. Westphalen looked at him in something like astonishment, and Nathan realized with some surprise that she had not expected him to be on her side. "Yes," she said. "Given the proper equipment."
Ford frowned a bit. "You mean military equipment."
Bridger shook his head in genial disgust. How am I going to get through to these people that if the paradigm doesn't work on this level, it won't work on any other? "I don't care who owns the pink slip!"
He watched Ford. You could almost see the wheels go around in the man's head as he tried to make the right decision. His naval personnel were all staring at him, though, expecting him to jump the obvious way, their way; and there was no way this officer, youngest ex-o or not, no matter how little experience he might have had, could not feel the pressure and be urged to jump that way. Indeed, he wanted to anyhow. "I understand the doctor's concern, but..."
Oy, Bridger thought, wanting to roll his eyes as he heard the too-clear emphasis on the word doc-tor. He is going to put his foot in it—as far as he can! "This ship is operating under very unusual and dangerous circumstances," Ford went on. "And presently, I don't know if we should divert our efforts from the very real need to find the cause of the weapons and propulsion systems failure—so we can go after that armed rebel sub out there."
"Commander," Nathan said, "in my own days among my military brethren, I would've taken the same stance you're taking now. However..."— and he held up his hand to forestall the look of satisfaction that was going back and forth among the naval types—"if I understand this whole UEO mandate thing correctly, then this ship shouldn't sail away from a potential major ecological disaster if it can do something about it." The science personnel blinked at that. "I know I'm only along for the ride here," Nathan said, all innocence. "But only so many TeamCraft suits can work on our hull at any given time, so"— and he looked sideways at Ford most pointedly— "I strongly recommend we patch that vent."
Ford paused, saying nothing—studying his hands. He looked torn. But Bridger simply waited, not needing to say anything else. This man might be young and moderately inexperienced as yet, but clearly he knew when something was right. Finally, he looked up and nodded. "All right, Captain Bridger. We patch the vent."
Some of the naval personnel breathed out in muffled exasperation. "Dismissed," Ford said, and science and military staff alike started to head out.
Nathan looked over at Westphalen as he got up. She was plainly extremely pleased, but her own management style wasn't going to let her show how much—certainly not in front of these Navy types, and maybe not in front of her own people.
He went over to her. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" he said.
She glanced at him, a quizzical look, then nodded.
* * *
In the officers' lounge, they sat down with their cups and spent a short time in the cream-and-sugar ritual. There was a monitor nearby, and Nathan activated it and had a look at the docking bay area. In the pale glare of the auxiliary lighting, the place was turning into the scene of a melee. Off to one side, the docking bay control officer stood at his station, monitoring the deployment of the several TeamCraft on his display screens. Below him, streaming toward the docking port, a cluster of science crew came carrying their equipment—various monitors, chemical analyzers and so forth—mixing uncomfortably with a group of military crew carrying their own gear. Both teams were waiting to go up the ladders to the waiting TeamCraft, but there was no mixing, no chatter between them, no friendly banter. Instead there were glares.
Visible on the display screens at the control officer's station, several TeamCraft, each with its two-person crew, were already on their way toward the smoking base of the power-station derrick. One vanished into the smoke while the control officer watched. Others were still in the process of pushing away from the seaQuest's docking sphere section.
Westphalen was looking over his shoulder as he switched views to what one of the TeamCraft was seeing, the swirls of toxic vapor from around the base of the power station. She breathed out, looked over at Bridger and said, "Thank you for what you did back there."
Nathan shrugged as he turned away from the monitor. "It made sense."
She looked at him curiously. "Excuse me for saying so—but you don't strike me as the prototypical military man."
He was intrigued in spite of himself. "Really? Exactly how do I 'strike' you, Doctor?"
Westphalen looked embarrassed. "Now I've insulted you."
Bridger laughed softly. "On the contrary. I've spent most of my career trying not to become part of the machine."
"Then you consider yourself a radical?"
He raised his eyebrows. "I never thought about it one way or the other. I made up my mind a long time ago that I wouldn't 'go along" to 'get along.'" He thought of Carol, then, remembering how she would tease him about what she called his "troublemaking"—"My wife used to call me 'terminally stubborn,'" he said.
Westphalen hesitated a moment. "But perhaps she saw a glint of flexibility?"
Nathan smiled slightly and stirred his coffee again. "Perhaps a glint."
"How long were you married?"
"Twenty-seven years. She died ten months ago."
