Cauldron

Chapter 32

The omega clouds seemed to originate from a single source, located approximately fifty-seven light-years from the galactic center and in orbit around it. It was the Mordecai Zone, named for the guy who’d done the math twenty years ago. It also had a numerical designator, RVP66119. The more sensational news media commonly referred to it as the Boiler Room. Whatever one chose to call it, no one had ever seen it. The area was obscured by enormous clouds of dust and hydrogen.

The jump from Tenareif would take them across seven thousand light-years, and require nearly four weeks.

Jon was annoyed. For him, Tenareif was to have been the highlight of the mission. But Rudy’s death had cast a pall over everything, which even the discovery of the mysterious marker, with its implication of cosmic goodwill, had failed to lift. Especially for Matt. In the end, Jon understood, Matt had looked into the black hole and seen a metaphor for the meaning of existence.

Conditions were not helped by the fact that riding his star drive was something less than exhilarating. Jon had always enjoyed travel. He’d been around the globe several times, had represented Henry Barber at distant forums and conferences whenever he could, had learned to sail when he was a boy, and had always known that one day he would go the Moon.

To the Moon.

But travel should include motion. Movement. The sense of getting from one place to another. Journeys are not about destinations, they are about the route. They are about mountain passages and cruising around the horn and riding the Northwest glide train along the Pacific rim. They are about sailing past Jupiter and drinking toasts as Centaurus grows brighter on the screens. (Okay, that last was strictly his imagination, but that made it no less true.) It was not, most certainly not, sitting for weeks inside a constricted container that passed nothing. That didn’t rock in the wind, or throw on the brakes, or even glide slowly through the eternal mists of Hazeltine space.

It was early February back home. The All-Swiss Regional Bridge Tournament, in which he’d played last year, where he and his partner had almost won, had opened its qualifying round the day they’d left Tenareif. Pitchers would be reporting for spring training. And the streets of Washington would be filled with lovely young women.

There was a time he’d taken all that for granted.

He’d given up all pretense of trying to work. Before coming, he’d thought the atmosphere for finding ways to improve the Locarno, to make it more efficient, to give it more range on less fuel, to make it even more precise, would be ideal. But it hadn’t played out that way. For one thing he’d found it hard to work when there was no break, no chance to wander off and hit a local bistro. For another, as the situation on board deteriorated, he couldn’t simply abandon Matt, leaving him to entertain himself through the endless days and nights. So they watched VR and played bridge and worked out, and the lights dimmed and brightened, marking the hours.

The AI had an extensive translation by then of the Sigma Hotel poems, but neither of them was much into poetry. When Jim announced he could find nothing in the book about automated deep-space missions or about omega clouds, they lost interest. There were, Jim said, occasional references to clouds, as in creating moody skies or bringing rain, but there was nothing about clouds that rolled in from the outer darkness, pouring down the wrath of the gods on baffled city dwellers.

Jon spent a fair amount of time going over the details they’d compiled on Tenareif. He wasn’t an astrophysicist, and black holes were a long way from his field of interest, but nevertheless he spent hours peering down into the funnel, wondering what conditions were really like, what the odds were that the thing actually opened into another universe. Such a possibility was counterintuitive, but everything about black holes was counterintuitive. So much about the structure of the universe at large was counterintuitive.

He amused himself by calculating the distance to Earth. Technically, of course, while it was in Barber space, there was no such thing as a range between the McAdams and anything in the Milky Way. Each existed in its own spatial continuum. Nevertheless, he proposed the question to himself in terms of where they would be if they exited now.

At the beginning of the second week, they were twenty-two thousand light-years out. “Pity we don’t have a telescope big enough to look back,” he told Matt. “Imagine what we’d see. They won’t build their first pyramid for another fifteen thousand years or so. Babylon, Sumer, none of that exists. There’s nobody there except guys living in caves.”

Matt had been paging through his notebook. “It’s a bit like riding a time machine.”

“As close as we’ll get.”

Jim was invaluable. He was always ready to play bridge or produce a show. Matt especially enjoyed Government Issue, which portrayed the misadventures of three female interns in a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent Washington. Jon had seen it before, a few episodes, but he grew to enjoy it more than anything else they watched, not because of the assorted buffooneries, or even because of the nubile young women. It was rather because, for reasons he could not understand, it didn’t seem quite so far as everything else.

So the weeks passed, and the final days dwindled away. And at last they were ready to make their jump into the Mordecai Zone. Matt sealed the viewports and the hatches against the radiation and told him they had three minutes.

Chapter 33

Twenty-eight thousand light-years from Earth.

Jon was looking at the navigation screen when they made the jump. He had become accustomed to the mild tingling sensation in his toes and fingertips when the ship moved from one state to the other. He felt it now and started breathing again when the stars blinked on. They provided a spectacular light show, as always, and it appeared as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch.

The night was ablaze, with stars that were points of light and others so close he could make out disks. Still others were radiant smears, trapped in clouds of gas and dust. Brilliant jets and light-years-long streaks of glowing gas arced across the sky. In their immediate rear lay a cloud filled with hot red stars. If you lived here, on a terrestrial world, it would never get dark. He decided at that moment on the title of his autobiography: 28,000 Light-Years from Earth. Except that twenty-eight didn’t work. Round it off. Make it thirty. 30,000 Light-Years from Earth: The Jon Silvestri Story. Yeah. He liked that. It had a ring to it.

They sealed the viewports, so the only external views now were by way of the displays.

Matt had been worried about jumping in so close. “It’s too goddam much,” he’d said before punching the button. Jon had felt the same way, too much radiation here. Despite the assurances of the people who’d put on the shielding, he wasn’t comfortable. The estimates regarding how much protection they needed had been just that: estimates. They’d built in a 50 percent safety factor, but out here that might not mean much. A sudden explosion somewhere, a flare, almost any kind of eruption might fry them before they knew they were in trouble.

“Jim.” Matt didn’t even bother to release his restraints. “How do the radiation levels look?”

“Shielding is adequate.”

“Good. Recharge.”

“Commencing.”

Matt wanted to be ready to clear out if necessary.

“Which way’s the core?” asked Jon.

A cursor appeared on-screen, marking the position of the McAdams. And an arrow: “Approximately sixty light-years. That way.” Into the swirl of dust and stars.

“Do you see any unusual activity out there, Jim?” Specifically, were there any omegas?

“Negative,” said Jim. “It is a crowded area, but I see nothing we need be concerned about.”

Jon took a deep breath. “We’re really here,” he said. Only sixty light-years from Sag A*. The monster at the heart of the galaxy. A black hole three million times as massive as the sun. Dead ahead.

Sixty light-years seemed suddenly close. Just up in the next block.

“The diameter of the Sag A* event horizon,” said Jim, “is estimated at 7.7 million kilometers.”

Matt took a deep breath. Shook his head. “You know, Jon, I’d love to get close enough to see it.”

“We wouldn’t survive, Matt.”

“I know.”

Nevertheless, it was something Jon would have liked to see. “Sounds like a project for an AI flight.”

They both glanced toward the AI’s mode lamp. It brightened. “Don’t expect me to volunteer,” Jim said.

Matt grinned. “Jim, I’m disappointed in you.”

“I’ll try to live with your disappointment, Matthew. The area is lethal. Jets, radiation, antimatter, gamma rays. Get close in, and the interstellar medium is filled with highly ionized iron. Not a place for anyone to travel. Especially not an advanced entity.”

Matt could not take his eyes from the screen. “It doesn’t look like a real sky out there,” he said. “It’s too crowded.”

“Yes.” It was a sight that left Jon breathless. Blue-white suns off to one side; in another direction, a cloud filled with stars probably just being born. Another cloud with jagged flashes, seemingly frozen, until he saw that they were moving, crawling through the cloud at light speed.

They could see hundreds of clouds, large and small, scattered across an area several light-years deep and about thirty light-years wide. They were elongated, tubular, accusing fingers pointed at the central black hole that held them locked in their orbits.

Jon used the VR capabilities of the common room to re-create the clouds, and he spent the next few hours seated in his chair, wandering among them. He’d never considered himself one of those sense-of-wonder types, idiots whose jaws dropped at the sight of a waterfall or a passing comet. But this was different. The sheer power and enormity of the Mordecai took his breath away. He was adrift near a luminous fountain when Matt broke in to tell him they’d located the Preston.

“You okay?” asked Hutch, referring to whether the shields were holding.

Both ships were, fortunately, doing well.

“I have some news,” she said. “We’ve spotted three omegas.”

The Mordecai Zone was an area of indefinite size. Their only real hope of finding the source had been to locate some omegas and run the vectors backward. That raised the issue of how common omegas were. Nobody had any real idea. Estimates ranged from a staggered production rate of fifty or so per year, to several thousand. But it was all guesswork.

Jon took a last look at the fountain, a golden stream arching through the night, bending and swirling as if the quality of light itself were different here. Then he shut it down and went onto the bridge. “Hi, Hutch,” he said, “welcome to the Cauldron.”

“Hello, Jon. Must be heaven out there for a physicist.”

“What do the omegas look like?”

“Unfortunately, they’re running together. All going in the same direction. Sorry.”

A couple of omegas on different routes would have allowed them to track backward until they intersected. And there, voilà, they would find the factory. The boiler room. The manufacturer. Whatever the hell it was.

“They’re in a vee-shape,” Hutch continued, “one in front, the others angled back at about twenty degrees. The entire formation is two and a fraction light-years across. The two trailing clouds are identical ranges from the lead.”

She relayed images, and Jim put them on-screen. They simply looked like hazy stars.

“They do love their math,” said Jon.

“They’re moving at escape velocity, in the same general direction as everything else here.”

Matt tried to get a clearer picture. “Can you give us a better mag?” he said.

“That’s max. We could go over and look at them, I suppose. But I don’t see the point.”

“Are we sure they’re omegas?”

“Yes. We’ve got matching spectra.”

A cursor appeared behind the one in the center. It tracked backward across open space, passed through a series of clouds, and finally vanished in the general chaos. “It originated somewhere along there,” said Hutch. “It can’t go too much deeper.”

“Why not?” asked Matt.

