Cauldron

Chapter 1 Thursday, January 11, 2255.

François St. John did not like the omega. It lay beneath him, dark and misty and gray. And ominous, like an approaching thunderstorm in summer. It was a vast cloudscape, illuminated by internal lightning. It seemed to go on forever.

They’d measured it, estimated its mass, taken its temperature, gleaned samples from deeper inside than anyone had been able to penetrate before, and they were ready to start for home.

The omega, despite appearances, was by no means adrift. It was racing through the night at a velocity far exceeding anything possible for an ordinary dust cloud, running behind the hedgehog, its trigger, closing on it at a rate of about thirteen kilometers per day. In approximately three thousand years it would overtake the object and hit it with a lightning strike. When it did, the trigger would explode, igniting the cloud, and the cloud would erupt in an enormous fireball.

The omegas were the great enigma of the age. Purpose unknown. Once thought to be natural objects, but no more. Not since the discovery of the hedgehogs twenty years earlier. Nobody knew what they were or why they existed. There wasn’t even a decent theory, so far as François was aware. The lightning was drawn by the right angles incorporated into the design of the hedgehogs. The problem was that anything with a right angle, if it got in the path of the cloud, had better look out.

He was surprised by the voice behind him. “Almost done, François. Another hour or so, and we can be on our way.”

It was Benjamin Langston. The team leader. He was more than a hundred years old, but he still played tennis on weekends. There had been a time when people at that age routinely contemplated retirement. “You got anything new, Ben?”

Ben ducked his head to get through the hatch onto the bridge. It was an exaggerated gesture, designed to show off. He enjoyed being the tallest guy on the ship. Or the most put-upon. Or the guy whose equipment was least reliable. Whenever anyone had a story about women, or alcohol, or close calls, Ben always went one better. But he knew how to speak plain English, which set him apart from most of the physicists François had been hauling around these last few years.

“Not really,” he said. “We’ll know more when we get home. When we can do some analysis.” He had red hair and a crooked smile. He’d probably injured his jaw at some point.

“I have to admit, Ben,” François said, “that I’ll be happy to be away from the thing. I don’t like going anywhere near it.” The Jenkins was supposed to be safe for working around an omega. The Prometheus Foundation, its owner, had rebuilt her several years ago, taking away the outer shell and replacing it with a rounded hull. No right angles anywhere. Nothing to stir the monster. But he’d seen the holos, had watched the massive lightning bolts reach out and strike target objects left in its path. The thing was scary.

He looked down at the cloudscape. It felt as if there were something solid immediately beneath the gray mist, as if they were gliding over a planetary surface. But people who’d done work around omegas said that was always the impression. One of the uncanny features of the omega was its ability to hang together. You would have expected it to dissipate, to blur at the edges. But the clouds weren’t like that. Ben had commented that they had nearly the cohesion of a solid object.

In fact, Ben admired the damned things. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. He sounded awed.

That wasn’t the way François would have described it. But he pretended to agree. “Yes,” he said. “Beautiful.” Dead ahead, and deep within the cloud, a red glow appeared, expanded, brightened, and finally faded. It lasted only a few moments, then it was gone, and they saw nothing except their own navigation lights, captured and blurred in the mist.

It happened all the time, silent flowerings of ruby light.

They talked about incidentals, about the long ride home, which would take approximately three weeks, and how good it would be to get out of their cramped quarters. Ben admitted that he missed his classes. He was one of those very occasional academic types who seemed to enjoy the give-and-take of a seminar. His colleagues usually talked about it as if it were a menial task imposed by an unthinking university interested only in making money.

“François.” The AI’s voice.

“Yes, Bill, what have you got?”

“Cloud’s changing course.”

“What?” That wasn’t possible.

“I’ve been watching it for several minutes. There’s no question. It’s moving to port, and below the plane.”

It couldn’t happen. The clouds stayed relentlessly in pursuit of their triggers unless they were distracted by something else. The lines of a city, perhaps. But there were certainly no cities anywhere nearby. And no gravity fields to distract it.

“It’s picked up a geometric pattern here somewhere,” said Ben. He peered at the images on the monitors. “Has to be.” But there was nothing in any direction save empty space. For light-years. “François, ask Bill to do a sweep of the area.”

François nodded. “Bill?”

“We need to get out in front of it.”

Ben made a face. “We’ll lose contact with the probe if we do that.”

François wasn’t sure what kind of data the probe was collecting. The only thing that had mattered to him was that it was the last one. He looked at Ben. “What do you want to do?”

“Are we sure the cloud’s really changing course?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s find out why.”

“Okay,” François said. He gave instructions to the AI, and the sound of the engines began to intensify. He switched on the allcom. “Leah, Eagle, Tolya, strap down. We’re going to be executing a maneuver in a minute.”

Leah was Mrs. Langston. Like Ben, she was a specialist in various aspects of the clouds, physical structure, nanotech systems, propulsion. The objective of the mission was to learn something about their makers, who they were, what their capabilities were, why they sent the damned things out into the Orion Arm. Into the entire galaxy for all anyone knew.

Eagle’s real name was Jack Hopewell. He was a Native American, the mission’s astrophysicist, the department chairman at the World Sciences Institute. He claimed to be a full-blooded Cherokee, but he always smiled when he said it, as if he didn’t really mean it. François thought there might be a German back there somewhere, and maybe an Irishman.

Tolya was Anatoly Vasiliev, a nanotech specialist from the University of Moscow. She was on the verge of retirement, had never seen an omega, and had pulled every string she could find to get assigned to this mission.

Leah responded with that very precise Oxford voice: “François, what’s going on?”

He explained, while—one by one—the three indicator lamps brightened. Everybody was belted down. Ben slipped into his seat, and the harness closed around him. “All right, guys,” François said, “I’ll let you know when we’re done. This is going to take a few minutes.” He switched back to the AI. “When you’re ready, Bill.”

The Jenkins was, of course, moving in the same direction as the cloud, pacing it. François extracted the yoke from the control panel and pushed it gently forward. The engines grew louder, and the cloudscape began to move aft. Swirls of mist accelerated, swept beneath the glow of the ship’s lights, and blurred. Bill announced he’d lost contact with the probe.

It took a while, but eventually the horizon approached.

“The omega is still turning,” said Bill.

More electricity flashed through the depths. To François, the cloud seemed alive. It was a notion that had respectability in some quarters. No one had really been able to demonstrate the validity of the proposition one way or the other. And François would readily have admitted he had no evidence to support his impression. But the thing felt alive. That was why he didn’t entirely trust the assurances of the engineers who told him the Jenkins, because of its rounded edges, was safe. Who could really predict what one of these monsters might do?

They soared out past the rim, the leading edge of the cloud. “See anything yet, Bill?” he asked.

“Negative. But the turn is slowing. It’s settling in on a vector.” Bill adjusted course and continued to accelerate.

François looked out at the stars. There was no nearby sun. No nearby planet. Nowhere it could be going. “You figure that thing can see farther than we can, Ben?”

Ben sighed. “Don’t know. We still don’t know much. But it has potentially a much larger reception area than we do. So yes, it probably can see farther. Maybe not optically, but in some sense.”

The cloud was dwindling behind them, becoming part of the night, a dark presence blocking off the stars, illuminated only by periodic lightning. It could have been a distant storm.

“Still nothing?” asked François.

“Not yet,” said Bill. “Whatever it is, it’s dead ahead. The omega has begun to decelerate.”

He eased back on the yoke and opened the allcom: “Going to cruise, folks. If you need to get anything done, this would be a good time, but don’t go too far from your couch.”

Minutes later Leah’s head pushed through the hatch. “Nothing yet?”

“Not a thing,” said Ben.

Leah was in her nineties. She was tall and graceful, with dark brown hair and matching eyes. A good partner for Ben, given to trading quips with him, and easily, as far as François could see, his intellectual equal. “Okay,” she said, starting back. “Let us know if you see something.”

François had known Leah for thirty years, had hauled her to various destinations during his Academy days, before she’d married Ben. Before she’d known him, as a matter of fact. He’d made a play for her once, in those halcyon times, shortly after his first marriage had gone south. But she hadn’t been interested. He suspected she’d thought she wouldn’t be able to hold on to him.

A half hour slipped past while Bill sought the reason for the omega’s course change. François began to wonder if the AI had misread the omega. Ben had fallen silent, was going over some notes, and François was sitting with his head thrown back, half-asleep, when Bill stirred. You could tell Bill was about to deliver an announcement of some significance, because it was inevitably preceded by an electronic warble, the AI’s equivalent of clearing his throat. “François, object ahead. Range 3.4 million kilometers.”

Ben immediately looked up. Studied the display. “What is it?” he asked.

“It appears to be a ship.”

“A ship?”

“Yes. An artificial construct of some kind. It is not under power.”

Ben turned to look out the viewport. “François, who else is out here?”

“Nobody. Not supposed to be anybody.”

What the hell? “Bill, what kind of ship?”

“I don’t know. We’re too far away.”

It looked like a collection of cubes, or boxes, of varying sizes connected by tubes. Some of the tubes ran straight from one box to another, others angled off in various directions. None curved. It was all right angles, a target made for an omega.

The thing resembled a child’s toy, a puzzle to be manipulated until all the cubes lined up one way or another. Despite Bill’s assessment, it was most definitely not a ship. “I was in error,” said Bill. “I see no visible means of propulsion. Furthermore, if there were a method not apparent to us, I doubt the thing would hold together under acceleration.”

“A space station of some kind?” asked Ben.

“Possibly a habitat,” said François. “I really don’t know what to make of it.”

“What’s it doing out here?”

François gave them a ride. With the cloud coming up in the rear, he wanted to get to the object as quickly as he could. So he accelerated, then threw on the brakes. He burned fuel heedlessly. Ben grinned down at him. “That’s good, François. You’re learning.”

“Bill,” he said, “how much time do we have?”

“The omega is still decelerating. If it continues to slow at its present rate, after we arrive, we will have approximately twenty-three minutes before the cloud comes within strike distance.”

Ben stared at the object and looked pained. “François, it’s alien.”

“I know.”

“It’s priceless.”

“I know that, too, Ben.”

“Can we save it? Push it aside?”

“How big is it, Bill?”

“I am not able to estimate its mass. But the largest of the segments is eleven times the diameter of the ship. It dwarfs us.”

“Couldn’t we accelerate it?” said Ben. “It’s big, I know, but it’s adrift.”

François counted nine boxes. “It wouldn’t matter. We have no way to control its flight. The thing would just roll off to the side when we started pushing. All that would happen is that the goddam omega would adjust course.”

Eagle and Tolya had crowded into the hatchway. Leah was behind them. “We have to do something,” Tolya said. “We can’t just let this happen.”

“Damn right,” said Eagle.

François raised his hands. “We don’t have much choice. For what it’s worth, we’re recording everything.”

“That’s not worth much,” Leah said.

“There’s nothing else we can do.” He pulled at one ear. “Bill.”

“Yes, François.”

“Is the thing hollow?”

“It appears to be.”

Leah broke in. “When we get there, we’ll have a few minutes. We need to find a way in.”

François squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he said. “Absolutely not. That’s the last thing we want to do.”

“Look, François.” She was trying to sound reasonable. “We can probably find a hatch or port or something. We can get in, take a quick look around, and clear out.” She was already opening the storage locker and grabbing for air tanks and an e-suit.

“No,” said Ben. “Absolutely not.”

Tolya looked frantic. “I’ll go, too.” All the women on the flight were deranged. “What do you want to do,” she demanded, “just give up?”

François wanted to remind her she was only a student. Not here to give directions to anybody. But Ben took care of it with an icy look. “Forget it,” he said. “Nobody’s going anywhere. Twenty minutes won’t be enough time.”

“He’s right,” said François.

Ben was a bit too daunting for her, so Tolya turned on François. “What the hell do you know about it? What are we going to do? Just stand by and watch the idiot cloud blow that thing up? Spend the rest of our lives wondering what it might have been?”

It was tumbling. Slowly.

“I wonder how old it is?” Leah checked Ben’s air tanks. “You’re all set.”

They were in the airlock, carrying lasers and tool belts, ready to go. Eagle and Tolya had wanted to go along, too, but fortunately there were only three e-suits on board, and nobody got to use the captain’s. It was a violation of regulations.

“You guys go over,” said François, “cut your way in, take a quick look, and get back here.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ben.

“Look, Ben, so you know: There really isn’t time to do this, and I’m not going to put the ship at risk. When it gets close, I’m clearing out. Whether you two are back or not.”

“Understood,” said Ben.

“Goddam it.” Leah shook her head. “You worry too much, François.”

He saw no advantage to the design of the object. The cubes seemed to be connected in a totally random fashion. Purely aesthetic, he thought. Somebody’s idea of art.

