After a while, he became aware that Helen was poking him.
"A.J.? Answer me! You just cut off there and—"
He made a sharp gesture with his hand and she went quiet; he was glad she could recognize the signs. The idea was there and it was a hell of an idea. It seemed like it could work . . .
"It would work," he muttered to himself, "if I can pull it off. Not easy . . . cross talk . . . network topology . . . emitters, yeah, but how much will I need? Power supply for the whole thing, higher constant use than design . . . but with Nike to help . . ."
He suddenly gave a whoop, picked Helen up and spun her around. In Mars' gravity, this caused them to spin out of control—fortunately for continued harmony, not into the raptor mummy—and over in what might have been an embarrassing position if they hadn't both been wearing spacesuits.
"Yes! Thank you, thank you, you are gorgeous and brilliant and just plain always say the right thing at the right time!"
She was laughing. "You nut. What is this all about?"
A.J. rose, giving a hand to Helen at the same time. "You and old fangface there and a few reminiscences. I can do it, Helen!"
He felt the grin just about splitting his face from ear to ear. "I know how to decode that damn disc! Screw Earth, I don't even need to go back to Nike, I just need her bandwidth and some design work that we can do right here!"
"Joe! Hey, Joe, you and me have got some detective work to do." As A.J. and the Tayler Corporation had programmed, the smart suit recognized when the wearer spoke a name in such a way as to indicate "connect me with this person" and opened an appropriate channel. Not waiting for Joe's response, A.J. continued marshaling his resources. "Yo, Jackie!"
"Ms. Secord is sleeping at the moment," came an automated reply. "If this is an emergency—"
"Not really, no. Is Dr. Gupta there?"
The unmistakable sonorous voice answered in a moment. "Yes, I am here. A.J.? What is it that you need? No emergency, I hope?"
"No, just a hell of a job. I'm going to need a lot of the processing capacity of Nike dedicated to running an ad-hoc network with, um. . . a few billion individual nodes."
To his credit, Dr. Gupta's reaction was only slightly delayed. "That is indeed a formidable task, especially if as I suspect you will be passing data through the network for analysis. You will have the protocols for us and the specifications on what functions you will need? And when exactly this will be needed?"
"Oh, you can bet on my having the exact code for you. When? Ah . . . let's say the day after tomorrow. I've got some engineering work to do down here with Joe. I just want you guys to make sure that I'll have the system clear for me then."
"It shall be done, assuming that the captain approves. What is the reason for this interesting task?"
"Getting that disc Rich found a couple of days ago to spill its guts so Rich and Jane can really go to town."
"Ah. In that case I cannot see any reason why you would not have access to virtually all of our processing capacity at the time you specify."
"Didn't think so. A.J. out."
He started for the exit. "Joe! You coming?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming. Remember that Mr. Gimpy is slower than you are. Mind telling me exactly what it is we have to tinker together out of duct tape and WD-40?"
"Sure, won't take a minute."
Joe had a lot of questions and comments that changed the design somewhat. But by the time they got back to Thoat and the tools they needed, the basic design was already visible in their HUDs.
"Not too hard. Yeah, A.J., we can do that in a day."
It actually took ten hours and seventeen minutes.
A.J. carefully unpacked the device from the container he'd used to carry it all the way from the surface to the innermost sanctum of the Vault. He placed it on the polished, flat surface that was clearly a desk or table and, despite millions of years of waiting, seemed to be just as solid as the day it was made.
"It's showtime."
Rich looked at the thing in bemusement. "Just what is it? It looks like something you and Joe dreamed up with a box of metal Tinkertoys and a few electronic lab kits."
The object was about half a meter across, a square framework of slender metal tubes or thick wires with a carefully arranged clamping device in the center, and round black cases at the corners. Wires trailed from it to connect to a fuel cell.
"That," A.J. said, as he gingerly extracted the precious disc from its case, "is the support and supply framework for the device that's going to read this old book-on-disc for you."
"Ah . . . there's no reader or anything on that framework," Rich pointed out, as A.J. clamped the disc carefully into the holder. "And that clamp won't let the disc spin, which seems almost certain to be the way it was read."
