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more pilots realized that claims of collision avoidance could mask their ever closer approach to the starship. The armed UP vessels were soon reduced to playing chicken with the boldest of the onlookers.
At least most ships carried standard traffic-control transponders. Radar was the only means of monitoring the Snake aux ships and their swooping paths. Was their refueling need so urgent they couldn’t wait for the navy to impose order? The civilian flotilla, the UP ships trying valiantly to herd the civilians, the Snake scoopships suddenly bursting out of Jupiter’s opaque lower atmosphere, as often as not initiating a fresh cascade of evasive maneuvers … the pattern in the command display was too complex for Helmut to absorb.
He didn’t much care for it—and there was nothing he could do about it.
“You’re fine.” Art wanted to sound reassuring, which was hard on the fifth try.
The dash to Jupiter, it turned out, was Keizo’s first off-world experience. Before the starship’s arrival, a xenosociologist had no special reason to leave Earth. Despite tutoring from a shuttle crewwoman and Art’s repeated assurances, Keizo exuded anxiety about the imminent spacewalk. “The K’vithians came all this way. Would it kill them to do the last twenty meters to our shuttle?”
“Our esteemed boss says since they came so far we should do the walking.” It felt odd to agree with Chung. “Besides, won’t you learn more in their environment than in ours?”
“Just let me gripe, okay?”
“Check your partner,” came the order through helmet speakers. This was the official safety inspection.
Art yet again eyeballed the secondary gauges and idiot lights on the back of Keizo’s spacesuit, where everything continued to register as nominal. He tapped his friend’s shoulder so Keizo could return the favor. Five other pairs in the crowded airlock were going through the same procedure. Most were diplomats.
A comm test followed the safety drill. Their helmet radios provided twenty coded channels, permitting plenty of private conversations, and a public band. Had Chung not been a humanist, all that private conversation could, with far greater simplicity, have used neural implants to access the team’s wireless local network.
“Switching to ambient light.”
Illumination in the airlock faded to the dimness they would experience on the docking platform. Inverse-square law, Art thought, as nano-scaled photomultipliers in his visor kicked in. Had he been more patient, his eyes would have adjusted. Jupiter was just over five times farther from the sun than Earth. Any given area here intercepted less than four percent of the light it would catch in Earth’s neighborhood. Possibly just a coincidence, lighting inside the starship would be similar. A low-wattage incandescent bulb gave a good approximation of the light at habitable distances from a red dwarf sun like Barnard’s Star.
“Depressurizing.” Humming faded as less and less air remained to carry the sound of the pumps. Keizo’s mouth moved silently; he suddenly looked panicked. Art touched helmets. “You okay? Meet me,” he checked his heads-up display for an idle channel, “on band four.”
The rigidity of the inflated spacesuit in the now depressurized airlock defeated Keizo’s attempt to shrug. He tapped the channel selection into his forearm keypad. “Oops. Thanks. It freaked me out that you didn’t respond. I hadn’t selected a band.”
For many reasons, from similar interests to her experience in a spacesuit, Art wished Eva were here. They could both have kept an eye on Keizo. As it happened, Art’s desires were immaterial; Montoya had vetoed her participation. She knew too much about the UP’s antimatter program.
Finally, the outer hatch irised open. The contact team tromped down the ramp to the docking platform. Through the air in his suit and the medium of his own body came the clank of his magnetic soles striking the metal ramp and deck
At least most ships carried standard traffic-control transponders. Radar was the only means of monitoring the Snake aux ships and their swooping paths. Was their refueling need so urgent they couldn’t wait for the navy to impose order? The civilian flotilla, the UP ships trying valiantly to herd the civilians, the Snake scoopships suddenly bursting out of Jupiter’s opaque lower atmosphere, as often as not initiating a fresh cascade of evasive maneuvers … the pattern in the command display was too complex for Helmut to absorb.
He didn’t much care for it—and there was nothing he could do about it.
“You’re fine.” Art wanted to sound reassuring, which was hard on the fifth try.
The dash to Jupiter, it turned out, was Keizo’s first off-world experience. Before the starship’s arrival, a xenosociologist had no special reason to leave Earth. Despite tutoring from a shuttle crewwoman and Art’s repeated assurances, Keizo exuded anxiety about the imminent spacewalk. “The K’vithians came all this way. Would it kill them to do the last twenty meters to our shuttle?”
“Our esteemed boss says since they came so far we should do the walking.” It felt odd to agree with Chung. “Besides, won’t you learn more in their environment than in ours?”
“Just let me gripe, okay?”
“Check your partner,” came the order through helmet speakers. This was the official safety inspection.
Art yet again eyeballed the secondary gauges and idiot lights on the back of Keizo’s spacesuit, where everything continued to register as nominal. He tapped his friend’s shoulder so Keizo could return the favor. Five other pairs in the crowded airlock were going through the same procedure. Most were diplomats.
A comm test followed the safety drill. Their helmet radios provided twenty coded channels, permitting plenty of private conversations, and a public band. Had Chung not been a humanist, all that private conversation could, with far greater simplicity, have used neural implants to access the team’s wireless local network.
“Switching to ambient light.”
Illumination in the airlock faded to the dimness they would experience on the docking platform. Inverse-square law, Art thought, as nano-scaled photomultipliers in his visor kicked in. Had he been more patient, his eyes would have adjusted. Jupiter was just over five times farther from the sun than Earth. Any given area here intercepted less than four percent of the light it would catch in Earth’s neighborhood. Possibly just a coincidence, lighting inside the starship would be similar. A low-wattage incandescent bulb gave a good approximation of the light at habitable distances from a red dwarf sun like Barnard’s Star.
“Depressurizing.” Humming faded as less and less air remained to carry the sound of the pumps. Keizo’s mouth moved silently; he suddenly looked panicked. Art touched helmets. “You okay? Meet me,” he checked his heads-up display for an idle channel, “on band four.”
The rigidity of the inflated spacesuit in the now depressurized airlock defeated Keizo’s attempt to shrug. He tapped the channel selection into his forearm keypad. “Oops. Thanks. It freaked me out that you didn’t respond. I hadn’t selected a band.”
For many reasons, from similar interests to her experience in a spacesuit, Art wished Eva were here. They could both have kept an eye on Keizo. As it happened, Art’s desires were immaterial; Montoya had vetoed her participation. She knew too much about the UP’s antimatter program.
Finally, the outer hatch irised open. The contact team tromped down the ramp to the docking platform. Through the air in his suit and the medium of his own body came the clank of his magnetic soles striking the metal ramp and deck
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