“The numbers don’t work. Whatever we’re looking for, it’s no further than about fifty-seven light-years from the core. That’s where we are now.”

“So the source is somewhere along this arc?”

“Yes. I’d say so.”

“How long’s the arc?”

“Five and a half light-years.”

“That could take a while.”

“Not necessarily. Most of the area’s open space.”

“Okay,” said Matt. “How do we want to do this?”

“Stay together,” she said. “We simply start poking around. Look for more omegas. Or anything else out of the way.”

“How do we inspect a dust cloud?” asked Jon.

“Scanners.”

“But some of these things are millions of kilometers deep. You’re not going to be able to see very far into that.”

“It’s all we have, Jon. Other than going in with the ships to see whether we bump into something.”

“Okay. I see what you mean.”

“Look, I can’t give you any specifics about this. We’ll be hunting for anything out of the ordinary. Unusual energy signatures. Artificial radio transmissions. Too much carbon. I don’t know—”

Matt nodded. “We’ll know it when we see it.”

“That’s exactly right, Matthew.”

“Okay, Preston, let’s go look at some dust clouds.”

Their first target was about forty million klicks long, maybe a million across. The dust was less concentrated than it appeared from a distance, and the sensors were able to penetrate it quite easily. “Dust and rocks all the way through,” said Matt.

The Preston lay off at a safe distance while the McAdams went in close, within a few kilometers, and, in effect, took the cloud’s temperature. Jim reported that conditions inside, so far as the initial readings were concerned, showed results well within anticipated parameters. No anomalies.

They moved along the face of the cloud for about an hour, recharged the Locarno, jumped twelve million kilometers, and repeated the process.

“Within anticipated parameters,” said Jim.

They moved to the next cloud, this time with the Preston doing the honors while Matt and Jon watched.

Chapter 34

They named the clouds alphabetically as they progressed. The first one was Aggie, supposedly a morose aunt of Matt’s. The second was Bill, who had been a grouchy editor early in Antonio’s career.

They went to a round-the-clock search pattern, with one of the two pilots awake at all times. They stayed outside the clouds, one vehicle close in, the one with the functioning pilot, and the other at a respectful distance.

Hutch admitted to Antonio that she could not imagine how any directed operation could function out here. The place was indeed a cosmic cookpot, a cauldron of churning clouds and enormous jets. She suspected stellar collisions were not uncommon.

Toward the end of the second week, while they were completing their search of Charlotte, Phyl announced that she had sighted another group of omegas. Four this time.

They glittered like distant fires, flaring and dimming in the shifting light of the Cauldron.

“They track to Cloud F,” she said.

F for Frank.

Frank was a cloud of moderate size. Like all the others, it was long and narrow, aimed toward Sag A* by the relentless gravity. They passed a stellar corpse on approach. And several red stars.

“Length of the cloud,” said Phyl, “is eighty billion kilometers.” Almost seven times the diameter of the solar system. Like everything else at this range from Sag A*, it was orbiting the core at about 220 kps. Frank would need about 480,000 years to complete an orbit.

It was the Preston’s turn to go in close and look. But they changed the routine: Both pilots would remain awake during the search. At the end of the day, they’d simply call it off and start fresh in the morning.

Antonio watched nervously as Hutch took station about eighty kilometers out from the edge of the cloud. Matt retreated to six million klicks.

“We safe at this range?” asked Antonio.

“Probably not,” she said.

The cloud had become a vast, amorphous wall. It extended above and below the ship, fore and aft on the starboard side, to the limits of vision. It was alive with energy, riven near the surface by enormous lightning bolts, illuminated deep within by flashes and glimmerings.

Antonio knew the history, had read of that first encounter with an omega, when Hutchins and a few others at a place they called Delta had been attacked by lightning bolts, had tried to ride a lander to safety while directed lightning rained down out of the sky. He was impressed that she would tempt fate again.

Two red jets arced through the night, brightening the face of the cloud. “It’s probably a pulsar,” Antonio said. “This area must be littered with burned-out supernovas.”

Hutch had been unusually quiet. They were both on the bridge, belted down in case they had to leave in a hurry. She was checking something off in a notebook and simultaneously watching as the insubstantial wall rippled past. “Hutch,” he said, “answer a question.”

“If I can.”

“You’re disappointed, aren’t you? All this way, and there’s not really going to be anything we can do here. Even if this cloud really is the source, it’s just too big.”

She adjusted course, pulling a little closer. A sudden flash dazzled them. “We don’t know that yet,” she said. “To be honest, Antonio, I’m not entirely sure I want to meet whatever’s putting the omegas in play. I’m perfectly willing to let somebody else have that honor.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Her eyes looked far away. “This feels like the start of a new phase. I mean, the Locarno Drive and the possibilities it opens.”

“And—?”

Her eyes drifted back to the screen. The wall had gone dark. “I’d like to shut them down.” She realized how unrealistic that was, and shrugged. “The truth, Antonio, is that I never believed in this part of the operation. I went along with it because it was what Rudy wanted to do. And maybe he was right. At least we’ve come out here. Now we can shake our fist at them, I guess, and go home.”

It was Antonio’s turn to fall silent. He was thinking that if he could go back and make a few changes in his life, he’d do some things differently. He wasn’t sure what. He knew he could never have done the things she had. He couldn’t seriously imagine himself at the controls of a superluminal. Wouldn’t have wanted to make some of the life-and-death decisions she’d been forced to make. He’d been Dr. Science. A pretend astrophysicist. And he’d covered scientific developments for several news organizations. It hadn’t been a bad career, really. He’d been a minor celebrity, he’d been paid reasonably well, and he liked to think he’d been responsible for turning some kids on to scientific careers.

But he wasn’t really going anywhere. When his time came to retire, when he’d pulled the pin and gone back home, no one would ever remember him. Maybe they’d remember Dr. Science. But not Antonio Giannotti.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Hutch,” he said.

That brought a smile. “Thank you, Antonio. You’re a bit of a looker yourself.”

“That’s good of you to say, Priscilla. But I was never much able to turn heads.”

She studied him for a long moment. “You might have turned mine, Antonio.” She switched back to the AI. “Phyl?”

“Yes, Hutch?”

“Still no indication of activity?”

“Negative. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

The wall had become almost a blur. “How fast are we traveling?” he asked.

“Relative to the cloud, we’re moving at almost seventy-five thousand.” That was, of course, kilometers per hour.

“How long would it take us to look at the entire thing?”

“At this rate?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a long cloud.”

“Right. I know.”

She passed the question to Phyl. Phyl’s electronics picked up a notch, the equivalent of clearing her throat. “About 130 years.”

Antonio grinned.

“That would be just one side,” Phyl continued. “To do it properly, multiply the figure by four.”

The situation was not made easier by the fact that the cloud was simply too big for the sensors to penetrate adequately. “Somebody could be planting lemon trees in that thing,” Hutch said, “and we wouldn’t know it.” The displays showed murky and overcast. The ship’s navigation lights were smeared across the screens. “What do you want to do?” she asked him.

“How do you mean?”

“Did you want to go in and look around?”

“What would you do if I said yes?”

“Try me.”

“Ah, no. Thanks. Let it go. But I do have an idea.”

“What’s that, Antonio?”

“Let’s put all four of us in one ship, and use the AI to send the other one in for a test run. See what happens.”

“The transfer would not work,” said Phyl. “How would you get from one ship to the other without exposing yourselves to the radiation?”

“You don’t want to go,” Hutch told Phyl. The AI was right, of course. But the pilot couldn’t resist testing her sense of humor.

“No, ma’am, I do not. May I point out that if you send a ship in there, you may not recover it.” One of her avatars appeared, a young woman. She had Hutch’s dark hair and eyes, looked remarkably vulnerable, and was about eight months pregnant. “I don’t think it’s a chance worth taking,” she said. “But if you insist, I’ll do it, of course.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Antonio. “I’d feel the same way.”

Eventually, Antonio’s attention wandered from the cloud to the crowded sky. A couple of nearby yellow stars were almost touching. He tried to imagine Earth’s sun bumping its way through the chaos. Phyl reported a planet adrift. “Range is twelve million kilometers. I can’t be certain, but it doesn’t seem attached to anything. Just orbiting the core. Like everything else. It appears to have been a terrestrial world.”

“You wouldn’t expect it to be attached to anything out here,” said Antonio. “Maybe it’s what we’re looking for.”

“Phyl, any sign of life? Or activity of any kind?”

“Certainly not any kind of living thing we’d know about. There’s no electromagnetic cloud, either. Did you want to inspect it more closely?” A picture appeared on-screen. The world appeared to be nothing more than a battered rock.

“No,” said Hutch. “It’s not a very likely candidate.”

Something rattled the ship, a burst of wind and sand, and was gone. “Got in the way of a dust storm,” said Hutch. “Phyl, are we okay?”

“Yes.” The AI sounded doubtful. “It wasn’t enough to activate the particle beams. And, anyhow, the shielding covered us nicely.”

“Scopes and sensors okay?”

“Yes. I read no problems, maybe some minor scratches to the lens on number three. Although I have to say these are not ideal conditions for them.”

“Okay. Keep the forward and starboard scopes active, and the starboard sensor.” That was the one in the best position to work the cloud. “Seal everything else for now.”

“Complying.”

The pictures on the displays went down one by one until Antonio was looking either straight ahead or at the cloud.

After an hour or so, they jumped twelve million klicks. “All readings are still inside the parameters,” said Phyl.

Antonio had gotten hungry. He went back, made sandwiches for them, and carried everything onto the bridge. Hutch already had a cup of hot chocolate. After he got settled in his seat, she touched something, and his harness settled over his shoulders. Damned thing was annoying. “How long are we going to stay?” he asked. He expected her to make a crack about maybe only a couple of years. But she contented herself with a shrug and a smile.

“So when are we going to leave?” he said again.

She surprised him. “I don’t know.”

“We aren’t going to stay here the rest of the month, are we?” He was losing any serious hope that they’d find anything.

“No,” she said. “Let’s just give it a little more time, though. You don’t want to go back and face your colleagues and tell them we got nothing.”

“That’s a point.”