He looked at the rear view. The black patch was growing, systematically blocking out stars.

“Hatch locations,” said Bill, marking four sites on the display. François picked one that allowed easy access from the Jenkins and maneuvered alongside. It was located on one of the smaller cubes, on the outer rim of the cluster. It was less than average size, but it was larger than the Jenkins. He eased in as closely as he could, lined up the hatch with the ship’s air lock, and instructed Bill to hold the position. “Okay,” he told Ben.

His navigation lights played off the surface of the object. It was battered. Corroded. It had been there a long time.

Ben opened the outer hatch. “It’s pretty worn,” he said.

“You’ve got seventeen minutes to be back here,” François said. “Okay? Seventeen minutes and we take off. Whether you’re on board or not.”

“Don’t worry,” said Leah. “Just keep the door open.”

Right.

An imager picked them up as they left the ship. Followed them across the few meters of open space to the hatch. Whoever’d used it had been about the same size as humans. Which meant Ben would have a hard time squeezing through.

“Incredible,” said Leah. She was examining the hull, which was pocked and scored. “Cosmic rays. It is ancient.”

“How old do you think?” asked Ben.

Bill sighed. “Use the scanner, Ben. Get me the hull’s composition, and I might be able to give you an answer.”

Ben wasn’t sure which of the devices he carried with him was the scanner. He hadn’t used one before, but Leah knew. She activated hers and ran it across the damage.

“Good,” said Bill. “Give me a minute.”

Ben made an effort to open the hatch. There was a press panel, but it didn’t react. Leah put her scanner back in her belt and produced a laser. She activated it and started cutting. “This is a disaster,” she said. “What were the odds of finding something like this? And then to have it sitting right in front of that goddam avalanche back there?”

Ben drew his own laser out of his harness, but François cautioned him not to use it. Two relatively inexperienced people cutting away was a sure formula for disaster. So he stayed back. Leah needed only minutes to cut through. She pushed a wedge of metal into space, put the instrument away, and stepped inside the ship.

“Turn on the recorder,” François told her.

Each wore an imager on the right breast pocket. The auxiliary monitor came to life, and François was looking down a dark corridor, illuminated by their headlamps. Shadows everywhere. The bulkhead looked rough and washed-out. Whatever materials had originally lined it had disintegrated. The overhead was so low that even Leah couldn’t stand up straight.

Something was moving slowly down the bulkhead. Ben saw it, and the picture jumped.

“What is it?” asked François.

Dust. A hand, Leah’s, scooped some of it up, held the light against it.

“Scan it,” said Bill. Leah complied. The AI’s electronics murmured softly. “Organics,” he said.

“You’re saying this was one of the crew?”

“Probably,” said François. “Or maybe they kept plants on board.”

“I wonder what happened here?” said Ben.

After a long silence, Bill said, “I’ve got the results on the cosmic ray damage. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve double-checked the numbers. The object appears to be 1.2 billion years old.”

Ben made a noise as if he were in pain. “That can’t be right,” he said.

“I’ve made no error.”

“Son of a bitch. François, we’ve got to save this thing.”

“If you can think of a way, I’ll be happy to make it happen.”

Leah broke in: “There’s something on the wall here. Engraving of some kind. Feel this, Ben.”

He put his fingertips against the bulkhead. Then he produced a knife and scraped away some dust.

“Careful,” she said.

François couldn’t make out anything.

“There is something here. It’s filled in.”

Leah moved to her right. “More here.” She ran her fingers down the bulkhead, top to bottom. “Not symbols,” she said. “More like a curving line.”

“Nine minutes,” said François.

“For God’s sake, François. Give us a break.”

“What do you want me to do, Ben?” He was having trouble keeping the anger out of his voice. Did they think he wouldn’t have saved the thing if he could? Did they think he didn’t care?

He listened while they tried to get a better look at the bulkhead. The object was tumbling slowly as it moved, and the dust had been crawling around inside it all this time. It would have long since wedded itself to any apertures, openings, lines, anything on the bulkheads. “It’s hopeless,” François said.

It wasn’t going well. He heard mostly invective, aimed at the dust, occasionally at the omega. “Can’t be sure of anything,” Leah said. She looked around. A few pieces of metal were bolted into the connecting bulkhead.

“Might have been cabinets,” said Ben, “or shelves, or an instrument panel of some sort.”

“Better start back,” said François.

“We can’t just give up.” Ben sounded desperate. He literally stabbed the bulkhead. “We may never find anything again as old as this is.”

“Before the dinosaurs,” said François.

Leah was breathing hard. “Before multicellular life.” The comment was punctuated by gasps. “Think about that for a minute. Before the first plant appeared on Earth, something was sitting here, in this room. We can’t just leave it.”

François was getting a creepy feeling. The black patch behind the Jenkins kept growing.

They gave up. Ben had found a plate fixed to the bulkhead. He’d been trying to break it loose and he finally took a swipe at it with a wrench. It broke away and disappeared into the darkness. “Maybe the name of the place they came from,” he said.

Leah touched the spot where the plate had been. “Or maybe the Men’s Room.”

They went through an opening into a connecting tube. Toward a cube several times the size of the one they were leaving. “No,” said François. “Your time’s up. Come back.”

“It’ll just take a minute, François,” said Leah. “We’re just going to take a quick look. Then we’ll come right back.”

He wondered whether the tubes had originally been transparent. They looked different from the interior, a different shade of gray, and were smeared rather than flaking.

He took a deep breath. “Bill, I don’t much like the way this is going.

“Nor do I, François.”

He counted off another minute. “Ben,” he said, finally, “that’s enough. Come back.”

“We’re on our way.” They’d entered the new cube, which consisted of another chamber and several doorways.

He wondered if, in some oddball way, they felt secure inside the object. Maybe if they were on the bridge, where they could see the omega closing in, they’d hustle a bit more. Behind him, Eagle and Tolya stood watching, saying nothing, hanging on to each other. François couldn’t resist: “Doesn’t look like such a hot idea now, guys, does it?”

“Nyet,” said Tolya.

He turned back to the AI: “Bill, put everything we have into a package and transmit to Union. Everything on the cloud, and on this damned thing. Whatever it is.”

“It will take a minute or two.”

“All right. Just do it.”

The omega brightened. A series of lightning bolts.

“Nothing here,” said Ben. He swept his light around the interior. Some objects were anchored to the deck. It was impossible to determine what they had been. Chairs, maybe. Or consoles. Or, for all they knew, altars. And boxes on either side of an exit. Cabinets, maybe. Leah cut one open, flashed her light inside. “Ben,” she said, “look at this.”

She struggled to remove something. “Maybe a gauge of some sort?” She brushed it carefully, and held it up for inspection. François saw corroded metal. And symbols. And maybe a place that had supported wiring.

“François,” said the AI, “the cloud is close. Our departure is becoming problematic.”

“That’s it, guys. Time’s up. Come on. Let’s go.”

“There’s something over here,” said Leah.

François never found out what it was. Lightning flared behind him.

Ben got the message. “On our way,” he said. They started to move. Finally. But Ben tripped over something, and bounced along the passageway. “Son of a bitch.”

Bill responded with an electrical display, the sort of thing he did to show disapproval.

“You okay?” said Leah.

“Yeah.” He pushed her away. “Keep going.” And he was up and running, pushing her before him.

It’s hard to run in grip shoes and zero gravity. Especially when you’re not used to either. They hurried back down the connecting tube. François urged them on. Maybe it was his voice, maybe it was inevitable, but, whatever the cause, Ben and Leah had become suddenly fearful. Panicky.

“The data package has been dispatched, François.”

“Good,” he said. “Bill, be ready to go as soon as they’re on board.”

“We can proceed on your direction.”

“Ben, when you guys get into the lock, shut the outer hatch and grab hold of something. We’re not going to wait around.”

“Okay, François. It’ll only be a minute.”

Bill rattled his electronics again. He was not happy. “Electrical activity in the cloud is increasing. It might be prudent to leave now.”

François considered it. The idiots had put him and the ship in danger.

Moments later they left the object and clambered into the air lock.

“Go, Bill,” he said. “Get us the hell out of here.”

Chapter 2

Matt Darwin filed the last of the documents, accepted the congratulations of his senior partner, Emma Stern, sat back in his chair, and considered how good he was. A natural talent for moving real estate. Who would have thought? That morning, he’d completed the sale of the Hofstatter property, a professional office building in Alexandria. Its owners had come to him after months of trying to move the place, and he’d done it in a week, even gotten two prospective buyers bidding against each other.

His commission, on that single sale, almost matched his annual take-home pay back in his Academy days. “Must make you wonder why you didn’t get started earlier,” Emma said.

She was tall and graceful, with two personalities, cordial, funny, and lighthearted for the customers, skeptical and strictly business for her employees. She could be vindictive, but she approved of Matt, recognized his talent, and was somewhat taken by his charm. He’d told her once she’d have made a good Academy pilot, had meant it, and had won her heart forever.

“How about we close down early and celebrate?” he said. “Dinner’s on me.”

She wasn’t young, but she could still light up the place. “Love to, Matt. But we have tickets for Born Again tonight.” She let him see she regretted declining the invitation. “How about we do it tomorrow, okay? And I’ll buy.”

Kirby, the AI, announced that Prendergast had arrived for his appointment with her. They were trying to decide on a place to locate his pharmaceutical distribution operation. He was being forced to relocate because of rising waters. Can’t go on building dikes forever, he’d been saying. Find me a new place. Preferably on top of a hill.

So she turned a radiant isn’t-life-grand smile on him and left. Matt had nothing pressing and decided he’d take the rest of the day off.

Stern & Hopkins Realty Company (Hopkins had moved on before Matt joined the firm) was located on the third floor of the Estevan Building, across the park from the Potomac Senior Center. A few years ago, he’d received an award over there for shepherding a damaged ship and its passengers back home. It had been the Academy of Science and Technology then.

He watched as the front door of the old administration building opened. That was where they’d given him his big night, called him onstage in the auditorium, and presented him with the plaque that now hung in his den at home. An attendant came out onto the walkway, pushing someone in a wheelchair. Despite all the medical advances, the vastly increased longevity, the general good health of the population, knees still eventually gave way. And bodies still went through the long process of breaking down.

He got his jacket out of the closet and pulled it around his shoulders. “Kirby?”

“Yes, Matt?” The AI spoke with a Southern accent. Emma was from South Carolina.

“I’m going to head out for the day.”

“I’ll tell her.”

When he got home, he’d call Reyna. Maybe she’d like to do dinner this evening.

There had been a time when the land now bordering the Potomac Senior Center was a golf course. The golf course was long gone, converted into a park, but the area was still called the Fairway. Matt lived in a modest duplex on the edge of the Fairway. It was about a mile and a half from the office, a pleasant stroll on a nice day. He passed young mothers with their toddlers and infants, older people spread out among the benches, a couple of five-year-olds trying to get a kite into the air. Sailboats drifted down the Potomac, and a steady stream of traffic passed overhead.

A sudden gust lifted a woman’s hat and sent it flying. The woman hesitated between pursuit and a child. Matt would have given chase, but the wind was taking it toward the horizon, and within seconds the hat had vanished into a cluster of trees fifty yards away.

He passed a chess game between two elderly men. That’s how I’m going to end up, he thought, splayed across a bench looking for ways to spend my time. Thinking how I’d never made my life count for anything.

In Emma’s presence, he always pretended he couldn’t be more satisfied with his job. He was, she said with mock significance, one of the great salesmen of their time. She meant it, more or less, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of life he’d envisioned. She’d been concerned about his background when he’d first shown up at Stern & Hopkins. Isn’t this going to seem dull after piloting starships? You really going to be satisfied hanging around here when you might have been spending your time at Alva Koratti? (She always made up the name of a star, and pretended she couldn’t quite get it right. So she had him cruising through Alpha Carlassa, and Beta Chesko, and Far Nineveh.) We don’t want to take you, Matt, she’d said, then lose you and have to train someone else.

He’d assured her he was there to stay. He pretended he loved representing people who were buying and selling real estate. He made jokes about how much better the money was (that, at least, was true), and how he liked working regular hours. “I must have been crazy in the old days,” he’d told her. “I’d never go back.”

She’d smiled at him. A skeptic’s smile. Emma was no dummy, and she saw right through his routine. But she liked him enough to hire him anyhow.

He’d left his chosen profession because there was no longer a market for star pilots. The Interstellar Age was over. He’d stayed with the Academy until they shut down, then he’d gone to work for Kosmik, hauling freight and passengers to the outstations. A year later, Kosmik began cutting back, and he’d caught a job piloting tours for Orion.

