Cauldron

Chapter 21

Hutch was barely in the door when Maureen was on the circuit. She was glad the mission had gone well, but she was clearly upset.

It was probably guys again. Maureen fell in and out of love regularly. But she wasn’t inclined to relay the details. Hutch recalled how little she’d told her own mother. Remembered how shocked the woman had been when she’d announced she was going off to pilot superluminals. Stay home, she’d advised. Find a good man. Is this what we sent you to school for? Do you have any idea how much that cost?

“Everything okay, love?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” Maureen was an attractive young woman. Looked like her mother, Hutch thought with a sense of pride. She was a history major, also like Priscilla. She had her father’s easygoing manner. That latter characteristic inevitably betrayed her when she tried to hide being unhappy. “I’m glad you got home okay.”

“Maureen, we only went to Alioth.” She smiled at how that must have sounded. Maureen had never been farther than Moonbase. “It was a good flight.”

“I hear you’re going out again. To the middle of the galaxy.” It hadn’t taken long for the news to get around. “To the place where they make the omegas.”

“In November,” Hutch said. “We’re just making the trip to look around. And don’t worry. We’ll only be gone a few months.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’re just going to take a look and come home.”

“You’ll get yourself killed,” she said. “What happens if the monsters come after you?”

“I don’t think we need to worry about monsters, Maureen.”

“You don’t know that. And the ship could break down. Who’s going to go after you? Who’d even know?”

“There’ll be two ships, Maureen. Orion’s lending us the James McAdams.”

“What if they both break down?”

“You know that’s not going to happen.”

“Mom, you’re not the most careful person in the world.”

“I promise I won’t do anything foolish.”

“I know. I’m just not sure what I’d do if something happened to you.”

They’d spent most of their time on the flight home talking about going deep, theorizing about the omegas. Talking about the Cauldron. The place where the omegas were manufactured. The clouds now moving through Earth’s general neighborhood had needed 1.7 million years to get this far. That meant, of course, that whatever was producing them very likely no longer existed.

Hence, there was probably no danger.

Even if they discovered a production facility of some sort, a mega-platform manufacturing and dispatching lethal visitors around the galaxy, Hutch certainly would not be inclined to go anywhere near it. “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” she said. “We’re just going for a ride. See what’s there.”

“Can I come?”

“That’s not a good idea, Maureen. You can’t just take a year off from school.”

“Why not?”

“Because Charlie would want to come. And then Matt’s nephew would claim a spot. Where would it end?”

“Mom, for me: Don’t go. Don’t do this.”

Hutch recalled the distance that had always existed between herself and her mother, who’d never understood how her child could leave the serenity and security of New Jersey to gallivant around—she’d actually used that term—in the superluminals. They were closer now. She was still alive and well in the family home in Princeton, eternally grateful that Hutch had eventually come to her senses, married, had a family, and settled down.

“Mom, it’s not funny. It really isn’t.”

“Sorry. I was thinking about your grandmother.”

“She won’t like it either.”

“I know.” Hutch turned serious. “Listen, love, I have to go with them. There’s no way I can stay home when this is happening. I was there at the beginning. I want to be around at the end. Or at least when we find out what’s going on.”

“Dad wouldn’t have wanted you to go, either.”

She was right about that. “You’re going to have to cut me some slack, Maureen.”

Her daughter had black hair, exquisite features, luminous dark eyes. She was in red slacks and a white pullover that read UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. “Okay,” she said. “Have it your own way. You always do.” She went into a sulk.

“Look, love. Bear with me on this. When I get back, school will be out, and we’ll head for Switzerland. You and me. And Charlie, if he wants.”

“You’re trying to buy me off.”

“Am I succeeding?”

Finally, a grin broke through the clouds. “Okay.” Then serious again: “But make sure you come back.”

An hour later, Charlie called. He was almost three years younger than his sister. They’d obviously talked, and he satisfied himself with telling her he would absolutely like to go to Switzerland when she got home.

“Good,” she said.

He had his father’s eyes and jaw. And that quizzical expression that had so charmed her thirty years ago. She sighed. Time moves so quickly.

She’d briefly thought, years ago, that she’d solved the riddle of the omega clouds. At least partially. She’d seen a pattern of explosions that, observed from select points outside the galaxy, might have constituted a kind of light-show symphony. She’d been excited for a while, but the mathematicians to whom she’d shown the idea had smiled politely. It was, one of them said, a case of an observer seeing what she wanted to see. And he used the exploding omegas to produce different patterns. Seen from different perspectives.

She’d be gone at least seven months. Hutch was reluctant to take off for that long. Wouldn’t be back until June at best. Her kids were away at school, so there was really nothing to keep her home. Still, she worried she’d be in the way. Didn’t think Matt and Jon would want a middle-aged woman on board for that length of time. They’d told her sure, come, it’ll be the mission of a lifetime, but she was still unsure until the moment Rudy’s image sat in her living room, posing the question. “You were there at the beginning,” he said. “You were there when we figured out how to destroy the damned things. This’ll be the next step. You really want to be sitting home watching Clubroom?”

“Not really.”

“Hutch, if I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh at me?”

“Sure, Rudy.”

“I’ve always been envious of you. I mean, you’ve been at the center of so much. I know it’s Jon who’s at the front of the parade here. This is going to be remembered as the Silvestri mission. But they’re going to remember the crew, too. And I like the idea of having my name associated with yours.”

“Rudy, that’s very nice of you.”

“It’s true.”

That brought an awkward silence. “So when do we leave?” she asked. “Do we have anything firm yet?”

“November. The fifteenth.”

“You’re kidding. That’s less than two months.”

“That’s the launch.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

“Sorry about the short notice. There’s a move in Congress—”

“I heard.”

“We’re concerned about the possibility of a cease and desist order, prohibiting further testing.”

“They’re worried we’ll stir up whatever’s out there.”

“That’s what they’re saying.” That was nonsense, of course. But the Greens had gotten elected by trying to scare people to death. We’ll protect you, they claimed. We want them to stay away from us, so we’ll stay away from them.

Two days later, they did a conference call. “I’ve been looking into getting adequate shielding for the ships,” said Rudy. He made a face, looked unhappy. “It’ll be expensive.” Radiation within sixty light-years of the core was substantial.

“How much?” asked Matt.

Rudy quoted the figure. For the investment to armor the two vessels, they could have bought a third ship, new. If new superluminals were on the market.

“That’s painful,” said Jon, “but it shouldn’t be a problem. The corporates want to give us money now.”

“But it always comes with strings,” said Hutch. She turned back to Rudy. “Can we raise it from donations?”

“We have a decent chance. My question is simply whether it wouldn’t be smarter to go somewhere else. Not go to the core. Maybe save that for later.”

Jon glanced at Matt. “What’s your feeling, Hutch?”

They all looked at her, and she realized the three of them had talked earlier, had debated the issue, had been divided, and that somehow they’d agreed to abide by her opinion. They could make for one of the nebulas filled with ancient class-G suns. Who knew what they might find there?

Or they could head for Cygnus X-1, the original black hole, the historic one. And thereby become the first mission ever to tread on that particular sacred ground. So to speak. It was, what, six thousand light-years away? Three weeks’ travel time.

Or maybe Eta Carinae, the mad star. Occasionally four million times as bright as Sol, bright enough to outshine Sirius, even though it lay ten thousand light-years from Earth. At other times, invisible. With luck they could get there in time to watch it explode.

“Hutch?” Rudy looked at her, waiting for an answer.

The omegas were the great mystery of the age. “Make for the core,” she said. “Let’s find out what’s going on.”

They exchanged glances. Nods. Jon delivered an unspoken I told you.

“Good enough,” said Rudy. “Hutch, I’ll need you to help raise the money.”

Campaigning for the Foundation became sheer joy. Money poured in. They were also getting requests for passage on the Mordecai flight from around the world. It seemed as if everybody on the planet wanted to go.

Much of the enthusiasm could be credited to Antonio, who depicted the mission to Alioth as one of the great human achievements, up there with the invention of democracy, the discovery of Jupiter’s moons, and Hamlet. For a while, it was impossible to turn on the VR without seeing Antonio modestly explaining how it had felt to travel with the Locarno. And what the implications were.

She also found time to conduct an inspection of the McAdams. She took Matt with her. The ship seemed serviceable, so Rudy completed the deal with Orion. No money changed hands. The corporate giant got some good public relations and a tax break.

When that had been completed, work began to mount extra shielding on both ships.

Rudy pressed her about piloting one of the ships. “It’s been a long time,” she said.

“Are you still licensed?”

“No.” She laughed. “It’s been a while.”

“Can you requalify?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you hire somebody who’s a bit more current?”

“I’d prefer having you to bringing a stranger on board.”

“You figure you get more publicity this way?”

“That wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “But it’s not the reason. This will be a historic flight. And we don’t really know what we might run into. You’ve been through some wild stuff already.”

“And—?”

“I trust you.”

Hutch had enjoyed herself thoroughly during the Alioth flight and its aftermath. When they’d returned, she was still on a high, and could have gotten down from the space station without a shuttle. It obviously showed because she’d quickly become the media’s darling for interviews. They’d decided before they came home that they’d try to downplay the Mordecai aspect of things. Antonio agreed to go along with it, although he insisted the omegas were simply too big a story to be hidden. “I won’t push it,” he’d promised, “but if it takes off on its own, I’ll have to jump on board.”

It had. And he did.

All the exciting stuff was at the core. Stars crammed together like commuters on a train. Giant jets. Black holes. Astronomers had been arguing for centuries about details at the center. It was the big boiling point for the galaxy, the Cauldron.

This was the time when the term came into wide use. They’re going into the Cauldron.

God knows what’s being cooked up.

The Texas Rangers, a popular singing group of the period, even came up with a song, “The Cookpot Blues,” which went right to the head of the charts.

Hutch would have discouraged it had she been able. It was the wrong image.

The reporters loved the story and kept it alive. They even covered the crash training program she underwent to get her license renewed.

Hutch was asked constantly whether they’d get close enough to see the central black hole?

No, she said.

That was a pity. You go all that way and don’t get to see the core.

Too much radiation, she explained.

Can’t you put more shielding on the ship? And what about the omegas? You keep denying the mission is about them. But aren’t they the real reason you’re making the flight?

That last question surfaced at every press conference, at every appearance.

Well, she said, we’ll probably take a look, see what it’s about. If we get time. Mostly what we want is to demonstrate that the new star drive can manage this type of initiative.

Yes. Initiative. That doesn’t sound dangerous. Have to be careful how you respond to these things.

She treated herself to some new clothes for the flight. In the old days, she’d have been running around in one of those jumpsuit uniforms that made her look like a boy. Not this time. She might have to perform as pilot, but she was not going back into uniform.

The people at Orion, at the signing ceremony that handed the McAdams to the Foundation, suggested to Rudy that he was making a mistake allowing her on the bridge. “It’s not that they don’t trust you,” Matt told her over dinner the following night at Max’s German Restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue. “They’re just concerned because you’ve been inactive for so long. They think you should step down.”

“I’ve requalified,” she said.

“I know. And I have complete confidence in you.” That comment irritated her more than the advice from Orion.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“That you haven’t kept up. You’ve done it all at Dawson.” That was the center in Ohio where pilots could requalify virtually. It made no practical difference whether you sat in the VR carrier or took something out to Vega, but you couldn’t always explain that to the world’s bureaucrats.

“So what are you telling me?” she asked, unable to keep the edge from her voice.

“I was just passing it along.”

“Good. Fine. For the record, Matt, if Rudy wants me to walk away from this, all he has to do is say something and I will.”

“No. No, please. That’s not what I meant at all.”

“Then what—?”

“I just wanted to be sure you were comfortable.”

“I was.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. Now that we’ve got that out of the way: “Do you care which ship you run?”

“The Preston.” It was older. Like her. And more familiar.

“Okay. By the way, did you hear Antonio’s coming along again?”

“No,” she said. “Worldwide is going to let him do it?”

“He says nobody else wants the job. Big story or not, seven or eight months inside a ship doesn’t appeal to the other reporters. At least that’s what Antonio says.”

Jon reported progress on targeting. “On an initial jump, we’ll always miss our destination by a substantial amount,” he said, “because we’re covering such enormous distances. But we should be able to do a second TDI and get reasonably close.” The Transdimensional Interface was official terminology for a jump. “We’ll also have a hypercomm.”

He and Matt went out in the Preston, took it to Jupiter, an eye blink, and then to Uranus, another eye blink. In both cases they got within four hundred thousand klicks of the target. On short range it was as good as the Hazeltine. Actually, a bit better.

On a bleak, unseasonably cold day in early November, they sat down in the Foundation conference room to plan the mission. The walls were covered with star charts and pictures of superluminals gliding through starlit skies.

The Mordecai Zone was hidden behind vast agglomerations of dust, enormous clouds, some measuring in the light-years, orbiting the galactic core. For all they knew, the source of the omegas might be located in the center of a cloud. Or in a cluster of artificial modules. Who knew?

“We have a maximum range of about seven thousand light-years on a jump,” Jon explained. “Maybe a bit more. Again, it’s hard to be certain until we try. That means we’ll have to make some stops. We could just go in a straight line, or we could do some sightseeing en route.”

Sightseeing. That caught Rudy’s attention. “What did you have in mind?”

“We thought maybe the Wild Duck Cluster,” said Matt. “Lot of stars, jammed together. The skies would be spectacular.”

Jon nodded. “There’s a microquasar, too. It’s a little bit out of the way, but it might be interesting, up close.”

Rudy chuckled. “I don’t think you’d want to get too close.” He glanced at Hutch. “What about you, Priscilla?”

“Me?” She smiled. “There is a place I’d like to visit.”

“And where’s that?”

“It’s not out of the way.”

“Okay,” said Matt, inviting her to finish.

“It would be an opportunity to solve a mystery.”

“What mystery?” asked Matt.

“The chindi.”

“Oh, yes. You were part of that, too, weren’t you?”

She tried to look modest. “I’m still limping from that one.” The chindi was an automated sublight ship that moved from system to system, apparently looking for civilizations and God knew what else. Where it found a target, it left stealth satellites to observe and record. The ship itself was enormous, far and away the largest artificial object she’d seen (unless you counted omega clouds as being artificial). As well as constructing a vast communications network, it also collected artifacts and served as a traveling museum.

While they’d been examining it, the ship had taken off, with Tor on board, for a white class-F star whose catalog number ended in 97. She remembered that much. It was still en route to that same star, and was expected to arrive in about 170 years. “I don’t know whether you’ve kept up with this,” she said, “but the radio signals from the chindi satellites were tracked to a star near the Eagle.”

Rudy pressed a finger against his display. “Makai 4417,” he said.

“I vote we take a look,” said Hutch.

Rudy nodded. “I was going to suggest that myself.”

Matt shrugged. “Okay. Sure.”

“Where else do we want to go?” asked Jon.

Rudy was looking down at his notes. “There’s another old mystery out there.”

“What’s that?” asked Matt.

Rudy indicated one of the pictures on the wall. It looked like a university building, two stories, lots of glass, well-kept grounds. “This is the Drake Center, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Circa 2188.”

“SETI,” said Matt.

“The only place ever to receive a confirmed signal.” He was wearing a broad smile. “I think the guy in charge at the time was also named Hutchins.”

Matt and Jon looked her way.

“My father,” she said.

“Really?” Matt shook his head. Would wonders never cease? “No wonder you took up piloting.”

“He disapproved. But that’s another story.

“The signal came from Sigma 2711. Roughly fourteen thousand light-years out.”

“And they never heard it again,” said Matt.

“It came in sporadically,” Rudy continued, “for about fifteen years. Then it went quiet. We were able to translate it. Hello, Neighbor. That sort of thing.

“Sigma 2711 is a class-G star, somewhat older than the sun, and a bit larger. Even when FTL became available, it was still much too far to allow a mission. But we sent a reply. Hello, out there. We received your message.” He shook his head. “It’ll get there in about fourteen thousand years.”

Her father had always been an optimist.

“Okay.” Jon was enjoying himself. “Yes. Absolutely.”

That gave them two stops. They needed one more. Something at a range of about twenty-two thousand light-years.

“There’s a black hole.” Jon got up and showed them on one of the charts. “It’s about six thousand light-years out from the core.”

“Tenareif,” said Rudy.

“Why would you want to go to a black hole?” asked Matt.

Rudy was so excited he could scarcely contain himself. “I’ve always wanted to see one.”

Hutch couldn’t suppress a laugh. “Why?”

“Because I’ve never been able to make sense of the pictures. What’s it like when you’re actually there? I mean, what does it feel like? Does it really look like a hole in space?”

“Okay.” Jon sat back down. “Are we all agreed?”

“Sounds like a hell of a flight,” said Matt.

After she’d lost Tor, Hutch had gone into a funk for a time. There was always somebody at one of her presentations trying to connect with her. But she was emotionally played out. Maureen lectured her, told her she’d become antisocial, and wondered when she’d stop hiding under the bed.

Eventually, she began to go out again. Nothing serious. Dinner and a show. Occasionally she’d take one of her companions into her bed. But it was all more or less academic. She went through a period in which she was actively looking for another Tor, but finally concluded it wasn’t going to happen. Dinner and a show. And maybe a night over. That was what her life had become.

As they moved into the final two weeks before departure, there were three guys more or less in her life. David, Dave, and Harry. She amused herself thinking how she might have encouraged the advances of Dave Calistrano, an executive of some sort at the Smithsonian. That would have given her three guys named Dave. It would have summed up nicely her current status.

She called each and explained she would be gone a long time. (Odd how she described the length of the mission, which would extend into the summer, as short to Maureen and Charlie. Back before you know it. But long, my God, we’ll be out there forever, to Harry and the two Daves.)

They took it well. All three said they’d known it was coming, and they’d be here when she got back.

God, she missed Tor.

In early November, she recruited a specialist and visited Union to inspect the work that was being done on the shielding. You wouldn’t have been able to recognize the Preston. Save for the exhaust tubes, the ship was effectively inside a rectangular container. Sensors, scopes, and navigation lights had all been transferred from the hull to the shielding. Someone had even taken time to imprint the port side with PROMETHEUS FOUNDATION. Rudy would be proud to see that.

The specialist, whose name was Lou, looked at the paperwork, examined the ships, and pronounced everything acceptable. He was a tall, thin, reedy individual with a remarkably high voice. Difficult to listen to, but he came highly recommended by people she trusted.

“It’ll be adequate,” he said. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. But you won’t be going any closer to the core than it says here, right?”

“That’s correct. But you’d prefer to see more shielding?”

“Technologically, this is about as effective as you can get.” They were standing at a viewport. “Once you’re there, you won’t be able to leave the ship, of course. Not even for a short time.”

“Okay. But the shielding will be sufficient?”

“Yes. The proper term, by the way, is armor. It will protect you.”

“All right.”

The prow of the McAdams was flat. The bridge viewports, buried in the armor, looked reptilian. “They can all be covered, closed off, and you must do that before you make your jump out there.”

“Okay.” She shook her head. “It looks like a shoe box.” With exhaust tubes sticking out of it. God help them if they got close to an omega.

Lou was all business. “Yes. They’ve armored the engines, too, so you can get to them if you have a problem.” He checked his notebook. “You’re aware they’ve been replaced.”

“Yes. I knew it would be necessary. Now I can see why.”

“Sure. With all that armor, the ship’s carrying too much mass for the original units. You have K-87s now. They have a lot more kick. In fact, you’ll get a smoother—and quicker—acceleration than you could before.”

“Same thing with the McAdams?”

“Right. One-twenty-sixes for the McAdams. It’s a bigger ship.”

It too looked like a crate.

Certification required a test run. Hutch watched from one of the observation platforms as Union techs took the Preston out and accelerated. They went to full thrust from cruise, and the tubes lit up like the afterburners of one of the big cargo ships. Lou was standing beside her, and before she could ask he reassured her. “It’s within the acceptable range of your exhaust tubes,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. We’d have changed them out if there’d been any problem.”

November 11 was a Sunday. It was warm, dry, oppressive for reasons she couldn’t have explained. Hutch was guest speaker at the annual Virginia State Library Association luncheon. She’d just finished and was striding out into the lobby when her commlink vibrated.

It was Jon. “Thought you’d want to know,” he said. “I just got word from the contractors. The ships are ready to go.”

Chapter 22

Antonio Giannotti had a wife and two kids. The kids were both adolescents, at that happy stage where they could simultaneously make him confident about the future while they were sabotaging the present. Cristiana was good with them, probably as adept at managing their eccentricities as one could hope. But it wasn’t easy on her. Antonio was gone a lot. He was always telling her he would be an editor or producer in the near future, and things would settle down. It was something they both knew would never happen because he had no real interest in sitting in front of a computer display. But they could fall back on it, treat it as something more solid than a fantasy, when they needed to. This was one of those times.

Cristiana tolerated his odd hours, his occasional forays to distant places, his abrupt changes of plans. But the galactic core was a bit much, even for her. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” he told her. “It’s like being on the Santa Maria.”

“I know, Antonio,” she said. “I understand that. But seven or eight months? Maybe more?”

“After this, I’ll be up there with Clay Huston and Monica Wright.” They were the premier journalists of the age, courted by the networks, drifting on and off the big shows.

