The Devil's Eye

TWENTY-FIVE

We rode the train into Marinopolis. On the way, Alex asked me to make a shuttle reservation. For one. Uno . "How come?" I said. We were seated in a compartment, just back from the dining car with sandwiches. He looked out at a large patch of farmland. "Chase, we both know they'll probably be waiting for us at either the terminal or at Samuels. Probably both places." "I know." "We can't afford to have them take both of us." "So what are you suggesting?"

"I'm going up alone. If I make it okay, I'll look up your friend Ivan and see if he can be persuaded to take me out to the asteroid. I won't try to get Belle because I'm pretty sure Wexler'll be watching it." He took a deep breath. "You think Ivan would go along?" "Maybe," I said. "Well, we'll have to give it a try." "Alex, I don't like this." "Neither do I. But we have to play our best shot." I did what he asked. But I also went into a sulk. "I know how you feel," he said. "But we're going to do it this way. Now, before we get to the station, I have something to show you." He drew the blinds, took out a notebook, and killed the lights. "I don't think we need be concerned about a rift." "Good," I said. "Why?" He activated the notebook. It gave us a soft glow. "I think Saberna's a guy on a mission. I checked him out. He's been trying to make the case for spatial rifts for years. It's his pet project. If he finds one, maybe they'll name it for him." "So we're, what, back to the Mutes again?" "I don't think so. We talked about the Calient mission." "Yes." "Watch." He primed the notebook. A yellow globe appeared in the center of the room. "Seepah," he said. Eight smaller lights, representing planets, were circling it. "Okay, let's look at the position of everything when the transmissions stopped." The orbiting lights glided to a halt. "The monitors that shut down were on the third and seventh worlds." "Okay." He paused. "Notice anything?" "Just lights." "The third and seventh worlds are on the same side of the sun." "So's the fifth world. And for that matter the outermost." "The fifth world was already shut down. That's the one with the failed transmitter." "But the signal from the eighth was still coming in, right?" "Yes. Maybe it was too far out." "Too far out for what?" Alex is a decent-looking guy. Especially when he gives you the big smile that always indicates he's figured out where the Ibritic tomb is, or some such thing. I got that smile then, underscored by the half-light. "I don't know yet." I took a bite out of my sandwich and chewed slowly. It was good. "Alex, what are you trying to tell me?" "The transmissions stopped six centuries ago. Six hundred fourteen years, to be exact." "Standard years?" "Yes." "Okay. So what's the point?" I took another bite. Chewed some more. "Let me show you." Seepah's system blinked off. Callistra appeared. A bright azure light near the window. Then a dim yellow star near the door. Seepah. And, finally, off to one side and still farther away, almost flat against the door, a tiny red light. The asteroid. "I'm going to draw an arc around Callistra, at Seepah's range," Alex said. He pressed a pad on his notebook and the arc appeared, to the extent the dimensions of the room would permit it. It passed through the dwarf star. Next, we got a second arc, drawn through the asteroid. "The distance from Seepah," he said, "to the asteroid is more than two thousand light-years." "Okay." "But the distance between the arcs is only five hundred eighty-one light-years." "Alex, you say that as if it has some significance." "The Lantner incident occurred thirty-six years ago. The loss of the Seepah signal happened six hundred

seventeen years ago. As the good Professor Saberna would put it, do the math." It didn't take a genius. "But it can't be the same thing happening in both places," I said. "They're too far apart." "I'll tell you something else: The Lantner and the Origon didn't disappear. At least not in the way we've been led to believe." "Explain." "The ship that was sent to look around found something other than what was reported. That's why it blew up a couple of days later. So nobody would be in a position to contradict the official story. It's why the captain who carried Vicki out there disappeared." "They saw something?" "Yes. The second vehicle would have been manned by Nicorps people. It was a cleanup operation. They got rid of whatever was left." "So what actually happened? Was it the Mutes?" "I doubt it. But the answer is out at the asteroid."

The train pulled into Marinopolis. We grabbed our luggage and headed for the doors. I was still not happy as we climbed down onto the platform. "Don't be angry," he said. "You know we have to do it this way." I noticed a uniformed police officer watching us. Looking down at a notebook. He started in our direction. Alex saw him, too. "Split," he said. He grabbed his bag, gave me a shove, and hurried off in the opposite direction. The officer began talking into his link and took after Alex.

I waved down a taxi and went for a ride. I didn't have a destination. "Just take me to the spaceport," I told it. Then I tried to reach Alex on his link. An unfamiliar voice answered: "Ms. Kolpath, is that you?" Damn. They had him.

"Please answer. We're not trying to hurt anybody. This is the police."

I broke the circuit and called Peifer. "Rob, they took Alex."

"Damn."

"Can you do a story? Put some pressure on Wexler?"

"Sure. Give me the details. What's going on?"

"I don't know."

"That's not easy to write."

"I know."

"Okay. Look, I'll check the police reports. We should be able to find out what's happening with him, anyhow."

"Maybe." I didn't know where to go from there. "Rob, I need to get out to the asteroid. Can you make me part of a news team or something? And we both go? If we did that, I could probably get through. And you might get your story."

"But why, Chase? We keep going around in a circle. Did you guys find evidence of the rift?"

"There's no rift, Rob. At least, I don't think there is."

"What, then?"

"I don't know. Alex thought we'd find out if we could get to the asteroid."

"Great."

"So can you help, Rob?"

"Let me see what I can do. I'll get back to you."

I moved into a hotel in the center of the city. And I sat in it, watching newscasts, watching talk shows, and I saw nothing about Alex. Heard no mention of him. There were reports, though, of another

encounter with the Mutes. The administration announced that plans were going ahead to increase "substantially" the size of the fleet. And work had begun on another group of shelters. Administration officials appeared everywhere and were reassuring. "We're protected by a cosmic ocean," one of them said. "The Mutes are coming out here because they think we're an easy target. We're going to fix that." "Then why," asked an interviewer, "do we need all those shelters?" "We're sending a message," he said. "If they come here, we'll stand our ground and go to all-out war if need be. Once they see that, once they see we aren't going to just sit here and let them run us off, we're confident they'll understand that this Administrator is not going to tolerate recurring attacks."

I don't usually drink alone, but I had a couple that night, in my room, while I wondered what was happening to Alex, where he was, whether they were trying to press him to find out where I was. Eventually Peifer called. "Sorry, kid," he said. "But it's no go." "Which part of it?"

"All of it. When I told Howie-my editor-he ran it past the fifth floor. That's our senior people. I'm not sure what's going on, but somebody up there vetoed it. They told Howie we weren't to touch any part of the story. The official line is that it's pointless, that nobody knows anything, and to just let it go away."

"Rob- "

"Chase, if you can come up with something solid, I'll do something with it. But I can't hang everything out there when we don't even know what it's about."

"Okay."

"Also, I checked on Alex."

"And- ?"

"The police claim they released him an hour after they picked him up. They're saying it was a case of mistaken identity."

"Rob, he'd have called me."

"And he hasn't?"

"Not a peep."

"Well, maybe he-"

"What?" "All right, look: I'll keep checking. If you hear from him, let me know." He looked tired. "Do you need a place to stay? We've got a spare room."

"No. Thanks."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Get your story, I guess."

"What do you mean? How are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to the asteroid. And find out what this is about."

"Yeah, good. How are you going to manage it? Grab a taxi?"