feel like an idiot."
"How do you mean?"
Lan Yi laughed. It was a dry noise in Strauss-Giolitto's helmet.
"I insisted to her that I needed at least a hundred techbots if I were to do my job properly. She said the SSIA had said I could have four. I was prepared to appeal over her head until she pointed out that every extra kilogram of mass aboard the Santa Maria made the mission less likely to succeed: did I really believe it was worth doing without one of the shuttles in order to have my extra bots? Better a job done, if not as well as I would like, than a job completely undone." He laughed again. "Then she took me out for a meal, and we talked it over a second time."
Lan Yi was adapting to the strains of moving about on Phobos better than she was, which irritated Strauss-Giolitto yet further. She was in her early twenties—she thought she was twenty-four—and he must be a hundred years older. She was in splendid physical condition and over two and a half meters tall; he was apparently frail and barely two-thirds her height.
"She was right," continued Lan Yi. "By the time I'd worked it out properly, I realized that I could get as good results from four techbots as from a hundred, because I could use the Main Computer for data storage. I had been thinking lazily; Strider hadn't. Many people I have worked with would have made me feel foolish because of my lack of clear thinking. Strider did not."
"That doesn't sound like the person everyone else describes," said Strauss-Giolitto impatiently. They were very close to the Santa Maria now—close enough that the curve of its hull overhead was no longer noticeable.
"Perhaps this displays a lack in those other people rather than in Strider," said Lan Yi mildly.
"Hmmf."
"How many of these other people are going to be a part of this mission?"
Strauss-Giolitto hesitated. "Well, none, actually."
"I do not think that this is a coincidence: only the best are being permitted aboard this vessel. Look, someone is letting down an access tube for us."
Strauss-Giolitto was silent as they entered the tube's outer airlock, stripped naked, stuffed their suits into disposal vents, and were showered with various precautionary chemicals to ensure they were bringing nothing into the Santa Maria 's ecosystem that had not been planned for. She tried not to look at the little out-of-Taiwanese's body, but couldn't help it. He was more muscular than she had expected, his only visible augmentation the secondary retinal screen that hovered a couple of centimeters in front of his right eye. With his left eye he was unashamedly scanning her own body.
"You are very lovely," he remarked.
She snorted. "Dream on."
"I was speaking aesthetically."
"Oh yeah?"
"Oh yeah, as you put it, Strauss-Giolitto. If I knew you better I might find the display of your body alluring. As it is, I find it merely beautiful—you are an elegant statue."
The second airlock hissed, and two sets of SSIA uniform flopped on to the floor on its far side. After a moment's confusion Lan Yi and Strauss-Giolitto sorted out between them whose was whose.
She didn't know whether to feel complimented or to be angry with the small Taiwanese.
Then they were walking up the brightly illuminated walkway through the tube towards the ship's interior.
#
They could hear the tube grunting and creaking as it retracted itself behind them. The innermost airlock grudgingly granted them admission, and they were met by someone even taller than Strauss-Giolitto. His face was crafted as a perfect simulacrum of a human being's and he was clad in the form-shrouding standard uniform of the SSIA, but she immediately recognized him—it—as a bot.
Lan Yi was shaking the bot's hand and reaching up to slap it on the shoulder.
"My good friend Pinocchio," the diminutive scientist was saying. "How very fine to find you here to welcome us."
The bot's head buzzed. "Dr Lan Yi," it said after a perceptible pause. "The pleasure is mine entirely. I have been
"How do you mean?"
Lan Yi laughed. It was a dry noise in Strauss-Giolitto's helmet.
"I insisted to her that I needed at least a hundred techbots if I were to do my job properly. She said the SSIA had said I could have four. I was prepared to appeal over her head until she pointed out that every extra kilogram of mass aboard the Santa Maria made the mission less likely to succeed: did I really believe it was worth doing without one of the shuttles in order to have my extra bots? Better a job done, if not as well as I would like, than a job completely undone." He laughed again. "Then she took me out for a meal, and we talked it over a second time."
Lan Yi was adapting to the strains of moving about on Phobos better than she was, which irritated Strauss-Giolitto yet further. She was in her early twenties—she thought she was twenty-four—and he must be a hundred years older. She was in splendid physical condition and over two and a half meters tall; he was apparently frail and barely two-thirds her height.
"She was right," continued Lan Yi. "By the time I'd worked it out properly, I realized that I could get as good results from four techbots as from a hundred, because I could use the Main Computer for data storage. I had been thinking lazily; Strider hadn't. Many people I have worked with would have made me feel foolish because of my lack of clear thinking. Strider did not."
"That doesn't sound like the person everyone else describes," said Strauss-Giolitto impatiently. They were very close to the Santa Maria now—close enough that the curve of its hull overhead was no longer noticeable.
"Perhaps this displays a lack in those other people rather than in Strider," said Lan Yi mildly.
"Hmmf."
"How many of these other people are going to be a part of this mission?"
Strauss-Giolitto hesitated. "Well, none, actually."
"I do not think that this is a coincidence: only the best are being permitted aboard this vessel. Look, someone is letting down an access tube for us."
Strauss-Giolitto was silent as they entered the tube's outer airlock, stripped naked, stuffed their suits into disposal vents, and were showered with various precautionary chemicals to ensure they were bringing nothing into the Santa Maria 's ecosystem that had not been planned for. She tried not to look at the little out-of-Taiwanese's body, but couldn't help it. He was more muscular than she had expected, his only visible augmentation the secondary retinal screen that hovered a couple of centimeters in front of his right eye. With his left eye he was unashamedly scanning her own body.
"You are very lovely," he remarked.
She snorted. "Dream on."
"I was speaking aesthetically."
"Oh yeah?"
"Oh yeah, as you put it, Strauss-Giolitto. If I knew you better I might find the display of your body alluring. As it is, I find it merely beautiful—you are an elegant statue."
The second airlock hissed, and two sets of SSIA uniform flopped on to the floor on its far side. After a moment's confusion Lan Yi and Strauss-Giolitto sorted out between them whose was whose.
She didn't know whether to feel complimented or to be angry with the small Taiwanese.
Then they were walking up the brightly illuminated walkway through the tube towards the ship's interior.
#
They could hear the tube grunting and creaking as it retracted itself behind them. The innermost airlock grudgingly granted them admission, and they were met by someone even taller than Strauss-Giolitto. His face was crafted as a perfect simulacrum of a human being's and he was clad in the form-shrouding standard uniform of the SSIA, but she immediately recognized him—it—as a bot.
Lan Yi was shaking the bot's hand and reaching up to slap it on the shoulder.
"My good friend Pinocchio," the diminutive scientist was saying. "How very fine to find you here to welcome us."
The bot's head buzzed. "Dr Lan Yi," it said after a perceptible pause. "The pleasure is mine entirely. I have been
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