came to an unguarded airlock fitted into a docking port of the luren craft by profligate use of flexible gasket material. The portal was plastered with a frightening array of DayGlo quarantine signs, but the green light above it was on. He leaned against the bulkhead beside it, trying to concentrate on what was on the other side.
At length, he held his breath and eased into the airlock. Casting a pall of Influence to divert the attention of the guards, he hoped no one would notice what appeared to be an empty lock cycling. After a nerve-wracking interval, he emerged in the Biomed research section where the alien bodies were being studied. It was one area Titus’s clearance didn’t authorize him to enter.
He would need their results, but he had been banned from their lab. Why? Because they planned a cloning? It seemed so reasonable, and then he remembered Mihelich. If he was connected with cloning....
The airlock opened into a corridor where everyone was dressed in bio-isolation suits, the labs opening off it doubly sealed. Through the next airlock, precautions eased and there was one open lab where glass vessels climbed poles up to the ceiling next to one lined with incubator ovens filled with specimen dishes. Two other rooms down the hall held the main biocomputer.
Further on, he found a power and life support substation capable of maintaining this dome independently of the central systems of the station. Of course Abbot would oversee the operation of that unit, and thus be cleared for this area.
Titus was sorely tempted to linger, to listen and try to find out if cloning capability was being installed here. But it was too dangerous. He had already inadvertently tripped one of security’s traps. No more today.
He headed back to his room.
* * * * * * *
Titus spent the next couple of days organizing the repairs. Shimon proved to be a genius, and Inea became invaluable. Though she was no computer hardware expert, she was a wizard at troubleshooting and better with her hands than others.
At his first department heads meeting, Titus Influenced one of the engineers to do a refractory study of the ship’s hull. He led the man to believe it would be useful if the military had to detect hostile ships.
When not attending obligatory meetings, sitting on committees, or reading reports of meetings he wasn’t supposed to attend, Titus prowled the storerooms. He found eight vital components that had disappeared from inventory...Abbot’s work, no doubt. Each time he returned with one of these treasures, Inea would study him thoughtfully.
During working hours, she treated him in a professional manner. There were only a few moments when she would pause to weigh something he said or did, and he would feel he was being judged. Indeed, he felt that all luren were being judged.
He hadn’t visited her again. It was not because he spent most of his off hours trying to crack security seals to get at background on the biomed staff, but because, each evening when they parted, she would say goodnight in a final tone.
At first he thought it was an act designed to tell everyone there was nothing between them, protecting his cover. But when he caught up with her in the lift, she brushed him off. He was alarmed at how much it hurt to watch her retreating form. But he didn’t dare push her.
On the fourth day, Carol Colby called. Titus took it in his office. “Titus, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“I’ll take the bad first.”
“We’ve got an appropriations fight on our hands. We may not get all the parts you ordered. And we may not get them by special shipment. They’re telling me the budget won’t cover it. When I told them they had to ship the parts, or at least squirt us a copy of your star catalogue, they laughed at me. It would cost too much to squirt it, they tell me.”
“It would,” agreed Titus. “It would take hours, and there’d be errors. Sunspot activity is making hash of all data from the far orbital instruments. We’re on repeaters.”
At least part of his operation had been functioning well. He was getting some raw data from the far observatories searching the Taurus region along the vessel’s approach path. The others hadn’t found anything as useful as a jettisoned power module, but he was monitoring a particle-counting array deployed on the surface of Deimos. If the luren drive had left a particle trail, they might find it. But not until the computer was up again.
Titus hoped Colby’s good news was that they had regained contact with the probe that had tracked the alien in, then ceased talking before dumping its data. Unmanned probes often righted themselves. There were a dozen good people working on the problem, but Titus needed the data soon, for the probe had seen the approach from a different angle.
“Well then,” he said heartily, “your good news is that Wild Goose has finally reported in?”
“No, my good news isn’t that good. Abbot Nandoha has agreed—after considerable persuasion on my part—to help with your repairs. He’s technically hired to run our power plant, but his dossier shows he’s also a computer architect. I hope he can redesign your system and put you back on line with the parts we have and will be getting soon.”
Oh, God. “I’ll bet that took some persuasion.”
“Now, Titus, I am aware of the, uh, friction you’ve generated with Nandoha. I don’t expect such behavior from my department heads. You’ll make an effort. Am I understood?”
“Yes.” She couldn’t fire him because nobody else had spent the last ten years identifying stars with planets. A few decades ago, the search had been the main occupation of astronomers. But the grant money had dried up. Now, Titus had the only complete catalogue of such stars, and heaps of unpublished papers. The lack of public interest had forced Titus to make his living teaching. “I will make the effort, Dr. Colby. And in the future, I will take care not to allow fatigue to erode my temper. Please accept my apology.”
“Now don’t take it too hard, Titus. We’re all human. We make mistakes. If I hear nothing more of it, it won’t go on your record, your pay won’t be docked, and I won’t need to bring in a lesser manager for your department.”
“Thank you, Dr. Colby.”
“Carol, remember?”
Titus forced himself to relax visibly. But this was a message from Abbot. At will, his father could remove him from the project just by creating “friction.”
“Look, Carol, I’m not sure it’s necessary to take such a vitally needed man off life support. Shimon is a genius in his own right, and has been diligent—”
“Don’t argue with me, Titus. I’m giving you Nandoha for a week. In four days, I’ll want your list of what still must be brought from Earth. Don’t despair. I’ll get it for you somehow. But only what Abbot can’t do without. Good day.”
Titus sat back and stared at the blank screen. Maybe the anti-Project humans are blocking appropriations because somebody knows about the sleeper. If they knew, Connie might know by now, too. But he couldn’t assume that. He had to get a message out to Connie. He needed blood concentrate. He needed someone who could stand up to Abbot. And he had to know what to do about the sleeper.
Before he could report, he had to verify his suspicions about cloning. Mihelich was no orderly. His file was locked behind highest security. Even queries for his published papers were blocked. And while Titus had been wasting time