When things turned dark for Orion, he was the junior guy and consequently first to go. He’d gotten a job managing a databank operation, mining, sorting, and analysis done here. He’d hated it, moved on, sold insurance, managed a desk in a medical office, even done a stint as a security guard in an entertainment mall. Eventually, he’d taken a girlfriend’s advice and tried real estate.

So here he was, on a fast track to nowhere, piling up more money than he’d ever dreamed of.

The last hundred yards was uphill. His neighbor, Hobbie Cordero, was just getting home. Hobbie was a medical researcher of some sort, always going on about genetic this and splenetic that. He was passionate about what he did. Matt envied him.

They talked for a few minutes. Hobbie was short and dumpy, a guy who ate too much and never exercised and just didn’t worry about it. He was involved in a project that would help fend off strokes, and he was capable of telling Matt about it while wolfing down hot dogs.

Sometimes, the conversation with Hobbie was the highlight of his day.

So Matt drifted through the afternoons of his life, rooting for the Washington Sentinels, and getting excited about selling estates along the Potomac and villas in DC.

Reyna was used to his moods. And she knew what caused them. “Quit,” she advised.

They’d skipped dinner, gone for a walk along the river, and ended at Cleary’s, a coffeehouse that had prospered during Academy days and was now just hanging on. “Quit and do what?” he asked.

“You’ll find something.”

He liked Reyna. She was tall and lean, with blue eyes and dark hair, and he loved the way she laughed. There was no real passion between them, though, and he didn’t understand why. It made him wonder if he’d ever find a woman he could really relate to.

She was good company. They’d been dating on and off for a year. They’d slept together a couple of times. But he didn’t push that side of the relationship because he wasn’t going to offer to make things permanent. She was the woman he spent time with when no one special was available. She knew that, and he suspected she felt much the same way. “Like what?” he asked.

“How about a federal job? I understand they’re looking for tour guides in DC.”

“That would be exciting.”

She smiled at him. Everything’s going to be all right. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself. “Have you thought about teaching?”

“Me?”

“Sure. Why not?” She stirred her coffee, took a sip, rested her cheek on her fist. Her eyes locked on him. She was showing a little perspiration from their walk.

“What would I teach?”

“Astronomy.”

“I was a history major, Reyna.”

“They won’t care. Star pilot. You’ve been out there. They’d love you.”

The coffee was good. He had a Brazilian blend, sweetened with tapioca. “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine myself in a classroom.”

“I could ask around,” she said. “See what’s available.” She looked away, out the window at the river. “There’s another possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve a friend who works in a law office in Wheaton. They’re looking to hire an analyst. Apparently, you don’t need a legal background. They’ll teach you everything you need. They just want somebody who’s reasonably smart.”

He couldn’t see himself working with contracts and entitlements. Of course, until these last few years, he couldn’t have imagined himself spending his days in an office of any kind. Maybe what he needed in his life was a good woman. Somebody who could make him feel as if he were moving forward. Going somewhere.

Maybe two good women.

“What are you smiling at?” she asked.

He’d just gotten in the door at home when Basil, his AI, informed him there was a news report of interest. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were out.”

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“François was in an accident. They’re sending out a rescue mission.”

“François St. John?” That seemed unlikely. François was a model of caution and good sense. “What are they saying? Is he okay?”

“Presumably. There are no reports of injuries. But apparently the ship is adrift.”

“What happened?”

“An omega. They got in its way.”

François was the guy who wouldn’t quit. When everything was shutting down, he’d found a way to stay with the interstellars. Most recently he’d been working for the Prometheus Foundation. Probably for expenses and lunch money. “We have details?”

“They’re running an interview with Dr. Golombeck now.”

“Put it on. Let’s see what happened.”

Golombeck’s image appeared. He was seated at a table, looking forlorn, saying something about a derelict ship. He was a thin, gray man. Gray mustache, gray clothes, gray skin. He didn’t look as if he had ever been out in the sun. He was, of course, the director of the Prometheus Foundation.

François and Matt had never really been friends. They’d not seen enough of each other for that. But they’d met periodically in the Academy ops center and at the outstations. They’d had a few drinks together on occasion, including that last memorable night at Union when the Academy announced it was closing down. There had been four or five of them present when the news came. Matt had returned less than an hour earlier from a flight to Serenity. François and one of the others had been scheduled for outbound missions, which had been delayed two or three days without explanation, and finally canceled. A couple of the others had been going through refresher training.

The talk, of course, had centered on the conviction that it wasn’t really happening. A shutdown had been rumored for years, but the common wisdom was that the threats were always designed to shake more funding out of Congress. There was some hope at the table that it was true this time, too.

But if not, what would they do?

They’d talked about getting piloting jobs with Kosmik and Orion and the other starflight corporations. But the field was drying up, and everybody knew it. One female pilot had talked about going home to Montana. “Maybe work on the ranch,” she’d said. After all this time, he could still remember the way she’d tilted her head, the way her blond hair was cut, the pain in her eyes. Couldn’t remember her name, but he remembered the pain.

Work on the ranch.

And François. He’d been solid, quiet, competent. The kind of guy you wanted playing the action hero. He was a born skeptic, thought nothing corrupted people quicker than giving them promotions. What was he going to do now? He’d shaken his head. Stay in the backcountry, he’d said. Ride the ships. Matt seemed to recall that he’d added he would never stoop to selling real estate for a living. But that was a false memory. Had to be.

“They were trying to salvage what they could out of the derelict,” Golombeck was saying.

The interviewer was Cathie Coleman, of The London Times. She sat across the table, nodding as he spoke. Her dark skin glistened in lights that did not exist in Matt’s living room. He described how the Langstons had boarded the derelict, had cut their way into it. How they had cut things a bit too close. How the derelict was by far the oldest ever discovered.

“And you say this object was a billion years old?”

“That’s what they’re telling us, Cathie.”

“Who was flying around out there a billion years ago?”

“That’s a question we might not be able to answer now.”

“Were they able to salvage anything?” she asked.

“A few relics, we know that, but we don’t know what specifically. Apparently almost everything was lost.”

Matt halted the interview. “How far away are they?” he asked the AI.

“Two hundred sixty-four light-years.”

Almost a month travel time. Well, they clearly had adequate life support, so there was really nothing to worry about. Other than losing a billion-year-old artifact. What would that have been worth?

“The rescue ship is leaving from here?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Dr. Golombeck.” Cathie took a deep breath. Big question coming. “Are you going to be able to salvage the Jenkins?”

“We don’t know the extent of the damage yet. They were hit by lightning. We’ll send a team of engineers out as soon as we can assess what’s needed. We’ll do everything we can to bring the Jenkins home.”

There’d been a time, during the peak of the interstellar period, when someone would have been close by, when help would have arrived within a few days, at most. That was only twenty years ago. Hard to believe. The era was already being described as the Golden Age.

In the morning, Golombeck was back. He’d been a bit optimistic, he admitted. The Foundation would have to write the Jenkins off. “Beyond repair,” he said.

The interviewer, Wilson deChancie of Chronicle News, nodded. “Professor,” he said, “there aren’t many people left doing serious exploration. And Prometheus is now down to one ship.”

“That’s correct, yes.”

“Will the Foundation survive?”

“Yes,” he said. “We’ll survive. There’s no question about that.”

“I’m sure our viewers will be happy to hear that.”

“Yes. We do not intend to give up and walk away from the table, Wilson. And by the way, I should mention we’ll be conducting a fund-raiser. That’ll be at the Benjamin Hotel, next Wednesday, at noon.”

“The proceeds to be used to buy another ship?”

“That’s our hope, yes. The problem, of course, is that no one manufactures superluminals anymore. The few operational vehicles that remain are extremely expensive.”

“I’m sure they are.”

Golombeck turned and looked directly at Matt. “The public’s invited, of course. And again, that’s Wednesday, at twelve. There’ll be a luncheon, and your viewers can secure reservations by calling us directly.”

The code appeared at his knees.

DeChancie nodded solemnly. Expressed his hope that the event would be successful.

Elsewhere, experts argued that the derelict could not possibly have been a billion years old, as reported.

On another show, one guest asked the others on the panel whether anyone could name anything the Prometheus Foundation had discovered during its five-year lifetime. “Anything anybody really cares about?”

The panelists looked at one another and smiled.

In the morning, Matt sent Prometheus a donation. He wasn’t sure what impelled him to do that. He never had before, had never even considered it. But he felt better when it was done. They responded within the hour with a recorded message, an attractive young woman standing in front of a Foundation banner, blue and white with a ringed star in the center. She thanked him for his generosity, reminded him it was deductible, and invited him to attend the Wednesday luncheon at the Benjamin Hotel in Silver Spring. The guest speaker, she said, would be Priscilla Hutchins, a former star pilot and the author of Mission.

Her name induced a moment of pride. When, years from now, his grandkids asked him what he’d done for a living, he knew he wasn’t going to bring up real estate.

He had a leisurely breakfast, bacon and eggs, and headed for work. It was a cool morning, with rain clouds coming in from the west. But he could beat the storm. Or maybe not. The possibility of getting drenched added a bit of spice to the morning. It wouldn’t matter. He had extra clothes at the office.

He strolled past the Senior Center, ignoring the rising wind. The place was well maintained, with clusters of oaks and maples scattered in strategic places and more benches now than there’d been in earlier times. The morning’s stream of flyers were already passing overhead, most making for DC. Across the Potomac, the Washington Monument seemed poised to free itself from the gravity well.

On impulse, he detoured into the grounds, following the long, winding walkway that used to be filled with joggers and physical fitness nuts. It was concrete until you got past the main buildings, where it converted to gravel, entered a cluster of trees, and circled the Morning Pool. At the far end of the pool, the trees opened out onto a stone wall. If he’d walked to the end of the wall, he would have been able to see his office.

Despite the fact it was located along the eastern perimeter of the old Academy grounds, this was the South Wall, on which were engraved the likenesses of the fifty-three persons who had given their lives during the Academy’s near half-century existence. Fourteen pilots and crew (the latter from the days when ships needed more than a pilot), and thirty-nine researchers. There was Tanya Marubi, killed in the Academy’s first year when she tried to rescue a paleontologist who’d blundered into a walking plant of some sort on Kovar III. The plaque stipulated that the paleontologist had escaped almost unharmed, and that Marubi had taken the plant down with her.

And George Hackett, who’d died during the Beta Pac mission, which had discovered the existence of the omega clouds. And Jane Collins and Terry Drafts, who’d found the first hedgehog and revealed its purpose when they inadvertently triggered it. And Preacher Brawley, who had run into a booby trap in a system that was referred to on his plaque simply as Point B.

Emma was waiting for him when he got to the office. She was watching the latest Jenkins reports. “Anything like that ever happen to you, Matt?” she asked. “You ever get stranded somewhere?”

“No.” He made immediately for the coffee. “My career was pretty routine. Just back and forth.”

She studied him. “Did you know the pilot?” she asked.

“I’ve met him.”

“Well, I’m glad he came out of it okay.”

“Me, too.”

They were in his office. The wind was rattling the windows, and rain had begun to fall. “You must be glad to be here,” she said. “Real estate’s not the most glamorous way to make a living, but it’s safe.”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever know anybody out there who…?” Her voice trailed off.

“One,” he said. “I trained under Preacher Brawley.”

“Who?”

Brawley had been the best there was. But he’d lost his life when he got ambushed by an automated device that there’d been no way to anticipate. Matt had set out to be like his mentor. And gradually came to realize nobody could be like the Preacher.

She nodded and smiled and after a minute glanced at the clock. Time to get to work. “Do you have anything pressing at the moment, Matt?”

“No. What did you want me to do?”

“Take over the Hawkins business. I think it’s a little too complicated for Anjie.”

Too complicated for Anjie. “Why don’t I just give her a hand?”

THE JERRY TYLER SHOW

Guest: Melinda Alan, Astrophysics Director, AMNH

JERRY: Melinda, we were talking back in the lounge before we came on and you said the omega incident was the worst scientific setback in history. Do I have that right?

MELINDA: Absolutely, Jerry. I can’t think of anything that remotely compares with it.

JERRY: Okay. Do you want to explain why?

MELINDA: Sure. Previous to this, we’ve known that there was intelligence in the galaxy going back over a million years—

JERRY: Let’s take a moment here to explain to our audience. You’re saying we’ve known all along that, a million years ago, there were intelligent aliens.

MELINDA: That’s right.

JERRY: How did we know that?

MELINDA: The omega clouds. They come from the galactic core. They travel pretty fast, but they still need more than a million years to get here.

JERRY: What exactly are they? The omegas?

MELINDA: We have no idea, Jerry.