Phyl broke in: “Hutch, we’re getting some odd readings.”

“Specify, please.”

“Recurring patterns of nontypical electromagnetic radiation.” Details appeared on-screen, but they meant nothing to either of them. “There are also quantum fluctuations indicative of biological activity.”

“What?” said Hutch. “Biological? In there?”

“We need Rudy,” said Antonio.

“Explain, Phyl.”

“Data is insufficient to draw conclusions. I can say with certainty, however, that activity here is at a different level and more coherent than in the other clouds or at other sites in this cloud.”

“Coherent? By that you mean—?”

“Occurring within more distinct parameters. More repetitive. Less arbitrary. Fewer extremes.”

“You said ‘biological activity.’ Do you mean there’s something alive in there?”

“That is probable.”

“Okay.” She was jiggling the yoke. Pulling them away from the wall. “Let’s give it some breathing space.” She was apparently talking to herself as much as to Antonio.

It was all right with Antonio. Something alive in there? Maledire. If he could see the cloud at all, they were too close.

She turned the ship left, to port, and Antonio was pushed against the side of his seat. On the displays, the cloud wall moved up, angled overhead, and became a ceiling, an overhead. Then it dropped back to the side again.

He looked at her for a long moment.

“What?” she said.

“You’re showing off.”

“A little. Thought you’d enjoy the ride.”

She called Matt and passed the information along. “The cloud might have a tenant.”

Once they were well away from it—or at least what Hutch apparently considered well away—she did more gyrations with the ship, rotating it along its vertical axis until the main engines were pointed forward. Then she used them to begin braking. Antonio, now facing backward, was pushed gently into his seat.

She had also turned the ship 180 degrees around its lateral axis, thereby keeping the starboard scope pointed at the cloud. It would have been a good moment for the Dr. Science show: I’m now upside down, boys and girls, except you can’t tell a difference because there is no up or down away from a gravity well.

The cloud brightened and darkened in the swirling light from the pulsar.

“Something’s happening,” said Phyl. “Quantity and intensity of signals is picking up.”

The lightning was becoming more frequent. And more violent. “Maybe it’s waking up,” Antonio said.

Matt’s voice broke in: “Hutch, get clear.” He sounded frantic. “Do it now. Get out of there.”

Had Antonio not been harnessed in, he’d have jumped out of his seat. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Don’t know,” said Hutch. She nevertheless pulled back on the yoke. “Matt, do you see something?”

They’d been caught at a bad time. The ship was reversed, traveling backward, gradually braking. If she hit the mains, it would only slow them down more. She rotated the ship again, to get it pointed away from the wall. While they waited to complete the maneuver, Antonio hanging on to the arms of his chair, Matt’s response came in: “Up ahead. It’s watching you.” His voice was shrill.

“What’s watching me, Matt? What are you talking about?”

“The cloud.”

“Matt—?”

“For God’s sake, Hutch. The cloud is. Look at it.”

Chapter 35

It was like being in a dark house and having something jump out of a closet. Hutch fought down the impulse to hit the main engines but continued waiting while the ship rotated away from the cloud. It seemed a painfully slow process. “Do you see anything, Antonio?”

Antonio looked as if he would have been hiding under his seat had he not been belted in. “Nothing. Just the wall.”

“Phyl?”

“Nothing, Hutch.”

It was an illusion. Matt’s imagination. Had to be.

Finally, she got clearance. She told herself not to panic, warned Antonio, and started to accelerate.

He yelped as they pulled away.

“I can’t see it now,” said Matt. “We’ve lost it.”

“What was it, Matt?”

“Priscilla, I know how this sounds. But it was an eye.”

“An eye? Matt, how could you have seen an eye from out there?” Her heart was pounding. Been away from this too long.

“Because it was big.”

“Okay,” she said. “We’re clearing.” She continued the turn, maintained thrust, and favored Antonio with a smile meant to be reassuring but which seemed only to alarm him more.

“You think he really saw something?”

“Get the right lighting here,” she said, “and you probably get a half dozen faces in the cloud.” She switched back to the McAdams. “Anything more, Matt?”

“No, Hutch. But I don’t think we were seeing things. Jon saw it, too.”

“Okay.”

“It was real.”

“Okay.”

Phyl cut in: “There,” she said. “That might be what they saw.”

A dark circle within the cloud. No. More ovoid than circular. With a black patch in the center.

Beside her, Antonio shifted, tried to get comfortable.

The picture was at maximum mag. Whatever the thing was, had they continued on their original course, they’d have passed directly in front of it. “Can you give us better definition, Phyl?”

The AI tried to adjust. Not much of an improvement. “We see it,” she told Matt.

“Yeah. We got it back, too.”

“It’s just the light,” she said.

“Maybe.”

It did look like an eye.

Pensive. Emotionless. Looking at her.

“How big is it, Phyl?”

“Ninety meters by seventy-four. Error range of five percent.” Phyl put up a map and located the position of the object.

Deep in the cloud, she saw lightning.

Hutch eased back on acceleration, gave it another minute or two, and cut forward thrust altogether. They were, of course, still racing away from the wall. When she was two thousand kilometers out, she angled to starboard and began running parallel to it again. “Phyl, are you reading any change in energy levels?”

“Negative,” she said.

“Very good. If there’s any shift, anything at all, up or down, I want to know about it. Right away.”

“Yes, Hutch.”

“You’re worried about lightning?” said Antonio, who obviously was.

“I’m cautious, Antonio.” She had no interest in trying to outrun a lightning bolt. “Phyl—”

“I’m listening.”

“Make sure we keep the Locarno charged at all times for an instant departure. Okay?”

“Hutch, that will be a severe drain on our fuel.”

“Do it anyhow. Until I tell you to stop. Matt, are you listening?”

“I’m here, Hutch.”

“I need to talk to Jon.”

Phyl was giving them a close-up of the disk. The eye. Whatever. “That is an eye,” said Antonio. “I don’t think there’s any question about it.”

Jon’s voice was usually a deep baritone, but at the moment it sounded a shade or two higher: “Hello, Hutch. What can I do for you?”

“What do you think about the eye?”

“Don’t know. I don’t think there’s any question there’s something alive in there.”

“Okay. Give me best guess: What is it?”

“How the hell would I know? It’s probably some sort of plasma creature. But it could be anything. I’d say we keep our distance.”

“You think it’s intelligent?”

“Not if it’s living out here.”

“Seriously, Jon.”

“No way to know. Look, Hutch, I don’t know anything about this sort of thing. My field is propulsion systems.”

“Nobody knows anything, Jon. I’m asking about your instincts.”

“Okay. I’m not convinced yet it isn’t an illusion.”

“It doesn’t look like an illusion.”

“Illusions never do. But if it’s really there, and it’s surviving out here, I’d say we don’t want to mess with it.”

“It, ah, isn’t possible the whole cloud could be alive, is it?”

“You mean a single living organism?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too big. If something happens at one end, it would take hours to get a message to the central nervous system. Help, I’m on fire.”

“Would it have to have a central nervous system? Maybe it’s dispersed in some way.”

“If we’re assuming this is what put together the omegas, then we’re talking intelligence. I don’t see how you could have that without a brain. One brain, centrally located. But what the hell do I know? Maybe it’s some sort of hive. Individual animals cooperating the way, say, ants do. But I’m damned if I can see how anything could live in there. Especially with all this radiation.”

“So we can assume they’re in the cloud.”

“I think so.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“I’d say the smart thing now would be to assume this is the source of the omegas. And go home. We have what we came for. Let somebody else come and sort out the details.”

“He’s right,” said Antonio. “Phyl, we’ve got that thing’s pictures on the record, right?”

“Yes, Antonio.”

“What a story that’s going to make.”

No question. An eye twenty stories high. “Matt,” she said, “you had a wider angle on it than we did. Could you see anything else in there? Any indication of a shape, possibly?”

“Like maybe tentacles?” Antonio was trying to lighten the mood.

Matt relayed the McAdams record to her and Phyl put it on-screen. Nothing else of note was visible. Just the eye.

“Matt’s pictures aren’t as clear as ours,” he said.

“That’s because they’re farther away.”

“Phyl? Is that the only reason?”

“The range accounts for some of the blurring. But not all of it. The image they sent should be more defined.”

“Maybe the scope took a few seconds to focus,” said Antonio.

“That’s enough for me,” said Matt. “I’m for starting back.”

“I guess,” said Hutch.

“Smart move.” Jon was trying to sound disappointed, trying to mask his enthusiasm for turning around. “I don’t think we want to give that thing a shot at us.”

“It’s lighting up,” said Antonio.

He was referring to patches of the cloud on either side of the eye. “Light globules,” Hutch said. Deep inside somewhere. They were like summer lightning. Or lights coming on in a dark house.

And going off again.

“We ready to go, Hutch?”

And coming back on.

“Hold it a second.”

“You know,” said Matt, “it might be possible to come back here and nuke the thing after all. Get rid of it.”

“Not that it would do us any good,” said Jon.

“How do you mean?”

“We’ve got more than a million years’ worth of omegas already in the pipeline. I mean, we’ve seen seven of them in the last couple of weeks. By the time they could get anywhere near our part of the galaxy, we’ll have evolved into something else. You can forget about the omegas. They’re a done deal, and the galaxy will have to put up with them for a long time.”

Matt didn’t care. “We owe them something. If we do send a mission back to take the things out, I’d like to be here when it happens.”

Antonio was watching the light display. “Matt,” he said, “what makes you think this is the only cloud that’s infested? This area might be a family of the things. Or a colony. I mean, why would there only be one?”

“I think there’s only one,” said Hutch.

“I agree,” said Jon. “There’s a kind of rhythm, a pattern to the release. The omegas explode in a timed sequence, maybe four in Ursa Major, maybe a few months apart. But the same duration between events. Then six somewhere else. Again, same duration.”

“Like a cosmic symphony,” said Hutch.

“Do you still believe that?”

She was surprised that Jon knew about her speculation that the omegas were intended to be a work of art. “Yes,” she said. “It’s a possibility. If there were a colony of critters doing that, I don’t think it could be coordinated the way it is.”

“It could be something else,” said Jon. “Other than a symphony.”

