“There is no evidence of creatures resembling mammals,” he replied. “Our information is very limited, though. We would hesitate to make statements about the whole world on the basis of what was discovered in one locality in a matter of twenty days.”
“You have supplementary evidence from the robots.”
“Very little,” he said.
He was playing coy. It wasn’t just scientific caution. For some reason, he didn’t want to jump to the oh-so-attractive conclusion that Naxos was a virgin world, ready for exploitation if only it could be demonstrated that humans could live there. Maybe, I thought, it was an official line, chosen so as to provide an excuse for holding the Soviets back from a more intimate involvement. If Naxos was what it seemed, then it surely was a matter to interest the whole human race; but while we could treat it as nothing more than another biological puzzle, with no real practical implications, it would be much easier for Space Agency to keep control.
I didn’t bother to follow up the line of thought. It didn’t really interest me that much.
“Have we finished for the time being?” asked Schumann.
Harmall signaled that we had, though he looked around once more to see if there was any sign of anyone wanting to back out.
“In that case,” said the director, “you’d better take Dr. Hesse to your lab, Lee. No equipment came up from Marsbase, and I doubt if Vesenkov will bring any from the Belt. You’d better start deciding what you need, before the Earth Spirit’s quartermaster begins telling you what you can’t have.”
I was the last to leave the room, and as I looked back at Schumann, he said, “Good luck.” I realized then that he had meant the remark about being expendable.
“You don’t really think there’s something there that we can’t handle, do you?” I asked him.
“Why do you think Zeno is included?” he countered. His voice was low. Zeno was out in the corridor, moving away.
“He and I are a good team?” I suggested.
“A bug which knocks out humans just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers, “might take a little longer to dispose of a Calicoi. Or maybe it will work the other way around. Either way, someone could be on hand to watch it happen, and get the story back. That’s how dangerous Harmall thinks it is.”
“You worry too much,” I told him.
Directors are paid to be cautious to the point of paranoia. I preferred to think that Zeno was in for much the same reason that Vesenkov was in—because the Calicoi had every right to take an interest in the Ariadne’s discovery.
“Well,” he said, “good luck anyway.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll tell you the whole story, next time I pass this way.”
I figured that I was in a position to be generous with my promises.
CHAPTER FIVE
When they told me that the Department had decided to throw a party to bid us farewell, I was not exactly overjoyed. Indeed, I felt a distinct sinking feeling in my stomach. I could hardly refuse, though; it wouldn’t have done any good, and it would have offended a lot of people. So close to New Year’s Eve, it couldn’t actually be said that they needed another excuse to let their hair down, but on the other hand, when you’re so many millions of miles from home, who can say that they didn’t need it?
As always, they took the partition walls down to increase the size of the common room and make room for a dance floor. Out there, the lights were dim and colored, and they had a couple of strobes set up. I decided that I wasn’t going near them. It was unlikely that my blackout had been caused by strobes interfering with my alpha rhythms, but I was damn certain that I wasn’t going to take the chance. I elected to stay in the brightly lit space behind the bar area, sipping the indigenous brew that the non-pedantic members our fraternity were pleased to call “wine.” I tried to look as if I was enjoying myself, just in case anybody cared. If challenged, I reckoned that I could always excuse my unease by explaining how sorry I was to leave good old Sule, which was a home from home to me.
A few people drifted up to me to offer me their good wishes and ask polite but inquisitive questions about where I might be going and why. They weren’t upset when I explained why I couldn’t answer them.
I was just wondering how long I ought to stick it out before tendering my apologies and pleading lack of sleep, when I was accosted by a woman I didn’t know. She was about fifty, with short-cropped grey hair, and looked rather like my mother’s older sister.
“Dr. Caretta?” she asked.
“I’m Lee Caretta,” I confirmed. There was something about the situation which was vaguely alarming, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.
“I’m Catherine d’Orsay,” she said.
I nodded vaguely, and it wasn’t until a half-frown crossed her face that it sunk in.
“D’Orsay!” I exclaimed. “You’re the Captain of the....”
“Not anymore,” she said, swiftly and flatly. “I handed over the command.”
My mouth was still open and moving, but no sound came out. It was easy to see that she didn’t want to pursue the matter. I cast around for some other approach.
“You don’t look old enough to be my fourteen times great-grandmother,” I observed, wishing after I said it that it didn’t seem so snide.
She was up to it, though. “You don’t look old enough to be one of the top men in your field,” she countered.
“You know how it is,” I said, piling gaffe upon gaffe. “These days, if you don’t make your mark before you’re thirty, you never will.”
She let that one die the death it deserved. After a suitable pause, she said, “Do you mind if I talk to you—somewhere where we don’t have to compete with the music?”
I put my plastic cup down on a shelf, and wiped my hand on the back of my trousers because a little of the fluid had somehow spilled on to my fingers.
“Sure,” I said. “We can slip into sick bay. It’s just down the corridor and it’s always quiet when nobody’s ill.”
There was a half-frown again, as if she didn’t think the sick bay was entirely appropriate, but she nodded. As we went out of the door I inclined my head back in the direction of the frenetic festivity.
“Hasn’t changed much since your time, I guess?”
“No,” she said. “That’s the most alarming thing about these last few days. Everything is so tediously familiar.”
“Wouldn’t have been too different if it were seven hundred years ago,” I observed. “Except that we wouldn’t be on a space station and we’d have funny costumes on. Dancing and drinking are the hardy perennials of human behavior.”
“And sex,” she added dryly.
“Yes,” I answered. “That too.”
“If I’d stepped out of 1744 into the twenty-first century,” she said, “I’d notice plenty of differences. But from the twenty-first to the twenty-fifth...I keep on looking, but I’m damned if I can find them.”
I opened the door of the sick bay, and stood aside to let her go through. She looked at the beds draped with plastic curtains, and moved to the main desk. She took the chair from behind it; I borrowed one from beside the nearest bed.
“There are reasons for that,” I said, referring to the lack of perceptible changes in the human condition.
“So I’ve heard,” she replied.
“What