"I'm sorry," Westphalen said; and even while busily blocking the resurgence of the memories that inevitably came with the words She died, Nathan could tell from Westphalen's tone that the question wasn't mere idle curiosity.
"What about y
ou?" he said. "Is there a Mr. Westphalen?"
"Several, I'm afraid."
Bridger raised his eyebrows again. "Interesting."
But Westphalen was shaking her head. "Not really. I can't even tell you what went wrong, specifically. I guess in the end they were just—weak. Strength can be a debilitating trait for some men." She sighed. "I did get one positive thing out of it."
"Alimony?" Nathan said innocently.
She gave him a look not nearly as annoyed as it should have been. "My daughter, Susan. She just received her degree in biophysics. I hope to have her join my research team... Do you have children?"
That set of memories started to come up too, and Nathan pushed them down forcefully. "We had a son," he said. "He was lost at sea six years ago."
Westphalen looked at him, clearly unable to find exactly what to say; so she retreated back into a cooler mode. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"
He was glad enough to retreat himself. "Uh, yeah... I need a troubleshooter."
"A what?"
"I don't think what's happening to this boat is an accident. I need somebody who can tear her systems apart and find out what's going on."
"What about Lieutenant Hitchcock?"
"No good," Nathan said. "She's hardware. Besides, she's busy supervising the repair team. I need somebody who can get into her guts and dig around. I was hoping you might have somebody on your team?"
"I—" She looked doubtful; Nathan started to worry. Then she blinked. "Wait. There is one person who might be able to help."
"Who?" Nathan said, getting up. "Let's go see him."
* * *
They came around the corner of a quarters entryway, where light played on a wall. Nathan looked at the wall, opened his mouth and shut it again. Someone was making giant shadow bunnies on it.
He and Westphalen stuck their heads around the next corner, the room's actual doorway. The auxiliary lights were too pale to produce the result they were seeing; a battery-powered lamp had been rigged near the room's bunk. On the bunk itself, hands up in front of the light, lay a boy, making the hand shadows. It was Lucas.
Lucas glanced up in some surprise, and with a single movement of his hands turned the bunny into a dog face and said, with the "dog's" jaws moving in time, "Wowee, Lucas! Look who's come to visit us today! It's the Amazing Bonko and his beautiful assistant Doris!"
Nathan looked at Westphalen, his eyebrows so far up they probably looked as if they were planning to emigrate to his scalp. "You're serious?" he said.
Westphalen nodded. "Some things," she said, "are worth putting up with."
"I'll believe it when I see it," Nathan said.
Within a few minutes, though, the lamp had been swiveled down to do what it had originally been intended to do: illuminate Lucas's workstation. Nathan found himself becoming impressed despite himself. The workstation was filled with every kind of computer component he could imagine—keyboards, memoryboards, wiring everywhere, jerry-rigged serial and parallel ports, CD-ROM and block ROM and components he couldn't identify—all intermingled with the usual clutter and junk you might expect in a fifteen-year-old's room: socks in pairs and mismatched triplets, underwear—one set of it being worn upside down over a teddy bear's head—clothing in various states of repair and cleanliness draped over everything, here and there used as insulation matting or cushions to keep one wire-entangled piece of electronic equipment from touching another, elsewhere plainly just thrown on the floor because its owner had no time for it.
Lucas was hunched over the workstation, hammering at it—not so much in the style of a classical pianist, more like a jazz drummer, all the action coming from the wrists, going from snares to cymbals to brushes to cowbells and back to the snares again—occasionally reaching out to another keyboard nearby to hit a control key here, tap in a sequence there, bring up a macro from somewhere else. All this would have looked very impressive, had Lucas not at the time been wearing a baseball cap with a dolphin snout out the front and its tail out the back. He was muttering to himself, but the language was so interspersed with computer and other jargon Nathan couldn't translate that he realized there was no point in his standing there trying to understand what was going on. Just let the boy take his course, Nathan thought, and left him to the business of working his way into the ship's systems.
He wandered over to the bookshelves. There were a lot of them, bracketed to the walls. Some of them actually held books, but these were much in the minority. Most of them were covered with ... stuff. There was one of the little laser-disc players that Nathan remembered from his own youth, the ones that had been so much fun to listen to on planes until they discovered that the things interfered with the on-board electronics, and an even older tape-cassette machine—though looking at this one now, he couldn't imagine what had been so great about a tape deck that couldn't record. And thinking of recordings... Nathan reached out and picked up what had to be a computer disk, one of the big old fragile floppies that left a good slice of the recording medium exposed to any dust or sticky fingers that might wander by. Other things: a cap with a big X on it, some kind of stuffed saurian raptor. "What's all this?" he muttered.
