1n1REzE

Peter Watts 76 Blindsight
nine klicks of displaced contrail had merely grazed the perimeter,
cut across an arc of forty or fifty degrees. This thing hiding in the
shadow of ten Jupiters was almost thirty kilometers from side to
side.
Sometime during Sarasti's executive summary we'd stopped
accellerating. Down was back where it belonged. We weren't,
though. Our hesitant maybe-maybe-not approach was a thing of
the past: we vectored straight in now, and damn the torpedoes.
"Er, that's thirty klicks across," Sascha pointed out. "And it's
invisible. Shouldn't we maybe be a little more cautious now"
Szpindel shrugged. "We could second-guess vampires, we
wouldn't need vampires, eh"
A new facet bloomed on the feed. Frequency histograms and
harmonic spectra erupted from flatline into shifting
mountainscapes, a chorus of visible light.
"Modulated laser," Bates reported.
Szpindel looked up. "From that"
Bates nodded. "Right after we blow its cover. Interesting
timing."
"Scary timing," Szpindel said. "How'd it know"
"We changed course. We're heading right for it."
The lightscape played on, knocking at the window.
"Whatever it is," Bates said, "it's talking to us."
"Well then," remarked a welcome voice. "By all means let's say
hello."
Susan James was back in the driver's seat.
I was the only pure spectator.
They all performed what duties they could. Szpindel ran
Sarasti's sketchy silhouette through a series of filters, perchance to
squeeze a bit of biology from engineering. Bates compared
morphometrics between the cloaked artefact and the skimmers.
Sarasti watched us all from overhead and thought vampire thoughts
deeper than anything we could aspire to. But it was all just makework.
The Gang of Four was on center stage, under the capable
*