Starhawk

Chapter 37

JAKE HAD LONG since lost count of the number of flights he’d logged. But this was the first time he’d surfaced in an area with no sun. Well, maybe that was something of an exaggeration. He’d been out to Neptune once. Sol, from there, wasn’t much more than a bright star. But at least you knew it was there. In this case, light-years from everything, he felt—What? The emptiness? The distances?

“Myra,” said Priscilla. “Any sign of Orfano?”

“Nothing yet. It may take some time.”

“All right. Let’s see if maybe we can get lucky and locate the Vincenti. Go to broadcast.”

“Okay. Ready when you are.”

“Vincenti, this is Baumbachner. We have just arrived in the area. Do you read?”

She switched over and listened to the silence.

“Vincenti, answer up please.”

Nothing.

“I’ve got Orfano,” said Myra. “Range is seven hundred thousand kilometers.”

“That’s not bad,” said Priscilla.

Jake agreed. “Considering how far we’ve come, that’s about as close as you could hope for.”

“Unfortunately,” said Myra, “It’s behind us. We’re pulling away from it.”

“Wonderful,” Priscilla said. “Prepare to do a one-eighty.”

“It will require two hours to reverse movement.”

“Okay. Hold on a second, Myra.” She looked over at Jake.

“No,” he said, “I’m fine. Start braking whenever you’re ready.”

* * *

ORFANO WAS SLIGHTLY bigger than Earth, with an equatorial diameter of thirteen thousand kilometers, and a gravity index at 1.1. Reports from the first expedition indicated warmer temperatures than would normally be expected with no sunlight. The experts attributed the condition, probably, to the presence of an iron core warmed by radioactives.

They were braking again, preparing to enter orbit.

Jake was at the controls while Priscilla sat quietly in the right-hand seat, looking out at gray clouds and an icy landscape. It was more exotic than any planetary surface she’d seen before. On terrestrial worlds, mountains usually came in clusters, divided by plains and hills. But the clusters were random, and the mountains scattered arbitrarily. Orfano’s mountains and ridges resembled a frozen eruption. They possessed an unsettling symmetry. Long, curving lines of snowcapped peaks and valleys ran parallel to each other, cast in shades and tones of rock that formed circles and triangles. Or maybe not. She found that if she closed her eyes and looked again, the impression went away.

“I see it, too,” said Jake.

“What do you mean?”

“It looks as if it was landscaped.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not especially religious, but that place could have been put together by an engineer.”

When the angle was right, the ice glittered in the starlight, and the ground acquired a kind of pristine beauty. Nature in all its fractious, weathered clarity. “Maybe that’s where you should have your cabin,” she said.

“It does have a certain charm, Priscilla. But it’s a bit too exotic for my tastes. Myra, any sign of the Vincenti?”

“Negative, Jake.” The seductive tone was gone. Games were over. “We’re not picking up anything.”

“Okay. Keep us informed.”

“Of course.”

He turned back to Priscilla. “It’s early yet.”

“What do you think could have happened to them?”

“Well, we know they’re not simply on the other side of the planet.” They’d been sending out transmissions for hours. “To be honest, I’m not optimistic. But maybe they developed a problem with their comm system. If they couldn’t communicate with anybody, there wouldn’t be much they could do. They weren’t going to go all the way back to fix a transmitter. So they stay on, complete the mission, then go home. They might have done that and already left.”

“And we have to wait here until they get home, and Frank lets us know everything’s okay?”

“Priscilla, you’re a licensed pilot. What do you do if your comm system gives out and you have to return to base?”

She thought about it. “Oh,” she said.

“So what do you do?”

“Leave a satellite with a message.”

“Very good.”

“I’m embarrassed.”

You should be. “It’s okay,” he said.

After her performance with the Gremlin, he was almost relieved to find out she could be just as dumb as anybody else.

* * *

“THEY’RE NOT HERE,” Myra said.

Priscilla looked out at the empty sky. “They must have gone back. And it looks as if I’m not the only one who forgets about satellites.”

“Or they went down,” said Jake.

She frowned. “I hope not.”

Starlight reflected from icy ridges and mountaintops. He could make out a long, jagged canyon near the horizon.

“So what do we do?” asked Priscilla.

“We expand the search. We’ll keep looking until we find something or get recalled.”

“You think Isha would leave without putting out a satellite?”

“Anybody can screw up. But no, it’s hard to imagine. Myra, set up the scanners for a ground survey.”

“Okay, Jake.”

“The Vincenti’s big enough,” he said, “that if it went down, we should be able to find it.”

* * *

THEY MOVED OVER a gray mist. The gorges, ridges, and mountains were hazy under the stars. The ground could not properly be described as rugged. It was rather the sort of terrain one might see in a portrait designed to emphasize the beauty of the natural order. Priscilla could not resist expressing her admiration. Meantime, Myra adjusted the angle of each orbit to expand the coverage, but the hours drifted by without result.

Eventually, they both slept in their chairs while the AI continued to monitor the scanners and scopes. Jake woke periodically only to drift back off, lulled by the murmur of the air vents. Then it was morning on the ship, if not in the world below, and the interior lighting adjusted accordingly. In several areas, the surface appeared to be obscured by storms. Priscilla woke. “Nothing yet?”

“Negative,” said Jake. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

He released his harness, and Myra’s voice broke the silence. “Object ahead,” she said. “It appears to be in orbit.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I am not sure.” She put it on-screen. Jake could make out nothing other than that it was tumbling. “It is much too small to be a vehicle.”

Priscilla was in the pilot’s seat. “Ready when you are, Jake,” she said.

He belted back down, and she changed course and fired the thrusters. The ship began to accelerate.

The object grew larger. It had right angles. “It is about the size of a human being,” Myra said.

Jake stared at it. “Probably just a chunk of ice.”

“It appears to have four legs,” said Myra.

It was acquiring definition. “Holy cats,” Priscilla said.

Jake gaped. It looked like a chair.

* * *

BAUMBACHNER LOG

We have found the Vincenti.

—Jake Loomis, February 7, 2196