“We’re not doing anything,” he said, and felt the rising waspish irritation. He knew what was coming and yet the emotions that came through from the fictional Helen moved him. Events carried him forward. Robert simmered in his tight-faced anger, the senso started, Helen’s shock lanced through him—

And he saw that it was like his own, with Carlos. But worse. It hit deeply. There was betrayal with it, a hollow feeling of the ground opening under Helen. She had struggled to see her own past clearly. Everything she had felt, each day, now meant something different. This taciturn stranger next to her in the slick chair knew everything about her but had been hiding himself—herself—every day of their lives. Helen had stroked him, receive him into herself, accepted and savored his male-ness, all without a thought—

Helen struggled bleakly, trying to find a hold. She would have to begin again, learn to accept Robert as something both more and less than she had ever thought, make herself—

Nigel tore himself away from the churn of emotions. He thumbed ESCAPE and the tangled world dropped away.

They peeled the pod back and crisp light flooded in. He wriggled out. The attendants smiled professionally. He ignored their warm, well-modulated voices, their polite questions. He wrapped himself snugly in a blue terry-cloth robe and started toward the dressing room.

“Wait! Your consultation—”

“Not having any.”

“It’s part of the—”

“Not mandatory, is it?”

“No, but we—”

“Thought so. I don’t have to talk to you sods and I frigging well don’t intend to.”

“It will go on the record,” the woman said as a warning.

“Dear me. Pity.”

“Isn’t it a little obvious to be so hostile to analysis?”

Nigel hesitated, knowing he should be civil to this person, even if he was shaken. He teetered on the brink, feeling the weight of her expectations, how the society of the ship would evaluate this, and in the long gliding moment felt a sureness come into himself that had been there before, but that he had lost years before. “Fuck off,” he said precisely.

“How did it go?” Nikka asked.

He lay back, letting their jury-rigged machine minister to him. It burbled and sucked and the pumps rattled, but it worked. He had actually come to feel a certain affection for the damned thing. “Hated it.”

She sighed. “That will not put you further into the good graces of—”

“I know, I know.”

“You saw the maps of that moon? Craters everywhere. They’re calling it Pocks. No official name yet.”

“Appropriate. Think you can wangle some surface duty?”

“What surface duty?” She sat up. “The net hasn’t even discussed—”

“I found a system interface into the engine section. They’re lower than they thought on plain old deuterium inventory. Before we ignite the drive again, they’ll need to store up some.”

“From the moon, uh, Pocks.”

“Right.”

Five

Look man Pocks is riddled jess same as Europa an’ Callisto an’ the resta the Jovian moons, dozens like this, seen one you seen ’em all

Some interestin’ ice flows see there that escaprment methane ice maybe

Might as well send down some scientific personnel with the mining crew

Could take some deep borings, even find a vent for access to deeper, get a good metal abundance measurement, make the ExoGeo boys Earthside happy

Trouble is the ice is all carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, not much water

We’d do better to send down that submersible gear

What’re you sayin’ use that subsurface stuff

Sure it works on Ganymede we brought it along for just exactly this kind of case

That ice skin is, what, fifteen klicks thick

There’s cracks and vents we already spotted them on recon

Sure, work your way down those, subs will take that pressure easy remember the gravity’s less than a fifth g

Penetrate the ice surface Christ

I dunno strip mining is safer and you can lift off if anything goes wrong

Sure but it takes three times the work crew and you have to hunt around for veins of water

Yeah the submarines are better, they can scoop up lots, and it’s pure water, no impurities from meteorites

Ted I’ll recommend that if you want somethin’ official

I have no problem with that no need to be so formal Bob we’ll be sending a pretty big team I want that deuterium out fast

No reason to wait aroun’ with that Watcher close by

If I might butt in I must say I still don’t like mining Pocks with that Watcher in range, bloody risky

No easy alternative as we decided yesterday, where’ve you been Nigel, there’s no other moon here that has the right topography—rest of ’em are rocks

Whole system’s bone-dry must have all the light elements locked up in the gas giants

Pocks is a typical snowball moon, fraction over two thousand klicks radius, ninety percent slush inside with an ice crust

Lot like Ganymede only more craters lot of crustal movement too

Nigel you been out of the loop too long shoot him the recap on that probe we sent to the Watcher

What! You poked your nose into—

Don’t get all fluffed up now look at it this way we were testing Walmsley’s Rule, giving it a last chance

It failed too you’ll notice

Lookit the robot probe walked all over the Watcher, banged on the hull, took a sample—nothing special, gamma-hardened alloy—tried radio and IR and

Found bunch of old sensors and stuff on the surface dead as can be

Burrowed inside maybe twenty meters all the circuits inactive, no acoustic pattern, no sign of anything working

Funny equipment pretty simpleminded circuits looked to me all crapped out it’s old as hell too

Still that doesn’t mean you sods didn’t awaken something—

Nigel this is Ted, we’ve got work to do here and you can get all this on recap I’d advise you drop off the net and come back when you

Sounds to me like he’s pissed his Rule didn’t work out

No, that’s not it at all, I merely meant

Well hell Walmsley first place we try it your theory isn’t worth a fart that moon’s never had any life on it lookit those surveys no bioproducts on the surface no atmosphere just lots of ice and rock that’s been pounded for billions of years

So that Watcher’s not waiting for life there hell the thing probably ran out of gas explorin’ this system an’ went dead looks like a kinda crude low-velocity ship burning its own rock for reaction mass

Yeah a ham-fisted piece of tech you ask me

Take forever to get to the next star

Well if you’ve got sodding forever—

Face it Walmsley the Watchers aren’t all the same they’re leftover weapons or explorers no reason to think they’re related to each other

Stuff in orbit lasts long time is all

There’s too much evidence to ignore, my damned Rule aside—

No Nigel this is Ted now I’d like you to drop out of the net take a rest maybe look over the recon stuff file a report with us later if you want to say your-piece but we can’t be squabbling over theory when we have to do a big minimax calculation on the mining operation

I’ll say

Very well Ted I’ll do that but

Good now I want a touchdown to begin excavations within forty-eight hours Sheila get those submersibles in the surface landers I want backup crews all down the line too

Good-bye you lot

Six

He had never meant for him and Nikka and Carlotta to choose up and play Nuclear Family, but the old times between them had called up a blood-rush swelling, as each slid over the others’ love-slicked skin, gasping at the dazzling slides of fingers, seeking the sag of aging muscles without judgment, yielding to the jut of bone. He dimly recalled how furious it had been between them. Then came the cooling, time leaching away the weight of each other. Now the past ambitions unspoken surfaced, and Carlotta was smothered in apparatus.