"There will be, and it doesn't have to spin," A.J. replied confidently. "Just watch."
And with that, he took the entire bag of Fairy Dust he'd brought with him and upended it onto the framework, disc, and all.
In that large a mass, the dust-sized, motile sensor motes looked more like liquid graphite than dust, but unlike any liquid, the mass stopped flowing long before it could spill off the table. Eerily, the stuff began to move upward, spreading first along all the structural supports of the framework, and then filling in the gaps, and covering the entire surface of the alien disc.
"You know, I'm not sure anyone's ever used this many smart-dust motes before in one application. Hell, Dust-Storm freaked when I told them before we left how many of my custom motes I was going to need to take with me. They'd never done a single run that large before. But I sure as hell wasn't getting caught short way out here, and now I'm real, real glad I didn't. I'm still offloading a lot of the housekeeping and data analysis tasks off to Nike, except for the ones that just have to be done local."
Rich had backed up a bit. He clearly found the oily, alien flowing motion unnerving.
"Relax, Rich. I know it looks funky, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to become an alien intellect and suck out all our brains."
"Ha, ha." Rich came closer. "So how are you getting around the need to spin the thing?"
"I'm scanning it in various wavelengths as indicated, and if I can manage to get down to the resolution we need—that's the tricky part, and why I'm using a lot of capacity—we can basically replicate each layer of the disc and emulate spinning it by reading the data directly, if you see what I mean."
Rich's eyebrows rose inside his helmet. "Yes . . . yes, I think I do see. But do you really need so many to just read it?"
"Yeah, because if the initial data I got from scanning the disc is right, they've encoded the data just a little bit too fine for our regular sensors to pick up. So I have to pull off a major enhancement trick. Image enhancement really relies on the fact that you can increase the information content of your data through more resolution in space and time, and that with very small shifts in the perspective from which your data is accumulated, you can often derive much more data which is hidden within your apparently too-coarse data stream. You can average out noise, you can take pictures from multiple sequential perspectives and see how things change at borderline points . . . Oh, there's about a million and one ways to do it."
He gazed with great satisfaction on the Fairy Dust now covering the alien artifact. "I've coated the surface of that thing with over a billion sensors, all examining the surface as closely as they can, and the sensors are shifting points of view slowly as they record the data. By the time they've done a ten-times-redundant scan—sometime late tomorrow evening—Nike will be able to shift her work from maintaining the network to doing serious, serious number crunching—using everything from simple image enhancement with interpolation all the way to synth aperture and a whole bunch of other approaches to get that hidden info out."
He checked some telltales on his HUD; everything okay so far. "Assuming the Fairy Dust network holds out. What I'm doing here is way off the beaten path. Those little black boxes at the corners are RF transmitters supplying the power to the Fairy Dust, on a frequency which shouldn't mess with the rest of the work too much. But, basically, what I'm doing to these little guys is running them on overdrive for a whole day. Way out of spec. Theoretically they should be able to do it, but . . . " He shrugged. "If it works, though, you guys get to do your work making a full-scale translation protocol, and together we just might read this thing before we even leave Mars!"
Ken Hathaway's expression on Thoat's screen was solemn, as he looked at Madeline.
"You're sure?"
"Yes, Ken, I'm sure. Just pass along the transmission to Earth exactly as I send it up to you."
"I'll be glad to—"
"No. First, because there's no reason for your name to be on it anywhere. Mine is enough for the authorization. Second, because I see no reason in the world that we need to sink two careers here." She gave Hathaway a very warm smile. "Thanks, Ken. I appreciate the offer, I really do. But there's still no point to it. For the record, you heard nothing, saw nothing, said nothing. Just-Following-Orders-Hathaway, that's you."
He looked away, seeming to swallow a bit. "Okay."
"Hey, look on the bright side. It's not as if they can actually have me shot." Now she gave him the great gleaming Fathom smile. "We didn't bring any guns down here with us. Security issues, you know?"
That got a laugh, at least.
"Sending now, Captain Hathaway."