JERRY: But there’s no question in your mind they’re mechanical objects? Launched by somebody?

MELINDA: That seems to be a safe assumption.

JERRY: So whoever’s out there could be a lot older than a million years.

MELINDA: That’s so, yes.

JERRY: Okay. Now talk about the loss of the artifact.

MELINDA: One point two billion years, Jerry. That ship, station, whatever it was, was so old the mind has trouble grasping it. We’ll probably not see anything like it again. It was older than the dinosaurs. In fact, that vehicle dates from a time before any multicellular life had developed on Earth. Think about it: There was nothing on the planet you would have been able to see. Who knows what the artifact might have revealed had we been able to retrieve it?

JERRY: It’s okay. Take a second to catch your breath.

MELINDA: (Wipes her eyes.) I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like this on camera before.

Chapter 3

Priscilla Hutchins looked out across the tables and saw a lot of empty places. Maybe her act had gotten old. But the diminishing crowds had been a long-term trend, and the Foundation’s other speakers were running into the same problem. The loss of the Jenkins wasn’t helping. She saw Rudy Golombeck slip in through the side door, take a quick look around, shake his head, and leave as quickly as he’d come. “I’ll take questions now,” she said.

“Hutch.” Ed Jesperson, up front. A medical researcher. “My understanding is that we know where the omega clouds come from. Is that right?”

“Ed, actually we’ve known for a long time. More or less. We’ve been able to backtrack them. And yes, the point of origin seems to be in a cluster of dust clouds near the galactic core. We can’t get a good look at the area. So we don’t know precisely what’s happening.”

Spike Numatsu was next. Spike was the last survivor of a band of physicists from Georgetown who’d organized campaigns on behalf of the Foundation for years. “Is there any possibility of sending a mission there to find out? I know it would take a long time, but it seems as if there should be a way to do it.”

There was a lot of nodding. “We can’t stretch the technology that far,” she said. “A flight to the galactic core would take seven years. One way.” She paused. “We’ve thought about an automated flight. But we don’t have the funds. And we’re not sure it could be made to work anyhow. Basically, we need a better drive unit.” More hands went up. “Margo.”

Margo Desperanza, Margo Dee to her friends, hosted parties and galas and a wide range of benefits for Prometheus. It struck Hutch that there were few new faces that day. Mostly, only the true believers were left. Margo Dee didn’t know it yet, but Rudy was going to ask her that afternoon to serve on the board of directors. “Hutch, do you see any possibility of a breakthrough? Whatever happened to the Locarno Drive?”

What, indeed? “There’s always a possibility, Margo. Unfortunately, the Locarno didn’t test out.” It had been the brain child of Henry Barber, developed in Switzerland, an interstellar propulsion system that was to be a vast improvement over the Hazeltine. But it had gone through a string of failures. Then, last year, Barber had died. “I’m sure, eventually, we’ll get a better system than the one we have.”

“You hope,” said Jenny Chang in a whisper from her spot immediately to Hutch’s left.

Eventually, the big question showed up. It came from a young blond man near the back of the dining room: “If we did develop the capability to go there, to find out who was sending the omega clouds, wouldn’t it be dangerous? Wouldn’t we be telling them we’re here? What happens if they follow us home?” It was a question that had been gaining considerable credibility among American voters, and, for that matter, worldwide. Politicians around the globe had seized on the issue to scare the general public and get themselves elected on promises to restrict interstellar travel.

“The clouds were produced millions of years ago,” Hutch said. “Whoever manufactured them is a long time dead.”

The crowd divided on that one; some supportive, many skeptical. The blond man wasn’t finished: “Can you guarantee that? That they’re dead?”

“You know I can’t,” she said.

Someone wanted to know whether she believed the theory that an omega had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Someone else asked whether the clouds were connected with the moonriders.

The moonriders, known in various ages as foo fighters, flying saucers, UFOs, and beamrunners, had, until modern times, been perceived as myth. But the Origins incident of two decades earlier had removed all doubt. More recently, a flight of the objects had been seen, scanned, recorded by a team of physicists. “We don’t know that either,” she said. “But it feels like a different level of technology. If I had to put a bet down, I’d say they’re separate phenomena.”

Did she know François St. John, the pilot of the Jenkins? Or the Langstons? Or Eagle or Tolya?

“I know them all,” she said. “We’ll be glad to see them safely back.”

When it was over, she thanked her audience for their donations and for being receptive. They applauded. She stayed behind to answer more questions, signed a few copies of her book (actually written by Amy Taylor, a senator’s daughter who’d grown up to achieve a lifelong ambition to qualify as a star pilot only to find no positions available), and wandered out into the lobby. She was pulling her jacket around her shoulders when an extraordinarily good-looking young man asked if he might have a moment of her time.

“Of course,” she said. He was probably the tallest person in the room, with dark skin, dark eyes, leading-man features. The kind of guy who made her wish she was twenty again. “What can I do for you?”

He hesitated. “Ms. Hutchins, my name is Jon Silvestri.” He said it as if he expected her to recognize it. “I have something the Foundation might be interested in.”

They were standing in the lobby. Another man, a guy she thought she’d seen somewhere before, hovered off to one side, obviously also interested in speaking with her. “I don’t work for the Foundation, Mr. Silvestri. I’m just a fund-raiser. Why don’t you stop by the offices later today or tomorrow? They’d have someone available to talk to you.”

She started to move away, but he stayed in front of her. “I’m Dr. Silvestri,” he said.

“Okay.”

“They asked you about the Locarno.”

“And—?”

He moved closer to her and lowered his voice. “The Locarno is legitimate, Ms. Hutchins. Henry hadn’t quite finished it before he died. There was still testing to be done. A few problems to be worked out. But the theory behind it is perfectly valid. It will work.”

Hutch was starting to feel uncomfortable. There was something a bit too intense about this guy. “I’m sure, whatever you need, they’ll be able to take care of it for you at the Foundation offices, Doctor. You know where they’re located?”

He must have realized he was coming on a bit strong. He stopped, cleared his throat, straightened himself. And smiled. There was a tightness to it. And maybe a hint of anger. “Ms. Hutchins, I used to work with Henry Barber. I helped him develop the system.”

Barber had been working for years, trying to develop a drive that could seriously move vehicles around the galaxy, something with more giddyup than the plodding Hazeltine. “Riding around the galaxy with a Hazeltine,” he’d once famously said, “is like trying to cross the Pacific in a rowboat with one oar.”

The other man was checking his watch. He was maybe forty, though with rejuvenation techniques these days it was hard to tell. He could have been eighty. She knew him from somewhere. “Dr. Silvestri,” she said, thinking she shouldn’t get involved in this, “how much work remains to be done? To get the Locarno operational?”

“Why don’t we sit down for a minute?” He steered her to a couple of plastic chairs facing each other across a low table. “The work is effectively done. It’s simply a matter of running the tests.” A note of uncertainty had crept into his voice.

“You hope.”

“Yes.” He focused somewhere else, then came back to her. “I hope. But I see no reason why it should not function as expected. Henry did the brute work. It remained only to make a few adjustments. Solve a few minor problems.”

“He died last spring,” she said. “In Switzerland, as I recall. If you’ve an operational system, where’s it been all this time?”

“I’ve been working on it.”

“You have.”

“Yes. You seem skeptical.”

He looked so young. He was only a few years older than Charlie. Her son. “Barber hadn’t been able to make it work,” she said. She looked back to where the other man had been standing. He was gone.

“Henry was close. He simply didn’t have all the details right. What we have now is essentially his. But some things needed to be tweaked.”

She started to get up. Just tell him to drop by the office. Maggie can deal with him.

“I’m serious,” he said. “It will work.”

“You sound uncertain, Dr. Silvestri.”

“It hasn’t been tested yet. I need sponsorship.”

“I understand.”

“I came here today because I wanted to make it available to the Prometheus Foundation. I don’t want to turn it over to one of the corporations.”

“Why not? You’d get serious money that way. We wouldn’t have anything to give you.”

“I don’t need money. I don’t want it to become a moneymaking operation. There aren’t many people left doing deep-space exploration. I’d like you to have it. But I’ll need your help to run the tests.”

It didn’t feel like a con. That happened occasionally. People tried to get the Foundation to back various schemes. They’d ask for a grant, hoping to take the money and run. The organization had had a couple of bad experiences. But this guy either meant what he said, or he was very good. Still, the possibility that he had a workable drive seemed remote. “You know, Dr. Silvestri, the Foundation hears claims like this every day.” That wasn’t quite true, but it was close enough. “Tell me, with something like this, why don’t you get government funding?”

He sighed. “The government. If they fund it, they own it. But okay, if Prometheus isn’t interested, I’ll find somebody else.”

“No. Wait. Hold on a second. I guess there’s nothing much to lose. How sure are you? Really?”

“Without running a test, I can’t be positive.”

An honest answer. “That wasn’t my question.”

“You want me to put a number on it?”

“I want you to tell me, if the Foundation were to back this thing, what would our chances of success be?”

He thought it over. “I’m not objective,” he said.

“No way you could be.”

“Eighty-twenty.”

“Pro?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of improvement could we expect over the Hazeltine?”

“Canopus in about ten days.”

My God. With present technology, Canopus was three months away. “You’ll need a ship.”

“Yes.”

“The truth, Dr. Silvestri, is that you’re here at the worst possible time. We just lost the Jenkins.”

“I know.”

“You probably also know I’m not authorized to speak for the Foundation.”

“I’m not sure about your formal position, Ms. Hutchins. But I suspect you have influence.”

“Give me a number,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.”

The Foundation routinely set up a green room at its fund-raisers. Guests were invited to drop by, bring friends, and meet the people behind Prometheus. When Hutch walked in, Rudy was cloistered in a corner with a group of Rangers. That was the designation given to contributors who met a given minimum standard. It seemed a trifle juvenile to Hutch, but Rudy claimed it made people feel good and brought in additional money.

She picked up a scotch and soda and commenced mingling. She was never entirely comfortable during such events. She enjoyed playing to an audience, had discovered she could hold listeners spellbound, yet had never really learned the art of simple one-on-one socializing. She found it hard to insert herself into a group already engaged in conversation, even though they invariably recognized her and made room for her. The Foundation events were particularly difficult because she always felt that she was essentially begging for money.

When she found an opportunity, she drifted off to a side room and asked the house AI to provide whatever it had on Jon Silvestri. “A physicist,” she explained. “Associated with Henry Barber.”

One of the walls converted to a screen, and a list of topics appeared. Silvestri and Barber. Published work by Jon Silvestri. Silvestri and Propulsion Systems.

He’d appeared in several of the major science journals. Had been on the faculty at the University of Ottawa for two years before being invited by Barber to join his team in Switzerland. Born in Winnipeg. Twenty-six years old. Named to last year’s “rising stars” selections by the International Physics Journal.

There were lots of pictures: Silvestri on the Ottawa faculty softball team. Silvestri performing with a small band in Locarno. (He played a trumpet.) She listened to a couple of their selections and was impressed.

It wasn’t great music, but it wasn’t the clunky sort of stuff you expected from amateurs.

There was no mention of specific awards, but she suspected he might have been overshadowed, working with Henry Barber.

Satisfied he was legitimate, she returned to the green room.

When the reception was over, Rudy took her aside and thanked her. “I thought contributions would be down,” he said. “But I suspect they find you irresistible.”

She returned a smile. “What would you expect?”

Rudy was short, energetic, excitable. Everything, for him, had a passionate dimension. He lived and died with the Washington Sentinels. He loved some VR stars, loathed others. He enjoyed country music, especially the legendary Brad Wilkins, who sang about lost trains and lost love, and who had died under mysterious circumstances, probably a suicide, two years earlier. He knew what he liked at the dinner table and would never try anything new. Most of all, he thought humanity’s future depended on its ability to establish itself off-world. The failure of the Academy, he maintained, marked the beginning of a decadent age. “If we don’t get it back up and running,” he was fond of saying, “we don’t deserve to survive.”

He had started as a seminarian in New England, had gone through several career changes, and had eventually become an astrophysicist. He was the only astrophysicist Hutch had met who routinely used terms like destiny and spiritually fulfilling. Rudy was the ultimate true believer.

On this night, however, he was not in a good mood. “They think space is dead, some of them,” he said. “Pete Wescott says that unless we can find a way to make money out of it, he’ll have a hard time justifying further support. What the hell—? Nobody ever told him this was going to be easy.”

“I have a question for you,” Hutch said.

“Sure.” He drew himself up, as if expecting bad news. He’d had a bit too much of the wine. Rudy had a low tolerance for alcohol. She’d suggested once or twice that he not drink at these events, but he inevitably waved it away. Silly. Never had a problem.

