“IT IS FOR ALL PURPOSES EMPTY,” TEKLA REPORTED OVER AN ENCRYPTED voice link to Ivy. “Empty of people. Empty of supplies.”
She, Tom Van Meter, and Bolor-Erdene had spent the last ten minutes searching Arklet 98 from front door to boiler room, under the eye of Sal Guodian. They had arrived via Flivver, docked, and entered 98 without incident. Sal had gone through first, carrying a tablet on which was displayed the first search warrant ever issued under the provisions of the Cloud Ark Constitution. He had been ready to show it to the first person who challenged him. But no one was here.
Tekla, Tom, and Bo had then come in, wearing orange vests improvised from survival kits that, since they’d been designed for use on Earth, had no practical utility anymore. These would serve as police uniforms until something else could be stitched together. With any luck, they wouldn’t be needing a lot of cop gear. But Ivy had been clear, and the others in her ad hoc council had agreed, that if they were executing what amounted to a police action, they couldn’t beat around the bush—couldn’t try to palm it off as an informal visit. A new constitution had to be exercised, or it was just words.
“Can you get it back on the SAN?” Ivy asked, over the voice link. “I’d like to see what’s happening.”
“I’ll reboot everything,” Sal said, pulling himself up into the control couch. “But it depends on what Spencer did—whether he broke it permanently, or just entered a temporary command.” He reached around in back of a panel, felt for a connector, pulled it out, and jacked it back in.
“We had estimated that you were going to find ten person-years worth of nonrenewables in that thing,” Ivy said. She meant, not bulk food (which could be grown in the outer hull space of an arklet) or air (which was renewed by the life support system), but generally smaller items like toiletries, vitamins, medicine, and specialty food. “That was based on circumstantial evidence—the amount of stuff that’s gone missing, the number of Flivver trips and EVAs that have touched that arklet. We always knew it was only a guess. But for it to contain nothing at all is . . . odd.”
“More than odd,” Tekla said. “Surprise attack.”
“You think there’s going to be an attack?”
“Maybe not in sense of violent assault,” Tekla said, “but something.”
“And Arklet 98 was a decoy?”
“Obviously.”
A musical tone sounded from the arklet’s PA speakers, and the white LEDs changed their hue to red. “Alert,” said a synthesized voice. “All personnel should now be awake and at stations for urgent swarm maneuver. This is not a drill.”
They’d heard it before. It was a Streaker Alert.
Normally, though, they took it at face value. “Remarkable coincidence,” Tekla said.
“I think you guys had better get back in the Flivver,” Ivy said. “Follow the usual procedures for one of these, but keep your eyes open.”
“STEVE, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING YET ON THE BOLIDE?” IVY ASKED. They were about five minutes into the alert, which had obliged them to move down into the Banana. As much as Ivy wanted to know what was happening with J.B.F., and what Tekla had characterized as a “surprise attack,” her responsibility in a case like this one was clear: all of her attentions had to be focused on the evasive maneuvers being carried out by the Cloud Ark and their possible consequences. Those might include collisions between arklets or the separation of one or more arklets from the swarm. In dire cases it might be necessary to send out rescue teams, which was why her first act had been to get Tekla and the others into their Flivver. For the normal role of that makeshift police service was not to serve warrants on hoarders; it was to respond to emergencies. As keenly as the space geek in Ivy’s soul wanted to pay attention to the scientific phenomenon of the incoming rock, it was a task she had to delegate; and she’d delegated it to Steve Lake as soon as the alert had sounded.