“I deserve censure far more than you. You were busy, making preparations for the trip to Sky City. I am the one who is supposedly responsible for thinking. And that I clearly failed to do.”
“So think now. What next?”
“We accept the truth of what we were just told.
You cannot possibly wander unencumbered and unnoticed. We need help-preferably female help. Unfortunately, such assistance appears beyond our reach.”
“Mebbe. Mebbe not.” Seth sounded frustrated, but also thoughtful. “The people I work for got resources. I hafta see what I can do. You want to come along?”
“For the moment, no. I wish to pursue a little cerebration.” I was also, though I did not choose to mention it, stifling within the heavy RV helmet.
“Then I’m goin’ to take off this pansy jacket-why’s it hafta be pink and mauve? — and cut the video and audio connection for an hour or two. I got somethin1 needs doin’ here, but it’s sort of confidential. I’ll buzz you later. Okay?”
The image swirled in a dizzying flurry of colors before I could essay an answer. Seth was gone.
I removed the RV set and wiped my forehead. I was sweating monstrously, but less, I suspected, from my heated condition than from psychological factors. The period of my telepresence on Sky City had been short, less than one full hour, but that brief exposure had been enough to confirm one earlier suspicion and provide a clue as to the nature of the Sky City murderer.
Of course, I am still in some sense as far away from an answer as ever. In order to catch a murderer, it is necessary to possess two crucial items of information: first, an identity; second, the proof that links murderer to crime.
Suppose, however, that you are closing in on the first but the second element is lacking. Then one must hope to catch the killer red-handed, in flagrante delicto. But what if there should be no more killings?
It is far past midnight in Otranto Castle. The girls ought to be-but, in view of past experience, probably are not-asleep. They are, at least, quiet.
Think, Oliver Guest; think. Once you were good at thinking, and you have the whole night ahead of you.
As for that sly shade of a spectral reader who hovers always behind my shoulder as I write, you must do some thinking, too.
Or is that not necessary? Are you, my unseen companion, already far ahead of me, confident of motive, sure of the murderer’s identity, certain of a method of capture?
I will never know; but as for me, I am like Gulliver: newly returned from the magical flying island of Laputa, happy to be home, but unsure of what strange voyages may lie in the future.
16
John Hyslop was showing off, but he didn’t know it. Even with a knowledge of what he was doing, he would have had trouble explaining why.
He and Maddy Wheatstone stood at the entrance to the shield simulation chamber. The sight alone was enough to make most visitors gasp, even without explanation of the technological marvels hidden within.
The chamber sat far out on the central spindle of Sky City, at the opposite end from the power-generating plant. It was a structure only in the Sky City sense, of material enclosing a volume. It would not have survived for two seconds down on Earth. The wall of the chamber was a micron-thin sheet of fullerenes, held to its spherical shape by an internal pressure of a few micro-grams per square meter.
At the center of the sphere floated a physical model of the shield, built at a scale of a hundred thousand to one.
“It’s a little more than a kilometer lengthwise,” John explained as he guided Maddy toward the wide end of the cone. “Everything is in exact proportion to the real shield. The important thing, though, is that you get an overview of where the project stands at any time, which you can never get by looking at the shield itself — for one thing, most of the shield components are too small to see, and for another, the whole thing is too big to look at all at once. The model is updated in real time to reflect progress — or problems — with the real shield. See, it’s happening now. A section is going out of commission. Either it’s part of a routine check, or a horde of rolfes will be heading that way on the real shield.”
Maddy followed his pointing arm. A small section of the shield, no more than a meter square, was changing from green to red. Except that a one-meter square was not small at all. With a scale of a hundred thousand to one, one meter on the model represented a hundred kilometers on the shield itself.
“Let’s go take a look at it,” John said casually. “Hold tight, I’m switching us to VR mode.”
He saw Maddy turn and stare at him inside her suit helmet. A VR session was not on their schedule. In less than an hour, John was supposed to meet with Will Davis and Lauren Stansfield for a final wrap-up before he went to his new assignment in asteroid capture.
“I know,” he said. “But I’ve worked with the shield for a lot of years. Call it one last look.”
“Hey, you’re the boss. You don’t have to give me explanations for what we do.”
Her helmet was only a foot away from his, and she was smiling. That smile made John profoundly uncomfortable yet pleased at the same time. Will Davis had met Maddy only once, three days ago, but as soon as he and John were alone he said, “Better not get ideas, boyo — and if you have ideas already, drop ’em. That there’s one heavy-duty alpha female. She eats men like me and you as appetizers before the main meal.”
Heavy-duty alpha female. That struck John as an understatement. But he still wanted an answer to his question: Why did someone like Maddy Wheatstone trail along with him when she could be doing so many more important and interesting things?
Don’t ask, or you’ll hear what you don’t want to hear. John took a quick breath and threw them into virtual reality mode.
The shield sat in front of them, exactly as before. Its apparent size had not changed, but the far-off wall of the chamber had vanished and Maddy Wheatstone no longer smiled at him inside her suit.
He heard her gasp. “What happened?”
“We’re in VR. What you’re seeing on your visor isn’t the model of the shield anymore, it’s the real thing. We’re picking up radio feeds from sensors located around the shield, in the same relative position as we are to the model. Smart sensors on the shield surface send out messages describing their condition, and those are converted to light signals of the right color by the message sensors.”
“Neat. But suppose I want to look at a different part of the shield?”
“You move along using your suit controls, just as if you wanted to visit a different piece of the model.”
“Like this? Hey, I’m moving.”
“Keep going. You can use VR all the way to Cusp Station.” John did the same thing, gliding steadily toward the point of the cone that formed the terminus of the shield.
He was used to the effect, but Maddy wasn’t. After a moment she said, “I don’t get it. I’m moving all right, but if I travel along in my suit at ten meters a second I must be going like hell in real space.”
“It’s a hundred thousand to one scale. Ten meters a second converts to a thousand kilometers. You’re moving along the shield at a thousand kilometers a second.”
“But that’s impossible. Nothing can accelerate me so fast to move at that speed.”
“Quite true. Nothing at all is accelerating in real space. Observational sensors watch every part of the shield, and the VR system simply switches to provide us with signals from whichever set of sensors is appropriate. What you’re seeing is a succession of frames, like in an old-time movie camera. If your eyes could handle a hundred frames a second, you’d be able to watch the individual scene change each time you were switched to a new set of observational sensors.”