One of the Rangers tried to corral him for a picture. “I’ll be right along, George,” he said, and then turned back to Hutch. “What’ve you got?”

“Do you know Jon Silvestri?”

He made a face while he thought about it. “One of Barber’s people.”

“He was here today.”

“Really? Why?”

She pointed to a chair. “Sit for a minute.”

Rudy complied. He looked worn out. “What does he want from us?”

“Oh, Rudy.” She sat beside him. “He might have something to give us.”

He looked around at the few people left in the green room. “Was he back here?”

“No.”

“So what did he want to give us?”

“He says he’s been working on Barber’s FTL drive.”

“The Locarno.”

“Yes.”

“It was a failure.”

“He says that’s not so.”

Rudy’s eyes closed and a pained smile appeared. “Lord,” he said, “would that it were true.”

“Maybe it is.”

“I doubt it. So what’s he want with us?”

“It looks as if he’s going to ask for a ship. To run some tests.” She recounted their conversation.

When she’d finished, he sat staring at the wall. At last his eyes came back to her. “What do you think? Does he know what he’s talking about?”

“I have no idea, Rudy.”

“The Locarno. Think what a break that would be.” His eyes brightened. “If he does want a test vehicle, we’d have to use the Preston.” With the loss of the Jenkins, it was all they had left. He scratched a spot over his right eyebrow. “Did he seem to think he could really make it work?”

“He says probably.” Two hotel bots came in and began collecting leftover food. The Ranger who’d been standing at the doorway, waiting to talk with Rudy, wandered off.

“Well,” he said, “let’s find out.”

SCIENCE HAS ENDED, SAYS JULIANO

“Issues That Remain Are Not Open to Scientific Inquiry”

Connected Story—see editorial:

WHY IS THERE SOMETHING AND NOT NOTHING?

WORLD COUNCIL WILL CLOSE SERENITY

Last Interstellar Base Outlives Usefulness

Will Shut Down at End of Year

BRING EVERYTHING HOME, SAYS MARGULIES

“Deep Space Never Made a Dollar”

SPACE FLIGHT AMBITIONS A DELUSION?

“Time to Grow Up,” Says President

“Coming Home Marks Beginning of Maturity”

MAMMOTHS DOING WELL IN INDIA, AMERICA

WHALE BEACHINGS A MYSTERY

Scientists Test the Water

COMET OLDER THAN SOLAR SYSTEM

9 Billion Years and Counting

PHYSICISTS, THEOLOGIANS DISCUSS END OF DAYS

Fourteenth Annual Vatican Symposium

Lights Out in a Few Trillion Years

Does Anybody Care?

SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCE IMMORTAL CHIMP

Will Not Age, Researchers Say

Treatment to Be Available for Humans by End of Decade

But Where Will We Put Everybody?

SOUTH AMERICAN REFORESTATION PROGRAM NEARS COMPLETION

COLLAPSE OF ICE SHEETS MAY BE IMMINENT

Race Is Close Between Stabilization Effort and Ongoing Melting

PUERTO RICAN AMAZON PARROT SPECIES FOUND

Believed Extinct in 21st Century

Bird Alive and Well in Lesser Antilles

THIS YEAR’S HURRICANE SEASON EXPECTED TO FOLLOW TREND

Number, Intensity of Storms Should Decrease

Chief Forecaster Hopeful Worst Is Over

SCAM ARTISTS CLAIM TECHNOLOGY TO HARNESS VOLCANIC POWER

Investors Bilked

Police: “They Got Away Clean”

Tidal Wave Technology Next?

Victims Mostly Elderly

STUDIES SUGGEST MARRIAGE, BUT NO CHILDREN, KEY TO LONGEVITY

BLACK HOLES MAY DISSIPATE MORE QUICKLY THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT

ARK ON ARARAT MAY NOT BE NOAH’S

Replica Probably Built in Ancient Times

Intended to Commemorate Biblical Event?

ARE LITTLE PEOPLE SMARTER?

Studies Suggest Correlation Between IQ and Size

Smaller May Be Better

Chapter 4

Matt wasn’t entirely sure why he’d wanted to speak with Priscilla Hutchins. He didn’t really know her. He’d just been starting his career when she’d left the Academy. Maybe it was no more than the craving to say hello, I used to pilot superluminals, too. I understand what you’re talking about.

“There’s almost always someone, after one of these events,” she had told her audience, “who asks how I got my start. ‘I have a nephew who talks about piloting starships,’ he’ll say, in a tone that suggests the kid has other problems as well. ‘Never been much into travel out there myself. The Earth’s big enough for me.’ And you know, I feel sorry for him. The train’s long since left the station, and he’s still standing on the platform.

“I honestly can’t imagine what my life would have been without the opportunity to sit on the bridge of a superluminal, to cruise past Vega IV. To see Saturn’s rings from the surface of Iapetus. To stand on the beach at Morikai, on a warm summer afternoon, with the wind blowing behind me and a silver sun high overhead and to know that I’m the only living thing on that entire world.

“And I know what you’re thinking. This is a woman who’s spent a lot of time alone. In strange places. You have to expect she’d be a bit deranged on the subject.” That drew laughter from the audience. “But let’s talk about why the interstellar effort matters.

“Once you’ve been out there, and seen what it’s like, how many worlds there are, how gorgeous some of these places are, how majestic, you can never settle for staying in Virginia.” She talked about good times on the flight lines, described what we’d been learning about our environment and about ourselves, and even brought in Destiny and DNA. “If some of the current politicians had been around a few thousand years ago,” she’d said, “we never would have gotten out of Africa. Boats cost too much.

“To close everything down now, to say we’ve had enough, let’s just park on the front porch, which is what we’re doing, is a betrayal of everything that matters.” She’d looked out over her audience. “What would we think of a child who had no curiosity? Who was given a sealed box and showed no interest in its contents? In the end, we have to decide who we are.”

When she’d finished, somebody asked whether she thought it was true that the human race, to ensure its long-term survival, needed to get off-world. Establish colonies. Immunize itself against catastrophe.

“That’s probably so,” she’d replied. “It makes sense. But that’s not the real reason to go. If we stay here, where it’s warm and comfortable, we’ll die a kind of spiritual death. And I guess maybe it wouldn’t matter because we’d probably not be worth saving.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d have said to her had he gotten the chance. Maybe just that he thought she was right, and that he wished her well. But a guy in a light blue suit had cornered her in the lobby. He’d waited a few minutes while they talked, begun to feel either impatient or conspicuous, and finally decided to hell with it.

They were having a reception in the green room, but he decided he’d invested enough time, took a last look at Hutchins, who seemed to be trying to break off the conversation, and wondered briefly whether he shouldn’t help out. She’d probably welcome being rescued. In the end, though, he simply left.

It was an afternoon filled with paperwork, clearing up the administrative details on the sale of a town house on Massachusetts Avenue, going over a right-of-way agreement, making sure the licenses were in order. When he’d finished, he needed to make some adjustments to the inventory. Then talk with the company lawyer, who was looking into a property dispute, one of those domestic things where one party wanted to divest the property and the other was trying to hang on to it.

It was an easy way to make a living. He was making more money than he ever thought possible. And, God knows, his social life was better than it had been during his Academy days. Nothing like regular hours to put women in your life.

The secret of success for any good real estate agent lay in his ability to connect with the clients. Which meant having a naturally friendly disposition toward strangers and, often, people who tried your patience; and the ability to project it. Sounded simple enough, but Emma insisted they were qualities she rarely encountered. Most people, she said, are out for themselves, and any reasonably observant buyer will pick that up right away in a real estate agent. “If they decide you’re faking it, they may still buy the property if they like it enough. But you won’t sell them anything that has only marginal appeal.”

Matt had only to be himself. Take customers around to look at properties. Wait for them to say yes. File the documents. Collect his commission. He remembered a friend from high school who used to say he wanted one of those jobs where you slept in a bed in a store window. The idea had actually seemed appealing at the time. No responsibility. No way to go wrong. And you’d get a regular paycheck. It was more or less what he had now. The paycheck, of course, wasn’t regular, but the flow of money was substantial and presented no problem. Why then did the thought of going back to Stern & Hopkins in the morning, and every morning until he retired, fill him with horror?

The second Wednesday of the month was a night routinely devoted to the Arlington Businessmen’s Association dinner. The event was held at the Liberty Club, and it was required attendance for anyone in the community who expected to be taken seriously as an entrepreneur, CEO, or whatever. Emma had encouraged his attendance, and he had for four years been trying to persuade himself that it was an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

He arrived toward the end of happy hour, paid up, collected a rum topper, stopped for some small talk with George Edward and his psychologist wife Annie, bought a few tickets in the raffle being conducted for this month’s worthy cause, and finally wandered into the dining area.

He sat down with the same group he usually sat with, another real estate agent and his wife, the director of a medical test lab and her father, a retired construction contractor, and the owner of a landscaping business, who was accompanied by a son. Emma usually joined them with her husband, but she’d told him she wouldn’t make it that night.

They talked about nothing he’d be able to remember ten minutes later. The food came, chicken on a bed of rice, tomatoes and celery. Somehow the chefs at the Liberty always managed to flatten whatever flavor the meal might normally have had. But the bread was good.

The guest speaker was from a local investment house. His topic was Building Your Portfolio. He was a small, nervous-looking guy who squeaked a lot. He overdramatized everything, made it all sound like the outbreak of a world war, and went on at length citing price-earnings ratios, how the problems in Africa were going to affect the markets, why corporate bonds were not a particularly good investment at the moment. The woman on Matt’s right, the real estate agent’s wife, looked at him and rolled her eyes. Matt agreed. After Hutchins’s passionate pitch for the stars, this was pretty slow going.

When it was over, he mingled. Abraham Hogarth, Dr. Hogarth to anyone not belonging to his circle, invited Matt to meet his daughter. Hogarth ran an operation that monitored consumer trends and advised retailers how to market their products. Matt had never believed Hogarth really possessed a doctorate. He seemed a bit too impressed by the title, the kind of person who would very much have liked people to refer to him as Excellency.

The daughter was attractive, and Hogarth suggested Matt might come some evening for dinner. You and I share a lot of interests, he said. (Matt had no idea what those might be.) We’d love to have you over, wouldn’t we, Bessie?

Bessie looked embarrassed, and Matt felt sorry for her. She didn’t need help with men, but with her father pushing her as if she were damaged goods, the poor woman was at a distinct disadvantage. Some of the resentment showed in the way she responded to Matt.

Somebody else wanted to know whether he’d be playing tennis over the weekend. Matt did play most Saturdays. Other than walking between the office and home, it was the only exercise he got. Yes, he said, he expected he would.

The evening ended, more or less with a whimper, and he was on his way out the door when Julie Claggett spotted him. Julie was an English teacher at Thomas MacElroy High in Alexandria. Her father, a charter member of the Liberty Club, owned the Longview Hotel. “Matt,” she said, “have a minute?” Julie was a nicely tucked blonde, congenial, energetic, the kind of woman who always got her way. Like any good high school teacher, she was pure showbiz. She could have drifted through life, hanging around the pool. But instead she used her considerable talents trying to demonstrate to reluctant kids that reading was fun.

“I was wondering if I could persuade you to come over and talk to a couple of my classes?”

His appearances at MacElroy High were becoming an annual event. “Maybe this time about real estate?” he asked, innocently.

Her smile was a killer. “Seriously.” She liked him to go in and explain to her students what Quraqua looked like from orbit, and how it felt to ride alongside a comet. “Do the routine about how space is made out of rubber, and why my kids weigh more in the basement than they do on the roof.”

“Okay.”

“And why they get older more quickly waiting for the bus than they do riding it.” She grinned. “It works, Matt,” she said. “Every time you come in and talk about this stuff, there’s a surge of kids at the library.”

She had the material down, and could easily have done the routine herself. But Matt had the credentials. He’d been out there.

“Sure,” he said. “When did you want me to come over?”

He got a call from Ari Claggett in the morning. “Matt,” he said, “I wanted to thank you for agreeing to help Julie at the school. She tells me her students really enjoy listening to you.”

He was surprised. Julie’s father had never before said anything about his efforts. “You’re welcome, Ari,” he said. “I enjoy doing it.”

Claggett was a big man, tall, overweight, with a voice that implied he knew exactly what he was talking about. “They don’t get enough of it,” he said. “Kids spend too much time listening to people like me just push information at them. Julie says you show them a lot of passion.”

“I just go in there and say what I think,” said Matt. “Most of her students have the impression the world ends at the space station.”

“I wasn’t really talking about outer space,” he said. “I was thinking about books. Julie says most of her students—not all, but most—have never discovered why they matter.” He appeared to be at home, seated in a leather divan, lush white drapes pulled behind him. Matt could see something else was on his mind. “Sometimes I wonder where we’re going to be by the end of the century.”