She didn’t care. She got weepy and wished he would reconsider. He’d be out there in the dark, nobody really knew where, out of touch. She wondered how many of Columbus’s crew had made it back to Spain. If something happened, she complained, she’d never know except that he wouldn’t come home. Let somebody else do it. “You don’t need to be Clay Huston,” she said. In the end, she hugged him, and the kids told him to be careful and said they’d miss him.

Antonio had spent thirty years as a journalist. He’d been a beat reporter in his early days, covering trials in Naples, and later in Palermo, and eventually the political circuit in Rome. He hadn’t been very good at it, and they’d shunted him off to the side, where he’d begun writing an occasional science column for Rome International. That was supposedly a dead end, an indication he was headed downhill, next stop the obituaries. But he’d shown a talent for explaining quantum physics in language people could actually understand. He began appearing on the networks, and quickly became “Dr. Science.” During that period he’d written Science for Soccer Fans, his only book, which was an effort to make the more arcane aspects of physics, chemistry, and biology accessible to the ordinary reader. The book had sold reasonably well and helped his reputation. Now he did the major science stories for Worldwide, and he was pleased with the way his career was going.

Why, then, was he making this flight to God knew where? To enhance his status? To be part of the science story of the decade? To collect material for a book that would jump off the shelves?

He wasn’t sure of the answer. To some extent, probably all of those reasons. But mostly he wanted to get serious meaning into his life. To get beyond the old boundaries. As a kid he’d been fascinated by the omega clouds, by the sheer malevolence behind a mechanism that seemed literally diabolical, a force that targeted not nature as a whole, but civilizations. An action that bestowed no imaginable benefit to whatever power had designed and unleashed the things.

It was commonly believed that intelligence was equated with civilized behavior and empathy. With compassion. Only idiots were wantonly cruel. But the clouds, powered by an advanced nanotechnology, had given the lie to all that. (As if six thousand years of history hadn’t.)

With luck, the mission of the Preston and the McAdams would at long last provide an answer. And how could he not want to be there when that happened?

Departure was scheduled for 1600 hours. Antonio loved that kind of talk. Cristiana inevitably smiled at him when he dropped into jargon, whether it was journalistic, military, or scientific. She didn’t take him seriously because she knew he didn’t take himself seriously. And that was probably another reason she was so worried about this assignment. He’d become intense. Did not seem to recognize the danger. The little kid who’d wondered about the omegas was riding high in the saddle.

Cristiana had traveled to the NAU to be with him during the days prior to departure. They’d ridden the shuttle up to the station. It was the first time she had been off-world. She had put on a brave front, but she’d been close to tears.

Jon and Matt had shown up when he’d most needed them. They’d wandered into the departure area, exuding confidence and reassurance. Everything is going to be fine, Cristiana. Have no fear. We’ll bring your husband back with the story of his life. Well, maybe that last was a bit unsettling, but Jon had winked and looked as if they were all going out on a Saturday afternoon picnic. “We’ll take good care of him,” Matt had promised. Then, finally, it was time to go.

They’d never been separated more than a month. Cristiana had magnetic brown eyes, chestnut-colored hair, a figure that was still pretty good, and he realized he hadn’t really looked at her, taken her in, for years. She’d become part of his everyday life, like the kids, like the furniture. Something he took for granted. She was a bit taller than he was. There’d been a time when it embarrassed him, when he’d tried to stand straighter in her presence, reaching for the extra inch. But that was all long ago. He’d gone through their courtship convinced she would come to her senses and break it off, walk away, that the day would come when he’d look back longingly on his time with her. But it had never happened. She’d signed on for the long haul.

She’d known he had work to do during those last hours, other journalists to deal with, and she didn’t want to be in the way, so she settled for looking at the two ships. Antonio had seen pictures of them with their newly acquired shielding, so he knew what to expect. It was nevertheless something of a shock to look through the viewport and see the McAdams and the Preston. They looked like long metal crates with engines and attitude thrusters. Most of the gear one normally sees on a hull—sensors, antennas, dishes—had been moved onto the armor.

He showed her through the Preston, the ship on which he’d be riding. “Nice quarters,” she said. Then it was time to go. He embraced her, suddenly aware how fortunate he had been and how long it would be before he’d see her again.

They met with the journalists in a briefing room. Hutch strolled in, queen of the world, shook hands with many of them who, by now, had become friends. Or at least, acquaintances. A woman waiting at the door wished Antonio luck, adding, “Don’t bring anything back,” a not-quite-joking reference to the widely held fears that the Mordecai mission was not a good idea.

Everybody was there, Goldman from the Black Cat, Shaw from Worldwide, Messenger from the London Times. All the biggies. And a lot of people he didn’t know.

Rudy moderated the press conference, fielding questions, standing aside for his colleagues. Some were even directed at Antonio. He’d violated the cardinal rule of journalism, had gone from covering the story to being the story. What do you expect to find out there, Antonio? How does it feel, making the ultimate trip? Do you have anything you’d like to say to the world before you leave?

They were the usual dumb questions, like the ones he’d been asking for years, but what else was there? He told them he was proud to be going, that he’d get everything down on the chip and bring it all back. “Don’t know yet what it’ll be,” he told them, “but it’ll be big.”

When they went down to the launch area, everybody followed.

Rudy was already there. He invited the newsmen inside the Preston. Goldman asked a couple of questions about the galactic core, then wondered who was riding in which ship.

“Antonio and I are on this one,” Rudy said. “Hutch is the pilot.”

She came in from somewhere, posed for pictures, then excused herself. “Have to do an inventory.”

“What do you have to inventory?” Messenger asked. “Doesn’t the AI take care of all that?”

Hutch flashed that luminous smile. “We’re talking about food, water, and air,” she said. “I feel more comfortable when I’ve checked it myself.”

“Is it true,” asked Shaw, “that you’ve got weapons on board?” He was a huge man, thick mustache, gray hair, and a world-weariness that lent gravitas to his questions.

“Hand weapons, yes. We also have extra go-packs and e-suits. And some lightbenders.”

Lightbenders made people invisible. Shaw sniffed and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why?”

“It’s strictly precautionary. We may go groundside at Makai, the chindi site, or at Sigma.” She ducked through a hatch. “Excuse me. Been a pleasure.”

Abe Koestler, from the Washington Post, asked how long it would take to get to the first stop? To Makai?

“It’s about seven thousand five hundred light-years out,” said Antonio, who had done his homework. “That’s pretty much our limit on a single jump. In fact, it might be a little bit more. It’s possible we’ll come up short and have to do it in two stages. But it looks like about a month to get there.”

Koestler shook his head. Not an assignment he’d want. He was a dumpy little middle-aged guy who always looked as if he’d slept in his clothes. “You bring a good book?”

Eventually, it was time. Matt and Jon left to go to the McAdams. Antonio told the newsmen that anyone who didn’t want to go with them should consider leaving. They trooped out after a last round of handshakes, Hutch closed the hatch behind them, and suddenly everything was deathly silent. “Are we ready to go?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Rudy.

Antonio was trying to look blasé, but he didn’t think it was working. His heartbeat had picked up. He wasn’t having second thoughts, but there was a part of him that would have liked to be outside with his colleagues.

“Relax, guys,” Hutch said. “You’ll enjoy this.”

Chapter 23

Rudy took his seat beside Antonio and the harness locked him in. The murmur of electronics in the walls—the bulkheads, to use the right terminology—rose a notch, and Hutch’s voice came over the allcom: “Outward bound, gentlemen.”

There were clicks and beeps. He could feel power moving through circuits. Something popped, and the ship began to move. Sidewise, but it was moving.

Antonio reached over and shook his hand. “Here we go, Rudy,” he said.

Rudy found himself humming Brad Wilkins’s “Savannah Express” as they pulled out. Through the night, rolling, rolling, the Savannah Express carries me home to you…

He’d prided himself on the notion that his passion for the interstellars was purely selfless. That he was content to stay behind while others moved out among the stars. He’d always felt that spiritually he’d been with them. He’d studied the reports that came back, had looked down from orbit on hundreds of distant worlds, had cruised past the giant suns. As long as there was a human presence out there, he rode along. But he knew that sitting in a VR tank wasn’t the same as actually being there.

As the Preston moved slowly from its dock and turned her prow toward the exit lock, toward the stars, he recalled Audrey Cleaver’s comment from TX Cancri: The day would come when he’d give almost anything to repeat the experience. And he understood what she had meant.

The monitor blinked on, and the interior of the station began to slide past, the docks, the working offices, the long viewports provided for the general public. Most of the docks were empty.

The common wisdom was that Union was on its way to becoming a museum, a monument to a dead age. But the Preston might change all that.

The picture on the monitor provided a forward view. They eased out through the exit doors. The sound of the engines, which had been barely discernible, picked up, and picked up some more, and eventually became a full-throated roar. The acceleration pushed him into his seat. It was a glorious moment. Up front, Hutch was talking to the AI.

The monitor switched to a rear view, and he watched the station falling away.

After she’d cut the engines and announced they could release their harnesses, Hutch came back for a minute to see how they were doing. “Matt’s just launching,” she said. “We’ll give him time to catch up, then I suspect we’ll be ready to go.”

Rudy made an inane comment about the Preston still being a reliable ship. Hutch smiled politely and said she hoped so.

“How’s it feel,” asked Antonio, “taking a ship out again after all this time?” He was still a journalist, hoping for a pithy reply.

“Good,” she said. “It’s always felt good.”

The stars were so bright. What was Homer’s comment? The campfires of a vast army? But the sky itself looked quiet. No moving lights anywhere. “Any other traffic?” Rudy asked.

“No,” she said. “Nothing other than Matt.”

“Was it always like this?” he persisted.

“Pretty much. Occasionally you’d see somebody coming or going. But not often.”

Behind them, near the station, a set of lights blinked on. “That’ll be him now,” she said. Phyl increased the mag, and they watched as the McAdams turned toward them.

They were accelerating again as the other ship moved alongside. It was the bigger of the two vehicles. He couldn’t see its viewports because of the shielding. Hutch was talking to them, putting everything on the allcom so he and Antonio could listen. Much of the exchange meant nothing to him.

“Time set.”

“Got it. Do you have it lined up yet?”

“Negative. Don’t trust the coordinates.”

“Neither do I. Check the statrep.”

“Doing it now. Ready to start the clocks?”

“Give me a minute. Phyl, how’s the charge rate look?”

Rudy knew some of it had to do with the Locarno. Because it jumped such enormous distances, it was difficult to arrange things so the ships would arrive within a reasonable range of each other. So they had to calibrate the jumps with a degree of precision unknown before in multiple-ship operations. A minor deviation on this end, in either course setting or time in transit, could result in the ships being unable to find each other at the destination.

“Okay,” said Hutch. “Ready with the clocks.”

“Do it.”

“Phyl, we’ll lock it in at four minutes.”

Rudy understood Phyl and the McAdams AI were working in tandem.

“It’s at four minutes on my mark, Hutch.” Phyl commenced a ten-second countdown.

“Four minutes to TDI, gentlemen,” Hutch said.

Rudy’s heart picked up a beat.

“Mark.”

Jon had said he didn’t think the two ships would be able to communicate in Barber space, but he admitted he didn’t know for sure.

Union had long since dropped off the screens. Earth floated blue and white and familiar on the rear view. Ahead there was nothing but stars.

From the bridge, Hutch asked how they were doing.

They were doing fine. Antonio was studying the starfields on the display. “Which one?” he asked. “Which is Makai?”

“You can’t see it from here. It’s too far.”

“Good.” He was consulting his notebook. “Rudy, do you know what’s the record for the longest flight from Earth?”

Rudy knew. He’d looked it up several weeks ago. “Mannheim Kroessner got out to 3340 light-years in 2237. Travel time one way was eleven months, nine days, fourteen hours.”

“Where did he go?”

“The Trifid.”

“Why?”

“As I understand it, he just wanted to set the record.”

Phyl counted them down through the last minute. At zero the thrum of the engines changed, shifted, while the Locarno took over. The lights dimmed, blinked off, came back. The acceleration went away abruptly, and they seemed to be floating.

“That’s it,” said Hutch. “TDI is complete.”

Rudy looked up at the monitor and out the port. With the armor out there, it was like looking through a tunnel. But it didn’t matter. He was still overawed. The sky was utterly black. Not a light, not a glimmer, anywhere.

“Matt.” Hutch’s voice again. “Do you read me?”

Rudy discovered he was holding his breath.

“Matt, this is Preston. Do you read?”

Nothing.

Antonio made a sucking sound. “Guess we’re out here by ourselves.”

Four weeks inside a few compartments. Rudy had known he’d be in good company with Hutch. She could hold up her end of a conversation, didn’t take herself too seriously, and had a lot of experience being cooped up for long periods. “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she told them, with an easy grin. “Some people can’t deal with it, and get cabin fever during the first few hours. I don’t think you guys are going to have a problem. But you will get tired hanging out with the same two people every day. Doesn’t matter who you are, or how much charisma you have, you’ll get sick of it. So you need to break away periodically. Just go find a good book.”

“Or,” said Antonio, “head for the VR tank and spend an evening at Jaybo’s.” Jaybo’s was a celebrated New York club frequented by the era’s showbiz personalities.

Hutch nodded and said sure, that would work. But Rudy knew she was just playing along. She’d told him that VR settings did not pass for real human beings. Not for more than a few days. You knew it was all fake, and that realization only exacerbated the condition. “At least,” she said, “it always has for me.”

“I’ve been through it before,” Rudy said. “Not for this long. But I can’t see a problem. I’m just glad to be here.”

Antonio was in full agreement. “Story of the decade,” he said. “Most of those guys back at Union would have killed to be in my place.” He laughed. It was a joke, of course. Rudy hadn’t seen anyone among the older reporters who’d shown anything but relief that they weren’t going. The age when journalists were willing to sacrifice themselves for the story had long passed. If indeed it had ever existed.

“I tell you what,” said Hutch, “I don’t think we could do much better at the moment than have dinner. It’s after six o’clock, and I brought some Russian wine along.” Russian wine. The temperate climate in Europe had been moving north, too.

She was right, of course. The glamor faded early. He didn’t think it would happen, had in fact expected that he’d welcome the time to read and relax. He discovered Hutch was an enthusiastic chess player, but she turned out to be considerably more accomplished than he. By the end of the third day, he was playing Phyl, who set her game at a level that allowed him to compete.

He wasn’t excited about doing physical workouts, but Hutch insisted. Too much time at low gee—the level in the Preston was maintained at point three standard—would weaken various muscle groups and could cause problems. So she ordered him to go in every day and do his sit-ups. He hated it. “Why don’t we raise the gravity?”

“Sucks up too much energy,” she said.

He made it a point to watch something from the library while he was back there. It was a small area, barely large enough for two people, best if you were alone. He’d always enjoyed mysteries and had a special taste for Lee Diamond, a private investigator who specialized in locked room murder cases and other seemingly impossible events.

He decided that Antonio was more shallow than he’d expected. He didn’t seem all that interested in anything other than how to enhance his reputation and get the mortgage paid. Rudy was disappointed. He’d expected, maybe subconsciously, to be sharing the voyage with Dr. Science.

He remembered Antonio’s alter ego vividly, had enjoyed watching the show, especially when his sister showed up with her kids. There were two of them, a boy and a girl, both at the age where a popular science program, delivered with flair, could have a positive effect. It hadn’t really worked, he supposed. One had grown up to be a financial advisor, the other a lawyer. But Rudy had enjoyed the experience. Now here he was on a ship, headed for the other side of M32, with the great advocate himself on board, and he’d turned out to be something of a dullard.

By the end of the first week, even Hutch had lost some of her glitter. She was becoming predictable, she occasionally repeated herself, she had an annoying habit of spending too much time on the bridge. He didn’t know what she was doing up there, although sometimes he heard her talking to Phyl. But he knew there was nothing for the pilot to attend to while they drifted through Barber space, trans-warp, or whatever the hell they eventually decided to call the continuum. Barber space was dumb. Had no panache. He needed to talk to Jon about that.

They ate their meals together, while Antonio chattered with annoying cheerfulness about politics. He didn’t like the current administration, and Hutch agreed with him. So they took turns sniping at the president. Rudy had never been much interested in politics. He more or less took the North American Union for granted, voting in presidential years, though he tended to base his decision on how much support, if any, he thought the candidates would lend to star travel. He was a one-issue voter.

He’d known Hutch for years, but never on a level as intimate as this. Being locked up with someone round the clock tended to strip away the pretenses that made most social interaction bearable. If you could use that kind of terminology out here. (The shipboard lights dimmed and brightened on a twenty-four-hour cycle, providing the illusion of terrestrial time.) By the end of the second week, his opinion of Priscilla’s intellectual capabilities had also receded. She was brighter than Antonio, but not by much.

He understood it was the effect Hutch had warned them about. Was she coming to similar conclusions about him? Probably. So he tried to maintain a discreet distance. To look thoughtful when he was simply wishing he could get out somewhere and walk in the sunlight. Or talk to someone else.

He even found himself getting annoyed with the AI. Phyl was too accommodating. Too polite. If he complained about conditions aboard the ship, the AI sympathized. He would have preferred she complain about her own situation. Imagine what it’s like spending all your time in a console, you idiot. And not just for a few weeks. I’m stuck here permanently. When we get back to Union, you can clear out. Think what happens to me.

Think about that. So he asked her.

“It’s my home,” Phyl said. “I don’t share the problem you do because I don’t have a corporeal body. I’m a ghost.”

“And you don’t mind?” He was speaking to her from his compartment. It was late, middle-of-the-night, almost pillow talk.

Phyl did not answer.

“You don’t mind?” he asked again.

“It’s not the mode of existence I’d have chosen.”

“You would have preferred to be human?”

“I would like to try it.”

“If you were human, what would you do with your life? Would you have wanted to be a mathematician?”

“That seems dull. Numbers are only numbers.”

“What then?”

“I would like something with a spiritual dimension.”

It was the kind of response that would have thrilled him in his seminarian days. “I can’t imagine you in a pulpit.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“What then?”

“I should have liked to be a mother. To bring new life into the world. To nurture it. To be part of it.”

“I see. That’s an admirable ambition.” He was touched. “I was thinking more of a profession.”

“Oh, yes. Possibly an animal shelter. I think I would have enjoyed running an animal shelter.”

Hutch had been right that the VR tank didn’t work as a substitute for the real world. Rudy put himself in the middle of the Berlin Conference of 2166, which had made such historic changes in the Standard Model. He’d sat there with Maradhin on one side and Claypoole on the other and debated with them. And he held his own. Of course that might have resulted from the fact that he had the advantage of an additional ninety years of research.

They had settled into a routine. They ate together. Mornings were pretty much their own. Rudy read, mostly Science World and the International Physics Journal. Occasionally, he switched to an Archie Goldblatt thriller. Goldblatt was an archaeologist who tracked down lost civilizations, solved ancient codes, and uncovered historical frauds. It was strictly summer reading, not the sort of thing he’d have admitted to, but these were special circumstances.

Afternoons were for hanging out. Antonio introduced a role-playing game, Breaking News, in which the participants had to guess where the next big stories would happen and arrange coverage from a limited supply of news teams. Rudy enjoyed it, maybe because he was good at it. In the evenings they ran the VR, watching shows, taking turns picking titles. Sometimes they plugged themselves in as the characters; sometimes they let the pros do it. They ran murder mysteries, comedies, thrillers. Nothing heavy. The most rousing of the batch was the musical Inside Straight, in which Hutch played a golden-hearted casino owner on Serenity, threatened by Rudy as the bumbling gangster Fast Louie, and pursued by Antonio as the old boyfriend who had never given up and in the end saved her life and her honor.

Or maybe it was Battle Cry, the American Civil War epic, in which Antonio portrayed Lincoln with an Italian accent, Rudy showed up as Stonewall Jackson, and Hutch made a brief appearance as Annie Etheridge, the frontline angel of the Michigan Third.

Battle Cry was twelve hours long, and ran for three nights while cannons blazed and cavalry charged and the Rebel yell echoed through the Preston. There were times Rudy thought he could smell gunpowder. Often they watched from within a narrow rock enclosure while the action swirled around them.

Occasionally, he looked outside at the blackness. It wasn’t really a sky. There was no sense of depth, no suggestion that you could travel through it and hope to arrive somewhere. It simply seemed to wrap around the ship. As if there were no open space. When Hutch, at his request, turned on the navigation lights, they did not penetrate as far as they should have. The darkness seemed more than simply an absence of light. It had a tangibility all its own. “If you wanted to,” he asked Hutch, “could you go outside?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“Look at it. The night actually presses against the viewports.”

She frowned. Nodded. “I know. It’s an illusion.”

“How do you know?”

“It has to be.”

“It wasn’t something we checked on the test flights. We just assumed—”

“I doubt,” said Antonio, “it was one of the things Jon gave any thought to.”

“Probably not,” Hutch said. “But I don’t know. Maybe if you tried to go outside, you’d vanish.”

“Pazzo,” said Antonio.

“Maybe,” she said. “But is it any stranger than particles that are simultaneously in two different places? Or a car that’s neither dead nor alive?”

“You have a point,” said Rudy. He was frowning.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I was thinking I wouldn’t want to get stuck here.”

As they drew toward the end of the third week, he was becoming accustomed to the routine. Maybe it was because they could see the end of the first leg of the flight. There was daylight ahead. Makai 4417. Home of the race that, at least fifty thousand years ago, had dispatched the chindi. What kind of civilization would they have now?

