“You need have no fear on that score. You have been accepted into the service in the Outer System, and such acceptance cannot be revoked. You will not be returned to Earth. However, I am less sure that you will be permitted to proceed to Saturn.” Captain Kondo raised an eyebrow toward Valnia Bloom. “I also think it likely that Dr. Bloom will choose to go with you wherever you are, at least for some initial period of time.”
Valnia Bloom came to life. Her skeleton head nodded vigorously. “Of course. I caused this to happen. It is my responsibility to remain with Sebastian until I learn exactly what I did to him.”
“That seems reasonable and appropriate. Let me add, we will dock on Ganymede in approximately six hours. I hope that you will find some agreeable diversion — or, at the very least, a respite from your immediate worries and concerns — during the remainder of what has been by far the most unusual Jupiter swingby of my career.”
Captain Kondo nodded formally to the little group. “And now, I bid you a very good night.”
22
In the early days of the Ligon corporate empire, the tradition was well-known if unspoken. The smartest of each generation ran the family business. The worthy but uninspired went into the church or military service, while the idiots with Cousin Hector’s combination of stupidity and furious energy would be tucked away on a remote part of the broad baronial estates where he could do little damage.
Alex stared out of the port and decided that the Ligon family had now adopted a new principle. Today, the fool of the family was sent off on a fruitless mission to a distant part of the solar system. There he was supposed to meet with a man who preferred to avoid everyone, and persuade him in a manner unspecified to share his lease on Pandora with the Ligon corporate interests.
Based on what he had seen so far, Alex found it hard to believe that a rational human would want any part of the Saturnian system. The sun was a feeble and shrunken disk of light, nothing like the radiant orb visible from Ganymede. As for the planet itself, guarded by its great ring system, Saturn gave an impression of cold, aloof mystery. When Great-aunt Cora had described Alex’s trip to Saturn as being to “the outback of the solar system,” Uncle Karolus had laughed and said, “More like the outhouse.” As for Alex’s final destination, which he was fast approaching, that was nothing at all — an insignificant mote of a world, forever unable to support an atmosphere, a gravity field, or a civilization.
The only moon of Saturn that any Ligon family member took seriously was Titan, today clouded by dense hydrocarbon fogs, but with long-term potential, according to the professional world-builders, that matched Ganymede and Callisto.
So what did Pandora, only minutes away, have to offer? Nothing but the old rule of real estate: location, location, location. It was well situated to operate as the nerve center for the swarming Von Neumanns who would mine the Saturnian atmosphere. More important yet, it commanded the access rights for that mining.
Which just made things tough for the present occupant, because in Alex’s experience, what Ligon wanted Ligon got. For instance, they wanted him here, and here he was. Kate had been confident that the work he was doing on the predictive model would persuade their superiors that he should remain on Ganymede. Her message of recommendation to that effect had gone all the way up to Magrit Knudsen — and bounced back down with a totally contrary command. Alex would not only go to Pandora and communicate with its mysterious occupant, he would explain his work on predictive models and the problems that they were encountering.
That seemed like an insult to both Kate and Alex. Kate had done some checking through her own network, and learned that the hermit who lived on Pandora had a reputation for gluttony and arrogance in roughly equal parts. The only reason for asking him anything was that he had once worked for Magrit Knudsen and apparently owed her some allegiance. Also, a few years ago he had sorted out — more by luck than anything else, according to his fellow-workers at the time — a major mystery on Europa.
Alex had been told to expect no greeting at Pandora’s single dock. He was to make his way from the surface, through multiple air-locks, and down a long elevator shaft. That was as far as the instructions took him. From that point he would be on his own.
Docking in the negligible gravity of Pandora took only a few minutes. Alex, about to leave his single-person ship, hesitated. On the journey from Ganymede he had spent his waking hours playing with the predictive model, making a variety of assumptions, plugging them in as exogenous variables, and studying the output. The ship’s computer had a Seine link, but one permitting only an infuriatingly low transfer data rate. Alex’s results had been more puzzling than persuasive.
However, he would hot leave them behind. He dismounted the data cube that contained both his program and his most recent results, and tucked them away in a side pocket of his travel bag. If Rustum Battachariya was, as Magrit Knudsen insisted, a computer specialist with considerable intellectual resources of his own, perhaps Alex might find a way to repeat his recent runs in a more forgiving computer setting.
The descent into Pandora’s gloomy interior did not affect Alex as it would have, say, Kate or his mother. He was not interested in the physical appearance of his surroundings — “blind as a worm,” according to Kate, when it came to niceties of furnishings. Had he been taking notice, he would have discovered one point at least on which he and the lone inhabitant of Pandora agreed: simplicity. The walls were bleak rock or dull plastic. Alex passed through the last of three massive sets of air-locks, removed his suit, and kept going.
At the end of the elevator shaft he had no options as to what to do next. A single corridor, forty meters long, ended in a steel door. The door was closed, but a red button stood in the center with a sign above it: AFTER THE BUTTON IS PRESSED, YOU WILL HAVE SEVEN SECONDS IN WHICH TO ENTER.
Alex pressed, drifted on through as the door opened, and wondered about the need for such security. So far as he could see there was nothing on or in Pandora that anyone in his right mind would think worth stealing. What it suggested was extreme paranoia on the part of the man he was about to meet.
Beyond the door Alex found himself at the side wall of a chamber that stretched far off to left and right. If the corridors and elevators he had seen so far were unusually empty, this room made up for them. It was packed — not with furniture, but with machines, all dust-free, gleaming, and placed relative to each other with great care. The only object out of place, in both its nature and its condition, stood about eight meters away on Alex’s left.
It was — Alex had to take a second look to make sure — a person; a man of colossal size, dressed in rumpled and tight-fitting black clothes, and with a black cowled hood that partly concealed his face.
The man nodded to Alex. He said, in a rumbling but precise voice, “I have observed your progress since the arrival of your ship at the surface. I must say that you arrive at a peculiarly inconvenient time.”
“For both of us,” Alex said.
He was ignored as the other went on, “I will not say welcome to Pandora, since that would be gross insincerity on my part. I will, however, ask if you have dined.”
Alex hadn’t eaten, nor did he particularly want to; but since this seemed like an unexpected attempt at politeness, he shook his head and said, “I didn’t eat.”
“Nor did I.” The other man threw back the cowl, to reveal a round shaven head. “I am, of course, Rustum Battachariya, and you of course are Alex Ligon. You may find it easier to call me Bat, though this should not be presumed to indicate any desire for a closeness of relationship between us. And when I invite you to share my afternoon repast, it is only because a failure to do so would display a churlish lack of civility and hospitality on my part.”