Claggett’s interest in education was no secret. He’d pushed local politicians to get more money for the schools, and had long campaigned to get parents involved. You live or die with the parents, Julie had quoted him as saying. If you don’t have them on your side, you’re helpless. “We’ll be okay,” said Matt. “The kids just need somebody to turn them on. Maybe Orion could arrange free tours for some of them.” Ari sat on Orion’s board of directors.

He allowed himself to look as if he thought it was a good suggestion. “Why don’t you and Julie make the request? Come up with a scheme and put it in writing? We couldn’t send the whole school, but we could consider giving some awards to a few of the kids.” He nodded. Why not? “It shouldn’t be a hard sell. It would be pretty good PR for Orion.”

“Yes, it would.”

“Which suggests something else.” Ah. Finally, we were getting to the reason for the call. “Listen, Matt, I have a proposal for you. If you’re interested.”

“Okay.”

“We’re putting together an advertising program. Orion is. We want to have a few well-known former star pilots do spots. You know, stand on the bridge and say how much fun it is to take one of the tours. How educational it can be. The money’s not a whole lot, but it wouldn’t take much of your time. And I thought it was something you might enjoy doing.”

He hesitated, not certain why. Yes, he’d be glad to do it. “Sure,” he said.

Ari plunged ahead: “We’re going to get maybe five or six guys to do this for us. You’re our first choice. It’s my way of saying thanks for what you’ve been doing for Julie.”

Funny how it became Ari doing a favor for him. “I’m not much of an actor.”

“Don’t need an actor,” he said. “We’re looking for people who believe the message.”

He had dinner with Reyna that night. The conversation eventually got around to the loss of the Jenkins. To the narrow escape of the people on board. “You know,” she said, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it makes me glad you’re not still out there. Say what you want about real estate: At least it’s safe.”

POLAR BEARS RELEASED FROM CAPTIVITY

Latest Effort to Replenish Species

REPORTS OF RELIGIOUS EXECUTIONS IN MIDDLE EAST

Death Penalty Still in Place for Muslims Who Go Astray

Christian Missionary Reported Among Victims

World Council Demands Access

LONGEVITY A GLOBAL PROBLEM

Are People Living Too Long?

“Bosses Linger, Politicians Stay Forever,” Says Melvin

HAPPINESS GENE UNCOVERED

“A Little Tweaking Will Go a Long Way”

Some Want It Banned

Yuvenkov: “Relentlessly Happy People Will Become Slaves”

MINNESOTA TEACHER FIRED FOR PRAYING TO ZEUS

Religion in Public Schools?

Or Violation of a Basic Freedom?

GREENWATCH SAYS CLIMATE HAS STABILIZED

Conditions Worsening at Decreasing Rate

“Light at End of Tunnel,” Says Bokely

NUMBER OF MEAT-EATERS DECLINES ELEVENTH CONSECUTIVE YEAR

Health, Ethical Considerations, High Prices Are Factors

MCGRAW CONVICTED ON ROBOTICS CHARGE

Violation of Prohibited Technology Act

Sentencing Set for Next Week

Court May Seek to Set Example

DAMAGED STARSHIP SAW BILLION-YEAR-OLD ARTIFACT

Chapter 5

Rudy insisted Hutch be present when Jon Silvestri came in to make his case. “Why?” she asked. “I’m not a physicist. I can’t pass judgment on what he says.”

In the background, the volume turned low, Brad Wilkins was singing about the Savannah Express, rolling through the night.

Rudy’s fingers drummed the edge of his desk, the way they did when he was being forced to waste time explaining the obvious. “He came to you. I think it’ll be more comfortable all around if you’re here.”

He also brought in Paul Parmentier, a physicist who specialized in Hazeltine technology and spatial structure. Paul was a little guy with a big mustache and a reputation for driving his colleagues crazy. He closely resembled Banjo Hawk, a walk-on comic who was enormously popular with high school dropouts. Oddly enough, it was the big mustache that made it work. Hutch never understood why Parmentier would want to cultivate the similarities. It was as if he longed to be one of the guys. It was a curious attitude for an accomplished physicist.

Paul’s feelings lay close to the surface. He never forgot a slight, and any criticism of an idea he supported was deemed personal. Nevertheless, Rudy insisted there was no doubting his mastery of the field. You want to talk about transdimensional drives, he was your guy. Paul got there early and started by telling them before Silvestri had arrived that he didn’t think a more effective system than the Hazeltine was possible. But he was willing to keep an open mind.

Paul had been a consultant for the Foundation since its beginning, not because of any philosophical leaning toward exploratory starflight, but simply because of his connection with Rudy. They were old friends. Hutch suspected Rudy was the only one he had. They constituted one of those unusual pairings in which both men had courted the same young woman, both had married her, both had been cast aside by her, and through it all they had maintained the friendship. How they’d managed that, Hutch couldn’t imagine. The former wife had been a good catch, quite attractive, and herself a biologist of no mean accomplishment. The last time Hutch had seen her, she’d insisted she would never marry another physicist. Maybe not marry again at all.

Paul was about forty, with red hair and expressive eyes. You always knew what he was thinking.

Within five minutes of his arrival, he was explaining why it was impossible to move across the galaxy any more quickly than the Hazeltine drive would allow. Hutch caught something about manifold derivatives and net inconsistencies, but could make no sense of it. She suspected Rudy was lost, too, but he nodded in all the right places, asked a few questions and, if he was as puzzled as she, did a decent job hiding the fact.

Twenty minutes later, right on time, Jon Silvestri arrived. He stood in the office doorway, almost as tall as the door itself, hesitating, not sure which of the occupants to address. Rudy escorted him into the office, and he smiled at Hutch. “I appreciate your seeing me,” he said. “And I wanted to say first that I was glad you were able to save the people on the Jenkins.” Rudy thanked him, and Hutch took them through the introductions.

Silvestri was nervous. He was young, and he probably knew both Rudy and Paul by reputation. Moreover, the two older men were suspicious of him, especially Parmentier, and there was no way he could not be aware of the fact. Their suspicions were driven, of course, by his extraordinary claims. There might also have been a problem with the way he dressed. He wore a dark gray business suit, the sort you might get at Christiansen’s. It was out of the mainstream for a profession that took pride in rumpled clothes. If you’re paying attention to your wardrobe, Rudy believed, your mind isn’t sufficiently occupied.

Within minutes they were talking about bending space and juggling local parameters and manipulating tensor beams. Silvestri inserted a chip into Rudy’s AI. They closed the curtains to darken the room, and the AI, at Silvestri’s direction, provided a series of images, representations of quantum forces, logarithmic spirals, hyperboloids, and God knew what else. He asked the AI to hold this image or that while he made his points. They might have been salient. Or not. Hutch couldn’t tell from the reactions she was seeing. Paul got behind Rudy’s desk, found a pad, and took to writing things down. He asked a lot of questions.

“Ah, yes,” Silvestri would say. “I probably wasn’t very clear on that. Let me try it another way.”

And so it went, through the morning. The critical thing was that Paul didn’t cut the meeting short. Rudy continually looked from one to the other, trying to follow the arcane dialogue. Eventually, Hutch got up and slipped out, apparently with only Rudy noticing. She wandered around the offices, talked to the help, stretched her legs, hit the washroom, and went back. They were still going strong.

Silvestri was explaining that he didn’t know precisely how effective the drive would be, which seemed to translate into how much ground it would cover. “Can’t be sure until we run a test.”

He went into a description of where “Henry” had gone wrong. (Hutch had trouble adjusting to referring to one of the century’s certified geniuses in so familiar a manner.) He laid too much reliance on asymmetrical vertices, Silvestri said. Not enough on something else that escaped her.

He finished with a flourish and a broad smile, implying that it was all so simple, how could we have missed it first time around? He glanced over at Hutch. Paul traded looks with Rudy, pursed his lips, let his head drift back until he was studying the ceiling. “Okay, Jon,” he said. “Thank you.”

Silvestri retrieved his chip. “You’re welcome.”

Paul sat back. “It would help if you’d leave that for us.”

“Okay. Sure.” He put the chip on the edge of Rudy’s battered desk. “You understand, no copies are to be made. And none of it is for publication.”

“Of course. Give us a few days to look it over, and we’ll get back to you.”

Silvestri had obviously been hoping for more. Those dark eyes clouded. He looked down at Paul. The decision-maker. “Be aware,” he said, “I could have gone elsewhere. Orion would love to have something like this. Tours to black holes. To places where stars are being born. They’d give a lot.”

Rudy’s mouth tightened. “So why didn’t you take it to them?”

Silvestri looked directly at Rudy. “I know how they’d use it,” he said. “I’d prefer you have it.”

When he was gone, the room went quiet. Paul stared at the notepad he’d been using. Rudy’s eyes swiveled from Paul to Hutch to the door and back to Paul. Hutch shifted her weight, and her chair squealed. “What do you think, gentlemen?” she asked. “Any of that make sense to you?” She was, of course, really talking to Paul.

Paul stared straight ahead, past her, past Rudy. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s too much to digest at one time.”

“You must have a sense of it, though,” insisted Rudy. “Does he sound as if he knows what he’s talking about?”

Paul was nodding and shaking his head no at the same time. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.” He picked up the chip, turned it over, examined it, put it in his pocket. “My gut reaction is that it can’t be done. Nobody seriously believes it’s possible to outrun the Hazeltine. And by the way, that could be the real reason he didn’t go to Orion or Kosmik. They aren’t going to spend money on a boondoggle.”

“Then you think—what?”

“Give me some time. We’ll keep an open mind. There’s nothing to lose, and Henry Barber thought the project was sufficiently worthwhile to spend his last years on it. And he must have trusted Silvestri. So I’ll take everything home and get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Paul,” Hutch said, “when Barber was running his tests, the drive system kept blowing up. They lost, as I recall, three ships.”

“I know.”

“Do you think it might happen again?”

“Might? Sure. Will it? I don’t know.”

The Academy of Science and Technology had not collapsed in the usual sense. The government hadn’t wanted to be accused of neglecting an organization with so many accomplishments. So, less than two years after Hutch left, they had reorganized the Academy, centralized it, according to the term then in vogue. It meant it had been subsumed into the federal structure, designated semiautonomous, and eventually taken over wholesale by the Department of Technological Development.

Since leaving the Academy, Hutch had lived a quiet life. She’d stayed home and reared her two kids, mostly. She’d also set up as a guest speaker, and had discovered there was no end of audiences who were willing to pay to hear her talk about her Academy years. She drew lessons for them in leadership and management, explaining why it was important to encourage subordinates to speak freely, why decision-makers should sit down with people who disagreed with them. She talked about what happens when managers intimidate people. She gave examples, sometimes naming names, of life-and-death decisions that had gone wrong even though information to make a rational call had been readily available. “If things blow up,” she was fond of saying, “and if the boss survives, he’ll inevitably claim that some underling dropped the ball. Didn’t tell me. Harry should have spoken up. Said something. But the truth is that when your people don’t tell you what you need to know, it’s a failure of leadership.”

She had seen much of it in her lifetime, at the Academy, in government, and in the private industries with which she’d had to deal during her years as director of operations. There was a tendency everywhere to believe that if you could perform a job, you could supervise others performing that same job. It was a view that led to mismanagement, inefficiency, failure, and sometimes carnage.

Life at home was quiet. Tor was gone, the victim of undiagnosed heart disease. Maureen and Charlie were both away at school. Maureen would graduate next year with a degree in history. She planned to teach, and had shown no interest in following the career arcs of either of her parents. Charlie, on the other hand, seemed to have his father’s artistic aptitude. Very few people, however, made a living moving paint around on a canvas. But however that turned out, it seemed clear there’d be no more star-pilots in the family.

Hutch never said anything, never pressed her kids about it. Careers were their call, not hers. And, of course, star pilots barely existed anymore. Another ten years, and she suspected nobody would be leaving the solar system.

Still, it hurt that her passion for the interstellar deeps had not passed down into the family.

The provided wisdom was that when you had an AI, you never came home to an empty house. He (or she) was always there to greet you when you walked in the door. Even if he’d been instructed to say nothing, as some were, you still felt his presence. But, of course, it wasn’t the same. AI or not, her home still had echoes.

She missed the kids. When they’d left for school, much of the family’s energy had gone with them. Now, as the flyer angled down out of the traffic stream and settled onto the pad, she looked at the house, dark despite the lights that came on to greet her, and it seemed abandoned.

After the chindi business, she’d retired from piloting to marry Tor and had taken an administrative job with the Academy. That had lasted about a year. She’d been unable to cope with riding back and forth to work every day. (They’d lived in Alexandria then.) And she’d felt horribly bored preparing personnel reports and staff studies. Tor had encouraged her to quit, and finally she had.