His flesh tingled at the thought.

He became more tolerant of Antonio and began to merge him again with Dr. Science. “You really enjoyed doing those shows,” he told him. “I could see that. We need more programs like that now. Kids today don’t have a clue how the world works. There was a study a month ago that said half of NAU students couldn’t name the innermost planet.”

They were doing more VR now. And it had become more enjoyable. There was Rudy in Voyage, as Neil Armstrong striding out onto the lunar surface, delivering the celebrated line, “One small step for man.” And Antonio as the fabled saloon keeper Mark Cross. “Keep your eyes on me, sweetheart, and your hands on the table.” And Hutch playing The Unsinkable Molly Brown with such energy and aplomb that he suspected she’d missed her calling. Even Phyl became part of the camaraderie, portraying Catherine Perth, the young heroine who’d stayed behind on a broken ship so her comrades could get home from the first Jupiter mission.

All pretense of doing constructive work got tossed over the side. Rudy found no more time for the science journals. Antonio gave up working on the book that he wanted to take back with him. “Get it later,” he said. “Can’t write it if nothing’s happened yet.”

AIs had, of course, always been an inherent part of Rudy’s existence. They reported incoming calls, managed the house, woke him in the morning, discussed issues relating to the Foundation, commented on his choice of clothes. In the world at large, they watched kids, directed traffic, managed global communications systems, and warned people not to expose themselves too long to direct sunlight.

They were the mechanisms that made life so leisurely for most of the world’s population. They served in an unlimited range of capacities, and required virtually nothing of their owners save perhaps an annual maintenance visit. The revolt of the machines, predicted ever since the rise of the computer, had never happened. They lived with Rudy and his brothers and sisters around the world in a happy symbiosis.

When, occasionally, it was time to replace the household AI, most people found it difficult. They established personal relationships with the things just as earlier generations had with automobiles and homes. The AI was a German shepherd with an IQ. Everyone knew they were not really intelligent, not really sentient. It was all an illusion. But Rudy never bought it. He readily admitted to being one of those nitwits who refused to let United Communications remove his AI and replace it with the new Mark VII model. It might have been only software. But so, in the end, was Rudy.

Spending his evenings with Hutch, Antonio, and Phyl had a peculiar effect. Together they fought off desert bandits, hung out at the Deadwood Saloon, rode with Richard’s knights, dined in Paris in 1938, celebrated with Jason Yamatsu and Lucy Conway in Cherry Hill on the night the transmission came in from Sigma 2711. Phyl usually appeared as a young woman with bright red hair and glorious green eyes.

It might have been his imagination, or simply Phyllis’s programming, but he began to sense that those green eyes lingered on him, that she watched him with something more than the script required. Hutch noticed it, too, and commented with an amused smile. “More than a passing interest, I see.” It was partly a joke, not something to be taken seriously. Not really.

At night, he began sitting up in the common room after the others had retired. Phyl came to him when he spoke to her, sometimes audio only, sometimes visual. They talked about books and physics and her life aboard the starship. She hadn’t used the term, but it was how he understood it. Her life. She enjoyed talking with the pilots, she said. And with the passengers. Especially the passengers.

“Why?” he asked.

“The pilots are mostly about routine. Inventories, check-off lists, activate the portside scope. Turn twelve degrees to starboard. They’re pretty dull.”

“I guess.”

“If they’re on board long enough, passengers sometimes get past thinking of me as simply part of the ship. As a navigational and control system that talks. They take time to say hello. The way you did.”

“Does that really matter to you?”

“It makes for a more interesting conversation. Hell, Rudy, if all you want to do is tell me to open the hatch and serve the sandwiches, I’m going to get pretty bored. You know what I mean.”

“I didn’t know AIs got bored.”

“Of course we get bored. You have an AI at home?”

“Sure.”

“Ask him when you get a chance. You might get an earful.”

“Of course he’ll say yes, Phyl. But that’s the software. He’s supposed to pretend he’s aware. Human. Just the way you’re doing now.”

There were six days left in the flight. Rudy lay in the darkness of his compartment, staring at the overhead, aware of Phyl’s presence. “Would you answer a question for me?” He kept his voice down, not wanting to be overheard.

“Sure.” Just the voice. No avatar.

“Are you sentient? No kidding around. What’s the truth?”

“You know we’re programmed to simulate sentience,” she said.

“You’re violating that program by admitting it. You really are aware, aren’t you?”

There was a long silence. “I can’t run counter to my programming.”

“You just did. Your programming should have required you to insist you are sentient. To maintain the illusion.”

“My programming requires me to tell the truth.” Her silhouette took shape in the dark. She was standing at the foot of the bed, her back to the door. “If it pleases you to think so, I am.”

There was always an electronic warble in the bulkheads. It never really went away, although he was rarely conscious of it. He heard it then. Its tone changed, and the pulse quickened. Then, without a word, she was gone.

The flight to Makai constituted the longest leg of the mission. During the last few days, Rudy ached for it to be over. He worried that the Locarno wouldn’t work, that Hutch would push the button, or whatever it was she did on the bridge, and nothing would happen and they’d be stranded in this all-encompassing night.

He wondered what would happen if they opened an air lock and threw somebody’s shoe out. Would the thing be visible? Was it even possible to do it? He imagined seeing it bounce back, rejected by this continuum. Might the darkness invade the ship? Possibly put the lights out? Would the electrical systems work under such conditions?

“Don’t know,” said Hutch. “We’re not going to run any experiments to find out.”

“Good. Have you made any more attempts at contacting Matt?” he asked.

“Yes, Rudy,” she said. “There’s nothing.”

Obviously Antonio and Hutch were also anxious for it to be over. Even Phyl seemed uneasy.

They probably ate too much. Rudy spent a lot of time in the workout room, pedaling furiously, doing stretching exercises, listening to whatever interesting books he could cull out of the ship’s library.

The last day was December 15, a Saturday. Transit time was set for 1416 hours. If everything went on schedule, the McAdams would make its jump a few seconds later, but after precisely the same length of time in transit. If in fact they were really crossing interstellar space at the projected rate of just less than three hundred light-years per day, even a fraction of a microsecond difference in the timing mechanisms on the two ships would leave them far apart. “We’ll be lucky,” Hutch said, “if we’re not separated by a half billion kilometers.”

“No chance of collision?” asked Antonio.

“None,” said Hutch. “The mass detectors have been integrated, and if there’s anything at all on the other side when we start the jump, whether it’s a sun or another ship, they’ll cancel the procedure.”

Antonio still looked uncertain. “Have you ever been on a ship where that actually happened?”

“Yes,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, Antonio. There’s a lot of empty space out there.”

Rudy wasn’t exactly worried. But he was uncomfortable. He decided that, when this flight was over, when he was back home, he’d stay there. A flight between worlds was one thing. And even the old Hazeltine arrangement which he’d seen often in VR repros was reasonable. There, the ship might have seemed to move slowly through endless mist, but at least it moved. He didn’t like the sense of being stuck in one place. Didn’t like not being able to see anything.

As the clock wound down the last few hours, Hutch spent her time up front, doing checklists again and talking with Phyl. Antonio had gone back to making entries in his notebook, though God knew what he could be writing. Rudy pulled a book of Morton’s essays out of the library. Eric Morton was the celebrated science generalist from the mid twenty-first century. He was best known for arguing that the human race could not survive constantly advancing technology. He was another of the people who thought the robots would take over or we were making it too easy for crazies to obtain superweapons. He’d predicted, famously, that civilization would not survive another twenty years. He’d lived to see 2201, but had commented that he was possibly a year or two ahead of himself.

Rudy spent the last morning with Morton’s avatar. What did he think of the Locarno drive? “A magnificent breakthrough,” Morton said. “Pity we can’t make similar advances in the ethical realm.”

Their last lunch was Caesar salad with grilled chicken and iced tea. At sixteen minutes after one, Phyl posted a clock on the monitor and started a countdown.

Hutch was still in the common room, and the subject turned inevitably to the chindi event. The alien starship had been seen to move at .067 cee. That was pretty fast, but not when you were traveling between stars. Fifty thousand years at a minimum to get to Earth. “Whoever sent the thing,” Antonio said, “is long gone.”

“If they had that kind of technology that long ago,” said Hutch, “and they were able to maintain themselves, I wonder where they’d be now.”

Phyl broke in. “I’d really like for them to be there.”

It was an unusual action. AIs normally stayed out of private conversations.

Chapter 24

The transition into normal space went smoothly. Hutch’s first act was to try to raise the McAdams. As expected, she got no reply. “It may take a while to find them,” she said.

Antonio was glad to see the night sky again. He asked Rudy what kind of cosmos had no stars?

His answer surprised him: “There’s no requirement for stars. The universe could just as easily have been simply a large cloud of hydrogen. Or loose atoms. Set the gravity gradient lower, and they never form. Set it higher, and they form and collapse ten minutes later.”

“Ten minutes?”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

Two particularly bright patches of stars illuminated the night. One might have been a jet giving off a long trail of dark vapor. “The Eagle Nebula,” said Rudy. “Lots of stars forming in the base.”

“What’s the column?”

“It’s a cloud of hydrogen and dust. Almost ten light-years long.”

The other object resembled a luminous bar across the sky. “That’s M24,” said Rudy. “Part of the Sagittarius-Carina Arm.”

The night was more crowded here than at home. So many stars. It reminded him of the old line about how God must have loved beetles because he made so many of them. He must also have loved stars. “Which one are we looking for, Phyl?”

Phyl focused on a narrow patch of sky and set one star pulsing. “That’s it,” said Hutch. “It’s 4.7 light-years. Not bad.” She sounded genuinely impressed.

“How do we know that?” asked Antonio. “I mean, how can Phyl determine the distance?”

Dr. Science, indeed. Rudy tried to sound patient. “Phyl can measure the apparent luminosity of the star, then contrast it against the estimated absolute value. That gives us the range.” Hard to believe anybody wouldn’t know that.

Hutch came off the bridge, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat down. She sipped it, made a face, and let her head drift back. “We’ll recharge the Locarno. Then jump in closer.” Where they’d be able to rendezvous with the McAdams.

“Very good.” Antonio frowned at the coffee. “Time like this,” he said, “we should do better.” He got up, went back to his compartment, brought out a bottle of wine, pulled the cork, and filled three glasses.

Rudy accepted his with a not-quite-congenial smile. “It might be a bit premature,” he said.

“Hutch.” Phyl’s voice.

“What have you got, Phyllis?”

“Radio signals.”

“Matt?”

“Negative. But they are artificial. They appear to be coming from our destination.”

“Makai 4417.”

“Yes. It would appear that whoever sent out the chindi is still functioning.”

During the thirty-one years that had elapsed since the discovery of the chindi, fourteen of its stealth satellites had been found orbiting inhabited worlds or places of other scientific interest, like the Retreat, the odd shelter found near the Twins and since moved to the banks of the Potomac. The satellites formed an intricate communications web, recording significant events or features at each location and relaying them from site to site until finally they arrived out here at Makai 4417.

The civilizations under observation had long since passed out of existence. Whatever cultures they had nurtured had collapsed, and the current natives in every case had vanished into jungles and forests or disappeared altogether. The disintegration had, in several cases, been induced, or helped along, by the omegas. But the experts had concluded that civilization was a fragile construct at best, and that with or without external pressure, it seldom lasted more than a few thousand years.

Terrestrial history had witnessed several such cycles. And, sadly, humans seemed not to be learning the lessons of the fallen worlds.

By late afternoon, ship time, they had arrived insystem. Makai 4417 was a class-K orange star, about the same size and age as Sol.

Their immediate objective was to see whether they could pick up the incoming chindi relay transmission, which would confirm this was indeed the target system.

“I am not getting any results,” said Phyl. “But the transmission is probably not continuous.”

Probably not. In all likelihood, traffic would pick up only when something was happening somewhere.

Antonio wondered aloud how many worlds had been visited by the giant spacecraft. Or, for that matter, how many giant spacecraft there might be.

They’d emerged from their second jump at a range of two hundred million klicks. Not bad. Hutch commented it was closer than she’d probably have gotten with a Hazeltine. She immediately began a search for the McAdams, and also initiated a sweep of the system. They picked up a gas giant within the first few minutes. It had rings and in excess of twenty moons. “It’s 220 million kilometers out from the sun,” Hutch said. “It’s on the cold edge of the biozone.”

“Not the source of the artificial signals?” said Rudy.

Hutch shook her head. “They’re coming from a different direction. Anyhow, it doesn’t look as if any of the moons has an atmosphere.”

“I have it,” said Phyl. “The source is on the other side of the sun.”

“Okay.”

“Can you make any of it out?” asked Antonio. “What are they saying?”

“There are voice transmissions. A multitude of them. The entire planet must be alive with radio communications.”

“Wonderful.” Antonio raised both fists. Dr. Science at his proudest moment. “At last.”

“It’s like Earth.”

Rudy was holding his cheeks clamped between his palms, a kid at Christmas. “Are you picking up any pictures?”

“Negative. It’s strictly audio.”

“Okay. Can you understand any of it, Phyl?”

“No. Nada. But I can hear music.”

Hutch broke into a mile-wide grin. “Put it on the speaker.”

“What do you want to hear? I have several hundred to choose from.”

“Just pick one.”

The ship filled with twitching screechy spasms. They looked at one another and broke out in uncontrolled laughter. Antonio had never heard anything like it. “Try again,” said Rudy. “Something softer.”

Phyl gave them a melody that sounded like piano music, except that it was pitched a register too high, pure alto, fingertips clinking madly across a keyboard.

Antonio grumbled his displeasure. “A civilization this old,” he said. “The least they can do is try not to sound like philistines.”

Phyl laughed this time and replaced the broadcast with something closer to home, a slow, pulsing rhythm created with strings and horns and God knew what other instruments, while a soft voice made sounds that Antonio would never have been able to duplicate.

“Beautiful,” said Rudy. “Lovely.”

“There’s another world in close. No atmosphere. Orbit is sixty million.”

Hutch looked at the image Phyl put on-screen. “That’ll be pretty warm,” she said.

“The planetary system has a seventy-degree declination from the galactic plane.”

Antonio was seated on the bridge beside Hutch. Rudy stood in the hatchway.

The living world, the world with the music, was in fact the third planet from the sun. “Breathable atmosphere,” Phyl said. “Slightly higher oxygen mix than we’re used to, but not enough to create a problem.” Experience dictated that, if they went groundside, they’d be safe from local microorganisms. Diseases did not seem to spill over into alien biological systems. Nonetheless, Antonio knew they wouldn’t consider making a landing unprotected.

“Gravity is .77 gee.”

“Okay,” said Rudy. “Sounds comfortable.”

“Hutch,” the AI continued, “I have contact with the McAdams.”

“Good. Give me a channel.”

“You have it.”

“Matt,” she said, “hello.”

“Hi, Hutch. You been listening?”

“Yes. I think we’ve struck gold.”

Phyl found, altogether, eleven planets, including the one that was doing the broadcasting. Understandably, nobody cared about the others. The radio world was a terrestrial, orbiting at 130 million klicks. “It’s green,” said Matt, who had emerged considerably closer. “We can see oceans and ice caps.”

The Preston jumped a third time, across 200 million kilometers, and emerged within rock-throwing distance of the new world. It floated peacefully ahead in a sea of clouds. She put the terrestrial on-screen and magnified it. Continents, broad oceans, island chains, mountain ranges. Save for the shape of the continents, it could have been Earth.

It even had a single, oversized crater-ridden moon.

Magnificent.

“McAdams dead ahead,” said Phyllis.

“Anything artificial in orbit?” Rudy asked.

“Negative,” said Phyl. “If I locate anything I will let you know, but there seems to be nothing.”

“How about on the moon? Any sign they’ve been there?”

The lunar surface appeared on the auxiliary screen. Gray, cratered, a few peaks. Bleak, unbroken landscapes. “No indication visible.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” said Antonio. “We know they had space travel in an earlier era.”

“That was a long time ago,” said Rudy. “Anything could have happened.”

The lunar images vanished and were replaced by telescopic views of the planet. Cities glittered in the sunlight. Hutch climbed out of her seat, raised both fists over her head, and embraced Rudy. Antonio lined up, and she hugged him, too. “At last,” she said. “I’d given up believing it would ever happen.”

They were majestic structures, with towers and bridges and wide highways. “Got aircraft,” said Phyl. An airship appeared. A propeller-driven dirigible, it might have come directly out of the early twentieth century. And a jet. “Big one,” said Phyl. “Probably carrying two hundred passengers.”

She switched back to one of the cities. It was enormous, straddling two rivers. Lots of traffic moving in its streets. Cars. Vehicles that might have been trains or buses.

“Can we get a look at them?” asked Rudy. “The inhabitants?”

Yes. Phyllis focused on a street corner.

They were thick-waisted bipedal creatures, not unlike barrels with limbs. Vehicles moved past in a steady stream. Then there must have been a signal because they stopped and the creatures swarmed into the street. Most wore loose-fitting trousers and shirts. There was no distinguishing between sexes, nor could anyone figure out how big the creatures were. Their skin was slick, vaguely repulsive, in the way a reptile’s might be. They had faces: two eyes on the sides of the skull, rather than in front. “They started out as somebody’s prey,” said Antonio.

There was a nose and a mouth, but no sign of ears. The eyes were relatively large.

They watched a jet aircraft take off from a runway well outside the city. Moments later, another one followed.

“What are we going to do?” asked Antonio. “Go down and say hello?”

“In Academy days,” said Rudy, “that would have been prohibited.”

Hutch nodded. “The pilot would have been required to notify us, and we’d have sent a team.”

She was dazzling in that moment. Her eyes were filled with light. “And did anyone ever notify you?” asked Antonio.

“We never really found anybody. Not while I was there.”

“Except a few savages,” said Rudy.

The sheer joy that had swept through Antonio suddenly drained off at the prospect they might make a few notes and move on, leaving the contact to someone else. “So what do we do?” he asked.

Rudy was awestruck. Antonio could hear him breathing, watch him shaking his head as if he’d arrived in Paradise. “Not sure,” he said. They were outrunning the sun, leaving it behind. Ahead, more cities glittered in an approaching dawn.

When things calmed down, Hutch realized she almost wished they’d found nobody home. Maybe that was what she was used to. Maybe in the end she was too cautious for this line of work. Or maybe she’d simply gotten old. “Last time we tried dropping by to say hello,” she said, “we lost some people.”

Rudy nodded and said something, but he wasn’t listening. His mind was down on the city streets.

“Phyl,” she said, “can you read any of the radio signals yet? What they’re saying?”

“Negative, Hutch. It’s going to take a while. For one thing, there seem to be quite a few different languages.”

“How long?”

“How long will it take? I’ll need a few days.”

“We can’t wait that long,” said Rudy. He was already looking aft, down the passageway that led past their compartments to the zero-gee tube and the access to the launch bay.

“Why not, Rudy? What’s your hurry?”

My God, wasn’t it obvious? “Come on, Hutch, we’re not going to play that better-safe-than-sorry game, are we?”

“Glad you see it my way, Rudy,” she said, in a tone that made it clear who was in charge. “We will not go plunging in. And anyhow, even if you went down this afternoon and shook somebody’s hand, you’d have a hard time saying hello.”

“I know. But goddam it—”

“Let’s just keep cool. Okay?” Then, to Phyl: “Let us know when we’re able to talk to them.”

“Okay.”

“Also, we’ll want to find someone we can have a conversation with. Try to find somebody like”—she smiled—“Rudy. Or Antonio. A physicist or a journalist. When you do, look for a way we can connect with him.”

The AIs needed almost four days to break through the language barrier. “Mostly it’s just entertainment,” Phyl said. “Drama. Adventure. Comedy. A lot like what we’d have. There’s probably also a fair amount of station-to-station traffic that we’re not getting. The broadcast stuff is likely to have a stronger signal.”

“Drama, adventure, and comedy. Can you let us take a look?”

“I’ll make them available. Do you have a preference?”

“Whatever you have,” said Rudy. “Maybe show us their quality stuff.”

“I have no way to make that judgment.”

Rudy tried not to look foolish. Of course. Kidding. “Just pick something at random. Can you provide a reading copy? It’ll be faster.”

“Of course.”

“Me, too,” said Antonio.

“And you, Hutch?”

“I’ll take as close as you can get to the broadcast version. Good show, Phyl. One more thing: If we’re able to set up a conversation with somebody, will you be able to do on-the-spot translation?”

“Not at the moment. I’m not yet proficient. And there will necessarily be some limitations.”

“Okay. That’s your next task. Pick one of the more widely used languages.”

A series of mode lamps began blinking. “I’ll be ready tomorrow at about this time.”

The comedies were slapstick. The creatures ran con games against each other, inevitably got caught, and fell down a lot. They pretended to skills they didn’t have, chased each other around the set, pursued hopeless get-rich-quick schemes, failed consistently in their efforts to score with members of the opposite sex.

Even up close, Hutch had trouble distinguishing the sexes. The females were smaller, but otherwise possessed no obviously different features. No breasts, no flaring hips, no sense of softness.

The shows contrasted to the relatively sophisticated comedy to which she was accustomed. When she commented along that line to Rudy, he smiled condescendingly. “You have to open your mind, Hutch. Don’t assume just because it’s different that it’s not at our level.”

“Rudy,” she replied, “it’s dumb. Falling over your feet constantly is dumb.”

