He rose from his chair. "Unless there is anything else at the moment, this meeting is concluded. Thank you all for your attention and assistance." He left, accompanied by Fathom.
A.J. still looked shell-shocked, until Jackie poked him. "Hey, A.J. Think about it. Now you'll get to design the sensor suite for the Nike. And ride a nuclear rocket to Mars."
"Yeah." A.J. was perking up, but there was still a wary look on his face. "So why am I still looking for the catch?"
"The catch," Hathaway said, getting up, "is that you'd better keep producing. Haven't you got some real work to do, A.J.?"
A.J. glanced at the corner of his virtual display and suddenly scrambled for the door.
"This is why I hate meetings!" trailed after him, as he ran out the doorway.
Chapter 19
"Bracing calculations, check. Geometry, check. Force configuration, check."
A.J. glanced over all the parameters once more. He'd checked them a dozen times already, but he was still nervous. Three Faeries were about to try to pry open one of the doors, and if something went wrong, he could potentially be cut down to two ISMs—which wouldn't be able to transmit while exploring any distance inside the miniature moon, as at most they'd have only one other for a relay.
He'd told Jackie that he wasn't likely to lose the Faeries. That was true, in a sense, because just blowing the manipulator arms wouldn't be likely to cause trouble. The fact remained that prying on something in zero g carried other risks, especially if something broke. The sudden release of forces and fragments of broken prying arms flying around in close quarters could easily do damage to any of the Faeries. They had been built to survive launch and travel stresses, but only in specially-designed cradles in Pirate's equipment bays.
Once he hit the transmit code on this one, there'd be no stopping it; the three little probes would follow their directions to the electronic letter. He ran another simulation. Too many unknowns. They might move the door, or break the Faeries, or anything in between.
At least he was sure there was something to find behind there. Despite the amazingly dispersive and absorptive characteristics of the door—and, apparently, the wall material on the other side—he had managed to gain an idea of the size and layout of the chamber beyond. Shadowy blobs hinted at other objects inside the oval room, which was about twenty-five meters long. He'd been able to get some idea of the composition of the door's exterior, which was an odd alloy of iron, copper, beryllium, and apparently mercury and silicon in small quantities. But the precise alloy wasn't known—and whatever was inside wasn't the same material. It might have a core of some sort of insulation, with the exterior clad in the aliens' version of armor plate.
"Well, are you going to just sit there all day, or are we going to get some action around here?" As usual, Diane's tone suggested a double entendre.
A.J. ignored it. "You wouldn't be in a hurry to push the button if it was several million bucks of your money. And if you'd spent months making the things."
Jackie looked up from her nearby workstation. As she was stuck at the command center until the news broke, Hathaway had set both Gupta and Jackie up with engineering design stations in the center. Gupta was currently off at the main engine facility, working with the others to determine if they wanted to make a larger engine design or just use several more like the prototype.
"Relax, A.J.," she said. "You've already gotten more than your money's worth out of them. I know they're like your babies, but do you want to wait another couple of years until we can get Nike out there to look?"
"No. Hell with it. All systems and calculations check. Implement Routine Prybar."
The "go" code shot out into the nonexistent ether, to stroll its leisurely way across the intervening millions of miles. Now that the decision was made, he relaxed, took a deep breath, and looked around. Suddenly he chuckled.
"What's funny, A.J.?"
"I wish I was in Hollywood."
Jackie looked puzzled. "Why?"
"Because in Hollywood, after I sent the 'go' command, we'd watch the results right away, and I'd have an emergency stop button on hand to keep things from going wrong."
"Video links at the speed of plot," Jackie chuckled, nodding sagely. "But it's just as well. If you were in Hollywood, you wouldn't use your emergency stop button in time. If something went wrong, the Faeries would go up in huge explosions—they're nuclear powered, remember. And if they did get in without mishap, an alien energy being would possess the probes and then download their commands to our computers and kill us all."