Probability Sun by Nancy Kress Read Free Book Online Page A

reliable performance of duties. No one aboard, not the lowest crewman third class, had ever had so much as an official reprimand logged anywhere in the SADN records. Kaufman was pretty sure nothing would come of the hole in the stateroom wall, which he would have Doolin restore when the ship returned to Mars.
    All the same, Capelo had, after less than twenty-four hours aboard, already caused Kaufman to move outside the rules. Kaufman wondered how many more times the physicist would do so, and how far he, Kaufman, was actually prepared to go on behalf of Thomas Capelo.

FIVE
    ABOARD THE ALAN B. SHEPARD
    T here it is,” Capelo said, “the most fried object in a thousand star systems. We who are already dead salute you.”
    “There wasn’t any life on it anyway,” Hal Albemarle said.
    “Do we know that? Do you know that? Are you holding out on us, Hal? Give, give, share the wisdom of the ages.”
    Albemarle glared. Kaufman, gathered with the rest of his team on the observation deck of the Alan B. Shepard, suppressed an impatient twinge. The relationship between Capelo and Albemarle had not improved since their first encounter, and neither one bothered to hide his dislike. Fortunately, Albemarle and Commander Grafton seemed to be the only ones that challenged Capelo’s sharp mockery. Rosalind Singh indulged it; Ann Sikorski tolerated it; Dieter Gruber was oblivious of it.
    Gruber was the only one missing from the preliminary survey of Nimitri, sixth planet from the star in the World System. The geologist had taken ill the day after boarding. Ship’s doctor determined that Gruber had contracted a virus, one of the nasty mutated strains appearing so frequently on Earth; that the virus was laterally transmitted; and that nobody on the Alan B. Shepard possessed immunity. Immediately she slapped Gruber into quarantine, where he remained, querulous at being able to participate only virtually in the project team’s discussions.
    The ship had journeyed at top speed from Mars to Space Tunnel #1, and then through several more clustered tunnels to reach this remote system at the far edge of the galaxy. After emerging from the system’s only tunnel, #438, the Alan B. Shepard took another three days to reach orbit around Nimitri, a bleak, frozen, atmosphereless globe that was the closest planet to Space Tunnel #438. Long before their arrival in the star system, Commander Grafton had turned over the observation deck to the project team, who had set up their data-ports there. Now Capelo, Albemarle, and Rosalind Singh studied the displays, which coordinated data from the ship’s normal sensors from those added to her for this expedition, and from the two probes sent down to the surface.
    Rosalind said, “Radioactivity is twenty-nine times what would be predicted. Spectography results … high concentrations of iridium, platinum, thorium, moderately high amounts of uranium … Hal, run an Auberjois test on that data, please.”
    Capelo said, “Looks like Syree Johnson called it.”
    “I told you so!” crowed the voice of Gruber, following the proceedings from quarantine.
    Dr. Singh said, “Hal?”
    Albemarle said, “The numbers correlate. A huge leap in the rate of decay occurred two-point-one E-years ago, and no rate change since.”
    Marbet said, “For us non-physicists, what does that mean?”
    “It means,” Rosalind Singh said in her precise voice, “that what Dr. Johnson said in her preliminary report fits the facts as they exist now. It’s at least possible that her ‘wave effect’ hit Nimitri and caused its massive radioactivity by destabilizing the nucleus of every element above atomic number seventy-five. In other words, the probability that each nucleus would emit a radioactive particle increased enormously. Of course, that doesn’t provide the cause of the phenomenon.”
    Gruber’s voice said, “The moon they towed to the tunnel was the cause!” at the same moment that Capelo said, “That’s why I love