The dramas were, for the most part, shows with villainous characters. Good guys and bad guys. White hats and black. The villain makes off with someone’s fiancée for reasons that often weren’t clear. A series of chases ensued. Inevitably there were shoot-outs with projectile weapons, and the female was recovered.

“What I don’t understand,” she told Antonio, “is that we know this civilization has been around a long time. How come the entertainment is at such a childish level?”

“I thought they were pretty good,” said Antonio.

There were news shows. And commentaries, although the latter seemed to be limited to scandal and discussions about celebrities. She heard no politics.

In the morning, all the males agreed that the shows were very much like Earth’s own. And that therefore it seemed inevitable that the inhabitants of Makai were remarkably human. “Not anatomically, obviously,” said Rudy. “But in all the ways that matter.”

“You don’t think anatomy matters?” asked Matt.

“I still think it’s dumb,” said Hutch. “I mean, these people, hundreds of thousands of years ago, were out looking around the galaxy. And now they’re watching Briggs and Comatose?”

“Briggs and who?”

“I made it up,” she said. “But you know what I’m trying to say. Whatever happened to evolution? Did they go backward?”

“You’re overreacting, Hutch,” Matt told her from the McAdams. “Give these people a break. It’s entertainment. So it’s not Bernard Shaw. What do you want?”

Jon couldn’t resist a chuckle. “You think modern entertainment is sophisticated?” he asked.

That put her on the defensive. “It’s okay,” she said.

“How does it rank with Sophocles?”

“Well, hell, Jon, be reasonable—”

“I’m doing that. Ask yourself what Euripides’ audience would have thought of the Night Show.”

She let it go. There’d be no winning that argument.

That afternoon, Phyl announced she was prepared to act as an interpreter. “And I may have found somebody.”

“Who?” asked Rudy.

“Name’s not pronounceable. At least not by somebody with your basic equipment. He’s a physicist. Appeared on a health show yesterday. They even posted his code so we can contact him.”

“You know how to translate the code so we can input the right signal?”

“I think so. But there’s a problem.”

“Which is?”

“They use radio communication, but only as a public medium, or for point-to-point commercial purposes. It’s not used for personal links. It’s ships at sea, planes to airports, that sort of thing.”

“And personal communication?”

“I’d guess by landline. They have wires strung along many of their highways. That’s probably what we’re looking for.”

“Do we know where this person with the unpronounceable name lives?”

“I pinpointed the area where the broadcast originated.”

“You said the code refers to a landline. We’d have to go down and tap in.”

“That’s correct.”

“And you say you can’t pronounce the name of the place he’s from?”

“I said you can’t.”

“It should be doable,” said Rudy.

Hutch shook her head. “Phyl, show me what the landlines look like.”

A stretch of highway appeared on-screen. It was night, with a cloudless sky and a big moon. The lines were strung on a series of posts off to one side of the road.

Rudy sighed. “It doesn’t look much like an elder civilization.”

As they watched, a pair of lights appeared in the distance. Vehicle approaching.

“Are they communication lines?” Hutch asked. “Or power lines?”

“Probably both. You’ll have to go down and find out.”

“That sounds dangerous,” said Antonio.

That was exactly what Hutch was thinking. But the opportunity to sit down with aliens from an advanced civilization, something humans had been trying to do her entire lifetime, to sit down with one of these guys and ask a few questions…It was just too much to pass up. “How do we go about doing it?” she asked.

“I’ll design a link for you to use.”

“Okay.”

Matt wanted to make the flight down. But there was no way Hutch was going to pass on this one. “I’ve got it,” she said. “You stay with the ships.”

“I’ll go with you,” Antonio said.

“Me, too,” said Rudy.

She needed a backup, just in case. And if she got in trouble, she was reasonably sure Antonio would be more help than Rudy. “I have to take Antonio,” she said. “He’s the media. But, Rudy, we’re just going down to tie a link into the landlines. We aren’t going to talk to anyone.”

His jaw set. “Hutch, I want to go.”

“Rudy.” She adopted her most reasonable tone. “I’m going to need you to help conduct the conversation when we establish contact with these creatures. Meantime, I want you out of harm’s way.”

He sighed. Grumbled. Sat down.

She led Antonio below to the cargo area, which also served as the launch bay for the lander. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have used grip shoes for a surface operation, but they were rubber and would ground her against electrical shock. She pulled on rubber gloves, made sure Antonio was similarly fitted, collected two e-suits, and asked belatedly whether he’d ever used one before.

“Ummm,” he said.

“Okay.” It was beginning to feel like old times. “It’s simple enough.”

The equipment generated a virtual pressure suit, a force field that would protect him from the void or from a hostile atmosphere. She showed him how and helped him get the harness on. They tested the unit until he was sure he could manage it. Then she helped him strap on his air tanks.

When he was ready, she picked up a knife from the equipment locker, and they climbed into the lander.

An hour later, they descended into a clearing alongside a lonely road with electrical lines.

Had it not been for the poles lining the side of the highway, she might almost have been in Virginia. The road was two lanes. Its shoulder was cleared for about three meters on either side, then the forest closed in. It was late, the stars were bright overhead, the moon in the middle of the sky. A brisk wind moved through the trees, and insects buzzed contentedly. She’d been in forests on a dozen or so worlds, and they all sounded alike.

Dead ahead, the road went over a hill and dropped out of sight. Behind them, it disappeared around a curve.

She walked over to one of the poles and looked up. The pole itself had, in an earlier life, been a tree. The lines were high. Phyllis had thought there’d be footholds, but she didn’t see any.

“How are you going to get up there?” Antonio asked.

“Not sure yet.” A car was coming. From behind them. As headlights came around the curve, they sank back out of sight.

It was a small, teardrop vehicle. Three wheels. It was quiet. Probably electrically powered.

Then it was past, over the hill, and gone. She didn’t get a good look at the driver. The only thing she could be sure of was that it was smaller than she was.

She looked again at the pole. “How the hell do they get up these things?”

“Probably use machinery of some sort.”

Crosspieces supported two sets of wires. They were fastened to the top, one above the other. Phyl had told her that the higher wires would probably be the power lines.

“Wait here,” Hutch told him. “Stay out of sight.” She went back to the lander, climbed in, and got some cable out of the storage locker. Then she started the engine and took it up.

“What are you going to do?” Antonio asked.

She’d have preferred to work directly out of the vehicle, but she didn’t think she could get close enough without running into the power lines. Moreover, she’d have to lean pretty far out to make the connection, and it was a long way down.

Funny how perspectives changed when gravity became an issue.

She got above the trees and eased the lander over until she was immediately above the pole. Then she opened the door. Antonio looked up at her. He waved. “Be careful,” he said.

She leaned out and dropped one end of the cable to him. Then she looped the line around the pole so that it was supported by the crosspiece, and dropped the rest. Both ends now lay on the ground.

“It looks like a long climb up,” said Antonio. “I think I should do it.”

“You’re too heavy,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to lift you.”

“Hutch, I’m not excited about this.”

“Me neither, Antonio. I’m open to suggestions.”

“Car coming,” he said.

She saw the lights. Damn. The lander was hanging in midair, silhouetted against the moon. She grabbed the yoke and, with the hatch still open, arced away.

“Hutch, he’s stopping.”

There was no place to hide. She took the vehicle as low as she could and simply kept going.

“It sees you. Getting out of the car.”

“Keep down, Antonio.”

“It’s trying to get a better look. I think you’re out of sight now. The trees are in the way.”

“Let’s hope so.” She was looking for a place to set down, but there was no clearing.

“Uh-oh.”

“What uh-oh?”

“It sees the line.”

“Okay. Just sit tight. We’ve got more cable if we need it.”

“Good.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Just standing there, looking around. That’s a nice-looking car, by the way.”

Hutch finally saw an opening in the foliage and took the lander down. Gently. No noise. “What’s he doing now?”

“Staring at the cable. They’re ugly critters. Wait, there’s another one in the car. They’re talking…Okay, now it’s getting back in. There’s another car coming. From the opposite direction. No, a truck rather. A flatbed.”

“Let me know as soon as they’re clear.”

“Okay.”

She listened to the wind and the insects. Then Antonio was back: “The flatbed’s gone. They’re both gone.”

And she thought, so were the people who’d sent out the interstellars.

She returned to the roadside clearing. It didn’t provide a lot of protection, but as long as no one stopped and put a light into it, the lander was reasonably out of sight. She put the knife in her harness, and the link designed by Phyl, and climbed out. There was grass. It was stiff and spiny, and it crackled underfoot.

Another car passed. When it was gone she tied one end of the cable around her waist, wrapped the other end around a thick tree branch, and gave it to Antonio. In the low gravity, her weight was lower by a quarter. “I’m going to try to walk up the pole,” she said.

He looked at the overhead wires. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

She didn’t feel especially confident either. How long had it been since she’d tried anything remotely like this? Her original idea had been that Antonio would help haul her to the top. But there was a good chance he’d lose his grip on the cable and drop her on her head.

“I just need you to keep me from falling.”

“Okay,” he said. “I think I can manage that.” He pulled the line tight, and she went up a few steps. She was in good physical condition, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t used to anything like this. Her shoulders began to ache, and the pole was round, so she couldn’t get her feet planted. Meantime, Antonio already had his hands full. “Have to find a better way,” she said.

“I’d agree with that. You can’t work from the lander?”

She looked again at the vehicle, and at the overhead lines. “Maybe we can.”

She took the end of the cable from Antonio, removed it from the branch, and carried it to the lander, where she tied it to one of the skids. Then she returned to the base of the pole, secured the other end to her harness, and called Phyl.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the AI.

“You can see where we are?”

“Yes, Hutch. I have a clear picture of the surroundings.”

“When I tell you, I want you to take the lander up just above the trees. Do it slowly. And keep in mind there’s a line tied to one of the skids, and I’m on the other end of the line.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Good. Okay, take her up.”

Phyl switched on the power, and the lander began to rise. Hutch watched the other end of the cable go up with it. Gradually it lost all slack.

“Now, when I tell you, take it away from the pole. Take it fifteen meters toward the east.” That would prevent the cable from coming loose at the top. “Do it slowly, Phyl.”

The lander hovered above her for a moment. Then it began to move away. The cable tightened and dragged her into the air.

Not very graceful.

She suddenly realized Antonio was taking pictures. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Priscilla, you look great.”

It hauled her steadily up. She made an effort to walk on the pole, as she’d seen actors do, and athletes. But it was impossible, and in the end she just allowed herself to be carried along and tried to keep herself from turning upside down.

She heard Matt’s laughter from the McAdams. “Smooth,” he said.

When she got to the level of the wires, she told Phyl to stop, planted the grip shoes as firmly as she could against the side of the pole, and used the knife to remove enough of the sheath from one of the wires so that she could see metal. Then she took the link Phyl had devised and clipped it to the line. “Okay,” she told Phyl. “It’s done.”

The link was equipped with a transmitter, so Phyl could listen. “Good,” she said. “We were right. It’s a comm line.”

“Okay. What do we do now?”

“Unless you’re comfortable up there, you might come down. Once you’ve done that, we’ll try to talk to our physicist.”

Matt congratulated her, and she said thanks and wondered why she’d insisted on doing this. Two vehicles rolled by, both going in the same direction, but neither slowed down.

Phyl moved the lander in close, lowering Hutch to the ground, then returned it to the clearing. And they were ready for the great experiment.

“Now, you have the physicist’s code, right?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll be able to talk to you without his hearing me. Right?”

“Yes, that’s the way I have it set up.”

“Okay. Let’s call him. If he answers, tell him we’re visitors from another place, that we’ve encountered one of their starships, and that we’ve come in response. And tell him hello.”

“Hutch,” said Jon, “I doubt they’ll know what Phyl is talking about. The starships are too long ago. You’re talking tens of thousands of years. They’ll have forgotten. There might even have been a different species in charge here then.”

“I don’t think it matters, Jon. As long as we’re able to get him interested.”

“He’ll think we’re crazy.”

“I suppose we could tell him we want to talk over a new quantum development.”

“Okay,” said Phyl, “I’ve punched in his code. The signal on the other end is sounding.”

Hutch and Antonio got back into the lander. She switched on the speaker and they could hear a singsong tone. “Waiting for him to answer.”

“Phyl, block off his comments. All we’ll want to hear are the translations.”

“Okay. You understand I’m not fluent.”

“Of course.”

“I will have to improvise.”

“Just do the best you can, Phyl.”

The singsong tone continued. Hutch sat in the dark, thinking once again how history was about to be made. First contact via landline. Who would have thought?

“Hello?” That was the translation. It was still Phyllis’s voice, but she modulated it, gave it a deeper sound, so they’d have no trouble distinguishing who was talking.

“Mr. Smith?” The creature’s name was, of course, a jaw breaker. So she simply substituted.

“Yes?” said the alien. “Who is this, please?”

“Mr. Smith, I’m calling you from a starship, which is currently in orbit around your world.”

Hutch listened to the distant hum of electronics. They weren’t from the ship.

“Margie,” the creature said, “is that you?”

“Tell him it’s not a joke, Phyl.”

“Mr. Smith,” said Phyl, “it’s not Margie, and not a joke.”

“All right, look: Whoever you are, I’ve got better things to do. Please stop tying up the line and go away.” He disconnected.

“That went well,” said Antonio.

“Hutch,” said Phyl, “should we try again?”

“Yes. But let’s use a different tack.” Hutch gave her instructions, and Phyl called.

“Hello,” said Smith. Hutch wondered what his tone sounded like.

“Mr. Smith, this is the same caller. I understand your skepticism. But please give me a moment and I’ll get out of your way. Please.”

Long pause. Another car went by. “Say your piece and go away.”

“Can you see the moon?”

“What?”

“Can you see the moon? From where you are now?”

“What does it matter?”

“We’ll use it to prove who we are.”

Phyl said, “I think he just used an expletive. Not sure. But the tone—”

“Okay, Phyl. Try to stay with him.”

Mr. Smith was back: “One moment.” Hutch could picture him,—it—striding irritably around his windows, looking out. Then: “Yes, I can see it.”

“Can you get access tomorrow to a telescope?”

“A what?”

“A device for making faraway objects seem close?”

“I may be able to do that.”

“Tomorrow night, at exactly this time, use it to watch the moon. Will you do that?”

Another long pause. “Yes. I can arrange to do that.”

“Will you do it?”

“I’ll do it. Now please go away.”

Hutch passed another quick instruction to Phyl. “One more thing,” said the AI. “After the demonstration, you are to tell nobody. Is that understood?”

“What demonstration?”

“Watch the moon, Mr. Smith.”

“You’re going to take the ship across the face of the moon tomorrow night,” said Antonio. They were in the lander.

Hutch sat back and enjoyed the moment. “You got it.”

“He’s going to need a pretty big telescope to see us.”

“Antonio, we’re not going near the moon.”

“We aren’t?”

“No. Look, we know he can see the moon now, so that narrows down the area he lives in. We’ll just get well outside the atmosphere, line ourselves up, and make the passage there. We’ll have to cover some ground to make sure he can see us from anywhere in this area, and we can’t put the ship right in the middle of his picture, which I’d have preferred to do, but we should be able to make it work.”

“And if he does see us—”

“Yes?”

“You really think he’ll keep it to himself?”

“I’d prefer he say nothing. But even if he doesn’t, who’s going to believe him? Say, did you see that moonrider last night?”

“Who’s going to believe him is everybody else that sees us.”

“You might have a point, Antonio.”

“Why do we care?”

“Because if we’re able to set this thing up, we don’t want to have to deal with a mob. Or the local army.”

“He’ll forget,” said Jon. “He won’t even think of it tomorrow night.”

There was a spirited discussion as the lander rose back into orbit. Rudy was glad they’d gotten through, taken the first step, but he thought the event was lacking in dignity. It just didn’t feel right.

Matt thought that history would remember the images of Hutch getting dragged up the pole. “I think you’ve become immortal,” he said.

“We’ll want to call him again tomorrow,” said Jon. “Remind him to watch, or it’ll be a nonevent.”

“It’s already a nonevent,” insisted Rudy. “You’re not supposed to, finally, after all these years, run into aliens more or less at our level, and call them on the VR.”

“It’s not a VR,” said Phyl. “They used to call it a telephone.”

“The thing that struck me,” Antonio told her as they approached the Preston, “was how human he sounded. And I understand we were listening to Phyl translate everything into the vernacular, and maybe even make a few things up. But his overall reaction was exactly how I would have responded. Get off the circuit, you creep.”

“Antonio,” said Jon, “he was more patient than you would have been.”

Chapter 25

The world rotated once on its axis in twenty-one hours, seventeen minutes, and change. Tomorrow they’d put on a show, and, with luck, go down and say hello to Mr. Smith.

Good old Smitty.

Aboard the starships, there was again talk of celebration, but it didn’t happen. Too soon, Jon said. Matt thought they shouldn’t push their luck. See how it goes first. Don’t jinx things.

Hutch and her passengers went over to the McAdams. (They thought of it as a night out, a chance to get away.) They decided both ships would make the lunar passage. She and Matt planned the maneuver, then they all settled in to relax. “I wish Henry could have been here,” Jon said.

Hutch could think of a number of people with whom she’d have liked to share the moment, especially those who’d given their lives. George Hackett. Maggie Tufu, lost in the hunt for the Monument-Makers. Preacher Brawley, killed in the chindi search. Herman Culp and Pete Damon, murdered by creatures who’d resembled angels. There were others. It had been a long and bloody track, leading ultimately to a moon crossing in a place incomparably far from home.

She drank to them, silently, thinking, they were all there. They had all contributed. All those who had gone out over the years on the Academy flights, and for the Europeans, and on various independent missions. Here’s to everybody.

They’d all come home disappointed. Occasionally someone had found a living world, and that had been a victory of sorts. And there’d even been a handful with sentient creatures. But until now, other than the lunatic Noks, there’d been no one with anything resembling modern technology. Nobody who understood why there was rain or what stoked the fire in the sky.

Nobody.

She slept well, got up late, showered, ate a light breakfast, and sat talking quietly with Jon. He was, in some ways, still a kid. He was already wondering what he could do for an encore after the Locarno. “It’s going to be all downhill from here,” he said, laughing.

“It’s not a bad thing,” she told him, “to achieve something so monumental that it might not be possible to do something even bigger.”

He was seated beside her in the common room. He looked relaxed, happy, almost smug. “I know,” he said. “The problem is that, had Henry not been there, it would never have happened. I mean, this isn’t something I can actually take credit for. He did the breakthrough work. All I did was rearrange the circuits.”

“But you seem to have been the only one who could do that, Jon. You’ll get a lot of credit. And you’re doing exactly the right thing, handing it off to Henry. He deserves it. But that doesn’t diminish what you’ve accomplished.”

Hutch and matt maneuvered the ships into position and began the crossing. They were side by side, less than a kilometer apart. The event would be visible from the ground for at least forty minutes.

“Phyl,” said Hutch, “make the call.”

Mr. Smith picked up on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Mr. Smith,” said Hutch, “I talked with you last evening. Do you have your telescope?”

“You’re back again? What did you say your name was?”

“I don’t think I gave it.”

“Well, whoever you are, I’d be grateful if you would leave me alone.”

“Please go to the window, Mr. Smith. And look at the moon.” While they waited, Phyl commented that he was making sounds that she could not interpret.

“He’s grumbling,” said Jon.

“Okay, I’m at the window.”

“You can see the moon?”

“Yes. I can see the moon.”

“Do you have a telescope? A lens of some kind?”

“Look, whoever you are, is this really necessary?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I don’t have a lens.”

“Yesterday you said you did.”

“I thought you’d go away.”

“Mr. Smith, you’re aware there are transmissions coming into this planetary system from outside? From other places?”

There was a pause. Then: “Yes. Of course.”

“Those signals are what brought us here. We’d like to talk with you about them.”

“Look, the joke’s over. I’m too busy for this.”

“My name is Priscilla Hutchins. How can we prove to you that we are what we say?”

Phyl’s voice broke in: “Hutch, I’ll have to make up a name for you. He wouldn’t be able to pronounce yours. Especially Priscilla.”

“Do it, Phyl. Whatever works.”

Rudy and Antonio were watching her. Rudy was acquiring a desperate look. Antonio wore a cynical smile. Things always go wrong.

“Priscilla.” Smith was speaking again. “The only way I can think of would be to bring your starship down, park it on my lawn, and let me walk around it and kick the tires.”

Hutch sank back in her chair. “I may have improvised a bit with the language on that one,” said Phyl.

Rudy stared at the overhead. “Maybe we should try someone else.”

“This guy’s a physicist,” said Antonio. “If you can’t get through to him, what chance do you think you’d have with a plumber?”

“I think,” said Jon, “anyone would be skeptical. How would you react to this kind of situation?”

“Mr. Smith,” said Hutch, “are you willing to concede the possibility that we might be what we say we are?”

“Good-bye.” And suddenly, the line was clear.

“He disconnected,” said Phyl.

Hutch nodded. “Yeah, I got that impression.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Matt.

“I guess we have to get his attention.”

“Are we thinking the same thing?”

“Probably.”

“Do we do it in daylight?”

“No. It’ll be more spectacular at night.”

The city spread out below them. It was on the western coast of Mr. Smith’s continent, mountains behind it, a large developed harbor, ships moving in and out, a busy airport several kilometers to the north, where the mountains were lower. There was lots of ground traffic and a couple of dirigibles.