“Like what?”

“A message.”

Hutch thought about it. Tried to make sense of it. “I don’t think I follow.”

“Look at the display.”

Patches of light were still blinking on and off. “What’s your point?”

“Look closer.”

There were several luminous patches in the immediate area of the eye. Four, in fact. They were blinking in sync. On for a couple seconds. And off. On for a couple seconds. And off. Then it stopped.

And started again.

“Antonio,” she said, “I’d like to go back. Get a little closer.”

He wasn’t happy about that, and he let her see. Made a pained expression. Pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and wiped his lips against it. “You want to give this thing a clear shot at us, is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“Hold on,” said Matt. “I don’t think that’s very smart.”

“You wait where you are, Matt. Keep a respectful distance. We’re going to go ahead. Before we change our minds.”

The control system included a musical tone, a few notes from a pop hit of the period, that the AI could use if she wanted to speak to the pilot privately. The notes sounded.

Hutch frowned.

“What was that?” Antonio asked.

“Report from Phyl,” she said. “Technical stuff.” Then, casually, she pointed at her cup. “Antonio, would you mind getting me some fresh coffee? And maybe some chocolate to go with it.”

“You hungry already?”

“Yes. Please.”

He climbed out of his seat. “Okay. Back in a minute.”

Hutch turned off the speaker and pulled on earphones. “What is it, Phyl?”

“Matt wants to talk to you.”

Oh, Lord. “Put him through.”

A pause, a change in tone, and Matt’s voice: “Hutch?”

“What is it, Matt?”

“Can Antonio hear me?”

“No. But he’ll be back in a minute or so.”

“Okay. Listen, I think this is a seriously bad idea. You’ve got a good chance of getting yourself killed.”

“I know there’s a risk.”

“We’ve already lost Rudy. I don’t want to lose anybody else.”

The cloud was getting bigger. “Neither do I, Matt.” She tapped her fingertips on the control console. “Matt—”

“You’re putting Antonio at risk, too.”

“I know.”

“You’re not supposed to do that, Priscilla. He’s your passenger. His safety is supposed to be paramount.”

“Matt, he understands what the risks are.”

“Does he really? Do you?” For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then he sighed. “I guess it would take more courage to change your mind than to persist.”

“That hurts, Matt.”

“Good. I hope it’s the worst thing that happens to you over there.”

It was an eye.

The bridge was sealed. The viewports were blocked by the radiation shields, so she couldn’t really see it. On-screen, it was just an eye in a bank of mist. An eye that seemed to be aware of her presence in the ship. That looked out of the screen directly at her.

She maneuvered the Preston to within a few kilometers of the cloud wall, circling so that, when she arrived in front of the eye, she would be parallel to the cloud. If she had to get out of there, she didn’t want to have to turn around first like last time. “Careful,” said Antonio in a whisper.

It was hard to know how deep within the mist the apparition was. “Phyl, do you pick up anything solid in there?”

“Only the eye,” she said.

“You don’t think we could open the viewport covers? Just for a moment?”

“It would be too dangerous, Priscilla. In fact, this entire business strikes me as being imprudent.”

“Thanks, Phyl.”

“I’m not comfortable,” she added.

“I think we’ll be okay, Phyl.”

“I have a life, too, you know.”

The other lights in the wall, the flickering luminosities, the lightning, faded. The cloud went dark. Stayed dark. Hutch switched her navigation lamps on, but directed them away from the eye. Let’s not be impolite.

It focused on the lights. “No question about it,” said Antonio. “I’d thought maybe it was our imagination, but that thing is watching us.”

“Let’s see what happens when we move,” she said. Gently, she eased the ship forward. The eye tracked them.

“That’s deceptive,” he said. “It might be like one of those drawings where the subject watches you no matter where you go in the room.”

“It’s possible.”

Antonio nodded, agreeing with his own analysis. He hung tightly on to his chair. Started to say something, but stopped. His voice was giving him trouble.

Hutch understood completely. She fought down an impulse to take off. She stopped the forward progress, and used the attitude thrusters to back up. The eye stayed with them.

When she drew abreast of it, a luminous patch appeared. Off to one side of the eye.

“Phyl, are you reading anything?”

“Slight energy uptick.”

The patch expanded. Grew brighter.

Matt was on the circuit again: “You’re too close to it, Hutch. Back off.”

“Relax, Matthew,” she said. “We’re okay.”

“Uh-oh.”

Hutch never liked uh-ohs. “What is it, Matt?”

“We’ve got another one.”

“Another light?”

“Another eye.”

“Where?”

“Same area.”

“I see it,” said Phyl.

It was of similar dimensions, several kilometers farther along the wall. It, too, watched the Preston.

“There are two of them,” said Jon.

He meant entities. The positioning of the eyes wasn’t symmetrical. However big the thing might be, they were not part of the same head.

The luminous patch went dark.

Navigation lamps were normally handled routinely by the AI. But Hutch had a set of manual controls. She shut the lamps off. Left them a few seconds. And turned them back on.

The patch reappeared.

And went off.

“Hello,” said Hutch.

The navigation lamps on interstellars consisted of a base set: a red strobe on the highest part of the after section, a steady red light to port, a green light to starboard, and a white light aft.

She turned them on again. Counted to four. Switched them off. Counted to four. Turned them back on.

Waited.

“Hutch.” Matt sounded almost frantic in that low-key professional manner that pilots cultivate. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to talk to it.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Matt, back off. I’m busy.”

“Have you forgotten what that thing is?”

The patch flashed back. On and off.

She replied. On for four seconds. And off. And again, on four seconds, then off.

“Matt, I’m doing the best I can.”

“Crazy woman.”

The patch reappeared, brightened.

Died.

Reappeared.

“Matt.” She was unable to keep the excitement out of her voice.

“I see it.” He sounded skeptical, relieved, scared, wish-you-were-out-of-there. All at once. “I wonder what it’s saying.”

Antonio took a deep breath and shook his head. “Welcome to galactic center, I think.”

“Phyl,” said Hutch, “you’re monitoring the radio frequencies, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. There is no radio signal of any kind, other than the normal background noise.”

She blinked twice.

The patch brightened and faded.

“So what do we do now?” asked Antonio.

The two eyes stared back at her. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think we’ve exhausted our vocabulary.”

“Phyl, what else can you tell us about the Mordecai area?”

“Nothing you don’t already know, Hutch. No one, until now, has been able to establish anything unique about it. Other than that the omegas all track back to this general area. It is, of course, in orbit around the galactic center.”

“That’s it?”

“I can give you estimated dust particles per cubic meter if you like. And a few other technical details.”

“Is the orbit stable?”

“Oh, yes.”

Antonio was watching her. “What’s your point, Hutch? What are you looking for?”

Filaments had begun moving laterally across the eyes. In sync. It was blinking.

“Let’s pull back a bit,” she said.

“Yeah. I’d feel better, too, if we put some distance between us.”

She began to ease away.

The patch went luminous again. Five bursts in quick succession.

She stopped forward progress and blinked her lights. Five times.

More bursts. Five.

She started back. And returned the ship to its initial position. “It wants us to stay, Antonio.”

“Maybe it wants to have us for dinner.”

“Would Dr. Science say that?”

“Absolutely. Listen, Hutch, I think we should get out of here.”

“Maybe it just wants company.”

“Hutch, you’re not thinking clearly. This thing manufactures omegas that go out and kill everything in sight.”

Matt came on the circuit: “What’s going on?”

“Hutch thinks it’s lonely.”

He laughed. His voice had a strained quality.

“It doesn’t seem to be hostile, Matt.”

“Right. Not this son of a bitch.”

“Matt, do you see any other eyes along the wall?”

“Negative. Just those two.”

She turned to Antonio. “Let’s try another tack. Can we agree this part of the galaxy wouldn’t get many visitors?”

He chuckled. It was the old Dr. Science laugh that inevitably came while he demonstrated how an experiment might turn out differently from what one might expect. “I wouldn’t think so.”

“Okay. If this is the thing that’s responsible for the omegas, it, or its ancestors, have been here more than a million years.”

“Of course they have, Hutch. They live here.”

“Maybe.” Hutch turned off her lights. The cloud went dark.

Chapter 36

Midnight.

Antonio was watching the eye blinks. They were lateral, they happened once about every six minutes, and they took seventeen seconds to complete. Close and open. And they always occurred simultaneously.

“It’s one creature,” Hutch said.

Antonio nodded. “Yes.”

“With a head several kilometers across?”

“I doubt it. This thing doesn’t have a head. Not in the way we understand the term. But it’s connected somehow.”

She blinked the navigation lights. The luminous patch reappeared. Went off. Came on again.

Hutch repeated the pattern, and got a quick series of flashes in return. “I think you’re right,” Antonio said. “It wants to talk.” She seemed unusually subdued. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“What do you do after you’ve said hello?”

“With this thing? I have no idea.”

She turned on the starboard green light. Blinked it three times. Then she ran the strobe, a series of red flashes, for a total of five seconds. Blinked starboard green three more times. Flashed the steady red light to port, and blinked the green nine times.

The patch appeared and faded.

She did it again. Same series.

“What are you doing?” asked Antonio.

“Hold on.”

The patch reappeared. Blinked three. Then, higher in the cloud, they saw a burst of white light. The patch blinked three more times. Then a steady red glow. And finally the patch again, blinking to nine.

“So,” said Antonio, “it more or less copies what you did. It didn’t quite get the colors right, but what’s the point?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She tried another series: Blink green twice, run the strobe, two more blinks, port side red, then four blinks.

She leaned forward, and Antonio got the sense her fingers were crossed.

The cloud was quiet. Then the luminous patch came back and went off, the white burst reappeared momentarily, the patch appeared again and faded.

Antonio sighed. “I still don’t see what it’s supposed to mean.”

The red glow showed up again. Lasted a few seconds.

Hutch leaned forward.

The patch came on again and went off. Once.

Yes! She raised a fist over her head.

“What happened?” asked Antonio.

“Two times two equal four,” she said. “It replied one times one equals one.”

Antonio asked her to run the series again, and he saw. The white burst became a multiplier. The steady red light was an equals sign. “I’m impressed,” he said.