But it had been more than that. She’d wanted to go back to the interstellars. They’d talked it over, and Tor reluctantly had given his blessing. She could still recall his going up to Union that first day when she was heading out to Beta Pac with a team of assorted specialists who were going to try to discover whether anyone on that unhappy world remembered the days when they, too, had moved among the stars. (They found nobody. There were a few inscriptions, a few legends, that seemed to hark back to the Monument-Makers, but their descendants had no memory of who they had once been. And it struck Hutch as the ultimate irony that the race that had left monuments all over the Orion Arm because they wanted to be remembered by whatever other species might eventually show up had been forgotten by their own.)

Tor had gone with her to Union, had helped carry her bags, had gone on board the Phyllis Preston with her. It was then brand-new. Eventually, after years of service, it would be transferred to the Prometheus Foundation. At the time, she’d almost been in tears when she took her seat on the bridge, said hello to the AI, and began running down her preflight check-off list. It had been one of the most emotional moments in her life. There was a time she’d thought that a sad commentary, but that was years ago. She was wiser now. She loved the superluminals and the vast deeps between the stars and she was simply never going to get past that.

Tor had stayed while her passengers, one by one, filed in. They’d introduced one another, and he’d lingered until it was time to start. She still remembered him as he went out through the hatch, and moments later appeared at one of the station viewports. He’d waved, and she’d waved back, and the Preston had come to life. The countdown had hit zero, and she eased the yoke forward. She’d taken it out herself, rather than let the AI do it. She’d waited too long not to milk the situation for every ounce of pleasure. But she’d watched Tor, with his right hand raised, sliding past the viewport until he was gone. Outside the launch bay, she’d accelerated, poured the juice to the main engines, but she kept seeing Tor drifting away. Less than a year later she’d been back full-time at the Academy.

She had no regrets.

Not really. Had she stayed in space, her marriage could not have survived. She’d have missed all those years with her husband. Maureen and Charlie would not exist. And she’d have gone down with the Academy, as so many others had.

Tor, of course, was gone now. Yet something else was missing in her life.

She’d have liked to take the Preston out again.

When she was a teen, her father had schooled her on the importance of setting priorities. “I could have had a decent career cataloging star clouds and speculating on the properties of black holes,” he’d once told her. It would have brought prestige, recognition, better money.

Instead, he’d spent his time at the Drake Center listening for that first intelligent murmur from the stars. While his colleagues learned not to take him seriously. Even after it had actually happened, after the historic signal had come in and the first link with an advanced civilization had been established, he was written off as a kind of bystander to an event that was a matter of pure luck.

Anyone could have done it. All that was necessary was a little persistence.

He’d told her that everything else paled beside first contact. In the end, who would really care what the temperature range was inside the Korialus Cloud?

Like Tor, he’d been taken from her too soon. Her dad had died young of a heart ailment no one knew he had. Disquieting similarity there, too. But he’d lived long enough to know his life had mattered. As had her husband.

It occurred to her that, if the Locarno Drive actually worked, if it gave them a decent range, they could send somebody out to Sigma 2711. Maybe find out who had sent that long-ago signal. To her dad.

Chapter 6

For Rudy, the Locarno Drive presented the moment of truth. The loss of the Jenkins had severely damaged the Foundation’s reputation. Despite the response to Hutch’s luncheon appearance, support had dropped off significantly.

The first call had come from Lyle Cormier, the organization’s most generous single supporter. He was in his office, dressed in one of his trademark black-and-white ensembles. “Probably best to give it up, Rudy,” he’d said. “The world is moving on. There are historical forces at work here, and there’s just no point trying to fight them.” Cormier always talked that way. He hadn’t said outright that he would cut his support, but it was implicit.

There’d been a flood of others. During the first few days, longtime contributors had gotten in touch, had called or come by, and the message had always been the same: Rudy, you know I’ve always been a hundred percent behind you and the Foundation. But times are changing. No point beating a dead horse. It’s just money down a rathole. No matter what we do, does anyone expect we’re really going back out to the stars? When was the last time a new superluminal rolled off the production line?

That was another expression he heard all the time. Going back to the stars. As if we’d ever really been out there. The deepest penetration had been the Trifid, three thousand light-years away. An eleven-month flight. They had never really gotten clear of the immediate neighborhood.

Environmental problems had proved to be every bit as intractable as originally predicted. The solutions were expensive. No real value was forthcoming from the interstellar effort. So it was inevitable that it would come to be perceived as a boondoggle. Boondoggle became the title of the book by Gregory MacAllister that had so effectively summed up the arguments against the superluminals. It was a worthwhile effort, he’d said. Acquiring knowledge is always worthwhile. But we need to leave it to another generation. First we have to get the planetary house in order.

MacAllister was right, to a point. But there was a good chance that, when this generation died off, people would forget how it had been done. Give it up now, Rudy thought, and we may be giving it up forever.

They needed a jump start. And the Locarno might provide that. If it worked.

After his conversation with Silvestri, he waited anxiously for Paul’s reaction. When he heard nothing over the course of a week, he initiated the call himself. “Working on it,” Paul said. “Best not to rush. These things take time.”

Rudy had no family. He’d been married three times, but his wives had all left, citing different reasons. He was inattentive. He was cold. He came on too strong. He was inexpressibly dull. That had been Eve, the last one. He had argued that he didn’t think dull was reasonable grounds for divorce, but this was an enlightened era in which one needed only cite a reason to the soon-to-be ex-spouse. The law required no more than intent by either party.

“I’m sorry, Rudy,” she’d said. “You’re nice and everything, but all you ever want to talk about is the North Star. For God’s sake, you really need to get a life.”

Rudy had a life. He loved what he did, and his days were lived on the knife-edge of passion. On more than one occasion Hutch had told him that he was a fanatic. But she’d meant it as a compliment. Why were there no available women around like her? (Technically, of course, she had been available since the death of her husband, but he sensed she did not see him as a prospect.) However all that might be, there was no evading the reality that the Foundation was down to the Phyllis Preston.

One ship to explore the universe.

And Jonathan Silvestri wanted to take her, tear out her Hazeltine drive and replace it with something from Switzerland that might, or might not, take them deeper into the Orion Arm. And if it didn’t work, he’d have to put the Hazeltine back, assuming there was a ship to put it back into. How much would all that cost?

He was paging through the financial report. There was enough to buy one more ship. It wouldn’t be a new one, of course. There were no new ones anymore. Grosvenor, Hudson Bay, and the other onetime major manufacturers were turning out interplanetary ships, oceangoing vessels, farm tractors, and aircraft. And, in the case of Hudson Bay, entertainment centers and robot dishwashers.

He scanned the listings for available vehicles. Kosmik was offering three from its onetime fleet. Orion had a couple up for sale. No guarantees on any of them. Caveat Emptor.

The Foundation had taken good care of the Preston. The rational thing to do, if Paul approved the Locarno effort, would be to pick up one of these bargain-basement jobs and use that for the test. It would strain Foundation resources, but it was a better idea than risking the only ship they had.

He called the operations center at the space station. A technician blinked on. “Union Ops,” he said in a bored voice.

Rudy identified himself. Then: “We have some new equipment to check out. We may want to set up a test flight within the next few weeks. Control it from the station. How much of a problem would it be to do that?”

“You mean no pilot?” asked the tech.

What else could he mean? “That’s right.”

“Sir, all you’d have to do is turn it over to the ship’s AI. Just tell it what you want done, and it’ll run the test for you.”

AIs were not really independent intelligences. They were software packages that mimicked intelligent entities. At least, that was the common wisdom. But nobody could prove it was indeed the case. Rudy was obsessed with the notion that AIs were alive. Chip, in his office; Amanda, at home and in his flyer; and the assorted voices that made life easier in restaurants, hotels, wherever. Maybe they were sentient, and maybe they weren’t. Whatever the truth, they put on a good show. And Rudy was taking no chances. He intended to remove the AI from whatever ship was used, in case the drive blew up during the test.

It was no coincidence that the ship was named for the celebrated twenty-first-century humanitarian. But he couldn’t give his real reason to the technician without getting laughed at. “The nature of the test requires the AI be disconnected,” he said.

The technician shrugged. “There’ll be a charge. But we can do it that way if you really want to.”

“How much advance notice would you need?”

He made a sucking sound. “When are you going to do this?”

“Not sure yet we will. If it happens, it’ll probably be within the next few months or so.”

“Hold on.” He consulted another screen. Talked with someone Rudy couldn’t see. Nodded okay. “Depending on how busy we are, I’d say a few days would do it. A week, maybe, if you want to get a berth at a specific time.”

He spent the next three days reassuring Prometheus subscribers that the end had not come, that the Foundation was not going under, that it was true this was a dark time, but that was all the more reason to rally round the flag. He actually said that. Yes, it was the oldest of clichés. But it worked. Some callers said okay, Rudy could count on them. Somebody even thanked God for people like Rudy, who didn’t give up as soon as things began to go south.

Toward the end of the second week, Hutch called. “I don’t know,” he told her. “He hasn’t said anything yet.”

“Have you called him?” She was a beautiful woman, he thought. Dark, penetrating eyes, an intense energy, and a sense of what mattered. She was at home, wearing a white blouse and a gold necklace. Behind her was a wall of books.

“Of course. He knows I’m anxious to hear.”

“Okay. Let me know when you have something.”

Silvestri called less than an hour later. “I’m still waiting to hear,” Rudy said. “Just be patient a bit longer.”

“Rudy, this is using up a lot of time.” He was behind a desk or table, his hands folded, his chin propped on them. “I wish we could move things along.”

“It’s a good sign,” Rudy said. “He’s taking a long look. That usually means he’s impressed.” Actually, Rudy was making it up as he went along.

Silvestri’s expression hardened. He saw right through Rudy’s happy talk. “It will work.”

“Nobody hopes for it more than we do,” he said. “But you must understand, it means a considerable investment on our part. We have to be sure what we’re doing.”

Paul called the next morning. “It might be okay.”

“Marvelous.” Rudy would have gone into ecstasy, but Paul wasn’t smiling.

“Of course, you understand there’s no way to be absolutely certain,” he said, “until we run the test flight.”

“I understand that.”

“I’m trying to think how to say this.”

“Just say it.”

“I think it’ll work.”

“You want to put a number on it, Paul?”

“I can’t. Not with any certainty. But I’m optimistic.”

“Okay, then. We’ll do it.”

“You should be aware, though, that if it doesn’t perform as expected, there could be a catastrophic result.”

“Destruction of the vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Still, if it succeeds, it will be one hell of a payoff.” Paul lounged in a leather chair, wrapped in an oversized gold sweater. He allowed himself a smile. “Look, Rudy, I’d like to see you try it. Because I’d like to be around to see it work. And maybe that’s clouding my judgment. But it’s worth backing.”

Thomas Macelroy High School was the home of the Explorers. It was named for the commander of the first ship to travel beyond the solar system.

When Matt arrived, he paused, as he always did, to look at the lander standing outside the main entrance. It was an AKV Spartan model, the kind routinely used on the old Academy ships, manufactured in 2229 by Starworks. It had at one time been aboard the Bill Jenkins when that ship found the nascent civilization at Lookout in 2234. The lander had descended on 117 worlds, four of which, including Lookout, had supported biosystems. Its history was inscribed on a bronze plaque mounted beside the hatch. The hatch itself remained closed and locked to protect the interior from the weather and the vagaries of the students. And, probably, old star pilots who’d get in and not want to leave.

He’d had one of these aboard the Resnick.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY was emblazoned in black letters on the hull, along with the familiar logo, Socrates’ scroll circled by a star. The after section carried the school’s name, with the seventeenth-century four-master that served as their motif, along with their sports designation EXPLORERS in script. A sudden gust of wind pulled at the trees, and he drew his jacket around him. A car eased into one of the parking places. An older woman got out and marched into the school building. A parent, he thought. And judging by her expression, the kid was in trouble.

Some things never change.

He followed her inside, signed in at the office, and collected a teenage escort who took him to the library. Julie was there, talking to a small group of students. She saw him, smiled brightly, and came over. “Good to see you, Matt,” she said. “You’ll have two eleventh-grade classes to start. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

“Can I get you something?”

They had fresh-squeezed orange juice. While he sampled it, bells rang, the room emptied, the hallways became active, and a fresh batch of kids began pouring into the library. Some of them looked curiously in his direction, but for the most part they were preoccupied with each other. Julie gave them a couple of minutes, asked if he was ready to go, strode to the lectern, and called them to order.

They settled in, and she introduced him. Matt Darwin. “He’s a retired star pilot.”

