Emile and the Dutchman Read Free

temperatures over the northern continent."
    "Damn." Buchholtz pursed his thin lips. "No armor?"
    Norfeldt bit down hard on the end of his cigar, then spat a hunk of tobacco at the nearest bulkhead. It stuck.
    "Am I telling this, or are you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "First did the pole-to-pole orbital sweep, got some good pictures. A lot of indigenous animal species; apparently one intelligent one. Erect, bipedal, vaguely amphibian. No abnormal neutrino emissions; no unusual synchrotron."
    "Radio?" I asked.
    He shrugged. "Not apparently. The star puts out a lot of RF and the dirtball's got a hot ionosphere; unlikely even the local equivalent of Marconi would think of RF as a good way to communicate. In any case, First didn't pick up on any radio. No promises, but the tech doesn't look too bad; maybe about middle, late Iron Age."
    The Dutchman shrugged. Analogies between human history and any alien history were likely to be useless. "They've got small cities, but no evidence of warfare—any kind."
    Buchholtz didn't look disappointed, which surprised me for just a moment. Then it occurred to me that he must have had faith in the Dutchman's description of the mission as a tough one.
    Norfeldt puffed at his cigar. "So, Second Team went in. We know they made contact. There was no apparent trouble, no fatalities dirtside. The scout returned to AlphaCee intact, complete with crew—who were relatively intact."
    "Relatively?" If I were an esper, I know that I would have heard Buchholtz inventorying the team's weapons.
    The Dutchman shook his head. "That's the word. Don't know much more. Under psych testing on the AlphaCee side, three of the four Second Teamers turned up . . . changed."
    "How?" I'm sure that McCaw didn't care; he was just asking out of a vague sense of obligation to participate.
    "Don't know. As soon as their escort's computer latched onto the fact that the changes were beyond normal bounds—except for the Team Leader's—the skipper of the escort opened fire. A bit too quick on the trigger; I would have liked to know more. One hell of a lot more."
    I started to speak, then changed my mind.
    "Well, Emmy? What is it?"
    "I . . . don't understand. Wouldn't the records of the psych test still be in the escort's computer?"
    "Good question." The Dutchman nodded as he rose and stretched. "Got another one?"
    "Sure." Buchholtz snorted. "How about this: Where the fuck are the records?"
    "I don't know. I wasn't given them, and I wasn't given an explanation, either. It could be that somebody's bullshitting around with classification games—they are classified high—or there's some sort of snafu. Central loses more records than they like to admit." He shrugged. "So we get to play it by ear. Fun, eh?"
    Buchholtz spread his hands. "I don't see the problem. All we have to do is blow the Gate on the other side, no? Looks like a clear Drop."
    Norfeldt pulled his chair out, swung it around, then sat down assbackward, resting his forearms on the back of the chair. "No, Kurt. We don't Drop this one, unless we absolutely have to. You don't have to know why."
    Norfeldt gave me a meaningful sideways glance. It takes tonnes of germanium, squeezed by a grabfield into a quantum black hole, to make the nucleus of a Gate, and the germanium is not recoverable; it comes out of the evaporating nucleus as random quanta, some locally, some through other singularities. "You got that, too, Emmy?"
    I didn't have any objection. I didn't want my First Assignment to end in a Drop. "Yes, sir. But, if we have to . . ."
    "Then we have to. Don't bother me with the obvious." The Dutchman paused. "One more thing. The escort ship, the one that blew up Second Team's scout?"
    Buchholtz nodded. "Magellan?"
    "Right."

III

    Even if I live to be a hundred—unlikely, given my line of work—I'll never get used to Gate travel. Back at the Academy, they used to explain that the nausea most people feel when they fly through a Gate is purely psychosomatic. They'll