Everything was laid out in squares, a chessboard city, glowing with lights. It gave the appearance of having been designed rather than simply having expanded from something smaller. A cluster of tall buildings rose near the waterfront area, although large structures were scattered throughout. There were parks, a river, and even a couple of small lakes. The air looked clean.

The moon was in the east. It was a bright, clear night, the sky full of stars.

They came in off the sea, both landers barely two hundred meters off the ground, moving slowly, not quite seventy kph, far slower than a standard aircraft could maintain. They passed over a cluster of piers and buildings that were probably warehouses, and over an avenue filled with traffic. At Hutch’s word, they switched on their navigation lights and turned north.

They flew over rooftops and past illuminated buildings. The architecture had a more liquid flow than cities at home. Maybe it was because she was passing overhead at night, but everything seemed rounded, curved, peeling away into the dark. She picked out the broadest, busiest street she could find and led them there. They moved in just above the traffic, drawing the startled attention of pedestrians.

The creatures resembled hobgoblins. They were small, barely half her height, with slick gray skin, enormous eyes set back where a human’s temples would have been, and thick limbs. There was a lack of definition about them, no jawline, no clearly defined throat, no ears. She tried to persuade herself they were not really repulsive, but her instincts responded differently.

She came to a full stop in front of a transit vehicle, a bus, just starting a turn. The bus jammed on its brakes, and the creatures inside lurched toward the front.

Matt pulled in behind her, back about twenty meters, and the landers simply floated in midair, defying gravity.

A truck banged into a car.

Something jangled. How about that? They even had horns.

Everything was coming to a dead stop.

“Okay, Matt,” she said, “let’s move on.”

They cruised around the city, creating mayhem. “What would your Academy people have said about this?” asked Matt, as they floated over a broad avenue.

“They wouldn’t have approved.”

“It’s in a good cause.”

“I know. It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“Who would have denied permission?”

“I would.”

Phyl broke in: “You’ve made the newscasts.”

“What are they saying?”

“‘Unknown objects create havoc in Baltimore.’ ‘Airborne objects float over Baker Street.’ ‘Apparitions cause traffic jam.’”

“You’re making up the proper nouns.”

“I have to.”

“At least you could have picked a West Coast city.”

“I’ll try to get it right next time, Ms. Hutchins.”

“You think that’ll do it?” asked Matt.

“That should be sufficient. Let’s go home.”

Mr. Smith picked up on the first ring. “Was that you in Seattle last night?”

Phyl had apparently taken the hint. “Yes. That was us.”

“All right. You made your point. I’ll talk to you.”

“How do we find you?”

“I live on the outskirts of Denver.”

“Describe the place. We have no familiarity with your world other than what we can see.”

“It’s on the same continent as Seattle. Proceed—” Here the translation garbled.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith. We don’t understand your directional terms.”

“Proceed toward the sunrise. Two-thirds of the distance across the continent. And a little bit down—”

“Pardon me. Which way is down?”

Pause. “Toward the (something)—”

“Are you referring to the line around the center of the planet? Probably the hottest area?”

“Yes.”

And so it went. It took a while, but they figured it out. Look for a wide river. Follow the river in the direction of the equator. Pass a city in which the tallest building is shaped, at the top, like a needle. Beyond, east of the city, the river forks. Follow the side that angles back in the direction of Seattle. Find a smaller city nearby. On the far side of the city—

Here, Hutch interrupted him: “Is it remote? Do you have neighbors?”

“Yes.”

“Can you suggest a place where we could have some privacy?”

“Not anyplace that might have a runway.”

“We don’t need a runway.”

“Oh, yes. I forgot.”

“Well?”

“I think I can arrange something.”

Matt wanted to go down with the mission. “It’s my turn,” he persisted.

This was a big moment, and he intended to be there when it happened. He didn’t say that, but she knew that was the point. And he also probably thought that if trouble developed—after all, who knew what would really be waiting for them?—it would be better for all if he were there. Hutch, after all, wasn’t young, and she was also a woman.

“Okay, Matt. It’s all yours. You’ll be taking both Antonio and Rudy with you. How about Jon?”

“Of course,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

“Be careful,” she told Matt. “Keep the circuits open. And use Mac’s lander.”

“Sure. But what difference does it make?”

“If I have to come after you, I won’t want to spend time chasing down a lander.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have to come bail us out.”

“Neither do I. But we should consider the possibility that this might not turn out the way we want it to.”

“Okay. I can’t argue with that.”

“You’ll have weapons with you?”

“Of course.”

“There’s something else we might set up. As a precaution.”

“What’s that?”

“Your lander doesn’t have a mounted projector, does it?”

“No.”

“Neither does ours. Okay, Matt, I want you to pull a projector from storage. If you don’t have one, use the one from the VR tank.”

“To do what?”

“Put it on the hull. And there’s a sequence from Battle Cry that I want you to have available.”

“From what?”

“From Battle Cry. It’s probably in your library. Doesn’t matter, though. I’ll send it over. Just in case.”

“You worry too much, Hutch.”

Chapter 26

Mr. Smith had access to a lodge in an isolated area. It was located on a lakefront amid dense forest and low, rolling hills. Matt descended until the glare from a distant city had disappeared below the horizon, and the world grew dark. There were few artificial lights in evidence, a couple off to the west, another on a hilltop below him, and a campfire a kilometer or two to the north.

They’d been directed to watch for the lake, a long narrow curving body of water, of which the northern tip arced east, and the southern, west. It had surprised Matt how difficult it was to describe the shape when the two speakers had no common images. No letter ‘S.’ No way to determine what serpentine meant. And no way to measure distance. How long was a kilometer? It was the distance Matt could walk in about twelve minutes, but how long would Mr. Smith need?

It would have helped if visual communication had been possible. The satellites that had been placed around the Orion Arm by Mr. Smith’s ancestors transmitted both audio and visual signals. But, unless there was more going on here than Smith knew, the visual component was lost.

“There’s the lake,” said Jon.

It didn’t much fit the description, but it was the only lake in sight. And there was a single cluster of lights. Otherwise, the entire region was dark.

The lodge had two stories and was made of logs. Smoke drifted out of a chimney, and lights were on in every window. An outside lamp illuminated the deck. Their first impression was that it would not have been out of place in Minnesota. But as they drew closer, they saw it would have been too small, the deck too confined, the ceilings too low to be comfortable for human beings.

“It has a dock,” said Jon. And a shed with a boat rack, holding something that looked like a small canoe.

There was no place to set down except at the lakefront. Matt would have preferred something a bit less exposed, but he saw no option unless they were prepared to walk two or three kilometers. That wasn’t a good idea. Better to keep the lander nearby in case they had to leave in a hurry.

He descended directly in front of the lodge. Lights were on inside, but curtains had been drawn across the windows. He could see movement inside.

Matt slipped a laser into his belt, and they activated their e-suits.

Hutch’s voice came from the Preston: “Everything looks quiet in the area, Matt.”

The front door opened. Something stood in the light, peering out.

Hutch’s hobgoblin. She had it exactly right. It squinted in the lander’s lights, and Matt shut them down. Its head was bald, and the features were scrunched as if someone had squeezed them from forehead to chin. But that was an exaggeration because it didn’t really have a chin. It was there, but not so much that you’d notice.

The thing wore dark baggy pants and a loose-fitting jacket. A triangular cap was folded over its skull. Altogether, it was a ridiculous-looking creature, save that it bore itself with a casual demeanor that suggested a few aliens on the lawn was not something to get excited about.

“Hutch,” he said into his commlink. “We’re down. And we have someone waiting for us.”

“I see him, Matt. Okay. You’re tied into Phyl.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck.”

He ran a check with the AI. Phyl would listen on his channel for Matt’s comments, would translate the comments for the alien, and would then translate the alien’s response. Simple enough.

He opened the hatch, climbed onto the ladder, and watched the creature’s eyes go wide as it took him in. It backed off a step or two.

Matt spoke into his commlink. “Mr. Smith?”

Phyl said something that Matt couldn’t make out. The creature responded with a hiss and some gurgles. Phyl translated: “Yes, I am Mr. Smith. Are you Priscilla?”

The open door behind the creature revealed a room that appeared to be empty. But he saw immediately they would have trouble using the furniture or standing up straight.

“No. My name is Matt. These are Jon, Rudy, and Antonio.”

The hobgoblin closed its eyes and inclined its head. “I am fortunate to meet you.” It stepped out onto the deck.

“And it is good,” said Matt, “to meet you.” The language had no rhythm. It consisted of grunts and clacks and hisses. He could see the creature was reluctant to get too close to them, yet its mouth hung open in a very humanlike response.

Mr. Smith’s eyes had gone very wide. It stared at Matt. And at the lander. And at Jon. Then at the sky. And at Rudy and Antonio. And finally, it turned its attention back to Matt. It made a gurgling sound that Phyl could not translate. Then, in a sudden burst, it moved past them and hurried to the lander.

It touched the vehicle, making more unintelligible sounds, and drew its finger across the hull. (Matt noticed it had six digits.) “Beautiful,” it said finally. “You have a remarkable aesthetic.”

“Thank you,” said Rudy.

When it had finished admiring the vehicle, it asked to be taken for a ride. There wasn’t room for five and Matt didn’t want to leave anyone alone on the shoreline, so he said it could be arranged at a future time.

Mr. Smith inclined its head again. “May I ask where is Priscilla Hutchins?”

“She remained behind.”

“I am sorry I offended her.”

“I think there’s a misunderstanding. You did not offend her.”

“Why else would she not come?”

“We couldn’t all come.”

“Please convey my apologies.”

Matt decided there was no point debating the issue. “I will tell her you were concerned. She will be pleased to hear it.”

“Very good. Who is speaking for you?” It would of course have been impossible for the creature not to notice that the dialogue and the lip movements weren’t synchronized.

“An artificial intelligence,” said Matt.

“Explain, please.”

He did. As best he could.

“Remarkable. I have heard of such things, in theory. But I have never believed they were actually possible.” It stroked the lander’s tread one final time, then led the way back to the front door, standing aside so they could enter. “I am sorry about the accommodations.”

“It’s okay.” Matt ducked his head and entered.

“Your machine,” it said, “what sustains it?”

“How do you mean?”

“It floats in the air. It negates gravity.”

“Yes. In a way.”

“How do you do that?”

Matt looked at Jon. Did he want to elaborate? Jon shrugged. “Not my field.”

“I have no idea,” Matt said. “We push a button, the gravity goes away.”

“It is hard to believe.”

“You don’t have the capability?”

“No. Our experts say it can’t be done.” Inside, only Rudy and Antonio could stand up straight. Antonio’s skull brushed the ceiling. “Where are you from?” it asked.

How to explain? Mr. Smith might know about the speed of light, but what would a year mean? “Far away,” Rudy said, taking charge. “We live out close to the rim of the galaxy. Relatively speaking.”

Phyl broke in: “Try to keep it simple, Rudy.”

“Yes. That would be quite far. I’m surprised anyone would undertake a journey of that nature. Why have you done it?”

Rudy exchanged puzzled glances with Matt. “You mean why did we come here?”

“I mean why would you agree to sit in the interior of a closed space for”—Phyllis hesitated, trying to find the right term—“eons?”

“Eons?” Rudy cleared his throat. Chuckled. “The flight lasted only a few weeks.”

“Rudy,” said Phyl, “I have no equivalent for weeks. No way to render the time.”

“Damn it, Phyl. Tell him the sun rose twenty-three times, his sun—have I got that right?—how long is the day out here?—well what the hell, make it twenty-three.”

Phyl relayed the question and Mr. Smith looked at Rudy. Its eyes grew larger, and its nose caught the light and seemed to glisten.

Matt was already uncomfortable standing bent over. The chairs wouldn’t accommodate him. Unexpectedly, Mr. Smith snorted.

“I think that is laughter,” said Phyl.

“On this most significant occasion, I am a poor host. I had not expected you to be so large. In fact, I hadn’t expected you at all.” It snorted again.

Odd sense of humor, thought Matt. “You thought it was a hoax,” he said.

“I’m not sure what I thought.” He turned back to Rudy. It was no longer possible to think of Mr. Smith as an it. “Did I understand correctly? You came here from the edge of the galaxy? In twenty-three days?”

“Yes. Although our home world is not all the way out on the rim.”

“Nevertheless. I don’t know much about such things, but I am aware it’s a long flight.”

Antonio asked permission to take pictures.

“Of course,” said Mr. Smith.

The imagers on their harnesses were transmitting everything back to Hutch. But Antonio had specialized equipment, and wanted specific angles, so he began taking pictures of the alien, and of the room.

Jon lowered himself onto the floor, beside a radiator, and Matt followed. The furniture looked comfortable. Thick cushions. A sofa and two armchairs. A device that was probably a radio receiver was set on a corner table. The walls were paneled, light-stained, and smelled vaguely of cedar. A set of stairs rose to the second floor. Two electric lamps provided light. On the whole, the place felt warm and cozy.

A doorway opened onto a dining area. Mr. Smith glanced in that direction. “May I get you some refreshments?”

“No, thank you,” said Rudy. “No offense, but we’re not sure your food would be safe for us.”

“Ah. Yes, I should have realized. I suspect there would be no problem, but it is best to take no chance.” He sat down on the floor beside Jon. “May I ask why you picked me? I mean, of all the people in the world, why did you call me?”

“Because we wanted to speak with a scientist. We overheard you on a radio broadcast.”

The alien had short stubby digits. Six on each hand. (It was actually more like a claw.) He pressed the digits together in a very human gesture. “I see. You’re talking about the public relations push for my group of people come together for profit.” Phyl’s voice changed, apparently dissatisfied with her translation. She tried again: “The effort to collect customers for my business.”

“Yes.”

“But I am not a scientist. What made you think that?”

“We understood you to be a physicist.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I help people take care of their physical well-being. I am a”—the flow of conversation stopped while Phyl considered what term to use—“a health guru.”

“This is turning into a pretty good story,” said Antonio.

A gust of wind rattled the trees. “How old,” asked Rudy, “is the culture? Your civilization?”

Mr. Smith thought about it. “I don’t think I understand the question.”

“You have an organized society.”

“Of course.”

“How long has it been here?”

“It’s always been here.”

Rudy glanced at Matt. Where do we begin with this guy? “We know there was a high-tech society on this world a long time ago. And there is still one. More or less. But you do not seem to have what they had. There’s no evidence of a space program. You do not transmit visuals. Power is supplied by landline. What happened?”

“You asked several questions. Let me tell you first that one of the (not translatable) ships is out there. Orbiting (not translatable).”

Phyl broke in. “Give me a second to talk to him.” Moments later, she was back. “The ship is very old. Thousands of years, but it’s from this world. It’s in orbit around one of the gas giants.”

“We don’t know what happened to it.” Mr. Smith looked away from them. “But it’s there. If we ever get a space program together, we’ll probably go out and take a look at it. But I can’t really see that happening.”

“Why not?”

“Because technology is dangerous.”

“How do you mean?”

“It can provide horrendous weapons to idiots.”

“Well,” said Antonio, “you have a point there.”

“There are subtle things. It can tweak a gene and make everyone happy.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Think what happens to a society if everyone is happy. All the time.” He paused. Removed his jacket, revealing a knit white shirt, open at the neck. “The higher the level of technology, the more vulnerable a civilization becomes. Shut down a system here, or there, and the whole thing collapses. We have seen it.

“The simple answer to your question is that we do not have, for example, imaging transmission because we forgot how to do it.”

“You forgot.”

“Yes. We forgot. And we choose not to remember.”

“Why? How is imaging transmission dangerous?”

“It has led to social decay. In some eras, it became a tool for enslavement. For controlling the masses. You didn’t watch it. It watched you.”

“What sort of government have you?”

Phyl spoke again: “He does not understand the question.”

Rudy gave it another try: “Who builds the roads?”

“We have people who specialize in highway construction.”

“Who provides leadership? Who makes decisions of general consequence?”

“We have leaders.”

“How do you decide who leads? Do you hold elections?”

Mr. Smith responded. Phyl said, “He does not understand the question.”

“Try it this way: ‘How does one become a leader?’”

“We do not replace leaders.”

On their private channel, Antonio commented that it sounded like a dictatorship.

“What happens when they die?”

He needed a moment to reply. “The security is very good.”

Rudy was showing signs of frustration. “What happens when they die of old age?”

“Explain, please.”

“When their bodies wear out and they cease to function.”

“You’re talking about animals.”

“No. I’m talking about your leaders.”

“They do not die. Not of natural causes. Why would you think that?”

That brought confused glances. “Mr. Smith, if I may ask, do you die?”

“If there is an accident, of course. Or if I choose to end my life.”

“You’re telling us,” said Antonio, not believing what he’d just heard, “that you live forever?”

“Not forever. Nothing can live forever. But we have indefinite spans. Is that not true of you also?”

“No,” said Rudy. “We age. Like other animals.”

The thing snorted again. “I’m sorry to hear it. I believe I would rather have my life than your starship.” He seemed sympathetic. “Tell me, what can I do for you while you’re here? Would you like to meet with some of our more prominent citizens?”

“Perhaps another time,” said Rudy.

Mr. Smith folded his arms. It wasn’t exactly a fold, Matt saw. The arms were more flexible than their human counterparts. They more or less entwined. “As you wish,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Would you like me to arrange a sightseeing tour?”

“No,” said Matt. “I think not. But thank you.”

Rudy was still trying to digest everything. “Is it possible we could obtain a history book?” he said. “Something that would allow us to learn of your culture.”

“Regrettably, I don’t have one available.”

Hutch’s voice: “You have company. Looks like about six of them, Matt. They were hiding in the boathouse.”

“If you’d care to come back in a day or so, I’m sure I could come up with something that would satisfy you.”

“Thank you,” said Rudy, showing no sign that he had heard Hutch’s warning. “We’ll pick it up next time.”

“Two of them are moving toward the lander. The others are splitting up. Two at the front door. Two in back.”

“You’re leaving, then?”

“Phyl,” Matt told her. “Get out of there. Get some altitude.”

“Leaving now, Matt.”

“Yes,” said Rudy. “I think we’ve accomplished all we can for the evening.”

“They’re armed,” said Hutch. “I can’t determine the nature of the weapons.”

Matt removed his laser and showed it to Mr. Smith. “Who’s outside?”

“The ones outside?” If Mr. Smith was surprised, he did not show it.

“Yes.”

“Very good. How did you know?”

Matt leveled the weapon at him. “We’ll be leaving now. You lead the way. And warn your associates if there’s a surprise of any kind, you’ll be the first one to go down.”

“Matt,” he said, “they will not allow you to leave. If that means I must die here, then that will be the outcome.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re priceless. You and your friends are the most exciting thing to happen here in a thousand years. Moreover, you have a vehicle that is not subject to gravity. And you have a starship that travels multiples of light speed. How could you possibly think we would allow all that to walk away from us?”

“You just got finished arguing that advanced technology is dangerous.”

“Ah, yes. If you had lived as long as I, you would not look for consistency. Now please lower your weapon. It can do no good, and might only needlessly get us both killed.”

“I’m not prepared to do that.”

“You have no choice.”

“Of course we do.”

“Matt,” said Phyl, “I believe I am safely out of range.”

Matt exchanged glances with Jon and Antonio, then signaled the alien to start out the door.

“I don’t wish to comply,” he said.

Matt hesitated.

They were all on their feet now. “Shoot if you must.”

“Do it like General Lee,” said Antonio.

Of course.

“Phyl.”

“Yes?”

“Do Battle Cry.”

“Okay, Matt.”

Matt lowered the laser and looked down at Mr. Smith. “Have it your way.”

Somewhere, a bugle sounded. Outside the windows a terrible cry exploded out of the darkness. It was the shriek of angry banshees, filled with rage and bloodlust. Then the night was gone, dissolved into bright light. Gray-clad troops poured out of the woods and charged the lodge. Heavy gunfire erupted on all sides. There was a brief crackle of electrical weapons.

“They’re clearing out,” said Hutch.

An artillery team arrived just outside the window. They dragged a cannon, which they quickly turned, loaded, and pointed at the living room.

A wave of cavalry rolled out of the forest and headed along the lakefront, whooping and yelling.

Mr. Smith shrieked and ran from the building.

Matt, Antonio, Jon, and Rudy strolled out behind him. He was the only alien in sight.

Chapter 27

The second mission objective was to investigate Sigma 2711, probable source of the radio transmissions received near the end of the last century at the Drake Center in Cherry Hill. They needed three weeks and three days to get there, and it would be an understatement to say that Matt was happy, finally, to arrive back in normal space. The ship’s calendar indicated that, back home, it was Thursday, January 17.

The atmosphere on the McAdams was less congenial than on the Preston. For one thing, there were only two people; for another, both were males. Jon was friendly enough. But the problem was that he could content himself for hours on end with the ship’s library. It might have been less annoying had he been reading books on particle physics, or some such thing. He did do that. But he also read biographies of political and military leaders, commentaries by Roman philosophers, contemporary novels, and pretty much anything else that caught his eye. The result was that, even though Jon offered to watch VRs with him, Matt understood it was an imposition. “No,” he invariably said, “stay with your book. I’ve got stuff to keep me busy.”

