"Hi, Stinky. Yo, Smelly." Boggy vegetation squished beneath their slowly shuffling, broad webbed feet. Good. Swelk had fretted about the unnatural metal decking her friends suffered aboard ship. The animals chewed contentedly on synthesized sludge, massive jaws sliding and grinding in a totally alien motion. Despite widespread suspicions that Krulchukor bioconverters employed nanotech, no one—certainly not Kyle—would endanger the Girillians by opening one for inspection. "Do they brush you guys enough?"
"Perhaps you could give the other guests a chance, sir." A zoo guard politely indicated the serpentine queue behind Kyle. Plenty of tourists were glued to the railing, but, Kyle guessed, none spoke so familiarly to the main attractions. "This exhibit is quite popular."
He moved along rather than argue. Seeing Smelly and Stinky was how he communed with his dead friend. He loved the cats, but associated them more with Dar. He drifted through the rest of Girillia House, murmuring as he went. None of these critters had bonded like the swampbeasts with Swelk; none affected him as deeply.
He found an empty bench. Swelk, he thought, at least one puzzle that had us stymied is solved. That reflection yielded a bit of the solace he'd sought unsuccessfully in Girillia House.
The computer Matt had repaired with masersat parts might—in twenty years? More?—lead to amazing breakthroughs. It wasn't a cookbook for fusion or interstellar travel, but it offered clues: operating procedures and detailed parts inventories. The recovered files, in Kyle's belief, held more promise than the charred starship surrendered to UN custody.
The how of the mother ship holo-projection had gnawed at him long after the fact of the hologram became obvious. Why would the aliens have such equipment with them? Discovering the masersats to be cobbled-together devices had only deepened the mystery.
But now, extrapolating from newly recovered Krulchukor files, he had an answer.
The alien star drive, its physical principles still maddeningly obscure, was inoperative deep within a star's gravity well. Starships used solar sails to exit solar systems—sailing conserved He3 for interstellar travel. In settled solar systems, big laser cannons rapidly propelled starships to where their drives could engage. In low-tech solar systems (which, in practice, meant any system not colonized by Krulirim), shipboard emergency gear included kits to build laser boosters. Seed a convenient, sunlight-drenched, silicon-rich asteroid with nanomachines. Wait a bit for semiconductor lasers, and the solar cells to power them, to grow. Voilà!
The moon's surface was one-fifth silicon by mass. Without an atmosphere, solar energy was abundant on the dayside.
If Swelk's translator had correctly converted units of measure, an emergency booster kit would expand into an about-kilometer-squared patch. An individual laser was a silicon structure only millimeters in size, but a full-grown booster contained billions. Inventory records showed several kits had been taken from ship's stores.
The evidence was entirely circumstantial, but Kyle was sure he finally understood the mother-ship trick. Just as Grelben's engineers had kludged masersats from onboard equipment, they, or perhaps Rualf's special-effects team, must have hacked into the booster-kit software. Change the aiming logic to track a moon-orbiting radar buoy instead of a receding starship. Add an animation model of the movie-prop vessel to be projected. (Model, as well, the occasional holographic auxiliary ship going to or from the mother ship—an effective bit of misdirection.) Schedule the hand-off of projection duties from laser patch to laser patch, to compensate for the moon's rotation and to mimic the mother ship's purported orbital path. For a species with centuries of computer experience, he guessed the reprogramming was a snap.
Memories of Swelk occupied his walk to the Metro station and the subway ride itself, reminiscences intermingled with hopes for a new beginning. In a West Wing waiting room, he tried to focus on the latter.
"Sorry, I'm running late. Crisis du jour." Britt had appeared in the doorway. "Much simpler than crises we've handled. Come in. Can I get you something?"
"Water, thanks."
"Carl, two Perriers." Once the earnest intern nodded acknowledgment, Britt led the way to his office. "How's my favorite diplomat?"
"Fine." He took a chilled bottle. "Busy." A workaholic, not that I'm entitled to criticize.
Britt draped his suit coat over a chair. "It's ominous when you get terse and tongue-tied on me. What now?"
"Good news, actually." Kyle took a photo from his shirt pocket. "Matt's team repaired a recovered Krulchukor computer. Unlike Swelk's, it wasn't filled with movies and a translation program." They'd have been out of luck, though, without Swelk's computer to translate for it.
Britt raised an eyebrow. "After all these years, they fixed it. Interesting."
Admit nothing. "Good things come to he who waits."
"We'll let that lie. What's on your always active mind?"
Had there been an emphasis on "lie"? "It was a crewman's computer. The maintenance files should be very helpful in recreating Krulchukor technology. Case in point." Kyle explained the mother-ship illusion. "It's nice to know why the mother ship was off in lunar orbit."
An intercom buzzed. "Your next appointment is here, sir."
Britt picked up the photo. "For someone bearing good news, you don't seem happy."
Nothing would be gained by citing the maddeningly vague reference in a recovered file to Clean Slate. Nor would reasserting his unshaken conviction of dangers lurking on the moon accomplish anything. Every suggestion over the years of a lunar program had been rebuffed. Krulirim were patient. They had to be—interstellar voyages lasted years.
Why was he the only one who believed Grelben's plans could be years in preparation?
None of this prevented Kyle from doing his damnedest to be prepared. "Dar predicts the President will give the computer, too, to the UN. Our favorite diplomat implies I'm bitter."
Britt clasped his hands, fingers interlaced. "If, as I think likely, she's right, then what? Can I lure you into the District more often?"
"No, but with a good excuse." They had arrived, at last, at the reason for his visit. "I'd like to accept the President's offer of a job referral."