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Or about Janus, or Purgatory, or the Valles Marianes, or Valhalla.

276

Mimas, 26 August 2982

Chris wished they could have taken a cutter, but every warship Leabie had was out there, somewhere… Instead they took Leabie’s private shuttle, the Zero Discipline, newly installed proton cannon heavy on its back.

They fell towards Mimas, engines off, only the attitude jets puffing out compressed gas to keep them on course. He kept an eye on the monitor, keeping them just over the horizon. Mimas was a dirty lump of ice, a little rock buried under the surface.

Herschel Crater was almost half as wide as the moon itself.

The Doctor was running a simulation on the shuttle’s computer, his hands nervous on the controls. ‘Tethys is tidally locked,’ he said. Chris glanced across to the screen. Its great crater always points in the same direction, thirty degrees above the ecliptic. A signal from there would drift out into space, well clear of the other moons and planets.

‘But Mimas’s crater is locked only two degrees above the ecliptic. Shoot a beam from the centre of Herschel, and it would pass through the entire solar system, slightly more often than once a day.’

Chris watched the projected red line moving across the surface of the Earth, connecting the icy moon with the distant, living world. ‘You’d only get twenty to thirty minutes’ contact per day,’

said the Doctor. ‘But that would be enough.’

‘So is it leaking?’ said Chris. ‘Like the one on Iphigenia?’

‘No,’ the Doctor said. ‘They’ve found part of the original shielding mechanism. It was never meant to do what they’re doing with it.’

‘They’re making it leak deliberately?’ said Chris. ‘They can make whatever changes they like? But only for thirty minutes at a time?’

‘That’s right,’ said the Doctor. ‘They think I can tell them how to stabilize the corrupt probabilities.’

‘Can you?’

‘Probably,’ said the Doctor.

He sat back in the co-pilot’s seat, staring out at Saturn as they fell towards its innermost moon. Distantly, flashes of light 277

reached them from a pair of warships locked in close combat in the Cassini Division.

‘Take us in as close as you can,’ he said. ‘And then skim over the surface until we reach the lip of the crater.’

‘Aye aye,’ said Chris. Mimas’s pocked surface was looming in the forward screen, blotting out everything else.

‘Is the rescue autopilot set?’

‘Doctor,’ said Chris, ‘that’s the third time you’ve asked that.

It’s a standard safety feature – of course it’s switched on.

‘I know, but it can be disabled for suicide work,’ said the Doctor.

‘Gee,’ said Chris, ‘you’re not thinking of ramming the thing, are you?’

The Doctor picked a bit of imaginary dust off the console.

‘Damaging it is the last thing we want to do.’

‘So what is the plan?’ said Chris.

‘I need to reach the Nexus itself,’ said the Doctor. ‘Or rather, its real-world interface. It won’t be very large. It probably won’t be directly under the centre of the crater, but it will be buried deep.’

‘Close to the centre of the moon?’

‘That’s right.’

They were approaching the five-klick-high rim of Herschel.

‘People have speculated for centuries how a giant snowball could have survived so large an impact,’ said the Doctor softly.

‘So the whole thing is fake?’

‘The whole crater,’ said the Doctor. ‘Possibly the whole moon.’

‘Holy cow,’ said Chris. And then, ‘Christ!’

He fell back in his seat, hands jerking away from the controls.

His heart went into overdrive, his whole body jumping with the force of his pulse.

The Doctor was slumped in the co-pilot’s seat, head lolling to one side. Chris tried to reach out to him, but the pounding in his head got louder and louder until he decided it would be a very good idea to faint.

Kibero

278

Leabie’s war room had been a ballroom two days ago. Now it was packed with computers and people. Everyone wore a comm headset. Huge screens had been hung from the ceiling, covered in messages and 3D schematics. Soft lighting,