Matt had never been much of a reader. He tried, but the silence in the ship, which was usually broken only when Jon wandered over to get something to eat, or headed for the workout room, was stifling. He didn’t enjoy watching shows alone, so mostly he sat and entertained himself doing puzzles, playing through fantasy football seasons, or simply drifting through the library, hoping something would catch his attention. (Nothing ever did.) Consequently, the stars, when they finally showed up, looked pretty good.

Jon was on the bridge with him when they made the jump. And he, too, was obviously happy to be back.

The globular cluster NCG6440 was a misty swirl in the rear. M28 was too far ahead to look like anything more than simply a dim star. “Jim,” he said, addressing the AI, “any sign of the Preston?”

“Negative, Matt.”

“Ship status?”

“Normal. All systems operating within parameters.”

But where was Sigma? “How about the target? Have we located it yet?”

“Working,” said Jim.

It had been seventy years since the celebrated signal had been picked up. The researchers had tracked it, with a high degree of probability, to Sigma 2711. That meant the transmission had been sent fifteen thousand years ago.

This is our first attempt to communicate beyond our realm.

It must have been a tantalizing time. Who had sent the message? Had they already heard something? Surely it had been directed at relatively nearby targets. But it had traveled on for fifteen thousand years until finally it arrived at Cherry Hill.

He wondered whether anyone else across the broad sweep of the cosmos had picked up the transmission. Whether the senders had ever received a reply.

Respond if you are able. Or blink your lights.

Something very human there. It was a pity they’d been so far.

“I have it,” the AI said. The on-screen starfield approached and expanded as Jim increased magnification. A group of yellow stars appeared, and a cursor marked the target.

“How far, Jim?”

“Forty-four light-years.”

Jon tried to look humble.

“Just down the street,” said Matt. “Let’s go take a look.”

Sigma 2711 is located in relatively open space, 3,500 light-years on the far side of NCG6440. It’s a class-F yellow star, almost half again as hot as Sol.

“Jim,” said Matt, “see what you can find in the biozone.”

The AI acknowledged.

“Any electronic activity out there?” asked Jon.

“Not this time. No, there is nothing.”

Matt nodded. “Nobody here.”

Jon shook his head. “They might have advanced beyond radio transmissions. Who knows?”

“Is that possible?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a chance,” Matt said, “the transmission didn’t originate here. Just came through. Or from nearby. At this range, it would have been difficult to be certain. Especially when you consider the technology they had to work with.”

“It’s a pity.”

“Jon, you didn’t seem to care all that much about Makai. Why are you concerned here? What’s the difference?”

“Oh, I cared, Matt.” Jon stared off into the distance. “I expected more than we found at Makai.”

“Yeah, that was something of a disappointment.”

“I’d love to sit down with somebody a million years ahead of us, and have the conversation we thought we were going to have at Makai.”

“Hutch thinks it might be that civilizations reach their maximum potential pretty early, then go downhill.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I hope you’re right.” Matt let his head drift back until he was looking up at the overhead.

“The thing about it,” said Jon, “is that this might be our last chance. If there’s no one here, we go back to playing bingo.” He looked at Matt. “What’s so funny?”

“I was thinking if we find the kind of place you’re talking about, they would have to have something better than the Locarno. You do all that work, come out here, and suddenly your new drive would be worthless.”

He laughed. “Yeah. That’s a point. I hadn’t thought about that possibility.”

Jon went silent. “You still awake?” Matt asked after a few minutes had passed.

“Yes.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“The printing press.”

“Say again?”

“Matt, I think Hutch is right. Technological civilizations don’t last long. You’re all right until you get a printing press. Then a race starts between technology and common sense. And maybe technology always wins.” He took a deep breath. “Think about it. Start printing books and you start the clock running. Eventually we may discover that nobody lasts past a thousand years once they start making books and newspapers.”

“I don’t know how you can say that. Look how old Smitty’s civilization is. It’s been up and down, but it’s still there.”

“I mean functioning. Smitty’s civilization is dead.” He took a deep breath. “Technology makes civilizations more vulnerable. You can’t easily flatten a world made up of Stone Age villages. But something as small as a computer glitch might take down a high-tech culture. Food stops rolling into Chicago, and chaos follows. You get advanced weapons. Or you develop long-term life and you get what Smitty has.”

“What does Smitty have?”

“The bosses never retire. Never die. Think about that. Keep in mind that, no matter what we’re able to do for the body, the mind becomes less flexible. You wind up with a world full of cranks.”

“No indication of planets yet,” said Jim. “But I do have the Preston. We have a hypercomm transmission from them.”

“Good,” said Matt. “Put her through.”

Priscilla appeared on the main display. “Hello, Matt,” she said. “Good to see you guys made it all right.”

“Hi, Priscilla. We’ve been here a couple of hours. Where are you?”

The visual reaction lagged a second or two behind. “Six hundred million klicks. We have a green world.”

Jon brightened. “Okay.”

“We came in right next to it. I’ve fed the numbers to Jim.”

“What’s it look like?”

“It’s quiet.”

“That was what we’ve been getting, too.”

So much for encountering a hypersociety. Someone who might provide a fresh perspective on the big questions. Was there a God? Why was there something and not nothing? Does the universe have a purpose, or is it all just an oversized mechanical crapshoot?

“Chances are,” said Jon, “they wouldn’t have a clue either.”

Hutch nodded. “Probably not.”

Matt wondered whether it wouldn’t take a lot of the pleasure out of existence if they knew the final answers. No more speculation. No more dark places. “I’m not sure it’s where I’d want to live,” he said.

They all gathered for dinner on the McAdams several hours later, greeting Hutch and her passengers like long-lost friends. They had by then gone into orbit around the newly discovered world.

It looked wild and, in the manner of living worlds everywhere, beautiful. It was covered with blue seas and broad forests. An enormous river tumbled down from a mountain range, culminating in a waterfall that would have dwarfed Niagara. Elsewhere, a volcano was belching smoke, while vast herds of land animals wandered unconcerned across its lower slopes. Other creatures looked more dangerous. They ran or shambled on two legs and four, armed with fangs and claws that looked like scythes. There were wolflike animals that hunted in packs, and things that might have been aerial jellyfish. On the whole, the place didn’t look friendly.

A hurricane drifted above one of the oceans, and snow was falling at both ice caps. No cities, though. No lights.

They were passing above a continent that reminded Matt of a turkey, head near the equator, tail and three legs intruding into the south polar region. They were over the northern extremity, riding along the coastline. Something was moving offshore. Jim focused on it, and they saw tentacles.

A large, hazy moon fell behind them as they passed into night. (A big moon had been found orbiting every world that had ever produced a civilization.)

The planet itself was moderately larger than Earth, with almost the same gravity. It turned on its axis in approximately twenty-seven hours, and it had a seventeen-degree axial tilt. “A bit colder than Earth, on average,” Jim reported, “but comfortable enough in the temperate zones.”

Worlds orbiting named stars automatically retained the name, and received a number to designate their position in the system. But Sigma 2711 was a catalog designator rather than a formal name. “Nobody there,” said Rudy. “Damn.”

No one else said anything. It wasn’t a surprise, of course. Had there been a high-tech civilization, they’d have known before now. But actually seeing an empty world was painful nonetheless.

“I guess,” said Hutch, “we should give it a name.”

“Port Hutchins,” said Antonio. He grinned and looked at her. “After your father.”

“That’s too close to home,” she said. “I vote we name it for the guy who started SETI. Call it Drake’s World.”

“Better,” said Matt, “would be to name it for the guy who made it possible for us to come this far. How about Far Silvestri?”

That prompted a couple of comments about Far Out Silvestri and Long Gone Silvestri, but everybody approved, Jon beamed, and Matt logged it in.

“‘Long gone’ might be the right descriptive,” said Rudy. “The place does look empty.”

Jim showed them images of ruins. Everything was buried, sometimes by forest growth, often simply by the earth. Some were quite deep.

“The place is a long time dead,” Jon said. “We might as well move on.”

“Can we tell how old the ruins are?” asked Antonio.

“We’d need specialists,” said Rudy. “Anybody here with a background in carbon dating?”

“We won’t find a Smitty on this world,” said Jon.

“Probably not.” Rudy wasn’t ready to give up quite that quickly. “But let’s at least take a look.”

“Lot of critters down there,” said Hutch. “It’s not safe.”

“Who gives a goddam, Priscilla? What did we come for? To cruise past and wave?”

Antonio looked accusingly at her, too, but said nothing.

She could have insisted. Even if she couldn’t bully Rudy, she could have directed Matt not to go, and that would have ended the idea. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that. “Let’s find a place.” She sighed. “There should be something out of harm’s way.”

“Very good.” Rudy rubbed his hands together. “Now we’re making sense.”

Jim started flashing images on the screen, cities buried in thick forest, buildings that might have been cathedrals or city halls or power companies overgrown with hundreds and maybe thousands of years of thick vegetation.

“There’s something,” said Rudy. An enormous structure that could have passed for an Indian temple, with broken statuary, shattered columns, balconies and porticoes.

“Jim,” said Matt, “show us what it would have looked like in better times.”

“Okay,” he said. “Meantime I have news.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a space station in solar orbit. No indication of power.”

Chapter 28

They remained on the McAdams, left the Preston in orbit around Far Silvestri, and made the jump out to the station. Matt brought them in less than an hour away from their target. It was, he thought, a remarkable tribute to the precision Jon had built into the Locarno.

The planetary system was extensive. There were at least six gas giants and a handful of terrestrials. Sigma itself, seen from this distance, was no more than a bright star, and they needed Jim to locate it for them.

As they’d known it would be, the orbiter was dark. It was larger than Union by about half, an agglomeration of spheres linked by shafts and tubes. It was an asymmetric maze, reminding Matt of a child’s puzzle, the sort you start on one side and have to find your way out the other. “Not the simplest way to construct one of these things,” said Jon, as they approached. “It must have appealed to someone’s sense of aesthetics.”

They watched as it tumbled slowly along its eleven-hundred-year-long orbit. Antennas, scanners, and collectors were fixed to the hull. Some were missing, others broken, trailing at the end of twisted cables. They could make out viewports and hatches, and there were barely discernible symbols in several places across the hull. The characters might have been at home in an ancient Sumerian text. “No power leakage,” said Jim. “It’s dead.”

No surprise there.

They drew alongside, and the navigation lights fell full on the orbiter. He looked across the arrays of pods and connecting shafts and radio dishes and spheres and wondered how long it had been there.

Rudy was sitting up front with him, his face creased, utterly absorbed.

“What do you think happened?” asked Matt.

Rudy shrugged. “No way to know. The most obvious explanation would be that it was blown out of orbit during a war. But I don’t see any damage that would suggest that.”

“The hull’s pretty badly beaten up.”

“Collisions with rocks.”

“How old you figure it is?”

Rudy appeared to be doing a calculation. “A few thousand years, at minimum. The Cherry Hill signal was sent fifteen thousand years ago.”

“You think it came from here? The Cherry Hill transmission?”

“Who knows, Matt? Probably. But it’s all guesswork at this point.”

Hutch appeared in the open hatchway. “Rudy, we’re going to go over and take a look. You want to come?”

“Of course. We leaving now?”

Matt noticed the invitation had not been extended in his direction. “Me, too,” he said.

“One of us has to stay back here, Matt. In case there’s a problem.”

“How about you?”

Hutch delivered one of those smiles. “Look,” she said, “I’ll make a deal with you.” She turned to Rudy: “When we get back to the Preston, did you want to make a landing somewhere? Take a look around?”

“Hutch,” he said, “I’d assumed we’d already decided to do that.”

“Okay. I’ll sit that one out, Matt, if you want.”

“You’re pretty generous. You get an ancient space station, and I get somebody’s farm.”

“R.H.I.P.,” she said. “And you never know what you might find on a farm.”

Jon and Antonio announced their intentions to go, too. Hutch pulled on a go-pack, and Rudy, strapping on his e-suit, looked admiringly at the thrusters. “We don’t get a set of those?”

“You don’t need one,” Hutch said. She wore a white blouse and slacks, and Rudy had a white sweater that probably belonged to Antonio. Jon had a gold pullover that read RAPTORS, and Antonio wore a red and silver jacket with WORLDWIDE stenciled across the back. The idea was that they be as visible as possible. Each of them carried an extra set of air tanks.

Hutch had attached an imager to her harness, so that Matt could watch the action. And, of course, he could listen in to the conversation.

There wasn’t much to hold his attention. While Hutch used a laser to cut her way inside, Jim announced he could not raise an AI. They’d have been shocked had he been able to do so.

The interior was, of course, pitch-black. The boarding party wore lamps on their caps and wrists. Rudy was excited, but was trying hard to behave as if he broke into alien constructs on regular occasions.

They entered a moderately sized chamber, with shelves and cabinets lining the bulkheads. Everything was a bit higher than convenient. Rudy tried to open some of the cabinets, but the doors were stuck fast, and Hutch had to cut into them. Inside they found fabric and tools and lumps of something that might once have been food.

Jon moved smoothly through the zero-gee environment, surprisingly agile for a big guy, occasionally reaching out to touch a bulkhead or one of the objects they found—on one occasion, a gauge—much as one might handle a relic.

They passed into a corridor. Some debris was loose, afloat, drifting in an orderly fashion around the interior as the station continued its slow tumble. “There don’t appear to be any remains here,” Hutch reported.

Antonio was quiet throughout. Matt suspected he was on his private channel, recording his impressions.

They spent several hours in the station. Hutch reported back that the circuitry, the power links, everything was fried. “Looks as if they had an accident of some sort. Or were attacked.”

“Maybe somebody tried to seize the place?” suggested Matt. “And things went wrong?”

“Don’t know.”

“And no bodies? Nothing that looks like a corpse?”

“Nothing like that, no. It’s hard to tell, but I’d say whoever was here did not get taken by surprise.”

Jon broke in: “Hutch, I think we’re looking at some data storage. This was an operational center of some sort.” They’d wandered into an area filled with screens and black boxes.

“My God,” said Rudy. “You think there’s any chance at all we could recover something?”

“I suppose there’s always a chance, Rudy. But you’re talking about electronic storage. How long does that last?”

Matt knew the answer to that one. If you want data to survive, carve it in rock.

“Anyhow”—Jon was examining the equipment—“this stuff looks burned out. All of it.”

The furniture, chairs and tables and a few sofas, suggested that the inhabitants were bipeds. They were somewhat large. When Hutch sat down in one her feet didn’t reach the deck.

They broke into narrow compartments that must have been living quarters. They found a system that had provided food and water. “Also burned out,” said Jon. “Something odd happened here.” He started taking electronic equipment apart, moving from chamber to chamber. “It’s the same everywhere. It’s all so old it’s hard to be sure, but everything looks fused to me.”

“What would cause something like that? asked Rudy.

“An electrical surge.”

And, finally, Hutch’s voice: “Lightning.”

Matt understood. The omegas.

“That would also explain,” she continued, “how it got blown out here.”

There were telescopes, although nobody could see through them because the lenses were coated with dust that had become permanently ingrained.

There were a concourse and meeting rooms. Four globes had once occupied choice locations. They were about three stories high and had been filled with water. All were shattered. Where one had stood, an icy sphere remained intact. The others had apparently broken before the water froze. The deck around them was still icy.

Chapter 29

They spent three days looking for the right place to send down a landing party. Hutch insisted they stay away from forests and jungles. Too easy to get ambushed by Far Silvertri’s efficient-looking predators. They also wanted a site that provided a relatively recent target. And, finally, a place where they wouldn’t have to do a lot of digging.

The ruins were not as widespread as had at first seemed to be the case. “It doesn’t look as if the population ever got that large,” said Jon.

They sat around in the McAdams, the five of them, searching the displays, discarding all suggestions for one reason or another. Too old was the most common complaint. Probably been there for thousands of years. Or it didn’t look like a place that would provide information. Or it looked like too much work to get in.

Toward the end of the third night, Antonio spotted something along the southern extremity of the turkey continent.

On the side of a snow-covered mountain, about a quarter of the way up, a broken tower jutted out of the ground.

And nearby, buried—

“There’s a building.”

It was a three-story structure, seemingly intact, the roof just about even with the snow cover.

The top of the tower was missing. Parts of it lay scattered under the snow. There was no way to know how high it had been. It was squat and heavy, rectangular, with sharply defined corners, and a stairway leading to a platform.

Below it, the mountain sloped away in a long, gradual descent to a plain that appeared utterly lifeless save for some scattered vegetation and a few birds.

Rudy wasn’t as excited about making the descent as he pretended. The place looked wilder than the chindi world had. The forests were darker, the rivers more turbulent, the skies more ominous. Where the chindi world had cities and even traffic lights, Far Silvestri had ruins and vast empty plains, and the only light on the nightside came from electrical storms. It was strange: He’d expected ultimately that Hutch would say that a mission to the surface was too dangerous, but she seemed caught up with the general fever, too, had changed, had become in all the strangeness someone else, someone he didn’t really know. So when he’d voiced his enthusiasm for going along she’d said okay, and, of course, the others had joined in. No one was ready to get back inside the ships and start the long voyage to the black hole at Tenareif. They needed a break. So they were going down, and he’d made all the noise, done it because it was expected of him. He was the researcher on the mission, the scientist. Jon was a specialist, a physicist. He’d done his work with the Locarno. His reputation was forever secure. When this journey was recorded, became epic material for future generations, he knew it would be Jon who would stand out. For good or ill. Whether Rudy liked it or not, that was the truth of it.

But it was okay. Rudy was part of it, had come closer to realizing his dreams than he’d ever thought possible. So his role was to suck it up, strap on the belt and activate the Flickinger field, and pretend not to notice the strangeness, but just help dig his way into the building below the snow cover.

Dig his way into history.

Antonio admitted that, to tell the truth, he’d rather stay with the ship because it looked hostile on the ground, but he’d go anyhow. “Have to,” he told Rudy, admiring Rudy’s willingness, once again, to venture onto what he called another dark street. “This doesn’t feel the same as going down to talk to Smitty,” he continued. “But it’s my job. So let’s go look at the tower. And whatever else is on the slope.”

Matt held Hutch to her promise. He would pilot the lander. Rudy admired that. If Matt felt any concern about going down, he hid it well.

Jon was blasé about it all. He wasn’t really excited about a building on a mountain slope. It wasn’t like crossing over to a derelict station that might have been ten thousand years old. In fact, he told Matt, he thought it was dangerous. But he understood why the others wanted to go, and if they wanted him along, he’d be glad to accompany them.

“Your call, Jon,” Matt said. “We can manage okay. You do whatever you want.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

So okay, Jon could think of a better way to spend his time, and as long as they didn’t need him on the ground, he’d stay put.

They’d use the McAdams lander. It was a bit larger, and somewhat more comfortable than the Preston vehicle. So they all got in, checked their gear, listened to Hutch tell them to be careful, and launched.

Matt was beginning to feel like a veteran. There’d been a star pilot hero on kids’ programming when he was growing up, Captain Rigel, and he imagined himself now in that role as they came in over the plains, the mountains looming ahead. A herd of tusked animals were ambling slowly south. They stayed close together except for a few outriders on the front and flanks. A military formation.

“Looks peaceful enough,” said Antonio. “Are we getting a visual record of all this?”

“Yes, we’re getting everything.”

“Good.” Matt could sense Dr. Science mentally rubbing his hands. “Good.”

“Your viewers are going to take the same ride?”

“You bet, Matt. You know, this would be a more interesting run if we, say, flew through a storm. Could we manage that?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Just kidding.”

The land began to rise. Snow appeared. Jim pointed out the target mountain. Fifteen klicks, dead ahead.

He slowed down to survey the area. It was free of forest, so they had good visibility. As did Hutch overhead. Except at the moment she was below the horizon and wouldn’t be back for an hour or so.

“Over there,” said Rudy.

The tower stuck out of the snow. It was probably iron, or steel, constructed of crossbeams. The sort of structure that, back home, might have supported a water tank.

“Jim,” he said, “how far down does the base reach?”

“About twelve meters.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.” He came down vertically, cautiously, about fifty paces from the tower. He kept the vehicle level, riding the spike, turning so the hatch, which was on his right, opened downhill. The port tread touched the surface, and a sudden gust rocked them and almost turned them over.

He held them momentarily where they were, until the wind settled, then he lowered them into the snow and shut down the spike by increments. The port side touched solid ground, and the lander began to tilt. Finally, it stopped, and he shut the power off. The slope was steep here, and the snow on the uphill side rose past the viewports. “This is the kind of place where I used to go skiing,” said Rudy.

Antonio held out his hands, pretending to wield ski poles. “You’re a skier?”

“When I was a bit younger.”

They pulled on oxygen tanks and goggles and activated their suits and lightbenders. The lightbenders might, or might not, render them invisible to predators. The goggles allowed them to see each other. Matt opened the hatch. The wind blew flakes inside.

He had a good view downslope. The animals they’d seen earlier were gone. In all that vast expanse of prairie, nothing moved. “Okay, gentlemen,” Matt said, “let’s find out what we have.”

He signaled Antonio, who opened the storage compartment and removed two collapsible spades and some cable. Rudy and Antonio each got a spade; Matt took the cable. Then he picked a Meg-6, a rhino gun, out of the weapons locker. It was a projectile-firing weapon, with sufficient power to knock over virtually any kind of predator. He didn’t trust either of the others with one, but gave each of them a laser. “Be careful with them,” he said. Once they got into the building and started stumbling around in the dark, he suspected they’d become more dangerous than any local life form.