She sent two times three, followed by the green light, a short and a long.

The cloud responded with a steady red light and six blinks. The green signal established itself as a question mark. It was only a short distance from there to I understand. And its reverse.

“So where do we go from here?”

She tried two times two and flashed five. The creature returned a single yellow light. A quick flash. On and off. Three plus one equals five got another yellow flash. So she had no.

She used the strobe. Kept it on for maybe ten seconds. I understand. She did two times two and gave the correct answer.

The creature did its yellow light again, longer this time. Yes.

Gradually, during the day, she built a primitive vocabulary. Plus and minus, up and down, forward and backward. She got inside and outside by sending out the lander, under Phyl’s control, and bringing it back in. Inside. Outside. Or maybe it was launch and recover. Well, let it go for now.

The creature varied its signals by intensity and length of illumination and by a range of hues to equate to Hutch’s terms.

To establish you and me/us, she dispatched the lander again, aimed its lights at the Preston, and sent her signal, three quick whites. Us. Then she directed the lander to spotlight the creature, and sent four. You.

It responded with a yellow-white light, and sent four. Then a puff of gas and dust blew out of the cloud wall, in the general direction of the ship. The yellow-white light blinked three times.

Okay. So we weren’t doing pronouns. It was names. The Preston was three; the creature in the cloud, four.

“Not bad, though,” said Antonio.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten near the questions she wanted to ask. How long have you been here? Are you alone? Do you need help? Where are you from? Why are you sending bombs into the outer galaxy?

A bit too complicated for the language so far.

“I have an idea for alone,” Antonio said.

She tried it. Five. Pause. One. Then the signal she wanted to mean alone. Then seven pause one. And the alone signal again. And a third round. Using four with one and alone. Then one equals and the alone signal again.

When the creature responded nine and one, followed by one equals alone, she sent: You alone question mark.

The patch brightened. Yes.

Antonio gave her a broad smile. “Brilliant,” he said.

“You’re talking about yourself.”

“I know.” The smile got even wider. “We ought to give that thing a name.”

“I thought we had.”

“What?”

“Frank,” she said.

“There’s only one of the damned things?” asked Jon.

“That’s what it says.”

“Is it responsible for the omega clouds?”

“We haven’t been able to ask that question yet.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how to spell omega.”

He had no patience with her sense of humor and let her see it.

“Look, Jon,” she said, “the thing’s about as easy to communicate with as you are.”

“All right,” he said. “Do the best you can.”

“You’re getting as bossy as Matt.”

Matt’s voice broke in: “I heard that.”

“Hi, Matthew.” She had known, of course, he’d be listening. “Just kidding.”

“So you’re talking to the critter now,” Matt said.

“More or less. So far it’s been a limited conversation.”

“All right. I agree with Jon. Find out whatever you can. It would be nice to know what’s going on. What the reason is for the omegas.”

“I’ll ask it when I can think of a way to do it.”

“Okay. Meantime, you’re too close to the damned thing. I wish you’d back off.”

In another age, Dr. Science had bitten his upper lip when he was about to reveal why, say, no matter how strong you were and how well you could fly, you couldn’t support a falling plane in midair. He bit his lip now, while his eyes acquired a distant look.

“What?” she asked.

“It might be stuck here.”

“Stuck? How could it be stuck? I mean, if it can fire off omegas, it should be able to clear out itself.”

“Not necessarily,” said Jon. “You could be stuck in orbit somewhere but still send out, say, projectiles.”

“Wait a minute.” Matt tried to laugh, but couldn’t manage it. “You’re suggesting the omegas might be a cry for help?”

“I’m open to a better explanation.”

“That’s one hell of a way to get people’s attention. Get them to come rescue you by blowing them up.”

“I doubt it thinks in terms of people,” said Jon. “It might be that it would be shocked to discover there were living creatures, people, on planetary surfaces.” For a long time no one spoke. “It feels right,” he said, finally. “I bet that’s exactly what’s been happening.”

“For millions of years?” Matt was laughing now. “I don’t believe it.”

“Why don’t we ask it?” said Hutch.

“How do you suggest we do that?”

“I have an idea, but you’ll have to come in closer and join us first. Do we want to do that?”

As she watched the McAdams approach, Hutch wished she had a term for indigestible.

“We ready to go?” asked Matt.

“Let’s do it.” She opened the cargo hatch, and Phyl took the lander out again. Hutch turned on its lights to draw Frank’s attention, and ran it back and forth several times. Then she directed Phyl to begin the demonstration.

Phyl brought it back toward the Preston. Toward the open cargo door. Very slowly. And bumped it against the hull. Too far to the right. Backed it off and tried again. Too low this time. A third effort went wide left.

The lander hesitated in front of the door, seemingly baffled.

Frank sent a message: You question mark.

Antonio laughed.

Hutch replied no.

Matt asked what it had said.

“It wants to know,” Antonio said, “if Hutch is the lander. If the lander is the intelligence inside the ship.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It has no way to know what’s going on,” said Hutch. “Before it saw the lander earlier today, it probably thought it was talking directly to the ship.” She grinned. “I’m beginning to like him.”

“Frank?”

“Sure. Who else?” She traded amused glances with Antonio, then flashed the strobe. Three short. Three long. Three short. The old SOS signal. “Matt, time to send out yours.”

“Will do.”

The launch door in the McAdams opened, and its lander soared into the night. It crossed to the apparently hapless vehicle still trying to get back into the Preston cargo bay, moved alongside it, nudged it left, pushed it lower, and guided it through the hatch.

Hutch flashed the SOS again, followed by Frank question mark.

Pause. Then the patch brightened.

Yes.

“All right,” Matt said. “We go home and report what we found. We have intelligent plasma out here. Or whatever. They’re going to love that. It got too close to the core, and now we think it’s stuck. You know what’ll happen: They’ll be coming out here to talk to the dragon. And somebody will be crazy enough to try to figure out a way to break it loose.” He was usually easygoing, one of those guys with little respect for authority because of a conviction that people in charge tend to do stupid things. At the moment, Hutch was the suspect. “Well,” he said, “at least we’ll get clear of it. It’ll be somebody else’s call.”

“That’s not what’ll happen,” said Hutch. “Most people will react the way you just did. This place will be declared off-limits. The idiots who thought Jon’s drive was dangerous will be confirmed. And nobody will come near the place.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know.” The creature’s eyes stared at her out of the navigation screen. “Talk about eternity in hell.”

“Well, look. It’s not up to us anyhow.”

She nodded. “Right. And the omegas will keep coming. For a long time. We’ve seen the kind of damage they do.”

“You’ve been talking to it. Tell it to stop.”

“I plan to try.”

“Good.”

Chapter 37

Hutch sat on the bridge, wearily trying to figure out how to expand the vocabulary. How do you say omega cloud with blinking lights? How to establish a unit of time? How to ask what kind of creature it is?

“If it’s not native to this area,” asked Antonio, “how did it get around?”

“There’s only one way I can think of,” said Jon. “It absorbs dust or gas and expels it.”

“A jet.”

“Has to be.”

The eyes remained open. Stayed focused on them. “It never sleeps,” said Matt.

“Looks like.”

Antonio got up. “Well, am I correct in assuming we won’t be leaving in the next few minutes?”

“I think that’s a safe guess.”

“Okay. In that case I’m going to head back for a while. I’m wiped out.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t mind?”

“No,” said Hutch. “I’m fine. You go ahead.”

He nodded. “Call me if you need me.”

She turned back to the screen image. The eyes. You and me, Frank. She blinked the lights. Frank blinked back.

How long have you been here? My God, a million years in a place like this. Has anybody else been by to say hello?

Maybe a billion years. Are you immortal? I suspect you could teach those idiots at Makai something about survival.

She thought back across her life. It seemed a long time ago, eons, since as a kid barely out of flight school, she’d taken Richard Wald to Quraqua. Since she’d stood outside that spooky city that no one had ever lived in on Quraqua’s airless moon. It had been constructed by an unknown benefactor, thought to be the Monument-Makers. But who really knew? It was supposed to draw the lightning of an approaching omega away from the cities of that unhappy world. It hadn’t worked.

Frank, if that was you sending the clouds, you’ve been stuck out here a long time. How could a sentient being stay sane?

The eyes looked back at her.

Matt said something about why were they waiting around? Nothing more to be done here. Why not start back tonight?

“Let me talk to it a bit more, Matt. Be patient. This is the reason we came.”

The expression in the eyes never changed.

What are you thinking?

She blinked the lights again.

It blinked back.

Phyl’s voice retrieved her from a dream. “…Ship out there…” She recalled something about a woodland, a sliver of moon, and lights in the trees. But it faded quickly, an impression only, less than a memory. “…Edge of the cloud.”

There was nothing new on-screen. “Say again, Phyl.”

“There’s a ship—” She stopped. “Matt wants to talk to you. They’ve probably seen it, too.”

“You mean a ship other than the McAdams?”

“Yes, Hutch.”

“On-screen, please.” It was box-shaped. Covered with shielding. Like the Preston. “Can you give me a better mag?”

“You have maximum.”

Its navigation lights were on. “It looks like us.”

Phyllis put Matt through. “Hutch, you see it?”

“I see it. Phyl, where is it?”

“Forward. Directly along the face of the wall. About four thousand klicks.”

“It’s almost in the cloud,” said Matt.

It could have been the Preston, even to the extent that the armor appeared to be a series of plates tacked on. “Open a channel,” she said.

“You have it.”

Hutch hesitated. An alien ship? That meant another language problem. At least. “Hello,” she said. “This is the Phyllis Preston. Please respond.”

She waited. And heard a single word: “Hello.”

She stared at the image. “Phyl—?”

“No mistake, Hutch. They’re speaking English.”

“Help us. Please.”

“That can’t be,” said Matt. “Not out here.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so, either.” She played it back.

Hello.

Help us. Please.

Male voice. Perfect accent. A native speaker. “Sounds like you,” she said. She stared up at the image, at the boxy ship that shouldn’t be there. “Who are you?”

“Help us—”

“Identify yourself, please.”

Matt broke in: “Who the hell are you?”

