BOUNDARY(104)

Perhaps Phobos had devoured them. The moonlet made Ken think of a gigantic sea beast, rising from the black depths.



He dismissed the grotesque notion. There were enough genuine hazards without inventing fantastical ones. "Engine status?"



"All engines showing green," Jackie answered. "Not that you needed to ask, really. If anything goes wrong, about a dozen alarms will scream their heads off."



"Will you at least let me pretend to be a real captain?"



"Aye aye, sir." Jackie got a false-solemn look on her face. "We're approaching the alien base, Captain. Should we raise shields?"



"Very funny. How are we tracking?"



"Well within tolerances. About four hundred seconds of burn left to go. Relative velocity has dropped below two point five kilometers per second."



The freight-train roar continued, the nuclear engines hurling more than three tons of fuel into space every second at an exhaust velocity of nearly twenty thousand miles per hour. Phobos was enormous and still swelling, now a hulking presence more than ten times wider than the Moon as seen from Earth. Even more than before, the satellite reminded Ken of a monster—with the five-mile-wide crater of Stickney being its single, glaring, off-center eye.



"How big is that going to get before we stop?" Ken wondered idly, trying not to sound at all nervous.



The problem with Phobos was that it was on a scale that the human mind could—just barely—grasp, as opposed to the Earth or the Moon. Something like that approaching touched a very primal chord.



"About seven point one six degrees—more than fourteen times wider than the Moon looks," A.J. answered, from his own console. "Being a hundred miles away is pretty far, sure, but that thing is twenty kilometers wide. It looks a hell of a lot bigger than it did in the photos back home, I can tell you that."



He turned his head and flashed Ken a wicked grin. "Lives up to its name Fear, doesn't it? Especially with that crater staring at us! Reminds me of some sort of gigantic Cyclops."



"Shut up, will you?" Hathaway growled. "I was trying not to think the same thing."





The blaze of Nike now covered measurable width on Rane's image; six separate tiny jets were visible.



"Sixty seconds left . . . thirty . . . ten . . . five, four, three, two, one, ze—"



The rockets cut off as Jackie was in mid word. Ken felt a momentary disorientation as free fall returned. Phobos loomed before them, but no longer did the barren miniature moon swell like a slowly inflating balloon.



"Relative speed with respect to Phobos?"



"Waiting on verification . . ." A.J. answered. "Okay, near zero. Very near zero. Let's just say that if we were staking Nike out in the yard like a dog, it'd be a week before she reached the end of her chain. Not bad for a shot across a hundred million miles. Starting closing calculations now."



Ken hit the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have stopped relative to Phobos. We have successfully completed the first interplanetary voyage in the history of mankind. Congratulations!"



He didn't need the intercom to hear the cheers.





PART VI: PHOBOS




Surmise, n: a matter of conjecture; an idea

or thought of something as being possible or likely,

often coming unexpectedly or by surprise.





Chapter 35




"One . . . two . . . three!"



On three, Joe and Harry Ingram pulled hard on the levers, each held from moving by the bracing they were strapped into. Jobs like this could be done using automatic machinery, but automated drones were much better for doing the more controlled and predictable gruntwork of sealing, insulating, and making livable portions of Phobos. If human muscle and mechanical advantage couldn't do the job here, they could always use some of the fancier powered equipment.



No need, Joe saw with satisfaction, as the alien doorway ground partly open for the first time in over sixty million years. Ingram, who'd done more work of this sort than Joe, unsnapped part of his harness expertly and rotated his body around, shining a bright LED flashlight into the room.



"Clear on the near side, nothing in the way. Looks interesting— not a duplicate of any of the other rooms we've seen so far. Let's get the door open a little further."



Joe nodded, noting to himself that it was a lot more comfortable doing stuff like this when you could use the best equipment. The Ares Project had planned on using the best spacesuit designs it could afford, of course, but when you are strapped for cash, what you can afford isn't the same thing as what a government agency with a top-level mandate and effectively unlimited credit can afford. The spacesuits worn by Nike's personnel were lighter, thinner, tougher, more efficient, and more versatile than anything Ares could possibly have managed.