Thus far, the alert had been proceeding as most of them did, which meant that most network activity had been shut down to leave open bandwidth for Parambulator. That system swung into action without human intervention, calculating courses, making suggestions, and gathering data about what the motes in the data cloud were doing. The Parambulator screens were looking pretty angry, but that was normal as almost every arklet fired its thrusters and shunted into a new trajectory. In time it would get sorted out. It always did. But part of the sorting-out process was refining what they knew about the trajectory of the incoming streaker. The closer it came, the more precisely they could track it. By the time it passed through, or near, the swarm, they’d have its parameters dialed in to high precision. And once it had flashed by, all Parambulator had to do was clean up the mess.
Ivy had asked Steve about the bolide for a couple of reasons. One was that hot rocks, by definition, tended to come and go rapidly. This one had been approaching for several minutes—a long time to wait. Another was that Parambulator looked more chaotic than usual. Normally there would be a spray of red in the first couple of minutes. Presently it would begin to fade as the arklets reported that they were out of harm’s way. But in this case, it never seemed to get any better. “Are we having trouble with bandwidth, or—”
“The rock is weird,” Steve said. “Normally I’d expect to see a stream of packets from SI, refining the params as they gathered more data.” He meant Sensor Integration: the department that managed the radars and telescopes.
“And you’re not?”
“Well, I am—but with different numbers.”
“What do you mean, different numbers?”
“It’s like we have two different Streaker Alerts happening at once. The packets are stepping on each other. There’s some kind of crosstalk going on.” Steve sat back from his screen for a moment and tugged his beard. “Just a sec,” he said. “I think that these packets are coming from different sources.”
“But they should all have the same point of origination,” Ivy said. “SI.”
“They claim to,” Steve said, “but I think that some of them are forgeries.”
Feeling his chair shift subtly beneath him, he reached out involuntarily with one hand and held the edge of the table. Izzy was firing her thrusters, coming about to a new orientation, trying to put Amalthea between herself and the bolide—real or imagined.
“You think this whole alert is them spoofing us?”
“It would fit in with Tekla’s theory of what’s going on,” Steve said.
“I’ll try to voice with Doob,” Ivy said. “Work on that forgery hypothesis.”
“MADAM PRESIDENT,” CAMILA SAID, PULLING A HEADPHONE AWAY from her ear. “As you requested, I am informing you that Ivy has figured it out.”
“She knows?” Julia asked.
“Not quite, but Steve Lake has detected the forged packets and is running further analysis.” Camila’s eyes were big and her voice—which was always somewhat impaired by her facial injuries—was thick and dry.
Julia threw her a shrewd look, then turned to Spencer Grindstaff, who shrugged. “Sooner or later a man of Steve’s talents was bound to—”
“I don’t care about that,” Julia cut in. “I want to know whether our gambit has bought us enough time.”
“There’s—” Camila began.
Spencer ran Camila off the road. “It has bought us enough confusion. We should be in a position to dock this heptad at the Shipyard in twenty seconds.”
“There’s another bolide!” Camila squeaked. “I think.”
Julia shook her off, keeping her focus on Spencer. “Where is the triad?”
“Already there,” Spencer said.
“The spacewalkers?”
“Suited up, out of the airlocks, in position.”
“Still. The assembly. The integration. It will take time.”
“Madam President, if I may,” Paul Freel broke in. “All we need is to slap her together—with zip ties, if that’s what it takes—and achieve separation from the Shipyard. A small thruster burn will do it. Izzy doesn’t have phasers to blast us out of the sky! They could send a Flivver after us, but what are they going to do? All we need is to get clear. Then we can spend days prepping Red Hope before we embark on the mission in earnest.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past that Tekla.”
“Say what you will about her, she’ll follow orders,” Paul said.
“Well, as a stay-behind supporter of your expedition, I will be happy to run interference for you until you can get cleanly away,” Julia said.
Through the heptad’s structure, a programmed series of whirrs and clunks resonated as it docked with a port on the long truss projecting to the side of the Caboose: the heart of the Shipyard, rich in airlocks and anchoring points. Docked at the next port along was a glinting, angular framework: the skeleton of Red Hope, awaiting its final components. It sported four large propellant tanks clustered around a knot of pumps, valves, actuators, and sensors that fed a rocket engine centered below.
“Madam President?” Ravi asked. “I’m afraid the time is now. Unless you want to go to Mars. Which you would be welcome to do.”
Julia snapped to attention. She had been checking herself in the mirror of her compact. Hardly glamorous, but by Cloud Ark standards, her appearance would do.
“It is tempting,” Julia said, “but I have responsibilities here, I’m afraid.” She snapped the compact shut and glanced over, verifying that Camila was ready to shoot video on her phone. She was, but she still had that rattled look on her face. What had come over her? They’d have to have a heart-to-heart later.