Before the outer door was even open, Carmen and the others were bearing down on me with questions.

Chapter 4 - OTHER-NESS

4

OTHER-NESS

Fly-in-Amber let us grill him for exactly one hour. Then he said he would submit a written report tomorrow and went off to rest.

Namir wondered aloud how he would do that. Lying down is irrelevant in zero gee, but they never actually lie down, anyhow. Hard to sort out all the legs.

Having a conversation was odd, too, without a physical up and down. By convention, most people tried to stay upright, but if you didn’t hang on to something, you could start to drift. Paul let himself go every which way, I supposed to demonstrate how natural the state was to an old space hand.

We were in the compromise lounge, and it was cold. I told Snowbird we had to move into the dining area. She said she would come along for a little while.

Namir had put a collection of ration bars in a plastic bag with a drawstring. I took a peanut butter one and passed the bag around.

Snowbird bounced gently off the refrigerator and grabbed onto the dining-room table with three arms. “You were not too pleased with what Fly-in-Amber remembered?” she said to me.

“We could wish for more. But we’ll have years.”

“The next time it visits, we’ll have plenty of questions,” Paul said.

“Can you establish a radio link?” Meryl asked. “Or would it be better not to?”

“No reason not to,” Namir said. He looked around with a stony expression. “It’s a good thing we have nothing to hide. They’re probably hearing every word we say.”

“Through vacuum?” I said.

“Any Earth spook could do it. Spy could have dropped a microtrans-mitter in here while it was walking around, but you could be even more direct than that—attach a sensor to the hull and have it transmit the vibrations it picks up.

“I don’t think that would work once the main drive starts up again,” Paul said. “The vibrations would overwhelm your signal.”

“Maybe so.” His expression didn’t change.

“They’d have something like S2N,” I said. It’s a spook program to coax out data that’s buried in noise.

That brought a little smile. “How on earth do you know about S2N?”

“I haven’t been on Earth since ’72,” I kidded him, “but you can learn a thing or two in orbit.” It was an unpleasant memory. Dargo Solingen had used S2N to spy on Paul and Red and me, overhearing our whispered conferences under loud music. A day later, our secrets were headlines on Earth, and the Others decided it was time for us all to die. Sort of a turning point in one’s life.

“What it said about the Others playing games,” Dustin said, “to find out the rules. I want to know more about that.”