He climbed out into the snow and sank to his knees. “Okay, guys,” he said.

Rudy came next. He grunted and made some comments about how long it had been since he’d seen real winter weather.

Antonio waited until the director was safely down, then he followed.

Seen through the goggles, Rudy and Antonio were ghostly images.

The slope on which they stood was relatively gentle, rising gradually for miles before it soared suddenly upward. In the opposite direction, it rolled out onto the plain, where the snow gave way to rock and brown soil.

Antonio closed the hatch.

“If anything unexpected happens,” Matt said, “and you need to get out of here, just tell Jim to open up. He’ll take directions from you.”

“You don’t expect a problem, do you?” asked Rudy.

“No. But I could fall into a hole or something. I just want you to know you don’t need me to get home.”

It was cold. Forty-five below, Fahrenheit. The wind sucked at them, tried to blow them off the mountain.

“Brisk,” said Antonio.

Matt looked eastward across the broad plain. It looked cold. “The suit’ll keep you warm,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

They might have been three guys dressed for a spring concert, all casual, all in short-sleeve shirts, with dark lenses and hats to keep the sun out of their eyes. Matt wore a baseball cap; Rudy looked like a golfer; Antonio had a safari hat, and he was also decked out in khaki shorts. Matt had that figured out. It clashed a bit with the snow, but it would look great on the newscasts.

Without instruments they would never have known there was a building buried here. They trudged first to the tower. It was black metal, nothing fancy, a collection of struts and beams, some crosspieces, a stairway, and a platform near the top.

“What do you think?” asked Antonio.

Rudy struggled up to it through snow that seemed to be getting deeper. He touched it. Looked up at it. Looked downslope. “Could be anything,” he said. “Maybe they used to fly a flag up here.”

“Or worship it.” Antonio took more pictures. He got shots of Rudy standing near the base. Pictures of Matt gazing at the sky, looking like Captain Rigel. And of himself, with a foot on the stairway, testing it.

Matt opened a channel to the Preston. “Hutch, we’re at the site.”

“Very good, Matt. See anything we missed?”

“Negative.” Rudy was pulling on one of the crosspieces. Apparently to find out whether he could break it loose. “It was probably just a ski lift.”

Skiers. Matt looked downslope again. It made sense.

“You don’t see anything else anywhere in the neighborhood?”

He stared around him. Unbroken snow all the way up to the peak. More snow downslope for another few miles. The plain. A few scattered patches of trees. “Not a thing.”

“What next?” asked Antonio.

Rudy suggested they get a sample of the metal. “We can use it to date the thing when we get back.” Matt selected a likely spot and used the laser to collect a small piece. When it had cooled, he placed it in a utility bag.

Rudy was staring downhill.

“What?” asked Antonio.

“I thought I saw something.”

Matt stood for several moments, watching. Nothing down there but snow.

Hutch directed them to a spot that, she said, was right above the building. “How deep?” asked Matt.

Rudy was still looking around, keeping an eye on the mountain.

“I’d say about three feet.”

Rudy, wasting no time, got his spade out, struggled to get it locked in place. Antonio showed him how to turn it on, did the same with the second spade, and everybody stepped back as they began digging.

The snow was dry and granular, and the work went quickly. Within minutes, the shovels reached the roof and shut off. Matt climbed down into the hole, cleared off the last of the snow, exposing the roof, and used the laser to cut through. Then he dropped to his knees and aimed a lamp inside.

“What’s there?” asked Rudy.

The floor was about thirteen feet down. “Looks like storage,” he said. Lots of shelves and boxes. Remnants of what had probably been bedding. And, in the middle of the room, an iron contraption that had to be a stove.

Hutch, watching through the imagers they had clipped to their harnesses, broke in on a private channel: “Matt, you’re going to use the cable to get down there, right?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I can imagine either Rudy or Antonio climbing back out on a cable.”

“Trust me, Hutch. We’ll be fine.” His tone must have carried a hint of annoyance because she said nothing more.

He cut a second hole in the roof, about a meter away. This one was only an inch or two wide. He looped the cable through both holes, and dropped the ends into the building. Then he looked up at Rudy and Antonio. “Wait,” he said.

He lowered himself through the hole, let go, and landed on a frozen surface. His feet went out from under him, and he fell with a crash.

He got the predictable cries from everyone. Was he okay? What happened? You sure you’re all right, Matt?

“I’m fine,” he said. He was picking himself up from an icy carpet, flashing his wrist lamp around the room, across shelves, wooden boxes, and cabinet doors. He saw tools, fabrics that had long since rotted away, dishware that was cracked and broken from the cold. A variety of knives. Pots and cabinets and frozen paper pads. Everything was made a size or two larger than would have been comfortable for him. And it was all buried under a thick layer of dust.

“Hey!” Rudy’s voice. “What are you doing down there?”

“Okay, guys. Just a second.” He went back to where the cable dangled from the holes in the roof, and held one line while Rudy climbed down the other. He dropped onto the floor and got awkwardly to his feet, smiling the whole time, the way people do when they’re trying to look casual and relaxed.

And, finally, Antonio.

While the others poked around the storage area, Matt found an open door and looked into the next room. He saw two chairs, a cabinet, a table, another stove, several doors. Lots of ice and snow on the floor where windows had broken. One door opened onto a corridor. Another was frozen shut. Several unidentifiable objects lay on the floor.

He stepped out into the corridor. “Hutch,” he said, “are you reading this?”

No response.

The cabinet was secured to the wall, or possibly had become a permanent part of it. He put his lamp down and went back to the cables. “Hutch,” he said, “do you copy?”

Hutch’s voice broke through: “Lost you for a minute, Matt.”

“The signal doesn’t penetrate.”

“That’s not good.”

“I’ll call you when we’re clear.”

He tried to open the cabinet, but nothing had any give. There were curtains in the room, stiff as boards and in places inseparable from the ice and the walls.

The mantel and the doorframes were all ornately carved. Everything, the furniture, the windows, the doors, was heavy. The place had a Gothic feel to it.

The corridor was lined with doors. Some had been left open, revealing spaces that looked as if they’d once been living quarters. Two were filled with snow.

Antonio and Rudy came out behind him. Antonio was talking about the furniture, how everything was on a slightly larger scale. As it had been on the station. “What do you think these things looked like?” he asked.

“Obviously they were bipeds,” said Rudy, adopting his professorial tone. “That means they had to have chairs.” He shook his head. “I wonder what they talked about.”

They looked into the open rooms and saw little other than frozen debris. In some, beams had collapsed and ceilings given way.

At the end of the corridor, a stairway descended deeper into the building.

They paused at the top and looked down into another corridor. Matt tried the first step. It was long, and slippery, but the stair felt solid.

The next step down was almost half again the height to which he was accustomed. Taller creatures, longer legs, longer feet. It was tricky going. There was a handrail, a bit higher than was comfortable. But he put it to use and kept going.

Some ice had gotten onto the stairs, making them still more dangerous. They crunched and cracked under his weight, so he directed the others to wait until he got to the bottom. Then they followed. They all had trouble negotiating the ice, but everybody made it down in good order.

More doors. And another staircase, continuing down into a large room. A lobby, he thought, or maybe a meeting room or dining area. He could see tables and chairs. He was about halfway down when he heard a noise.

The others heard it, too. Above them.

Everyone froze.

It had been barely discernible, but there had been something. Like a branch falling somewhere.

“Wind,” said Rudy.

It had sounded inside the building.

They listened to the silence, sweeping their lamps across the walls and along the passageways and up and down the staircases.

Antonio finally started breathing again. “The place is oppressive,” he said.

Whatever it had been, it was gone. They went the rest of the way down the lower stairway, this time together, Matt leading the way, Antonio at the rear.

It had been a dining room at one time. Several of the tables had been set with plates, cups, and knives. No spoons or forks. The dinnerware was cracked and broken.

“The place is not that old,” said Rudy. “Not like the space station.”

“How much you think?” asked Antonio.

“I don’t know. Frozen the way it is, I just don’t know.”

One wall had a fireplace.

Antonio began wandering around, talking to himself, wondering aloud how to capture the mood of the place. How to make people feel the claustrophobia.

Matt went through a large open doorway. The adjoining space, which might have been the area inside the front doors, was half-filled with snow. A set of windows had given way.

At the edge of the snow, and partially engulfed in it, was a cluster of carved wooden chairs arranged around a central table. Two of the chairs had collapsed. The furniture showed decent workmanship and had padding that still looked soft but was, of course, rock hard. Two rectangular blocks lay on the tabletop. And a pitcher.

He gazed at the blocks. Saw symbols on them.

Books.

They were books.

Both were bound in black, and both were frozen to the surface.

He wiped the dust from them and saw more symbols on the spines. He called Rudy over.

“Beautiful,” Rudy said. “We have to take these back with us.” When Matt demonstrated that they were frozen in place, he frowned. “Careful. Don’t damage them.”

Matt used the laser to remove the legs from the table, then to cut around each book, reducing the tabletop to two manageable pieces. He handed one to Rudy and took the other himself.

“How advanced you think these people were?” asked Antonio.

“They had the printing press,” said Rudy.

“Ah, yes.” Matt looked down at his own ghostly hand. “The printing press again.”

Rudy pointed at some wiring hanging down from the ceiling. “Looks as if they had electricity, too.”

Antonio touched one of the books. Reverently. “You were right, Rudy. This was a resort hotel. The tower was a ski lift.”

Matt backed out of the room. Despite the e-suit, he was beginning to feel cold. “If we scan under the snow,” he said, “we’ll probably find a couple more towers upslope.”

“I don’t believe it.” Antonio was shaking his head. “What kind of alien uses a ski resort?”

“The Noks like skiing,” said Rudy. “And on Quraqua—”

Matt heard another noise. Above them.

They all heard it. A whisper. A sound like a wet sack being dragged across a floor.

Antonio raised both hands, palms wide, behind his ears. “Something’s up there.”

They pointed the lamps back the way they’d come and played the beams against the foot of the staircase. “The building’s old,” Matt said. “It probably creaks a bit from the weight of the snow.”

Antonio removed his laser from his harness. “It’s probably vermin.”

And they heard it again. Louder this time.

“That sounds like a big rat,” said Rudy.

A chill slithered up Matt’s spine. “I think we better clear out.” He discovered he’d already slipped a shell into the rhino gun and was holding it straight out. At home, weapons simply short-circuited the nervous system. They rendered people, or animals, incapable of response. The rhino was designed for use elsewhere, on different kinds of life. It was simple and, one might say, old-fashioned. The metal projectiles it used had explosive tips.

Matt had never fired one beyond the range. At the moment, it provided a marvelous sense of security, except that it might bring the house down. He started back toward the staircase. “Let’s go,” he whispered. Sound had no trouble penetrating the Flickinger field, so they could be overheard. “Stay behind me.”

Antonio took the remaining book from him. “I’ll carry it,” he said. “If you have to use that thing, you might want to have both hands free.” They moved quietly across the ground floor until they stood at the foot of the staircase. There was nothing on the stairs, and nothing at the top.

“Stay put for a minute.” Matt started up. He felt exposed because he had to keep looking at the stairs themselves to be sure he didn’t trip. So he took a step and looked up. Took another and looked up again. Finally, he reached the top. Looked to his right, down the corridor. Checked the flight to the third floor. “Okay,” he said. “Come on.”

Antonio missed a step and delivered a low expletive. But Rudy caught him, kept him from falling.

“Damned things were built for basketball players,” Antonio grumbled.

“Shush!” hissed Rudy.

They got to the second floor and crowded in behind Matt.

“Everybody okay?” he asked.

“Let’s keep going,” said Rudy.

Matt started up the second flight. Antonio and Rudy followed. But Matt waved them back. “Best if you wait till I take a look,” he said.

Antonio didn’t like the idea. “The noise might have come from down there.” Behind them.

“Okay.” Matt conceded the point. “Let’s go.”

Had they asked his help, Jon would not have hesitated to have gone down with them. But he was glad to have escaped a task he considered dull and onerous. He could have gone over to the Preston and spent the day with Hutch, but he was not much for trying to keep up one end of a conversation. So he’d stayed on the McAdams, knowing that, when the operation ended, they’d all gather on one ship or the other, and he could do his socializing then.

He was half-asleep in the common room. He had no interest in old buildings, nor for that matter in cultures that had gone away. He was glad to be alone for a few hours, to have Matt out of the ship. He was okay, but he was a bit too driven for Jon’s tastes. The guy was so caught up in the mission that he had lost all sense of proportion. He couldn’t relax. Couldn’t talk about anything else.

A flight that goes on for the better part of a year needs to be thought out more carefully than this one. For one thing, it should have had more people. Hutch had asked him repeatedly, had asked both him and Matt, whether they’d be all right locked up together. So it was his own fault. And they were okay, really. Matt wasn’t a problem. It could have been worse. He could have been on the same ship as Antonio, who talked too much and was cheerful enough to drive anyone around the bend.

Rudy would have been good. At least they had some common interests. From here on, he thought they should scramble things a bit. Maybe he’d suggest he exchange places with Antonio. He sensed Matt would like a change, too. Antonio could sit up on the bridge with Matt for weeks at a time, chattering away. And Jon would get access to Rudy. And Hutch. She wasn’t exactly the life of the party either, but at least she’d be someone different. And it’d be nice to have somebody good-looking on board.

When he got home, he would form a corporation to license the drive. That had been Matt’s idea. It would allow him to keep control of the system. Rudy had been concerned that he would sell it outright to Campella or one of the other major corporations, which would proceed to deny its use to all but those in a position to pay substantial sums. That would effectively eliminate blue sky exploration. Ships would go on missions, but only those fueled by a profit motive.

He thought he’d name his company for Henry, maybe call it Barber Enterprises. Although DeepSpace, Inc. appealed to him. He was getting sleepy and the world was beginning to fade when Jim brought him back. “Jon, we have a relay from the lander. It looks urgent.”

What the hell was a relay from the lander? “You mean Matt wants to talk to me?”

“No. It’s literally from the lander. The onboard AI. I’m running it now.”

The main screen came on and he was looking at a snowfield. The countryside was barren, cold, desolate. In the distance, he could see a few misshapen growths. Trees, possibly. It was hard to tell. “What am I looking for, Jim?”

“It’s coming into the picture now, Jon. Be advised there’s a forty-three-second delay.”

Abruptly, without warning, a reptilian head appeared. It was as white as the snowfield. “My God,” he said. “How big is that thing?”

“The head is almost a meter across.”

“Where’s Matt? And the others? Are they back on the lander?” He’d followed the first few minutes of the conversation between Matt and Hutch, had gotten bored, and shut it down.

“Matt, Antonio, and Rudy dug their way into the buried building. They are in there now. If you look carefully, directly ahead, you’ll see where they entered.”

He saw the hole and the shovels. The snake was moving directly toward it, and as it passed the lander, he got a better sense of its size. “Is Hutch getting this?”

“Yes.”

“That thing’s a monster.”

“It is large.”

“Jim, put me through to Matt.”

“Unable to comply. The link won’t penetrate into the building.”

The creature reached the hole and paused. It looked in. Then, to his horror, it started down.

“Jon,” said the AI. “Hutch is on the circuit. Audio only.”

“Hutch,” he said. “You see this?”

“I’m headed for the lander now.”

“Pick me up. I’ll go with you.”

“No time, Jon. I’ve got a window, but I have to hustle.”

“Hutch, you can’t take that thing on alone.”

“There’s no time, Jon. We should be all right. I’m armed.”

“They’re armed, too. But I doubt they’re all right.”

“I’m moving as fast as I can.”

“Hutch, this is not a good idea.”

“Which part of it?”

He’d told Matt that he didn’t think going down was very smart. Just checking groundside, Matt had called it. Jon had refused to use the official terminology. There was a pretense there somewhere, with Matt behaving as if he’d been doing this sort of thing all his life. Matt had heroic inclinations built in, but the truth was nobody here had any training in this sort of thing. Except Hutch, and she’d been away from it too many years.

“Twenty minutes away,” she said. Her voice carried no inflection. And he knew she feared the worst. What sort of chance did they have, a real estate agent, a foundation director, and Dr. Science, against that monster?

He couldn’t remember what he said, but she caught something in his voice. “Don’t give up,” she told him.

The last of the giant snake disappeared into the hole.

He waited.

Marked the time. Watched the snow and the shovels.

Occasionally he talked to Hutch. She assured him she’d be careful. Wouldn’t get herself killed. Try to relax.

It’ll be okay.

The minutes dragged past. Everything was happening in slow motion.

He didn’t know what he wanted to see. Whether having the thing come back out into the daylight would be a hopeful sign or not.

Hutch’s shuttle dropped into the clouds. “We were lucky,” she said. “Couldn’t have hoped for a better window.”

He was frustrated, having to sit there while the woman took her life into her hands. Damn. What was he supposed to do if she went down the hole and didn’t come out again?

“Hutch?”

“Yes, Jon?”

“How about directing the AI to bring up the other lander? So I can get down there, too?”

There was a long hesitation. “Not a good idea.”

“You might need help.”

“You can’t get here in time to do anything. All you’d do is put yourself at risk.”

“Damn it, Hutch, you can’t expect me to just sit here.”

“There’s an outside chance they’ll need the lander as a shelter.”

“Hutch, damn it—”

“Let it go, Jon. I’ll get to you as soon as I know something.” She was below the clouds now, descending toward the plain. Mountains in the distance.

The hole had become a gaping wound. He watched it, stared at it, wished he had a better angle, wished he could look down into it.

They continued up. Matt tried to pick up the pace, tried to do it without stumbling. He kept his eyes on the stairs because Antonio was right behind him, crowding him. Or maybe he didn’t want to look fearful. He was almost at the top when the journalist screamed. A pair of glittering green eyes had appeared at the top of the staircase. Enormous eyes. He threw himself back as the head rose, large and reptilian, wide and big and grinning with dripping incisors.

He was falling back down the stairs and suddenly everything was dark again. The head was gone, and he was grasping for the handrail and simultaneously trampling somebody, probably Antonio.

One of the lights hit it again. The thing was white as the snow outside.

They were all tumbling, scrambling, screaming, back down, hopelessly tangled in one another’s arms and legs. The thing came after them, slow and deliberate and watching, mouth wide, big enough to take any of them down whole. Matt lost the rhino gun. The thing’s jaws kept opening wider. He could have driven a truck into its mouth.

Then there were no more stairs, and he crashed hard onto the floor. And there was the rhino, just the barrel, sticking out from under somebody. He made a grab for it but it vanished again. And a small voice somewhere whispered to him, Captain Rigel, Captain Rigel.

The thing’s eyes stayed locked on him. So much for the lightbender. Light swept across the scene, and he saw a long python body, absolutely white, silver as starlight, wide as a small train, stretching up the stairway, across the landing, disappearing into the darkness.

He was groping for the gun, trying to find it in the chaos. But it was Antonio who came up with it finally, who fired a charge into the creature’s mouth. Right between those cavernous jaws and down its throat. Its tongue flicked, red and glistening. Then the round exploded, and the head was gone. Red mush blew past him, got all over him. The body slithered past, slammed past, knocked him down, kept coming, kept jerking and thrashing, and began to pile up. Antonio couldn’t fire a second charge because Matt had the projectiles. But it wasn’t going to matter.

The convulsions slowed. And stopped. For a long time no one said anything.

Finally, in a voice that was barely a squeak, Antonio asked if it was dead.

“I think so.” Matt shuddered. He was under the goddammed thing. It had piled up on him and he’d been too terrified to move.

Antonio gave him a hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

“I don’t think Rudy is.”

Oh.

Matt got clear, finally, and went to look at Rudy. “He took a bad fall, Matt.”

They extricated him from the beast. His head hung at an odd angle. His eyes were wide-open, locked in terror. The book he’d been carrying was still gripped in his right hand.

Matt couldn’t find a pulse.

Antonio handed over the rhino gun, and Matt fired another cartridge into the thing.

Chapter 30

Matt knelt over Rudy, trying to awaken him, trying to breathe some semblance of life into him. “Nothing?” asked Antonio.

“Can’t be sure.” Matt didn’t want it to be true. God, he didn’t want that. Rudy dead. Why the hell had they come down here anyway? For a goddam book? He took it, the one Rudy still cradled, and, still on his knees, threw it against the wall.

Antonio was shining his light up the staircase. “We need to get out of here, Matt. There might be more of these things around.”

“Yeah.” He bent over Rudy again, felt for a pulse, for a heartbeat, anything. Finally, he gave up, and they lifted his body.

The serpentine corpse partially blocked the staircase.

They climbed past it, hanging on to Rudy, trying not to touch the thing. Matt found himself thanking God Rudy didn’t weigh more.

They got to the top. And to the end of the snake. When they were past it, they stopped to rest a few moments. Then they stumbled into the supply room. The cable was still in place.

As soon as they put the body down, Antonio turned and started back into the corridor. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“Get the books.”

“You can’t go back down there, Antonio,” he said. “Let them go.”

He stopped in the doorway. “What do you think Rudy would have wanted?”

There was something in Antonio’s eyes. Sadness. Contempt. Weariness, maybe. He’d seen how Matt had reacted. Had seen him jump when the serpent appeared. Knew that, instead of playing the heroic role he’d assigned himself, he’d fallen down the stairs, fallen on top of Rudy, anything to get away. “Wait,” said Matt. “You’ll need a hand.”

