Camouflage

ammonia, ethane, acetylene.
    In terms of temperature and pressure, it was a lot easier to handle than Venus. But carbon dioxide isn’t flammable. She looked at the huge tanks of hydrogen waiting for the high-pressure phase and tried not to think of it as a fireball waiting to happen.
    It was more than a thousand times the quantity of hydrogen that exploded in the Hindenburg disaster.
    By now, most of the people, Jan included, had little hope that the artifact was going to respond to anything. When it did, they thought it was an experimental error.
    T he thing inside the artifact didn’t think, not the way humans think. It didn’t pose problems and solve them. It didn’t wonder about its place in the universe. It felt no real need to communicate.
    Its mandate was survival, and it had powerful tools to that end. If the life that decorated the surface of this planet seemed to be a threat, it could simplify the situation. It had patience, fortunately, beyond any human reckoning of the term. All this tapping and zapping and flashing—it could stop the annoyance with one exercise of will, fry the planet clean.
    But a central part of it was still out there. It could wait for its return. Maybe, it finally decided, speed up the return by tapping back.
    W hen the changeling got off the plane at the Apia airport, the place was crazy with celebration, even though it was three in the morning. A couple of dozen young men and women danced and clapped and sang in harmony; bunting and flags were everywhere.
    When it had boarded in Hawaii, it couldn’t help noticing that several of the Caucasian passengers were unusually old. When the singing stopped, while it was waiting for its luggage, it found out what the story was. It was the sixtieth anniversary of Samoa’s independence, and these old guys were the last survivors of the American forces that had been stationed here in World War II.
    Bataan came back in a rush of bad memory, while the mayor of Apia welcomed the old vets and told stories she’d heard from her father and grandfather. The changeling listened respectfully, its face revealing nothing.
    It was a pretty face. The changeling had the form of a young attractive woman.
    The ad it had answered on the net was looking for a laboratory technician who could operate this and that machine and had knowledge of marine biology and astronomy. It didn’t call for doctorates in those subjects, but then the changeling could hardly advertise those. Its faked credentials were impressive enough; it only claimed “wide reading” in marine biology and a B.S. in astronomy. (The degree actually belonged to the woman whose appearance it had taken. Safely out of the job market herself, she was the mother of triplets in Pasadena.)
    Putting together a fake identity was more complicated than it used to be. It was not particularly hard for thechangeling to pretend to be the woman from Pasadena; it even had her fingerprints and tattoos and scent. But it had taken a bit of computer wizardry to erase the records of her husband and triplets and substitute an impressive job record. It had taken even more to temporarily make sure that computer, phone, and fax messages were routed through the changeling before Rae Archer got them.
    The actual Rae Archer was beautiful, and took pains to look less than her thirty years. The changeling modified the details so that it was the same face, but merely pretty, and thirty.
    It had done it all in less than a day, once the ad appeared on Sky and Telescope ’s website. (It automatically monitored anything with the key words “Apia” or “Poseidon Projects.”) As Rae, it had talked to Naomi and then Jan, who agreed to give Ms. Archer an interview if she were willing to gamble the airfare out to Samoa and back. The changeling thought it had done a good job of imitating an excited young woman trying to contain her enthusiasm.
    The real gamble, of course, was background checking. The changeling had inserted files attesting to Rae Archer’s job competence in every position she’d held. But if Naomi or Jan decided to call the States and ask for an actual person’s recollection of the woman’s work, the web of deception would evaporate.
    Apia was muggy and buggy at three in the morning. Almost every cab in town was waiting outside the airport—the plane from Honolulu only came in twice a week—but the changeling asked directions and did the sensible thing, taking the bus into town. It was twenty miles of