“I’ve got it, Matt,” she told him on a private channel. Then she switched back: “Please tell us who you are. What is your situation?”

She listened to the carrier wave. After about a minute, it was gone.

“They’re adrift,” said Phyl.

Hutch called Antonio and asked him to come forward. He appeared moments later, in a robe, looking simultaneously startled and bleary. “Yes?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

She explained while he gaped at the display. “I want to take a look,” she said. “But I don’t know what we’ll be getting into.”

“And you don’t have any idea who that is?”

“No.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

She informed Matt. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll meet you there.”

“No. Stay where you are.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Stay put until we find out what this is about. And let me talk to Jon for a minute, please?”

“Sure. hang on. He’s in back.”

Moments later, Jon got on the circuit. “That’s really strange,” he said.

“Did anybody else have access to the Locarno?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of.”

“Anybody work with you on it? Maybe before you came to us?”

“I had some help, yes. But nobody who could have gone on and finished the project on his own.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“All right. That leaves us with the technicians who installed it.”

“They wouldn’t be able to figure out the settings. Anyway, you’re forgetting how big everything is out here, Hutch. Even if somebody else had the drive, if they had twenty ships, the chance of any two of them running into each other in this area is just about nil.”

“Then how do you explain it? The guy speaks English.”

“I can’t explain it. But if you want my advice—”

“Yes?”

“Leave it and let’s go home.”

She would have liked to assure the creature she’d be back, but she could think of no quick way to do it.

When they pulled away, minutes later, the eyes were still trained on her.

The ship lay just outside the wall, its navigation lamps still on. It had remained silent after the original transmission.

It looked like a vehicle humans might have put together. Yet, as they approached, they saw that the hull, armored as it was, possessed a suppleness that placed it ahead of any designs currently in use. It had to be one of ours, had to be. But it was different in a way she couldn’t quite pin down.

And, all that aside, what was it doing here?

“So,” asked Antonio, as Phyl brought them alongside the other ship, “what do we do now?”

The shielding on the Preston covered the main and cargo hatches, but it was designed to open up when needed. Someone standing outside the ship would have no trouble seeing the seams where the armor lifted away. The arrangement on the intruder vessel looked identical.

“I’m not sure. We can’t really go over there and knock on the door.”

“I don’t think I’d want to do that in any case.” Antonio took a long deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t like any part of this.”

“Range one hundred meters,” said Phyl. “Still no reaction. Do we want to go closer?”

“No. Not for the moment.” She looked past the ship, into the wall, half-expecting to see another eye. But there was only dust and gas, darkening until it became lost in itself. “Matt?”

“Go ahead.”

“Has anything changed back there?”

“Negative.”

“It’s still there? The creature?”

“Yes, ma’am. Eyes are still open. It probably misses you.”

Actually, she thought, it might. Probably been a long time since it had anyone to talk to.

“What do we do now, Hutch?”

“Wish I knew. It would help if we didn’t have to deal with the armor. If we could see into the bridge, we could get a better idea what we’re dealing with.”

“Yeah, well, me, I wish for world peace.” Antonio made an annoyed sound deep in his throat. “If they don’t answer up, I don’t see what we can do.”

“I’m getting increased electromagnetic activity,” said Phyl.

“Where? from the ship?”

“No. From the cloud.”

“Let me see.”

Phyl put the numbers on-screen.

They were going up fast. Hell, they were spiking. “Heads up, Antonio,” she said. She took control of the ship and fired the mains. The ship jerked forward, and they were thrown back into their chairs.

“What’s going on?” asked Antonio.

She heard Matt’s voice, too, but she was preoccupied at the moment.

The cloud was lighting up.

Hutch turned hard to port, went lower, and ran it to full throttle. But a starship is a lumbering thing.

The sky behind them lit up.

“Lightning,” said Phyl. “I think it was directed at us.”

“Keep the wall on-screen,” she said.

“I can’t. Not from this angle. The aft telescopes are sealed.”

“Unseal them, Phyl. Come on.”

“Working.”

She watched the screens. Saw clouds and stars dead ahead. “Matt.”

“Listening.”

“It attacked us. Stay clear. We are okay.”

The cloud wall appeared on-screen. Glowing. Getting brighter.

She cut to starboard.

Come on.

The sky behind lit up and the ship shuddered. The displays failed, and the lights went off and blinked back on.

“Lightning bolt aft,” said Phyl.

One by one, the screens came back.

“It’s starting again,” said Phyl. “Energy levels rising.”

“Phyl, how much time was there between bolts?”

“Thirty-seven seconds, Hutch.”

She could hardly move under the pressure of acceleration.

Antonio was clinging to his chair. “Can we outrun it?” he asked.

“A lightning bolt? No.” She was watching the time. Counting the seconds. At thirty-five, she lifted the nose and again moved hard to starboard.

The screens lit up.

“That one missed, Hutch. May I congratulate you on your maneuver?”

She turned back to port. Headed straight out from the wall, trying to put it as far behind as she could. And she had half a minute again. But the Preston was moving along now at a pretty good clip.

“Can we get clear?” demanded Antonio.

“Sit tight, and I’ll let you know. Give me a countdown, Phyl.

“Eleven.”

She swerved again. Superluminals weren’t really built for this sort of thing.

“Three.”

Cut back. Dived.

Held steady, past the end of the countdown. “It did not fire.”

Swerved. And as she came out of it, something massive struck the ship. The engines died. The lights went out. Fans stopped running, and the screens went off. She rose slightly against the harness. They’d lost artificial gravity.

“It came off the pattern,” said Antonio.

“I know.”

The emergency lights came on. The fans restarted, and the flow of air began again. “I guess it doesn’t play by the rules.” She threw her head back in the chair. Nothing she could have done. It had come down to pure guesswork. “Phyl, what is our status?”

The lights flickered, but stayed on.

“Phyl?”

There was no response.

“She’s down,” said Antonio.

They were drifting in a straight line, an easy target for a second shot. No way the damned thing could miss. Frank, you are a son of a bitch. “Matt, do you read me? We’ve been hit. Stay away from the cloud. Do not try to retrieve us.”

“You really think Frank did this?” asked Antonio. “He’s thousands of kilometers away.”

“Maybe there’s another one here. I don’t know—”

There was no answer from Matt. Damn, she didn’t have enough power to transmit over a distance of four thousand klicks. What was she thinking?

She was suddenly aware of being pushed against her harness.

“What’s going on?” said Antonio.

“We’re slowing down.”

“How’s that happening?” His voice was a notch or two higher than normal.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we didn’t really get clear of the cloud.” The only thing she could imagine was that something had grabbed them. Was pulling them back. She looked again at the blank screens.

Chapter 38

“Hutch, do you read?” Matt listened to the crackle of cosmic static. It was hard to make much out at this range, but the Preston seemed to be tangled in long tendrils of cloud. “Goddam it,” he said, “I knew something like this was going to happen.”

The eyes were watching him.

“Matt,” said the AI, “the other ship, the one that issued the call for help, is gone. It must have been taken inside the cloud.”

“Jim, get us over there. Minimum time.” That meant using the Locarno, but they’d need about thirty minutes to charge. “Hutch, I don’t know whether you can hear this, but we’re on our way.”

“Wait,” said Jon.

“We don’t have time to screw around, Jon.” They began to move.

“Kill the engines. You’re doing this the wrong way.”

“How do you mean?”

“Shut the engines down. Please.”

“Why?”

“Just stop the goddammed thing.”

“Do it, Jim.”

“Complying, Captain.”

“Okay,” said Jon. “Now ask the AI to put me on with Hutch. And just one live mike.” He touched the one in front of him. “This one.”

“Why?”

“Time may be short. Will you just do it?”

“Okay. Jim, open a channel.”

Jon hunched over the mike. “Hutch, this is Jon.”

“You understand—”

Jon shushed him, and covered the mike. “Okay, go ahead.”

“You understand she probably can’t hear you.”

“That’s okay.”

Matt sighed. Shook his head. When dealing with a lunatic, it’s always best to pacify him. “All right. Do what you have to. But make it quick, all right?”

Jon went back to the mike. “Hutch,” he said, “we don’t know whether you can hear us or not. But the thing in the cloud wants to seize the Preston. You can guess why. We’re sorry, but”—he held up a hand, signaling Matt not to interfere—“but we’re going to have to destroy you.”

Matt almost jumped out of his chair. Jon covered the mike again. “Trust me,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Have faith, Brother. You want to save them?”

“Of course.”

“This might be the only way.” The hand went up again, index finger pointed at the overhead, his expression warning Matt to be silent. “We’re starting a countdown, Hutch, to allow you and Antonio a few minutes for prayer and reflection. We’ll blow the ship in precisely five minutes. I’m setting the clock now.”

He shut off the mike, sat back, and exhaled.

“What did you just do, Jon? They may have heard that. If they did—”

“Matt, we don’t actually have the capability to destroy them, do we?”

“No.”

“Okay. Then what would they be worried about?”

“At a time when they’re in deep trouble? They’ll think we’ve lost our minds.”

“Matt.” He went into his professorial mode. “Hutch is pretty smart. By now she’ll have figured out what’s—”

“Incoming transmission,” said Jim.

Matt was beginning to feel he was in a surreal world. “From Hutch?”

“No, Matt. I’m not sure who it’s from. It originated in the cloud.”

Jon was wearing a large, told-you-so smile. “Let me handle it,” he said.

Matt was glad somebody had an idea what was going on. “Go ahead,” he said. “I assume you know who’s on the circuit?”

“He has big eyes,” said Jon. “Jim, connect.” When the white lamp came on, he said, “Go ahead, please.”

“Do not destroy the Preston.” It sounded like the same voice that had called for help. The one Jon insisted sounded like Matt.

Jon switched off the mike. “Now you see what we’re dealing with?”

“No. What the hell is going on?”

Jon held up his palm. Okay. Be patient. Stay out of it. He switched the mike back on: “I’m sorry. Unless you can give me a good reason not to, I have no choice. It is standard procedure.”

“Why would you wish to destroy friends?”

“You were listening to us all along, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“The flashing lights. That was a game, wasn’t it?”

