Pull it together. You have more important things to worry about.
Ben focused his eyes on the corridor and marched past the flag, almost as if it wasn’t there.
The door to the Surveyors’ lab opened as soon as it identified Bennet Godwin, just as all the doors on Venera did. That fact could still amaze him. There had been a point when he assumed he’d never be trusted again.
And I may be about to blow all of it. He shoved the thought aside. This was not some petty academic political battle. This one was for the real world.
Except for Derek Cusmanos and several dozen neatly arrayed survey drones, the cavernous room was empty. All the personnel who’d been assigned to Derek were off either in the scarabs or in their own offices, poring over years of satellite data, looking for more alien bases. The mammoth wall screens showed a series of seemingly random still shots—the mushroomlike dome of a pancake volcano, the ripples of one of the lava deltas, the ragged, concentric rings of a collapsed crater.
Derek himself crouched in front of one of his drones. This was one of the surface surveyors, which looked like miniature scarabs with eyes and arms. Derek had it turned over on its side so he could get at the hatch in its belly. Whatever he saw there was so absorbing that he did not look up as Ben started across the floor.
“Derek?”
Derek grunted and held up one finger. Ben stopped where he was, folding his hands behind his back and getting ready to wait. Derek, like most of the mechanical engineers Ben knew, had the tendency to get completely absorbed in his work. Ben studied the rows of drones with their spindly arms, picks and containers for taking samples, lasers for measuring, cameras for every kind of photography. Derek knew them all. Had built half of them. Had come very close to losing his job because no one felt the need to fund a human mapmaker when drones and computers could do that just fine. The drones themselves could, of course, be cared for by the same staff that took care of the scarabs.
Derek finished his repairs or adjustments, closed the hatch, and heaved the drone upright onto its treads. Only then did he stand up and really acknowledge Ben’s presence.
“Afternoon, Dr. Godwin.” Derek plucked a sterile towel out of the box and started wiping his hands with it. “What can I do for you?”
“Afternoon.” Derek had been one of Ben’s students when he was still teaching. Ben had long ago given up trying to get the younger man to use his first name. “Have you got the new pictures of Ozza Mons?”
“Fresh in.” Derek tossed the towel down the recycling shaft and plunked himself behind the sprawling, semicircular desk that was in his main workstation. The desk woke up, and he typed in a quick command sequence. The wall image of the lava delta disappeared, replaced by the ragged, ashen gray throat of an old, massive volcano. “Looks pretty dead.”
“May just be dormant.” Ben studied the picture, but the familiar sense of excitement failed to rise in him. “We’ll have to go down and look at it.”
“If you can get a scarab for anything but ogling the Discovery.” Derek shook his head at his keyboard. “It’s amazing, you know? I mean, I knew, once we found it, that the Terrans wouldn’t think there was anything else worthwhile up here, but I thought the Board…” He stopped.
Ben held up his hand. “Now that the tourists are here, everybody’s supposed to go back to their normal duties. Dr. Failia wants to give your visitors plenty of room to play.”
Derek made a sour face. Ben returned a smile and changed the subject. “Have you found anything that looks like another outpost?”
Derek shook his head. “They’ve given me the entire geology department, and we’ve got every surveyor, from the satellites to the minirovers, set on fine-tooth comb, but there’s nothing.”
“Think we will find anything?”
Derek started but recovered quickly. “How would I know?”
Ben shrugged. “You found the first one. I thought you might recognize…traces.”
Derek didn’t look at him. His gaze wandered over the silent ranks of surveyors with their waldos, cameras, and caterpillar treads. They were heavy, blocky, reinforced things, completely unlike the delicate machines Ben had worked with on Mars. “The drones found the first one, Dr. Godwin, not me. But there are no traces of anything around it. It’s just sitting there, a random occurrence.” He paused and finally returned his gaze to Ben. “Or have your people found something new?”
Ben barked out a laugh. “You have all my people. You’re going to hear anything long before I do.” Then, he paused, as if considering a new thought. “Although…well, you’ve got a trained eye. Can I get you to take a look at one of the new batches of images your team passed me?”