Lucas actually got up and, very gently, took the floppy disk away from him, leaning it back on the shelf, on edge. "My collection," he said, suddenly sounding astonishingly protective. "Antiques. Everything up there's front the 1990s."
Nathan looked at the odd conglomeration of stuff. Antiques, he thought. I had some of this stuff, and I thought it was pretty neat. Now they're antiques. What does that make me?
"Why the nineties?" Westphalen said.
Lucas shrugged. "Because it's all so—old fashioned, and weird..."
Old fashioned and weird. Right. Nathan wasn't sure he wouldn't prefer to be an antique after all. At least there was a certain amount of dignity in the word. He picked up another baseball cap, this one with brown stains on it that suggested that someone had gotten playful with their ice cream. "UNIVERSAL TOURS," it said. Nathan shook his head, put it down again.
Lucas was still working furiously. He paused a moment, waiting, watching the screen—then went taut. "Got it!" he said.
Bridger looked at the screen and wondered exactly what he had got, unless it was one of the more abstruse entertainment channels. The monitor was displaying an arcane mixture of colors, geometries, data scrolling behind some things that might have been part of a flowchart, except that flowchart fields had never come in shapes like those, as far as Nathan knew. He couldn't make head or tail of it; he was glad Lucas could.
The boy tapped at the keyboard, bringing up new screenfuls of data, new flowcharts and diagrams, more scrolling text. "You were right," he said over his shoulder to Nathan, sat back from the screen and waved at it. Whatever sense he made of the graphics was lost on Nathan, but he wasn't about to say so. Instead he just raised his eyebrows a notch and waited for an explanation. As he had guessed, it wasn't long in coming— though as computer-expert's explanations went, it was short enough. And not encouraging. There's the source of your trouble. The main computer's dying."
"Dying?”
Lucas spun his chair slowly around. "The core of the main computer has a virus. That's what's gnawing away at the systems...”
"If it's in the core," Westphalen said, "why isn't it affecting the whole ship?"
"Oh, it will," Lucas said. "It just started with weapons and propulsion."
"But why didn't the system diagnostics catch it on routine checks?"
"No," Nathan said. "When weapons and propulsions go down, the system only runs a quick-pass diagnostics program—conventional wisdom being either you find and fix such a problem fast—or you're dead anyway. Unless you fixed that too... ?"
"I've got some parts on order," Lucas said right back, unperturbed. Nathan gave him an old- fashioned look entirely appropriate to an antique, and watched it bounce off the boy's shell of cheeky self-assurance.
Westphalen straightened up from staring at the scr
een. Evidently what she saw there made a good deal more sense to her than it did to Bridger, because she had the look of someone who didn't like what she was looking at. "I still don't see how it could have been missed."
Lucas nodded, bringing up another screenful of data. "The complication here was that this sucker's buried so deep that any quick-pass sweep couldn't find it." He looked impressed. "It's pretty cool. I mean, whoever planted this thing really knew what they were doing."
"Then it's not organic," Nathan said.
"No way. It's too specific."
Nathan leaned over his shoulder, looking at the screenful of incomprehensibles. I knew that something was amiss, he thought. We've come a long way from the time when the only form of sabotage was to throw a wooden shoe into the work... Who would purposely leave such a mine in our midst... something scheduled to fail our systems, maybe kill us, at the time when we needed it the most? He put that aside. "Can you tell how long it's been in there?"
Lucas looked smug—or anyway, more smug than usual. "No problem," he said. "If I can peel back the layers of data between me and it—" He began hammering on the keyboards again.
Nathan smiled. There might after all be some purpose for the arrogance of youth. Anyway, if he produced the results ... who really cared?
"It's a little tricky," Lucas said as he worked, sounding very pleased with himself at having a chance to lecture his elders. "They don't usually hang date tags on these things. It's not a file— it's a fragment of code; and even if it had any dating attached to it, that could have been erased, subverted, told to lie... No, you have to analyze these things structurally. Judging by the layers of data accreted between the upper levels of processing and the virus, it might have been hiding in there for as long as a year. Dormant... just waiting until someone started to use those systems. And used them in action, not in a drill."
"Systems that would only be used when the ship went into battle," Bridger muttered.