To her surprise, Joe was waiting for her when she came out of the rover. She'd deliberately timed the transmission for a period when everyone would be occupied elsewhere.
"Joe? What're you—"
"You just sent it, didn't you?" He cleared his throat so noisily it was quite audible over the radio. "Whatever it was you decided to clear, I mean."
She could feel her expression going blank. "Yes. I did."
"Yeah, I figured that was what you were so tense about, the past day or so."
She hadn't thought he'd noticed. The knowledge that he had warmed her, at a moment when she felt very cold. So much so, that she almost explained.
But . . .
No. Let it be on my head alone.
"Okay," Joe said. "I just wanted to know because . . ."
He was acting, for all the world, like a high school boy trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl on a date. More precisely, the way a geek acts when he's trying to work up the nerve to ask out the high school head cheerleader. Even in the suit, Madeline could see him fidgeting.
She almost burst into laughter. "Joe, what's on your mind?"
As if by sheer force of will, she could see him settling down. "Sorry. It's just . . ."
His head turned for a moment, looking across the Martian landscape. Madeline's gaze followed his. The sight was a splendid one. The sun was beginning to set over the far distant rim of Valles Marineris, casting lengthening shadows over the crimson-pinksalmon landscape. The colors always seemed at their richest, then.
Still not looking at her, he reached into one of the pouches of his suit and brought out something. Quite small, whatever it was, completely hidden in his glove.
"When A.J. told me he was making one of these up for Helen—last night, he told me—I asked him to make me one. Real quick, so I'd have it in time."
"In time for what? And what is it, anyway?"
Finally, he looked at her. His glove opened up. Nestled in the palm was a ring. The band itself was some sort of utilitarian metal. But the stone set in it was a shimmering, multicolored brilliance like nothing Madeline had ever seen.
"I wanted to ask you before I knew what the message was you sent. Just . . . Well, so you'd know. That it wasn't any kind of condition, I mean. Whatever decision you made is okay with me. Even if I don't agree with it."
Her eyes were still riveted on the ring, and . . . whatever it was glimmering in its center.
"We don't have any diamonds, of course," Joe said apologetically. "And no way to get any, for . . . God, who knows how long? I don't think there are any on Nike, either, except for industrial use. And those are . . . well. Not pretty."
"Joe, it's beautiful," she whispered. Her mind was trying to grapple with the real issue, but kept getting distracted by the mystery. "But what is it?"
"A.J. showing off, what else? He told me he could do it." Joe picked the ring out of the palm of the glove with his other hand and held it up. "It is gorgeous, isn't it? Prettier than diamonds, if you ask me. Of course, you'll have to get it recharged periodically, which you wouldn't have to with real stones."
Her eyes widened.
"Yup. What a show-off, huh? Genuine 24-carat solid Fairy Dust."
"Yes," she said firmly. Then, she shook her head. "I'm not talking about A.J. Yes, he's a show-off. Who cares?"
She looked up from the ring, to Joe, to the landscape. Her vision got worse as it went, from the tears watering them.
"Damn, there are things I hate about spacesuits," she muttered. "Can't wipe your eyes, can't blow your nose. Yes, Joe Buckley, I will marry you."
A while later, she added: "And that's another thing. Hugging in a spacesuit is a pain, and kissing's impossible."
Joe laughed. And laughed. Never once letting her go.
"I warn you," she whispered, as close to his ear as she could get. "You'll have to be the only breadwinner, for a while. I'm pretty sure your bride-to-be is about to become unemployed."
"Who cares?"
"Well. And you may have to visit me in prison, too. I don't think that's likely, but . . ."
Finally, he pulled back. "Like that, huh?"
"'Fraid so. And, yes, I understand and appreciate the fact—believe me, I do—that you didn't wait to know before you proposed. But you might want to reconsider now that—"
"Oh, bullshit." Joe keyed the general band used by Thoat's company. "Hey, A.J.! Madeline thinks she might have to take it on the lam, in a few months. That be enough time for us to figure out how to make our getaway into the badlands of Valles Marineris?"
The answer came immediately. "Sure. Biggest badlands in the Solar System, too."