Not really retired. Unemployed. That sounded better.

Matt never used lecterns. They got between him and his audience. He’d been seated on a tabletop, and he stood upright as the audience’s attention swung his way. “Mr. Darwin flew Academy missions. You know what the Academy was, right?” A few hands went up. Julie looked at a tall, dark-eyed girl in back.

“They used to do exploration missions,” the girl said.

In front, a male student rolled his eyes.

“Very good, Sylvia.” Julie looked down at the male. “Mr. Darwin, Harry, has been farther from Alexandria than anyone here could imagine.”

She took a seat along the side where she could watch Matt and her students.

Matt thanked her and looked around at the audience. “You have a lander out on the lawn in front of the school,” he said. “I’d like to tell you a little about it.”

Chapter 7

Rudy and Hutch looked at four interstellars and settled on a Grosvenor 352, the Happy Times, which the Foundation bought from Orbital at auction. The ship was forty-two years old, had hauled freight and passengers out to Serenity and the other stations, and on one occasion had been immortalized by Whitmore Covington in his Quantum Dialogues, conversations on the state of the human race supposedly conducted on the ship during a flight to Nok, whose idiotic inhabitants continued to kill one another over dwindling resources with early-twentieth-century weapons.

Despite its claim to fame, the cost was minimal because the ship’s Hazeltine engines were inoperable. That was, of course, irrelevant to Rudy. So he saved substantial money, and in addition picked up a vehicle whose historic value, if the Locarno Drive went nowhere, would allow it to be resold later. “Of course,” his occasional companion Ellen Simons told him, “if the Locarno’s a flameout, the Foundation’s going to have to shut down anyhow.”

Mouths of babes. Ellen was a pessimist, and was always ready to explain why something wouldn’t work. It was the reason she and Rudy would never get serious. But about this, she was right. The Foundation was on its last legs. Poking around the vast unknown with one Hazeltine ship wasn’t going to get anyone excited. They needed the Locarno.

Paying for the Happy Times, as well as financing the installation of the new drive, drained the Foundation’s resources. Silvestri virtually moved onto the station to assist the work of a team of technicians. That part of the operation didn’t go well. The technicians didn’t really need him, and they quickly took offense at his presence. “We’ve got the basic unit,” one of them complained to Rudy. “All we have to do is tie it in to the ship’s systems. We just don’t need him looking over everybody’s shoulder all the time.”

So Rudy arranged a series of public presentations for Silvestri. He’d be doing guest appearances at colleges and universities and talking to Rotary groups and press associations and whomever else Rudy could round up. When he presented the package, Silvestri smiled. “They’ve been complaining to you, haven’t they?”

“Yes,” he said. “Come on home. We can use the PR.”

In fact, Rudy would have kept the project quiet had he been able. He’d have preferred to present the world with a successful test rather than hang himself out there to look silly if the Locarno fizzled. But with so many people involved, word would inevitably leak out, so he called a press conference and announced what they were trying to do. It became a big story for about two days. But other events, a grisly murder in a Chicago teknopark, followed by a fresh bribery scandal involving several congressmen, pushed it aside. Meanwhile, several physicists gave interviews. All admitted they saw no reason to suppose a better drive was impossible. Nonetheless, they were uniform in predicting failure. Eliot Greeley, the renowned cosmologist from the University of London, remarked that, “Hell, anything is possible, unless it’s specifically prohibited. But that doesn’t mean you can do it.”

When he called Hutch, pretending to be upbeat, she caught his mood and pointed out that the experts had been saying much the same thing about FTL travel in general until Ginny Hazeltine had proven them all wrong.

As a counterbalance, Paul became increasingly enthusiastic with each passing day. “I think we’re going to make it happen, Rudy,” he said. “Keep the faith.”

Ah, yes. And so he did. When the Foundation’s contributors got in touch to urge Rudy on, he told them he was confident, but they should keep in mind it was a gamble. It may not work. Whether it does or not, we’ll still need your support.

The most stinging rebuke came from Joe Hollingsworth, who had been one of the Foundation’s founders. Hollingsworth arrived in his office one morning to excoriate him for wasting resources on a crank project. He was one of those intimidating figures who commands everyone’s attention when he enters a room. He didn’t stand out physically in any way. He was not quite six feet tall, part African, part Massachusetts Yankee, part Mexican. Dressed impeccably. But you knew he was there, and you always got the feeling he’d just come from advising the president. “Rudy,” he’d said, “you’re throwing money away and, more significantly, you’re demolishing the Foundation’s reputation. When the Happy Times goes out there and blows up, which is what’s going to happen, nobody will ever take us seriously again.”

“It won’t blow up,” Rudy had said.

“Doesn’t matter. Anything short of an all-out success is going to make us look foolish. Why didn’t you talk to us before you started all this?”

Why indeed? “Because I knew you’d veto it,” he’d replied in a burst of indignant candor. “Because there are always people on the board who think we can’t get the job done and somebody else should take the risk. Joe, I wanted us to be the ones to do it. Because it would ultimately give us the inside track on using the system.”

“Good.” Hollingsworth sounded as if he was talking to a child. “For an ego trip, you risk everything. If it fails, as it will, it will be the end of the Foundation. Worse, it’ll be the end of the interstellar effort in our lifetime. Well done, Rudy.”

There were others. A substantial fraction of their contributors were unhappy. They demanded to know how much the project was costing and were warning him that if the experiment didn’t work, they would be withdrawing their support.

So sending Silvestri on a public relations tour was not a bad idea. Moreover, he surprised Rudy with his ability to charm his audiences. The references to quantum fluxes and spatial entanglement were gone. Instead, he told them what the Locarno would mean. Easy access to places that had been weeks and months away. The establishment of colonies would become practical, should we choose to go that route. Travel that had once been limited to people with large bank accounts would become available to everybody. “People will be able to vacation in the Pleiades the way we do on the Moon. It will be like replacing fifteenth-century sailing ships with jets.”

Nevertheless, it seemed too good to be true. Rudy told himself he’d feel better about it if he could understand it. None of it was Rudy’s specialty. He was an astrophysicist by trade. He understood the dynamics by which stars formed and died. But nuclear processes and stellar collapse and the rest of it all seemed fairly straightforward in contrast with this multidimensional talk. Had he been around in the last century when Ginny Hazeltine was claiming she was going to be able to get to Alpha Centauri in a few hours, he’d have been one of the skeptics.

On February 19, a Monday, word came that the Itaki had found the Jenkins. On the twentieth, Rudy received a message from François, informing him they’d all been taken aboard the rescue ship and were on their way home. Everybody, he said, was in good spirits. “Sorry we lost your ship.”

The Itaki arrived at Serenity on March 1. “I thought they were closing the place down,” François reported. “But they’re telling us it’ll take years.”

The following day he sent another transmission: “Rudy, I know the Foundation is down to one ship now, and you have no need for two pilots. So I’m taking a job out here. Going to run shuttles around the station while they decommission the place. Ben and the others will be returning on the Itaki. I’ll miss working for you. I’ve enjoyed it, and I’ll look forward to seeing you when I get back. In a couple of years.” He smiled and signed off.

Three days later, the Phyllis Preston returned from a mission. Rudy was there, of course, when she docked. He took Jon along.

The Preston had been poking around in the Hyades, 150 light-years out. The cluster was thought to be about 625 million years old. It was, like all clusters, changing over time as heavier stars sank toward the center and stars on the periphery were propelled outward after near collisions.

Like most of the relatively small bubble of space into which humans had ventured, it was basically unknown country.

The system consisted of slightly more than two hundred stars, or slightly fewer, depending on how you structured your count. The Preston, conducting a general survey, had been away almost six months. It had visited about a quarter of the systems. They had found one living world, on which the biological forms were still single-celled. Early reports indicated they would need another two billion years before multiple-cell forms appeared.

There was a gas giant that might be harboring life in its atmosphere. The mission wasn’t equipped to test for that. Which meant a second flight would be needed to make the determination. Everyone knew, of course, there would be no second flight.

You could tell how desperate the exploration effort had become by the ages of the researchers. You rarely saw young people on the flights anymore. With only a couple of privately supported organizations running missions, there was simply no space available. The research teams were inevitably department heads or award winners. No more postdocs, the way it had been in the old days.

Rudy missed the old days. He’d been out three times, for a total of about eight months. He’d twice been to local systems, and once to M44, the Beehive, where he’d awakened one morning to a magnificent view of the eclipsing binary, TX Cancri.

He remembered sitting in the operations room on that flight with Audrey Cleaver, from the University of Paris. Audrey had commented that the day would come when they would give almost anything to be able to come back and repeat that experience. At the time, he’d thought Audrey was talking as much about being young as she was about watching the binary.

But it was true. And not in the sense that he’d like to go back to that particular system, as that he wished he could return to that milieu, to live again in a world where everybody was going out to the stars, where the taxpayers happily supported the initiative, and even the politicians were excited. Where people cared.

Rudy and Jon greeted each of the Preston researchers as they came out of the tube, asked them how the flight had been, had the instruments performed okay, had it been worthwhile. They all seemed satisfied with the results of the mission but were tired and glad to be home. And of course, like every returning mission, they had one regret that nobody ever admitted to: no sign of a living civilization.

The last person off was Armand (Cap) Shinyu, its pilot. Rudy introduced Jon, and Cap’s eyes went wide. “You’re the guy with the Locarno,” he said.

“Yes.” Jon flashed a covert grin at Rudy. It’s nice to be recognized.

“Well, good luck,” said Cap. He expressed his regrets over the loss of the Jenkins (which he’d already done by hyperlink, but this was the first time he and Rudy had actually been together since the accident). “Thank God nobody was hurt,” he said.

“François couldn’t get them to leave the derelict.”

“Is that what happened?” Cap was an average-sized guy with huge shoulders, a beefy face, and thick white hair. And an extraordinary baritone. He sounded like a seven-footer. He’d once been a teacher of Eastern literature.

“That’s what happened.”

Cap shook his head. “For smart people,” he said, “some of them can be pretty dumb.”

“Yeah. Can we buy you dinner?”

They wandered down to the Quarter Moon. It was quiet, mostly empty, an off-hour. “I’ve been hearing from my wife,” Cap said.

“How’s Carrie doing?”

“She’s okay. But the business with the Jenkins shook her up a little.”

“I guess I don’t blame her.”

A bot arrived to take their orders. Cap studied the menu, decided he wasn’t very hungry, and settled for a salad. “Rudy,” he said, “she’s never been happy with this job.”

Rudy ordered a bottle of German wine. “I know.” He was surprised she’d put up with it at all. The Foundation didn’t pay that much, and her husband was away six and seven months at a time. He’d offered to arrange things so she could go along. But they had kids, and there was no way to manage it.

“She’d just like a normal life. Now she’s wondering how dangerous it is.”

“You’re not going to leave us, are you, Cap?”

Two of his passengers were seated on the other side of the dining area. They looked over, saw Cap, and waved. He waved back. “She refused even to come up to meet me. She’s never done that before.”

“I’m sorry. I wish there were something we could do.”

“I do, too, Rudy.” He turned his attention to Jon: “Is it going to work?”

Jon’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Oh, yes,” he said.

“How fast is it?”

“We aren’t sure yet. Have to conduct some tests first.”

“Well,” he said, “it would be a godsend to have something that would move a bit faster than what we have now.”

Rudy held his gaze. “Cap, this is a bad time to ask, but after we finish the testing, and we’re sure it’ll do what we want it to, would you be open to piloting the first mission?”

“Rudy,” he said, “I don’t think so. If I were to do something like that, Carrie would file for separation. I think I’ve reached a point where I should pull the plug.”

“We just lost François,” said Jon.

“I’m sorry to hear it. What happened?”

Rudy sighed. “He decided we didn’t have a future. So he got another job.”

“Piloting?”

“Shuttling.”

“That’s a comedown.”

“Money’s probably a good bit better,” said Rudy.

“Yeah. I guess.” The wine arrived. They uncorked the bottle, poured three glasses, and drank to the Foundation. To each other. And to the Locarno.

Rudy took advantage of the opportunity to inspect the Happy Times. The engineers were not entirely pleased to see him, and especially not Jon, but they brought them on board, and their supervisor explained that they were conducting the first set of calibration tests for the QDU. The Quantum Disruption Unit. Rudy had no idea what it was or what it would do. Neither, he suspected, did the supervisor.

“It’s what will give us access,” said Jon. He explained its function, which had something to do with spatial manipulation. While they talked, results were coming in. Jon parked in front of one of the displays, followed the operation, looked up periodically to give Rudy an encouraging nod, and, after a half hour or so, broke into a wide smile. “It’s going to work, Rudy,” he said.