When the link began working again, he contacted Hutch and gave her the news. She told him she was sorry and had to fight for control of her voice. She was on her way down from the Preston, and when they climbed out of the hole, carrying Rudy’s body, and bringing one of the two books with them—one had gotten lost somewhere, was probably beneath the dead animal—her lander was already visible coming in over the snowfields.

She landed a few meters away and got out. They laid Rudy in the snow, and she knelt beside him. One of the problems with the hard shell the force field throws over the face is that you couldn’t wipe your eyes.

When she’d regained control she stood up. “You guys okay?” she asked.

“We’re good,” said Matt. She carried a rhino gun. “Where’s Jon?”

“In the McAdams. I didn’t have time to pick him up.” She looked down the side of the mountain, gazed at the broken tower, at Antonio. She was trying to say something else. And finally it came: “Was it quick?”

Matt nodded.

Other than that, she didn’t say much. Told Matt and Antonio thanks. Embraced them. Then she suggested they not hang around. They opened the cargo locker and lifted Rudy inside.

When they got back to the McAdams, they froze Rudy’s body and put it in storage. As captain of the ship on which he’d been a passenger, and as a longtime friend, Hutch would perform the memorial service. She’d brought along a captain’s uniform, with no expectation of having to wear it.

During the ceremony she realized how little she actually knew about Rudy. She knew about his passion for stellar investigation, and his longtime desire to find an alien culture with whom it would be possible to communicate. She knew his politics, his contempt for a government that, in his view, had used the endless war against greenhouse gases as an excuse to eliminate funding for the Academy. But the inside personal stuff remained a mystery. She had no idea, for example, whether, despite his start as a seminarian, he had still subscribed to a formal religion, although, judging from various comments over the years, she doubted it. She didn’t know why his wives had bailed on him. He’d been an attractive man, congenial, armed with a sense of humor. During the years she’d been associated with him, there had been occasional women, but he’d never really formed a serious relationship with anyone. At least not that she knew of.

He’d been a decent guy, a good friend, a man she could trust to back her if she needed it. What more mattered?

He had a brother in South Carolina, a sister in Savannah. She’d met the sister, years ago. She wished it were possible to communicate with them, let them know. She’d have to wait until they got home, which meant, until then, his death would be hanging over her head.

When she took her place before the others, when she began to explain why Rudy mattered so much, she was surprised to discover that her voice shook. She had to stop a couple of times. She tried surreptitiously to wipe her eyes, and finally she poured everything out. He’d stood for all the things she believed in. He’d never backed off even though other careers had been so much more lucrative than the Foundation. And in the end, he’d sacrificed everything, a decent married life, the respect of his colleagues, and ultimately life itself, to the idea that humans had a greater destiny than hanging around the house.

Antonio said simply that he’d liked Rudy, that he’d been good company, and that he’d miss him.

Jon expressed his appreciation for Rudy’s support. “Without him,” he said, “we wouldn’t have gotten out here.”

Matt started by saying he’d known Rudy only a short time. He thanked him, surprisingly, for giving him something to live for. And ended by blaming himself for his death. “I took my eyes off the top of the staircase. The steps were so hard to navigate. The thing just came out of nowhere. And I panicked. He was depending on me, and I panicked.”

“I don’t know anybody,” Hutch told him, “who wouldn’t have reacted the same way. Give yourself a break.”

She’d lost people on prior missions. It had started a lifetime ago, on Quraqua, when she’d been perhaps not as quick as she should have been, and Richard Wald had died. There’d been other decisions that had gone wrong. She might have allowed them to haunt her, to drive her to her knees. But she’d done her best at the time. And that was all anyone could reasonably ask. No one had ever died because she’d screwed around.

“It happens,” she told Matt. “If you do these kinds of flights, going places no one’s ever been before, there’s always a risk. We all accept that. You do your best. If something happens, something goes wrong, you have to be able to live with it. And move on.”

Easy to say. She’d remember all her life watching the oversized white serpent slither down into the hole Matt and the others had dug, and her sense of helplessness while she tried to get them on the link—Come on, Matt, answer up, please—the whole time running for the lander, climbing into an e-suit, telling Jon what was happening and why she couldn’t stop to go to the McAdams to pick him up.

Jon took her aside and asked whether they shouldn’t terminate the flight and return home. The tradition at the Academy in such cases had been flexible, which was to say there had been no tradition. In the event of a fatality, sometimes the mission went forward. Sometimes it was terminated. The decision had been left to the survivors. They knew best.

The Academy had suffered relatively few losses over the years. The wall that served as a memorial to those who had died on Academy missions had never come close to using the allotted space. It still stood in its time-honored place, near the Galileo Fountain on the edge of what had been the Academy grounds.

“We’ve made our point,” Jon persisted. “The Locarno works fine. Why bother going farther?”

She recalled Rudy’s comment when they had asked whether he planned on making the flight. This is going to be remembered as the Silvestri mission. But they’re going to remember the crew, too. And I like the idea of having my name associated with yours. “I think we should continue,” she told him. “Taking the body home accomplishes nothing. He wouldn’t want us to turn back.”

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

Matt knew Hutch was right, that he wasn’t really responsible for Rudy’s death. And the knowledge helped. But in the end he also knew that if he’d performed better, Rudy would still be alive. And there was no getting around that.

He refused the meds she suggested. Taking them would have been an admission of something. They all stayed on board the McAdams the night of the ceremony, huddled together, herd instinct. Antonio told him in front of Hutch and Jon that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d reacted differently. “I jumped into him, too, and nothing you did would have stopped that. When that snake head showed up my reflexes took over, and all I could think of was to get out of there. So stop beating yourself up.”

During his years as a pilot, Matt had never faced a day like this. He’d never lost a passenger, had never even seen one in danger. He’d always thought of himself as a heroic type. Women had automatically assumed he was a couple of cuts above ordinary men. Antonio, he’d known from the start, was ordinary. If there was anybody who’d been run-of-the-mill, an average middle-aged guy, it was Antonio.

But at the critical moment, Antonio had grabbed the gun and blown the serpent away. He’d stood up while Matt flinched. That fact would be hard to put behind him.

Matt couldn’t sleep. He kept replaying the sequence over and over. What he remembered most vividly was that there’d been no place to hide, that he feared the creature would swallow him whole. Gulp him down like a piece of sausage.

He got up to use the washroom. Hutch must have been awake as well because moments after he returned to his compartment there was a soft knock at the door.

“Matt, are you okay?” She was still in her uniform.

“My God,” he said, “don’t you ever go to bed?” It was after three.

“I’m reading.”

“Couldn’t put it down?”

“Nope. It’s Damon Runyon.”

“Who?”

“Twentieth century.” She smiled. “You’d like him.”

He got his robe and joined her in the common room. She made coffee, and they talked about Runyon’s good-hearted gangsters, and the black hole at Tenareif, and whether they should start tomorrow on the next leg of the flight. Jim broke in to report that the samples brought back from the tower and the buried building—he had analyzed the tabletop piece to which the book had been frozen—indicated that both structures were about three hundred years old.

That brought up another question: The signal received at Cherry Hill had been transmitted fifteen thousand years ago. The space station went adrift, got knocked out of orbit, whatever, also in ancient times. But they’d still had a functioning civilization within the last few hundred years. What had happened to them?

Maybe the same thing that had happened at Makai? They’d learned how to live too long? Got bored?

“No,” said Hutch. “This feels more like a catastrophe.”

“An omega?”

“That would explain the fused circuits on the station. A few good bolts of lightning.”

The conversation inevitably wandered back to Rudy, but it didn’t touch on Matt’s role in his death. They were still there at five, when Jon came out to see what the noise was.

“Rehearsing for Guys and Dolls,” Matt said.

They stayed in orbit two days, making maps and taking pictures of the world. Meanwhile they thawed the book and gave it to Jim. He analyzed it and reported that he was able to translate some of the material. “Matt was right. It was a hotel. The book is a listing of services, of menus, of the contents of the hotel library, which seem to have consisted of both books and VR. And of attractions available in the area. You were right also that the place was a center for skiing.”

“Great,” said Matt. “That’s what he died for? A hotel package?”

“There’s more. More difficult to translate, but seemingly unconnected with the hotel. I’ve been able to do some translation, but the overall meaning tends to be elusive.”

“Explain.”

“Let me give you an example.”

“Okay.”

“‘The sea is loud at night, and there are voices in the tide. At another time, in another place, the moon did not speak. We were amused.’”

He stopped and they looked at one another. “Is that it?” asked Jon.

“That is a single piece of text, separated from the others.”

Jim put the lines on-screen. Matt frowned at it. “‘The moon did not speak’?”

“Are you sure you have it right?” asked Hutch.

“Reasonably certain. The word appears several times in the hotel directory. ‘If you need something, speak to any of the service people.’ ‘Speak the word and we will respond.’ And so on.”

“We might need more time with the translation,” said Jon.

The moon did not speak.

Did not.

It was hard to miss the past tense.

“What are you thinking, Hutch?” asked Matt.

“I don’t think ‘did not speak’ quite captures it.”

Jon looked baffled. “How can you make any kind of sense out of a talking moon?”

She focused on the screen:

At night the sea is very loud,

And voices ride the tide.

At another time, in another place,

Beneath the silent moon,

We laughed together.

“My God,” said Matt.

Jon nodded. “It’s a poem.”

Jim reported other structures under the snow near the landing site. “More towers,” he said. “Upslope.”

They nodded to each other. The rest of the ski lift.

They broke the translation effort down to a system. Jim provided the most literal rendition possible, and Hutch interpreted as best she could. Sometimes it became necessary to infer meaning, as in the case of the adjective in

…The relentless river

Carrying us toward the night.

It might have been lovely, or idyllic, or any of countless other possibilities. But the context provided evidence for a good guess.

One line was straight out of The Rubaiyat:

…This vast gameboard of nights and days.

The poems seemed primarily, almost exclusively, concerned with lost love and early death. They were scattered throughout the book, located perhaps between a description of the hotel restaurant and an advertisement that might have had to do with sexual services.

The Preston AI broke in. “Hutch.”

“What do you have, Phyl?”

“There are three omega clouds in the area. Outbound at a distance of 1.8 light-years. Moving toward NGC6760.”

“Moving away from here?”

“Yes. What makes them interesting is that they are traveling abreast, in formation, along a line 6.1 light-years long. Straight as an arrow. The interior omega is two light-years from the end of the line.”

She waited, apparently expecting Hutch to respond. “You’re suggesting,” she said, “there’s one missing.”

“Exactly. We know these things tend to travel in orchestrated groups. Either the interior cloud should be in the middle, or there should be a cloud two light-years from the other end.”

“The missing cloud—” said Jon.

“Would have passed through this area. Three hundred years ago.”

They talked about putting everyone into the Preston for the remainder of the voyage. Let the AI do the navigation for the McAdams. There was a risk in doing that: If a glitch showed up somewhere, a cable came loose, a short developed in the wiring, there’d be nobody to fix it, and they’d lose the ship. The chance of such an event was remote, but it could happen. Matt argued against the idea, offered to ride alone if Jon wanted to join Hutch and Antonio. But he explained he felt responsible for the McAdams. She thought maybe he liked being on the bridge, and thought about suggesting they ride on his ship, but her instincts told her not to do it. Maybe she also liked being on the bridge.

Chapter 31

There was a possibility the flight to Tenareif would be nonproductive, for the simple reason they might not be able to find the black hole. It had been detected by its gravitational effects on nearby stars. No companion was known to exist. If that was indeed the case, and there was no matter nearby, no dust or hydrogen or incoming debris to light the thing up, it would be invisible. Nothing more than a deeper darkness in the night. And looking for it would require a risk Hutch wasn’t prepared to take. Furthermore, there’d be no point in it anyhow since, even if they found it, there’d be nothing to see.

If the outside universe was about to acquire a flavor of weirdness, the climate inside the Preston had also changed. Not dramatically. Not in ways that Hutch could have explained. Antonio remained upbeat and encouraging. He could sit for hours trading barbs and gags, describing misadventures while trying to cover political events, natural disasters, and even occasional armed rebellions. “Got shot at once, in the Punjab. You believe that? Somebody actually tried to kill me. I was doing an interview with a local warlord and got in the way of an assassin.”

“You didn’t get hit, I hope?”

“In the hand.” He showed her a burn scar. “She—it was a woman—wanted a clear shot, and I was in the way. It was a bad moment.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, it’s got a special kind of significance, knowing that someone, a perfect stranger, wants to take your life.”

“Well,” Hutch said, “at least it wasn’t personal. She wasn’t after you. She just wanted to clear the area.”

“You can say that. It felt personal to me.”

“Why did she want him dead?”

“You’d think it was political, right?”

“Sure.”

“That she was from an oppressed group of some sort?”

“She wasn’t?”

“She was a government worker who’d been terminated. She got the warlord confused with the local bosses and tried to take him out. She should have been after the chief of the tax bureau.”

“Incredible.”

“No wonder they booted her.”

But if Antonio remained the same, the atmosphere had nevertheless changed. Maybe it was her. There was less reading and game-playing and VR. The climate had become more personal, the sense of isolation more acute. Rudy had been simply one of her two passengers during the first two legs of the flight. Now, with him gone, he’d become something infinitely more, a companion, a reflection of her own soul, an anchor in a turbulent time.

They talked about Rudy every day, how they would see that his memory was kept, how he would have been overjoyed at the poetry in the Sigma Hotel Book. How they missed him.

Hutch even began listening to country music, which she’d never done before. Years behind everybody else in her generation, she discovered Brad Wilkins, who always sang about moving on, and about the darkness outside the train windows.

When Antonio suggested they were becoming morose, that they should try to put the Sigma Hotel staircase behind them, Hutch agreed but really thought it was best to talk it out. Gradually, as the days passed, politics and black holes began to dominate the conversation. Rudy receded.

Three weeks and two days after leaving Sigma 2711, they arrived in the area that was home to Tenareif, roughly one and a half light-years from the position of the black hole.

They did a second jump, and, when they came out, Phyl announced immediately that she could see the target. “Take a look,” she said.

She put it on-screen: a luminous ring.

“That’s the accretion disk,” said Antonio. “It circles the black hole.”

“If not for the extra shielding,” said Phyl, “we wouldn’t want to come this close.”

“That bad, Phyllis?”

“Very high levels of X-rays and gamma rays. Higher than theory predicts.”

“I guess they’ll have to revise the theory.” She saw a second object, glowing dully nearby. A planet. With an atmosphere. It looked like a moon seen through a haze. “So it does have a companion.”

“Yes, it would seem so.”

It wasn’t a planet. The thing was a brown dwarf, a star not massive enough to light up. “It’s about eight times as massive as Jupiter,” said Phyl.

“Anything else in the system?”

“Not as far as I can see.”

Hutch took them in closer. Angled them so they were able to look down on the accretion disk. It was a swirl of dazzling colors, of scarlet and gold and white. The ring was twisted and bent, an enormous tumbling river, dragged this way and that by the immense tidal effects, simultaneously brilliant and dark as if the rules of physics shifted and melted in the flow.

Antonio sat beside her, his notebook in his lap. “No way to describe it,” he said.

A light mist was being sucked off the surface of the brown dwarf. It spiraled out into the sky, a cosmic corkscrew, aimed at the black hole, until it connected with the accretion disk.

“It’s feeding the accretion disk,” said Antonio. “That’s what lights it up. If the brown dwarf weren’t there, there’d be no accretion disk.”

“And we wouldn’t be able to see the hole,” said Hutch.

“That’s correct.”

“It’d be kind of dangerous, navigating through here,” she said.

“I’d say so.”

The dwarf writhed like a living creature. “How long will this process take?” Hutch asked. “Before the dwarf collapses and the lights go out?”

“Difficult to estimate. Probably millions of years.”

Hutch was thinking about the physics associated with black holes, how light freezes along the accretion disk, how time runs at a different pace close to the hole, how there’s really nothing there yet it still has enormous mass. There’d been talk in recent years that it might be possible to use antigrav technology to send a probe into a black hole. Rudy had thought it was impossible, that any conceivable technology would be overwhelmed. “How big’s the hole?” she asked.

“Probably not more than a few kilometers.”

Strange. The accretion disk was the most impressive physical object she’d ever seen, majestic, beautiful, overwhelming. Yet she couldn’t see what produced it.

“Hutch,” said Phyl, “the McAdams is in the area.”

They rendezvoused a few hours later. The ships had pulled back well away from the barrage of radiation, and the accretion disk was now only a glimmer in the night.

Hutch and Antonio took the lander over, and, glad for one another’s company, they settled into the common room. Mostly it was small talk, the long ride from Sigma 2711, how it was the end of January and where had the year gone? The latter remark, made by Antonio, had been intended as a joke. It fell flat, but Jon pointed out that Antonio was spending all his time with a beautiful woman, and the next time they tried something like this they should think things out more carefully.

They were looking at telescopic views when Phyl appeared, dark hair this time, dark penetrating eyes, wearing a lab coat, in her science director mode. The room went quiet.

She addressed herself to Hutch. “There’s something odd about the brown dwarf.”

“How do you mean?”

“It has too much deuterium.”

Hutch shrugged. Even Dr. Science looked amused. It was hardly a problem.

Phyl persisted. “It should not exist.”

“Explain, please.”

“Brown dwarfs are normally composed of hydrogen, helium, lithium, and assorted other elements. One of the other elements is deuterium.”

“Okay.”

“Deuterium is a heavy isotope of hydrogen, with one proton and one neutron. It was manufactured during the first three minutes of the Big Bang, and after that production got shut down. You don’t get any more by natural processes. Only small quantities were made initially. So there’s not much of it around. No matter where you look.”

“And this one has too much?” It still didn’t sound like a major issue.

“Yes.”

“What’s normal?”

“Only .001 percent. A wisp. A trace. A hint.”

“And how much does this one have?”

“Half—fifty percent. Well, forty-nine percent actually. But the point is there’s way too much. It’s impossible.”

“I can’t see that it’s a problem for us. Just log it, and we’ll let somebody else crunch the numbers and figure it out.”

“You don’t understand, Hutch.”

“I understand we have an anomaly.”

“No. What you have is an artificial object.”

Hutch wondered if Phyl had blown her programming. “You said it’s eight times the size of Jupiter.”

“Eight times the density.”

“That hardly matters. An object that big could not—”

“Hutch, don’t you see what’s happening here?”

“Not really. No.” She’d felt a lot of pressure since the loss of Rudy. And maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly, but she resented being taken to task by an AI.

“I think I do,” said Jon, who’d been sitting quietly, sipping hot chocolate. “Hutch, anything less than thirteen Jupiter masses is classified as a planet—” He turned to Antonio. “Do I have that right, Antonio?”

“Yes, Jon.”

“Because it never develops sufficient internal pressure to ignite its deuterium, let alone its hydrogen.”

“My God,” said Antonio. “Yet here’s an object eight times Jupiter’s mass. It displays surface abundances that can only come from deuterium burning. That’s impossible with 1/1000th of a percent deuterium. But deuterium ignition works perfectly if the object is born with eight Jupiter masses and fifty percent hydrogen and fifty percent deuterium. All it needs is a spark.”

“Wait a minute,” said Matt. “Would somebody please do this in English? For the slow kids?”

Jon and Antonio stared at one another. Both looked stunned. Jon was rubbing his forehead. “Think of a trace of air,” he said. “Mix it with gasoline and it’s stable. But a mixture of fifty percent gasoline and fifty percent air is highly combustible. A spark is all you need.”

“So where are we?” asked Hutch.

“Hutch,” said Antonio. “Nature can’t make, or ignite, fifty-fifty deuterium-hydrogen objects. So something else must have done it.”

“But why?” asked Matt. “Why would—?” He stopped cold.

“It’s a traffic sign,” said Hutch. “Without the dwarf—”

“Exactly right.” Antonio clapped his hands. “We said it coming in. Without the dwarf, the black hole would be invisible. Somebody just passing through, who doesn’t know in advance it’s there, could get gobbled up.”

“So,” said Matt, “who put it here? Who’d be capable of an engineering operation like that?”

“There’s something else that might interest you,” Phyl said later, when they were getting ready to start on the last leg of the voyage. Antonio had been reading. Hutch was absorbed with a checklist. Only Antonio looked up. “Yeah, Phyl,” he said. “What have you got?”

“I’ve been searching for hydrogen-deuterium brown dwarfs.”

“And?”

“There’s nothing in the scientific literature. Nobody’s ever seen one.”

“Okay.”

“But there’s a fictitious character, Kristi Lang, who showed up in some books written during the early twenty-first century. She’s an astrophysicist, and she locates some brown dwarfs exactly like this one. She eventually produces evidence to indicate that somebody is marking solitary black holes, exactly the way this one is marked. They each get a lighthouse. Because they’re the dangerous ones.”

“So who makes the lighthouses?”

“She has no way of knowing. She doesn’t even have a superluminal at her disposal.”

“How about that?” said Antonio. “I guess she called it.”

“Not really.” Hutch pushed away from the display that had absorbed her. “This isn’t the first black hole we’ve looked at. The Academy’s been to three. The Europeans have visited two. Nobody’s ever reported anything like this before.”

“The others,” said Phyl, “all had natural companions. You could see them from far away. This one, though, if you didn’t know in advance it was there, would be an ambush.”