“I am not familiar with the term.”

“Game: an activity of no consequence.”

“No. It was a way to start communication. It was a beginning.”

“Now you want the Preston.”

“Yes. I wish to make an arrangement.”

“I’m listening.”

“First, stop the clock.”

“I’ll stop it if I’m satisfied with your answers.”

“How do I know you are telling me the realistic thing?”

“You mean, how do you know I can actually destroy the other ship?”

“Yes.”

“I can prove it by doing it. Be patient and you will see.”

“That is not satisfactory.”

“If you choose not to believe me, and I am telling the truth, telling the realistic thing, you will lose access to the Preston. If you allow me to take off my associates, whether I am telling the realistic thing or not, you will still have the ship.”

“Yes. That is so.”

Jon covered the mike and looked over at Matt. “People always told me you could be a good engineer and still be dumb.” Then back to the microphone: “All right. I have put the clock on hold.”

“That means what?”

“It’s not running. But I can start it again at any moment.”

“How does it happen you have such capability? To destroy the other ship?”

“You are aware of the Penzance pirates?”

“No. What is a Penzance pirate?”

“They are from Penzance.”

“I am not familiar with Penzance. Or with the term pirate.”

“Penzance is a barbarous empire out near the galactic rim. Far from here. They are all pirates. They attack ships. Like ours. Seize them. Rob the crew and passengers. Kill people for no reason. We found only one way to protect ourselves. Let them come on board, then destroy the vessel. Either self-destruct, or from nearby.”

“It is hard to believe you would do a thing like this.”

“We no longer have problems with pirates.”

“Does that not kill your people as well as those whom you oppose?”

“They’re called enemies.”

“Yes. Enemies.” It seemed to be tasting the word, as though something might be learned from it.

“Yes, the strategy kills our people. But they live on. It is honorable to die in a just cause. To die while fighting your enemies gives us salvation.”

Love your theology, thought Matt.

“How do they live on? If they are dead?”

“There is a part of them that is immortal. That lives forever. Like you, perhaps.”

“I do not live forever.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“What is ‘salvation’? A method to dispose of the remains?”

“It’s complicated. But I sincerely wish you would give us cause to destroy ourselves, as well as our friends.”

“You are a strange species. But I am unable to accommodate you.”

“I see.”

“I offer you the lives of your friends. You may go and collect them from the ship. But then you must leave. I ask only that you not damage the Preston.”

“Beyond what you’ve already done.”

“The essentials remain.”

“Okay,” said Jon. “I’m sorry to hear that. They will not be pleased to be taken off. They expect that we will grant them the opportunity for salvation.”

“You may tell them I am sorry for their inconvenience.”

“I’ll tell them.” He scratched his forehead, waited a few beats, then spoke again: “Who were you signaling?”

“I do not understand.”

“There’s someone you hoped would see the clouds, the explosions, and come to your assistance. Is that not correct?”

“Yes. It is correct.”

“Who? Others like you?”

“Yes. Like me.”

“Why have they not come?”

“They know they would be trapped here if they did. As I am.”

“Then why bother? If they will not come?”

“It is all I have.”

At that moment Jon would happily have killed the thing. “Have you any idea how many have died, how many civilizations have been destroyed by your goddam signal?”

“I did not know there were life forms like you.”

“Yeah. One more thing: If you attempt to strike us in any way, know that we are not without recourse.”

“I understand.”

“We will know in advance that a strike is coming, and we will immediately destroy both ships.”

“Yes. I understand that also.”

“I hope so.”

“And if I fulfill my part of the agreement you will not destroy the Preston?”

“No. You have my word.”

“Okay, jim,” Matt told the AI, “get us over there as quickly as you can.”

“No,” said Jon. “Don’t show it the Locarno. Just use the main engines.”

“Why?”

“Best to keep a surprise available. Charge the Locarno on the way. And keep it ready.”

“Okay, Jon. Now, how about telling me where that other ship came from? And why this thing wants the Preston at all? Especially after it crippled the thing. Even if it was operational, something as big as that son of a bitch is couldn’t fit inside.”

“It manufactured the other ship. To lure Hutch closer. And no, of course the creature couldn’t fit inside.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“We can assume it wants to get out of here. That means it needs thrust. What makes the Preston go?”

“But—”

“I suspect what it wants is to get a look at the Preston’s engines and thrusters.”

“So it can reproduce them?”

“On a much larger scale. Or maybe just make a zillion of them. I don’t know—”

“You think it can do that? Manufacture thrusters?”

“It makes omega clouds and their triggers, doesn’t it? We’ve seen it make a transmitter. We know it has nanotech capabilities. I’d say sure. It can manufacture the engines, the fuel, probably whatever it needs. It just doesn’t know how.”

“And we’re going to leave it a design? So it can get clear?”

“One problem at a time, Matt.”

“I don’t think we should let this happen.”

“I know you don’t. At the moment, all I really care about is picking up Hutch and Antonio and getting out of here.”

It was a betrayal. “If the idiot woman had listened to me, none of this would be happening.”

“You can complain to her when we have them back on board.”

“Jon, you know, after we get them back, it might be possible to destroy the Preston anyhow.”

“Matt, I promised the thing it could have the ship.”

“I know. But we have a defense system. We have particle beams.”

“Matt, the Preston is armored. The particle beams might do some damage, but I suspect it would be minimal. The thing would probably still be able to figure out how the engines work.”

“Probably.”

“You’d have to pretty much melt the engines to hide the design.”

“If we fired a few shots right up the tubes, we’d bypass the shielding. There’d be a decent chance of blowing the ship apart. We could pick them up, then at least make the effort.”

Jon looked unhappy. “Wouldn’t you have to maneuver into position to do that?”

“Yeah.”

“And if you succeeded, we’d have to make a run for it. Against lightning bolts.”

“We already know the thing’s a scattershot.”

“I don’t think it would have to have a very good aim to take us out.”

“I don’t know. If that’s the case, why didn’t it disable the Preston when it got so close right at the beginning? Why did it have to arrange that elaborate ploy with the alternate ship to get her even closer?”

“I’d say because it wasn’t a matter of taking down the Preston; it was a question of securing the ship afterward.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think we do what we said we were going to do. Let it have the Preston and count ourselves lucky if we get clear with Antonio and Hutch.”

They were too far away to get a good look, but as Matt accelerated toward the Preston, they could see that tendrils still clung to it. The forward motion of the ship had not yet stopped, but it was barely moving.

“It’s not letting go,” said Matt.

Jon nodded. “It won’t.”

Matt got back on the circuit. “Hutch,” he said. “We know you can’t transmit. But we’re on the way. Be there in a couple of hours. Hang on. We’re going to—”

Jon held up his hands. Stop. He scribbled a note. Careful what you say. Enemy listening.

“See you then,” he finished.

Jon took over, explained how they intended to make the transfer, and signed off. When he’d finished, Matt wondered what the enemy remark was about.

“If we sound anxious to get them off, Frank might conclude the story’s a fabrication.”

“So what if it does? I mean, really, as long as it gets to keep the ship, why would it care?”

“If I were Frank,” said Jon, “I’d prefer two ships to one. In case something went wrong. In case the engine in one was damaged to the extent I couldn’t figure out how it worked. Maybe just because I’m a mean son of a bitch who wants to kill everybody in sight. Look, what would your mood be like if you’d been stuck out here a million years?”

“Okay.”

“We need it to be convinced we’re suicidal.”

Jim broke in: “Forward motion by the Preston has stopped.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “Maybe it’s best we stay off the link.”

“Until we get there, anyhow.”

“It is beginning to retract. The ship is being drawn back toward the cloud wall.”

They reached cruise velocity, and Matt released the harnesses. “Time to get to work,” he said.

They climbed into e-suits and went below to cargo. There, they collected two lasers and began cutting into the ship’s outer bulkhead.

When they got within a hundred kilometers, they picked up a transmission from the Preston. “Glad you guys are coming. We’ll be waiting.”

“Very good, Hutch,” said Matt. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Jon leaned forward. “Hutch, in the various communication media, as in all things, caution is the watchword.”

“Understood, Jon. Nobody ever got in trouble for something she didn’t say.”

The Preston was being dragged relentlessly toward the cloud wall.

“Jim,” said Matt, “you get any indication of increasing activity inside the cloud, let me know right away.”

“Yes, Matt.”

Jon got on the link. “Being in the cloud, we do not have a name for you. How do we address you?”

He got only static back.

“Okay. It doesn’t matter. We’re approaching the Preston. In a few minutes we will be taking our people off. When we have accomplished that, I’ll signal you, and at that point you may do as you will with the ship.”

“Yes,” it said. Still using Matt’s voice. “Agreed.”

“Okay.”

Matt brought them in carefully. He tried to angle the ship so he could get clear quickly if attacked. But he knew, they both knew, that if things went wrong, there’d be no evading the lightning. Not at this range.

“Okay, Hutch,” he said, “we’re ready to go.”

“Need a couple minutes,” she said.

Matt grumbled under his breath. They were presumably putting on e-suits, getting ready to go down into cargo. But they’d had plenty of time to do that. It was irritating that she hadn’t been ready to move on signal.

“All right.” He didn’t add What’s the holdup? but his voice must have given it away.

“We’re packing,” she said.

Packing? What the hell was the matter with the woman? “Hutch, you have nothing over there we can’t replace.”

“Need my clothes,” she said. “Just be a few minutes.”

He pushed back in his chair. “Goddam women.”

And he waited.

Jon went below to take a last look at the shielding they’d welded to the hull of the lander. More had been placed inside the vehicle wherever possible. It didn’t look pretty, and it wasn’t much, not in the surrounding electromagnetic maelstrom, but it was something.

The minutes dragged. Didn’t she realize the monster in the cloud could change its mind at any moment and fry them all? What the hell was she doing over there?

Then, finally, she was back. “Okay, Matt. All set. You’ll want to hurry up, though.” Urgency in her voice. That’s right. Take your time and now let’s hustle. He wanted to say something, but best not. Not with Frank listening.

“Thank God,” he said. “Jettison the lander.”

