A Deepness in the Sky

Fong grunted, remembering what they'd been discussing before she blew up. But surprisingly, she said, "Ah, forget the numbers. The short answer is, we can handle more people. Hell, if we could control our automation properly we could house three thousand in this balloon. As for the people themselves?" She shrugged, but without any great anger. "They're typical Chumps. The sort I've seen in a lot of tyrannies. They call themselves ‘managers,' but they're peons. The fact is, behind some bluster they're kind of nervous aboutus. " A sneaky smile spread across her heavy features. "We got people who know how to handle Customers like these. Some of us are making friends. There's lots they're not supposed to talk about—like how bad this ‘mindrot' crap really is. But I'll tell you, if their big bosses don't come clean soon, we'll find out for ourselves."

Ezr didn't smile back.Are you listening, Podmaster Nau? Whateveryour desires, soon we will know the truth. And what they discovered, Jimmy Diem could use. Coming in to this meeting, Ezr had been totally wrapped up in one item, the last on the agenda. Now he was beginning to see that everything fit together. And maybe he wasn't doing such a bad job after all.

That last agenda item was the upcoming explosion of the sun. And Jimmy had a fool—surely an unknowing fool—to front for them on this: Pham Trinli. The armsman made a big show of moving to the front of the table. "Yes, yes," he said. "I've got the pictures here. Just a second." A dozen engineering graphics appeared on the windows around the room. Trinli launched himself to the podium, and lectured them on Lagrange stability points. Funny, the man actually had a voice and style that bespoke command, but the ideas that came out were tendentious commonplaces.

Vinh let him ramble for a hundred seconds. Then, "I believe your agenda item is ‘Preparations for Relight,' Mr. Trinli. What is it the Emergents are asking us to do?"

The old man fixed Ezr with a stare as intimidating as any crewleader's: "That'sArmsman Trinli, if you please, Fleet Manager." The stare continued a second longer. "Very well, to the heart of the matter. Here we have some five billion tonnes of diamond." A red pointer lit on the window behind him, pointing at the slowly turning pile of rocks, all the loose material that Captain Park had found in this solar system. The ice and ore that had been lifted from Arachna were smaller mountains wedged in the corners and creases of the asteroidal blocks. "The rocks are in a classic contact jumble. At the present time, our fleets are moored to this jumble or in orbit around it. Now, as I was trying to explain a few seconds ago, the Emergents want us to emplace and manage a system of electric jets on the core blocks of the jumble."

Diem: "Before the Relight?"

"Indeed."

"They want to maintain contact stability during the Relight?"

"That's exactly right."

Uneasy looks passed around the table. Stationkeeping was a common and ancient practice. If done properly, an orbit about L1 cost very little fuel. They would be less than a million and a half kilometers from Arachna, and almost directly between the planet and its sun. In the coming bright years, they would be effectively hidden in its glare. But the Emergents didn't think small; they already had built various structures, including their "Hammerfest," down on the rockpile. So now they wanted the stationkeeping jets in place before Relight. OnOff would shine at fifty to one hundred sols before it settled down. The Chumps wanted to use the stationkeeping jets to keep the big rocks from shifting around during that time. It was dangerous foolishness, but the Emergents were boss.And this will giveJimmy access to the out-of-doors.

"Actually, I don't think there will be serious problems." Qiwi Lisolet rose from her seat. She coasted over to Pham Trinli's maps, preempting whatever more Trinli had to say. "I did a number of exercises like this while we were in transit. My mother wants me to be an engineer and she thought stationkeeping might be an important part of this mission." Qiwi sounded more adultly serious than usual. This was also the first time he'd seen her dressed in Lisolet-greens. She floated in front of the windows for a moment, reading the details. Her ladylike dignity faltered. "Lord, they are asking a lot! That rockpile is so loose. Even if we get the math right, there's no way we can know all the stresses inside the pile. And if the volatiles get into sunlight, there'll be a whole new problem." She whistled, and her smile was one of childlike relish. "We may have to move the jets during the Relight. I—"

Pham Trinli glowered at the girl. No doubt she had just trashed a thousand seconds of his presentation. "Yes, it will be quite a job. We have only a hundred electric jets for the whole thing. We'll need crews down on the jumble the whole time."