2312

“They already know,” Genette said, working at the little box as if it were an abalone. “But maybe we can turn the tables here. This ship will have a provenance, elements we can trace. We’ll take its AI with us.” The other Interplan investigators opened the inner lock door; the interior appeared to be as much a vacuum as space outside. Wahram followed the others inside. The interior lights were on, the bridge looked functional, and yet no air, no people.

“Everyone knows a ship has an ID,” Wahram said. “Why would they hang the ship here? Why wouldn’t they just dispose of it?”

“I don’t know. Possibly they intended to use it again and didn’t know about the Saturnian tracking system.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Maybe this ship is from the unaffiliateds,” Swan said. “Off record from the start.”

“Are there ships entirely off the grid?” Wahram asked.

“Yes,” Genette said briefly, plugging cords from Passepartout into ports on one of the consoles.

“I have its data,” Passepartout said.

“Let’s get out of here,” Genette said. “Passepartout says the balloons holding this thing up have been punctured. They’re big, but we need to get out of this thing before it starts falling fast.”

They rushed through the short halls back to the lock. Their cloud diver’s pilot was urgently requesting them to get back inside so it could delink; they were dropping into Saturn at an accelerating rate as the giant balloon over them emptied. Quickly they all five jammed into the lock, the inspector and his two assistants taking up only small spaces in the upper corners, looking like spandrels. When the outer door opened, they jetted out into space. The balloon above the abandoned ship was already visibly deflated, thinner and creased and flapping. Nevertheless the Interplan smalls jetted around the hull, inspecting and photographing it by quadrants. “See there,” Genette said to one of them. “Bolt holes. Get samples from the threading.”

Then they returned to their cloud diver, reeling in on their Ariadne threads. When they were in the lock of the diver, they felt it come away from the abandoned ship and start to rise. They made their way to the bridge, where the pilot was too busy or too polite to comment on the situation. They rose, cutting through clouds overhead, shuddering hard.

“We’re free of it,” Genette said irritably to the pilot. “Slow down.”

Wahram for one was happy to be rising at speed. In his youth people had not dived into the planet; it still struck him as an impudent thing, dangerous in the extreme.

When they were free of the clouds and back in a clear channel between masses, he relaxed a little. For a time, when they got high enough, they could see north and south to the bands in which the wind coursed in the opposite direction; these both had cloud levels slightly higher than theirs, so for a time it appeared they floated easily down a very broad canal, the banks of which were rushing madly upstream.

When they were a bit higher, Inspector Genette showed Swan the screen of his wristqube. “We’ve got it confirmed. The ship is owned by a transport firm based on Earth. They never reported it missing. Last registered port of call was that asteroid we saw it on.”

Swan nodded and looked at Wahram. “I’m going to Earth next,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

Wahram said cautiously, “I have to go downsystem anyway. So I think I can meet you somewhere down there.”

“That’s good,” she said. “We can work together there.”

She seemed not to suspect him of any possibility of harm. Which was nice-even encouraging-but, unfortunately, incorrect.

He swallowed heavily. “Before you go-can I perhaps show you a bit of Saturn? There is a different kind of flying you might enjoy, in the rings. And I could introduce you to my creche. To my family.”

She was surprised by this, he could see. He swallowed again, tried to look bland under her sharp gaze.

“All right,” she said.

SWAN AND THE RINGS OF SATURN

Inspector Genette and his team had business to conduct in the Saturn system and would not be returning downsystem for a while, so Swan was free to join Wahram as he had requested. His manner had been very odd, his gaze fixed on her, x-raying right through her-toad vision, yes. It reminded her of the look he had given her when she told him she had eaten the Enceladan alien suite; out of the fog of that whole incident, the look on his face was what she recalled-his surprise that anyone could be such a fool. Well, he had better get used to it. She was not normal; not even human, but some kind of symbiote. Ever since eating the aliens she had never felt the same-assuming there had ever been any same to begin with. Maybe it had always been true that colors burst in her head, that her sense of spaciousness was sharp to the point of pain or joy, her sense of significance likewise. Possibly the Enceladan bugs made no more difference than any of the other bugs in her gut. She was not sure what she was.