Since the Preston had no power, Hutch and Antonio would have to release the locks and the cargo hatch manually. That would expose them to the outside radiation, but she’d said not to worry, she could take care of it. Probably she had done much the same thing he and Jon had, taken down some of the interior shielding and built a shelter near the hatch that they could hide behind.

The Preston cargo hatch was located on the port side. He watched it open. The lander, like the ship, had lost power, and they needed to get it out of the way. Even in zero gravity, it retained its mass, and would therefore require some serious pushing. Hutch and Antonio would be behind their makeshift shielding pulling on lines to drag the lander through the launch doors. He was relieved to see it emerge and begin to drift away.

Matt opened his own cargo door.

Hutch called over. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Incredible. She was annoyed at him.

“I hope you got all your blouses,” he told her.

“Say again, Matt?”

“Nothing.” The McAdams lander slipped out through the hatch and started toward the Preston.

“Jim, don’t forget they have no gravity over there.”

“I know.”

It crossed the twenty or so meters that separated the two ships and entered Hutch’s cargo section.

He visualized Hutch and Antonio scrambling on board, looking around doubtfully at the makeshift shielding. Then Jim alerted him that the lander had sealed. The vehicle made its exit and started back. Moments later the McAdams took it aboard.

Jon waited below in cargo, watching it come in. He couldn’t see into the vehicle because of the shielding he and Matt had welded around it. As soon as it had cleared the launch doors, he closed them. It eased into its berth, and he started the pressurization procedure. It would take about two minutes before they could leave the passenger cabin.

Except that the shuttle opened up immediately. Antonio was wearing an e-suit. He jumped down from the lander, looked around, and spotted Jon. He literally bolted in his direction. There was no sign of Hutch.

He was carrying something. A piece of cloth, looked like.

Jon started to wave, and mouthed hello. Was going to add Glad to see you. But he shook his head, no time.

Jon glanced back at the lander. Nobody else was getting out. Antonio unraveled the cloth and held it up for him. A message was scrawled on it: GET GOING. PRESTON ABOUT TO BLOW.

He shook his head. That couldn’t be right. Again he tried to form words that Antonio could read. What’s going on? What do you mean?

The journalist looked directly into his eyes and opened his mouth to form one unmistakable word: Boom.

That was enough for Jon. He got on the allcom, the ship’s internal communication system, which Frank couldn’t intercept, and called the bridge. “Matt.”

“They okay, Jon?”

“Antonio says there’s a bomb ready to go off over there. Move out.”

“What?” He added an expletive. “Tell him to grab hold of something.” The main engines came online.

Jon gave a thumbs-up, and Antonio tried to hurry back to the lander, where he could belt down and ride out the acceleration. But the ship was already moving, turning away, power building in the engines. Jon clung to a safety rail, while Antonio lost his balance and slid aft, into storage, where he grabbed hold of a cabinet door handle.

He looked again around the launch bay. Where was Hutch?

Chapter 39

Jon looked dismayed. “Matt,” he said, “stay off the commlink. Don’t try to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Because it might be overheard.”

“Well, if that critter hasn’t figured out by now that something’s wrong, it’s pretty dumb.” But he complied. At the moment there was nothing to be gained by talking.

Just clear out.

He couldn’t go to maximum thrust, with people running around the launch bay. But he put on as much acceleration as he dared. A few bumps and bruises were better than getting caught in an explosion, and who the hell’s idea was it anyhow to plant a bomb on board the Preston? “Jon, how much time do we have?”

“Don’t know.” Jon grunted, straining to hang on to the bar.

“What kind of bomb?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“What do we know?”

“Matt,” he said, “I haven’t seen Hutch yet.”

The AI cut in: “Electrical activity’s picking up.”

They were going to get another bolt up their rear ends. He turned onto a new course. Jon grunted but hung on. Starships weren’t like aircraft. Not nearly as maneuverable, because you don’t have an atmosphere to help you do flips and turns. All Matt could do was roll around and fire attitude thrusters.

“I think we’ve got another eye forming.”

“Not surprised.” He changed course again. And fired braking rockets.

“Hey.” Jon did not sound happy. “What are you doing?”

“Two of them, in fact. No, three.”

“It’s getting ready to shoot at us, Jon. I guess it’s figured out—”

The sky flared.

“Close,” said Jim. “Building again.”

He angled off in another direction and heard Jon yell. Heard something crash.

“Sorry. Can’t help it.”

“Do what you have to.”

Another bolt ripped past. It illuminated the hull and was gone.

At the same instant the sky behind them exploded.

“That was the Preston,” said Jim.

He turned again. And took her hard up.

Lightning rippled across the screens. They went off momentarily, and came back. He could smell something burning. “Jim?”

“We’re okay. Best not to get hit again, though.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

“It appears the Preston’s engines went. I do not think much will be left.”

“Jon—”

“Still here.”

“Any sign of Hutch?”

“Hard to see from down here.”

“You’re on the deck?”

“Another one building, Matt.”

It had begun trying to outguess him. This time he stayed on course. Just kept piling on distance.

The sky brightened again.

“Matt,” said Jim, “we should be out of range in about a minute.”

Matt didn’t believe it. “How do you get out of range of a lightning bolt?”

“You become a small enough target that it’s virtually impossible for the cloud to mount an accurate strike.”

“Okay.” He would have liked to ease off a bit, but he didn’t dare, and in fact it took all his discipline not to go to full thrust. But neither Jon nor Antonio and maybe not Hutch would have survived. “Jon, how you doing?”

“No sweat, Matt. The bone’ll set in thirty days.”

He opened the commlink. It didn’t much matter if they were overheard now. “Antonio, how about you?”

“I’m all right,” he said.

“Where’s Hutch?”

Her voice came through: “I’m here. In the lander.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

The sky brightened again. Less intense this time.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“Pretty dumb. I trusted that thing. I still don’t believe it.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the bomb.”

“Going up again, Matt.”

“Why the bomb? Why’d you do it?”

“I wasn’t going to allow that damned thing to take my ship.”

“You put us all in danger.”

“I know.”

Jim broke in: “We are getting a transmission from Frank.”

“Okay. Let’s hear what it has to say. Hutch, you still there?”

“I’m here. You’ve been talking to Frank?”

“Yes. Good old Frank.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I never kid. Put him on, Jim.”

But there was only the whisper of the stars.

“It was here a moment ago, Matt.”

“I am here now.” Matt’s own voice again. Sounding angry. Or maybe hurt. Disappointed. “You broke your engagement.”

“Promise. It’s called a promise.”

“Nevertheless, am I not able to trust you?”

“What was the promise?” asked Hutch.

Another bolt rippled through the sky, far away.

Matt’s voice responded: “Who is that?”

“I’ll tell you who, Frank. I’m the person who’s been blinking lights at you the last few days. The one you tried to kill a few hours ago.”

“Priscilla Hutchins. From the Preston.”

“Yes. I was her captain, until you took us down.”

“I am not familiar with the phrase.”

“Until you seized my ship. Is that clear enough for you?”

“I regret the loss. I needed it. The ship.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“You promised it would not be damaged if I allowed the persons on board to be rescued.”

“I didn’t promise anything, Frank. You want to know the truth, Frank. I don’t—”

Another bolt soared past. Enough to dim the lights. But only for a moment.

“You want to know the truth, Frank?” she said again. “I don’t like you very much.”

“I am stranded. Have a measure of empathy.”

“I think you lost that chance. Enjoy your time here, Frank. I think you’ll be here awhile.”

“I had no choice but to do as I did.”

“You could have had help. All you had to do was ask.” Maybe, Matt thought. But probably not.

“You have nothing left, Frank. Even if you get lucky and hit us, you won’t be able to recover the ship.”

“I know.”

“Good-bye, Frank.”

“I think we’re out of range,” said Jim.

The sky behind them came alive with lightning strikes. “All that power,” said Hutch, “and it’s helpless.”

Antonio was limping. He’d picked up some bumps and bruises, but otherwise he was fine. Jon had ended splayed against the after bulkhead, but he discovered he could walk, and nothing seemed to be broken.

He’d been startled—and happy—when Hutch had begun speaking to Matt. When she hadn’t gotten out of the spacecraft, he’d feared she’d stayed behind to detonate the bomb. He’d seen no other explanation for her absence.

“What could I do?” she asked Jon as they strolled into the common room. She was carrying the black box that housed Phyl. “I knew Matt would have to go evasive, and I couldn’t get out of the launch area before that started. I’m getting a little too old to get tossed around. Antonio was enough of a gentleman to carry the note.”

Matt took a seat opposite her. They were about ten minutes from making their jump. “Hutch,” he said, “explain something to me.”

“If I can.”

“Why was the bomb such a close thing? Why didn’t you give us more time before detonation? Give yourself more time? You guys were barely inside the ship before it went off.”

She laughed and the room brightened. “I’d have done that in a minute if I’d known how.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, Matt, I don’t know a thing about making bombs. Do you?”

“No. Not really. Never had reason to learn.”

“Me, too.”

“So how’d you do it?”

She smiled at Antonio. Tell them.

Antonio sat back and folded his arms. “The original plan was to dump some fuel in the engine room, but we needed a fuse. The cables are all fireproof, so we tried tying together some sheets. But they burned too fast. We would never have gotten out of the ship.”

“So what did you do?”

“We took a laser to one of the fuel lines. Then used our clothes and the pages from the Sigma Hotel Book to build a fire.”

“Transmission from the cloud,” said Jim.

Matt nodded, and Frank’s reproduction of Matt’s voice filled the bridge. “Please don’t leave.”

Hutch was beside him. Her eyes were clouded, and she looked as if she were going to speak, but she said nothing.

And again: “Please come back.”

The cloud occupied the navigation screen. It seemed now to be all eyes, all staring after them.

“Please, help me.”

“You know,” Matt said, “it was in a bind.” He hated the damned thing. But it didn’t seem to matter. Now that the shooting was over. “It would have recognized how powerless we were to help. It took the only course open to it.”

“I promise you will be safe.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” said Hutch.

“And it would have known that we would probably not have been able to help in any case. Unless we gave it a ship. Would we have done that if it asked?” He paused and listened to the silence. “I didn’t think so.”